#meaning there's a lot more links to stuff and explainers and whatnot...

[junabuggy]

Hazbin Hotel crew x Reader: general fluff hcs

A/n: 100+ follower special !!

I’ve been doing a lot of headcanons lately so I pinky promise there’ll be some kind of oneshot coming soon 🙏

Warnings: None !! Just some good old fashioned fluff :3

Fluff✔️ Comfort❌ Angst❌ Smut❌

‧₊˚✧ Alastor ✧˚₊‧

📻𖤐 When Alastor forms a close bond with you (and I’ve mentioned this before), he’d want to spend more time with you. Even if that’s just sitting in silence together and reading your own separate books

📻𖤐 Who knows? Maybe he’d let you lean against him, head on his shoulder, as he reads to you?

📻𖤐 This guys primary love language is quality time for sure. A close second perhaps acts of service.

📻𖤐 Biggest mamas boy ever…. But I’m sure we all knew that already

📻𖤐 LOVES to go on walks with you, especially during the afternoon or at night.

📻𖤐 Would link your arm with his and chat with you as you went on your daily stroll together… you’re not quite sure when it became a routine but it did.

📻𖤐 Huuuggeee story teller

📻𖤐 100% laughs at dad jokes and will also make them from time to time

📻𖤐 Always winning every single IDGAF war because he genuinely, wholeheartedly, just doesn’t give two shits 💀💀

📻𖤐 Can’t swim. I don’t know how to explain why I think this but I just KNOW its true

📻𖤐 Freezes like a deer in headlights (quite literally) when you shine a bright enough light at him

‧₊˚✧ Angel Dust ✧˚₊‧

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Angel would be the absolute BEST at giving out hugs oh my goddd, he’s got six arms for a reason, baby !

🕸️ᥫ᭡ I feel like he’d have fun dancing !! (I mean “Loser, Baby” was enough evidence for me)

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Competitive as fuck, UNO would actually be so fun with him 😭 (gets so genuinely excited when he wins too, gloating about it and everything like he just won the lottery)

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Biggest shoplifter ever and most of the time it’s not even because he can’t afford it, he just does it for fun.

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Smells realllyyy good all the time, he’s got the best perfumes ever

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Spa-days/Self-care days quickly become a Saturday night thing for you two once you become one of his besties. And I’m talking the whole shabang like face masks, candles lit and snack tray out as he paints your nails for you 💕

🕸️ᥫ᭡ It’s something Angel genuinely looks forward to as well (ᵒ̴̶̷᷄⩊ᵒ̴̶̷᷅)

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Primary love language is most likely physical touch, we’ve all seen how touchy he can get 🤞

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Getting to know his real name and getting to call him by it means he trusts you a lot, he doesn’t give that privilege out to just anybody.

🕸️ᥫ᭡ On a less serious note, he’s definitely a huge show off 💀💀

🕸️ᥫ᭡ Amazing at doing makeup, will do your makeup if you asked him to (might accidentally poke you in the eye or something though lmfaoo)

‧₊˚✧ Husker ✧˚₊‧

🍺🃁 Needs glasses and HAS them but just doesn’t wear them for whatever reason. He looks good in them though !!

🍺🃁 Cheats in any card game ever. Wins 9/10 against you because of that reason (he’s also a gambler so that’s a big factor as well obviously)

🍺🃁 Bros the type of guy to call you “doll” and “baby”

🍺🃁 Primary love language?? quality time 🙏 🙏acts of service and physical touch are both tied for second place (but you only ever really get the physical touch one if you’re his s/o)

🍺🃁 Again, we all saw “Loser, Baby” this mf can DANCE and he enjoys it too

🍺🃁 Jazz is one of Huskers favourite music genres for sure

🍺🃁 You two don’t really have a routine hangout type thing but he does enjoy it when you come around to the bar to just hang out with him while he cleans and whatnot :3

🍺🃁 Trust, you will be given a specialized nickname just for you once he considers you a close friend of his.

🍺🃁 He’s a great listener but gives very blunt advice, doesn’t sugarcoat shit if you ask him for his opinion on something.

🍺🃁 Weirdly caught up with mental health stuff, like he knows a lot about it

🍺🃁 Poor Husker does NOT like the cat noises he makes but he literally cannot control them 😭😭 (believe me, he’s tried)

‧₊˚✧ Vaggie ✧˚₊‧

🗡️☪︎ Vaggie is NOT a morning person, usually sleeps in until around noon

🗡️☪︎ Would have good fashion taste

🗡️☪︎ Vaggie is also a very competitive UNO player, probably ends up yelling at Alastor for making her pick up all those “pick up four” cards when everyone plays together (yes, he looks smug as fuck while doing it and yes he was saving them just for her 💀💀)

🗡️☪︎ Has beef with almost all of the guys at the hotel but Husker is chill for the most part

🗡️☪︎ Adding onto that last one, it doesn’t really take much for a man to piss her off tbh (she’s so real for this)

🗡️☪︎ Would spar with you if you asked and gets really into it too !! She’s careful not to actually hurt you though and it’s a great way of bonding with her (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

🗡️☪︎ Verrryyyyy jealous girl, remember when Emily took Charlie’s hands in the heaven episode?? (The look on her face made me giggle)

🗡️☪︎ Hates pickles. She just looks like she’d be a pickle hater

🗡️☪︎ Primary love language is words of affirmation

‧₊˚✧ Charlie ✧˚₊‧

⭐️☀︎ Charlie is infact a morning person and wakes up at the crack of dawn everyday for zero reason whatsoever 💀

⭐️☀︎ She does her absolute best to include everyone in every activity going on, she doesn’t ever want anybody in the hotel to feel excluded

⭐️☀︎ Biggest shipper EVER. You ever told her you have a crush on someone here?? Oh god..

⭐️☀︎ She’ll silently fan girl from a distance whenever you and your crush are together to the point Vaggie has to drag her away

⭐️☀︎ Charlie can be a little bit overwhelming at times but her happiness is suppeerrr contagious

⭐️☀︎ The best way to spend time and bond with her?? Literally just offer to do anything with her and she’ll do it, I don’t think she’s too picky

⭐️☀︎ Learnt some Spanish from Vaggie and tries to use it with her to be all romantic but her pronunciations are fucked up (She’s trying her hardest guys okay 😞🙏)

⭐️☀︎ Totally asked Vaggie one time as a pick up line if she fell from heaven and she broke out into a sweat (poor girl)

⭐️☀︎ Primary love language is words of affirmation. quality time is somewhere up there too though

⭐️☀︎ Will break out into song a lot and it’s kinda funny to watch

‧₊˚✧ Niffty ✧˚₊‧

🧼𐙚 Acts a lot like a hyperactive toddler on crack. Has zero chill and it’s pretty rare to see her actually calm

🧼𐙚 I think Niffty lowkey has stage freight, like we all see how she just automatically freezes up when a camera is on (I mean it’s happened twice in the show already)

🧼𐙚 Takes a lot after Alastor, sees him as some sort of older brother figure as well 😞🩵

🧼𐙚 When playing UNO, she’d fucking EAT the cards so she’d win. Deadass just nom nom nom that shit

🧼𐙚 She’s a big giggler, she’ll laugh and giggle at almost everything so it’s not hard to get her to do so

🧼𐙚 She’d probably really enjoy it if you let her just sit with you for a while and braid your hair (But she’d steal some for her “collection” in the process)

🧼𐙚 I’m actually not too sure what Nifftys love language would even be? Perhaps acts of service (she is a maid, after all)

🧼𐙚 Okay 99% sure this is actually canon but she’s a hardcore germophobe, can’t handle when things are cluttered or a mess.

🧼𐙚 Has a collection of cleaning supplies in her room

+ Bonus !!

‧₊˚✧ Vox ✧˚₊‧

📺☆ Whenever Vox is sleeping or thinking really hard about something, the voxtek symbol will bounce around on his screen like the DVD logo thing

📺☆ Not very big on pda, he has an image to uphold, after all. (But he would enjoy affection in private though)

📺☆ Not above watching you through whatever technology you have, he spies on you a lot 💀💀

📺☆ Also guys…… stop pretending Vox isn’t a whiny little bitch, because he is (trust me y’all, read some of @bigfatbimbo’s stuff)

𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞, 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 ◟( ˃̶͈◡ ˂̶͈ )◞

ᯓ★ 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐲

[itsmelloww]

Theory/HC on GuraGura being Shin's dog 🦴 [Long]

(every meta/a post i make is always long as shit so just fyi)

Its a theory with a bit of HC mixed in so dont take it too seriously ig but i believe that GuraGura didnt just randomly decide to become Shin's dog specifically, but rather it could be because GuraGura had a similar past to Shin.

--- Quick Index tab to all sections below: 🗂⬇️

Name

Past Life / Hobbies

(2.5) Design

GuraGura's characterisation in the series

The Theory

Theory ++ / Devils , Gathering Intel and En

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1. Name

For starter's, before GG became a Devil, his name as a sorcerer was actually 'Shin'. Which imo is definitely Hayashida connecting the two.

GuraGura(sorc): 震 (Shin), Quake Shin: 心 (Shin) , Heart

[Side mini rant on this: This is something that I annoyingly missed for the longest time cause I read physical and VIZ likes to do a literal translation of the names to english , so i just knew GG's sorcerer name as 'Quake' for the longest time --- which literally pisses me off so much cause like WHY would I be referring to characters via the english translation of their names? Cause also if thats what were doing why do it selectively and why not also refer to Chidaruma as 'Covered in Blood' or Chota as 'Fat Bird' ?? But you see how dumb this is right, so wtf Viz??? pmo]

I find this such a cool detail - When i read the scans some months ago for the first time and saw GG's name as 'Shin' , my eyes literally goggled

--------------------

2. Past Life / Hobbies

Secondly, in the bonus curse of volume 21, GuraGura has his own 'Hobby' Channel which is literally him building stuff.

He's building stuff.

I mean cmon!!!

Like please, surely you all remember that Shin basically grew up with his father as a CARPENTER ! He built stuff !

At some point in the series Asu explained how Devils are generally beings of passion, and we've also seen how obsessively and intensely Nikaido was cooking/making gyoza as she was transitioning into a Devil. In her full devil design Hayashida showed in an au chapter, she also had a mini gyoza between her horns which supports my understanding that generally, Devils must retain some of the hobbies/passions they had as sorcerers into Devilhood.

This would then help contextualise GuraGura - I believe for him to be having a whole channel to himself based around building stuff and furniture for a hobby would support the theory that as a sorcerer, he must have been a sort of carpenter or builder.

--------------------

2.5 Design

This is a bit of a reach tbh im adding to just build on the theory, but I'd just like to make a point on GG's devil design- it kiiiinda resembles a carpenter's fit; especially with his vest with the pockets that look to me like a carpenter's vest, and even his skirt kinda gives me traditional japanese carpenter attire.

But like i said this is kind of a reach - its a cool design at the end of the day so doesnt have to mean that much.

--------------------

GuraGura's characterisation in the series:

I think also what drives this home for me is also when I look at it in relation to how GG is portrayed in the series - he is a very aloof, even more so than you standard Devil.

He spends years pretending to be a dog and genuinely lives as one, he can be very thoughtless and random, he'd be so in his head he wouldnt notice Chidaruma calling to him, and even when in Devil form he'd act like a dog, such as barking, accepting pets and whatnot. His profile also in the all stars showed that he literally had no thoughts (iconic btw/ also cant find the page for the life of me to link but its out there).

So hes a very aloof, happy go lucky character (def not stupid tho, which I thought it was so interesting when I saw how he was driving lots of the conversation with Kaiman when he was reverted to a sorcerer, but thats a completely diff point).

--------------------

The Theory:

In my eyes its couple strong points that come together -

They have the same names

Possibly the same past around building/carpentry

Just the name on its own would make me think is Hayashida just being cute, but when you add the hobby channel in conjuction with his characterisation in the show to me it just felt like Hayashida was trying to really hint at something more

Shin is generally a very interesting person, hes just gravitating really (no pun intended) ; hes also very strong, has grit, and he's also one of En's cleaners -- Add to all that that he has the same name as him and (potentially) the same past, and I can imagine why GuraGura would potentially see himself kinda and decide to play around with him.

GuraGura is also OLD ok, he's 358 years old -- imagine how endearing it'd be to find a little snot that reminds you of your old life (thats just me being sappy tho)

--------------------

Theory ++ / Devils , Intel Gathering and En

Cute stuff aside btw, i'd also like to add that from Chidaruma's/Devils' perspective, how convenient is to have a Devil literally be with one of EN'S cleaners day in and out?

Like what a brilliant way to get intel on En and whatever he's up to at all times.

And if anyone thinks wtf do Devils care for all that, they absolutely do care. En's mentioned before while talking with Chidaruma how Chidaruma has informants and has also implied that its through informant networks that the Devils know everything that's going at all times. Think it was Haru that also mentioned that they'd also been spying on the cross eyes and Kai for the longest time.

Devils and in particular Chidaruma 100% just keep tabs on everyone and everything that's going on in the Magic World. They rule the realm anyways so It's part of having power at the end of the day. And who else would you be more interested in than En himself? (ok maybe whatever Kai was on as well but u get my point) Chidaruma and En are buddies, but En is 100% ass kissing and im sure theres so much that he doesn't let Chidaruma in on. Chidaruma also 100% is wary and very observant of En.

I do really believe (or like to at least) that GG just chose to be Shin's dog for the fuck of it but i would be in no way surprised if it was also partially to get intel.

Noi and Shin are in on everything En is on anyways since they kill for him, and they're always talking about him so can imagine the stuff GG's found out by just chilling and listening.

And all that info would go back to Chidaruma/Devils in the end.

---------------------

So yeah, there's that.

Bit long (as per usual) but i like to get everything off my chest - been thinking about these for ages but i never got around to making the post. At the end of the day its all up to interpretation, but this is what i think.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #88

Today is the day. I'm going to try to write about ACEs. It's a big topic, and I'm pretty exhausted, so my efforts might be clumsy. Sorry in advance.

So, ACEs is short for Adverse Childhood Experiences. An organization called Kaiser Permanente conducted a study that involved thousands and thousands of people, the purpose of which was to look at how adverse experiences in childhood, especially in the absence of appropriate support, impacts the development and health of the resulting adult.

You can find lots of information about it here:

…But the short version of it is basically, the more kinds of abuse and adversity that a person experiences during childhood, the more likely a person is to have significant health problems when they get older.

The mechanism for that is basically this: children get adrenaline and cortisol in their bodies when they're hit, screamed at, neglected, abused, or needing to withstand living in tense, unpredictable environments, and growing brains cannot develop properly if a child has adrenaline and cortisol coursing through their blood all the damn time. And this does not only affect a person's mental health as they get older - it also impacts the brain's ability to do other important stuff, like regulate blood pressure and composition, regulate insulin levels, regulate various hormone levels, regulate digestion, regulate the sleep cycle, regulate immune system function, regulate the metabolism overall, and SO MANY MORE THINGS, because chronic exposure to adrenaline and cortisol ACTIVELY INTERFERES with the development of the parts of the brain that control these very basic bodily systems. When the parts of our brain that are responsible for the functioning of our basic organs do not grow in properly, it has widespread effects on a body's health and on the body's ability to maintain homeostasis overall.

So essentially, whether or not a person was abused during childhood or went through difficult shit without much support DIRECTLY AFFECTS whether or not the organs in a person's body get to function properly. Pause here and let that fucking sink in for a moment. Sit with it, and with all the ugly, horrifying implications that come from it. Take all the time you need.

Just to drive the point home, here is a handy-dandy infographic that can explain a lot of this FAR more succinctly and completely than I can:

Then there's this little page, too:

And yeah, you read that right in the previous link: if you have an ACE score of 6 or more, there's a decent chance that you'll take a dirt nap 20 years earlier than most other folks, and that's not just from risky behaviors like substance abuse, eating disorders, and whatnot. No, you get 20 years shaved off your lifespan just because if your body can't properly do things like regulate its blood pressure, insulin, hormones, sleep cycle, immune system, and all that jazz, it causes damage over time, which means that a person's cells will need to divide more frequently to repair the damage, which shortens a person's telomeres (and can also lead to cancer!), which results in, you guessed it, less life to live. Hoodathunkit.

You can find more sciency stuff about all this in this spot:

…Like I said in my 86th letter, this rabbit hole is HUGE. If ACEs impact even base functions (all it takes for this is an ACE score of 1), you can bet your ass that a person's higher functions (such as emotional regulation, decision-making, executive function, and all that fun stuff) are ALSO impacted, because these systems are even more delicate than basic things like "making sure your heart beats properly". Untreated ACEs FUCK. PEOPLE. UP.

Fun fact: my ACE score is at least 8. The questionnaire we were given when I studied Early Childhood Education is woefully underinclusive (it doesn't include things like living as a marginalized human, for example), and I think there are better ones out and about now, but it still covers most bases. You can find it here if you wonder what your ACE score is:

So here's a caveat: I know that this all probably looks pretty bleak, but recovery is ABSOLUTELY possible, and awareness of this stuff is the very first step on that road. Congratulations - you've been made aware. Now you can DO something about it. You can start today. You can start tomorrow. You can start a year from now. Whatever. It's NEVER too late. It's NEVER too late to try something new, to walk a different path, and to choose a healthier and more wholesome life for yourself, no matter how you've suffered before, and no matter the mistakes you've made before.

So get on it; if some derpy-ass autistic chick from an unremarkable, backwater planet can walk this difficult road, then someone amazing like you sure as hell can! You're a lot smarter and a lot more resilient than some nobody like me could ever possibly hope to be. So if you choose not to walk down this road, then you'll have to admit that some random noodley weirdo like me is braver, stronger, and more flexible even than you in all the ways that matter (yes, even if by some wondrous and merciful miracle you manage to zoop yourself all the way over here and use that fancy sword of yours to liberate me from my defective meat-mech), and LITERALLY NO ONE WANTS THAT TO BE THE CASE. So for fuck's sake fix it already, willya? Goddamn!

Anyhoot. I'm tired. So I'm gonna call it quits here for today. If you got questions about any of this stuff, go ahead and ask me and I'll try to answer it in my next letter to ya. Assuming any of this ever reaches you, or that you could ever reach me. Impossible, I know, but I'm going to hope for it anyway; after a childhood like mine, I fucking deserve to believe in magic sometimes, even if other people think I'm weird and crazy for it; I'm getting too old and cranky to give a crap about what someone who has no intention of understanding my circumstances thinks about my existence.

I love you. And I'll write you again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

[nonhumanwithin]

; I've always been supportive of the alterhuman, etc, community. But I never considered being a part of it .. So I basically js have some questions since I'm in mild crisis because I've been relating to posts about them more and more and like the " symptoms " or " signs " of alterhumanity ykwim ?? Feel free to ignore any questions you don't want to answer :D /gen /lh

; 1. Fictionkins, I don't know much about them really, so any information would be really appreciated. Even " basic " stuff about them !!

; 2. Is alterhumanity, etc, related to neurodivergency at all ?? It's just I usually see people who are alterhumans or other are also almost always neurodivergent in some way, so I was curious if they had any links !!

; 3. How exactly would phantom feelings ( is that right ?? ) be described ?? Because I sometimes, and looking back on it this has been present all my life, feel like I'm " missing " something from myself. Like I'll feel like I have / had a tail ( or want to swish it and whatnot ) and then feel weird when it's obviously not there. Or I'll get this odd feeling on my back like there are wings / something there and it feels thick and empty when I remember its not there ?? Would this be described as phantom feelings or smth else entirely ??

; 4. I've always loved the air and the sky, the idea of flying in general. Not like a " I love the sky it seems like it'd be fun to fly " but more like " I should be able to fly, it feels wrong that I can't. Like I'm maybe supposed to be flying, or that this isn't my actual body and I js want to flap some non existent wings and fly around. " or even walking feels funny sometimes .. Idk. Could this be connected to smth ??

; 5. I relate to foxes and cats a lot. Specific cat breeds too. Not in like a " we're so similar haha " way but like .. Like I want to walk like a cat, feel like a cat, see like a cat. I sometimes have moments where I can't talk properly ( I am neurodivergent and do go non-verbal sometimes, but these moments feel different from eac other. ) or I simply have " animal " instincts .. It's hard to explain.

; 6. There is a few fictional characters ( by a few I mean like 3 ) I relate to so heavily it's like they actually are me, and I want to be perceived as them and act like them, etc. Beyond a normal they're my fav character, more to a I'm literally them but not actually, I just feel idk ?? Very confusing sob /lh

; anyways hopefully these aren't weird questions or whatever .. I have more but I can't think of them right now / they kinda rely on other questions being answered first lol. Thank you in advance !! ( also js general info / advice on alterhumanity, therians, and all things related would be really appreciated <33 /nf /gen )

Hi! You're absolutely welcome in the alterhuman community even if you're questioning or later come to the conclusion you aren't alterhuman, so don't be afraid to keep asking around and connecting with people :)

To answer your questions:

Fictionkin are people who identify as something from fictional media (usually fictional characters but people who identify as a fictional species such as pokemon are included). That's really the basics of it and it can range from your fictional identity being a lowkey thing you don't always feel strongly to something you feel 24/7 and center your life around. There is no right or wrong way to be fictionkin. It can be a little confusing because it is common to connect with fictional characters- they are often meant to be relatable after all! But if you get a strong "that's me" feeling or feel euphoria when you are viewed as that character or called their name, that definitely sounds like fictionkin to me.

Alterhumanity isn't strictly related to neurodivergence but it is very common for alterhumans to be neurodivergent (and queer too!). I've heard that with autism it is common to feel you don't relate to other humans as much or don't align with society's standards, so deviating from the norm comes naturally. There's definitely also something with just being a little weird (positive) and being willing to accept parts of yourself that the average person wouldn't.

Phantom limbs are feeling something that isn't actually there. It's totally normal to intentionally phantom shift and make yourself imagine the feeling of a tail or muzzle etc but can also happen involuntarily! What you described about feeling like something is "missing" sounds more like species dysphoria than a phantom shift, but they can go hand in hand. Species dysphoria is quite simply feeling like your body should (partially or wholly) be another species. I get those "I should have a tail" feelings a lot for sure, and it even kind of messes with my body language because I feel like I should be able to communicate with my tail lol.

What you described here definitely sounds like an alterhuman feeling :) I can't say 100% for certain because ultimately the only one who can determine your identity is you, but that aligns with what a lot of otherkin feel.

This really feels like a typical alterhuman experience. IMO you should listen to your heart and trust your feelings. If you feel drawn to a cat/fox/etc identity then let yourself be that :)

There can be a fine line between fictionhearted (feeling a deep connection/relation to a character) and fictionkin but feeling like "literally them" sounds more like fictionkin. If viewing yourself as these characters feels right to you then go for it! There is absolutely zero harm in doing so and even if you turn out wrong or your identity changes, that's normal. We are not static people and we're not perfect all-knowing beings who immediately know our identities from a young age lol.

These questions aren't weird at all and I think it's great to see newbies asking questions and trying to learn! I'm not sure what other general advice to give besides just take your time and don't be hard on yourself. Feel free to ask more if you want or don't be afraid to ask other people too :)

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Pokemon could just be regular magical fauna, dnd style? Not types, just one or two magical qualities in place of like dragons, displacer beasts, oozes, etc. But no regular animals, just pokemon like normal. Generally moderately intelligent, like crows maybe, but still animals. But if they're a familiar to a human, like rei's pikachu, then they have above average intelligence and can understand human speech and whatnot because of the magic binding them together. Does that work? I don't doubt pokemon battles as a sport like in the games, but lots are dangerous and so are raiders and stuff. Battlemage and healer for hired protection and damage control maybe?

yeah!! there could even be regular animals (or, the regular animals are like... rattata. pidgey. etc.) but pokemon are very common alongside them. i DO think that canon pokemon are sort of...made more recognizably human-intelligent via a trainer bond, actually. if that makes sense. i keep vaguely referencing trainer bonds and not elaborating, but it really is a unique connection that opens a lot of new mental pathways for both parties. like being high-level competitive and having a deep bond of trust with your pokes will rewire your brain. and theirs. which suits very well with the familiar bond idea i think! and another ask here and my response to it actually, hang on

[Anonymous: You think 'pokemon' still have pokeball equivalents? (More of a transportation bc I refuse to believe pokeballs magically make pokemon follow your orders like Black and White Npcs say bc theyre my friends :( I dont wanna mind control them ) I remember a nuzlock comic fantasy style that used cystals n such as pokeballs. that or 'contacts' and they have markings left on your body signaling u have companions. I dont think it would be as commonplace to have 'pokemon' tho. Maybe Ingo and like the wardens are the only ppl to have em? idk but I think Jubelife would like pokemon even LESS than canon does. ]

ooooh so i think having like, bonded markings for familiar/companion bonds is a fun idea... i could see that being a big like, life/green mage thing in particular. physically binding your soul to another feels like a big life force manip thing. tho i do agree that it should be a rarer thing than pokemon training in canon is. i think if there is this kind of bonding process, it's also different than just befriending them. like, maybe rei and pikachu don't have one, or don't at first anyhow? it might actually be more of a pearl/diamond thing in general, which would be an interesting inverse to canon.

or maybe rather than being a bonding process that anyone can do, this is a specific magic effect done by green mages, and it can be either intentionally with the agreement of all parties, or forcibly. either way you form a sort of link of will, which makes me think the marks maybe show up on your head/neck/chest rather than hands? consensually it's an empathic bond, nonconsensually it's almost a mind control effect. ...maybe this is a lake trio related thing, even.

the wardens all having noble bonds i think is good, and that could also go a ways towards explaining why nobles are more powerful/smarter/etc than their non-noble counterparts, if that thing about familiar bonding materially changing the animal/pokemon is true. in which case one of the wardens should be able to cast it. or it's adaman and irida's responsibility, which adds some explanation to "what are they doing in this verse, what are their responsibilities" and also suggests irida has these capabilities, which could further mean that she could materially put a lock on ingo's magic via the same sort of manipulation of life force. which also implies interesting things about their relationship that i sort of dig, if he was so suspected of being unable or unwilling to safely control the magic that she felt the need to do that.

...maybe his own making warden wasn't even like, a position of privilege, it was just using the life link as an entry path to get access and basically impose that link as a block between him and his magic. which almost makes him feel like a suspect that they're trying to control. at least at first, since they'd also inadvertently assigned him to [whatever being a warden means in this world] they sort of had to get to know him and then oops, now they like and respect him as a colleague. fuck. i might also keep none of this entire tangent. idk. what were we talking about again.

[tatakaeeren]

first off i also just wanna say the fact that you continually ask me questions on stuffs means a lot to me adfadfadfasd it soothes me to know my extrovert rambling personality doesn't cause too much annoyance to you asdfasd <333333

BUT ALSO ALSO I WATCHED THIRD EPISODE BC I'VE BEEN PUTTING OFF BC PAIN AND WELL YAH PAIN *cries into pillow*

NOW SHOUJO RECS WOOP WOOP (i will give u the links of where i read them too ^^)

Sesame salt and pudding- https://bato.to/series/81088/sesame-salt-and-pudding

so basically a 20 year old and a 40 year old drunkenly marry each other. I PERSONALLY love age gap stories and the 40 year guy is just *screams into pillow bc of hotness* but also the way they handle situations and everything is amazing the female lead is strong and confident in herself and not just a wet napkin

Loving Yamada at Lv999- https://bato.to/series/98627/loving-yamada-at-lv999-official

SO GOOD. idk if you've read it or seen the anime but i LOVE KUUDERES AND YAMADA IS THAT SO ARGH i love. older female lead (i think they're like two years apart but people were upset that she was like 21 and he was like 19 so i have to say that even tho it isn't creepy or anything BUT YAH)

wotakoi: love is hard for an otaku- https://wotaku-manga.com/

SO GOOD PART TWO. this is like grown adult romance i would say since they're all coworkers and like it's definitely the "i am dating my best friend" (literally) trope which i absolutely love and it's refreshing if you need a break for like high school romance yk?

My reason to die- it's a webtoon but you don't have to pay for it whoop whoop

PAIN. it's still ongoing updates every tuesday and it's SO GOOD BUT OH MY GOD THE PAIN IT CAUSES *screams in a corn field* bc like the male lead just loves her so so much and the way the author portrays like the little acts of affection through simple touches and whatnot is FUCKING AMAZING.

Here you are- https://bato.to/series/70482/here-u-are

I SHOULD SAY IT'S BL and i know that's not everyone's fancy but i personally think that like even if you someone isn't a fan of the genre to give it a try. There's no like nsfw outright, hints to it but it's not done in like a fetish way. I've cried my eyes out to this one because the characters all just feel so real. the author did an amazing job just making the characters come alive and so even if someone is like ew bl PLEASE give it a chance.

Love for Sale- https://mangabuddy.com/love-for-sale

yes this is another BL. Let me explain. there are nsfw scenes and whatnot but like, the CHARACTERS THE CHARACTERS. another one where I've cried to. The "top" for lack of a better description is somewhat aromantic, but not like oh I'm toxic man way but like in a. that's just the way he is because he can't figure out what love even is, so he uses his money to show people love because that's the only thing that makes sense to him. I am not giving an apt description but seriously, it's amazing as well, like you really get invested in the characters and i just love it.

THATS ALL FOR NOW SORRY IF YOU'VE READ SOME OF THESE BUT HOPEFULLY NOT ALL

-lavender anonieee

Hi how are you doing today?? i'm glad you feel that way! I ask you a bunch of questions because I am genuinely interested in your answers! you have different and fun opinions + I can learn more about new anime or manga and I get to know you more 😉

Oh come here let me hug you because after the third ep, we all needed a hug, a warm blanket and mentally staying at the beach with them.. let's forget the other half of the ep happened 😭

Thank you for the recommendations and the link!!! I didn't know two of them (Sesame salt and pudding and love for sale) so I definitely added them to my list!! thank you for including the summary, they really picked my interest thanks to that! 💖

[blogquantumreality]

I looked up FIMFiction and the link adds a lot of context for why it was so easy to see NSFW material. The My Little Pony fandom back then was just overrun by adults, mostly men, who couldn't resist doing what Rule 34 says people will do when confronted with a new fandom.

Now, being as it was established in 2011, I'm going to assume there were at least basic controls that required some kind of half-assed age verification. Now, most websites didn't work too hard to enforce that, but the thing is, when you're younger, and you see something hidden away that says You Must Say You're An Adult To Get In, well, 99% of the time you're gonna say YES, because you want to be seen as older and more mature and you're rabidly curious about what the grown-ups do and see that you can't yet do and see - that's just how teenagerhood tends to work. (I should know, I was one once)

So the onus was on the parents to sit down and explain some basic stuff:

Websites that say they have material that is potentially R or M rated say that for a reason: so you can opt out of it.

If a website says that, then just because you can click the "I am an Adult" button with no consequences does not mean you should without thinking hard about whether you can deal with whatever you see past that point.

All that said, I know we all like to laugh at the ineffective parental controls found in operating systems and whatnot, but it does sound like in skweeze's case it might've been a good idea to add that software onto the computer and allow them to slowly dip their toe into fandom rather than jump into the deep end, as it were.

But websites can't be the guardians and curators of everything people see and do; it's just not possible. The best they can do is have robust warnings and label systems, and if necessary require that casual viewers have login accounts to view potentially NSFW material. But even those things will not stop a teenager bound and determined to pull back the curtain and see for themselves.

Fanfiction literally cannot "normalize" anything. Fanfiction is a weird little niche and fics are not something with massive cultural impact.

[ma-lark-ey]

Summarizing the Foxhole Court cast as artists I follow on Spotify and why (and with links to the artists/songs);

Neil;

Set It Off, thinks he’s so cool and edgy and for the most part he is but also there’s too much time where’s he’s a silly goose. Specifically, he’s Cinematics Era because yeah they have some emo bangers like Partners in Crime and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead but also Dad’s Song is on that album as is Dream Catcher

Andrew;

Chase Petra. Intense, overwhelming, takes awhile to understand, either is super mellow and chill or the pop punk anthems are GOING. Particularly, Andrew reaks of Monet Issues and Soapy Water, but I also believe he could jive with Reliable Narrator, not to mention In An Emergency Such As The End Of The World

Kevin;

Noah Kahan. It's abut the complex relationship with where you grew up and having a deep, inescapable loving and loathing for that environment. You're Gonna Go Far is just so Kevin coded, and also recognizing you are simultaneously your problem and your solution, like Dial Drunk. And All My Love is just sooo Riko and Kevin (I mean, 'No winter coat could keep out the cold of your atmosphere // We once sang Retrograde, we'd shake the frame of your car // Now I know your name but now who you are')

Aaron;

Alec Benjamin. A lot of people find him unassuming and whatnot, but honestly he'd kind of devastating and we should be cautious. Particularly, Boy In The Bubble & Outrunning Karma I feel have a very fitting energy. My Mother's Eyes (Unreleased) also has something distinctly Aaron about it, as does The Knife In My Back (Unreleased)

Nicky;

The Moondivers. Similar genre feel to Chase Petra but has a more lo-fi undertones. Stays at a pretty level sixty but can go either direction pretty fast. Particularly, Lovely has very Nicky energy to, lacking commitment but also not lacking the love and the need for the person.

Wymack;

Fall Out Boy. Very gruff and rough and tumble on the surface and has that iconic emo energy, but under all of that harsh exterior there’s an underlying message of community and healing and acknowledging the depression and the darkness but also learning to heal. Things like Save Rock & Roll as well as The Kids Aren't All Right show that distinct want to improve and move on with life while we also have songs like My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark and So Much (For) Stardust keep us in that depressive state.

Dan;

Sabrina Carpenter. It took me awhile to figure this one out, but I think this is the one. Pretty much everyone knows who she is but doesn't realise just how much she's done. The energy of this low-level A-lister who everyone knows and respects at least a little bit, but doesn't have the public in the palm of her hand the way other women like Beyonce or Swift do. Also the vibes are entirely correct, she's in the car karaokeing this shit with Matt tell me I'm wrong. She's jamming out to Feather and Sue Me and Thumbs like it's nobody's business. The entire summary of emails i can't send just feels so Dan I can't explain it.

Renee;

Julian Moon. Has this softcore vibe about her, but it powerful and doesn't put up with a lot. Particularly, Siren Song I think fits Renee really well, and Pomegranate Seeds feels like something that'd be on her playlist. Savior matches her role amongst the Foxes (also the intense religious imagery in this song and this EP as a whole needed to be referenced).

Matt;

Placebo. It's glam rock but also not. It's kind of undefinable. You're not really sure what's going on with the music, but you know it's slaps. It's been around a long time and has it's own respect. tbch I don't know massive amounts of Placebo's stuff, mostly only know one album right now because I feel the need to completely dissect an album from an artist before I move on to the next one, but their cover of Running Up That Hill is fantastic. From their actual discography, I think Matt has the vibes/would enjoy Brick Shithouse, Pure Morning, and Burger Queen

Seth;

Eminem (YES I listen to Eminem unironically). He doesn't give a fuck what you think about him, he says a lot of shit he probably shouldn't say, but he's also got points sometimes. Without Me is playing in the background when he comes back in book one. Love The Way You Lie is him and Allison core. Just Lose It is just funny and something he'd listen too all the time. He'd also think he was cool and different for listening to him.

Allison;

Maisie Peters. As much feral crazy ex-girlfriend music as there is sad depression bops. Unpredictable in every measure. Is here for a good time not a long time. BSC is very Allison core, and I think History of Man as well. Boy also reeks of her and Seth's relationship, and Blonde is what she blasts in her bedroom to get ready in the morning.

Abby;

Kesha. She's got a history to her, she fits with the Foxes. She's one of this insane pack, but also she's working on helping fix this insane group. She cares abut their wellbeing, she wants the best. She's got the energy of Resentment, Learn To Let Go, but also she knows these are kids who are gonna do insane things, so let's through in Hymn and Raise Hell. She knows her role in the group, but also she'll stray out of it and test new things. Also, she has to be a bit crazy to be able to manage Andrew's lot.

okay thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[mittensmorgul]

For anyone interested in long-term residence in the supernatural fandom, please have some observations I’ve made over the decade I’ve been here. Take it or leave it as you will, but I’ve found all of this info useful over the years I’ve been here.

I wrote this yesterday, and it achieved its mission of identifying the sort of folks who would react negatively to it (i.e. a lot of block lists have been updated), so now that it’s been edited for content, it’s going under a cut (because that is how we do things on tumblr in general, unless we have a deliberate purpose for annoying readers with excessively long text posts) for the sake of people who actually do care about the fandom and its history. If that’s not you or your reason for being here, then keep on keeping on with your own thing, I guess. For those who are interested, there’s a lot of fandom resources some of us have been building for years that you might enjoy knowing about.

First off, I’ve been informed by a few friends who’ve read through this for coherency’s sake that it sort of reads like a *shakes cane from porch* fandom grandma complaint, but honestly... I earned this rocking chair and goshdangit imma rock now. So apologies for any “back in my day” vibes or faint aroma of tiger balm this post might give off. Then again, it’s loosely based on a similar post from 2012 so like... time is a flat circle anyway I guess.

1. There is no such thing as “tumblr famous,” unless you’re referring to the hilarious and delightful fic of the same name (please go read it, you will cackle). Posting Hot Takes for imaginary Clout™ on this site is kind of pointless in the long run. Sure you can post solely for the sake of stirring shit and getting notes, but the majority of the folks who do aren’t long term residents of the fandom. They’re just tourists moving through our little beach town for spring break. If you’re actually intent on moving to this corner of the fandom for an extended stay, please bother to really feel out the permanent residents and understand the culture and general mood of the neighborhood. It bears no resemblance to whatever’s going on across town where all the bars and beach parities are happening, and those loud, drunken revelers are, again, gonna disappear back to their regular lives or on to the next party eventually. That doesn’t mean the fandom is dying, it’s just evolving.

(funny how I had several comments implying that I’m just trying to keep the fandom from evolving with this post, because I sincerely do want the fandom to continue on for years to come, and that is impossible without evolution. We can evolve without self-immolating, though. mostly i included point 1 for an excuse to push ancient but hilarious fanfic on you.)

2. Once you post something here, it’s been unleashed to the fandom winds. You never know where it will end up, or who will comment on it or add to it. Remember that time Misha tweeted the link to the Epic Cockles Love Story post? No? It was wild. That was 2012. They all know we’re here, and how to find us if they want to. Please don’t take it to their doorsteps.

Obviously if someone is being a dick on your posts, please feel free to block them, but the whole entire point of this site is to engage people with your posts. Being big mad that someone reblogged your post with comments or supporting evidence, or happy headcanons or “HECK THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE (insert personal story about their experience or whatever else made them Feel Things about your post)” is frankly ridiculous. If your goal is to avoid any sort of engagement with your posts, then maybe try instagram instead. From what I understand, there is a SPN fandom presence there, and nobody can tarnish your original posts with unwanted commentary. But the ability to reblog with additional commentary is a FEATURE of tumblr that builds community through conversation. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves in a vacuum, and that’s what actually kills fandoms.

(and for the folks who just want to blog how they want to blog and don’t want people to engage on their posts at all, please feel free to block anyone you want, as well... nobody wants to step on your toes, but most of us also don’t want to walk on eggshells wondering if this post is one of the “do not add comments for any reason” sorts of posts, either. This is a huge fandom and most people can’t even begin to keep track of every creator and their url du jour, and what their personal rules might be regarding interaction with their content. Including a “please don’t add comments” note at the bottom of your posts-- and not in your tags that won’t even show up on reblogs, but in the actual body of the post-- would sincerely help avoid any awkward or unwanted interactions, too. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own fandom experience and the block button exists.

For the record, I block zero fandom blogs (which is why I posted this, I wanted it to reach a wide scope... refer to the opening paragraphs as to why).

3. Since this post was partly inspired by a tag I left on that post going around about how “previous tags” mean fuckall on this site (which you can read here), just a reminder that if you like someone’s tags or feel they add value to the post, part of the Peer Review structure of tumblr encourages you to PASTE THEM INTO A REBLOG. If you do this, then at least credit the person who actually wrote the tags! Don’t just copy someone else’s tags into your tags on your reblog of the post without credit either. They were not YOUR tags. (I have had this happen to tag rambles I wrote and someone else got credited with them on a subsequent reblog and it is FRUSTRATING). Just... don’t even bother to write “previous tags” because WHAT PREVIOUS TAGS?! Nobody is gonna bother to chase back the chain of reblogs trying to find where the mystery tags came from, friendos. That way lies madness.

(for the record, since some folks seemed to focus on this point solely, writing “previous tags” on a post isn’t inherently a BAD thing, but for anyone who actually is here for more than one-off shitposting, then it’s sort of a pointless thing in the long run. This wasn’t intended to suggest people who ARE here for one-off shitposting are bad or “doing it wrong,” but for people who might actually want to preserve that hilarious joke or insightful comment. People delete posts and entire blogs all the time around here. Links break. I get that the upcoming generation just shrugs at that and moves on with their lives, but heck... you don’t have to accept that all entertainment is disposable if you don’t want to. There’s a bizarre sort of nihilism plaguing us all about the impermanence of pretty much everything that feels like something we should be fighting against rather than buying into wholesale, even in our escapist entertainment. I’m just exhausted by the complete loss of joy in community.

*shouts from the peanut gallery* IT AIN’T THAT DEEP, JUST GET SOME FRESH AIR AND LOOK AT A PUPPY OR SOMETHING

Yes... yes it isn’t really that deep, but bigger picture in the state of reality we’re all entirely disillusioned with, are we supposed to just give up on everything, including the things we cling to because they bring us a tiny spark of hope that we’re not all just trapped in this dystopian nightmare and things might actually be worth living for?

*peanut gallery clinging to burnt husks of peanuts in a barren peanut field* but this is how we have chosen to cope

Okay... you do you... I feel bad for you but if that’s the case then this post is NOT FOR YOU. AND THAT’S FINE. I honestly do not care if you don’t care! I mean, I’m sorry anyone has to live in a world that drives them to that mindset, but I understand. This post is for anyone who might look at their lives and their choices and think “no wait, I unironically enjoy this and want more from the experience of that enjoyment than I’m currently feeling.” Everyone else can continue with their lives as usual.)

4. CONTENT THEFT IS NEVER OKAY. PERIOD. Things like “credit to the artist” or tagging gifs or images you found on pinterest as “not mine” isn’t actually credit. If you can’t source an image or gif set, DO NOT POST IT! We don’t REPOST (i.e. save an image and then create a new post with it as if it was our own creation). We REBLOG (click the little square arrows and reblog from the actual creator). That goes for gif sets, fanvids, screencaps, meta, fic... everything.

(hopefully everyone here already understands this one, but I felt compelled to include some “these are stupidly obvious” reminders anyway, since this is ostensibly some sort of advice column. This is the equivalent of the warning label on your toaster reminding you not to use it in the bath. Like... duh...)

5. Close kin of item 4 is SOURCE YOUR SHIT. 

(for 100% disclosure purposes, I specifically discussed this one in this specific way because of an influx of anon ask messages I received in the wake of the finale. Literally the inciting incident for creating this entire post was what I can only assume was a joking ask about a comment Misha made at a con years ago. Someone actually bothered to take the time to type out those sentences to me. I have no idea what they were expecting in reply, or what could possibly motivate them to send this comment about something so entirely random from, again, several years ago. Just a joke? No idea, but whatever... it got me thinking that there might actually be people who are new to the fandom who MIGHT actually care about the fandom history, and maybe they just don’t know where to go for that info, or how to even begin searching through 16 years of history for things they might actually find enjoyment in, rather than just hauling random out of context garbage out on main and pointing and laughing about it now. People are actually allowed to care about things. It’s not cringeworthy to actually care about things, and you are not alone in actually caring, and there’s this whole big room over here full of people who are thrilled to share in that with you. This post is intended FOR THOSE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY, so if that is not you, please just continue walking by.)

Yes, I know lots of y’all are new around here right now, but dredging up stuff from years ago that fandom has completely debunked and presenting it as TRU FAX again is just exhausting. We’re not trying to be party poopers, but seriously, we have seen it all and are mostly done with extinguishing bags of flaming dog poop on our front porches for the umpteenth year in a row. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have the same tone as “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil” or “I heard kylo ren has an eight pack” and just... the information is there for anyone who cares enough to find it.

This goes double for “why is nobody talking about this thing I just discovered while watching the show for the first time?!” And, oh hon, we have talked it all into the ground over the last fifteen years. We’re happy you’re discovering it again, but I promise we talked about it plenty when the episodes originally aired. We have such a rich meta history that lots of us have worked really hard to preserve. I encourage you to seek it out, if nothing else than as historical artifacts. The way we have discussed the show has been a 16-year evolution. People have written literal doctoral dissertations on this show. Your shitposts are fun! We love reliving our own experience through fresh eyes, and seeing your wonder at experiencing it all again for the first time! But y’all didn’t invent this fandom in the last six months, either.

Meta Sources and Minerals provided by our friendly neighborhood fandom archivist, @lets-steal-an-archive

Academic books and articles about SPN 

A collection of Meta Essays going back to s1 and organized by topic (all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again)

SPN Heavy Meta Archive (s1-3)

Mel’s Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-12)

Oranges8hands Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-15, with many similar entries to Mel’s... though ymmv on viewpoint in a lot of these too)

Anyone remember Fandom Wank? Not the concept but the actual LJ... No? Okay have a link to SPN topics that ended up there. Through 2013. We have seen so much... including several fandom containment breaches.

for all your art sourcing needs, please see @theroadsofararchive, the repository for so much fandom art.

need to find a gif of something? canonspngifs is a vast repository of gifsets of the entire series. If the gif you want to use in your post happens to be the first gif in the gifset, in the tumblr gif finder thingy just paste the permalink to that post from canonspngifs (which is easily searchable by episode, character, location, situation, quotes, and sometimes even color and clothing items the actors are wearing... it’s really well organized, especially for tumblr >.>) and the first gif will be automatically linked with credit to the gif creator attached. It makes life easy that way. It’s also convenient when trying to remember something specific but can’t remember what episode it’s from. I’ve used the site to jog my memory before going to the superwiki armed with more specific search results to find episode quotes and references. Or sometimes I just scroll through all the nice gifs for fun, too.

Need a screencap of something and know exactly which episode it’s from? Try Home of the Nutty. You might not find the exact screencap you’re looking for, but they have a complete set of caps of every episode, and it’s an incredibly useful resource for quick reference checks and the like. Just give pages a chance to fully load before clicking on the next one. The site is easily overloaded, but it’s still free to use (and again, with credit... Pretty much every screencap on my entire blog is from HotN unless otherwise credited).

As you can see, this is a fandom built on preserving our history. You absolutely are not required to engage with any of this if that’s not of interest to you, but I can only assume that there are people who would be interested in it if only they knew it existed and how to find it. Well, now they do.

6. A few more notes on tags, and how they work on tumblr. The first 20 tags on your ORIGINAL posts are searchable sitewide, so if you want to be able to find something again, tag that thing first before going on general tag rambles. The only place tags on reblogs are searchable is on your own blog. So you don’t have to put 50 tags trying to get a post seen if it’s a reblog. You’re just spitting into the wind at that point. If you have a filing system for finding things again, then by all means add those tags (again, in the first 20, so they’re searchable), but you don’t need to tag a reblog “destiel” and “deancas” and “dean” and “cas” and “dean x cas” or whatever. Pick one for your personal blog’s filing system, that’s all you need.

(this was only added because tagging and searching on this site is so very broken... I get that a lot of folks don’t care about ever searching their own blogs again for anything, so this one only really applies if you do often find yourself trying to find old posts. If not, then it’s not really relevant.  It took me years to work out a decent tagging system, and at the beginning of my time here I never thought I’d end up camping out here for a decade and falling this deep into the fandom, and I regretted my lack of consistent tags only years later when I realized I actually wanted to be able to go back and find specific old posts again. So... for anyone who wants to err on the side of caution, working out a sensible tagging system really helps if you’re here for the long term. I personally tag content by episode, because some of my other general tags are so large as to be practically useless as a search term. But whatever system you choose to file stuff on your own blog, it really only has to make sense to you. And again, if this is pointless advice for someone who has no intention of settling here for the long term. Please feel free to ignore it. I just wish someone had explained it this way to me ten years ago and saved me the hassle of retroactively tagging something like 30k posts... especially now that using the mass tag replacer is the fastest way to get your entire blog deleted... oops? so yeah, don’t use the mass tag replacer either >.>)

7. Tags on Tumblr DO NOT WORK LIKE TAGS ON TWITTER. If you @ someone in the body of the post, it will show up in their notifications (if they’re the sort of person who even checks their notifications... not all of us do. For the record, I generally don’t...), but putting actor or ship names in the tags on a tumblr post does absolutely nothing. It’s not the same as tagging the actor’s twitter account in a tweet. Nobody’s getting notifications about you tagging a post about Jensen here as “Jensen Ackles.” There is a difference. Please learn it. (and don’t take headcanons and ESPECIALLY RPF or otherwise explicit art or fic from tumblr to twitter and tag the actors in it. That’s just... not okay.)

(I have seen the pearl clutchers getting all in a huff about the mere existence of RPF or even explicit content of fictional characters if it doesn’t meet their purity standards, but tagging those things allows people who don’t want to see it to actively avoid that content here. Nobody has a right to tell people their fictional content shouldn’t exist at all, or that creators of that fictional content somehow deserve harassment or threats for having dared to create such “immoral” content, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children... and no... you do not do that here. Don’t be the problematic behavior you wish to ban from the world. Learn to use tags to protect yourself from, as i have attempted to emphasize here, fictional content you are personally upset by. That’s a you problem, not a problem for the creators of potentially upsetting content that they tag appropriately for.)

8. General formatting stuff: If you’re writing long text posts, visually break them up so people aren’t faced with one long wall of text. The enter key is your friend. Also, if you put long text posts under a Read More break and send people to your blog to finish reading, please ensure that your blog is actually visually accessible (tiny text, or light grey text on a dark grey background, or a visually busy background might be aesthetically pleasing to you but nobody can actually read it. Loads of folks won’t even try. Which is great if you don’t actually care whether people are able to appreciate your content or not, but something to at least consider if you *do* actively want to encourage engagement with your work. Confirm how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop and make sure it’s actually functional in both, too).

And since I mentioned that most of my experience on fandom tumblr has been in the SPN fandom, here’s a bit of a reminder for folks who are new around here. With the reminder that I have been here more than a decade and still feel like a newbie myself sometimes...

This is an OLD FANDOM. There are many, many people who have been at this longer than some of you have been alive. The average age for creators in this fandom is older than you think (I think of my friends in their 30′s as young’ins okay? okay). With that understood, you are responsible for the content you consume and are exposed to. Curate your experience. Ship and let ship. YKINMKATOK. Don’t deliberately expose yourself to content you find upsetting for whatever reason. Tags and warnings are your friends, not targets for you to attack in some sort of purity war. People will ship things you do not like (or in specific ways you do not like), will say things you do not agree with, and will find their happiness in things you abhor. That is not your concern. Find what you do like, and support and engage with it, and ignore (or block, or unfollow) the rest. Tumblr has a feature that lets you blacklist tags so the content you’re trying to avoid won’t appear on your dash.

Remember the paradox of tolerance.

It is not your job in fandom to police how other people enjoy the fandom. It’s not *my* job to police how *you* enjoy the fandom, UNLESS your enjoyment is in actively harming other real human beings in the fandom. If you don’t like their take on the character or the show or the plotlines or their ships or anything else, you don’t need to engage with their posts at all! The necessary corollary to this is that clarifying misunderstandings or correcting factual misinformation is not “policing.” 

(this is where the peanut gallery reminds me it ain’t that deep, and I plead with them to put down the social media and find just one (1) thing to actually believe in in this godforsaken life, find something other than disdain and cynicism and spite to live for. If those things motivate you to find a larger cause for yourself, then great, use them to your advantage, but use them to find something that makes you a better person or brings you a modicum of joy and connection to your fellow human beings despite living in a dystopian hellscape of a world)

I have seen a lot of posts lately that are founded on the sort of authority that comes with “I watched through tumblr for a few months and then watched the last three episodes of the series” and as such are just... missing the larger context of the entire show, and are unfounded entirely in canon. I 100% appreciate the new enthusiasm for the fandom that we’ve been living in here for years, and it’s wonderful to see new people enjoying the thing we love. Your headcanons are valid, you are valid, but recognize that your headcanons aren’t canon. All of us finale denialists have accepted this in some measure, so we feel you. We truly, truly feel you. But regarding actual canon, we have a resource for that: the Superwiki. Learn it, live it, love it, as Metatron would say.

(which you could discover he said in 10.17 Inside Man, thanks to the superwiki! accept no substitutes!)

(and again, there have been people who have been involved in fandom for years who haven’t engaged with canon in years, either! You can play in this universe however you choose, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT CANON AT ALL, WHICH I AM AGAIN POINTEDLY SAYING MIGHT NOT BE YOU, READER, AND I’M NOT SUGGESTING YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE WITH CANON, but if you DO want to engage with canon, please have some useful resources. Why do people feel personally attacked by being presented a list of helpful resources? Absolutely baffling.)

(also: words have definitions. “Canon” is a specific thing, meaning in this case “the finished media product that aired on television.” Anything beyond those limits is secondary canon (think: john’s journal, which is not canon but canon adjacent at best...), word of god (i.e stuff said by the writers and showrunners), or headcanon (which includes actor commentary-- they may have helped create the show with their acting choices and whatever, but they are not in control of the story overall). If there’s something you dislike about actual canon, you can reject it and supplement it with your own theories or preferred outcomes-- that’s basically what fanfic is-- but that doesn’t make your theories canon (much to all our dismay, that’s just not how any of this works. This is not to invalidate how anyone engages with the show or the fandom, just trying to clarify what seems to have been a source of unintentional misunderstandings. Your theories do not have to be “canon” to be legitimate interpretations.)

***I am setting this section apart, and did make a separate post of just this following information, because this is where we go from being relatively chill about different parts of fandom choosing to interact in different ways and you do you and blog however you want, to “hey can everybody please understand that the way you are interacting with this specific material might be harmful for specific legal reasons, and stating that you do not care about the consequences of your actions does actively make you the asshole here...” Okay, now that we have that understood:

The spnscripthunt collective has been steadily acquiring new scripts (which are posted in full on the superwiki for everyone to enjoy, for free). The language around how some folks are talking about these scripts is... concerning. For very real legal reasons, actually, and not because we’re feeling precious about the collection and don’t wike it when meanies use them in shitposts.

-First off, these scripts are not “leaks.” They are all verified and legally purchased (or gifted, in some cases, but still acquired entirely above board. we didn’t whack anyone over the head in a back alley for these scripts, or swipe them out of someone’s trailer on set).

(in case anyone was unaware, these scripts are the copywritten protected property of Warner Brothers. So yes, how we use them and share them with the fandom could have legal repercussions. We present them as a collected resource of fandom history which SHOULD fall under Fair Use doctrine, but this is untested legal water. Insinuating that the scripts are somehow not entirely legally obtained, or that posting them for public access involved less than 100% transparent and entirely legal transactions is incredibly concerning.

Once again for the peanut gallery, if you don’t care about any of that and are just having a good time with it, at least be mindful of the work and expense a large group of people have gone through to acquire and present the content you’re all too eager to exploit for cheap thrills. Some of us do actually care and are not exactly comfortable with the fact that others don’t seem to care about burning it all to the ground. We can’t force you to listen or behave as we’d hope you might, but at least be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. All we’re asking is for you to not be the douchebag who sets the whole neighborhood on fire with your illegal fireworks display. Is that too much to ask for? more on that in a second, first... a psa)

-If you see a script for sale and are unsure if it’s legit (or believe it might already be freely available in our collection), please feel free to ask us for advice. Our goal is to make as much of our fandom history available to the entire fandom, and we absolutely do not want anyone shelling out money for stuff you can already find for free.

(seriously, we’ve seen a bunch of resellers cropping up selling printed versions of the scripts we bought and uploaded for everyone to enjoy free of charge, or scripts that are otherwise of dubious origin. We’ve been at this for years now and know what’s actually out there. We don’t want anyone to fall for a scam if we can help it)

-Also, the usual reminder that the scripts we acquire ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL SHOOTING DRAFTS. In fact, the majority of scripts in our collection are NOT. Changes are made daily to scripts, even during filming. Comparing a Production Draft (white pages, effectively the first “final draft” of what usually becomes a series of drafts before filming wraps) to a much later revision (say... green or goldenrod revisions, several of which we DO have in our collection for comparison) and how those earlier drafts often differ wildly from the aired version versus how similar a much later green draft is to the aired version, for example, can teach you a lot about the television writing process. The link above to the superwiki scripts page has a nice little explainer about how this process works.

Differences between our posted scripts (many of which are white drafts, aka FIRST complete drafts, which will likely go through multiple rounds of revisions before filming even begins) and the aired version of the show are not all “acting choices” or a director or editor just cutting whole scenes on a whim. It’s insulting to everyone involved in production to suggest that’s the case.

(and yeah, fine... whatever, make any sort of posts you like regarding how those changes came about, but at the very least understand that it’s not actually the truth about how any of this works. Don’t care that that’s not the truth and want to make the posts anyway because shitposting is fun and that’s the extent of your sense of humor? FINE! You’re entitled to do that! But at least you DO know the truth now, and hopefully so do the people who engage with your posts. Deliberate ignorance isn’t cute, smooth lions notwithstanding)

There’s probably a whole other post to be made on fandom tagging etiquette, but again I don’t really use the tags enough to know what’s going on with that whole situation. I’ve also probably left a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add things I’ve overlooked.

Thanks also to @trisscar368 and @thayerkerbasy for help compiling this, too. They were kind enough to escort me through the park to feed these pigeons. Now I need to take them out for ice cream. :’D

So I guess welcome to the neighborhood. Make yourself at home, but like... try not to trash the place while you’re here. Some of us live here by choice, lol.

[bi-bard]

The Retreat - Winchester Brothers Imagine (Supernatural/Criminal Minds Crossover)

Title: The Retreat

Pairing: Winchester Brothers X Sibling!Reader, Spencer Reid X Platonic!Reader

Word Count: 2,382 words

Warning(s): none that I know of

Summary: (Season 10, Episode 8) Spencer and (Y/n) get invited out to a Sheriff's retreat on behalf on the B.A.U. Of course, no trip could ever be that easy.

Author's Note: Remember when it was said that Spencer was supposed to be bi, but his crush on J.J somehow made that impossible? Yeah, that's gonna be my villain origin story. This is justice for bi Spencer.

I really just wanted this to be cute. Nothing else mattered to me.

MORE ABOUT THIS OC HERE

Hey! I did a rewrite of the ending of Supernatural. It took a really long time to complete, so it would mean a lot to me if you check it out. Here’s a link! (it’s on my personal account)

-----------------------------

"Wonder why Hotch wanted us to come out here," Spencer asked as we got out of the car.

I shrugged as we grabbed our bags, "Don't know. Maybe we're the shiny new faces of the B.A.U."

Spencer scoffed as we walked in.

"That and you're a certified genius," I added.

We walked up to a table being run by a blonde sheriff. I put on a kind smile and pulled out my badge.

"Hello there," I said. "Agents Campbell and Reid. We're the speakers sent by the B.A.U."

"Oh, yes," she smiled widely at us after marking our names on a list. "Nice to meet you both. I'm Donna Hanscum. I'm a sheriff out in Stillwater, but I grew up here. If you need any advice on where to eat and stuff, I'm your gal."

"Nice to meet you," I grinned, grabbing the information from her. "Where are we staying?"

"Oh, those stairs just behind you will take up to all of the rooms," she pointed behind us.

We both looked back at it for a moment before looking back at her. When we did, she was holding out two suckers for us.

"Thank you," Spencer said, a little awkwardly as we both accepted.

"I am just so excited to hear your talk," she explained. "You two are easily the biggest names here."

I chuckled and looked down for a moment, "Thank you."

I turned around when the door opened.

"Jody," I said when I saw who it was.

She looked up from her broken suitcase and immediately relaxed when she saw me. I walked over and hugged her, carefully moving my bag so I didn't hit her.

"God, it's good to see you, (Y/n)," she replied.

"How are you," I asked as I stepped back. "How are Claire and Alex?"

"Good and... getting there," she nodded. "I think we're getting there, y'know?"

"Good," I said. I looked over and waved Spencer over. "Jody, this is Spencer Reid. We work together at the F.B.I. Spencer, this is Jody Mills. A complete badass."

"Oh, thanks," she chuckled at the compliment. "Nice to meet you, Spencer."

"Nice to meet you too," Spencer nodded.

"Come on, let's go get settled so we can start looking around," I shoved Spencer toward the stairs. "I'll talk to you later, Jody!"

"Later!"

--time skip--

Most of the conference went just fine.

Most of the people there were nice enough. They seemed to be actually interested in what Spencer and I were going to speak about. People were kind and it was going pretty well.

Except for Donna's ex. That guy was a tool. Nothing could change my mind.

However, when news started spreading about a body being found, I knew something was going to go downhill.

We had met up with Jody and Donna when we first heard about it.

"Eaten," I asked the sheriff who had told us. "Sorry, Campbell and Reid, F.B.I."

"Yeah, eaten. Like just the peach pit kind of eaten."

"Any idea what did it," Jody asked.

"Coroner's saying animals out of the woods," he shrugged. "Bobcats and whatnot. No wonder Sheriff Cuse was so out of sorts back there. Got all of this to sort out."

Jody and I looked at each other for a moment.

"Do attacks like that happen a lot in this area," Jody looked at Donna.

"Heck no," she said immediately. "When I lived here, we kept our critters in check. Did it leave any track... hairs?"

"Not even a claw mark on the body," the man replied.

"Crap," I whispered.

"I'll be right back," Jody walked off.

I followed her outside. She pulled out her phone.

"I'm calling your brother," she told me as I made it over. She froze up when she saw Spencer.

"He knows," I answered.

"Why does he-"

She cut herself off when he answered the phone. I listened to them make small talk. Apparently, Sam didn't call Jody when he tracked Dean down after the whole demon ordeal. We ended up leaning on her car.

"Listen, this may not be your kind of thing, but a body was found here this morning, and something had gone to chow town on it," she explained.

I didn't hear any of Sam's responses.

"Worse, I'm hearing that all the flesh had been eaten down to the bone. Any ideas?"

"Nah, it's okay, I can handle it. I've got (Y/n) and their buddy, Spencer, so I'm not alone. I promise I'll call if it gets to be something I can't."

"Screw you, Winchester."

She hung up soon after that.

"We should head to the coroner's office," she suggested.

"We can't," Spencer checked his. "Our talk is gonna start soon. We can't just leave."

"Text us any updates," I said. "We only have the one talk and then we're free."

"Good luck," she replied, going to get in her car.

"Let's go, Reid," I nodded back toward the building.

I could never have a normal trip, could I?

--time skip--

I spotted Sam and Dean as soon as they walked in the next day. I sighed at them and walked over, Spencer right behind me.

"Jody told you we had it handled," I said.

"I was going crazy in the bunker, (Y/n)," Dean explained. "I needed to do something."

I sighed before stepping forward and hugging him. He had been through a lot of shit recently. I had to at least try to be understanding.

"How are you doing," I asked after stepping back.

"Better," Dean nodded. I grinned. He looked over at Spencer. "Hey, Spencer."

"Hi," he grinned. He looked over at Sam and immediately seemed more nervous. His voice was suddenly quieter as he awkwardly waved. "Hi."

"Hey," Sam seemed awkward too.

Dean and I shared a look. These two again.

"I said I could handle it," Jody said as she walked over.

"Yeah, we got the speech," Dean replied as she hugged him. "Nice to see you, too."

She hugged Sam quickly before stepping back, "I'm heading to the morgue, want in?"

"We just came from there," Sam said.

"And?"

"And flesh was eaten off the second victim too," he explained.

"Anything missing?"

"His wallet, why," Dean asked.

"Because I think a belt was missing off the first kid," Jody mentioned.

"Why take souvenirs when you're dumping the body in plain sight," I asked. "The scene looks like it's done out of hunger, but the robbing... that's very different."

"Could robbing be an afterthought," Spencer asked. "If it was about souvenirs, the killer would take the same thing each time."

"Stealing out of necessity," I replied. Spencer nodded.

"Are you two profiling a monster," Dean whispered.

"It works," I shrugged. "Most monsters have an element of human to them."

"Jodio, you take sugar?"

We all paused to look over at where Donna was standing. She was making her and Jody some coffee.

"No," Jody replied awkwardly. "No sugar."

"Okeydokes," Donna called over again.

Dean, Sam, and I bit back laughs while Spencer just grinned.

"Jodio," Dean asked.

"It's... don't ask," Jody shook her head and looked down.

"Wait a sec," Sam hit Dean's arm. "Isn't that Donna?"

"Fat-spa Donna," Dean nodded.

"You guys know my stalker?"

"Fat-spa," I asked.

"She nearly blew a case for us last time," Dean explained.

"I haven't been able to shake that ray of sunshine since I got here," Jody muttered. "She's actually been pretty helpful, but, you know, it's just tough keeping her out of this nightmare stuff, you know?"

"And her ex is a tool," I muttered.

"You mind distracting her while we poke around," Sam asked Jody.

She crossed her arms over her chest, "You show up, and now I'm a babysitter?"

"Look, she hasn't gotten mixed up with this crap yet," Dean said. "Let's just try to keep it that way."

Jody sighed, "Fine. But if she tries to show me her sticker collection, I'm out."

"Agent Frehley, Agent Criss," Donna said as she walked over. The two of them greeted her. "I thought that was you! Ain't this a kick in the pants? Have you guys met Agents Campbell and Reid?"

"Well, we don't get a lot of chances to work with other teams," Dean lied through his teeth. "Just happened to cross paths."

"What dragged you two in then," she pushed.

"Well, we can't talk about it," he lied again.

She nodded, "Oh, yeah. I hear ya. Anything I can help with?"

"Oh, no, no, nothing," Sam insisted.

Jody managed to drag Donna off to the gear expo.

"So, what now," Spencer asked.

"Who's the... main sheriff here," Dean asked.

"Cuse," I answered. "Be careful though. He has my boss's number. Don't give him a reason to call it."

They nodded and went to walk off.

"What about us?"

"We play it cool," I replied. "Steer clear of them. That way, no one can accuse us of overstepping and our team doesn't get any crap."

He nodded.

"So... let's go do some networking at the gear expo."

"Sounds like a plan."

--time skip--

We could really only hide the truth from Donna for so long.

She had spotted a potential attack in action, so they kind of had to explain everything to her.

Spencer and I only headed outside when I got a message from them about Sheriff Cuse.

"A vampire," I asked when we got to the group.

"These two are in on it," Donna asked.

"Well... Spencer's not, really, he found out on accident... like you did," Sam explained.

"I'm Sam and Dean's sibling," I added.

"Really," she asked.

I nodded before looking at the boys, "What do we have?"

"Donna got an address that could be something," Dean said.

"It's the only lead we got," Donna chimed in.

"'We'," Sam repeated. She nodded. "All due respect, sheriff, but vampires are far more dangerous than the Johns you throw in jail."

"You're gonna sit this one out," Dean said.

"Stuff you, Dean," she snapped. "Or whatever your real name is."

Jody smirked, "Hanscum's good."

"She doesn't have any training with this," I said.

"I said, she's good."

"(Y/n)," I looked at Sam. "Stay here?"

"And let Donna go?"

"If the sheriff comes back, it looks sketchy if all four F.B.I agents are gone," he explained.

"Fine," I let out a breath. "Let's go, Spencer. Half an hour and I'm coming after you idiots."

They all nodded.

"Good luck."

We were sitting inside, just counting the minutes.

"It doesn't make sense," Spencer said. I raised an eyebrow. "The sheriff killing, maybe, but stealing. He already has a good job. He doesn't need to."

"You don't think it's him," I asked.

"At the least, not on his own. It has to be a team."

"Which would mean that the group walked into a whole nest, thinking he was alone," I muttered. "Let's go."

When we rolled up to the house, the impala was still there. Spencer grabbed his gun.

"Nope," I reached back to grab the spare bag I had brought. "I'm overly cautious."

"What- Oh my gosh," Spencer said as I handed him a machete. "How did you even sneak that in here?"

"Magician never reveals their secrets," I replied as I sat back up with my machete. "Hope you're ready. It's gonna be chaos."

"I'm ready," he nodded.

We got out of the car and started toward the house. We were only a few steps from the doors when they swung open.

"Whoa," Dean held his hands up. "Weapons down. No fangs."

"What the hell," I asked.

"It was a team."

"Yeah, we figured that much out."

"I killed a vampire," Donna said quickly.

"Good... job...," I replied hesitantly. "Is everyone physically okay?"

Everyone was nodding.

As we walked back to the cars, I caught Sam and Spencer talking off to the side. I tapped Dean's arm before pointing over at them.

"What- oh," Dean said. "How long until they kiss?"

"Two hours max," I replied. "They're cute though."

"Sammy deserves it."

"Yeah," I nodded. "So does Spencer."

"Snooping on your brother," Jody asked.

"Maybe," I muttered like a guilty kid before jogging to my car. "Spencer!"

His head popped up.

He awkwardly said goodbye to Sam and started jogging over to the car. We got in and started driving back to the motel.

"What's with the smile," I asked.

"What," Spencer seemed to suddenly snap out of some kind of trance.

"You have a huge smile on your face," I chuckled. "What happened?"

"Oh," he tried to make his smile smaller. "Nothing. Nothing."

I didn't believe him.

Not even a little bit.

But still, I dropped it.

Until we got back to the motel and Spencer decided to speak up again.

"(Y/n)," Spencer said nervously.

"What's up," I asked.

"Your brother... Your brother asked me out."

"What," I replied quickly. "Wait, wait. It was Sam, right?"

He paused, looking down, "Yeah."

"Aww," I smiled. "This is great. This is good, right? This is a good thing?"

"Yeah, I think so," Spencer was still staring at the floor as he spoke. "I said that I wanted to go get cleaned up and then meet up with him... mostly because I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh, Spencer," I gushed. "I'm so happy for you."

"You're not upset that I'm ditching you?"

"You aren't ditching me," I replied. "I'll go hang out with Dean. Maybe we'll drag Jody and Donna with us. Have fun."

He nodded.

"But... how long have you two been talking," I asked. He furrowed his eyebrows. "You don't dive into relationships, Spencer. You never have."

"He... gave me his number when I met him," he explained. "He said it was for emergencies, but... it really was just us talking whenever we wanted."

"I should've known," I chuckled. "Damn. I'm oblivious."

Spencer shook his head.

"Go get ready for your date," I said before he could explain.

"Okay," he walked to the bathroom. "Thank you... for being so okay with this."

"As long as you and Sam are happy."

He grinned.

"I will murder you if you hurt him. And I have plenty of ways to make sure no one figures it out."

His grin dropped.

"Have fun tonight," I smiled back.

Sometimes being scary was a little bit fun.

-----------------------------

Masterlist (Includes links to All Writing Challenges)

What I Write For

Some Original Characters

[mckkachins]

gif cut-out tutorial

ok ok so @subtledean requested a tutorial on how to do stuff like this post with the gif cutouts and the text effects. hopefully this helps aria ;w; i’m not the best at explaining things but i included some screencaps for clarity. i’ve tried to compress all the sample gifs and screenshots down to under 3mb to avoid tunglr compression on mobile so if they look a little different from the actual gifset, that’s probably why!

what you’ll need:

photoshop, i’m using PS 2021 but any version of photoshop will work out

a basic knowledge of gif-making (i’m assuming you already know how to make a gif and color it).

step 0: storyboard

this isn’t strictly necessary but i HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it. you don’t have to do any photoshopping this first step, but it’s really important to check out your footage and the shots you have gathered to see what works, especially if you’re trying to combine three or more gifs onto the same canvas. like literally take a piece of paper and draw out where you want the character’s faces to be, where you want the cutouts to be in relation to their faces, and think about whether or not there’s enough empty space to the right or left of characters heads for a cutout to be placed. is there too much movement that would be distracting or messy in an already busy gif?

things like that really help, and it also makes you double check on your footage quality and feasibility. if you end up making a gif where you want one character’s face to be on the left side of the gif but it turns out there’s not enough empty space on the right side of their face to place a cutout and you then have to hunt for new footage or start all over, it’s kind of a trainwreck and you just waste another hour of your time as you deepen your procrastination hellhole. that’s not a real story—

step 1: make the base gif

i’m assuming you know how to color it already. and aria i KNOW you know how to color already so :) size it accordingly to your desired dimensions.

as you can see, i left enough space on the right side of abaddon for the knight cutout to be placed.

save this as a .psd file. you don’t actually have to sharpen and do everything that comes at the end of making a gif right away, but make sure your layers are clearly labeled. do NOT convert to video timeline/smart object just yet.

step 2: make the cutout gif

this is critical: make absolutely certain your cutout gif has the same number of frames as your base gif. otherwise it could get really messy! abaddon has 20 frames, so the cutout will also have 20 frames. again, do not convert the cutout gif to a video timeline/smart object. just keep it as a frame animation. here’s my cutout gif. it’s just a simple b&w gif but i added a touch of purple for color consistency sake whatnot.

now for this particular gif i’ve actually cropped abaddon to be roughly exactly where i would want her face to be in relation to the first gif, but that is unnecessary. helpful, but unnecessary. you do NOT need the cutout gif to be cropped exactly perfect in order to make this work.

step 3: combining the two gifs

there are many different ways to combine two gifs onto the same canvas. some people like to do it via video timeline. i prefer to do it by frames and convert everything to a video timeline only at the end (it’s just a personal preference). here’s a tutorial if you prefer working with timelines, but i’m gonna go over how to do it by frames.

first group everything in your base gif into one folder. then group everything in your cutout gif into one folder as well. you can name them however you want to keep track of things.

then, select all of the frames in your cutout gif. in this case, all 20 of b&w abaddon get selected. make sure its not just frames 4-20 or whatever, but all the frames you made. you can click frame one and then shift-click your last frame to double check.

click the timeline tab group options bar and then go to options > copy frames

now go to your base gif canvas. select ALL the frames of your base gif as well (it’s critical that all of them are selected).

now do options > paste frames.

a popup should appear and you’re going to select the “paste over selection” option. do not link layers.

your cutout gif should now be completely or partially obscuring your base gif. however, now you should see two groups on your sidebar of layers. one for the base, one group for the cutout. if you labelled them with names you can tell which one is which.

step 4: creating the cutout

in order to create the cutout, we use my favorite thing in the whole world of photoshop. layer masks.

to make a layer mask, you simply select a layer or group you want to mask and then click this little icon on the row of icons at the bottom of your layers panel.

white on a layer mask means whatever group or layer is getting masked is completely visible. black on a layer mask means that the group or layer is invisible. if there is 50% gray on a layer mask, then its 50% visible. so on and so forth.

i love these so much i abuse them on the daily. i’ve made a few gifs where i’ve masked every frame one by one because i wanted to get some cool effects. admitting that kind of embarrasses me but oh well.

anyway this is simple though. just find a picture or an outline of a knight. i used these boyes:

obviously i cropped out the knight of the bunch, got rid of the watermark, and then i placed it on the canvas where i wanted it to go.

select the interior of the knight with the magic wand tool. should be pretty simple since it’s all black.

now click over to your layer mask. make sure you have selected the mask and not the group. you can tell you have selected the mask when a little white rectangle pops up on it.

when you know you have the mask selected, click command+i or control+i to invert. if for some reason you do not have this keyboard shortcut, just take a brush tool and color over the area in complete black. as long as the magic wand tool is still selecting just the interior of the knight, it should be fine.

now once again, black means a layer will NOT be showing, white means a layer will be showing. so right now after i disable the visibility of the top layer we used as a reference for the silhouette, it looks like:

do not fear the clownery. layer masks are great because they are always non-destructive. meaning that even if you somehow mess up and your canvas is showing something completely gross, you can always go back and edit your layer mask and your original gif would be unharmed as long as you did not touch any layers in the group, only the mask. simply invert the mask (again, make sure your mask is selected and then command+i or image > adjustments > invert) to get:

for a layer mask that looks like:

you could have also just made a black layer mask to begin with and then inverted the knight outline to be white. many different ways to do the same thing.

another tip: if you select your outline and then click layer mask upon a group or layer with no mask at the current moment, it will automatically make a layer mask with your selection as white and the unselected pixels as black. this is normally how i do my cutouts, because it’s a time-saver even if it like. saves a few seconds max. but i typed out the above for explanation and clarity, so hopefully i didn’t just make anyone more confused.

anyway.

now say you don’t like where the cutout abaddon is positioned. layer masks can also be linked or unlinked, depending on the little link icon you see between the group and the layer mask in the image above. if the icon is visible, the layer mask and the group are linked. if you cannot see the link icon, they are unlinked.

linked layer masks will move in conjunction with the group if any type of transform is done upon them. if the group moves, the layer mask also moves. but if a layer mask is unlinked, you can move the mask and the group independently of one another. for instance, i can change where the cutout is located on the overall canvas of the gif by simply moving ONLY the layer mask (and thereby changing where the blacks and whites of the layer mask occlude the cutout gif contents). but i can also transform the cutout gif layers without changing where the overall outline is located relative to the canvas itself. basically, i can transform the interior contents of the cutout independently. so here (make sure all of your frames are selected):

group unlinked. i’m also making sure that now i am selecting the GROUP (ie. the frames of the layers you are actually going to move) and not the layer mask. you can tell because the little white rectangle around the layer mask can no longer be seen.

now i can transform/adjust the contents of the cutout solely “within” the cutout, and i don’t have to worry about changing where the cutout is located in relation to the overall gif. when transforming, make sure all the frames of your gif are selected. like select the whole group and not just an individual layer, basically.

i’ve seen a lot of how to combine and cut out gifs tutorials on this website, and here is a really good one that i know sully also used <3 big shoutout to all the photoshop queens being inspired by each other!! however i haven’t seen anything that mentioned the linked vs. unlinked layer masks, which i really feel like deserves a shoutout. you don’t have to crop your gifs out perfectly every time, you can always adjust them later. for demonstration, i’ve positioned abaddon in a few different positions with an unlinked layer mask.

step 5: creating the outline

so in order to emphasize the shape of the cutout (the knight), i simply delete the white space surrounding the picture of the knight in the original silhouette that i used. magic wand tool + delete. you can also make a new layer, then paint bucket tool it. many ways to do the same thing.

now with only the knight on a transparent background, i double click the layer to pull up the effects. select outer glow. i used these settings:

when you are doing this, make sure you are on frame one of the frame animation and the “propagate frame one setting” is selected, otherwise you might end up only applying the effect to one out of your many frames, which blows.

then i go change the fill setting to 0%, BUT i leave opacity at 100%. fill is basically like opacity, but it doesn’t affect layer effects (whereas opacity does). so you basically get only the outline but not the black. you can also set the blending mode of the layer to screen and get the same effect, etc, etc. feel free to adjust however you see fit, in addition to the outer glow settings.

i move this layer over a couple pixels to give it the little offset effect, but you don’t have to.

step 6: adding the text

okay the two fonts i used are avenir and perla. i think a LOT of gifmakers use them because they’re really pretty.

i make TWO different text layers, one with avenir in a smaller size and one with perla in a bigger size. this is because for the perla one, i’m going to be changing the blending mode whereas i don’t want to be changing the blending mode for the smaller text. i position the text where i want it to be and make sure the perla font is in the color i like:

then i change the blending mode of the fancy text (perla) to difference. ONLY that layer, and again make sure to check “propagate frame 1″ and make changes on the first frame to apply the change to all of your frames.

but i still don’t think it produces enough of a difference. so i right click on the text layer for knights of hell, and then go to: select pixels.

then i click the curves adjustment layer. this will automatically make a curves layer with a layer mask that occludes everything BUT the area you selected. beautiful. i drag the curves around until i get enough of a difference that i like. normally i make the lights lighter and the darks darker. yeehaw.

again there are sooooo many different ways to achieve the same effect on photoshop. this is just want comes easiest to me, and it’s totally okay if you find a different way that works better for you at producing the contrast you want or the colors you want.

step 7: export and cry

NOW you can convert everything to a video timeline, put your video frame layers to smart objects, and then apply your finishing sharpening filters. export, cry, and hope tumblr compression doesn’t screw you over.

hopefully this was helpful! pls like... idk support my edits if you found this helpful or reblog this post. feel free to dm me about how u do some of the text effects as well bc i’m always trying to learn new things and i am by no means an expert on like. any of this.

aria please go write your fucking thesis before i delete this entire tutorial challenge. :D

[wooahaes]

Hi Daisy! (I'm so sorry, I don't know if it's weird for me to call you that, I can stop!) How are you? I'm new to Tumblr, so I don't actually know if I've done this right. Sorry if I haven't! In your questionnaire, I said that I was too scared to message you, but I've finally done it! I wanted to say I love your work, it's so comforting and I find it immersive. Sorry if this is a stupid question, should I be reblogging fics that I like? I feel bad for not doing it, but I don't know what it is.

omg its 100% fine to call me daisy?? its not my real name but i think a lot of ppl would guess that skdfhsdf pls know that if u see this (literally anyone who follows me) its 100% ok to call me daisy!! i wouldnt have it on my blog if it wasn't <3

i'm good! tummy hurtin a lil and im feeling the lack of sleep (rewatching shinee world iv was worth it tho), but it's all good <3 welcome to tumblr u will never leave /j

also omg hi!! ur message was super sweet and im proud of u for stepping out of ur comfort zone!! pls know i don't bite (unless ppl bite first) and i'm always happy to talk to anons <3 also i'm glad i can provide comfort to you!! ur super sweet aw

absolutely not a stupid question at all tho!! a lot of writers and other cc's will say a resounding "yes" and while i do think that people should reblog fics they like, if its initially like... super daunting to do so, i think its okay to like? getting used to tumblr can be kinda hard in the beginning, but i do highly recommend reblogging fics--even if you don't have any followers btw, the engagement still means a lot to ppl!! even if ppl don't put tags or anything, it says "i like this and i want other people to see it" since likes aren't public the way they are on other websites (or at all, if you turn them off)

please don't feel bad for not doing it since you're new!! literally i think most people don't understand how tumblr functions but that's pretty normal for joining a website haha

i'll explain things under the readmore and you can let me know in another ask if you have any questions!!

so full disclosure: i'm working on desktop and things are usually pretty similar on mobile, but there's a few differences that i can try to explain if you're on mobile!! but for reblogging:

at the bottom of a post, you'll see a couple things. they're in the same place pretty much for both desktop and mobile. if a post has been interacted with (through a reply (the little bubble icon), a reblog (the arrows), or liked (heart)), it'll have notes! you can nowadays see what other people write in their replies/reblogs by clicking on the notes key and looking through the different tabs there, but some people limit their replies (the bubble will be grayed out as a result) or turn off reblogs (reblog arrows will be grayed out).

excuse the extra buttons on mine: im on desktop and i have an extension called xkit active <3 (it allows me to block posts + do quick tags when i post fics)

as you can see: this post i made (which is dk uts skdfhds its the first thing i have thats not my pinned post) 48 notes, followed by a series of buttons. ignore the first two (they're from xkit), the rest are what you'll typically see on a post.

in order:

the single arrow can be used to share the post. either you an send it to other tumblrs (not all people have DMs open, and i'd honestly say ask before you DM someone if you don't know them well), or you can copy the link, share it on twitter/facebook, or do other things w the "more" button like send stuff via text n whatnot. its very possible to send things from a sideblog, if you ever have one and want to do it that way

on mobile your main blog will be at the top of the page with a little down arrow next to it: all you gotta do is click it and decide what blog you wanna send it from. on desktop:

you can see the bubble next to "your message here" isn't my icon since the message would be coming from my main. all you gotta do is click that little bubble (of your own icon) and you can send things from different blogs <3

anyway!!

the little speech bubble is the button for replies. tapping/clicking it will just open up the replies tab.

reblog on both desktop and mobile will open up the tab to reblog something. if you're on mobile, though, and wanna reblog something quickly, you can press and hold. i have sideblogs so i can't confirm if only having one blog will just auto-reblog it, but with sideblogs it'll pop up 2-3 of your recently used blogs (if you have more than 3).

on desktop:

this is what reblogs will look like! it's similar to posts, but the difference is just the blue "reblog" button compared to a blue "post" button. important distinction: the #tags is for tagging stuff (or, yknow, posting thoughts if you want lmao the tagging system on tumblr is kinda broken). if a post asks for something "in the tags" then you type in the tags as opposed to the main body <3

anyway, that lil heart outline is the like button <3 it just says that you like a post :) they don't get broadcast onto other people's feeds the way they do on other websites, but you can have them public or private through messing w settings

i hope this was helpful!! pls feel free to let me know if you have any questions <3

[tyrantisterror]

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE!  YOU THOUGHT THAT THE TIME OF MONSTERS WAS AT AN END!  BUT YOU WERE WRONG, FOR NOW YOU MUST WITNESS…

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

That’s right, it’s back!  Celebrating the publication of The Atomic Time of Monsters Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! (which in turn completes The Ballad of Tyrantis arc for this series), I’m holding another monster design jam.  The third of such jams, in fact!

Like the first A.T.O.M. Create a Kaiju Contest, the aim of this contest is to create kaiju that would fit within the setting of my big kaiju story series, The Atomic Time of Monsters.  Think of it as me letting you into my sandbox to play with my toys for a bit, or like you’re being put in the director’s chair of a new ATOM-verse kaiju movie.  That means your entry does have to fit into ATOM’s world, which in turn means that yes, there are limitations to your creativity here.  But limitations can be good sometimes - they can make us explore options we wouldn’t consider when given completely free rein to do what we want!

(also you don’t have to make a three dimensional image or anything, the title’s just a pun on how the third movie in a monster movie franchise will often be a 3-D film)

Read below the cut to learn the rules and whatnot:

THE RULES:

1.  You are limited to one entry per person.  Work hard and make your entry count!

2.  Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with.  Using the same template/format as my official ATOM Kaiju Files (https://horrorflora.com/monster-menageries/atom-kaiju-files/) isn’t required, but it was cool when people did it in the last contest, so feel free to do so this time too!

3. The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest  - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories.  This is not “trick TT into drawing/canonizing my main OC” time.

4. The kaiju must fit the setting and aesthetics of ATOM.  I’ll explain this in more detail down below.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. Don’t make your kaiju too dependent on pre-existing ATOM characters - no “Tyrantis’s long lost evil brother who’s the strongest kaiju in the world.” These should be to Tyrantis’s story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla’s movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

THE REWARDS:

I will make pencil sketches of the top 5 entries in the contest.

I will then make fully rendered illustrations (lineart, colors, & shading) of the top three entries.

The winning entry will be made into a model ala the ones I’ve been making for ATOM’s core 50 monsters, which can then be shipped to the person who created it (should they be able to cover the shipping costs).  That’s right, your kaiju could be brought to life in THREE GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR DIMENSIONS!  (Hey, we worked the gag title in to the prizes!)

THE DEADLINE: All entries must be submitted by July 3rd, 2021.  You can submit it here on tumblr, via the horror flora e-mail, or any other channel you know how to reach me through.  I’m in a lot of places.

THE GUIDELINES (TO HELP YOUR ENTRY FIT THE RULES AND WIN):

The smartest thing you could do if you want to win this contest is familiarize yourself with the world of ATOM by, y’know, reading all the material I’ve published on the subject.  In addition to the many kaiju files that are free to read on horrorflora.com, there are now TWO, count ‘em, TWO novels in this series for you to peruse, both of which establish many of the rules of the setting as well as its general themes and tone!  You can get them in either paperback or e-book formatting (I’d recommend the former over the latter since I lack the technology to make a really nice ebook, but if money is an object, the kindle version is only $1).  Here’s the links again if you missed them:

Vol. 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us!

Vol. 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth!

However, since I know reading a bunch of stuff is, y’know, not something everyone is inclined to do, I’ll jot some good bullet points for you in an attempt to outline how ATOM works in a brief, easily digested way:

ATOM is an homage to the monster fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s (i.e. the Atomic Age), and is set in those two decades, albeit an alternate universe version of them where, y’know, monsters and space aliens exist.  If you aren’t familiar with the monster fiction I’m referring to, there will be some reference material provided at the end of this post along with some recommendations for further research.

Kaiju/giant monsters in ATOM work under very specific rules.  There’s a full description of those rules at this link, but here’s the jist:

ATOM Kaiju are created created by the radiation of a mineral called Yamaneon, which naturally converts harmful radiation into its own unique energy.  In natural circumstances, it takes hundreds of years of exposure to Yamaneon radiation for a creature to become fully transform into a kaiju (luckily, Yamaneon radiation slows the aging process while speeding up the healing process).  However, an explosive burst of energy - such as the geothermal and kinetic energy released by an earthquake, or the blast of a nuclear weapon - can speed up the process, turning a normal animal into a kaiju within a matter of seconds.  

All ATOM kaiju can heal grievous wounds within minutes or even seconds, are supernaturally strong and durable, and can convert harmful radiation to harmless energy that they then feed off of.  Kaiju do not have an equivalent of old age, and can theoretically live forever (though their violent lifestyle means that few do).

ATOM Kaiju generally don’t need to eat unless they are severely injured, getting most of the energy they need from solar or geothermal radiation - but many still have instincts that drive them to seek out food from time to time.

Most ATOM kaiju stand roughly 100 feet tall (depending on their body shape), i.e. smaller than the original 1954 Godzilla.  There are exceptions to this rule - younger kaiju can be smaller, while exceedingly old kaiju can be significantly larger, but these are rare.

In general, ATOM kaiju are significantly more intelligent and emotionally complex than people expect animals to be, though most are incapable of speech or complex tool use.  There’s a reason ATOM Kaiju Files have a “personality” section.

Most ATOM Kaiju are tooth and claw fighters - ranged weapons are a rarity in this setting.

While the terrestrial monsters in ATOM look strange, they are intended to fit within the taxonomy of animals in reality - reptiles, mammals, fish, arthropods, molluscs, etc.

ATOM’s mesozoic era was dominated by a fictional clade of crocodile-relatives called retrosaurs, which are based on the outdated paleoart that one would find in the 1950’s/60’s fiction - i.e. when dinosaurs were viewed as trail dragging lizards instead of strange birds.  You can learn more about retrosaurs here (https://horrorflora.com/2016/11/15/atom-kaiju-file-bonus-a-guide-to-retrosaurs/).

Kaiju appear on every continent in ATOM, but certain areas tend to be dominated by different types.

North America is mainly besieged by retrosaur kaiju and giant arthropods.

East Asia is technically also mainly plagued by retrosaurs and big arthropods, though they tend to look more fantastical and mythic - and, often, oddly well suited to being portrayed by a person wearing a monster suit.

Russia is beset by prehistoric monsters that seem to come from the Cenozoic, particularly the Ice Age.

Western Europe is plagued by creatures that vaguely resemble creatures from myth, if they were also prehistoric.  Dragon-y lizards, fiery birds, etc.

Towards the mid-way point of ATOM’s timeline, earth is invaded by a coalition of aliens from different solar systems called the Beyonder Alliance, and as a result a bunch of alien monsters can be found on earth.

Mars and Venus both host (or hosted in Mars’s case) animal life.  The surviving Martians colonized Venus, and sent some of their kaiju guardians to earth to help us fend off the Beyonders (who are responsible for the destruction of Mars’s ecosystem).  Martian and Venusian kaiju have specific anatomical quirks, which you can see by looking at these kaiju files:

Venusians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/03/atom-kaiju-file-29-karamtor/

Martians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-39-kemlasulla/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-40-podritak/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-41-sombarvot/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-38-ullawdra/

Giant robots exist in ATOM, but are big, bulky, and incredibly expensive.  Fancy beam weapons also exist, but are similarly clunky - there are no sleek, elegant machines in ATOM.

Since the fiction ATOM takes inspiration from was made at a time when interplanetary travel was only just beginning to be possible, its scope is significantly smaller than modern sci-fi.  Alternate universes/dimensions were pretty uncommon because the idea of alien planets still held a lot of wonder to it.  So, as a general rule, don’t try to go farther than the one galaxy.

ATOM is a setting for stories that are focused on humanity learning to coexist with monsters, rather than humanity destroying them.  A certain level of sympathy is put into almost every creature of its canon, even the ones that are meant to be villains.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Here is a playlist of 1950′s monster movie trailers.  

Here is some reference material from various monster comics of the 50′s and 60′s. 

Good movies to track down to understand ATOM’s inspiration and tone include Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster, Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, Them!, The Black Scorpion, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Gamera, The Giant Claw, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

And here’s the intro cutscenes for all the different giant monsters in the PS2 videogame War of the Monsters.

[bellamaxlabs]

I was thinking of getting into the Zelda series, and I know you've played a lot of them, have any recs on which I should play first? Or maybe rank which ones were the best? Like I said I really don't know what I'm doing here, thanks for the help!

Ranking my favorite zelda games because absolutely no one asked! Except for this anon!

* I’m gonna be ranking these on a scale of 1-10 on story, gameplay, and dungeons so 1 is pretty much ass and 10 is like the holy fucking grail of game design alright

* Also remember this is entirely opinion, but I do hope I'm able to help!

* Skyward sword:

* 9 in story, 5 in gameplay, 7 in dungeons, the story is so so so good man and it kills me to know that some people avoid this one because of the controls, yes they’re frustrating sometimes but for the absolutely amazing story it’s so so worth it this game made me cry like 3 times

* Twilight Princess

* 7 in story, 8 in gameplay, 7 in dungeons, Twilight princess is one of those games that people generally regard as an off-brand ocarina of time, but the double clawshots and whole city in the sky stuff combined with Midna and the twili and Zant makes this game so worth playing like,,, its probably in my top three Zelda games of all time ok take the ocarina of time thing with a grain of salt

* Windwaker

* 6 in story, 7 in gameplay, 9 in dungeons, this one really stands out to me because even though the dungeons are so much easier than other games I’ve played they just flow so much better, I don’t know how to explain it but going through them is so much smoother than other games and I can’t pinpoint why. The cell shaded style is adorable too and Link actually has a family in this one so automatic +10000 points in every category alr

* Ocarina of Time

* 8 in story, 6 in gameplay, 6 in dungeons, obviously Ocarina of time is a classic for a whole bunch of people, and I may just be saying this because the wii virtual console controls sucked ass, but for me this game is probably the hardest out of all the major 3D’s, the dungeons were hard (especially the water temple, what a surprise) but challenge is never bad, and the reward factor once you finally get past all the puzzles and bosses and whatnot is so fun to see. I will say though the shell blades in the water temple kicked my ass so watch out for that

* Majoras mask

* 7 in story, 5 in gameplay, 7 in dungeons. Now,,, Majoras mask is a good game, but as someone who gets very stressed around time mechanics in general I can say that this game is one big never ending feeling of dread, which is great for building atmosphere and everything,,, but I got so stressed out in the last dungeon that I havent finished the game yet. So take that however you want, but if you get stressed out easily with games like this you may wanna take a step back

* Now last but not least, Breath of the Wild!

* 10 in story, 8 in gameplay, 2 in dungeons. Now you might say hold on a second, there are dungeons in breath of the wild! The divine beasts certainly count, don’t they? I say meh, they’re too short and the blights are pushovers, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t a blast to play through, they just don’t count as dungeons to me. But what Breath if the wild may lack in dungeons, it certainly makes up for it in story, gameplay, and just plain atmosphere. The exploration we see is more than anyone had ever hoped, and there’s just so much to grow on with the plot of 100 years prior, this one is a 10/10 for me 100% a must play for the switch

* And thats the end of my very long winded review of all the major 3d Zelda games! Hope I helped anon, feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!

[ttmiyh]

alright attempt #4 at writing this post, hoping very much that tumblr won't crash again whenever i try to put in a screenshot.

anyway, hello, its me again, sticking my face into the latest tag discussion kind of. im actually not going to weigh in on the bulk of the discussion because i want to hear people's opinions uninfluenced by my own and putting my finger on the scale one way or the other is detrimental in that regard - BUT - several people have dm'd me on discord asking about verification stuff on the backend and i want to make a big post i can link to that explains it. screenshots and technical info below the read-more!

tl;dr we don't keep your stuff after its used, verified users no longer have any encrypted picture strings associated with their account, here is a gif of me running a sql query that should prove it

anyway, here is what my profile looks like in our database, or at least the back couple of columns

it's those last couple of columns i'd like you to note. there's a boolean (true/false) that is "are you verified", and of course it's "true". then a verification_string, which is empty. what happens is that you upload your picture, it gets decoded into a string of bits and bytes and whatnot, and then it gets encrypted, and, for example, this is about how long a randomly picked encrypted string is;

yes you're not misreading that, that's about a million characters, that only one person on this god-given earth can unlock with their particular PGP key.

anyway, so there's three user statuses; verified (verified = true and verification_string = null), pending (verified = false and verification_string = [lots of characters...]), and unverified (verified = false and verification_string = null). Null, in this case, means basically "it's empty".

anyway, after the verifier verifies you, they discard the string, as you can see by the fact that mine's null - but, if that doesn't convince you, i also offer a gif that i will explain below it:

i made a screen recording of me executing the query so you can be assured no shenanigans are taking place. what the query says is "give me the count of all the users that ARE verified (verified = true) AND have a verification string (verification_string is not null)". then it runs, which you can see by the greying out on the bottom that happens, and it spits out a big happy zero - anyone verified no longer has a string stored in database. once it's been decoded, it gets discarded, and nobody has it anymore, the information is gone forevver.

hopefully that helps assuage some people who are worried that we're secretly keeping this stuff. we don't keep it, we don't want it after it's used, and keeping it would open us up to a WHOLE host of legal bullshit that none of us, but me especially, really want to bother with.

apologies for the long post and i hope you all have an above average evening!

[mimicutie]

Pit is Autistic - A “Brief” Analysis

Kid Icarus: Uprising is my favorite game of all time, and one thing I love about it is the characterization of Pit. Specifically, I see him as autistic. Of course, this is just a headcanon of mine, but I wanted to write out a little discussion explaining why I see him as such as well as show some of the autistic traits he demonstrates in Uprising (and the occasional reference to the Guidance conversations from Smash).

(fair warning, this is not very brief)

Difficulty Understanding Words and Jokes

It’s made abundantly clear that Pit isn’t the best at picking up sarcasm or jokes. At times, he struggles with understanding words, phrases, and context. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 11.

Pit: Good! There are survivors! Palutena: They’re a stubborn bunch hanging on like that. [...] Pit: Uh… stubborn? Palutena: Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.

Here, Pit doesn’t understand what Palutena means by “stubborn.” It’s pretty common for autistic people to struggle understanding parts of speech, such as words being used in different contexts than what they’re used to.

Medusa: Hmm… Now this is a little… bizarre. Pit: I know right? The mouth on that guy! I’d never talk like that! Medusa: That’s not what I meant. Palutena: Sorry. He can be a little… thick.

Once again, Pit is misinterpreting the situation. He doesn’t understand what Medusa is alluding to, thinking that she is talking about Dark Pit’s brash behavior. Palutena’s last comment hints that it’s very common for Pit to misunderstand people like this.

Pit: I’m Pit, servant of the goddess Palutena. I’m here to defeat Dark Lord Gaol. Magnus: So you’re here for a slice of the pie too? Pit: Huh? Pie? Where?

Chapter 2 has several examples of Pit not picking up on obvious jokes or idioms, and here’s one. Pit takes the idiom literally, not understanding what Magnus really means at first.

Viridi: Pit certainly is devoted to you, Palutena. Hades: Only because she squeezes his head wreath when he doesn’t follow orders. Palutena: You mean like… THIS?! Pit: No no no no no! You’ll squeeze my brains out! … (sigh) Why do I always fall for that?

In this example from Chapter 15, Palutena is clearly messing with Pit, but as he stated, he always falls for her jokes. Even though it’s clear she is just teasing, Pit can’t pick up on the fact that she isn’t being serious. He consistently struggles with understanding tone.

Pit: This is so annoying. Lady Palutena, help me out here! Palutena: Deploying the Palutena Super Sensor… Pit: I didn’t know you had a super sensor! Palutena: Hee hee. I don’t. You know I like to make stuff up. Pit: I can’t believe you’re messing with me at a time like this!

This dialogue from Chapter 13 is just another example of Palutena clearly joking while Pit does not pick up on it. Even though Palutena has done this time and time again, Pit still struggles to tell when someone, even a person he is incredibly close to like Palutena, is just messing with him. These are just a few examples. Pit commonly struggles with understanding language and tone throughout the game.

Using Words Differently

We can see that Pit has his own unique vocabulary with his own creative phrases like, “Calamaried!” “Re-defeated!” “Pulverazed!” and so on. Pit also makes LOTS of noises throughout the game, all of his “woohoo”s and “woah”s and whatnot. It’s just how he communicates, even if it's a bit particular or different.

Expressiveness

Pit is excitable. Like, really excitable. Sure, he’s a fun video game protagonist, but he’s always very happy-go-lucky and upbeat in a way that reads to me as autistic. Just look at how he jumps in excitement!

And when he gets the Three Sacred Treasure?! Gifs can’t really do the excitement in this scene justice. (link in case tumblr embed isn’t working)

Additionally, while Uprising doesn’t have a lot of cutscenes with Pit just standing around talking, in the ones where he does he is usually very expressive, using his hands to talk and whatnot. Added with his excitability, I feel that this shows us that Pit is so expressive and emotional because he’s autistic!

Extra Help

Pit needs more help with understanding things in comparison to others. Palutena often goes out of her way to guide Pit, whether it be giving him directions or explaining how to defeat an enemy. While Palutena’s advice does work as a guide for the player, it’s clear that Pit needs the help more than someone else his situation might. The clearest proof we have of this comes from Chapter 22.

Palutena: Watch out for that heart-shaped crystal barrier! You see, it’s— Dark Pit: Reflecting my shots back at me, right? Palutena: Well… yes. Dark Pit: I got it, so stop telling me what to do! 

Palutena is expecting Dark Pit to be like Pit, where she needs to explain to him what’s going on and offer her guidance. However, Dark Pit was able to figure out a strategy to defeat Pandora all on his own. Palutena is very aware that Pit needs a bit more help and prepares accordingly for him.

Accidental Rudeness

Many times throughout Uprising, Pit is shown speaking “rudely” towards gods or characters who have authority over him.

Pit: Oh, great! You’re the guy I’m looking for. Listen, I have a favor to ask you. Would you mind if I borrow your chariot for just a little while? Chariot Master: Your foolishness is matched only by your rudeness. How dare you charge in here, flinging unreasonable requests at me? [...] Viridi: You can’t really blame him for being upset. That was kind of rude.

Here, Pit is talking to the Chariot Master very casually, treating him like a friend despite the fact he is breaking into the Chariot Master’s tower and asking him for a precious artifact. Pit doesn’t see it as rude but Viridi and the Chariot Master clearly do. He is breaking an unwritten social norm by talking so casually to someone of high authority. Autistic people often misinterpret social situations or don’t act appropriately, sometimes resulting in “rude” behavior. There are several examples of this throughout the game, such as in Chapter 24…

Pit: You know, the Three Sacred Treasures weren’t exactly durable. Can you please make sure that this new weapon won’t just fall apart? Dyntos: Palutena, you’d be wise to put a muzzle on your chicken.  Palutena: I apologize for him. Again. Pit: I… I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to be rude.

To Pit, he is just stating a fact. However, it comes off to Dyntos as Pit being rude or even insulting his work. This is something that autistic people often do; they are blunt or honest about something, which is again mistaken as being rude.

Pit is also seen being more blunt when under emotional stress, such as in Chapter 20.

Pit: I trusted you because I knew you were on the side of justice, and… and light! But something is blocking that light now. This isn’t the real you. Viridi: Someone cue the strings… Pit: Would you mind holding the commentary for two seconds, Viridi? Phosphora: There are goddesses you’re talking to here, Pit. Watch your tone. Pit: Butt out, Phosphora! The goddess of light has turned dark. Skyworld is destroyed! Everything is wrong, and it’s up to me to make things right! Palutena: Oh, Pit. You’re just as naive as ever. Pit: I’m not naive!

Phew. This scene is pretty noteworthy to me because throughout the game, Pit is never really that angry or upset. He does show hostility, but he never really snaps at anyone, much less gods, like this. But when his home is destroyed and Lady Palutena is not herself, his emotions get the better of him. He doesn’t even seem to care that he is being “rude” to Viridi. I definitely see this moment as Pit having an outburst because of the stressful situation he is under. 

Scripts / Scripting

The most obvious example of Pit using a script is with his “rally cries” that he prepares before fighting enemies. Look at the idol description for this AR Card.

He practices his rally cries a lot in order to be prepared for battles with bosses. Pit even mentions practicing his rally cries in a later chapter.

Pit: Cells of Hades, hear my words! And, um… see my actions! Uh… something, something… I’m going to rain death on you! I can’t remember all the words, but that’s the general gist. Hades: My innards have so longed to hear your battle cry. How could you forget the words? Pit: I didn’t have time to rehearse. I’ve been busy fighting evil, okay?!

While some may see the rally cries as meaningless fun, I think it could be seen as Pit having a script that he likes to fall back to when facing enemies. 

His many references and quotes to video games could be seen as scripting, too. There are lots of instances in Uprising, and especially in Palutena’s Guidance, where Pit quotes famous video game phrases or imitates sounds. Which leads me to…

Special Interest

Pit’s special interest is video games. While Pit’s very vast knowledge of video games could just be because of Uprising’s fourth-wall breaking style of humor, I think it could also be seen as Pit having an intense interest in games. He references various video games such as Metroid, Nintendogs, and Super Smash Bros. in-game. He seems to enjoy bringing up video games or referencing video game mechanics whenever he can, which is very similar to how autistic people enjoy bringing up their special interests in conversations whenever possible. Additionally, while the Palutena’s Guidance conversations aren’t 100% accurate to canon, Pit constantly references and alludes to various video games in them, such as quoting Reyn in Shulk’s conversation or Peppy and General Pepper in Fox’s (which ties back to him scripting). It’s clear that he loves video games and talking about video games!

Pit: Those Aurum troops are doing their best Game and Watch impression! Viridi: Check out the gaming IQ on this guy! You’re a regular video game historian!

See, even Viridi is impressed with his video game knowledge! :D

Sensory Issues

Throughout the game, Pit seems to have an obsession with hot springs. It is never outright explained why he loves them so much, but I’m led to believe it is because of sensory reasons. Many autistic people use extreme temperatures to help soothe or calm themselves, such as cold showers or hot baths. It can often help with sensory overload. Hot springs, similarly to hot baths, may be a way to help soothe Pit and keep his sensory issues to a minimum. 

Pit’s habits with his tunic seem to hint towards sensory issues, too. He doesn’t like to be without his robes, stating that he keeps them on even when he’s in the hot spring. When his clothes seemingly get messed up in Chapter 21, he gets upset, exclaiming that it’s his only tunic. Wearing the same clothes or same types of clothes/fabric is pretty typical for autistic people, and Pit wearing the same tunic everyday is similar to that.

Additionally, Pit’s habits with food could be because of sensory differences. He very well could be hyposensitive to food and tastes, which is why he eats a lot and doesn’t seem to care about what he eats (as long as it isn’t vegetables, according to the Revolting Dinner short ;D ) . 

Small Social Circle

Pit doesn’t have a whole lot of people he can rely on. Before Uprising, the only person he seems to have any affinity for is Palutena. Other than that, he doesn’t seem to talk to anyone else. We don’t have a clear picture on what his relationship with the Centurions is like, but based off of the Revolting Dinner short and Chapter 17, he only really talks to them when he’s working as the Captain of the Army and not as a friend.

While yes, Pit is the only angel left in Skyworld, I still think it’s important to bring up that Pit only really has Palutena to rely on. By the end of Uprising, he has Viridi and Dark Pit as well, but his only clear and completely positive relationship is his mother-son bond with Palutena. I see this as Pit struggling to really befriend others. He’s had over two decades between the original game and Uprising to befriend the Centurions, but again, he only really has Palutena. It’s pretty typical for autistic people to have very small social circles, consisting of just one or two friends. Palutena seems to fit the role of mother and best friend for Pit, and she even remarks that he should make more friends in Chapter 4. 

Working Alone

This is a small one, but still something that I think is worth pointing out. Pit seems very adamant on accomplishing his missions on his own, telling Dark Pit on two separate occasions (Chapter 9 and Chapter 21) that he can handle the situation by himself. Similarly, it’s common for autistic people to prefer working by themselves rather than with others. Paired with the previous point about having a small social circle, this just reads to me as Pit not feeling too comfortable in situations with others.

Conclusion

There’s a few other points that I feel I could bring up but overall I think these are my main points summed up (and yes, I said summed up. this used to be over 2500 words) ! Thanks so much for reading! If you have any other traits that you think Pit has that I didn’t mention, feel free to share them, I’d be more than happy to hear! ^_^