#peer reviewed from discord

[high-fructose-jay-syrup]

the two types of short people:

smol

angry

[lipstickarithmetic]

liya has me back on my bullshit again. here are my definitive chase thoughts for real this time

no formatting bc i'm not liya (whose writing you can read @dulcesiabits <3 but let's be real if you're reading this post it's probably bc she reblogged it from me. she has way more followers)

spoilers for the short stories and the q&a under the cut

What strikes me the most about Chase's character, more than anything to do with the comparatively superficial stuff he does on the daily, is his immoderation with love—and I think his whole arc and everything he does essentially revolves around this axiom.

People have noticed the similarities between Red and Chase, and I agree with them! Former fuckboy, current fuckboy, and all of their social grace and charisma—I see the vision. However, crucially, while Liefred was slutting it up in the Circle and figuring out what love truly meant to him, Chase was being ordered to kill people by a mob boss. Red had no shortage of love in his life, while Chase was repeatedly denied love to a frankly astonishing degree. It's no surprise, then, that he would seek the cloth mother. His need for love is a yawning pit inside him, because as everyone knows, nothing is sweeter than that which is scarce.

Back to his backstory—enter Saya. lmao

I think Saya did like Chase in some way, but she definitely saw his need for love as an annoyance, as a flaw (let's put a pin in this). And so when he exceeded expectations at his place of employment 🫡 for her, and for his new family in the Thieves Guild, well. We know she resented him for how much credit he got compared to her, but I also felt like she was almost...disgusted by how happy he was. For him to have her life and then be better at thieving is one thing, but to then find so much joy in it when she's so resentful would have been the icing on the cake. I don't think she would've been as angry or careless as she was with him if he was as miserable as she was—but he wasn't. he was so happy because he finally found love—and this foolish, giddy happiness made him easy to look down on, easy to manipulate, and easier to ultimately betray.

-

Post-betrayal, Chase puts up the walls we see at the beginning of the game. He becomes even more slippery, insouciant, hard to pin down—and yet. And yet.

It's not like he stops yearning for love/aching to fill the hole inside (as Contrapoints put it in her video "Twilight"—I highly recommend giving it a watch). It's more that he's now aware of the loss of self-possession that love can cause, especially for him.

And yet!! That loss of self-possession, the yawning, love-starved hole inside him, that bone-deep need for love that he's never been any good at denying, is never going to go away for him. Think of the things Lena has said during Q&A. In his happy romance ending, he's "king simp". He would be down for matching tattoos and such things as these. Matching tattoos!!! MATCHING TATTOOS????? These are not the signs of a rational mind, are you INSANE?????

And this is his good ending!!! Even in this ideal arc, the compulsion he feels towards love does not loosen its grip on him. Rather, it's the people around him who recognize this in him and treat it with the care it deserves! (Now let's unpin the thought from earlier.) This is the crucial difference between Saya and a chasemancer MC. Both of them see this yearning within him, but where one sees it as a flaw to be stomped out or taken advantage of, the other recognizes it, understands it, and protects it.

Love will always make Chase vulnerable, but in his arc, he will learn that it doesn't have to make him weak.

[mwg-out-of-context]

[cyberiada]

the Tallyho! fandom is dying reblog if you're a true tally hoe

[genericpuff]

All That Glitters is Not Feminism - An Analysis of LO's Brand of "Feminism" and What Remains of its Fanbase (The Twist)

Alright y'all, I've been waiting a hot minute to talk about this because I wanted to see how it fully panned out before saying anything about it. And it's not even specifically about LO, but I do think it's very adjacent to it in a way that I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear. Much of it speaks to how we prop up white writers even at the expense of POC.

This is 'the twist' attached to my first post that I made just a couple hours ago that concerns an entirely other topic but I feel ties into this subject very well.

If you haven't heard, there's this author who recently fucked around in the Del Rey publishing scene.

Her name is Cait Corrain.

In the original tweet calling this person out, names were not dropped, but it was made very clear that what Cait did was unacceptable behavior.

You can read the entire thread that started it all from Xiran here:

There's also a GREAT recap thread from one of the affected authors, Bethany Baptiste:

I want to make it clear that Cait Corrain isn't just a debut author.

Cait Corrain is - or now, was (foreshadowing is a literary device that-) - a debut author who had an agent, a publishing deal with Del Rey (an imprint of Random House which is a MAJOR publisher) and even an upcoming Illumicrate deal - meaning, her book was going to be packaged in a monthly loot crate subscription shipped directly to people's doors, quite possibly one of the best marketing deals a debut author could ever get, usually unheard of in this industry. All the pre-reviews were strong and positive.

Cait's book was literally set up for success. All she had to do was sit back, relax, and watch the fruits of her labors roll in. She had written the book. It was ready for release. The hard part was technically over.

But I guess the racism brainrot got to her because as it turns out, since April - for EIGHT MONTHS - she's been making alternate accounts on GoodReads to review bomb the indie and debut works of her friends and peers, most of whom were POC and did not have the same opportunities set up for them as she did. There are loads of receipts to back this up that you can find in those above threads ^^^

To say that this is appalling is an understatement. This was an intentional and deliberate act of racism by a white queer writer who claimed to be "jealous" - of what, I can't imagine - so much so that she deliberately sabotaged her peers, people who had supported her and her book.

And then when she got caught? She doubled down on it and claimed it was a "friend", also an alternate account she made up.

The exchange between her and this made-up person is actually the funniest shit out of this entire thing, it's so poorly written and as soon as people noticed the time stamps were out of order, that was when it truly cemented her newfound clown status.

"oooooh he's standing right behind me, isn't he?" energy right here LMAO

yes keep expositing cait, that's really selling the "this is a genuine conversation that really happened with a real person" bit 🤡

Anyways, it became abundantly clear that Cait was just going to continue to dig her heels in over something she caused.

This has been a hot topic in the UnpopularLO Discord, not just because of how crazy of a situation it is that we had to talk about it - and we have people within the community who work in the literature and media sector - but because we noticed one very telling thing in the list of series that she had review bombed in her very own personal act of wrath.

You see, Cait made one fundamental mistake that led to her undoing - she didn't just review bomb the works of her peers, she positively reviewed her own book and others.

What's her book about though?

It's an Ariadne x Dionysus retelling set in space.

It's literally another "modern retelling" of Greek myth.

And wouldn't you know it, guess who else created a modern retelling of Greek myth that she included in her positive review raiding while she was sabotaging the work of her actual peers?

Now, I think it goes without saying that what I'm about to say should be taken with MOUNTAINS of salt, I'm sure a lot of you are reading the headline and going, "Ugh, really? You're gonna make this about LO? Could you give it a rest already???"

I need you to understand, with the current state of Rachel's fanbase and 'modern' Greek myth literature as a whole, at this point Lore Olympus - and the works that are literally inspired by it such as A Touch of Darkness - has basically become the shopping cart litmus test of basic decency. It's like when someone says they like Harry Potter - you can't take it automatically at good faith anymore, because there isn't a whole lot separating someone who simply liked Harry Potter as a kid and still rewatches the movies from time to time from someone who fully supports the politics and agenda of J.K. Rowling. No, not everyone who still watches the movies or reads the books fondly is a TERF by default, but it's justifiably a reason for suspicion when the consequences are often too dire to risk.

There's this thing that's been happening in the LO fanbase that I frankly saw coming, but has really recently started to hit its peak. It's what I call the "Kanye Effect", where the comic has become so absurd and backwards in its misogyny and white feminism that the only people who seem to be left supporting LO are the people who are legitimate white feminists and misogynists - because all the normal level-headed people fell off the comic ages ago (or transitioned into the critical side of the community).

I mentioned it in my last post, but it bears repeating - Rachel's fanbase has literally been shipping Hera, a victim of abuse, with her abuser, Kronos. I'm really hoping a lot of them realize how fucked up that is now that Hera herself has called it what it is - abuse - within the comic, but I also can't count on the LO fanbase picking up on that or even noticing it with how quickly people swipe through it each week, it's very apparent at this point that most of LO's readers don't know how to chew their food and don't pay attention when Persephone and Hades aren't onscreen.

But I'm digressing. Or am I? We're talking about Crown of Starlight after all. The debut Dionysus x Ariadne sci-fi/fantasy romance that was quite literally advertised using Lore Olympus as its baseline-

This. This is what the ongoing cultural erasure and white feminist uwu-fication of Greek myth is doing to the literary zeitgeist surrounding Greek myth as a whole. This is why we criticize Lore Olympus and works like it that are created by disingenuous people who only seek to use the assets of Greek myth material as a way to shoot themselves up into fame and stardom. This is why we demand better standards in the literature and webcomic industry, so that people like Rachel and Cait can't use their privileges to quite literally erase the source material that they used to make themselves famous in the first place.

If anything, Cait's actions didn't just affect the people she negatively review bombed, or the people she was affiliated with, but also the people she positively reviewed. While I don't support what Rachel creates, she wasn't the only one who Cait went out of her way to review positively from her alt accounts, there were many others as evident in the Google Doc - but all this really does is tarnish the legitimacy of these books and their ratings by artificially jacking up their numbers that are advertised to others.

Making Greek myth fanfiction or fun creative retellings was never the problem, but it's now being sabotaged alongside so many other genres and mediums by toxic white individuals who can't even keep themselves from committing hate crimes, let alone create something purely for entertainment that's transparent in its illegitimacy, lest it destroy the illusion that these people are qualified to speak over those whose voices are being stifled, often by these very same people. Many of these writers get caught and are still allowed to continue what they're doing - that was certainly what we feared with Cait.

Until today.

It was revealed today that Cait's book will no longer be featured in the Illumicrate May 2024 box.

Del Rey has dropped Crown of Starlight from their publishing schedule.

Daphne Press will be hopefully following suit.

And, most telling of all, Cait's own agent has severed ties with her.

For anyone not familiar with the inner workings of the publishing industry, Cait has essentially been blacklisted. Without an agent or a publishing house, she'll have to entirely rely on her own resources through self-publishing. Unless she manages to sneak her way back in under an alias (which I wouldn't put it past her to try) she no longer has access to the mainstream publishing industry that was already guaranteed for her before she let her 'jealousy' get the better of her.

Her career was already made for her. She had a red carpet laid out for her debut. Her book was getting good pre-reviews and she had quite literally nothing keeping her from her success. The best thing she could have done was nothing. Somewhere in her head, she made up a threat that didn't exist, and sealed her fate in acting on it, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think in these situations such as with Cait Corrain, Rachel Smythe, and - also recently and relevant - James Somerton, we need to become increasingly aware of how white voices are still overpowering POC voices, not just in their actions, but in the opportunities they're given over others which they then use to further stifle the voices of those they feel "threatened" by or feel entitled to speak over. While neither James nor Rachel have used sock puppet accounts to "take out the competition" (at least as far as we know lmao) James did quite literally steal the words and voices of queer writers who were deserving of their time in the spotlight, and Rachel's work is being quoted as "rewriting Greek myth" as if its blatant gentrification and appropriation should be marketed as some sort of positive.

It's all too common for these deeply-rooted prejudices to rear their ugly heads and for the people who carry them to act out in this way while justifying it as "jealousy" or "a mistake". This isn't jealousy. This isn't a mistake. This isn't someone "starting drama". This is genuine, targeted hate, with the intention of snuffing out the voices of others who should be empowered, not silenced.

All that time and effort, and for what? Racism and petty jealousy? It just goes to show, it doesn't matter how many opportunities you're given, how high up on the ladder you already are - it won't fix the deeply-rooted insecurity and racial pettiness that spurs people on to do such horrible things.

I've spent enough of my time and words today talking about Cait, and James, and Rachel. So to end this off, I want to join in with all the others who have highlighted the books that were review-bombed by Cait, and help in uplifting them so they can have successful debuts. I'll be pre-ordering a few of them, so I'll be happy to make dedicated posts for them in the future after they release. Please consider purchasing them for yourself if you want some new reading material <3

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste:

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole:

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang:

Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White:

(I'm sure there are plenty others so if I missed any here, please let me know so I can add them here and check out their books!)

If there's any silver lining to this, I hope that it makes people aware of the media they consume and who it's being created by. I hope it makes people more willing to seek out the books that aren't getting the same opportunities as Cait Corrain and Rachel Smythe. I hope it's a wake-up call to the industry that matters like this need to be taken seriously and that POC writers are still being silenced under their own noses. And most of all, I hope it's a reminder that we shouldn't even need at this point that this behavior is not okay, no matter what level a person climbs to - that just because someone is part of one minority doesn't mean they're not capable of sabotaging another. It sucks that that has to be said, it sucks that despite these groups being so intersectional there are still people within them who submit to their deeply-rooted insecurities and find ways to feel threatened that they use to justify hateful behavior.

Having a platform is a privilege. It should never be weaponized against your own peers or those who you simply feel "threatened" by for no reason beyond your own imposter syndrome or doubts or internal struggles. Because as much as you may feel like you've earned where you are, that never gives you the right to weaponize your opportunities against others who were never given those same opportunities in the first place. "Feminism" is not using your power to crush "other women". "Progressiveness" is not exclusive to the progress that only benefits you.

I wish only the best to those who were affected by the actions of Cait Corrain. You deserve to be heard and seen and appreciated for the work you do and the abuse you've had to tolerate. I look forward to your debuts in 2024 <3

[grandlinedreams]

|| special thanks to @miloonmetis for this specific brand of rot on discord yesterday lmao and happy fingering friday to my bbs iykyk

[Heads up!: inappropriate joke about Law's fingers, fingering (reader recieving), oral (also reader recieving), kinda mean dom Law]

You spend an inordinate amount of time staring at Law's hands. They're pretty, after all, almost as pretty as the man himself. Long, slender ㅡ with the letters of 'DEATH' tattooed on them in dark ink against tanned skin.

You toy with his fingers, curling and uncurling them, feeling the delicate work of the tendons and veins beneath. Your fingertips dance between the gaps, then you sigh. "You know, about these fingers of yours..."

"Hm." Law, having tuned you out about fifteen minutes ago, does not pay much attention to the deliberate bend of his fingers under your control.

"I think I'd like you to do these three to me." You wait patiently for him to drag his attention off of his text book review and to his hand. The index, middle and ring are extended out, pinky and thumb bent.

'EAT', it spells, and it takes Law a good minute and a half to register that, then what you're implying. You grin wickedly as color flushes his face.

"Oh."

He does as you ask, though. He's nothing if not a generous lover in terms of what you can ask for ㅡ what he gives you is an entirely different story.

"Close? Already?" His tone is teasing, hard edge of something else in his voice as 'e' and 'a' curl within you. His head tilts as you writhe, hips rocking to meet his shallow thrusts into your warmth as best you can when his other hand is trying to pin you to the bed. "Come on, you can take another finger, can't you?"

It's equal parts condescension as it is genuinely a question, and your cheeks burn for how eagerly your body responds to his words. You nod, and Law's lips curl. "That's what I thought."

The breach of his third finger aches in the best of ways, makes you whine as your cheeks burn, heart hammering and tummy clenching at how close your orgasm is.

And then Law stops. 'E', 'a', and 't' halt their delicious stretch inside you, the denial of your orgasm a cold bucket of water as you gasp, half-worded pleas spilling from your throat. "Keep going, please, please, I was so close ㅡ"

"Hush." Law's lips meet your thigh, pressing against the soft swell of skin, admiring the plush expanse as sticky fingers curl against you ㅡ and then his tongue is against your hot, achy center, and you almost wail in relief.

This too is something Law is familiar with, follows every jerk and twitch of your body as he curls his tongue, kneads at your thighs in comfort even as your orgasm begins to crescendo once more.

This time you anchor a hand in his hair, yanking hin closer to you ㅡ thighs squeezing in a bid to make him stay. He isn't going anywhere though, renewing his efforts as your noises pitch higher before you still against him, yanking as you cum.

Law lets you ride it out, waits until your hand eases up in his hair to pull away and peer at you from just below your groin. "Can you take another?"

It's clear what he means for the way he looks at you as if he's going devour you, and you shiver breathlessly before you nod, preparing yourself for a very long night.

[hotcheetohatredwastaken]

July LU Write-a-Thon: 351,092 Words in One Day!

On July 1, we hosted our second monthly LU Write-a-thon (organized by @not-freyja and @hotcheetohatredwastaken and joined by their new mods @noorahqar, @a-manicured-lawn, and @winterfen). The purpose of this event was to write as many productive words—words that furthered yourself, the LU writing community at large, or your own stories—within 24 hours as humanly possible. 

We had a whopping 90+ participants as opposed to our previous 16 - none of us expected such a large turnout, and were suitably unprepared 😅 We’ll definitely be making a lot of changes to accommodate that many people during the next Write-a-Thon, occurring August 1st. Thank you all for your patience!

But, until next month, here’s the awards and titles earned by each participant, as voted upon by the Discord server through an anonymous survey. The mods read through all your hundreds of submissions (thank you guys so much!) and picked either the highest voted title or the funniest custom submission for each person, as we found appropriate. First up is the winner’s circle, then the clubs, and then everybody else in alphabetical order right below this readmore!

The Winner’s Circle (5 Most Wordiest)

20,037 “Writer of All Time” and “Most Likely to Make 1K become 100K” (As can be seen in all its glory in your Aspects AU) @tashacee: You took advantage of Freyja and Cheeto’s beefing about who would be first and snapped up the win right from under their noses. Well played! 

20,011 “Writer of Some of the Time” and “Pen and Paper (Scritch... Scratchy?)” @hotcheetohatredwastaken: Missed the mark by juuust a bit, for the second time in a row. Cheeto, you suck. (:3 –Cheeto) (Qar wrote this, for reference!). Also wrote for most of the marathon on pen and paper!

17,491 “Writer of Last Time” (for winning last month and then failing to defend their title) and “The FourShadow-er of all Time” (for the unholy amount of Chekov’s Guns they leave lying around loaded in their docs) @not-freyja: you are the most autistic about Legend. Nerd.

13,203 “Will Make You Cry” and “Captain of the Twilight Angst Tag on Ao3” @somer-writes: Boosting the Twilight economy, and we’re all happy about it. Also the second-funniest person in the server, with the second-most stars!

13,000 “AU Collector” and “Four Enjoyer” @zarvasace: Whether they're heroes with disabilities, space rangers, or vampires, if Mina wrote it, the boys will be written well.

Clubs

Now while everyone’s accomplishments as individuals were nothing to sneeze at, teamwork does in fact make the dream work. A few lovely people made a couple of equally lovely groups, either by their own choice or as assigned by peer review.

Aimed for the Funny Numbers Club

“Literally Satan” @allwayswildchild: with exactly 6666 words, you deserve every bit of this cursed title. 

“Lawn Blart Mall Cop” and “Qar's Mom in a Moment of Weakness Apparently (And Then Qar’s Sister in a Moment of Un-Weakness)” @a-manicured-lawn: The latter explains itself. Apparently, the vision of Lawn segwaying around is amusing. [Some people just can’t appreciate the beauty of a white shirt, tie, and glorious moped… ~Lawn]

“The Reincarnated” @defenestration13: Hadn't written in six months but then reappeared to write multiple thousand words. Good job.

“Multimedia Powerhouse” @passerinesoncaffeine: The art, the writing, Raven's got it all! Painting, analyzing music, commenting, whatever you touch it turns to gold.

“Dark Miette” goes to @rebornofstars: An inside joke that I don’t understand. Also thought you should know that you got [insert bee pun].

“The Memer” and “Literally Wind” @savimatteo2810: These are related.

“The Quoter” @whatvioletdoes-blog: For spending the event harvesting quotable quotes for their chat-fic.

(freyja overshot all potential funny numbers, but is a member at heart)

Most Likely to Get Fangirled (Gender Neutral) Over Club

“Literally Hyrule” @across-violet-skies: Also called the Spunky Sidekick and a calming jasmine tea type person. Hopefully your ghost pepper recovery goes well. 

“The Snippeter” @imperialkatwala: For sharing so many snippets to us hungry folk. Thank you kindly.

“Friend Shaped” @polynomialpandemic: A friend to all. Also a “Snippeter” - thank you for feeding the masses!

“Four Tormentor” @undertheopensky: For really obvious reasons. Also managed to make Freyja scream for 10 minutes with your mere presence alone!

Other Friend Groups

“Sad Wet Cat Club” @cinis0 and @lunaopus, you two seem to have nominated one another, so you get this club all to yourselves! However, I would love to know what the talk of forgetting that the Queen died was about…. (Qar has requested to be an honorary member of this club)

@awildsilver and @four-eyed-nerd, you two get to come together as “Four-Eyed-Nerd’s Rat” and “AWildSilver’s Cat,” which is I think our favorite group of all in this month’s running. I do have some additional questions for you two, however, about a mention of the bee movie as an original work (allowed as long as it’s not copy pasted and also hilarious) for you Wild and the title “Honey I shrunk the Links” for you, Four. 

The Community Support Team

“The Commentator of All Time” @1-renegade: To directly quote, “Ain't NOBODY give better feedback and comments than lawlessland.” 

“Will Make You Cry” @artsyanonymity: Anonymity is the sweetest and kindest commenter in existence! SHE. WILL. MAKE. YOU. CRy. Writes the nicest comments and they make me (and apparently several others) cry

“The Encouragement Itself” @cat-at-a-writing-desk: For encouraging others to reach their goals. We appreciate you!

“Drill Sergeant” @gintrinsic-writing: Made Qar get 5k and scared everyone else into writing. (You did it! I got 5k! The fear (with funny intonation) dragged me over the finish line -Qar)

“Drawer of A Thousand Words” @la-sera: Ruler of the Legend and Hyrule brotherhood, inspirer of writers, and the spreader of so much love with your art this Fan Joy July with the art you spent the marathon working on. Can’t wait to see it all as the month goes on.

“The Reader of all Time” @life-in-winter: Or as you all probably know her, passerine44, the writer of the best ao3 comments of all time. Thea, you walk into a digital room and every writer there makes heart eyes at you. Cannot wait to read the writing you’ve been working on (and leave a comment) to return the favor.

“The Respondent of All Time” @silvrash-797: Silvrash had over four months of unanswered ao3 comments that she caught up with, congrats!

“Lives up to the Screen Name” @sunny-porridge: To quote: “Sunny is 100% a ray of sunshine and anyone who says otherwise can FIGHT ME” and I think we all agree.

“The Wildest Supporter.” @twilightangel83: Supported people and sent a lot of Wild emojis, so much so that we started picturing you as Wild!

“Poet” and “Master of the Shrimp Check” @winterfen: Writes good poetry, and also made sure that everyone was appropriately fed, hydrated, and rested for this event. 

Transfer Students

“I don’t work here, Lady” goes to bArk who neither has a tumblr nor writes for this fandom, but showed up and had fun anyways. Thanks for joining us!

“He Who Finished His Book” goes to jr_for_potus44 (not on Tumblr). Congrats!

“Split Screen” goes to @straight-outta-hobbiton for writing two fics on two screens at the same time, neither of which were LU. Frightening.

The Silent Ones

@pelicanpig, @mmelete, @wayfayrr, @raeofsky, @summaryscar @sunkissedkales: You guys came, you wrote, you did not elaborate. How mysterious your aura is (positive, deeply positive.)

"The Almost Silent One" @the-au-collector: Talked before and after, but not during the event. Probably too busy writing, or busy in general - good job either way!

Everybody else!

“Frequent Flier (WPM)” @anime-obsessed: For participating in so many sprints. Also earned “vocaloid enjoyer.”

“Keyboard Warrior” @august-the-friend: You fought autocorrect and lost 3-0, but it was a valiant fight nonetheless. You did great.

“Artist turned Writer” @aurora-boreas-borealis: Took a break from streaming to write—a huge shout out for all your hard work and your help with colors! (~the actual pigments, not the Links ~Lawn) 

“Literally Sun” @beesandhoney1219: Warmer than sunlight, sweeter than sugar, and absolutely obsessed with Sky’s girlfriend.

“Most Likely to Include Raccoons in their Fic” @bittirsweeteer: They Who Has Given Legend Espresso (thank you for your service).

“Last Minute Vidow” @deleetrix: Something that should always be encouraged. Thank you for feeding us.

“Stargiver” @emberlylion: For starring in a lot of posts, especially cat pics. Thank you for your service.

Move over Time, @estelian-01 “Will Fight Majora and Win” and then go back to studying.

“Studious Student Who (has not) Studied” @gerudoevernight: Self nominated for “Studious Student who Studied” for hitting their goal while in school. The mod team disagreed with the accuracy of that title and affectionately chose this one instead. Good job hitting your goal!

“The Outliner” @gia-d: Accidentally wrote a first draft. Also think it should be noted that everyone is convinced you either could kill a god or that you carry one around in your pocket.

“Onomatopoeia Outrage” @haloburns: Who debated the word “ow” so hard they inflicted it on the people around them.

“The Scholar” @irenkaferalkitty: For her extensive collection of well-researched data, presented in charts, documents and yes, excel sheets. We appreciate you.

“Most Improved” @labyrinthdancer: Their writing has improved a lot since they started posting! also they write really dark twilight & the chain fics. Being a new writer is scary, but they kept at it and are doing so well!

“Writer of Most Cursed Victorian Child” aka their take on Ravio, is @lele5429 with their first ever fic, which is as gorgeous in words as your art is in ink.

“The Hype Man (gender neutral)/Moral Support” @lemoncatssss: For all the encouragement that you gave others. Also the cat photos. Especially the cat photos.

“The accidental friend acquirer” @lennsart: For somehow befriending literally every single person you talk to.

“Severe Case of Clacking” @lerikwrites: You know why. Pennies in a washing machine my friend.

“Hyrule Hurter” goes to @linkiscool333: We all have the blorbo we love to put in the blender, but no one blends Rulie like you do.

“Marcus Actually Writes!?” @marcusdoodlesalot: For a second month in a row, some of us are still befuddled that Marcus is actually a writer, and not just an artist. Hard to believe that someone can have that much talent in both fields.

“Soup Soup Soup Soup Soup (Soup Soup Soup Soup Soup)” @marsnoodlesoup: I... do not know what this means. Congrats, it seems you’re soup.

“The Veteran” @musical-chan: For sharing stories of the early days of fandom. Back in my day but the most positive way possible

“Artist Turned Writer” @mysticstars105: Came out and wrote a whopping 400 words, which is so many words especially when you’re new. Gold Star!

“Art Fight Pre-Gaming” @nebulapaws: For their talk of Art Fight. Hope you have fun participating this month!

“Resident Audiophile” @needfantasticstories: Not just for writing with speech-to-text all day, but for your constant enthusiastic screaming about Epic the musical.

“Most likely to fight God and Win” and “The Modderrrrrr” @noorahqar: Who is actually Sky. Not with the sleepy part though. She actually wrote so much about Sky that he stole all her sleepy. Number one on the starboard, with the proud title of MVM (Most Valuable Mod) for sticking the landing as midnight hit. Also the one with “The Most Sigmas to Grindset” whatever… whatever that means. (Please help what does that mean?) 

“Picture Perfect Exhaustion” @nyastri: Their PFP (Four Doubled Over, hands on knees) combined with the announcement they'd reached their writing goal at the end of the marathon really just sold the picture for me. Well done.

“The Sleepy One” @ocha-blue: who justifiably went to bed as soon as they finished. (Hope you're recovered by now.)

“First Time Fic Writer” @peepthatbish: for breaking into the fic scene and boosting morale for our mod team, especially Lawn. We appreciate you!

“Slow And Steady (WPM)” @pokegeek151: Who was chugging away all day long.

“Doomed by the Narrative” @ra-archives: Google docs acting up, cat sitting on lap, and yet you persisted. Good job.

“My Little Friend Who I Love (This Is Qar Btw) (This Is Part Of The Title)” and “Wordsmith” @rosehipandroots: This is a direct copy paste from your submissions, Rose. Hope you enjoy it. But your amazing descriptions really make you a wordsmith. “The SkyBoy Enjoyer of All Time” @sapphicseasapphire: for your lovely art and writing of the boy!

“Task Succeeded Successfully” @screaming-but-i-have-four-swords: was an artist turned writer that tried to write words, and did! Good job.

“Artist Turned… More Artist” @seaotter-17: We were told you write descriptions like a poet, but in this event, you were most recognizable by your drawings of Nina the cat. Thank you for sharing. 

The “Person with a Passion for Pudding” (which is definitely an inside joke I do not understand, so I hope it makes you laugh) @somanyfanficssolittletime: Thanks for participating!

“The Fic Reccer of all Time” @staring-at-a-blank-page: For recommending so many fics, their own and others, up to read. Thank you!

“The Drabbler” @tenderleavesbob: For their lovely drabbles, of which they wrote around 10k of. The title is appropriate - it seems your drabbles have taken Tumblr (and the participants in this survey) by storm!

“100% Bunny Accurate Fiction”  @toyouhellohowareyou: writer of the most rabbit-fact-checked fics of all time by our own Bunny Lord [Beloved Pet and Bunny Boy (Legend) Himself]

“The Podficcer of All Time” @unexpectedstormy: For podfic making, promoting, and educating. And if that wasn’t enough fae is also our very own “Dragon Tamer” who spent the event working on their HTTYD WIP!

“The Dashshunder” @vivalaplutothedachshund: For sharing your lovely menace of a dog Pluto with us all. We also appreciate you both in the chats and in our rampage to give PolynomialPandemic 109 hugs. 

“Mod Emotional Support. We love you” @wanderlustmagician: You know what you did, and Cheeto’s firstborn deservedly belongs to you.

“Word Weaver” and “Fanfiction Foul---was writing at work instead of working” @weavingstarlight: Your words sparkle as bright as you do, glitter jar.

“Literally First (also shared cat pics)” @witchdoctor39 : Even Hylia can’t hold a candle to how much you love that poor poor man!

Thank all of you for participating, we appreciate each and every one of you so so so much! Please note that we had 90+ participants, and as such, there is probably guaranteed to be some mistakes on the list above. If you find any typos or pronoun goofs or anyone that was put on the list twice or missing or under the wrong name or put under the wrong name or any error that comes with having different discord and tumblr names or if you were left off the list in error or if you want to request a different name than the one you received or you want to be put into or removed from one club or another or anything else that could have gone wrong—please feel free to contact @hotcheetohatredwastaken or @not-freyja with your concerns here on tumblr!

Again, a big thank you to everyone for coming to the event from all of us on the mod team! Can’t wait to see you guys next month! And stay tuned---there will be another post with more information about the next event within the next couple of weeks!

[kirbyoctournament]

Hello again everyone,

Over the past 24 hours, there has been a series of misunderstandings regarding the recent poll tampering that we have reported. 

In this post, we hope to clear up some misunderstandings about the server and moderation team as a whole, as well as detail our evidence regarding the poll for those questioning its veracity.

As always, we have a zero tolerance policy for harassment.

>>> MISUNDERSTANDINGS

We would like to begin by stating that with the new year came a new team for the tourney--co-hosts and moderators alike. This tournament has been run and managed very differently from last year’s, and we consider ourselves to be affiliated solely in name and concept alone.

As such, all grievances related to the previous tournament are not related to our current moderation team. If you previously had a bad time in the tourney, we are very sorry to hear that. However, the previous 2023 moderation team is no longer affiliated with running or moderating the tourney.

We would also like to note that last year's host was a minor, and merely wished to help foster a community. They did not expect the event to grow to the size that it did, and do not deserve any amount of hate or contempt for this.

Regarding the Discord server in particular, upon change of ownership, the server eventually underwent an overhaul to better suit the community's new needs. 

One of the changes implemented was removal of an access restricted "Vent Channel" which was created by the previous host when the server still had less than 50 members. The new mods were aware of the risks a vent channel posed in a public server and immediately restricted it to request-to-access. However, as the server grew to foster over 150 members, the channel exhibited constant security breaches and rule breaks, and it had to be removed.

While we care for the mental health of our server members, a large public space is not the place to air private issues. Moderators and server members alike frequently offer support and encourage members to seek aid and consult friends in DMs or personal servers in a safe and private manner.

We also understand that despite the tourney's primary focus being centered around uplifting OCs, the concept remains the same--a "popularity contest” where OCs are matched against one another--which can cause the event to be stressful and mentally draining. We've always encouraged participants to see the competition as lighthearted, to realize that losses do not reflect poorly on their creativity, and to be responsible for their own mental health, as seen in our rules. Any participant can drop out at any time for any reason, a sentiment we reiterate with every new round.

Regarding allegations of bullying and harassing a server member: neither mods nor server members have ever wished the member in question any form of harm, and have frequently offered reassurances and help. No mod has ever sent hateful anons to any of our participants. We request any further allegations regarding this matter to be supplied with evidence, rather than with rumors.

All that being said, we will now share our evidence regarding the tampered poll, including a public catalogue of our minute by minute tracking as well as our calculations of the data.

>>> POLL TAMPERING EVIDENCE

Documentation was not originally released because the moderation team needed several days to analyze, process, format, and present the evidence. While delays are of course not ideal, sharing data with any room for misinterpretation would have been hurtful and harmful to the competitors. To declare a poll tampered with is an enormous action, and not one that we would have done without 100% concrete proof. We received multiple reports from concerned community members regarding abnormal poll behavior, and our moderation team have spent several days working tirelessly around the clock to collect the evidence needed before making any decisions. 

All data was peer reviewed by a team of 7 individuals, and none was falsified.

Firstly, here is a 41 hour graph of the ROUND FIVE: Fylass vs Valfrey poll, from the time we received the first reports of tampering concerns to when we archived the poll shortly after announcing it had been tampered with.

The pattern recorded is mechanical and undeniable.

Any time contestant Valfrey approached or crossed the 50% mark, contestant Fylass would receive a spike of votes within a narrow 10 minute window, surrounded by plateaus on either side. These votes were not accompanied by a boost in public propaganda or reblogs. We recorded this pattern 4 times within a 41 hour period, exclusively when Valfrey approached or crossed the 50% mark.

We reiterate that this pattern had been reported by multiple third party sources prior to our logging, from individuals who saw the spikes happening in real time on the public tumblr post.

Some spikes, especially early on, were smaller, such as the above. Others, such as the final spike below, were significant, recording 18 one-sided votes between 7:51am and 8:00am CDT. As previously, this influx of votes occurred within a ten minute window, and was bookended by a plateau.

What is expected to be seen is a steady fluctuation of votes for both characters. Small spikes are normal. Even a big spike on its own is normal, as someone may have shared their poll in a private space to friends or a separate server, or a piece of propaganda may have rallied potential voters. This was not the activity that was recorded.

Again: we recorded repeated, pattern behaviour of enormous voting spikes within precise ten minute windows, only when Valfrey approached or crossed the 50% marker. The results of these spikes always settled with a slight lead for Fylass, which Valfrey slowly closed; until the spike occurred again like clockwork.

For those who wish to see the numbers and draw their own conclusions, we have provided access to the raw data collected.

Here is our minute by minute screenshot log of this information, publicly available in a channel on our discord server, complete with timestamps. PLEASE BE AWARE that clicking this link will take you to our discord server, where you may choose to join. While the discord server has privacy protection and requires emoji reacts to enter in full, this log is completely public to view and can be accessed by anyone. For the next few days, our Welcome/Join channel will be private, for folks who wish to come and go anonymously, and data will be expunged before reinstatement.

Here is our comprehensive spreadsheet logging information in 10 minute increments, which may be fact checked with the screenshot log, with minute by minute highlights during spikes.

Here are the graphs shown above, within the same spreadsheet.

This was a public poll with many eyes on it, meaning these voting spikes were publicly visible, and could have been logged or recorded by anyone at any time. Tournament mods were certainly not the only people aware of this, especially given the size of the final recorded spike; we were just the ones who catalogued it.

We are saddened and upset to hear that some people took what they saw and attacked our competitors. As we have previously stated many times, we do not believe either competitor was aware of or responsible for the rigging of this poll. To tamper with a poll in this way is terribly cruel to the competitors, even those who it seems to "benefit", as it is an enormous betrayal of their trust. We do not believe anyone competing in this tournament would be happy with a doctored victory. 

We are all here because we love Kirby OCs. Tournament contestants in particular are here to spotlight and celebrate their own OCs in the polls, and rally genuine fans. To take that away is an extreme act of unkindness to our competitors, and we are sorry that it came to pass in such a way. We had previously stated our intentions of rerunning this poll through a more secure platform, in the hopes of creating a more fair and enjoyable environment for our competitors. However, due to a competitor withdrawing, we will no longer be rerunning this poll. We would like to once again request not to use this as an opportunity to harass or attack our competitors. Again, we do not think they are responsible for the tampering of this poll. We genuinely believe that the impacted competitors are hurt by this act of tampering above all others.

Bullying and harassment is, as it has always been, something we have zero tolerance for. If anyone has any evidence of bullying or harassment, we ask you to approach us immediately so that we may address it. Thank you to those kind community members who have already stepped up during this time to share material with us while these incidents unfolded, we are very grateful.

We hope that this has helped clear up any lingering uncertainties or confusion.

For now, we would like to keep all other private issues private, and do not intend to release any further evidence regarding any other allegations towards our moderation team or the tournament as a whole. We believe this is in the best interests of everyone involved, and would like to see these claims cease. However, we will not tolerate the continued public slander of our team; we can and will publicise what we need in order to defend them and clear any remaining doubt.

Thank you for your time, The Kirby OC Tournament Moderation Team

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Dirty Work 6

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as bullying, familial discord/abuse, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You start a new gig and find one of your clients to be hard to please.

Characters: Loki

Note: I had the worst Monday that could have ever existed. Onto Tuesday.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

"I trust this should be amenable to your work," Mr. Laufeyson holds open the door along the east wall of his study. One you've never opened before though you're familiar with the space within. The library also opens into the hallway and keeps you busier than many of the other rooms. "When you should require it. I expect much of your work will keep you afoot."

You peer past him, his tall figure like a second shadow. You clutch your kit tight and nod. You didn't exactly bring the tools for this new role.

"I should have a blank ledger somewhere, oh and a pen of course," he advises, "given our new... arrangement, I would require a contact point."

You nod and tear your attention from the full shelves and luxurious velvet chaise. You won't get to enjoy those but they give the space a much more welcome feel than the rest of the house. You face Mr. Laufeyson as he keeps the door propped open with his foot. He slides out his phone as if it's a task. 

"Never to worry, I wouldn't bother you much so long as you do your work adequately," he assures, "but in case of... emergency."

"Oh, erm," you sputter and reach into your hoodie pocket, revealing the tiny flip phone.

"Hm, vintage," he muses, "as you would."

He holds his phone, gesturing to it with his other hand. You teethe your lip before you recall the digits of your number. Your plan doesn't include a lot of talk minutes but he doesn't promise much of that. He keys them into his screen.

"You'll have mine," he taps his thumb and your phone chimes. "In case."

"Thanks, uh, Mr. Laufeyson."

"Mmmm," he hums again. "Suppose you would need some sort of proper device, a computer of sorts." He clucks and checks his watch, dropping his arm with a huff, "I've an important event shortly, I'll try to venture by the electronics shop before I return.”

You nod and fold your phone, slipping it away as you peek back into the library. He inhales deeply, "suppose you should begin. The list is on the writing desk.”

You accept the command easily. You’re even thankful for it. It gives you a proper reason to find distance. You go to the desk and look over the typed list. You don’t sit, hesitating as you wonder if it would seem lazy, maybe even presumptuous.

“Let me fetch that ledger,” he says before letting the door drift closed.

You run your finger over the top line. ‘Create a schedule’. Hmmm. You look over the bullets that fill the paper. You can only assume he refers to all of that. It’s straightforward, you can handle a schedule. It’s everything that comes after that gives you doubt.

“And you’ll have to review what my wife, ex that is, left in shambles,” Mr. Laufeyson interrupts as he pushes through again. “Her little folder is here. She was always fond of order, even though she left me in much less. This is what’s left of her handiwork,” he approaches coolly and sets down a plain fawn coloured ledger, a fountain pen, and a white folder with golden flowers on it.

“Thanks,” you eke out as his hands linger on the edges.

You sense his gaze, discerning and weighty. He leans forward slightly and you nearly take a step across as he points to the list. You follow the line of his arm and his extended finger.

“Another point to add, ‘acquire work attire’,” he instructs and turns his hand over, flippant flicking his finger in a gesture to your plain hoodie and worn gray denim. “I trust my pay should afford that necessity easily, however should you require a write-off, I suppose it could be argued as a professional expense.”

“Sorry, Mr. Laufeyson,” you frown in embarrassment, “I didn’t…” You look down at yourself, wanting to hide behind your arms. 

“You wouldn’t think of it, just a maid,” he dismisses, “very well, I think you have more than enough to begin. I should be some hours.”

“Yes, Mr. Laufeyson,” you agree. He is correct, there is more than enough to keep you busy.

“I will review the schedule upon my return,” he affirms. “Should you require refreshment, you recall where to go.”

You nod and cautiously reach for the ledger, sliding it closer as he backs up. You slowly sit, hovering before you let yourself rest. He lingers by the door as you roll the pen aside and put the ledger and folder parallel. You open the former and line up the list inside the cover, resuming your perusal of the bullet points.

The door closes and you keep your attention to the paper. You don’t dare a glance up until you hear his muffled footfalls cross his study. You feel as if he’s waiting for you to make a mistake. You think you might be too.

🧹

A clunk sharply pierces the tenuous peace of the empty house. You hadn’t heard the door or his approach, not even right next door, not until the hefty thunk. You listen but keep your nose down. 

You’re just about done with the schedule. Two cleans throughout the week to spread the duties evenly. The main floor on Mondays, and the upper on Thursday. You’ll be able to fit in an unexpected tidying between your other to-dos.

You flutter through the pretty white and gold folder. The embossed suede speaks of a sophisticated owner. You wonder why she would ever abandon it, though you assume, a separation may not inspire sentiment.

You turn over another note. This one about the gazebo. A blurb on a repair. You’ll have too go out and check to see if it was actually done, there’s no confirmation of the job. You stop to admire her loopy writing, as elegant as the folder.

The door opens without pretense. You sit up and wiggle the pen between your index and thumb. Mr. Laufeyson as a flat white box in his hand, along with a smaller one on top. He does not near you, instead place his lot on the square table by the window.

“Here,” he orders shortly.

You rise and leave the pen in the centre of the ledger. You cross to him as he moves the smaller box aside and unfolds the two smaller flaps from the large one. You can’t help but watch curiously.

“This should suffice,” he shimmies out the cardboard insert, revealing a sleek silver laptop, “hmm?”

He shifts it towards you and lets you look it over. You put your hands behind you to keep from touching. You lean in just a little.

“It looks nice, Mr. Laufeyson. Thank you.”

“For your work, of course. These days, it is a requirement. And this,” he takes the smaller box and offers it up, “a proper work phone. It is more professional. Any calls on my behalf, you will make on this. That relic you have won’t do much.”

“Uh, yes, Mr. Laufeyson, that’s really thoughtful.”

“Thoughtful? Practical. Company property, of course,” he insists, “another point to add. Set these up. They should be functioning by the end of the day. You’ll need them to keep up with the rest of your tasks.”

“Yes, Mr. Laufeyson. I will put it on the list.”

“Mm,” he circles around you, striding to the writing desk before you can react. You follow at a few paces, not wanting to crowd him. He takes the pen and uncaps it. He adds the bullet himself. “There you are.”

“Thank you, Mr. Laufeyson,” you recite again.

He snaps the lid on the pen and his lips twitch, not quite curving, “I’ll review,” he snatches up the open ledger, your schedule open to see. You almost rush forward. You meant to rewrite it before you handed it over. It has scribbles all over it. You won’t argue.

“Go on,” he steps around the desk, waving to the side dismissively.

You return to the table and gather the laptop and phone, along with the stray box. You bring them back to the writing desk and stay standing as you free the laptop from the insert. You let your eyes edge along the top of your vision as Mr. Laufeyson sits on the chaise and browses the ledger.

You refocus and investigate the cord buried in the box as a collection of booklets fall out. You sort through them and find the one in English. You start on the front page, reading over the different buttons and features. The diagram is especially helpful. You’ve never had a computer before, not that it belongs to you.

You squint as you read the precautions. Your mind flits back and forth between your current task and everything beyond. You would go to the library sometimes and spend an hour on the PC, and in school you did all your work in the resource room. This is much fancier than any of the boxy computers you’d used before.

It says you should plug it in and charge to full before booting. You unravel the cord and search for an outlet against the wall. There’s one not far. You hook up the cord to the port on the side of the slender laptop then trail it to the wall. The little light on the side glows yellow.

Then you take the little box. A phone. The flip phone was second-hand but this is shiny and new. You’re like a kid at Christmas, not that you got much for the holiday, even when you were younger.

You slide out the small device. Your hand is unused to it. It’s not clunky like your phone. It feels easy to drop even if it’s bigger than the flip. You peel off the plastic film around the border and across the screen.

You take out the booklet and read it as closely as the first. Same thing; charge before use. You don’t want to mess up any of this. You plug it in above the computer and place it on the closed lid. You carefully sit in the chair, careful not to jostle the cords.

You peek up and find Mr. Laufeyson looking at you over the top of the ledger. His green eyes gleam and flick back down to the page. You hope he doesn’t see how clueless you are. This stuff that’s all so normal to everyone else is new to you. A job alone is a novelty still.

“You may ask it,” he says abruptly.

You wince and shrug. You don’t know what he means. His brows tweak in amusement.

“You’ve not asked about time off. I am unaware of your previous commitment, what days you had to yourself.”

You didn’t think of it but he does seem to think of everything. You twiddle your fingers on the desk. You would work as much as you need to. You still haven’t seen the final hospital bill.

“Mr. Laufeyson, I worked three shifts per week, but I was on probation,” you explain carefully, “I can work more than that.”

“How much is more?” He wonders, his thumb tapping the corner of the ledger.

You blink. You don’t know what’s appropriate. You don’t want to say too little and come off lazy, or say too much and seem ignorant. 

“Six?” You utter, “six days, Mr. Laufeyson?”

His thumb stills, “per week?”

You nod. His eyes narrow and his lips thin in consideration.

“Should do,” he accepts and his eyes fall back to the page.

You think you got the right answer. You look down at the bullet points. It seems like a lot written out but surely it can’t be. Besides, the more you think about it, the more exciting it is. This house is so beautiful and this list means you get to explore it.

You don’t sink too deep into the moment of optimism. Mr. Laufeyson stands, still intent on the ledger. He paces blindly around the library, a click of his tongue as he reviews your handwriting.

“There will be some nights,” he intones, “other occasions where I require you in the evening.”

“Mr. Laufeyson,” you accept as you flutter the pages of the laptop instruction booklet.

“Mm,” he hums flatly, “I do think the cook liked you, didn’t she? Suppose we might retain that service for the time being.”

You nod and make a note in the corner of the list; simply, Corissa. He shuts the ledger and grips it tight. He walks around the table then turns back, coming back to you. He lays down the book on the desk.

“I won’t know until the day in question. You understand, this would be on-call. I’ve a busy life and so will you,” he girds, leaning on the book as he bends over the desk. “You will be doing more than watching little birds flapping around the garden.”

You nearly recoil as he plucks the memory out so precisely. That was careless of you. You should’ve kept your head down and just got to work. It’s a warning you’ll remember.

“I won’t, Mr. Laufeyson, I understand,” you assure.

“Not to say that you can’t,” he stands and pushes the bottom of his jacket back, hooking his thumbs in his pockets, “but only when there are no other pressing matters.”

“Yes, Mr. Laufeyson.”

He sighs and tilts his head back, “you must resist distractions. You are prone to it. I’ve noticed.”

You chew your lip and accept the remonstrance. You’ll take it instead as advice. He is right, you do find yourself bewitched by this place at times.

“Like that man,” he says staunchly, “don’t think I forgot. I will warn you, he is my brother… regrettably. He is well above the staff and he knows it.”

You take the hint. It’s improper of you to stare. Even if he had touched you. Or maybe, you misinterpreted an accident.

“Yes, Mr. Laufeyson.”

“Hear me when I tell you, he is not interested in the likes of you,” he sniffs, “with any luck, he won’t be much around for you to believe anything of the like.”

You nod and pick up the pen, nervously rolling it between your fingers. His reproach scalds your cheek. To think he assumes you would ever think of something like that. That you might encourage a stranger in that way.

He watches you for a moment before he spins away. He checks the time on his wrist as you reach for the ledger.

“Very well, I must be at my own work,” he declares, “as I trust you will be diligent in your own.”

[curlybraceyourself]

The Case for Curly Brace

In July of 2024, a tumblr account by the name of "Curly-b-blog", themed after Curly Brace from Cave Story, began posting harassment towards prominent members of the "Lily Orchard Critical" community. These members include IloveKimPossibleALot, Courtney Peet (Lily Orchard's sister, who has accused her of sexual assault while both of them were minors) and Sai Scribbles, an artist from the aforementioned community.

Curly-B has gone as far as to involve people outside of the community in this harassment, sending unwarranted "critique" to unaffiliated artists, purely due to those artists having sent gift art to Sai Scribbles. Curly-B has used her anonymity as a shield to get away with this behavior and has expressed no remorse for her actions.

It should be made clear at this point that Curly-B is not an alias of Lily Orchard, nor is she Lily's wife Mikaila Orchard. Furthermore, the collator of this evidence requests that you do not harass the person behind the Curly-B alias; this information is collated for purposes of evidence only.

(Collator's note: tumblr has a policy of appending "-blog" to tumblr blogs that go inactive for extended periods of time. Due to this, some archived versions of curly-b-blog will simply be labelled as curly-b. Please keep this in mind if you wish to peer review the evidence presented)

Prior to her reappearance in July of 2024, Curly-B was already an established tumblr blog wth some history; as of this writing, a handful of posts dated to late 2011 and early 2012 still exist in Curly-B's archives. Moreover, there are a handful of posts dated to December 2023, that allude to some undetermined drama:

An Internet Archive snapshot from November of 2023 reveals the root of this drama: on November 15th, the Curly-B tumblr was used to post an anonymous screed detailing turmoil within the ranks of the Moderneopets art team. For the uninitiated, Moderneopets is a fan-run clone of the popular webgame Neopets.

(the full post by Curly-B can be viewed here: https://web.archive.org/web/20231123030516/https://curly-b-blog.tumblr.com/)

It seems Curly-B's post led to some friction within the Moderneopets community, as evidenced by its current absence from the blog. For more information, we have to go to the source; the Moderneopets Discord, which just happens to have public access:

From the above posts, we can ascertain that

Curly-B was an established member of the Moderneopets art team

Curly-B was removed from said art team on or around November 23rd, 2023.

Unfortunately, we run into a bit of a dead end here; see, the only archived instance of the Moderneopets artist roster dates to November 27th, 2023, four days after the discord posts mentioned above. In this snapshot, Curly-B has likely already been stricken from the record.

record of the Moderneopets art team as of November 27th, 2023 If we had an earlier snapshot then we could compare and contrast, but alas, we do not. Shy of combing the Moderneopets discord for all mentions of prior artists, this angle seems bust.

And then Curly-B did something incredibly stupid.

An anon ask sent to Curly by a mysterious figure known only as "K" According to the above anon-response, Curly's still on the Moderneopets art team. If we take this ask at face value, then either Hazer, the admin of Moderneopets, was lying about Curly's removal, or Curly was indeed removed… and then reinstated shortly thereafter.

And wouldn't you know, we have access to a list of Moderneopets artists, taken mere days after Curly's removal.

So let's compare:

Archived list of artists vs. list of artists, current as of August 20th, 2024.

One name appears on the current list that is not present on the November 2023 snapshot: Taffer. A quick search on the Moderneopets discord confirms that Taffer (aka Sneaky-Taffer) is not a new artist, but in fact an established artist with contributions to the Moderneopets project dating back to at least 2022.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Taffer got caught up in the drama of the time, and was briefly removed, before being reinstated at a later date. Just as what Curly is implying happened to her. So who is this Taffer? Well, she has a tumblr of her own:

As a reminder, Please do not send Harassment towards Sneaky-Taffer. This is merely a collection of evidence, not a call to arms.

The above evidence alone would not be enough to implicate Sneaky-Taffer as the individual behind Curly-B, however, a substantial quantity of evidence can be gathered from both Sneaky Taffer's and Curly-B's blogs that pushes this connection beyond the circumstantial:

Artistic similarities:

Curly-B draws herself in the above style in the margins of her redlining posts- this style is highly similar to one used by Taffer in several comic pages:

Artwork by Sneaky-Taffer, 2018 Note the similarities in how hair is shaded. Other comics by Taffer (viewable under "My Art" on her tumblr) use a similar means of shading hair, as well as the crosshatch shading and blush methods used by Curly-B for her avatar. Similarities in handwriting:

The above depictions of Curly-B feature handwriting in a consistent style. This handwriting is highly similar to that used by Taffer in her comics:

Note the shape of the Ws and the Ms in particular Edit: Taffer's Twitter account also features this piece of redlining that matches Curly-B's style and handwriting quite closely:

(Image links to the relevant Twitter post) The design of Taffer's OC:

On the 18th of August, Curly-B briefly posted an image of art that she claims is hers, before deleting it shortly thereafter. The image was, however saved by tumblr user Nivatar:

While no matches for this image have been found by typical searching, one of the characters depicted bears a striking similarity to one of Taffer's OCs, Sarnai :

more art of Sarnai can be found here

This suggests that the above artwork is either unpublished artwork by Taffer, or art commissioned by Taffer of her OC(s).

Prior involvement in the Lily Orchard circles

Would it surprise you to find out that Sneaky-Taffer had involvement in Lily Orchard discourse on Tumblr, prior to the appearance of Curly B? It turns out she's crossed paths with noted Lily Critic britts-galaxy-brain before:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post)

And Taffer has even responded to Lily Orchard's posts directly:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post) EDIT: Evidence has also been found of Taffer feuding with both KP and Courtney, on Twitter in June of 2024, shortly before Curly's revival. Both KP and Courtney were early targets of Curly-B's ire:

(Image links to relevant discussion and Taffer's twitter) and finally, as silly as it is:

Taffer had a Curly Brace phase in 2011:

EDIT: Taffer's former Deviantart account has been uncovered. Artworks in this Deviantart appear in an artist retrospective posted by Taffer in 2019:

This Deviantart account hosts a number of Cave Story-themed artworks dated to late 2011 and early 2012, the same period during which Curly-B was first active:

(Images link to their respective artwork pages on Deviantart) As an additional note; an archived version of Sneaky-Taffer's tumblr from 2013 links to a forum called Anime Maniacs United, which appears to be a message board for Anime Roleplay accounts. While no public archives of the AMU boards' content are available, it appears that AMU has a tumblr blog that persists to this day, featuring a list of affiliated character blogs:

... and wouldn't you know it, Curly-B is on the list. To quickly recap the things that we can be absolutely certain of:

Taffer is an artist on the Moderneopets art team, which Curly-B is also a member of

Taffer was not a member of the Moderneopets art team at the time that Curly-B was ostensibly removed

Taffer has interacted directly and negatively with ILoveKimPossibleALot and Courtney Peet, the first two targets of Curly-B's ire, prior to Curly-B's resurfacing.

Taffer was a member of an Anime RP Forum that is directly affiliated with Curly-B's tumblr. At this point, coincidence doesn't cut it. Sorry Taff, the jig is up. Noticed anything that I missed? Please let me know, and remember: No harassment. Thank you for your time.

-K

[cactusprincewrites]

awesome writers room!!!

🙏 writeblr gods please see this, shine down upon my post from beyond pls 🙏

my boyfriend and i have recently taken over the discord server we met in and are trying to revive and grow the community there -- its a lovely cosy server open to fans of writing, art and character design, anyone who wants to make new friends to create and explore their imaginary worlds with or find peers to review and read their work

we also now have the facilities to post your own long-form stories, comics, galleries or blogs for other people to enjoy and react to in our own community hub (but truth be told rn, just between you and me, it's a lil bit empty -- and we'd love to have your incredible creativity to fill it)

it's very lbtq and poc friendly, and we hope many of you will make it your writing, art, and creativity home. it's also (drumrolllll) RIGHT HERE GUYS: [insert discord invite]

[high-fructose-jay-syrup]

work things

[kaidanworkshop]

Workshop Progress: November Update

Happy Holidays guys, gals, and non-binary pals! Firstly, apologies for the delayed update! Flu and COVID season is in full force this year, and it seemed to have it out for not only the Workshop staff and families, but for our VA Paul Warren! We're happy to report that everyone is on the mend and returning to our regular workflow. Learn from our follies; make sure you're taking care of your own health as well! Last update we focused on our alpha and beta testing progress with the Creation Kit and Assets Team -- progress on that front continues as we add in more recorded lines and refine the new systems we've implemented; this update will be a deep dive focusing on our Writing Team and their workflow process in organizing, evaluating, and proposing changes to the base script via our peer review system. Besides this, we have our fourth recording session with Mr. Warren in the coming weeks; after this session, our business lead is projecting one more session will be enough to complete the rest of the original script, and we can begin to finalize what options the community has towards allocating the remaining funds. We've been compiling a few synopses of what those bonus content options will be, so stayed tuned on that front! Finally, we're very excited to show off some of what we've managed to implement, so one of our Community Team members will be streaming some of our current 1.3 beta for our Discord community this upcoming Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 3pm CST, and Thursday, November 16th, 2023 at 10am CST! With that out of the way, here's our Writing Team Workflow Deep Dive! Warning: The below contains spoilers!

The temperatures might be cooling down outside but we're staying nice and warm working on the Kaidan romance lines commission. As we move towards the more emotionally charged dialogues the player can have with Kaidan (i.e. his friendship and romance quests), we realized that our previous script notes for our VA needed to be a bit more robust in order to really convey the tone we're looking for. As much as we all love this silly little 10+ year old game, the reality is that Skyrim's engine has its limitations with regards to NPC emotivity and expression, so the onus falls on the voice acting to carry the extra emotional weight. While Kaidan is, on the surface, a rather reserved person, a major part of the growth he experiences with the player character is allowing himself to more vulnerable and forthcoming with his emotions. For prior commissions, our script to Mr. Warren was aggregated into spreadsheets broken up by quest name and dialogue path, with brief notes on delivery/different quest paths as needed.

For each commission, we have two members of our staff sit in with Mr. Warren and offer direction as he works his way through the script. We tend to get around 3 to 8 different takes of each line, with around 250 - 300 lines per commission. Once complete, Mr. Warren sends us the full audio, and the next leg of processing begins. Our absolute savior of an audio tech gets to work splitting all the hundreds of different takes up into individual cuts, as well as processing the audio for any latent sounds or fuzziness in the background. Once separated, they're placed in an associated thread for staff members to listen to and vote on.

Sometimes we are very lucky, and there's a clear winner for the individual take. Sometimes.

Other times, ties must be split. Or not.

It is also during this process that we'll identify lines that might've been misread or otherwise need a retake. We aggregate a list and discuss our feelings on it, then shoot them back to Mr. Warren with further clarification on what we're looking for in his delivery. The process of receiving, splitting, and voting on the retake lines then begins again.

This method of breaking down these emotion-fueled dialogues really helps us as a staff keep a firm grasp on the original presented characterization of Kaidan, and not get wrapped up in trying to unnecessarily change or otherwise alter his dialogue. There's a reason this follower remains one of the most popular within the Skyrim community, and the last thing we want to do is damage LivTempleton's magic with arbitrary wordsmithing. Still, sometimes changes are needed. We try to keep them as minimal as possible, but some lines stuck out due to strange wording or odd delivery. For example, Kaidan's response to this line was originally "You do, eh? Well keep digging there, you might make it to Akavir." We felt that it didn't flow very well, and depending on how far the player has progressed in his personal quest, it might not make any sense for him to be mentioning Akavir at all yet. The below change smooths out the transition in this conversation.

Another example of a change we're adding in is creating a path for players to exit the romance path completely -- as it is now, if you wear an Amulet of Mara and initiate the romance path, there is no way to change your mind. However, we always felt that the below line pathing was very harsh; after all, Kaidan exits the conversation completely and shuts down. Working in a way to 'break up' with him via this dialogue path (sorry Kai!) felt like an easy way to work in a new mod function without having to create entirely new dialogue -- it saves money for extra content in the future, something very near and dear to our business lead's heart.

Finally, one of our favorite changes is rewording the "How do you feel about me?" dialogue tree. Given that not all players will be following the 'hot' or 'warm' romance paths, this line of questioning from the player felt like the LDB was fishing for compliments -- not a good look in our opinion. We changed this to instead be a more equitable exchange of compliments between the two ("I think we make a good team" & "Can I tell you something? I'm glad we met"). Also, we use this format to track which lines will have multiple nickname/pronoun takes.

As we approach the final sets of scripts to wrap up the revoice section of the Workshop timeline, this process may undoubtedly change again when we begin discussing how we'd like to work with the community in producing Workshop original scripts -- which is exciting! In using a peer review system from start to finish, we keep ourselves open to workflow improvement suggestions that ultimately makes the process easier in the long run. While this method of group voting and review undoubtedly adds extra time to production -- especially given the logistics of scheduling multiple staff meetings to accommodate all the different time zones our staff members live in -- we feel that it results in a more polished product, and one in which all the members of each team feel empowered to discuss and offer their insights for our favorite CVF. We'll see you for the beta 1.3 livestreams on Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 3pm CST, and Thursday, November 16th, 2023 at 10am CST!

[mischieffoal]

Attention Samfro enjoyers, here is your Now and for Always transcription, ready to go. I'm happy to share the musescore file if you'd like to transpose/add instruments/etc., just shoot me a message :)

Based on the official YouTube video from the Watermill Theatre 2023 production of Lord of the Rings a Musical Tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suL8eUXyMx0

And a great recording from @faceofclown (thank you so much for sharing it!!)

And thank you to @nowandforalways for peer-review and ghosts of committees past in the CTS discord for pesky chord identification

[glitches-and-bugs]

The State Of The Community (From an outsider)

Let me preface this by saying that this is all based on information I could gather on my own from the Discord and the various blogs involved. I will do my best to be as accurate as possible but since nobody involved in the situation came to explain, I'm quite limited. Thank you to the two of you (Aside from my main contact) that approached me to tell me what was going on, even though you were both distant from what was happening. I wholeheartedly appreciate you.

Let's get started, shall we?

The Server

This will address both the previous state of the server, the current state, and the demands presented in order to reform the server.

Firstly, the previous state. It's abundantly clear that none of you involved in the management of that server 1) know how to run a server with a mixed age range, 2) Have enough emotional control to not abuse moderator positions, and 3) Know what to include and not to include in a server in order to provide a healthy environment. This is not calling you out, this is a statement of fact because this community is mostly children. Yes, yes, some of you are close to 18. But I'm fucking 25. You're children to me.

The current state. Though the NSFW channels seem to be removed (Which they shouldn't have even existed in the first place without proper age verification and a moderator group of adults), there's still aspects present that should NOT be in a healthy server. Let's break it down. The Trigger Channel. Though I understand that it might be seen as necessary for you to make sure that people don't misstep, you do realize that people can use those against you, right? You should NEVER discuss your triggers publicly. The sheer amount of Vent/Mental Health chats. Look. It's clear that you're all trying to take responsibility for each other and that's nice and all, but none of you have boundaries. These types of discussions are fine to have with friends, it's important to have a supportive net of friends, but you should NEVER have a vent chat unless it is in private. These discussions you're all having in there are things that should be brought up to medical professionals. Some of you should be going to HOSPITALS. The fact that there were NSFW chats at all. This is a community of mostly children. I know nothing can stop you kids from exploring on your own, but there should never be a place where adults and children can go at the same time that has sexual connotation. I know y'all might not think this is serious but you kids can get adults into trouble, or end up in compromising situations yourselves. I pray nobody's groomed or grooming any of you.

Now the demands, reviewed by someone that worked as a professional Twitch/Discord moderator for a few years. Things I understand why you want to change it: The sheer amount of moderators. Too many cooks spoil the stew. By having so many people with that much power, you cause confusion and disarray. Limit your moderation team to 1 moderator per like, 20-30 members, with a good spread of time zone variance. Transparency of moderator decisions. Sorta. This should always be a given. Any rule changes and major events should be publicized, but things like rule violations, bans, and things as such should stay in the background. You are not entitled to every piece of information. No-nonsense moderator applications. Being a moderator is something to be taken seriously. You're ensuring the safety of your peers, not making a secret club. Things I do not understand: Public moderator applications. This isn't necessary. Sharing applications with the moderation team is all well and good, but it's not a public affair. You aren't voted on like parliament or the senate. "Collectivized" server ownership. A server should be made up of one trusted owner and a team of moderators. This isn't a government, it's a leisure activity. A big server I'm in has one moderator per 50 members. YOURS has at LEAST one for every FUCKING EIGHT. That's oversaturation. Any further collectivization and you may as well just make everyone a moderator. Server owner rotates between moderators. This isn't going to work. I promise you with all my little rotten heart that this isn't going to work. You're either going to give up or someone is going to just... Not give up the server owner position. You do realize that can happen, right? That they can just not give up the Server Owner role? What happens then? Did you have a contingency plan? Opt-in Mental Health channels. It's better than just leaving them free and open, but having them at ALL is still not good. Like I brought up before.

Phew, and that's all just the SERVER.

The Tumblr Community

As some of you may know, I was one of the handful of founding blogs in this project.

It has gotten way out of hand.

We have lost the spirit of what we started as, and as a result we have become a very toxic, disorganized community built on the backs of people who cannot support it.

People are being exiled from the community left and right for reasons I cannot figure out but am certain are petty in spirit. You're all great kids, but you're ruthless. You're going to cannibalize this community someday. I pray it happens soon, so you can all get over the grief that much sooner. I pray it rips off like a bandage, quick and efficient, a grand hoorah that leaves this place etched in the annals of Tumblr history. But we all know it won't. You'll all slowly cannibalize the community, ousting any member that stands up against whatever in group is most popular at the time, and you'll slowly decline in number until it's just a handful of you all bickering with yourselves about what went wrong. You'll look back and wonder what happened to change this community so much and there won't be anything to pinpoint because it's not just one event that caused its downfall. It's dozens.

If you know what's best for you, you'll leave on your own terms before that day comes.

Go touch grass. Stay in school, go to college, follow your dreams, and go to fucking therapy. All of you.

I promise you, as someone who was once in your shoes; young and stupid with a big RP blog and a lot of moxie, I know how this ends. Godspeed Tem-ily, you beautiful Undertale blog.

Final thoughts

I'll give a summary of Glitches' and Bugs' storyline tonight or tomorrow or something. Feel free to send me asks through the day, maybe tomorrow. but after that I'm gonna abandon the blog for good.

As an adult of my age, I shouldn't have even stayed when I realized how young some of you were. This is me rectifying that mistake. Any adults are free to hit me up, but i don't wanna deal with y'all being so young compared to me. It's just not right for us to interact.

Goodbye and good luck.

Glitches.

[zedecksiew]

BLOGGIES 2023 BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR

On 31 January 2024, the tabletop-roleplaying-game community voted for the Best Blog Post Of 2023.

Contenders were drawn from the winners of four categories. Links, as well as their very excellent acceptance speeches---more exhortations and manifestos, really!---found here:

Theory

Gameable

Advice

Review

+++

Anyway---you voted. Results were very close; I was constantly worried about a tie. Nevertheless, a winner emerged:

Congratulations are in order, and an acceptance speech follows.

+++

(Like an idiot, I didn't plan for, and therefore didn't have the time to make a bespoke prize for the overall Bloggie winner. So they'll just get a full quadtych of lino prints. Fortunately these don't look too bad together!)

PLATINUM BLOGGIE FOR BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR:

🔮Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction🔮 from SachaGoat

Sacha:

As an (award-winning) blogger who only started 6 months ago - I want to use this "acceptance speech" to share the 5 steps that will start your blog: 1. You don't need a cool blog name. screenname(dot)blogspot(dot)com is probably available - you can move it later if you think of a cool name. The trick here is to set it up so your ideas can go live as soon as you're happy (or tired of editing). 2. Post something. Dust off your notebook (or note-taking app) and turn those musings into a structured post with paragraphs and context. Don't have anything ready to go? Take your latest game session and write a play report or spotlight a specific moment. This will take less time than your ttrpg prep. 3. Share it! With your gaming group, ttrpg friends, community discords, xwitter/bluesky, reddit, forums etc. 4. Don't worry about the rest. I don't have a fancy blog template. I've yet to compile a sidebar or blogroll. I don't have a newsletter or patreon. 5. Continue. Your readers will contribute with comments. You will be shared in community newsletters. Peers will write posts inspired by your posts. Your ideas will be used at another gaming table. (And if you're lucky, you can win the next BLOGGIES.) If you've shared your prep with a fellow DM… if you've contributed opinions on a ttrpg discord or forum… if you've read a blog post and have a thought that builds on it… if you have any tabletop advice or ideas … 👏 Start 👏 a 👏 blog This finally brings me to the "thanks". Winning the 2023 BLOGGIES is such a wonderful welcome to this creative niche. Many thanks to the creators who encourage the community to blog (especially around June 2023, I can actually see the thread that motivated me to start). I also want to thank a community whose collective enthusiasm and support nudge me to release the next post. And finally, everyone who voted for my post over the amazing nominations this year - a huge thank you.

+++

On a personal note: I am really thrilled at this final result.

The BLOGGIES can come off as clique-ish. Voting is public, but "public" on the Internet generally means a circle-jerk between subculture friends, a popularity contest.

This thing began as a jokey riff on those best-tweet-of-the-year polls over on Twitter. While Prismatic Wastelands grew it into a celebration of OSR blogging culture, it still has NSR / POSR inclinations---the specific community soil it sprung from.

As host this year I tried to extend the BLOGGIES' reach. Canvassing for nominations outside the OSR space got a couple of indie-RPG designers on the finalists list. Am proud of that; we have much to learn from each other.

I made prizes---hoping that, one day, with enough dangling carrots, these awards will eventually be tasty enough for non-POSR cliques / communities to attempt a takeover? We'll see.

Ultimately: I am glad to water this sapling and watch it grow slowly. Community is made by growing trees, not building greenhouses.

+++

SachaGoat snagging the final win is a vindication.

Sacha's blog is new. We don't share any Discord servers. We've never spoken, hitherto; the first time I messaged him ever was to tell him he'd won the Advice category.

The BLOGGIES fulfils its purpose: to introduce folks to quality blogs; to preach the gospel and importance of blogging. Its shade is spreading.

I'm glad to get to know Sacha and his blog. (Obviously it's been added to my must-read list!) I am honoured to be passing the torch: Sacha has agreed to host BLOGGIES 2024.

Thank you, everybody. Here's to growing trees.