#posting this here instead of my art blog cause its different from my actual art style

[c-taenthusiast]

[blastedoffagain]

What are Delta species? And shimmer pokemon for that matter from your tags?

The way the terms are used here, Delta Species refers to any Pokémon of a type different than the species standard. Technically, this would include Regional Variants, but as those are officially recognized, that label trumps the Delta marker. That tag popped up because Faye is a Delta Species, presenting the Fairy type either instead of or in addition Psychic (I'm not sure exactly, and I'm not about to dex-scan my coworker). Amarilla is technically also a Delta variant, carrying a Fighting secondary typing, but it doesn't seem to have caused her to deviate from the species standard in a noticable physical sense (I only know this because she told me).

Shimmer is a specific class of Shiny Pokémon. It generally refers to any Shiny that doesn't follow the standard Shiny coloration, but there are around 1-3 most-common standard Shimmer colors for a given species. Curiously, the gene is more common in species originally from Kanto, Johto, and even Hoenn, and its generally these regions' native species that actually have registered standards for Shimmer coloration. Amarilla is a Standard III Shimmer Pokémon, being gold instead of Shiny Mewtwo's usual green.

[Important OoC under the cut!]

Shimmers are a closed concept coined by my friend @mushroom-for-art that I think will appear in their irl/story blog whose url I can't remember off the top of my head (sorry friend)

Shimmers are basically a callout to the lost shinies of GSC as well as those found in console games like Stadium 2 and Colosseum/XD:GoD. Ama's coloration comes from Colosseum specifically, giving her the gold pelt and grey eyes.

The concept is NOT free to use, and he has given me special permission to use it on this blog and with my other OCs. His post detailing how Shimmers and other Shiny variants came to be in his world is very interesting, and I suggest giving it a read!

[sassypotatoe1]

I read your reblog about your living situation and I'm sorry you're in such dire straits. Have you considered moving to a different town or state? Is there any way I can help?

Hi! That blog was mostly a commentary on the current economic state of the world and a show of solidarity. I also live in one of the cheapest towns in my country, and looking at property in the other cheapest towns in the country according to our state stats body has yielded no luck. The problem here, and in many countries, is that property has been allowed to appreciate according to real estate agencies' whims for upwards of 50 years, but wages have been stagnant for most people for even longer than that. In south africa the unemployment rate, but especially the youth unemployment rate has skyrocketed drastically. However high you think it is, it's higher.

I do really appreciate the sentiment, and I'm glad you sent this ask, but unfortunately the solution isn't really to move somewhere else, because especially here in south africa when the stats are released of which towns are the cheapest to live or own property in, rich people and property developers flock to those places to buy up all the available property for holiday homes or bed and breakfasts, and then they buy the shops and price gouge the fuck out of everything because they know that people will see the stats and come running trying to find a place where they can survive.

Then when they've made their money out of the town they leave and list their property at triple or even quadruple the original value it was listed at just a year before, making it an impossible town to find property in, and leaving long-term residents in a wrecked micro economy. I've seen it happen 27 times in the last 5 years I've been monitoring the national property market. It's happening to my home town right now.

And you'd think it's house flippers and gentrification how Americans experience it, but very often these rich people buy a house for a couple hundred thousand, slap some new paint on it and get a landscaping company to update the garden, and then a year later when their effect has caused the entire town to become more expensive to live in, and their profit off this property is smaller, they leave and list it for a couple million. It doesn't get sold, they get a write-off on it, no one can move into the property, it falls apart. They add no actual value to the property or the area, they're just there to bleed the place dry and move on.

The overall solution for society is to cap property value appreciation at fixed rates. What would it cost to build an identical house and create an identical garden? That's your property value. It's valued at its actual material value. From my more socialist, radicalized perspective I firmly believe that food, Healthcare, education, shelter, clothes, utilities and transport should be completely free. Everything you earn with your work in excess of what you personally get from it* goes to luxury items. Arts, holidays, comfort, entertainment. Voting and lobbying and protesting to get to that point is what's needed.

*my take on this is too nuanced to include in this post I'd have to actually sit down outside of work hours and cite sources and write a bona fide academic dissertation.

Anyway you can help me personally by donating money to my Kofi or buying products from my redbubble, which are both linked over on my mostly dead art blog (I haven't had time to make any art for months) @snowflkedivergent. The money I get through these platforms pay into PayPal, from which I can't transfer money into my bank account because only one bank in the country accepts withdrawals from PayPal and I've been trying to open an account unsuccessfully for 5 years.

Instead I use money I make there to purchase stuff from wish, Amazon etc. To make physical art with, that I can then sell at markets to make more money. This is very slow going because I'm too busy to actually make the art, but when I'm behind on projects and still have a lot of stock to use up like now I use that money to buy clothes as my clothes get worn out or no longer fit.

I say all this so you know what your money would be going towards if you choose to donate, and that I'm not using it irresponsibly. The money I save buying these things with donation money goes directly into my fixed deposit for housing.

Again, thank you for this ask and for caring and wanting to help, I really appreciate it. Find out about housing lobbyists in your area and put pressure on the government to make quality housing accessible again.

[khaotic-ghost-dee]

Yoo Khaotic here! decided to make a little intro post thing idk what to call this lol.

~~~ - Personal Info - ‘m an adult, don’t like acting like it tho being adult is pain for me :c don’t wanna specify past that for privacy reasons ya know. Non-binary Aroace to simplify that in case you wanted to know that info too. (they/them, fae/fem either or both works! :D) ~~~ - About Blog Stuff - i mainly will be reblogging Sonic stuff and maybe Kirby if i really wanna gush about he!!! (tagged with kgd kirby post if you don’t wanna see that) -- I sometimes reblog other things that aren't these two things if i find them cool / important info / funni whatever i want really. i should be using my side blog more for other things 'm interested in i just keep forgetting its a thing lol -- Other personal tags i use are kgd personal post for when i talk about personal stuff or whatever. And kgd txt. post whenever i actually decide to make my own post and use words instead of just putting all of my thoughts into the tags like a khaotic gremlin bean. -- ( if i could figure out how i disabled my archive button i would bring it back i swear!! also don't understand how my personal theme isn't working... :c nvm i figure it out lol! ) -- people i follow hi! i luv all your stuff i appreciate u very much! hope you all have a wonderful day!

feel free to ask me about whatever (as long as its not weird or whatever) if you really wanna do that. i’ll be more scared of u than you are of me. ‘m a baby i swear! 🥺 i’ll get around to answering them if that ever happens lol.  ~~~ - What I Enjoy Doing In My Free Time - Artist, Reader, Rp’er, Playing Video Games, and Listening To Music! i mainly draw Kirby stuff cause he’s my baby bean 🥺💕(tho i probs won’t be posting my own art cause ‘m very shy...) 

fanfiction i adore oh so much its basically what i just do with all of my free time nowadays. i luv to read things so much, just all of the food is so good! authors that i read from i luv all your work so much!

i rp sometimes with a close group of friends on discord, we found each other from being fans of Kirby and decided to make an rp group with making a bunch of Kirby AU’s along with some other AU’s from different series than Kirby. ( i have a Kirby AU ‘ve been working on very much a WIP tho :c )

i have to have background music when ‘m doing things, otherwise things are too quiet and it bothers me so ‘ve been doing a thing where i update what i am currently listening to cause why not lol? down below is what ‘m listening to rn. ~~~ Hyper Fixations- i hyper fixate on a lot of things, Kirby and Chao being my main two. i will talk about them for hours if you let me i am not even kidding lol. Other hyper fixations that i have: Hollow Knight, Celeste, Slime Rancher, Paper Mario / Mario, LoZ, Mother / Earthbound, Pokemon... being a few.

Listening to: Drifting Away Kirby OST + Thunderstorm Ambience

Current Hyper Fixations: Sonic, TMA + TMAGP, Rain World. ( ^ this will be edited very infrequently lol cause my memory is very bad haha)

[evas-apartment]

would love your thoughts on death of the author, separating art from its creater, etc.!

as someone who enjoys critically thinking about what i read & watch, i love the idea that i control the lens thru which i view plots & characters. maybe the author didn't mean to write these two women as potential love interests or create an allegory for transitioning, but i can, thru my own lens, see it in the story. however, i can also understand that when another author creates a "dark skinned evil race" for their story (very common example in fantasy) it is reflecting real world prejudices that harm real people & that needs to become a discussion imo of the author, their purpose in writing, & its broader effect on other media

This might be a long answer, but I got a lot to say here.

Long story short: Depending on the severity of the of offense, it can become impossible to "separate the art from the artist". But frankly, I've never attached such a large part of myself or my personality to a piece of media, or a celebrity such that I find it impossible to detach myself from something that can hurt people.

Thankfully, I was never that into Harry Potter, but the fact that it's author is a TERF amongst a bunch of other bigoted things like being blatantly racist and blatantly antisemitic should be enough for people. It's basically the "I don't know how to tell you you should care about other people". It's largely about having empathy for groups that you aren't a part of. It's about listening to the people who have been affected by a shitty person's shitty behavior/views/attitudes. Being really into something is special, but being so into something that you blindly defend a bad person in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary leads people to believe that you're bad too. And Harry Potter isn't worth that.

I was VERY into Five Nights at Freddy's, but then Scott Cawthon was revealed to donate money to demonstrably bad people, and I felt my love for something just ebb away into indifference, but that's just me. I LOVED Alton Brown until I saw reports that he made a bunch of shitty jokes (which I haven't been able to substantiate beyond two blog posts, but still) and I was able to just....stop interacting with it. I don't really listen to Michael Jackson's music anymore, but I can admit that it's objectively good music. But the love isn't there anymore. And I'm not going to praise a person that AT THE VERY LEAST shared a bed with and gave alcohol to minors. To relate it to my current hyper-fixation, wrestling, I can watch the matches of Chris Benoit, and admit that he is a phenomenal wrestler, and seller, but outside of that, I wouldn't go out of my way to praise the guy, to buy merch of him, which I've seen someone in real life do, or to say something so stupid as to say he should be in the Hall of Fame, like he killed people. That should be enough.

I feel like there is a greater conversation to be had about fandom culture, about how fans consume media, and attach themselves to whatever golden calf they're into that week. But TONS of people have said that, and this response is long enough, so I guess that's a conversation for another day. (Or another ask if you wanna keep hearing me ramble :P)

So, to answer the original ask, Yes. Viewing a piece of media through your own lens can be great. As a trans woman, it materialistically hurts nobody to headcannon someone as trans, and it makes me feel good. Being aware of stereotypes in otherwise beloved media franchises (the Gerudo in tLoZ, Jinx in Pokemon) is something everyone should be aware of, but go beyond that and actually listen as to why these depictions are offensive. Wonder why the original Fire Temple Chanting was offensive in Ocarina of Time and just have the empathy to hear different people out. As for "death of the author", everything is written with intent, whether intentional or not, and people's worldviews, ingrained biases, and privileges will shine make it through a person's work regardless of genre or medium. People's writing has intent, regardless of what people's interpretations of it is. Basically I don't agree with the idea of "death of the author" cause things made by bad people are usually ingrained with their shit views. Separating the art from the artist is a privilege afforded to those willing to listen to us. But when people like JKR not only include horrifically offensive depictions of people like me, get called out for it, then DOUBLE DOWN ON IT, you lose that right. And that's when we call it. And that's when we call it for people that continue to contribute to that.

And just as a little addendum for the end, saying Miku made something popular instead of the actual creator is worthless, and pirating Harry Potter media helps nobody but yourself.

All that being said, I do enjoy asks, and like receiving and answering them. Thanks for this!

[sageinacage]

Why I am leaving this blog

This is the truth as of why I'm abandoning my tumblr, @/sageinacage.

CW: swearing/harsher language; mentions of breaking boundaries, sexualization, bondage, non-con/tickle torture, kinks, toxicity, overall rly uncomfortable topics

TLDR at the bottom.

Before I start, I want to say that I’m not talking about everyone in this community. Not everyone is like this, but still a lot of people are, and unfortunately the negatives are louder than the positives.

Having this blog was quite an adventure. It definitely had its ups and downs, but I was quick to notice that it had a majority of downs instead of ups. As of now, I'm dreading being on this page.

I don't feel comfortable here anymore and it's incredibly hard for me to feel any sense of safety in this community, and I honestly feel personally ashamed to be in the MCYT tickle community with the bullshit me and others have seen and experienced.

People go around on anonymous and practically harass creators, I've seen so many rude anons get sent to myself, my friends, and people on my dash. People are also breaking CC's boundaries left and right, and no one will listen to anyone when it's spoken up about. I remember making a post stating that if you send anon hate then DNI, and I lost 4 followers. So disappointing. Actually after I took a screenshot of my boundary/trigger list and posted it, someone sent me an ask and did EXACTLY what was listed in my triggers. It went fully against my boundaries, and it caused me to feel scared whenever I get a notification in my inbox, because I’m scared that somebody is trying to purposely trigger me again; and I shouldn’t have to be on Tumblr with such paranoia as I’m experiencing.

Going onto the topic of the more weird and uncomfortable side of the community, I also remember I made a post a while ago saying "if you support putting minors in heavy bondage, then unfollow," and I lost 5+ followers. To put it bluntly, that’s fucking disgusting. For those people to admit for putting minors in a borderline NSFW situation, since heavy bondage is quite literally something that only happens in the kink world and there’s nothing wholesome or cute about it, and for them to admit to doing it, is fucking weird. Though, I’m thankful those people got off my blog.

I have literally seen someone post art of c!Ranboo in heavy restraints and it didn’t even look remotely fun or consensual. It was pictured, or at least my friends and I interpreted it, that he was being tickle tortured and it was non-con. Though, it’s to be expected when the art is a dark-lit room with an intense tickle machine with heavy bondage, with a blindfold and what looks he is genuinely struggling. What made me even more uncomfortable is that an adult drew it. Another person wrote a fic of c!Ranboo in a lot of bondage with the sign “tickle toy” attached to him. That’s fucking weird. That’s practically something that never gets condoned in a strictly SFW sense. The sad part is that others and I have seen a lot of this happening around.

I was actually informed that an artist the other day on another MCYT tickle server drew literal non-con tickle art of Technoblade (/srs). I was revolted. The worst part is, some people didn't even have an issue with it and reacted to the image with heart emojis. For someone to draw non-con in a completely SFW server filled with a bunch of minors is creepy and weird. Non-con isn't a fun thing, and so many people, including me, have horrible experiences related to it; and for someone to turn it into a "heehee fun tickle" situation is fucked up. For someone to even fantasize non-con as a tickle fantasy just makes me feel sick. There are a few fics like this I've seen as well, unfortunately.

Related to non-con things, I've actually gotten a request before asking me to write Schlatt literally tickle torturing Tubbo, and multiple asks that are similar to that; even when on my request rules it stated not to ask for things related to that. Anything with the word "torture" in it is not consensual, especially in the context it was in. I’ve probably had to delete around 5–8 asks in total from my inbox that were related to non-con or torturous things, even after I already stated in my rules I do not write that stuff.

Another thing I've seen is romantic-esque things written with CCs and then the creator slaps a "/p" onto it, and all of a sudden it's okay? Ranboo has even stated in a stream that he is uncomfortable with his IRL self being written/drawn cuddling his friends, and I see so many fics and concepts of IRL Ranboo cuddling in some way (which I've spoken out about before, but again, no one listened).

Moving on, I've probably met the most toxic people in this community than any others I've been apart of- and I've been apart of a lot, I've been on Tumblr on different blogs since I was 11. For some reason, so many people love to guilt trip here (both my friends and I have noticed and experienced a bunch of people doing it in this community), and the people who get called out for it avoid apologizing like the plague. A person in this community made me and a few others literally scared to say no and scared to advocate for our boundaries, because of how much we got guilt tripped. And no, no one received an apology. But still, people DEFENDED this person, even though me and other people spoke out and explained how this person hurt us. That’s so fucking upsetting. I automatically don’t feel safe in a community where people willingly associate with a literal manipulator and someone who hurt probably over 10 people in total (/srs).

Another thing I've noticed is that so many people seem entitled to something. For example, when I got practically harassed by anons for my discomforts/triggers, basically trying to squeeze out reasoning. No one needs to explain their boundaries/discomforts to you, and this community doesn't understand that from what I've experienced; after being harassed by multiple people on anonymous multiple times, all of which were because of personal reasons I was not obligated to share. No one should be able to say that they got harassed by people on anon for their OWN BOUNDARIES. ON 3 DIFFERENT OCCASIONS AS WELL.

Long story short, I can’t help my triggers. Each of my triggers has developed from trauma I’ve gone through or a bad experience, and I shouldn’t even have to defend myself for my triggers/discomforts if people were respectful and weren’t so fucking entitled for an explanation. So many people in this community can’t mind their own business, and I unfortunately had to learn that the hard way.

I've also seen people project onto IRL CCs. Those are real and breathing people. I understand doing it for comfort, but, the CCs have a literal character that people can project onto, but for some reason, people have to push their things onto real life people. I’ve seen someone headcannon IRL Tommy as trans. That's like the same as your friend "headcannoning" you, a real person, as a different sexuality that isn't what you identify with, and one you may not even be OK with being seen as, and without knowing if you're comfortable with it or not. It's weird.

There are more points I could bring up and more specific things I could state, but I think you got the gist of why I'm leaving. I don't feel comfortable being a member in a community which a lot of its members condone in this stuff.

This is the reason why I'm only active in the MCYT tickle community on Discord, because my server, "Mcytickles," actually respects CCs boundaries and is truly an SFW server, and people are respectful towards each other. It's the only safe space I have in this community anymore, so please do not join it if you exhibit any of these things on this post.

No, I will not be coming back, so please do not try to convince me to stay. I’ve been wanting to leave for about a month now, so this isn’t some impulsive decision. I’ve been in the MCYT tickle community since April, and these problems have always existed but have just gotten worse and more extreme, so I’m leaving for my own mental health and to protect myself from further harm than what I’ve already received.

TLDR: I am leaving this blog and the MCYT tickle community on Tumblr due to the many boundary breaking and unacceptable behaviors I've seen be exhibited, and it makes me not feel safe and comfortable to be here anymore.

I want to thank my mutuals, though. You were all awesome and such kind and loving people, and I’m happy to be your guys’ mutual. I want to thank those who were always so nice to me and hyping up my work, and those who were respectful to everyone and advocated for boundaries. Thank you so much for everything, moots <3 (/gen)

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

Scattered AU Conclusion

To tie up the Scattered AU, I have written a short conclusion. I can't even express how much I've enjoyed working with all of you on this, and once again I have to say I've been absolutely blown away by the number of contributions there were. I am so happy that this idea was loved, and I hope all of you continue to take joy from it even after the official end of the event. Once again, thank you.

I tried to cover as many Hermits as I could here, but my energy ran out partway through. Feel free to add on an ending for anyone I've missed. Also, it's worth mentioning that this conclusion is not the only possible ending and does not overwrite any other endings submitted for the AU. This universe is a multi-branched thing, and the timeline of the story is flexible depending on what makes you happy. With that being said, I hope you enjoy this small effort to keep up with all your boundless creativity. 💙

After a long discussion, the Hermits decide to stay in the season 8 world instead of starting a new one. They will take this broken wreck of a place and turn it into something beautiful, just like they have every season. They will heal alongside the world they created, fixing what glitches remain as they support each other and make their best effort at recovery.

Impulse settles in the desert, with Tango and Zedaph close by him. The hot air stings his transformed body, but he is more than done with water for now. Maybe one day he will return to it - but not this season. For now, he keeps the air in his base humid, learns to build with sandstone, and invites his friends over often. Sometimes they talk about the things they all went through, but mostly, they just talk about all the normal things friends talk about. How their day went, what might be causing Tango's latest farm to malfunction, how Zed is going to pull off his next wild plan... they're just glad to have each other back. They're just happy to not have to be alone and afraid anymore.

Cleo is rezombified with the help of Joe, Stress, and False, as soon as they can manage it. Nobody really understands why she wants that, but no-one really needs to - it's her choice. It's what she needs to feel whole again. Seeming vital and normal to the outside world is not nearly as important to her as being herself is, and the others are glad to see her back to her former undead glory. Returned to her familiar form, she laughs and jokes in a way much more alive than she ever seemed when her heart was actually beating.

Jevin keeps every single axolotl he found on his and X's journey through the caves. His mind returned slowly back to normal after Xisuma fixed the plugins, and focusing on the adorable creatures helped him to control the lingering aggressive tendencies as he recovered. Now, when another Hermit seems to be having a hard time, he'll let them borrow an axolotl to take care of until they feel better. It helps to ground them and give them a sense of control, and reminds them all how lucky they are to be alive in this strange, updated world.

Scar struggled. For a long time after the events of the early season, he struggled. He claimed he could control this new level of Vex power, but more and more, he felt as though he was being subjected to it rather than using it. He could feel himself slipping more and more every day, and it scared him, so much that he couldn't even say anything...but the others noticed. Cub's own connection to the Vex told him that this wasn't a sustainable way for Scar to live. Together with Mumbo, he formed a plan. Using Mumbo's new Evoker power, they summoned the Vex that was controlling Scar and broke its hold. Scar is more vulnerable to deals with the Vex now, and it will be a long time before he can visit the End again without feeling weak, but he's more than happy to feel like himself again. Eventually, TFC talks him through his fear of the End - talking himself through his own fear in the process. He offers to go with Scar the first time he decides to return. Both of them find the obstacle more manageable with a friend.

Ren, Grian, and Doc find themselves drawn to each other even after things go back to "normal", not wanting to be alone again. In fact, many of the groups that formed in the more than a year since the world started remain intact. Whether for comfort or protection, or just sharing resources, the Hermits continue to rely on each other. That trio specifically has something new in common - with Grian's new foxlike features, they are all mob hybrids now. They share experiences and support each other, and they can often be found gathering around a fire to tell stories. None of them particularly fancies the cold anymore.

After all that they went through, nobody feels very strongly about banning Evil Xisuma again. His crimes are so far in the past by now, and it feels wrong to condemn him to a future of darkness and isolation when he's already gone through so much of that this season. He doesn't live on the server permanently, preferring to wander off and cause mischief elsewhere, but when he does visit Hermitcraft he stays with Hypno. They bond over a desire to stay on the outskirts and a persistent fear of flowers. They live in a base in the ocean, not a blossom in sight.

XB and Iskall live in the jungle, close enough to see each other but far enough so they don't feel pressured to talk. Both of them feel slightly guilty for getting separated in the desert, but neither of them want to be the first to apologize. Their conversation happens in stops and starts, not in one big rush - but they get there. Eventually, they get there.

Etho drifts. For what seems like an age after the glitches are fixed, he drifts. He talks to the Beetlejhost, sends messages through him sometimes, even manages to manifest in a way others can see occasionally - but that takes a lot of energy. Mostly, he just drifts. He hovers especially around Xisuma, who works for hours on fixing his code. The world can't be considered fixed until everyone is here. Nothing can be fully right until all of his Hermits are safe. It's the hardest admin challenge he's taken on yet, but it's worth it. When he gets to finally hug Etho again, it's worth it. When he brings him to the shopping district and presents him to the other Hermits with tired eyes and a grateful heart, here and real and alive again, it's worth it. It is more than worth it.

Nothing will ever be the same again. That much is obvious. Though the world was fixed and the season went on, the physical changes and emotional wounds are too lasting to be erased, no matter how much time goes by and how much the Hermits support each other. No matter what, the things they went through are unforgettable. Nothing will ever be the same again - but it doesn't need to be.

What is broken will heal back differently, what was changed will be adapted to. New things will be created, new habits will be formed, and for each new fear and trauma there will be a new kindness to match. It won't erase what happened, won't make the pain of the past any less real - but it will help. Healing is not a return to one's original state. Healing is progress. And, together, the Hermits are making progress.

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

And, there it is! The inbox will stay closed for another day after this (because I do occasionally need a break), and then it will be open again for regular Hermitcraft headcanons. If you have made any art or writing for the Scattered AU that hasn't been posted yet, please feel free to send that in too! Chances are if you just tagged this blog without sending me a link, it probably got lost in the flood of notifications.

[adventuresofclever]

CleverMax: SDCC 2021 Masquerade Entry

Comic-Con@Home Masquerade Entry: Adventures of Clever Costume Title: CleverMax - Mr. Clever as a Borderlands boss Costume Description: Recreation of Mr. Clever from the Doctor Who episode Nightmare in Silver, written by Neil Gaiman, done in the style of the video game, Borderlands. Bio: They/He pronouns

Greetings all!

I realized that I never wrote about how I made my CleverMax mashup cosplay, so when SDCC posted about their At Home masquerade, I figured this was the perfect time to do so! Most of you know that I cosplay exclusively as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who, with the random mash up thrown in here and there. I’ve always wanted to be a Borderlands cosplayer, and the following is how I managed to combine the two together.

As always, enjoy the blog and if there are any questions, please feel free to contact me. 

Let’s step into the TARDIS and jump back to October 20, 2009, when the first Borderlands game was released. It was my first foray into FPS (First person shooters) and I was hooked from day one. In 2012 they released Borderlands 2 which is, in my not so humble opinion, the best video game ever created. We got some of the most iconic charcters and storylines in that game. Including the best DLC ever, Bunkers and Badasses. And my second favorite villain of all time – Handsome Jack.

Jack’s sass, sarcasm and charm fits well with Mr. Clever’s personality. And in the pre sequel you get to play a version of him called the Dopplegnager.  I mean, this pretty much wrote itself.

Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 and Mr. Clever from Doctor Who

Borderlands cosplayers have aIways left me in a state of awe and admiration. The style of the game is so unique and seeing it recreated in person is nothing short of incredible. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to be a Borderlands cosplayer. For the past eight years I have only ever cosplayed as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who. In the summer of 2019 I decided that was the perfect time to try to make this happen before NYCC.

When I initially decided to do this, it was going to be more of a mash up between Handsome Jack and Mr. Clever. I had planned on wearing Jack’s basic outfit, but in Clever’s colors with the a few add ons. Namely the bow tie and the cybernetics.

After much research and drafting, I decided against that. I ended up just turning Mr. Clever into a Borderlands boss. Same basic outfit as Mr. Clever/11th Doctor, but cel shaded and with weapons, cause Borderlands.

I made the accessories, chess set, and obviously the working cyberplanner piece itself for my Nightmare in Silver version of Clever, but I have never tackled anything this ambitious. An entire costume from scratch? Not something I thought I could do. Not knowing how to sew and being visually impaired were both challenges that I had to work around.

I started with looking around my house for various items that I thought I could use. I figured if I messed up, might as well mess up on something I hadn’t spent money on yet! I was going to toss a pair of my old paddock boots as they had some rips in the leather. Ripped leather? How very Pandora. They were the first thing I tackled.

Old paddock boots that I refurbished for the cosplay

This was my first time using leather paint and I have to say I am very pleased with the Angelus brand of leather paint. I have worn these in the rain and through puddles, and they have held up 100%.

After the boots were done, I started on the vest. I had an old black vest lying around the house that was sort of the shape and size I wanted. I don’t have a dress form, so I put it on myself, inside out, and used safety pins to make it the size I needed, then hand sewed around the safety pins. Not ideal, but it works.

I had a spare pair of black jeans, button down light blue shirt and a plain bow tie that I just ended up cel shading.

The only item that I really couldn’t figure out was the purple frock coat. Try as I might, I couldn’t find one to modify. So the coat was actually made by my friend Heather Long. I did alter the length after NYCC. 

With the clothes themselves all set, for the most part anyay, it was time to paint. This was my first time trying to recreate the art style of Borderlands, often referred to as cel shading. I have a few “art of Borderlands” style books that I poured over before I sat down to attempt this.

Other than the accessories and anything leather, I used the same materials and techniques for each article of clothing. Instead of describing each seprate piece, I’ll just explain what I did to achieve the overall look.

When you look at a Borderlands character on screen, it can be a bit overwhelming. So many colors, and so many nuances of each color. I did my best to visually sift through all that, and try to establish what I thought was the base color.

Once the base color was determined, I just added blotches, blobs, shading, low lights, highlights and other variations of the base color itself throughout each piece. I recommend keeping your fabric wrinkled and using those wrinkle as guidlenes for where the lines and shading would fall naturally.

Once all of that dried, I then went over different sections of the fabric with white and black lines. To get that crisp, almost comic book looking outline of each piece I used black sharpie, and white fabric pens as well as white fabric paint.

When I sat down to do the coat, I wanted something a little different than just cel shading. During a second playthrough of Tales from the Borderlands, I noticed Rhys and other characters had interesting logos and designs on the back of their jackets. I ended up putting a chessboard pattern on the back as a homage to the chess game between the 11th Doctor and Mr. Clever in the episode.

Great shot of the chess board and my Judd Nelson pose

The materials that I used for all of the clothing items were craft paints that I had around the house. Any brand works, but I prefer Americana paints. I then added an additive that you use to make the paint water proof and used various sized brushes. Dry brushes are also very useful if you have them.

Black sharpies of different sizes and any fabric markers are also very helpful. Heat setting is required to make the paint waterpfoof, so if you mess up before you add sharpies, you can wash the clothes and start over.

A few tips if you decide to undertake cel shading clothing: Until now I hadn’t noticed that there aren’t many thing in Borderlands that are true black. Due to the art style most things that appear black are in reality shades of grey, with a grey base colr. This makes it easier to add the lines, shading, and what not.  Looking back, I should have bought GREY clothes. It was a ton of work to make the pants look like they were a mixture of greys. And as a result of so many laers of paint, they are stiff, lost their stretch and feel an entire size smaller! So I would recommend grey fabric as a base for black clothing and buy a size larger.

The pants are so stiff that I think they will stand up on their own

This entire process was way more fun than I thought it would be and I’ve since become addicted to cel shading anything I can. I may or may not have started cel shading my guest room. 

After the clothing was finished, I started on some accessories and props. The first being the easiet – a wee little cybermite that I cel shaded. My cosplay of Mr. Clever always has a cybermite on my lapel, so I took one of my older ones and repainted it.

You can’t have a Borderlands character without some sort of weapon, so I painted a nerf gun that looks similar to the one that Clara Oswald holds in the episode.

I have never had to carry a gun for my Mr. Clever cosplay before so weapon checks are sort of new to me. I didn’t want to go through that at NYCC so I came up with a clever, no pun intended, way around it.

I took a photo of each side of the gun. Went to Staples and had them printed on heavy cardstock. Then I cut around the guns, glued them together between a piece of cardboard then added some black electical tape around the edges.  Viola. Instant weapons check approved gun that is lightweight, and also acts a fan when it gets hot. It was a huge hit at the con. A few security guards were like “ we have to check your…wait..is that flat?” And they proceeded to play with it. I highly recommend doing this!

Gun and its flat counterpart

I am holding the flat gun in this picture from NYCC

In the actual game, you can equip your characters with mods that give them certain abilities and bonuses. In the Pre-Sequel, you can play as a Dopplganger of Handsome Jack so I searched for some of his mods and found one in purple which seemed perfect. I made the mod with cardboard, covered it in craft foam, modge podge to set, and installed led lights. The first time I wore it I put it on my belt which didn’t work. It kept falling off. I eventually put it on my lapel and wore it like Jack does. Unfortunately, someone glomped on me at a con and broke it, so I recently had to remake it all over again.

No Borderlands costume would be complete without cel shading on yourself. This was a huge challenge for me for a few reasons. One, I’m visually impaired so doing line work like this was challenging. Two, I am highly allergic to so many materials and ingrediants that finding a make up brand that I could wear was a trial and error process that ended up with many break outs and rashes before I found the perfect combination.

I used mostly eye liner pencils and liquid eye liner to achieve the look. The Wet n Wild liquid eye liner lasts forever, and is actually difficult to remove, but that is not a bad thing as it stood up to the heat of a very crowded venue.

As for the cel shading itself, I relied on many refernce photos of various characters in the game. I started with the eyebrows first as that seemed to frame the face nicely and give me a nice mischvieous look. I then just outlined the bones of my face, adding some random lines here and there. It never looks the same way twice, but that’s ok. Playing with different angles, lines, shading etc is half the fun!

The only real challenge were my hands. The make up didn’t last that long on my hands so I had to touch it up throughout the con. I also eventually started to use band aids that I cel sahded to cover up a tattoo on my inner wrist.

Figuring what to do with my hair is an on going process that I still haven’t 100% mastered. I opted to not use a foam wig as I have over heating issues on a cool day let alone trying to wear one if it gets warmer. I have had adverse reactions to craft foam in the past, so I don’t want it touching my skin, and lastly, I think a wig AND a facial prosthetic would be too much for me. So I decided to just cel shade my hair.

This takes forever to do, and I’m still figuring out better techniques every time I wear it.

I have a really great brand of colored gel, called Mofajang which I apply with a baster brush that you would find in the kitchen gadgets aisle. I also use a clean mascara brush to add some finer lines here and there. Set with way more hair spray than I ever used in the 80’s and it becomes fairly waterproof.

I have learned that due to how hard the make up and hair color is to remove, I really need to wear this on the LAST day of a con. I made the mistake of wearing it on day one of Long Island Who one year, and spent hours scrubbing my skin and hair for the next day. Far better to just leave the con with a tad bit of left over cel shading. Which makes it very interesting when you stop at a roadside bathroom on the trip home.

With the entire costume done it was time to work on the actual cyberplanner appliance. 

Next time I make a variation of Clever, I will make this FIRST. Making these pieces is the bane of my existence – I love wearing them, hate making them.  It’s a long process.

I am allergic to latex, silocone, scuply, most clays, and so many other things that seem to be every cosplayers go-to. When I made my first cyber piece back in late 2013, I spent weeks trying to find a substance that would keep attached to my face all day without causing a rash. Like an alchemist in a fantasy novel, I submerged myself into creating the perfect concoction. It took 22 days to finish the final product.

I admit that I rushed a bit on the Borderlands one.  As a result, it doesn’t quite fit as well as my others, and is a bit heavier than I expected. I only added two working lights, instead of the usual four, to hopefully balance the piece out. It lasted through two full days of a con, despite the heat of a crowded venue, but I did end up tweaking it a bit after. Even with the tweaks, it still doesn’t fit as well as I would like. It is too heavy and brings down the entire left side of my face, making it difficult to keep my eye open at times. I really need to sit down and force myself to make a new one.

There are a few more things that I would like to add to this costume eventually. Like a belt of grenades, and maybe another gun. But aside from that, I am incredibly pleased with how this costume turned out. It is by far, my favorite Clever variation that I have done.

I hope this post gives you the inspiration to go off and cel shade something, and possibly even play some Borderlands!

[kaishun]

Fanexus - Upcoming Fandom-focused Platform

Hey y’all, Kaishun here, who hasn’t spoken in 85 years but still vaguely lurks around in the corners of your peripherals. As you guys probably know, with the tumblr ban on NSFW (both for things that actually were NSFW and vaguely fleshy colored), a lot of big folks in the fandom left for twitter. Well, twitter sucks, as it’s impossible to finding anything. Nobody tags stuff, because there’s not enough space to do so, and harassment’s pretty bad (both due to lack of tagging and due to tagging).

Fanexus is a platform wanting to change that! It’s kinda’ve the love child between tumblr and livejournal, and with the beta coming up soon, they’re trying to drum up some hype. I’m hype, so, I’m gonna go over some of my fav official features so far:

Proship / Anti-Harassment / Anti-Censorship

Useful Tagging System ( #Saix = #Saïx )

3 Accounts in 1 (1 login for 3 different blogs)

Details on^ below the cut. Here’s a pretty picture from their blog @fanexus-dot-net​ to show its progress:

Proship, Harassment, and Censorship (Don’t Like/Don’t Read)

A lot of platforms and people are aggressively censoring fictional content they don’t like. Whether that be two characters lewding in general, those character being in an abusive relationships, noncon, age gaps, underaged, incest, etc.-- a lot of people get harassed for drawing that kind of stuff. But, y’know-- it’s fictional. No different from the whole “video games cause violence” scare from moms in the 90s. But the harassment from people has gotten really bad, especially on twitter.

Fanexus allows whatever you want to draw/write/etc., as long as it is of fictional characters--with a great tagging system to support it. If you don’t like something... you block the tag! Bam, that simple. You shouldn’t see anymore.

For those of you who went to Pillowfort, and were displeased with the sudden rule change & bans regarding some content, Fanexus should have no such issue. They’re hosting in Denmark, where the country’s sex specialists determined that underaged content of fictional characters did not have a negative impact on actual children.

Useful Tagging System

idk about you, but I hate looking under the 10 different names for the same ship. Every other new artist seems to have another name for their fav pairing. Fanexus has a tagging system that support synonyms-- meaning “#XemSai”, “#Xemnas x Saix”, “#Xemnas/Saïx”, etc. will all show up under the same “#XemSai” search.

Its tagging is also hierarchical-- so if someone tags something with just “#XemSai”, it’ll show up under show up #Xemnas, #Saix, and #Kingdom Hearts. While this may come off as a bit scary at first (there’s such a “don’t put X in the main tag!” concern on tumblr), it normalizes letting your art/fics to be actually, like... seen. And if someone doesn’t like it #XemSai, they can just block the tag. This greatly decreases the chance of shy people with rarepairs just being lost to the abyss, never seen again. As someone who’s in some small fandoms, “forcing” everything to go into the series tag is a great feature to me.

It also lets people completely block series-- block the #Kingdom Hearts tag if you don’t want to see Melody of Memory spoilers. As long as they’ve tagged their posts with anything regarding the series, it’ll get caught up in that block filter, so you can safely play the game and still browse your feed.

Aliases (3 Accounts in 1)

With one account, you have three different “Alias” blogs. These generally function like completely different blogs (none of that sideblog shit); with their own posts, their own followers, their own following, and their own memberships to communities. You can switch between them with an easy click, instead of having to open a whole new browser or logout/login like on tumblr.

My plan is to have a SFW alias, a NSFW alias, and a RP alias. I can enjoy my SFW alias at work and on the go, as well as post some OCs to it; I can switch to my NSFW alias if I want to see some juicy smut on a lazy weekend; and to my RP alias to catch up on what’s been going on and write some replies.

Miscellaneous 

Communities: You ever think about making a blog exclusively for one character, but go “ugh sideblogs suck and I don’t want to do this by myself”? Well, Communities allow everyone who joins to share content to it, easily gathering art/fics from your favorite character or series in one place. It’s a great way to find people with similar interests, follow some new artists, etc. Roleplay-wise, theoretically great for “Worlds”; tossing an opener into the themed world and getting some replies.

Funding: They’re currently planning on no ads, and funding via premium features, such as buying extra aliases. There’ll be a Kickstarter later for server cost and additional features.

People/Fans: I’ve been on their discord for a few weeks, and holy shit, these are my people. I’ve never felt so comfortable just like... chatting about my interests with people. I’m not the #1 sinner in the server at all times, like I am everywhere else. Discussions I’ve normally seen blow up into huge raging disagreements kinda just simmer to slightly irritable but still civil conversations. It’s kinda bizarre to witness, like... mature people talking to mature people.

Minors: Minors will not be able to see posts marked as 18+, full stop. You can also mark your entire blog as 18+, but you’re not required to. Minors who lie about their age will have their accounts banned.

Interested?: Their beta is going to be starting sometime late this month. You can find more details on their tumblr blog ( https://fanexus-dot-net.tumblr.com/ ) or their twitter ( https://twitter.com/fanexus ). You can sign up for their forum/discord/beta over here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-Ll_vb1bukbnxHpaQcuxUikUu1NtqDk3-AsD4gZkjiY/viewform?edit_requested=true 

[snailsaalt]

my only text post here and its about morrigan and lilith being gay

i feel like i have to talk about it here. like twitter gets to hear about it from me all the time so they know all my thoughts on the matter but you guys are lucky so you dont hear me talk often on any of my blogs. i should ruin that!! unfortunately for u guys tumblr doesnt have a character limit either. anyways every so often i show my morrigan/lilith art in nondarks spaces and someone always goes “ouh wai i thought they were sisters!????” an d i have to explain how foolish they are and that they should learn the shitty fucked up lore with a 10000 plotholes (but its allowed to because its dope as hell) like. this is like the sailor moons cousins thing but people actually fucking believe theyre cousins. darkstalkers fans stay losing anyways heres a high res of this fruity ass png bingus with an e drew in the 90s  

i know its obvious that peopl who think theyre sibs just have never touched a ds game or looked at any official images ever but. i think they should because ds arts amazing but more importantly morrigan and lilith are little fruits. morrigsn a grape and lilith is cherry.

i hate ressurections artstyle + artist whitewashed anakaris and felicia + drew jedah without heels. but ykno. i will take my wins.ALSO LOL.. BUTT WINGS FAIL MOMENT THIR WINGS OIN THEIR BACK!!!!!!! anyways

the titty press on the window. the breath. morrigans gaze. the hand hold. cishet games have no fucking idea what theyre up against. gona talk about the actual game now

its so fucking gay. anyways im gona jus talk abou my hcs now i think jedah is jus liliths mom. hes v open abou his fave child bu they still make lilitha da spagheti.... also i think its funny cauds like.  i think u guys kno i ship jedemi which i could go over why in this post but this isnt ABOUT THEM. its about MORRIGAN. and MORRIGAN 2!!!!!!!!! back to what i was saying jedah being liliths mom but also marryign demitri would make him morrigans father in law.. but also... since jedah turned ozom into fetus of god ozom is related to all of them too????? lol. i just think jedah turning his enemies into his children is funny and no one talks about that enough. anyways i feel like a lot of people just see two women (or in this case demigirls i think they r both nb) being close and instantly think “ouh theyre so close theyre like sisters HEHE!!!” and like. its so obvious they explored eachothers bodies. like i dont hate u if u intepret their relationship that way like maybe im an iddy bit concerned abou how you view your siblings but whatever i wont think about it too hard i think people think its cute and funny dynamic or whatever and thats it but like. i also dont wana see that cause..... i simply do not ! :] anyways i constantly feel like a freak caus of that but i think i am a freak for different reasons thatre morally ok but legally bad but lets not talk about that lets talk about the satanic subtext. jesus obviouslly was inspired by jedah w/ the savior and the rapture and the betrayal (ozom didnt betray jedah with a kiss hes homophobic and also has no lips :’[) but ALSO!!!!!!! god made eve from a piece of adam. lilith was made from a piece of morrigan. lilith was made a demon for thinking that she was equal to adam, lilith believes shes morrigans equal and betrays jedah’s little utopia attempt. they choose a life of being gay with stupid fucking goth bimbo and hedonism instead of saving the world and they benefit from it... i dont think ive ever seen anyone talk about that at all an when i bring it up to the 8 other ds fans with rights theyre all like “ouh ive never thought about it like that!!!” i think people kinda just avoid looking at morrigan in a deep way in general even though shes one of if not the most important character and theres so much interesting stuff you can look into like her struggle to be herself and have fun or giving that up to make makai less of a shithole, her power being taken away in a society where power is EVERYTHING, her relationship with demitri going from “lol this dudes so fucking stupid and easy to make fun of” to “ew this rat fuck is trying to make me his mindcontrold servant because the only way he could possibly think of someone as anything positive is if theyre below him” i say that but people kinda avoid looking at ds lore in a deep way in general so yea. lol. ds turned me into the joker theres so much cool shit you can talk about but NOO most of the bs is porn boobs titty asscheek balls and NONE OF ITS EVEN GOOD. I SAID IT!!!!!! DESPITE WHAT THE SO CALLED “TOLERANT LEFT” MIGHT THINK ABOUT IT... like how makai is made out of gods corpse and no one knows how big it is and the fucking door that killed jedah also killed a fruit noble (his name is persimon the door kills fruits....) anyways i have a ds server ive never posted a link to here.... i’ll drop it in this post i guess https://discord.gg/wMBGrda theres probably a lot i forgot to talk about despite the fact i wrote so much LOL. anyways the servers mostly lore discussion or jokes but there are 2 people there that play the video game.... crazy ik.....

[taikova]

do you got any tips on studying and applying anatomy to art? your character art always inspires me because of how well rounded it is. i get frustrated practicing life drawing because it feels like i never get anywhere.

so because it’s kind of vague to me what you mean by “well-roundedness”, i’m gonna just talk about general things (i do this a lot with art asks. i just have to keep reiterating about learning something of every single possible art fundamental from painters and illustrators and graphic designers and even 3d artists because doing that has helped me tremendously to improve my art. it might help you too, so here i go again. for more of the same and others, you can try the tag “art help” on a browser ver of my blog)

i think i practised *some* anatomy by drawing plain naked bodies at one time. but honestly rn i’m pretty bad at drawing that, because i haven’t drawn anatomy studies of muscles at all or done it very little lately. and there IS plenty of references to use if you google. it’s good to do life drawing for anatomy’s sake but there’s more to characters than just getting the muscles where they’re supposed to go (and you can actually just find/make a reference very specific to your art piece whenever you need it. reference is good.)

(cut for length)

i like drawing clothes folds, and you can make them look good with just a little knowledge of how certain clothing acts, bulks or wraps around a limb. i think rather than getting things anatomically correct (though it certainly helps me) it’s more important to focus on knowing how your character would look if you walked around them and saw them in 3 dimensions. gesture, body type, hair volume, clothes etc on top of this are part of well rounded characters. observing real life is very important, for example, often in my everyday life i’ve just taken a moment to stare at something objectively like how my clothes fold at the elbow or how i adjust my hoodie and how my hand grips something, and thought about how fun it could be to draw that. sometimes i just look at other people or their hands or clothes and try to keep them in mind for when i draw again. like it’s not very different from using real ref but you have to actually, actively think about it, incorporate it just a little into your daily life so you can remember it (on top of doing studies!). but when you’re in front of your canvas and need to be able to or need to solve a problem in your drawing, try to make sure you don’t get distracted by other things around you, and focus on drawing one thing for a little bit. (put on something instrumental, repetitive for focusing, like game bg soundtrack), and find or make the references you need, and go.

i’ve gotten frustrated a lot too, specifically about how HARD it is to like. see a full body and reference that instead of getting stuck into details like this one fold that’s right above the knee and you just can’t seem to make it look right and you gotta erase it over and over and over.... until you realise its sucked all fun out of drawing it cause you just can’t “see” the drawing anymore...

i think i had to find ways to make it more interesting to LEARN. it’s not always fun, but i’d just try to find any way to get me inspired to push into doing lots of bad drawing. there’s plenty of other reasons like feeling inadequate, which you SOMEHOW need to psych yourself out of. maybe if you’re not making something for an audience (so don’t think about posting it online, even if you likely would), but you’re making it cause you want to feel the satisfaction of either the process, or solving a problem, or the eventual long-game finished drawing that you will like to look at, or just the motivation from knowledge that if you push through this patch of studies, then drawing that next time will get a little bit easier. you won’t notice improvement until you stop to compare your old art to your new, it will be pretty gradual. (or maybe the satisfaction just comes from imagining a fave character and expressing that in whichever way or quality through your art? or just from imitating a cool speed painting from youtube and dreaming about achieving something like it *at that specific time*, even if your art will likely not look the same because you take inspiration from a lot of different places)

but anyway, i recommend trying to maybe find a fun way to do studies? if you find some fun references, try making them your fave character you like to draw each time. draw your own clothes! you have a free model living inside you all day and night. maybe try copying another artist, see what they do right (buuuuuut maybe don’t post it anywhere). Like, REALLY good painters have taught me to see better in 3d and what that means for art? it’s a lot of things that come together to make a very nice drawing of a character. good luck!

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Andy on Asian Animation or SYAC: The Master Review 2

Let’s talk a bit about anime and Dobson’s work relation with it.

I think we can all agree, that starting from the late 90s and early 2000s on, anime and manga became extremely popular in the western world. Sure, Japanese animation was nothing completely new to us (Speed Racer, Nadia-Secret of Blue Water, Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Kimba and Akira e.g. come to my mind as properties already known in the west before 1995) but it really was around this time that thanks to “mainstream” stuff like Dragon Ball and Pokemon people became aware of how different Japanese animation was from western. Eventually resulting in the really good shit (like Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Kenshin and Heat Guy J) coming over and enriching nerd culture for more than just a few people who knew of it as an obscurity at that point. Now, if you know anything about Dobson, you likely know that his relationship with anime is rather… complicated to say the least. Or, to let him explain it with his own words…

Dobson essentially likes silly and wacky 90s anime. But later on he hated anime in general, because it got too popular and a bad experience with an anime club in college soured his enjoyment of it. Furthermore, he put the blame on his lackluster art style and storytelling capabilities as seen in the likes of Formera, Patty and Alex ze Pirate, on anime in general, while also claiming that Disney pulling the plug on 2D animation is the result of the “anime inspired” Treasure Planet, meaning anime in a sense deprived him of his chance at working at his dream job and “ruining” western animation.

Which to me has always been ignorant as fuck. For starters, I can understand not liking certain stories or genres, either for objective or subjective reasons. But to hate on an entire nation’s form of entertainment (not just individual shows or genres), depriving yourself of the chance of potentially watching a lot of good stuff while also being rather insulting to these other works and people enjoying them? Especially when the stuff you can supposedly “stomach” has been rather simplistic compared to other things?

 Second, blaming Japan for “poisoning” your art style? What, did the ghost of Osamu Tezuka possess you and FORCE you to put sweatdrops on your characters forehead while also going for the rather simplistic character style of Rumiko Takahashi, as well as emulating the slapstick of the likes as Slayers and Ranma ½?

 Next, if he had emulated them successfully, I say he would have actually managed to tell decent enough stories worth to read online. Not create Uncle Peggy aka “Discount Happosai” or the bland proto-Isekai known as Formera.

I mean, let’s give some context here: There have been people who successfully managed to emulate certain anime and manga aesthetics into western animation and make it work. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the likes of Avatar-The last Airbender, Samurai Jack, the Animatrix, Thundercats 2011, Super Robot Monkey Hyperforce Go, Kim Possible, W.I.T.C.H, Megas XLR and Wakfu. You know, shows that are actually awesome as hell.

Heck, Dobson’s favorite animated show of the last decade, Steven Universe, is heavily inspired by anime aesthetics to the point of being embarrassing.

 But Dobson… well, he emulated anime aesthetics in his work the same way as these crimes against animation did.

Combined with his general shortcomings as a storyteller it is no wonder his initial comics did not do well.

 Lastly, and sorry for digressing here a bit, but if the Wikipedia entry on Treasure Planet is something to go by, there was no real inspiration by anime involved in making this movie.

Supposedly the idea of making an animated Treasure Planet in outer space movie was already pitched by Ron Clements WAY BACK in 1985 but only came to be after Michael Eisner greenlighted stuff in the late 90s. Design wise the movie was supposed to look 70% traditional and 30% sci-fi inspired and people took inspiration for the art style by illustrators associated with the Brandywine School of Illustration. A western style of illustration established in the 19th century, that had a big impact on the illustration styles for many 19th and early 20th century adventure novels and short stories.

What, is anime supposed to be the only form of animation allowed to have sci fi elements or steampunk in it? Fucks sake, The Lion King and Atlantis, which came out one year earlier to Treasure Planet, were likely more inspired by anime. Don’t believe me? Watch Atlantis and then a certain anime by Studio Gainax called “Nadia-Secret of Blue Water”. Or read up on the controversy surrounding the two.

The truth is, it is not entirely clear what caused Disney to shut down 2D feature film animation in the early 2000s. In fact, if anything, most people put the blame on Michael Eisner and a certain change in the publics taste in movies in general, combined with Disney trying to turn almost every movie they had into a franchise via cheap follow up movies on video and DVD.

And even if Disney did not shut down, are we really supposed to believe that a certain guy with fedora would have made it big at Disney to the point Alex ze Pirate would have been made into a feature film?

But Dobson could never quite understand this and instead of “reinventing” himself properly, he would rant about anime and its fans in one form or another…

 And on the peak of his hissy fit create this little art piece he baptized Anime Sux. Alternatively “West vs East”. Or as I like to call it, slap a jap.

Now, the pic was done in 2008 and Dobson claimed sometimes in the last decade, that he no longer holds his old opinions. Unfortunately, by that point he would also more or less use the chance to vent in his webcomic about anime (or rather its fans), which brings us finally back to SYAC.

 While Dobson never outright thematized in more detail WHY he hates anime and manga in SYAC (likely cause if his comic reasoning was even slightly like his reasoning in his blogs, people would have torn him apart like a bag of paper) he did use the format to punch down on anime fans and their preferences.

 For example, for someone who has a 4chan story going around of having been rather arrogant towards others in college for not liking Ranma ½, Dobson has THIS little college related comic to show off, where he portrays an aspiring manga artist as a delusional jackass.

Then in this strip titled manga, his manga fan is essentially portrayed as a young woman dressing up like a very stereotypical high school anime girl, who is in the wrong for even just DARING to draw her comics in the direction manga are read.

On one hand, I get Dobson’s point. She could be at risk of alienating a market of readers as she is obviously drawing for a western audience. Then again, if she doesn’t draw a traditional western comic but a manga, why shouldn’t she? I mean, as long as she enjoys it, which I assume she does as she seems genuinely just happy when stating that she likes manga, why not let her? Plus, this comic was drawn in the late 2000s. I think by then most people kinda knew how to read from right to left, so Dobson’s claim she would alienate or confuse people is kinda redundant. If anything I find a) Dobson getting angry at her just very petty (just let her have fun) and b) portraying a western manga fan as someone who would be confused by the sheer idea of reading stuff from right to left is also in itself just really dumb and insulting. What is Dobson trying to imply? That anime fans are so stuck in the way they consume certain media, they can’t act according to “western standards” again?

Then there is this strip where yet another female anime fan is essentially portrayed as the embodiment of how “ignorant” manga fans are of the idea of different art styles...

Which becomes rather laughable once Dobson describes his style as a mixture of European, American and  Japanese. Why? Because he is the one oversimplifying things, rather than the anime fan.

You see while anime and manga of all sorts do share certain aesthetics (like the black and white art style, emphasize on the eyes of characters, the way hair is drawn, recurring tropes within certain genres and so on) style wise (both in art and storytelling) there can be severe differences, depending on the artist alone. Akira Toriyama’s style differentiates significantly from the likes of Eichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi, Kentaro Miura, Tezuka, Kaori Yuki and so forth.

The same also goes for many western artists. Herge had a significantly different style from Uderzo and Goscinny. Don Rosa has a different style in which he drew Scrooge McDuck than Carl Barks did. Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee draw mainstream superheroes differently compared to how Jack Kirby, George Perez and others did. Heck, Ethan Van Sciver and Jim Lee were closely associated with Green Lantern in the 2000s and look how they differentiate.

 Which btw is the kind of skill level Dobson would have needed to have, to make it in the mainstream industry

So when Dobson says “I draw in a combination of American, Western and Japanese” all I can think is the following: THAT DOESN’T NARROW IT DOWN! WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU LEARNT IN COLLEGE ABOUT COMICS? WHICH ARTISTS, WORKS AND STORYTELLERS DO YOU TRY TO EITHER EMULATE OR HAVE BEEN INSPIRED BY?

Then there is this little thing…

Where do I even begin? How about the fact that Dobson’s hand in the last panel looks like he has lost a thumb? The fact that the little boy, anime fan or not, is aware of Sae Sawanoguchi, a character from a short lived OVA and anime series from the 90s, which considering his age, I kinda doubt he would be aware off. Unlike Dobson, who got into anime in the 90s and admits in fact within the posts I loaded up earlier, that he had watched the anime in particular, known in the west as Magic User Club.

Then there is the implication by Dobson, that anime is so “corruptive” as a medium, little kids don’t even know the most basic characters in western animation because of it. I expect in a next panel, that all of sudden some 50s PSA guy comes along and lectures me that if I want this kind of thing not to happen at MY convention, I need to teach little kids more about the GOOD western animation, instead of the BAD eastern one. Then there is this rather unflattering portrayal of a shonen ai/shojou ai fangirl…

 Which makes me laugh cause honestly, even some of the worst shonen ai and shojou ai can do better in portraying a “realistic” gay relationship than Patty if you ask me.

Also, as much as I think fangirls can be extremely thirsty (I have read my fair share of extremely stupid yaoi and yuri fanfics) I think that in hindsight Dobson is really not anyone to complain about shipping obsession and sex when he himself has KorraSami, the Ladybug fandom and a certain rat pirate under his floppy belt.

As you can imagine, Dobson would get heat for those comics, considering how he himself has been greatly inspired by anime and manga for his major comics. And while I don’t have any explicit deviantart posts of him reacting to criticism in that regard, I do have this comic which addresses it directly.

 And yeah, if I were schoolgirl number 4, I would just sigh and walk away after telling Dobson that his mistakes and shortcomings are not related to having consumed anime, but rather by what sort of anime (and other stories) he had consumed and the amount of effort he had put in creating his stories instead of emulating just something more popular. Plus, if you really want people to draw more from life, how about drawing more from life yourself down the line? And no, tracing Star Wars movie frames does not count.

Finally, Dobson, considering how very little most people think of your work, I say mission accomplished: People have learnt from your mistakes and know not to be a Dobson.

And at last, there is this comic, which kinda wraps up Dobson’s “vendetta” with anime and manga fans within the pages of SYAC.

By trying to mock anime fans and make them look just as shallow as he is. I at least suppose. Honestly, the message of this comic is rather muddled. On one hand, I would say the strawman accusing Dobson hates anime just because it is popular is very simplified. After all, Dobson has made his reasons for not liking anime clear in a few more details. It’s just that the details in and on themselves in real life are still rather shallow and boil down to a lot of personal bias rather than an objective criticism of actual flaws. Which I think is worth pointing out.

But frankly, what is Dobson trying to say or point out here? That the strawman is not so different or even dumber than him, because he hates Justin Bieber for “shallow” and superficial reasons too?

Okay, this doesn’t quite work as well as Dobson wants. First, the argument Dobson’s strawman makes is in huge parts based on some verified statements Dobson made for not liking anime. Second, he just says a name and that triggers the guy to express his hatred for Bieber. We don’t know why the guy hates Bieber and you could make in fact the case, that he hates him not because he is popular, but because he has a genuine issue with the artist, his work or his behavior as a human being. Third, if you want to make yourself look like the better person Dobson, try to argue with the guy and make solid arguments why you don’t like anime. Instead you just deflect the criticism by changing the subject and then try to make yourself look like the “smarter” person in the room by mocking your critic in the most condescending manner.

Which as I think about it, sounds like your modus operandi on twitter and tumblr.

Weirdly enough, that more or less marks the “end” of Dobson tackling anime fans and the beef he has with them within the pages of SYAC. Despite how much Dobson’s negative reputation especially in early years was build around him hating on anime and belittling its fans, he didn’t really do more afterwards in the Dobson focused pages of SYAC. And mind you, those strips were also separated by other strips in-between, focused on Dobson just being at conventions.

Unfortunately for him, the strips didn’t really help in any way to diminish that negative reputation and instead just confirmed for many, that Dobson can’t handle criticism about his flawed opinion on anime. If anything, it just made people think even less of Dobson, as the strips just painted him as someone who would rather portray his critics as strawman he can be “rightfully” annoyed at, instead of fellow humans with slightly different tastes in entertainment, who are still worth listening to.

So, now that we have the anime fan related “annoyances” out of the way, what other sort of silly problems in making webcomics would Dobson cover in his strips and are “relatable” to everyone?

Lets see some of these examples in the next part.

[freebooter4ever]

i’ve seen the discussion going back and forth on boundaries and sexual objectification, and i don’t have much to add to the conversation other than to say everyone is allowed to determine their OWN ‘lines’ and just because we don’t vocalize them doesn’t make them any less valid. but here’s the limits i set for my blog if anyone feels it is important for them to know (<3):

personally I consider ‘characters’ fair game for anything goes, with ‘public personas’ a little more iffy. ‘RPF’ isn’t new - it just takes on a new more accessible/visible form nowadays. i remember reading my first fic about a ‘real person’ back in my LOTR fandom days - it was a story in first person perspective about the main character meeting orlando bloom on a plane before he was ‘famous’. like a lot of these types of stories, it wasnt so much about the person as it was about the meet cute. the actor was just a convenient placeholder with a handsome face and some personality quirks thrown in to make the romance/dialogue more specific. i personally dont read much xReader fic nowadays, but mostly only cause i’m an old fart who can’t relate to the ‘you’ format. i miss the good old days when people actually created OC’s and then inserted them into things LOL. but also LOL if you think i’ve gone an entire year of quarantine without some imagined personal fantasies of joe mazzello (or steve aoki in the years before)(ramilicious can attest to this. she can also attest to most of these fantasies ending in friendship rather than anything explicit cause that’s just how i roll these days lol). the line i draw is i would never post these types of fics in a place where the subject could accidentally find them - you have to go looking for this stuff on tumblr, most fics are given explicit ratings and under read-mores. with the blacklist tags it’s pretty easy to filter things out. its even easier to add filters to ao3 searches. i am NOT going to do something like message steve aoki and say ‘yeah i watched that movie Ibiza like five times, here is my 1k fic where you’re the dj and i’m the one night stand’. but obviously people still enjoy imagining scenarios like these otherwise movies like Ibiza wouldn’t exist?

for art, i consider anything already on display up for grabs, we all know a certain person’s ass is all over the place...all you have to do is google ‘need for speed’ and rami’s name. HOWEVER, in the case of actors i personally would not draw anything more explicit than what’s already there. i’m not gonna draw full frontal nudity for rami (unless he gifts us with it in a movie, i suppose) or anyone. this is 100% a personal choice for me. 

i was a sophomore or junior in college when i volunteered as a figure drawing monitor where i’d time the nude model’s poses and help them set up the stage and lighting and such. there was this one guy in his mid forties probably, a regular who came every week, and i always thought of him fondly till one day (the day after i ran into my Hot Programming TA during dinner and later sent him an email begging him to go on a date with me because i was desperate for kissing experience)(and Hot Programming TA emailed me back within minutes saying yes) this artist guy who i saw all the time and thought i knew fairly well, decided to draw me instead of the model. which would have been fine except he drew me naked. i was NOT naked at the time, i was wearing a shirt, and a bra, and a full prairie skirt with alternating calico and floral patterns. he drew what he imagined was underneath all that. he came up to me after the figure drawing session and showed me his drawings and told me i had been ‘glowing’ and my response was to laugh it off awkwardly and get the hell out of there as soon as i gave the model their pay check. but inwardly i was thinking a) i was NOT glowing for this creepy man twice my age and b) i did NOT give him consent to sexualize my body under my clothes and then SHOW me that objectification. i never said anything to him or anything else, i continued to be the monitor, and i continued to field off creepy advances from him including multiple job offers, but when i finally realized i could just...stop..and i passed the student volunteer monitor job on to my friend naeem, i also realized that what that older male artist did was NOT ok in my book. and it was probably not something he would do while naeem was monitoring.

nowadays im working in an industry that regularly objectifies female bodies. in the past year alone i have had to deal with requests to make breasts bigger, i have been given character rigs that in addition to the usual elbow, knee, and spine joints also have ‘nipple’ joints but ONLY for the women (to make them jiggle for animation), every time i send out a female pose i get it back with notes that push it further into the sexy type of body language reserved for women (twist the spine more! sway the back more! give it ‘energy!’), i have been told to erase wrinkles and fat and pores but ONLY for the women (men you ADD pores bc realism! and manliness!) and this is all me working for a company that is actually fairly progressive in terms of sexism compared to OTHER studios.

like it or not, sexual objectification is a huge part of specifically women’s lives and how we react to that is our business. for me, turning the tables and putting men on display feels like fair’s fair. i cant stop the men from doing it, so if i want to enjoy sexualizing male bodies, damn it im gonna! like dang it, boy do i want to send steve aoki a thank you note every time he posts a video of himself doing those ice baths during the sunset golden hour bc holy shit gorgeous or working out in his gym wearing VERY little clothes, but i dont because i know what its like when someone imposes their personal fantasies on the subject. or, god, there was that time i had to unfollow nicole’s insta for a while bc i had a very explicit dream about her and realized, shit, i need to take a break and get my emotions under control before i can refollow. and god some of the stuff i see dudes sending her during her live videos on mental illness/meditation is TOTALLY gross and not something they should be confronting her with. and she’s not even ‘famous’ famous. or how some fans send their idols explicit direct messages without consent. THAT feels inappropriate to me.

a part of me feels like i shouldn’t have to defend this. men don’t. they’re even encouraged in mass media to sexualize women. but i also recognize the importance of talking about consent. the importance of recognizing that a celebrity deserves to have their boundaries respected. these are my lines in fandom. other people have different lines they won’t cross, and that’s okay to me. i block or blacklist any blogs or tags i think go over the top.

heck, even in fandom-only spaces i still try to keep my own more sexual fantasies off this blog and only in private messages with my friends and mutuals, and i feel like that might come across as unintentionally prudish or judgmental sometimes. i’m not ‘horny on main’ very often. but like...every time i reblog that particular ‘washing machine’ gif of joe mazzello am i thinking about him naked and thinking about how he’s got very loooooong feet, and ‘gee i wonder if that means /other/ things are Too Big for my tastes’ but also ‘gosh wouldnt that make a pretty picture to draw’???? hell yeah.

i dont know who is gonna actually read this essay but yolo i guess :)

[zirkkun]

Yo you have every right to be upset about things! You're still a person with your own feelings and deserve to be treated kindly. No one should come at you for making things you enjoy or for misunderstandings. I hope things get better for you even if I wasn't here for when all the drama happened (or maybe I was and just wasn't aware of it? I tend to avoid drama as much as possible tbh)

I didn't really post about it much. I think I answered about 4 asks about it (three of them in the same post because i was sure it was the same anon due to the similar string of seemingly continued messages) and the rest I just deleted as soon as they came in, but I got... A lot. A lot of mean things said too. Kinda hurts when you wanted to make something because you knew this work was highly criticized and wanted to let people give it a second chance only to be shot down by the people you were hoping to defend lol

In short, and a lot of it I missed because I was blocked by a lot of people so my friend sent me screencaps; someone took I believe only the old ask box post I had for ULR, which at the time was called "Underlust Rewrite," and was disgusted at the fact that everything was revamped and "made for kids" (because it's not 18+ explicit content, but as I've said before, it's just cause I'm too scared to be horny on main, and I've literally made a whole different biological system for ULR so I can write the necessary story ""sex scenes"" without it being human-like sex or otherwise uncomfortable or too explicit for me to draw, but I still consider it a mature story overall), so they blocked me instantly here and on twitter and then made a callout post on twitter itself. People were telling me originally to stop calling the AU Underlust, and I didn't really get it at first, because like, what's the difference between my spinoff and, say, Underlust Gold, Swapfell Indigo, TS!Underswap, you know, names that have add-ons from the original title to differentiate it but still connect it to the source. So that's what I said, as well as if I removed the Underlust name, it would be considered stealing to me, because I'd be disconnecting it from the source. But apparently, instead, what had been the concern was that it was just being called "Underlust" and the "Rewrite" aspect was implying I was replacing the original story, which like, had never been my intention and I've made a bunch of things with both the ULR and UL cast together and love the idea of Lust and Ace meeting up and just being a disaster duo of not working together at all. I just adore Underlust like it's in my pinned FAQ, Lust's been in my banner for months now, and he's practically my staple pfp character on every account but here atm.

It took like 3 days for it to actually click what was going on, because once I finally got the chance to have a conversation with someone where they weren't telling me I was the scum of the Earth -- which, honestly, bless the three people I talked to, they were so sweet (which actually included someone from the Japanese side of the fandom whose art I loved too... yeah it got pretty far. Once I sent them a message though it was cleared up quickly and they did post a clarification post about ULR and me, so that was nice to see.) -- I finally got the chance to realize that this was a misunderstanding from the beginning, from both sides, where people coming at me were saying I was doing all of the stuff above and probably more but those stuck the most, while I was confused as to where this information and accusations were coming from and what they were referring to in the first place. They probably never explained it in the anon asks because, well, they probably assumed I knew what I was doing, but when they came at me about something I didn't do with vague context of something I did do, I was very confused, and got really defensive really quickly, and really honestly snapped pretty hard. After my first initial explanation post and people were still trying to tell me to stop ULR/don't call it Underlust/whatever else there was, I just got tired and told people to block me if they didn't like it. But that didn't really stop anyone and honestly made it worse because that's when I started getting really nasty messages. I like... Specifically remember one where someone called me a lowlife and a thief, and that one stuck the most, but I tended to not read through them before deleting them for my own sanity. I actually did this to one of the people who'd later talked to me calmly about it at first too, because I had just woken up, and really didn't want to read an essay lecture on everything everyone's been telling me at the crack of 7am when I was borderline ready to delete my account and start over lol

Some people I do remember were accusing me of trying to censor nsfw content or erase it as well because ULR isn't 18+, and I'm out here on my horny ass like "wh. What are they talking about, where did you get that idea, have you SEEN my ao3 recommended list," /j but in all seriousness I really didn't understand that accusation at all because I've never been against nsfw content in the slightest and lowkey? This is very dumb -- but like, you know how they say when you get hate mail, you know you've made it? Well, for me, my thought has always been, "When there's 18+ fancontent of my OC's, I'll have finally made it." This is... Not a joke, some of my friends think its very weird LMAO oh well. I've been on the internet for far too long at this point -- like, definitely since I was far too young, probably, and being with a family of the next youngest being 12 years older than me, I really dove into stuff pretty quickly I definitely shouldn't have, but hey that's life -- I'm really unfazed by mostly anything now. Hell, me making ULR was honestly half motivated by me wanting to make others more comfortable with this kind of media, discussing sexuality and otherwise sexual-considered topics, without really being embarrassed or bothered by it. Because, people talk about death and killing and whatever other gorey stuff just fine, but the moment sex comes up, people just gasp in awe, y'know? I kind of grew up that way myself but like... ironically, in being more comfortable with my asexuality, I realized that it's honestly not that big of a deal. Sure, we don't need to hear the details of everything. We don't need to hear the details of a murder either. But I will never understand how murder is always the lowest on the "morally wrong list of things to not to" to so many people and that it's fine to mention, but even consider bringing up anything else and it's like, a sin and you're a bad person. Even racism is like, higher up on there for a lot of people, which it's like... this is an issue that needs to be discussed, or it can never be solved. You can't just kick that away and hope it goes away on its own, that's never how it works.

Ah, well, now I've gone off tangent lol. Sorry to make you read a blob of text lmao but having things in a cohesive format of what I've been thinking does feel a bit better. Thank you for the support regardless, and I do want to keep making what I really enjoy, because frankly, I really want to make things that make people take a step back and think for a moment, y'know? Things that invoke like a realization in yourself about something you didn't even know. That's how fiction's always been for me, so I want to give back by making it that way too. ... maybe my horny content is exempt from this however. That's just. Self indulgence LMAO.

Probably helps that I'm actually talking this all out for once, too, since before any of this I tried to keep as much of the situation contained to myself as possible in hopes I could clean it up before it got too bad. That was, in hindsight, probably a terrible idea lol. But I didn't want to be a source of stress for anyone following me or become the new creator-to-defend that like, 50% of people hate and 50% of people love and that you're either on one side or the other and there's no where in between. (I feel like Arin Hanson comes to mind for me every time I think of someone like this.) I know I can't please everyone and I knew internet hate would come eventually, but like, didn't expect it to be over a name or tag choice. I thought that would be a simple enough DM or clearable thing but apparently not, especially since I saw someone a few weeks ago delete their blog over a similar thing (though, the opposite, in a way: posting nsfw in a sfw tag by mistake). It wasn't in the UT fandom so y'all probably weren't following them (tbf I wasn't either, I just witnessed it happen from start to finish), but it was still disheartening.

Anyway, thank you, and sorry to make ya read all of that (if you actually did vahdbs don't blame you if you don't it's a lot of thought dump lmao)💕💕

[tangerinefluff]

before i can freely dive back in on tumblr after being gone for a long time, i just wanted to address some asks i got during my inactivity: 

where do I start lmao. so i’m not sure if I understood the asks the way the anons intended to communicate them. could be because of a little language barrier? and im actually having trouble deciphering hate or disrespect because i have almost never in my life been hated or received serious hate in any form (i was THE good girl, on the outside that is, my entire life no one messed with bc i dont really do anything hateful like it’s just not in my nature to respond in that way 😅 anw very besides the point) so you may talk to me again if that’s not what you (anon) intended.

to the first one who said this: 

hi! i get ur suggestion but maybe word it differently? bc that was kinda rude. first off, this one (garbage) writing is for you too. second, i appreciate the cute hearts at the end to go with the insult in the beginning 😅 (but also) third, you’re on MY blog. i mean,,, with the first words i agree? LMAO. i apologize i don’t have the best thoughts but no i won’t change things. this is literally my own space and im sharing a little of what’s on my mind and they don’t have to be useful and significant and a WOW moment kind of post to everyone lmao. fourth, you can locate the unfollow/mute button yourself. im not actually sure what writings you meant, if it’s the unrelated or personal posts/asks, or the blog-related shitty posts. and i’m not very tidy with my tags either so i’ll try harder on that! will tag unrelated texts as “garbage.text” and blog-related texts as “hq.text”. fifth, that’s what i keep my following tabs open for actually. i follow a lot of even betterrr blogs with content like mine and esppp amazing artists you should check out yk instead of sending people ask like that..haha. lastly, i hope you don’t go around sending blogs asks like this one and just filter out the stuff you want to consume yourself. let’s be careful with words bestie! (edit: also my blog now is 90% reblogged art so.... why the big issue).

candidate #2 who quoted a tag on my post and said: 

aah what i meant there is that i am actually having a hard time remembering.. in general. (cue the victim card script) yes dramatic but i feel like my memory’s deteriorating. can’t remember names of people i just met or friends from a long time. things i just did or the phone i just put down 30 secs ago. conversations and with whom. read somewhere that it could be due to mental health problems. and i cant keep track of all the interactions here so i mess things up sometimes which is why i’m less active. and its not bc my friends here are insignificant!!! lmao. dw i remember, i have my close friends’ UNs and names listed on my notes too :D

yk i wanna bite harder than this bc im a real B on the inside and i wanted to make light of this (somehow funny to me because ik i shouldn’t respond bc it feels like twitter behavior) &&& i wanted to show off my clean record that i haven’t ever been hated before lmao until this moment that is. im just super shocked cause i’m 22 and JUST realizing, oh so this is the dangerous stuff on the internet! like i thought i could’ve avoided them because im.... literally... nice that i’m almost boring here and unproblematic and trying my best and just talking about stuff i like. bestie is not special over here.

to those who have been following me from the first (cringe) days, would know i post reallyyyy randomly. it was more original posts rather than reblogs. and i minimized on that when my following increased. there’s 4.4k amazing people following this blog in just a little over a year. so i toned down the personal stuff right away. honestly got conscious and i didn’t like it because the blog started to feel less like it’s mine. i can’t openly switch to a different content/media or just scream nonsense. i can’t answer personal asks freely. can’t interact with mutuals. then i just decided that i won’t mind anymore. as long as my post isn’t offensive and/or rude, i will post as i wish. i don’t normally engage in hateful posts because it bums me out. like a minute into reading these asks they really upset me then writing my response and letting this sit in the drafts made me think i won’t bother anymore because i could just let the asks get lost into the void and it’s not like i did anything wrong, but i guess i had a little energy today. and yes, will be turning off anon asks from here on out.

i hope this one won’t get dragged out and i’m not expecting any interactions from this because i just wanna talk about stuff i’ve been getting into lately, back to regular programming.. AAAAHHHHH!!! not sure if this will reach the anons (expected they unfollowed because that’s the smart thing to do) but I still wish them a good day/night and a peaceful tumblr experience! (^^)

[svtskneecaps]

those of you following the situation might’ve seen that i asked the blog to dm me

she didn’t.

this is what i submitted instead:

(edited for two minor spelling errors)

well it seems although you said ok, you have no intention of dming me, so here i am instead

the first point i wanted to address is, are you actually here as emma's fan? i'm sure you'll just address this with a simple "yes", so i'd also like to state that at this point i'm not looking for your answer on that one. at this point i don't think you really are, there's some other motive for this (i would have discussed this but unfortunately, you've turned off dms so we'll have to do it in this format, i hope it's ok)

the second is simply: what are your reasons for doing this? you've said it's because you want to support emma and seventeen, but thus far you haven't been doing either. you say you'll stop if emma tells you to, but she tells you and you ignore her words, so obviously that isn't a true statement; i'd like to hope if you really wanted to support emma you would do the obvious and listen to her feelings about the situation, rather than responding with "i respect your feeling but there is freedom of speech" (for those who don't know, this is a direct quote from when emma dmed her directly and informed her that this was making her uncomfortable)

personally i'm inclined to believe this is a kind of experiment with the intention to make commentary on fic writing as an art, and perhaps fan content in general. certain responses you've made have made me think that it's either that or a push for attention (for example, asking people to come into your inbox and tell you what you were doing wrong, which you would know, if you had truly been seeing the posts telling people to report you; most posts included the reason for reporting your blog in them)

in this case, i can explain what you've done that's wrong to you in a few points:

you took photos off emma's facebook without her permission, including a photo of her posing with a certificate which included her last name and university (while you've deleted it now, which i thank you for, you had it up there and while unfortunately that remains one of the few posts i don't have receipts for, you and i both know it happened and while i don't expect you to act like it, i expect you to remember)

you wrote explicit content about her

you willfully continued this activity even after she told you how it made her feel and asked you to stop

now i'm sure there's a few counterpoints which you could make, including "well it's a public profile" but here's the thing

say i have an instagram account. on this account, i post photos of myself for my friends and family. it's a public account available on the internet, but i haven't linked it on here. i don't want people on tumblr to find that account and follow it. i've never mentioned it in a post. if you were to start posting photos from that on tumblr, where theoretically i have a sizeable following, i may ask you to stop; i don't want people on tumblr to know what i look like. this is an invasion of privacy. regardless of if the posts or pictures were public, they were never meant to be associated with my tumblr.

regardless, she asked you to stop, which should be reason enough for you to quit.

it may be said (and indeed you may have already said this and i just forgot; you'll have to forgive me, i don't have the patience to look through your blog and find it) that you're just writing fan fiction, and emma does the same thing, so it can't be wrong, right? this in part is why i think this could be a publicity effort / social experiment to drive a point that fan fiction and fan content are in many ways invasive and wrong. but you see, that point also is a bit misguided (which i'll cover later). in this case, the person you're writing the fan fiction about asked you outright, point blank, directly, to stop. i would hope that most carat writers would cease activities had seventeen asked outright, point blank, in the way emma has (numerous times), for them to stop. if seventeen at any point said fan content made them uncomfortable, i would immediately stop.

i hope i don't have to address the matter of consent. you say you're 13 so i should hope i don't have to explain it. i will if you need me to.

to finally address the point of all fan content being inherently invasive, there are several things making this situation fundamentally different and at its core making it so this cannot be used for that sort of point

emma is not a public figure in the way idols are

emma did not post those pictures to her facebook for her tumblr followers’ usage (you may be only posting from youtube now, but unfortunately for you, you and i both know you were taking from facebook before; let's not beat around the bush, shall we?)

again, emma has told you point blank that she does not appreciate this content and wants you to please stop

yes those photos were public. they were not public for this usage. again, they were there for her family and friends to see, not her tumblr followers. yes, emma has a public tumblr blog. that does not make her a public figure in the way joshua is. again, she asked you to stop.

i'm starting to repeat myself, so i believe i'll end that there. if you have any questions, please ask them. if i have any further points to make, i'll return and make them.

i apologize for the people who are coming in to yell at and insult you. while i do think your actions were disgusting and inexcusable in many ways and terrified not only emma but several other writers in the community and caused effects that i'm sure you weren't prepared for, i don't believe you should be yelled at or insulted like this.

i hope you understand exactly your effects on the community. i hope you understand what you've done. because i'm experiencing the effects of your actions, and now i feel afraid. you've sown chaos and discord into a peaceful writing community and i honestly can't ever forgive you for that.

i hope you understand what you've done.

thank you for your time. please dm me with any questions you have or if you need clarification on any points.

this is vic, signing off.