#same site layout and everything

[oktobearfest]

complained about it earlier but im doing one of the questionnaire tests for a job i applied to right now. massive waste of time but hey it's just like that sometimes

[theevilresident]

i'm back on my bullshit (using one iframe for everything)

[ms-demeanor]

since twitter has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, and reddit has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, what do we do now that tumblr is becoming (more) actively hostile to its users? i’ve been here for over a decade so i know tumblr users are the type to cling on despite everything and revel in undoing every change, but i’m so tired of the way this website breaks the way it fundamentally works in order to appeal to new users. the twitterfication of the site seems so much worse than when people jumped ship after the porn ban, and even then, only small communities (and twitter) cropped up as solutions. you might not be the person to ask for a definitive answer, but i figured a tech blog might be interested in considering - what do we do when there’s nowhere left to go?

Okay so, I mean this very seriously: how has tumblr meaningfully become like twitter?

I don't personally find the sidebar view obnoxious and it seems to me like just another layout change that's pretty typical to tumblr. New users are getting signed up with a bit more emphasis on algorithmic feeds, but that is still very easy to change (MUCH easier than on any other social platform) and the algorithm has been there for everyone for quite a while, we just typically don't notice it because a lot of long-term tumblr users don't go into the "for you" feed.

I don't think that tumblr *has* fundamentally broken the way that it works to appeal to new users. My dash now is still very much like my dash in 2019, and still very much like my dash in 2018 (though much less pornographic). Reblogs are still reblogs, likes are still likes. Replies, for all that they seem like they've been around forever, are new and good and I think they work well. I'm irritated that the notes menu doesn't have a "view all" option but I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff for an easy way to see tags.

I *do not* understand why tumblr has broken linking back to previous reblogs but I don't think that's out of an effort to act like twitter; it is a bizarre choice that I dislike and don't understand but I also don't think that it has fundamentally changed the way the site works and i mean you've been around long enough that I'm sure you've had the same experience I have of going into the notes of a post and randomly clicking until you found a version that you wanted to reblog without a bunch of bullshit at the bottom. Tumblr has always kind of sucked, this change DOES suck but it doesn't suck in a way that is particularly novel or insurmountable. (For instance, I think this change sucks MUCH LESS than when they made posts with links invisible to the search, that is something that is genuinely bad that has been long lasting but doesn't get brought up much in lists of the ways that tumblr has gone wrong)

Tumblr *is* changing, but I think it is changing more incrementally and less terribly than other parts of the internet. I also hate the floating clown, the login walls, the dash-only view for blogs (you can't archive it and I HATE that), and - to an extent - the new lightbox on mobile. And I dislike that less than I thought I would but I don't think it's a fundamental change that necessarily impacts my interactions with the site - it *adds* a feature that I don't care for but it doesn't *break* anything that I require to have a good time on tumblr - in that way I think of it very much like Live. People hate Live so much and I find that perplexing because it is so easy to simply ignore it.

But that's not really your question; that's just some stuff I want people to think about because as much as tumblr has changed in the last two years it is nowhere near as fucked up as the recent things that twitter and reddit have pulled.

So, as to your question: where do we go?

Well. Not to be an extremely old person on the internet, but damned if I don't miss email lists. And forums. God I miss forums. Neither of those things has all the bonuses of platforms like twitter or reddit or tumblr or facebook, but they were great ways to hang out with people you liked on the internet.

The internet is changing. I can feel it, you can feel it, I'm pretty sure we're all like cattle in a field lifting our noses and hearing some distant rumbling and becoming slowly aware that it's almost time to run. There's a coming stampede and it isn't here yet but you know it's on its way. You're not imagining that, that's how things feel right now and there are a shitload of things contributing to it.

Things like SESTA/FOSTA and KOSA (which has not passed yet but is a big red flag waving on the horizon) have been eroding away the way that users on various platforms can function. Some platforms have consolidated in ways that harm users; some new platforms have popped up and shaken up the map of the internet; some platforms are being torn apart brick by brick by owners who don't care about the users. It kind of seems like people are actually looking up and realizing that advertising is A) bad and B) doesn't actually work and I think we're running straight toward another advertising-based crash like we saw in 2017. It feels like all the desperate things that tumblr is doing is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic as the internet as a whole starts to sink into the ocean.

Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I think it *feels* bad, but I think we're looking at a slow whimpering death of the platforms, not a bang. I think tumblr is going to hang on at least for a few years and I think it's going to end up like livejournal and myspace, which both still exist as websites that are recognizable as updated versions of the sites they were in 2004-2010. The thing that I think would really, honestly hurt tumblr in a fundamental way is if it moved to a more algorithmic and data-sales based model of advertising, and I think that's still pretty distant. I think Automattic is aware that killing the chronological feed would be the one unforgivable sin that would cause a mass exodus and a final crash, and I think when we see that, when we can't just scroll through the feed and see what our friends did that day in order of when they did it, that's when the party is over here.

But that's still not answering your question.

So, where do we go? What do we do? Well, for now, I'd say it's a good time to get contact info for your friends across various platforms. Get email addresses, get phone numbers.

Now is also the time for you to set up a personal website. NeoCities is currently the best place to do this, though it takes a lot more effort than just starting a blog on tumblr. I think that various oldschool blogging sites like Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot/whatever the hell the google one is are a better place to have your emergency backup than a more platform-y platform if you aren't up to doing something with NeoCities.

If you've got the ability to do so and a group of people who are interested in the same core subject, set up a forum. There's a decent amount of off-the-shelf forum software out there and a text-and-small-images forum isn't prohibitively expensive, but it's never going to be huge and you're never going to have the kind of spread and virality and random connections that you would on a platform with millions or billions of users.

If you can't set up a forum, setting up or joining a discord server for your friends is a decent enough option at the moment, and may be a very good option for people who are looking to keep their interactions more private.

But yeah i think right now is a great time for people to start setting up their own personal websites, to start visiting actual webpages again, to start bookmarking their friends' websites, and to start collecting contact info that isn't tied to platforms.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Kill a Dragon, Rez a Falin

I just like when they're friends like this :)

This, too, is taken from another post, but truly this dynamic is sooo funny of

Chilchuck: I am not a fighter!

Chilchuck, any time he has any sort of ranged weapon: [aims with pinpoint accuracy]

.

This is just literally that moment in every Miraculous Ladybug episode where everything goes gray and the things Marinette is about to use for a Plan "light up" one by one in red with black spots. Please someone draw fanart of this. And maybe an entire Miraculous Ladybug AU. Yes I think Kabru would have to be Chat Noir - in terms of deuteragonist-ness is SHOULD be Marcille, but she and Laios just doesn't have enough of a bizarre push and pull Dynamic. We need real character foils to pull off that relationship square.

.

Raw fucking dialogue.

.

THE PERIODIC ADS ON THIS SITE FOR PRINTING OR CLOTHING OR SHOES REALLY ADD TO THE EXPERIENCE.

.

Agh agh agh, looking at this, thinking about Namari's explanation of how much body mass you can lose before resurrection gets harder...

.

Carving this tunnel into the dragon and physically walking in emphasizes how big it was much more than anything we saw while it was alive, and it's sooo cool.

.

This ad was a great millisecond of cliffhanger, unironically.

.

These opening pages of the next chapter are so devastating. After all the movement of the fight, this simple layout and minimal dialogue make the grief and horror and just emptiness, emptiness where Falin should be, where hope for Falin should be, ring like a low and broken bell. Driven in just a little deeper by Laios admitting he doesn't know a monsters fact (warg bones vs human bones) - there is helplessness, too. He's just doing the only thing he can, which is so little, in all this terrible caesura.

.

And then this! Marcille and Laois don't have the messy meatiness of relationship to carry and Miraculous Ladybug love square, but they are JOINTLY the parallel to the Mad Mage, and that's fascinating. They're on the same page here: Laios's "No" isn't just the denial of grief, it's a flat "That's not what we'll do." This is Laios - of course he's already thinking about how the red dragon is perfectly functional meat. As is Marcille, at last 100% in-step with him re: monsters = meat, here in the final steps to save Falin. With magic and drive and an absolute determination to save Falin, they're going to walk hand in hand into the darkness, and if something in their devours them (or their party, or the surface world...) - well, it'll have to beat them first, because throughout this world it's eat or be eaten, and those who want it most, win.

(And it IS fascinating that they do this while, so far as I've seen, basically remaining at the relationship tier of "good friends/in-laws." This isn't Found Family, it's Found Really Good Co-Workers; and I LOVE that.)

.

THE PARALLEL COMPOSITION AND DIALOGUE TO THE ABOVE SCREENSHOT WHEN LAIOS WENT TO KILL THE DRAGON THOUGH!! I'M FERAL!!!

.

Obsessed with the decision to frame this as a monster meal.

.

Blood! In! Hair! Blood! In! Hair! Man, when I saw that post saying this wished this show was in the show, I vaguely assumed her hair had gotten messed up in the fight but she didn't bother to fix it for the ritual; but in fact her hair was braided literally 1 panel ago - she undid that and DELIBERATELY (or at least uncaringly) ran her bloody hand through it.

.

YOU WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS AS COOL AS THIS PANEL! Oh fuck yeah, eyes went white. That's when you know the magic is awesome.

.

HUNGER AND EATING AS A SIGN, SYMPTOM, STIPULATION AND SYNECDOCHE OF BEING ALIVE!!!

Alas, but with good okay slightly postponed and belated timing I must now go to bed.

[miscretis]

Discord Mod!Ronin x Discord Kitten!Reader (G.n) [PART 1 OF A CRACK FIC TAKEN SERIOUSLY]

CG art by: munstxr

WRITER'S NOTE

This used to be satire but I quickly took it quite seriously which was hilarious. Yes I still find this quite funny to write.

CW:

- Cringe

- Possibly dull writing (I'm still new and I'm tired)

- Coarse Language

❣️

“So, what would'ja do now? Taste the feeling of metallic death by my crowbar? Or ya gonna kiss me? Or are you gonna kill me? I got a knife right here! ” He lets out a dark chuckle as he closes up the gap between the both of you, pinning you to the wall. Now, how did you two end up in the dark alleyways of the Purgatory? Or rather, how did you even end up in this situation?

It all started with a text, a passcode and a link.

ERROR!UNKNOWN: don't be so obvious smh. You're Gonna Get Caught.

ERROR!UNKNOWN sent you a file.exe

ERROR!UNKNOWN: ReceivedKey: k!llrch8t_b00t.mango

here Ya go there's your Key Whenever you're Ready.

What the fuck? What is this?

All you were trying to do was to collect research for your dark romance serial killer novel and now you're being sent a strange link? (Especially after tweeting a question about killing experience with a crowbar.)

It seemed like a link to a Walmart version of discord but on the darkweb. You were wary at first, thinking about how your IP could've been doxxed if you ever clicked on the link. However you felt pressured to click on it when a notification sounded from your PC.

ERROR!UNKNOWN: are You gonna Join? you're no Fun at all.

Whoever this person was, he seemed like he wanted to mess around. Well, fine, you'll give him entertainment then.

You then clicked on the link.

You were led to a shady site with a blank for keying in the passcode. You remember the person giving you the passcode but it was long and complicated so you couldn't really memorise it properly.

Uh….maybe I'll just try keying in ‘password’?

ERROR! Wrong passcode. 2 more tries and your IP address will be revealed.

Well, shit.

You continued to rack your brain around for any possible passwords for this situation. You tried different passwords until a message showed up…

ERROR! Wrong password! Your IP address will be revealed in 3 seconds!

…

Just kidding, come on inside.

You entered a chatroom named “The Slaughterhouse.” with the exact same interface as discord. The channels, layout and everything.

<goreboy> welcome the Newly Christened @user

<hitmeuppp> AAA omg omg!! welcome to helllllll

<LUCA_IS_SO_COOL> WELCOME WELCOME HIIIIIII

<felicite> Nice to meet you!

<Angelic> Hi there! Glad to have another one with us ❤️

<goreboy> make Sure to take a Peek at #rules

there is Barely Anything but You Never Know

…

It's a serial killer chatroom. This has to be satire…right?

Oh god

You checked the rules.

<goreboy> Be a serial killer. first rule of Fight Club. Whatever i don't really give a shit lmfao. Oh and be nice don't be racist or transphobic or weird else angel will snipe u :\

<Angelic> it's not a threat it's a promise

Maybe this is just an intense roleplaying server

This must be it. These people are weirdos, not serial killers.

…

Maybe I’ll just play along…for now..

A day or two went by and they were still into the intense roleplay. It was weird in all honesty. Being in a server full of probably edgy teenagers talking about killing people seems to be the last time on your checklist of things to do. Least to say, it was fun and entertaining to watch. Watching them say the cringiest of things, it sure really gave you a good laugh. However soon after, you were getting bored and tired of watching by the sidelines for weeks despite the roleplay being a perfect source of research for your novel.

But a roleplay is just a roleplay…isn't it?

So, you decided to mess around to cure your boredom. Just a little more fun wouldn't hurt.

You lean back against your chair, pondering what you should do. Suddenly your thoughts drifted off to discord memes that your friends have been sending to you, then it clicked.

A discord kitten

You're not sure if you should do it, being a discord kitten is dangerous work and surely isn't a smart thing to do, especially in a server probably full of serial killers…

But yet again, they're just edgy teenagers that were very niche in intense roleplay, it would be fun to mess with them…but do you?

…

Fine, I'll play it this way then.

First of all, you need to find your discord mod to your discord kitten and you immediately chose the top dog, the alpha of the server, goreboy. Ronin…isn't it?

Oh god, I can't believe that I'm losing my dignity for this.

But what route could this open? A dangerous and gloomy path, or a sweet flowery romance?

At this point, you don't really care about that anymore. You just wanted to tell a good story.

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

generally when looking at the way people turn prism into a mother figure on this site, the general (and admittedly, purely on a surface level, logical) thought process is something like:

prism is a mother figure towards her robots ➡️ prism invented phoenix's implant in the same way that she invented her robots ➡️ prism calls phoenix the best thing she's ever made, implying that she cares about them equally as much as her robots

when it comes to prism being a mother figure for her robots, the subject is... strange. the trope of black mothers is very nuanced and touchy, and it can be hard for a lot of people to understand why a portrayal is bad when it doesn't 'tick all the boxes' of a traditionally racist caricature.

for those who don't know, the robots initially weren't supposed to be in ieytd3 at all. the story was already completed by the time they were building puzzles and room layouts in unity, and the devs fell in love with the (at the time, way flatter) robutler prototypes, deciding after the fact to make them a larger part of the story.

this means that, originally, prism was never supposed to be a mother figure in any capacity. this, personally, is a green flag for me in regards to schell's interpretation. this means that instead of simply saying "let's have a black woman and turn her into a mother figure", schell instead said "we have this antagonist who we already have an established character arc for; we are introducing child-like robots into her life. how does that affect who she is as an established character?"

for those who don't know, one of the things that people like the least about black women being a mother figure is the fact that it's not just that they're turned into a mother, but that their entire life and personification suddenly becomes subservient. they're serving the 'child' figure, they're serving the 'father' figure, and they are suddenly incapable of wanting anything for themself, of having their own problems, of disagreeing, or of being a person in any capacity. they simply become a 'supporting role' to a character others perceive as more important.

this doesn't happen with prism and her robots. if anything, i feel as though prism's unique situation with her robots only accentuates her motifs as a character.

the robots aren't just important little creatures to her. they're hers. she made them. they are the culmination of years of dedication and effort put into her career. they're a manifestation of her intelligence, of her spite, of her determination in the face of adversity.

her robots are a little piece of her. and she treats that piece of herself the way she was never treated back at the agency- and probably even before then. her robots (in a literary context) are an extension of herself, which makes her parenting over them (again, in a literary context) more akin to her parenting over a younger/more fragile version of herself.

essentially, to boil it down, everything prism invests into her robots directly factors back into an investment in herself. just because she is a mother figure to the robots does not mean she is putting her life on pause in some pursuit of motherhood.

all i'm saying is that the same can not be said for a lot of interpretations i see of her being a 'mother figure' for phoenix.

ultimately, i'm not saying you have to stop, because even if i was saying that, nobody would care anyway. do what you want. it's your life. but what i am saying is maybe think about the reasons behind why you're making prism a mother figure to phoenix (occasionally interpreted as white, but it's not great even if they aren't), and a wife figure to reginald (who just is canonically white)

think about what this means for prism's characterization. are you using her as a stepping stool to prop up other characters? a support role with the depth of a shallow puddle?? because if so, maybe fucking stop it??

[twice-inamillion]

Childhood Dream

Fluff, Story Building, Light Smut (Handjob, Facial)

Chapter 225

1740 Words

(Sana has been interested in making one of her early childhood dreams come true. As a reward she gives you a memorable moment.)

Ever since you and Sana went to the construction site and took a tour of the house, she’s been a bit more happier than usual. She goes to your office in the mornings when you call on the progress of the house and eagerly listens to them. You even asked her if she wanted a copy of the plot and house layout since she would constantly look at yours.

Obviously, she agreed, and you got her a set. She would often ask you questions whenever she had a hard time understanding something. You were more than happy to help her out and keep her busy. Surprisingly, she picked up what you taught her quickly and even asked if it was possible to build something else on the property. 

“What did you have in mind?”

“Don’t laugh, okay?”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“I want to build a daycare.”

You see the seriousness in her eyes and ask, “Why do you want to build one?”

“Well… growing up, I always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but after talking to Chaeyoung’s mom, she told me she used to work at a daycare after her children got a bit older. She told me about help experience, and it seems like having one would be great.”

You’re surprised by their conversation and didn’t know that Sana felt that way. It’s true that having daycare or kindergarten would be easier for members once the children get older. It’s even more important now after the experience that Sana went through; you can’t imagine what would occur if the public found out about the existence of your children. 

“You’re right. Maybe having one is a good idea. How about we talk to the rest of the members?”

Sana giggles and says, “I already talked to them, and they said yes.”

“Haha, so it wasn’t much asking me but just telling me to build one.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, did you have anything in mind?”

The two of you spend most of the morning going over where the daycare would be and how big. You drew multiple sketches and drawings of what the building could have, such as a room for infants, two- to three-year-olds, four- to five-year-olds, and a kitchen. Sana mentioned that having a nice kitchen with homemade meals, a teacher's lounge, and a large playground would be nice for the kids. It took a while until the two of you could finalize the number of rooms and if having the infants separated from the rest was best or if having them in a detached building was better.

“What about the teachers?” you asked.

“Well, Chaeyoung’s mom said she would like to be one of the infant teachers, and Jihyo’s mom said they were more than willing to help. Mina mentioned it to her mom and said she would be willing to move and help with the twins. I wanted to ask my mom, but I don’t want to mention anything about kids until I’m better.” 

You pull her in for a hug and hold her tight as she closes her eyes and relaxes. Once she’s a bit better, you both continue and decide where to place the build. “How about here? It’s away from the house, and we can have a nice playground.”

Sana looks around at the layout of the plot and agrees that having it away from the house would be best. “I remember my mom taking me to kindergarten on her bike. Maybe we can do the same,” she said, laughing as she tried to remember her childhood moments. 

“That seems like fun. I’ll try to see if it's possible to build it. I’ll try to get it started as soon as possible if we can.”

Sana stands up from her chair and kisses you on the cheek, “Thank you!” she skips out of your office and goes off to see the children. 

—————

A few days pass, and you come back from talking with the developers. Everything was approved, and I wanted to surprise Sana with the news. You walk to the living room and see her sleeping on the couch with Ari on her stomach. 

“Sana, wake up.”

She rubs her eyes and turns towards you, “No, let me sleep.”

“Come on, you need to head upstairs.”

“I don’t want to, I’m…I’m going to sleep here” and turns over.

You slowly pick up Ari, holding her in your arms, and walk her upstairs to Chae’s mom. You knock and see Chae’s mom changing Hina. “Aww, she fell asleep. You can place her here,” she said as she pointed at the bed.

You kiss both Ari and Hina on the forehead before saying thanks and heading out to the living room. “Thank you.” 

Now, in front of Sana, you nudge her arm, trying to wake her up, but it’s no use. “Alight, I guess it will be getting my workout for tonight.” You place your hand at each end and pick up Sana. Surprisingly, she doesn’t weigh much at all, and you can easily carry her to your room. You place her on the bed and ask, “Sana, did you wash your teeth?”

Still sleeping she mumbles, “Nee…” and tuck her in and give her a kiss.

You’re woken up to freezing cold hands rubbing against your thighs, “Good morning, Sana.” You turn around and see Sana with a smile, “Good morning, baby.” You chuckle when she goes up your inner thigh and into your shorts, “Wait, what are you doing?”

“Just wanted to say thanks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sorry, but I heard your phone go off and saw that it was from a girl, so I am just a bit jealous. I read the text and saw that the permits and layout were approved. Said that you were going to have a meeting with the developers.” You see the light shine in her eyes by the news. 

Suddenly, you feel the cold sensation in your private regions and say, “Wait, what are you doing?” 

“I just want to say thanks. I know it’s not much, but I hope you like it.”

You feel her ice-cold fingers grab your limp cock and groan, “Ahh… fuck… it’s cold.” Still having the bedcovers, you can only imagine what is going on as you feel swaying your cock back and forth. Little by little, it slowly gets hard, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah…”

“Tell me if it feels good, okay.”

“Okay…”

With her thumb and index finger around the tip of your cock she slowly peels your foreskin back until your mushroom tip pops out. Now hardened, she pulls her hand back out and spits on her hand before going back down. She teases you by gently rubbing the tip of your cock with her wet fingers, making you moan from how sensitive it is. 

“Do you like that, babe?”

“Yeah, I do.”

She then grabs your shaft and slowly begins to stroke your cock. Sana kisses your chest, causing your cock to twitch. She increases the pace of her stroking, squeezing, and tilting it up. This causes your cock to throb and Sana to simile by your moaning. 

“Do you like that baby? Me stroking your big cock with my small fingers?”

“I do… I love it.”

She strokes it even faster and faster, as well as tightening the grip of her hand, “How bad do you want to cum?”

“I want to cum, I haven’t done it in a while.”

“Where do you want to cum?”

“Fuck… I don’t know, I just want to cum…”

“Want to paint my face white?”

Sana begins to giggle when she sees your cock react to her words of painting her face with cum. She flips the bedsheet over, revealing your throbbing cock, and crawls out of bed. She gets on her knees right in front of the bed. You get off the bed and stand right in front of her, stroking your cock with a firm grip. 

She looks directly into your eyes as she sees that you’re about to reach your peak. “Cum for me, baby; cover my pretty face in your thick cum.” 

You’re reaching your peak and can feel all your energy concentrating down in your core. “Fuck… I’m cumming! In one hard stroke, you watch as a rope of white hot cum flies and covers Sana’s. Her eyes are closed as it paints her eyebrows, nose, whole mouth, and small breasts. 

“It’s so hot! You must have been so backed up, baby.” 

“I was, but it was worth it,” you say as you look at the work of art you just made, using Sana’s body as your canvas.

She collects as much cum as she can with her tongue before showing you the amount of cum you shot in her mouth. She gargles you cum side to side and swallows it, then sticks out her tongue, showing you that it’s gone. 

“Thank you for the breakfast, babe.” 

She stands up, grabs her phone, and poses in front of her mirror, taking a photo of her upper body covered in your baby batter. 

“How about joining me for a shower?”

“I’d love to.” 

You smack her ass, making her giggle until you hear a pair of loud footsteps running across the hallway. 

“Apa!! Apa!” 

Both of your faces are horrified as the steps get louder. “I’m going to the shower; I don’t want the kids to see me like this!”

You quickly grab your bathrobe and the bathroom as Jisoo knocks on the door. Chaeyoung’s mom opened the door, and the two sisters yelled, “Apa??” They tilt their head and are surprised not to see you in your room but then hear the water running in the bathroom. “It seems like your daddy is taking a shower. How about we come back later and say good morning to him?” They both nodded their heads and ran out of the room. 

Chaeyoung’s mom was about to close the door when she noticed small stains that led from the bed to the bathroom. She walks towards it, sees the clear substance, and smiles before heading back and closing the door, “What a time to be young.” 

[midnight1nk]

⭐️A few days ago...⭐️

Wow, what a wholesome episode! "The rosemary to my bread", dude, I hope my future partner will say that to me one day. Now that I had my weekly dose of silly, time to check the Puzzlevision website! Eh, I bet it's going to be the same as...

[*SCREAMING*]

WOTFI 2024 PREDICTIONS REVISITED

⚠️ DISCLAIMER IN INTRO POST ⚠️

An eye for an eye...

How are we feeling, SMG4 fandom? It's that time of year and many have speculated about WOTFI as well as what might come afterwards. Myself included with my previous theory posts, suspecting that something big is guaranteed to happen. And we didn't have to wait long.

On the 14th of September, just a few days ago, the channel's latest episode, 'SMG4 and SMG3 come up with an episode' was released. But what truly made the fandom lose their mind was the sudden change of the Puzzlevision website. If you need a refresher, here is what it looked like before:

It had:

[puzzlevision.tv] being the site title and URL

Mr Puzzles' logo

A central image that transitioned between a webp to a gif file and vice versa on certain occasions

(after choosing Save As option) the image already labeled as Now Airing

Now, there was talk about this that wasn't left originally, stating that the image (that used to be larger) now had a black border around it. At least, at the time. As someone who has worked with web design, there's actually a number of reasons why this is.

Depending on the resolution/zoom setting on your device, it might alter the site's layout.

As said earlier, the image alternated between a gif to a webp. All websites require a background color underneath all of its assets so the change in image/file size may have shrunk than what was originally. Especially if you are attempting to make it look seamless between the transitions.

Long story short, It's simply how web layouts are: formatting gets a bit wonky from time to time.

Anyway, as I already mentioned, the website has changed to this,

(supposedly someone said the password was "carnival")

Then, to this:

Changes include:

The title "War of the Fat Italians 2024" with a similar URL [www.wotfi2024.com]

SMG4 logo

A whole new layout design (obviously) which just gives off 'Greatest Showman' energy

And now we've come to the present day: fans have already submitted their minigame challenges and preparing for a carnival-themed adventure. For me and other theorists, though, we're having a field day. From the clues I gathered on the website and a few past episodes, I might be able to put together what the channel has for us this year. Let's revisit my "WOTFI 2024 Predictions"!

I already covered a lot in depth in my "Puzzlevision 2: Now Airing" theory [link] and I'll be referring back to it here, so I recommend looking it over if you haven't already.

THE WEBSITE

I was honestly surprised that I was right about a couple of things. The main one being about the website itself.

The people behind SMG4 didn’t need to put this image in, they didn’t need to keep this website on. But they did.

Well, past Ink, you nailed it. And according to Cube (FM), this is the same website host.

"don't read into it too much"

Cube, with everything going on, I might as well interrogate a website for memes' sake.

Wait, what's wrong with it?

The fact that the website is used for WOTFI of all things is what's so strange. All the previous WOTFI'S asked the fans to submit their challenges through the comment section or social media. No other option was involved until now.

Maybe they wanted to try something different like what they did for WOTFI 2023?

That's a good point. It was stated that they wanted to be more experimental with their episodes. But even then, the '23 stream they hosted was on their channel, on Youtube.

Maybe they didn't want it to go to waste? After all, sites can be expensive.

Again, it's a good point. Depending on the domain they used and the apps connected to the site, it can be costly. However, I do want to iterate what I said earlier: they didn't need to keep this website up. Better yet, if they didn't want to raise any flags, why not keep the site how it originally was with the "That's all folks!" image? Why the change? Which brings us to our next point,

WHO IS THE REAL SMG4?

Let me explain...

After the change of the website, we got this post,

This brings up a lot of questions:

Who sent the letter?

If we can assume that's Four's hand, why did the post say "you" as if there is a narrator?

If Four had no idea about a carnival coming to town, then why would he ask us to submit challenges for a carnival he's supposedly hosting?

Well, they're pretty easy to answer. We already established that Marty would come back to be the most likely antagonist for WOTFI. I mean, this cardboard cutout managed to own a pizza shop, a casino, an airline company, and a spaghetti sauce brand. It wouldn't be a surprise if he also happened to own a carnival. But as I said in previous theories, Marty isn't working alone.

He's working with Mr Puzzles.

Mr Puzzles was the one who sent the letter to SMG4 just as he did for Wren in Western Spaghetti (indirect or not). It hasn't exactly shown if the letter had his seal on it. Not that it needs to anyway, they would recognize his logo and know they can't trust what's inside this envelope.

Remember how I said in my previous theory that one of the ways Mr Puzzles could control SMG4 was for our blue meme lord to be his eyes and ears? In the latest episode, SMG3 comes up with the idea of a carnival coming to the showgrounds for a week, and SMG4 wanting to go on the baby teacup ride.

Mr Puzzles was there, listening to every word they said to each other. He has been since "SMG4: Inside Out".

Could it just be purely by coincidence and just something out of improv? Sure, the SMG4 & SMG3 side episodes aren't really connected to canon. But like, c'mon, the channel knew what they were doing. Everything has to be put into consideration.

If that's true, the narrator could be Mr Puzzles, the second voice inside his head. Or, for those who love the goop!4 theory, the voice could be the demonic goo slowly taking over.

Now, back to the post!Four and site!Four. If we can assume the Four from the post is our Four, then the one impersonating Four would be Mr Puzzles, once again controlling the events in WOTFI. This time, using his website. Like Cube said, Mr Puzzles is the same website host as before. Also, look at these two:

It would be too obvious if we see a PNG of Mr Puzzles on the website again so why not impersonate his narrative foil. Well, at least look dapper while you're at it.

Or, even better, Four does know about the carnival but either the goo or Mr Puzzles are erasing certain memories.

A GAME OF WITS

Speaking of the website, let's analyze the description:

Step right up, WOTFI is coming to town and we need your challenges but this time...WITH A TWIST! We're doing a carnival theme this year and we want challenges named like a minigame and a description of what they are! For example "Whack a Bob - Who can smash bob with a hammer first?" OR "Pizza Pie Peril- Survive giant pizza's raining form the sky' Guidelines - Please only 1 challenge per person - Nothing inappropriate - Please add your internet profile name in the 'name' field below Thank you and see you soon!!! -SMG4

Carnival theme, huh?

Well, last year's theme made sense. Three's notebook was stolen and was risked of getting leaked. With the casino being heavily guarded, Four and Three had to sneak in. A secret mission to take back a secretive object.

If this WOTFI has Marty and Mr Puzzles working together, then It would make sense for a businessman and an entertainer would come up with something like a carnival. The best of two worlds: fun and capitalism. Besides, the Showgrounds would be a perfect place to host it since it used to be an abandoned carnival and Mr Puzzles having something to do with the land ownership.

[SMG4: Our New Home // timestamp: 5:38]

Now, what is peculiar is the use of the term "minigame".

Ink, it's a carnival. You have to stick to the theme of carnival rides and games.

Fair, but this is WOTFI we're talking about here. If you win a challenge, you get closer to the end and win a point for your side. For WOTFI '23, every choice impacted the story and therefore the ending. If the SMG4 crew plays and wins these minigames, what do they get in return? And if they lose, would there be a punishment?

It will entirely depend on how WOTFI would play out, in three scenarios:

Marty is revealed to be behind the carnival at the beginning of WOTFI and the Crew learns that, in order to reach him, they have to win some mini-games.

Marty isn't revealed until the near end. The Crew only came because they wanted to have some fun for the day but learned that this was a sort of trap created by Marty (along with Mr Puzzles but they don't know that yet).

OR BONUS SECRET OPTION

Both Marty and Mr Puzzles revealed themselves to be the ones hosting the carnival, meaning it's less likely that Puzzlevision 2 would happen unless something else happens.

Then, there is the phrase "WITH A TWIST". Sure, it could mean that it would be different than our regular old WOTFI, just as it happened in 2023. But WOTFI 2023 also revealed the twist that Mr Puzzles was actually the one orchestrating the whole thing, sending the fax to Marty about the secret recipe and his theme scattered in the background in multiple episodes. We might get a twist by the end of this year's WOTFI as well. Bonus points if we hear a version of his theme again.

Back in my Puzzlevision 2 theory, I predicted that the final battle with Mr Puzzles would happen back where it all started. With the carnival coming into the Showgrounds, it comes back full circle.

ONE STEP CLOSER

There isn't much to change from what I predicted:

Karen would be a key character for WOTFI this year. Maybe Karen just wanted her kids to have fun for the day, or even the corporation, her former workplace, gave her a tip that Marty would be there.

The Crew would have to find Marty's absolute weakness since he's technically invincible.

And possibly Pedro coming back to assist the Crew somehow.

But now I have a new prediction, based on the latest episode:

SMG4's and SMG3's relationship would change to a whole new level. That Four may need Three for something or if Three realizes something about himself, it would change their dynamic regardless.

It's really similar to how it was for WOTFI 2023 with small bits here and there all coming back to a single episode. (The notebook, the duo's meme guardian powers, Four's forklift, Three moving out of the Internet Graveyard, etc.)

It's still too early to confirm anything, but at the very least, we now have some idea what WOTFI may be about as well as evidence to back up some of my theories.

Will we get goop!4? God, I wish. I was listening to "Friends on the Other Side" and I was just imagining scenarios of Mr Puzzles taking complete control of Four with the goo. If it doesn't happen for whatever reason, I'll write it myself.

Oh well, we would just have to wait and see. In the meantime, that’s just a theory…

AN SMG4 THEORY

🎶Thanks for dropping by🎶

[the-timewatcher]

A disgruntled Tumblrina (gender-neutral) made a website and why you should too.

Or "reject social media, return to personal websites".

PART 1: THE PART WHERE I CONVINCE YOU TO MOVE TO PERSONAL WEBSITES

So, the Web 2.0 social media infested landscape seems to be crumbling before our very eyes. Reddit's leadership is increasingly greedy, Twitter is sinking under the weight of Elon's massive, yet increasingly fragile ego, Tumblr is slowly turning into another lifeless corpo-fest, complete with the layout, Instagram continues to be vapid and soulless and Facebook seems to be going the way of MySpace.

(feel free to check the alt text on these, btw)

In these troubling times, where everything looks the same and you're expected to be milked for every dollar you're worth, what is a disgruntled Internet surfer such as yourself to do? Move to an untested alternative that's bound to get overrun by fascists thanks to poor moderation? Stay the course on the sinking ships you're used to?

Well, what if I told you that we've solved this problem way back in the 90's and early 2000's and were merely duped by the Big Zuck into forgetting our legacy? What if there was a cure for the sanitized, dull social media hellscape?

It takes a bit of work, when compared to just using a social media site, but even if your particular use case makes switching difficult (ex. an artist looking to promote their work), it's still a good secondary option to consider.

The core appeal is the ability to customize and individualize, make a corner of cyberspace unabashedly yours,

It can also be an exciting avenue of creative expression, giving whatever you want to say a unique coat of paint,

Most website hosting services are a bit more lax about what you can do on them, due to changes in the profit structure (rather than depending on advertisers and investors, they either have a premium option to give supporters perks, have another product, or, in the case of paid services, you renting that space IS the product),

If you want your website to be more accomodating and accessible, you don't have to file tons of feedback - do it yourself,

If you'd like to connect with other webmasters and promote each other's websites, we have webrings - sets of circular links that connect websites with something in common, be it a topic, aesthetic or friend group,

You're less likely to have your stuff purged by an ill-advised change in policy (especially if you have a backup of your files somewhere),

The more people do it, the less power those massive social media corpos have over the internet,

It can be a load of fun!

If I have you convinced, keep reading into part 2. If you just wanna see what I did, skip to part 3. If neither, feel free to continue scrolling. I won't hold it against you. You'll be missing out, that's all.

PART 2: SO, YOU WANNA MAKE A WEBSITE!

Good choice, here's some resources!

sadgrl's absolute beginner's guide to Neocities - what it says on the tin!

W3Schools - a more in-depth tutorial site, a learning resource so excellent it substituted for what I was supposed to learn in technical highschool (because our teacher just told us to go on W3Schools instead of teaching us shit)

A list of free layouts for your website - whether to use as a base to learn from or to simply take for yourself,

Neocities - the posterchild for free website hosting for personal websites. Doesn't allow video or audio, but you can get around that by linking those files from elsewhere. Beginner-friendly to a fault - once you have an account just drag and drop your files in,

Gitlab (& Gitlab Pages) - a more advanced option, but it has a few advantages of its own. Gitlab is a website hoster second and a version control service first - which is programmer speak for "keeps track of changes in your code and stores a backup of it online". it helps a lot when working on multiple devices or co-writing with a friend. And secondly, you can use Gitlab Actions to automate putting your website up (even on Neocities, like I do!)

My askbox - I am not joking, if you have any questions about any of this, I'd love nothing more than to help you out!

But with most of my indie web propaganda out of the way, it's time.

PART 3: Welcome to Timewatcher OS.

Of course, because I couldn't be normal when it comes to making a website, I had to turn it into a fake operating system. Each subpage is an "app", opened in a separate embed window. It has unlockable wallpapers (no pay2win, prommy). There's bideo games on it! I even made a music player for it so I can share my incongruent music tastes!

Like I said in my Tumblr bio, if I ever go radio silent for more than a month, it means I've gotten fed up with this hellsite and moved to my own homepage permamently. And I highly advise you make an option like this for yourself too! Lastly, if any of y'all would like to start a webring, do let me know in the askbox - I'm down to manage it if I'm not alone in there.

Anyways, I hope I convinced you to make a website, or at least check out some of the cool sites you've been missing out on! Hope to see you on the Old Web!

[chiclet-go-boom]

i'm gonna wax a little melancholy for a moment.

i am an older. i was around for the birth of the internet, i saw it grow up from the very hectic first days all the way to the nightmare that is today. i've been through all of it: from dial up modems to chat BBS's to MySpace and AOL and the proliferation of personal websites and webrings and forums, yahoo communities and webmail chains, all the way up to now which is the collapse of official anything and everything fragmented to various levels of tarpit "social" media options or tiny little Discord servers where five people huddle or 500 shout at each other.

Tumblr is the only "big" place that has even a modicum of the old feel, driven by chronology and opt-in feeds. And its probably going down soon, with the recent staff layouts and then what do we have? fucking TikTok?

I really, REALLY miss forums. the official ones run by the companies might also have been tar pits full of try-hards, but at least you knew where to go to get the last Word From The Moderator. and you could always find a thread list of fan-sites that ALSO had their own forums so you could dial in on your preferred experience -- find your people, as it were, and sing your song at full volume to them.

and forums were archives - you could lurk and read before you opted to make your account. get the vibe before you committed, figure out who the names were, start a conversation with the ones you grokked the most with to see if they'd accept you. now if you want anything, you've got, what, Reddit if you need an answer to a question? and not a ton else that is easy to find or easy to get into and gosh forbid there be any personal connection at all.

the ground feels both trampled and abandoned at the same time.

(this post brought to you by Love And Deepspace where i just want to find somebody to cuddle up with who will explain how the protocores work, which boyfriend has the most angsty backstory so i can fall in love early, and which substats i should be gearing for. all i've got is Reddit "guides" written by those talking to the endgame people and dubious and out-of-date information with clickbait titles on websites i do not know or trust and its all just a mess of sorrow.)

[im-a-goat-in-disguise]

hey, tumblr @staff , if you don't revert my dashboard back the way it was like two weeks ago [i.e - NOT LOOKING LIKE FUCKING TWITTER OH MY GOD. PUT THE HOME AND MESSAGES AND EVERYTHING BACK IN THE TOP RIGHT WHERE ITS SUPPOSED TO BE AND I KNOW WHERE IT IS AND I WANT TO CLICK] I'm just not going to use tumblr on the website. at all. my use of tumblr will severely decline. you were good the way you were before. at least mobile is still the same [For now...] Trying to blatantly copy the layouts and decisions of other companies and social media sites [which are burning to the ground *because of those decisions*] will not make you more popular or retentive to new users or old ones. You will only push away anybody who creates content and has used your site for a long time. I've seen some of my friends switch to tumblr recently and they are not using it because it feels like twitter, or because it feels like reddit, but because the content they want is right there, accessible, and not hard to get to. they have supreme control over what they see and no algorithm tries to lead them to other stuff. for this reason, one of my friends has literally described tumblr as "Reddit, but more wholesome" - based on the fact that reddit kept leading them towards content they hated and made them feel upset. Don't try to become reddit. Or twitter. Or facebook. You're tumblr, and that's all you need to be.

At the very VERY VERY least, let us have an option to opt-out of future UI layout changes. OR give *NEW USERS* the OPTION to customize the UI layout when they join, if they want it to resemble twitter or reddit or anything else.

[ @staff @changes @humans @engineering @brickwhartley ]

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

do you have any posts already or if not would you be willing to share any information about what the process of getting the website up and running was like? i'm really interested in getting a site going for some other photo/record keeping projects and i know a decent amount about website design and basic html, but not that much about the process of actually getting it online;^;

Happy to share!

To be clear, my level of coding skill began with teaching myself html for neopets and ended with cobbling together vaguely custom css for my OG personal tumblr in 2011. So in terms of the physical backend of the website… it’s just Squarespace.

Getting it online is pretty simple if you’re not writing the code yourself, but there’s some stuff you’ve got to figure out first: what the name of your site will be, what url (domain) you want it to have, where to buy it, and where you want to host the site (like squarespace or Wordpress).

Once you’ve got the details sorted, you get an account on the hosting platform you want to use, and then set up the site and connect a domain. Squarespace lets you buy domains directly through their interface, but it tends to be more expensive than buying it directly from a registrar company like Namecheap or GoDaddy. If you’re comfortable teaching yourself to navigate basic internet stuff via Google, it isn’t too hard to learn how to tell a domain you bought elsewhere to point at your site. (Everything I’ve done to run all my websites has been self-taught via Google and Reddit, with the assistance of some very patient techie friends).

Once you’ve got the crunchy stuff set up, you build the site! I use Squarespace preferentially over Wordpress because a) I like the aesthetic of the templates and b) it’s what I know how to use. Wordpress is cheaper but trying to navigate the visual layout of the site annoyed me to the point it wasn’t fun anymore, so I personally will pay for ease of access on layout and design stuff.

To build the site, I thought through what I wanted the user experience to be, and how I wanted people to navigate, and I built with that in mind. For the photo repository, my goal was very clean visuals that really showcased the photos, and I wanted people to be able to navigate the taxonomy both visually and from a list. Honestly, just play with it, and try different things until you find a layout you like.

Then you try to break the site you’ve built. Because there will be errors and bugs and as much as I do appreciate it when y’all send me problems you encounter, I’d rather fix it first. I always check a new site on a desktop computer, tablet, and phone, and then ask a couple friends running different operating systems to do the same. That’s a good time to get feedback on things like layout and font size and readability, too.

The biggest time sink for the project has actually just been the photo management. I had to figure out how I needed things organized to build the site, and then taking the time to upload them all is the major rate-limiting factor.

You can launch the site so it’s “online” at any point during this process after you’ve paid for hosting and the domain and set it up, but I tend to wait until I’ve built the site and beta tested it sufficiently.

I’m happy to answer other questions, I’m just not sure what else would be helpful!

[letthefairyinyoufly]

A FAVE CREATORS ART CHALLENGE! started by @withered-rose-with-thorns

The premise is simple. Just think of your fave creators on this site and write a post listing some of your fave creations that were made by them. Tell them why you like it, if the coloring is pretty, if the blending is top notch, if it inspired you or just gush about the characters... And don't forget to tag them so they can see it.

I'm gonna start this list with the challenge creator itself @withered-rose-with-thorns, somehow I have not been acquainted with your work before your started giffing Haladriel.

Rhaenyra - everything

Anne Boleyn - everything

Caraxes - layout, coloring

I love your autumn sets

creator: @spiderliliez I love all your Morfydd sets, probably not news to you 😆. You are bolder then most of us. (same set has gifs with different sizes + using borders and textures)

in a yellow dress: I have thing for yellow dresses, all my favorite Gala dresses seems to be some kind of yellow (example: Micelle Williams Oscar dress 💛)

Gal & Theo: coloring, clarity

Set 36: coloring 🩵

Dora Spenlow: fonts, subs, coloring

Set 6 - coloring

creator: @sugurugetos - your COLORING skill is magnificent

villains Wiki - 🕶️

Haladriel - this set inspired me to amp up my sharpening

SUCCESSION - perfection

References to Tolkien's Legendarium - I love your informative sets

Adrift - coloring

This task is so time consuming that this next list is shortcut to few of my favorite creations and their authors.

GIFS:

sense8 by @rosamundpkes

the road goes ever on by @lady-arryn

Deathless by @elena-gilbert

We’re All Someone’s Monster by @meliorn

ALONE by @anya-chalotra

Yin & Yang by @hunterschafer

SIEGE AND STORM

GRISHA by @aemondtargaryenn

ALINA STARKOV by @astrophiliac

PHILIPPA FEATHERINGTON SEASON 3 outfits by @neverstheless

Civil War by @celine-song

THE MATRIX by @alexcabotgf

Euripides, Medea by @alicenthightowerdaily

daisy x billy by @rileykeouhg

LORD OF THE RINGS + Art references by @christophernolan

SAURONDRIEL by @ladyhawke

ABAY by @catronac7

Dune: Part Two by @junkfoodcinemas

CHAPTER TWO: Vecna’s Curse by @gentlegifs

Darklina by @alinaastarkov

All Too Well by @sheikah

Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials by @sheryl-lee

you have already lost by @danesdehaan

GOOD OMENS by @astaerion

Alicent Hightower + art by @ladyhawke

Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen by @jamesfrain

yaojing by @dengswei

Move to Heaven by @dramastream

The Big Empty by @bruceswaynes

All the things I did by @fredy-carter

ART:

Lucien Vanserra by @bbriches

Elucien by @the_megabee33

Haladriel by @samiaescorcio15

heir to the day court & emissary of the Spring Court by @cursebrkr

sleepy by @laxibbeb

Magic by @lib-arts

[kisoran]

oooo... you want to make a neocities site soooo badddd....

If you like to ramble, hoard cool graphics, create art, blog, write essays about your current interests, virtual pets, and having 100% control over your space online, make a neocities site!

If you need to get off your phone, if you hate social media algorithms and the centralized web... Make a Neocities site!

Don't know where to start? There are countless tutorials online and other neocities sites to take inspiration from. Plus, I give you permission to steal my site layouts (Right click, "inspect" for firefox to view the code needed)

Also consider checking out the MelonLand Project, which contains info about web revival and bringing humanity and connection back to the web. I encourage you to take an interest in other people's sites and works and interact with them! There's so much cool stuff out there!

Devote your site to one single topic! Or put everything you love in the same place, all on your site! Make cute buttons for yourself! Make secret pages for your friends to find! Share your music, your art, your OCs, your writing! You can literally do anything you want!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

hi derin! i’ve been following you for a little while, and also bemoaning the nature of publishing fiction (indie or trad) for a little bit longer than that, and i only just realized today that…of course web serials are a thing i can also do!

i really love the idea of publishing serially (though i’m not totally sure i CAN, i’d like to try), so while i add this to my list of potential paths, do you have any advice for getting started? building an audience? marketing? figuring out if writing/publishing this way will work for you to begin with?

i know that’s a lot of questions, and you don’t have to answer all of them! i’m throwing spaghetti at a wall out here. i hope you have a good day though, and thanks in advance!

Getting started in web serial writing

Web serial writing has the lowest barrier of entry of any major method of publishing your story. You can literally just start. There are two steps:

start writing your story

decide how/where you want to publish it

The writing part, I assume you have handled. The important thing to note here is that you gotta see the project through. Start and don't stop until you're done. For publishing, you have a few options:

1. Publish on a website designed for web serial novels

There are a few of these around, they're usually free to publish on (although most offer a paid account to give you ad space or boost you int he algorithm or whatever), and your best choice generally depends on which one happens to gravitate to a niche that best suits your kind of work. The big names in this industry are Royal Road and Scribblehub, which, last I checked up on them (about a year ago) tended towards isekai and light erotica respectively. (You absolutely can publish outside these niches on these sites, it's just much harder to get traction.) Publishing somewhere like this comes with multiple advantages. Firstly, there's a writing community right there to talk to; there's usually a forum or something where people gather to talk about reading or writing on the site. Second, the site itself is designed specifically to publish web serials, and will come with a good layout and hit trackers and 'where you left off' buttons for the reader and all that; generally all you have to do is copy-paste the text of a chapter into the page and the site will do everything else for you. Third, there's an audience sitting right there, browsing the 'latest arrivals' or 'most popular' page of the site; if you can get high in the algorithm, you have to do little if any marketing.

The downsides of such places usually come down to the same things as the advantages. Such sites are a flooded market. Your story absolutely will drown in a sea of other stories, a great many of them terrible, and most of them with the advantage of catering to the site's niche. Gaining an audience there is often a matter of trying to game an algorithm, and the community can be... variable. Some of these places are nice but most of them are a bunch of authors trying to tear down everyone around them to make their own work look better by comparison int he hopes of poaching audiences for their story instead. If you go this route, I'd recommend shopping around for a site that fits you personality and writing style (or just posting on many sites at once; you can also do that).

These places also tend to get targeted by scrapers who will steal your story and sell it as an ebook, which is very annoying.

2. publish on another site

Plenty of people publish web serials here on Tumblr. I do not know why. This site is TERRIBLY set up for that. It makes tracking stories and updates a pain in the arse (people end up having to *manually tag every reader whenever they post an update*), building and maintaining archives are annoying, community building is surprisingly difficult for a social media site, and it's just generally far more work for both writer and reader than it needs to be. You often do have a ready-made audience, though.

This does tend to work better on other sites. Reddit has multiple communities for reading and writing various types of fiction; publishing on these is a bit more work than somewhere like Royal Road, but not very much, and many of these communities are very active. There aren't as many forums around as there used to be, but you might be able to find fiction hosting forums, if that's what you prefer. And of course, many writers who simply want to write and don't mind not being paid choose to write on AO3.

These sites are a good middle ground compromise for people who want a ready-made community and don't mind putting in a bit of extra work.

3. make your own site

This is what I did. You can make a website for free, giving people a hub to find you and all your work, designed however you like. You can also pay for a website if you want it to be a little bit nicer. This option is the most work, but gives you the most control and leaves you free of having to worry about any algorithm.

The obvious downside of this is that there's no community there. If you host your work on your own website, you need to bring people to it. You need to build an audience on your own. This is not an easy thing to do.

Building an audience (general advice)

Here is some general advice about building an audience:

1. Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.

If you want people to read your writing, the best piece of advice I can possibly give you is have an update schedule and update on time, always. If you need to take a break, give people as much warning as possible and tell them exactly when you will be back, and come back then. Do not take unnecessary breaks because you don't feel like writing. (Do take breaks if you get carpal tunnel or need time off for a major life event or something -- your health is more important than the story.) If you're taking a lot of breaks to avoid burnout, you're doing it wrong -- you need to rework your whole schedule from the start and slow down updates to make these breaks unnecessary. Two chapters a month with no breaks is a billion times better than four chapters a month with frequent burnout breaks.

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.

A reliable schedule is the #1 factor in audience retention. If readers need to randomly check in or wait for notifications from you to check if there's an update, guess what? Most of them won't! They'll read something else. You want your audience to be able to anticipate each release and fit it in their own schedule. I cannot overstate the importance of this.

2. If you can, try to make your story good.

We writers would love to live in a world where this is the most important thing, but it actually isn't. Plenty of people out there are perfectly happy to read hot garbage. How do I define 'hot garbage'? It doesn't matter. Think of what you would consider to be just a terrible, no-effort, pointless garbage story that the world would be better off without. Someone is out there writing that right now, making US$2,500/month on Patreon.

It is, however, a real advantage if you can make your story good. At the very least, it should be worth your audience's time. Preferably, it should also be worth their money, and make them enthusiastic enough to try to get their friends into it. Managing this is massively advantageous.

3. Accept that you're not going to get a big audience for a really long time. Write consistently and update on schedule every time anyway.

It took me over a year to get my second patron. For the first year, I updated Curse Words every single week, on schedule, for over a year, and had maybe... four readers. One of them was a regular commenter. One of them was my first patron. There was no one else.

My audience has grown pretty rapidly, for this industry.

You're not gonna start publishing chapters for a big, vibrant community. You're just not. And you have to keep going anyway. These days, I have a pretty good readership, and those couple of loyal readers (who I appreciate beyond words) have grown into a much larger community, who hang out and debate theories with each other and liveblog and drag in new readers and make fanart. My discord has over 550 members, with volunteer moderators and regular fan artists and its own little in-jokes and games and readers who make a point of welcoming newcomers and helping them navigate the discord, all with very little input from me. I start crying when I think about these people, who do the bulk of my social and marketing work for me just because they want to help, and my patrons who, after writing for over 4.5 years, have recently helped me pass an important threshold -- my web serial (via patreon) now pays my mortgage repayments. I can't live off my writing alone, but boy is that a massive fucking step.

You're not gonna have that when you start. You're gonna have a couple of friends. And that's it. Maybe for a year. Maybe less, if you're good at marketing and lucky. Maybe longer.

You have to update on schedule, every time, anyway.

Building an audience (more specific advice)

"Yeah, that's great, Derin, but where can I find my fucking audience?" Well, if you publish on a web serial site, then the audience is there and you jsut need to grab their affention using the tools and social norms offered to you by the site. I utterly failed at this and cannot help you there. You can still use these other tips to bring in readers from off-site.

1. Paid ads

I've never paid for ads so I can't offer advice on how to do it. I've Blazed a couple of posts on Tumblr; they weren't helpful. This is, however, an option for you.

2. Actually tell people that your story exists and where they can find it.

I used to have a lot of trouble with this. I didn't want to bother people on Tumblr and soforth by telling them about my personal project. Unfortunately you kind of have to just get over that. Now I figure that if people don't want TTOU spam, they can just unfollow me. If you're like me and want to just politely keep your story to yourself... don't. You're shooting yourself in the foot doing that.

You need to mention your story. Link your story in your bio on whatever social media sites you use. Put it in your banner on forums. Make posts and memes about it. Eventually, if you're lucky, extremely valuable readers will start to talk about your story and meme and fanart it for you, but first, you need to let them know it exists.

It will always feel weird to do this. Just accept that people can unfollow you if they want, and do it anyway.

3. Leverage existing audiences and communities

Before I started doing this web serial thing, I used to write a lot of fanfic. The original audience that trickled in for Curse Words comes from AO3, where I was doing a full series rationalist rewrite of Animorphs. They knew how I wrote and wanted more of it. Nowadays, I still occasionally pull in readers through this route. Most of my new readers these days come from a different community -- people who follow me on Tumblr. Occasionally I bring in people who don't follow me because we'll be talking about how one of my stories relates to something different, and fans of that thing might decide they want to check my stories out.

Your first readers will come from communities that you're already in and that are already interested in something similar to what you're doing (people reading my fanfic on AO3 were already there for my writing, for instance). Keep these people in mind when you start out.

One additional critical source of existing communities is your readers themselves. A huge number of my readers are people I've never been in any group with -- they were pulled in by their friends, relatives, or community members who were reading my stories and wanted them to read them too. This is an absolutely invaluable source of 'advertising' and it is critically important to look after these people. enthusiastic readers, word-of-mouth advertisers, and fan artists are the people who will bring in those outside your immediate bubble.

4. Your "where to find me" hub

If you're publishing on your own website, you can simply link everything else to your homepage, and put all relevant links there. For example, I can link people to derinstories.com , which links out to all my stories, social media I want people to find me on (you don't have to link all your social media), patreon, discord, et cetera. If you don't have your own website, you're going to have to create a hub like this in the bios of every site where you garner audiences from. This is the main advantage of publishing on your own website.

Monetisation

There are a few different kinds of monetisation for web serials, but most of them boil down to 'use a web serial format to market your ebook', which to be honest I find pretty shady. These authors will start a web serial, put in enough to hook an audience for free, and then stop posting and release an ebook, with the intention of making readers pay for the ending. Now, to be clear, I am absolutely not against publishing and selling your web serial -- I'm doing exactly that, with Curse Words. I am against intentionally and knowingly setting up the start of a web serial as a 'demo' without telling your audience that that is what you are doing, soliciting Patreon money for it, and then later yanking it away unfinished and demanding money for the ending.

Monetisation of these sorts of stories is really just monetisation for normal indie publishing with the web serial acting as an ad, and I have no advice for how to do that successfully.

Your options of monetisation for a web serial as a web serial are a bit more limited. They essentially come down to merchandise (including ebooks or print books) or ongoing support (patreon, ko-fi, etc.) Of these, the only one I have experience with is the patreon model.

This model of monetisation involves setting up an account with a regular-donation site such as patreon, providing the base story for free, and providing bonuses to patrons. You can offer all kinds of bonuses for patrons. Many patrons don't actually care what the bonus is, they're donating to support you so that you can keep writing the story, but they still like to receive something. But some patrons do donate specifically for the bonuses, so it's worth choosing them with care.

The most common and most effective bonus for web serials is advance chapters -- if people are giving you money, give them the chapters early. You can also offer various bonus materials, merchandise, or voting rights on decisions you need to make in the future. 'Get your character put in the story' is a popular high-tier reward. If you're looking for reward ideas, you can see the ones I use on my patreon.

Patreon used to offer the ability to set donation goals, where you could offer something when you were making a certain amount total or had a certain number of subscribers. They recently removed this feature because Patreon hates me personally and doesn't want me to be happy, so you kind of have to advertise it yourself now if you want to use these goals. I release chapters of unrelated stories at donation goals, and I found this to be far more effective than I thought it would be.

The important factor for this kind of monetisation is that it's ongoing. The main advantage of this is that it makes your income far more regular and predictable than normal indie publishing -- your pledges will go up or down over a month, but not by nearly as much as book sales can. The main thing to keep in mind is that it's not a one-time sale, which means that however you organise things, you want to make sure that donating keeps on being worth it, month after month. Offering bonuses that aren't just one-time bonuses, but things that the patron can experience every month, helps here. So does making sure that you have a good community where patrons can hang out with other patrons. (Offering advance chapters does both of these things -- the patron can stay ahead in the story and discuss stuff with other patrons that non-patrons haven't seen. I've found that a lot of my patrons enjoy reading an emotionally devastating chapter ahead of time, discussing it, and then all gathering a week or two later to watch the unsuspecting non-patrons experience it for the first time.)

Whatever method you use for monetisation, rule #1 is (in the words of Moist Von Lipwig): always make it easy for people to give you money. The process of finding out how to give you money should be easy, as should the process of actually doing it. And, most importantly, the spender should feel like it's worth it to give you money. This is a big part of making it easy to give you money. Make your story worth it, make your bonuses worth it, make sure that they're happy to be part of your community and that they enjoy reading and supporting you. And remember that support comes in many forms -- the fan artist, the word-of-mouth enthuser, the person who makes your social hub a great place to be, the patron, all of these people are vital components in the life support system that keeps your story going. And you're going to have to find them, give them a story, and build them a community, word by word and brick by brick.

It's a long process.

Good luck.

.

[cerezaumbran]

Halloween Party

Vinnie hacker x Famous Male Reader

Warnings ⚠️: teasing

Genre: fluff with some slight smut, nothing super bad tho

Summary: You got invited to the biggest celebrity Halloween party, seeing as are you are famous singer/songwriter. All the biggest singers, artists, models, actors, etc are there, and you know who. You were asked to preform your new song fetish (just pretend it's ur song okay) since it has been charting number 1 for the past month.

You have been scrolling through many sites, You haven't found a single costume you liked. Exhausted from scrolling, you open snapchat to find vinnie has sent you a snap saying:

U replied back with a pic of yourself saying yeah u were. Vinnie calms he's straight, but he has been sending you very fruity snaps. One time, he sent you a snap saying

And

You don't know why straight guys act like this, they just do. Then boom, an idea hits you. You like vinnie, but you weren't sure if he was really genuine by his snaps or if he was joking. You've decided to be a sexy cheerleader and tease him at the party, plus it will go with your song. (Something like this)

(But ur wearing it). You order it, and it gets here on the day of the party. You finish getting ready and put the costume on. Looking in the mirror, you realize that with this costume, you're gonna have a lot of celebrities falling for you. You brush it off thinking that you're overreacting and grab your phone and your keys, and head to the party. You arrive at the and give your keys to the valet, you walk in and see the amazing decorations that must have taken hours to put up. All of your favorite artists, musicians, and actors were here. It took you a while to find your way around, but soon enough, you got the layout of this place. You met up with the host of the party and talked about when you're gonna perform. You were a bit nervous about going on stage and performing in front of your favorite people on the internet, but you performed at the half time show for the super bowl and that had like what 100 million people watching. An hour passes by, and you haven't seen vinnie anywhere, but many of the artists were falling for you and asking you to dance because of your costume. The host comes and tells you it's time to perform your song. " Hello, my friends, are you having a good time!" *everybody screams* "I'm glad that you're having fun and now the moment you've been waiting for the special guest.... Y/N L/N!!!" the host yells. You walk out on stage, and everyone cheers and ohs because of your costume. "Uh hey everyone, I'm y/n l/n, as u know, and I will be performing my new song fetish" you say, walking back and the music starting.

As you perform the song, you walk around the stage, feeling yourself get down and everything. Then you see vinnie in the crowd dancing with a drink in his hand, 'he's drunk already damn' you thought to yourself. Then you remembered your plan, and you started looking at him intensely, staring him down till he notices. You move your hand in a swaying motion to indicate the crowd to split into the group. Vinnie being drunk, he stays in the middle of the row, and you walk towards him. You walk up to him and use your index and middle fingers to walk up his body to his chin, where you lift it up to meet your eyes.

"You got a fetish for my love, I push you out, and you come right . you sing, leaning in. You grab his chin and close your eyes, and go in for a kiss. He does the same, and as he leans in, you pull back and turn around, walking back to the stage, looking back at him over your shoulder. He watches you in astonishment as you walk up on the stage and finish your song. You look down at the crowd, and everyone is cheering and yelling for you. I walk off the stage, and the host comes back on "hey hey hey how did everyone like that song?" *everybody screams* "I think we can all agree that... was.... AMAZING!!" the host yells. "Let's get another applause for y/n l/n, WOOOO!!"

You come out of the backstage door and find vinnie standing there looking at you "Oh hey vinnie, I love your costume" you say "t-thank you, umm you wanna maybe *hiccup* get out of here and go back to my place?"

"Umm, okay, I suppose"

You both walked out and had the valet bring out your car since vinnie came with his friends. We go to his house and go to his room. "Your room is bigger than I thought," you told him, looking around. "Yeah"

"Sooo we're here now"

"Yeah, ummm, I was wondering if you wanna go out with me?"

"I can't tell if this is you talking or the alcohol"

"It's me, the alcohol wore off some on the way over here, sooo will you?"

"Hmmm, let me think about it." You got up and walked to him and stared at him. He began to turn red as you stared at him, wondering what you were gonna say. "Close your eyes" you told him

"W-what"

"Close your eyes"

Umm, okay. " he shuts his eyes, and you lean in and give him a kiss. He opens his eyes and stares at you "yes I would like that very much," you say, putting your around arms around his neck. He lifts you by the hips and twirls you around laughing. He puts you down and leans in for another kiss. You accept the kiss, and you both stand there for a while, just kissing. "Vinnie, I'm getting tired," you say, pulling back. "Can we go to sleep, please?" You add "yeah let's go to sleep," he replied. You both lay down on his bed and cuddle up to each other, and fall asleep, happy that you finally got vinnie as your boyfriend.