#split character data

[valflame]

@artificile​​

⊰ ♖ ⊱

                   Arvis was a man who fought tooth and nail against his fate despite his story having already been written for him. He refused to acknowledge the very notion of the idea that he could not seize his own destiny by the horns, that he could not use all his gifts and all the blessings that he’d been born with to make the world around him a better place. His own hubris would ultimately become his downfall; he turned a blind, stubborn eye toward things that could otherwise cue him in to mistakes being made when he did not want to see them. It wasn’t like he was privy to what fate had in store for him anyway --- only that it was supposedly immovable, and that any attempts to push back against the tides of time would only result in his own sorrow.

                    Had he known what fate had in store for him, what was already written down and predetermined for him within his personal narrative, he might have laughed at the idea of coming across a young woman suffering from amnesia. If he could only see into the future he’d think he were making a habit out of stumbling upon them.

                   He did with her what fate said he would one day do with the next. He gestured back behind him towards his castle after confirming her lack of memory to invite her inside.

                   "Jugdral can be a dangerous place for someone with no home to turn back to,” he explained, taking a step back towards the castle. “There are bandits and terrors lurking in the woods... And horrors from the Desert of Death to the east. I would advise that you step in to see if we can’t help treat whatever seems to be ailing you with our court sorcerers.”

[handwrittenhello]

i think its kind of ridiculous to think that homestucks are seriously using bots in this poll because why the hell would they bot this poll instead of the tumblrwoman poll which was the poll EVERYBODY in the hs fandom was actually making a big deal out of . also because im going to be real but i dont think anyone cares about polls enough to rig one? even the bayonetta/miku poll turned out to actually not be vriska voter fraud (most people in the homestuck fandom voted miku anyway) i think people are just unable to comprehend that a lot of people are still dormantly into homestuck & probably just saw vriska serket at the front of the trending disco elysium tag and thought it was funny. like oh my godddd no one cares enough about the outcome of this poll to bot it . somebody with a lot of followers probably just posted about it on twitter or something mundane like that its not that deep . a lot of people on tumblr have read homestuck its not extraordinary that a lot of vriska voters exist. disco elysium fans im sorry your blorbo is losing you’ll probably be back in the lead in a couple hours anyway all of you need to chill out‼️‼️‼️

answering only this ask about the cheating/botting, and no others, because i'm getting a lot of asks about it. congratulations, this contest has officially had all the fun sucked out of it.

here's data i've been collecting for every poll i've run. it's organized by votes the character received per round, then the total number of votes on that poll, for all five rounds. then there are two columns for totals.

the next five columns, Notes 1-5, are the number of notes on each poll. i've highlighted two posts that were circulated with a greater-than-average frequency even after the poll ended (the loki/JC one because people were memeing on JC, and then HDB/Howl one because it gained popularity following a popular blogger reblogging it.)

V/N is the votes to notes ratio for each poll. it was taken by dividing the number of votes when the poll ended by the number of notes on each post. one limitation is that this was not taken at the same time each day, and so older posts will have slightly higher notes. however, i believe this uncertainty isn't enough to discount the conclusions i'll come to.

i've highlighted vriska's V:N ratio in red at the top. as you can see, round vriska's V:N ratio wasn't even the highest; she beat kaeya alberich easily, and the comments in the notes reflected that.

in round 2, things started to get interesting. this is where i and other people noticed a sudden flip, but i didn't think much of it. she was up against izzy hands. izzy was leading all day, and when i queued the next day's poll and went to bed, izzy was leading by 60%. when i woke up, it had flipped to 53/47 in vriska's favor. it's not a HUGEamount, but it is a NOTICEABLE amount.

keep in mind that every single day, there have been other, closer polls, that hovered around 49-50-51 all day, and which also flipped at the end of the day, or remained 50/50 and could only be determined by tumblr. in these cases, the notes also reflect the split. these polls also never swayed more than one or two percent.

in round 3, when vriska faced zuko, there was a clear and immediate lead for zuko, with him leading by 80%. keep in mind that by this point, all 28 other polls i ran, besides vriska's the day before, never swayed more than 1 or 2% once a clear lead had been established.

this poll went from 80/20 zuko to 59/41 vriska. that's RIDICULOUS. the only way that's possible is if an OVERWHELMING amount of people voted vriska and NO people voted zuko. for such a thing to happen, this post would need to spread really rapidly, right? surely this post had tens of thousands of notes and comments!

the V:N ratio for round 3 is TWENTY-SEVEN to one. that's the most out of any poll. the standard deviation for the round 3 polls is 9.0, compared to 4.8 and 4.9 the days before. not to mention reading those notes also does not get us an overwhelming amount of comments rooting for vriska.

today has also been highly suspicious. it started out with an 85/15 lead for harry. i wouldn't necessarily expect it to hold exactly at that percentage, but the flip was immediate and drastic. you can see the trend being tracked on this post. not at all suspicious, right? also note that the comments all day have been 95% rooting for harry and maybe 5% for vriska.

please also look at the GRAND TOTAL column, which has reliably predicted the winners of future polls each day. vriska has received 49,064 votes over the course of the whole contest. harry has received 64,644. that's 24% more votes. and yet the poll is locked at 50/50?

and if this isn't enough evidence for you, then remember the tumblr sexywoman poll. it is a FLAT FUCKING FACT that those polls were spammed by bots. out of respect for their privacy i won't go into detail, but they outright admitted it.

TO CONCLUDE,

it's pretty fucking obvious that something is up, and although i admit that there's simply no concrete way of proving it, there would have to be a really standout explanation for this.

and besides this being super lame, it's also removed all the fun from this contest. it's a stupid tumblr poll that wins literally nothing, congratulations!

also, to everyone making death threats in the notes, BOTH SIDES, you've failed my secret challenge of not being rude which means i'm judging you personally. be fucking nice.

[cassolotl]

Results of the nonbinary name survey

Hi folks, just thought I'd throw together a quick report about nonbinary names based on the recent survey.

The survey ran from 4th until 13th May, and there were 5,179 usable responses. For this one I won't share the full spreadsheet of all responses, as it contains potentially identifying information. Having said that, you can find a spreadsheet of the information I can share with you here. Every name entered only once has been redacted.

Most popular names

Let's kick it off with the main reason I did this survey, finding the nonbinaryest name:

Alex was #1, with 1.6%, which is 1 in 62 nonbinary people.

Here's the full top 10:

Alex - 1.6% (83)

Jay - 1.2% (64)

Sam - 0.9% (49)

Charlie - 0.7% (36)

Max - 0.7% (36)

Ash - 0.6% (33)

Robin - 0.6% (33)

Rowan - 0.6% (31)

Kit - 0.6% (30)

Eli - 0.6% (29)

Name length

I'm familiar with the stereotype that nonbinary people choose names by taking 3 letters from a bag of Scrabble tiles, or that nonbinary people take letters off their given names until it's one ungenderable syllable, and I would like to take this opportunity to add that these are both excellent ways to create new names. :D

This graph takes a rolling median name length from the whole list, and it shows that generally speaking the most popular names tended to be shorter:

The average name length was 5.1 characters long.

This seems to support the stereotypes, but I feel it's worth mentioning that we can't know for sure whether it actually does, because for all we know, binary people's names might show these kinds of patterns too.

Number of names per person

Participants could enter as many names as they wanted, in a list separated by commas. That made it pretty easy to count them, and it turned out like this:

That's fairly straightforward, most people have only one name.

Problems with survey design

Overall I definitely feel that the survey had some flaws. I knew in advance that there would be some people who have more than one name that they like more or less equally, but for some reason the first question I came up with assumed that you have one name that you like most and then required a single answer from a list stating how that name happened to you - leading the respondent to a different section based on that answer.

What if you've got two or more names that you like equally, and one was given to you by your parents when you were born that you use for work, one is a nickname based on that name that evolved between you and your family and friends as you were growing up, and one is a name you chose yourself and your closest friends call you that? That's pretty much an impossible question, isn't it?

And there were several other questions in the survey that took that approach, making the data from those questions basically useless.

I didn't think it would cause problems for so many people, but it did, and I have learned my lesson there.

However, there was a question asking you to list all your names, and that's what I used to make the ranked list. I don't see how people with more than one name that they prefer completely equally (i.e. those people who would be thrown out of the survey by an impossible required first question) would prefer different names from people with one name only, so I think the ranked list is probably approximately okay, and same for the number of names per person graph and the average name length.

Implications

I haven't decided yet, but I definitely think there's scope for doing this survey annually - but separately from the identity/titles/pronouns survey, for anonymity reasons. It could be fun to track popular nonbinary names over time, similar to the popular name lists for babies that are usually split by boys'/girls' names. It might be a bit meaningless unless I collect country data as well though, which is why the list currently reads very....... American..........

Now that I've learned a lot from a big and not-so-well-designed survey run on my personal account, I'd feel more comfortable designing something a bit more fit for purpose, and running it from the @gendercensus accounts to hopefully get more participants.

~ Fin ~

[tetsupeach]

pro hero bakugou x pro hero todoroki x reader

summary - you'd never imagined being best jeanists late night hero would be so tiring.

cws - healer reader, threesome, degradation, praise, light yandere overtones, possessive overtones, bakugou and shouto really don't wanna share reader. dom characters sub reader

a/n - ty to @killerdabi for the request follow them at @daddymaki minors dni

“Really,” you cross your arms. “I can’t pay any special attention to you because you did well in hero school.” You shrug. “I’m a healer and it’s my job to assist everyone equally,” you turn your back to the two boys who’d gotten into a skirmish well after Best Jeanist's working hours. “Give me just a second, alright, and I’ll take care of you.” You tap the spacebar on your laptop, waking it up so you can make a couple notes. 

“We uh,” Bakugou says, his low rasp cutting effectively through the silence, well above the hum of the air conditioning unit. “We had a question for ya.” You look up, they’re both only mostly dressed, hero costumes shredded from the fight with the villain engineered bioweapon. 

“Yes?” 

“We want to know which one of us you like better.” Shouto says bluntly, stepping in front of the blonde. You blink at them in surprise. 

“What?” 

“You heard him.” Bakugou crosses his arms over his broad chest. “We wanna know if ya like me or half n’ half better.” 

“I,” you scramble, none of your healing training had prepared you for this, “I’m not sure I have enough data to make a decision.” 

“That,” Shouto considers, “That we could provide.” 

______

“Shhhh,” Shouto breathes, pressing a kiss to your cheek, “So good, takin’ him so well.” You let out a strangled whimper, sitting in between the two pro heroes you’ve never felt smaller, sinking just a little lower on Bakugou’s cock and feeling like you’re being split in half. You’re straddling the blonde, he’s laying down on his bed, huge hands resting on your thighs. 

“So close,” he growls, “Almost got me all the way,” he eyes Shouto angrily, “You gonna help her out or are ya just here to watch me fuck her brains out?” Todoroki rolls his eyes, reaching around your body and rubbing softly at your clit, watching your mouth drop open as you relax against his chest. 

“I wouldn’t give me orders if I were you,” Shouto says coolly, kissing your shoulder as he makes eye contact with Bakugou, “I’d focus on making our sweet girl feel good,” he nips at your neck and you gasp with pain, clenching down hard on Bakugou, who swears violently. “That’s a good boy,” he coos, radiating condescension. 

Bakugou scowls, and swats at him. 

“I’m gonna move,” The blonde warns, and you whimper loudly as he rolls his hips against yours, you bury your face in Shouto’s neck. 

“So good,” He repeats smoothly, still rubbing softly at your puffy clit, feeling the way your thighs are trembling, “Think she’ll be able to walk after this?” He asks, eyes closing in pleasure as he starts to massage your chest with his free hand. “Fuck, these are perfect.” 

“Not if I can help it,” Bakugou grins, pressing down harder on your thighs as he fucks you, pinning you tightly against him. Shouto holds you upright, but your lips part, a hushed moan dropping from your lips as Bakugou bucks up into you, “C’mon,” he grunts, “Take it like ya said you could.” 

“Talked a big game,” Shouto says in your ear, “So sure you could handle both of us, pretty girl, how’s that working out for you?” 

“I,” you manage, hands on Bakugou’s abdomen, attempting to balance. 

“You know what’s at stake here,” Shouto says, still playing with you, cool hand so gentle on the softest part of you, carefully rubbing your clit, “If you fall apart, we own you, sweetheart,” 

“Wantcha to do everythin’ we say,” Bakugou grunts as your eyes start to roll, “No more of this competition shit, you’re ours, our fuckin’ healer, our sweet little set of holes.” 

“Fuck,” you chirp, toes curling, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m gonna,” 

“We’re just getting started,” Shouto kisses your burning cheek again, groping at your chest as you feel his hard cock against your ass. “You said there was no way we could make a mess of you.” 

“Oh,” you lean forward but he catches you, Bakugou smirks, thrusting up cruelly into you, watching you completely lose composure. 

“From where I am, princess,” he spits the last word like it’s an insult, “Pretty sure you’re a fuckin’ mess.”

“Shhhh,” Shouto breathes in your ear, “Be a good girl and take it, and when we’re done, we’ll take care of you.” You warble something unintelligible. “And you’re gonna be a good girl for us,” he kisses your neck softly, mouth cool on your hot skin, “And you’ll cum on his cock, and then  you’re gonna take mine, how does that sound pretty girl.” 

“Don’t wanna hear shit about you from other fuckin’ pros,” Bakugou growls, “Don’t wanna hear you gave ‘em the fuckin’ time of day, you’re goddamn ours now.” You nod pitifully, barely able to stay conscious under their careful ministrations. “You wanna cum?” He snaps and you nod, whimpering. “Whaddya think, bastard, should she get to cum?” 

“Hmmm,” Shouto sighs, slowing his attention to your clit. “Surely not until she’s pleased both of us.”

please rb if you liked it <3

[spyr0ar]

Star Trek Next Gen killed me last night >:,(

Tasha no :(

[londonfoginacup]

A New Larrie’s Guide to Tumblr

A probably incomprehensible, certainly incomplete list of what you need to know; whether you’re coming from a different platform or discovering Larry for the first time. 

My credentials

Hello! I’m Emmu. I’ve had tumblr since… 2008? Maybe 2009. I moved over from deviantArt and used Tumblr as a personal art blog for many years. I joined the One Direction fandom in 2014, so my 1D blog has 8+ years at this point. That being said, I will get on my soapbox a bit during this. Please excuse me, I’m quite passionate about cultivating a happy and healthy fandom.

What makes Tumblr different

The biggest thing that makes Tumblr, as a site, different from Twitter or Instagram is the rejection of algorithms. The “following” tab on your dashboard is in chronological order (and if it isn’t, you can – and should – change that), and the “for you” tab is both a recent feature and rarely used. Tumblr has very little algorithm, and the algorithm they have isn’t very good. It means that you’ll get the most god awful ads you’ve ever seen on this site, because they don’t utilize your data well. And that’s to your advantage.

Tumblr is a great place because you can curate what you see more than other social media. The people that you choose to follow are the only people that you see on your dash (unless you choose to follow tags, which I guess is an option? @lululawrence says “it is and it used to not do anything unless you went to the search page and then it would like autofill your followed tags options, but NOW they take those followed tags and plop them on your dash... SOMETIMES. usually only on mobile. but if there's only one new post in the tag, it shows you that post OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER AGAIN. IT'S SUPER ANNOYING ACTUALLY. SO I STOPPED FOLLOWING TAGS. lol anyway”).

So, the site is in chronological order. This is its biggest selling point.

There is also the opportunity for long posts. Masterposts. Things that are searchable without having to read through pages of screenshots or condensed twitter threads. You can write a whole lot more without worrying about character limit. People publish whole fics on here (I suggest ao3 for that, but tumblr is technically an option!).

Another important thing to know about tumblr is that the archives on tumblr run deep. There are newer larries here, and a lot of them, but you can also find older larries. People whose 1D blogs go back to 2010 or 2011. You can dive into the archives and read firsthand accounts of what was happening with One Direction or larry at that very time. Doing a bit of research means you find cute fetus pictures of the boys, but also you’re able to figure out for yourself whether something actually happened. Rumors always seem to spread quite easily and fandom memory always seems impossibly short, but here on tumblr you’re able to find out for yourself. That means the next time you hear about how xyz thing happened a long time ago, check out some of those archives and see what you can find.

Also, my personal favorite part of tumblr is that old posts are just as valid as new posts. Find a masterpost about RBB and SBB from 2015? Go ahead and reblog that; bring it back to the circulating dash. People will love that. Find a fanartist that you really like? Search through their tags, reblog anything you want. It’s not considered stalking or weird in any way. We love bringing back old posts here. Tumblr is a website where you’re not meant to just talk about the present. 

The cultural difference between Tumblr and Twitter

Speaking of the ways that tumblr and twitter are different, let’s talk for a moment about the 1D fandom in particular.

I’ve held this theory for a while that the twitter (and instagram) algorithm is fracturing the fandom. Because twitter is so dependent on the algorithm, people are more likely to split apart and join smaller and smaller communities based on smaller, more specific opinions. Tumblr, being a place where you don’t just get a post on your dash because someone else liked it, doesn’t have those smaller cliques. There are larries, and there are antis.

(if you get really in the weeds, there are also larry shippers [who don’t believe they’re together but like to read it in fic], and houis [who think they were together but broke up], but I just don’t hear about them as much).

While I do occasionally hear about blouies on my dash, for the most part this is a culture that exists primarily on other sites. 

On another note, because tumblr doesn’t have that handy algorithm, we have to work to make it a more active space. Likes don’t do anything here for anyone other than you, and it doesn’t really change anything about what you’ll see on your dash. Think of them more like the bookmark setting on twitter or instagram. Reblogs are necessary to get anything spread. Anything that you enjoy, or that looks interesting for any reason? Reblog it! That’s the only way other people will see it! And leave a happy comment in the tags if you’ve got one (more on that later). 

And, while lurkers do exist in this fandom (and we love them), it’s important to get an icon and blog header that make you look like a real person. People on tumblr have long been in the habit of blocking shady blogs, mostly because of a bot problem, so if you want to lurk, you have to look like a lurker. Maybe reblog a post or two to establish yourself, and make sure you don’t accidentally look like an icon-less bot posing as a sugar daddy. 

How to set up your account

Okay, so you’ve got a tumblr. Let’s take a minute to fix up the settings so that you’re not getting, well, the worst version of the site. 

My advice is to start by going into your dashboard preferences and:

Turn off the best stuff first (it’ll just show you things you’ve already seen)

Turn off “include stuff in your orbit” (you’ll see terrible posts that are mostly NOT in your orbit)

Turn off “Included based on your likes” (again, you’ll see posts you hate)

Turn off “shorten long posts”. It’s a ridiculous setting that, like many things on tumblr, had potential but was rolled out in an incredibly unhelpful and user unfriendly way.

Once you’ve got that squared away, go into filtering and block any tags and content you don’t like, as that is always proper fandom etiquette. Not seeing things you don’t like is your responsibility, not the responsibility of the person posting them. I personally suggest adding the topics you don’t want to see to both the content list and the filtered tags list, as that gives a much better likelihood of posts that are particularly unsavory for you getting caught by the filters. Please also note this might need to be done on both desktop and the app separately as, depending on where tumblr is at the moment, these filters do not always carry over from one application to the other.

Now scroll down to tumblr labs. These are their experimental things. Some are good! Some are very bad. They do change, though, so this might get out of date pretty fast.

Personally, I enabled fast queue

And disabled everything else

ALSO, an important note, if you are using the apple app, you need to go in and turn off the adult content filter. No idea offhand where that is, but it means posts that include tags like “mine” and “girl” are blocked. It’s ridiculous. 

Who to follow and how to find them

So, you’ve got a new tumblr and need people to follow. This makes sense! To really fill up your dash, I’d suggest the following

Find one person you like. There’s a good chance you know at least someone from twitter who also has a tumblr, so you can start there. If you’re not from twitter, or are looking to start fresh, you can dive into the search function (I’ve never tried finding someone this way myself, but searching larry stylinson or something similar would probably get you started)

Find the people they reblog from and check out each of their blogs! Follow people that make you happy

Follow some update accounts! Thinking of some off the top of my head, there’s @HLUpdate, @Stylesnews, @dailytomlinson, @HLDailyUpdate, or @neilswaterbottles (there’s definitely more though). 

Follow some fanart or fic rec accounts! 

I’d always suggest @1d-fanart or @hlcreators for art. 

For fic, you could check out @hlficlibrary, @ficsyoumayhavemissed, or @thelarriefics. 

Or, recurring fic fests! @onedirectionbigbang or @wordplayfics, which happen every year.

And if you end up not enjoying someone you’ve followed? Unfollow them! It’ll make you happier.

How to interact with posts

Tumblr is all about tags. Do you have a comment or thought? Reblog a post and say your thought in the tags. That way anyone you follow will see it, and the person who made the post will see it. This way a post doesn’t end up with a lot of cluttery additions that don’t mean a lot to the average person reblogging it, but if you browse the tags of posts you’ll find lots of interesting things. Tags can be used to keep track of things, too, of course — some people tag all pictures with who’s in them, or tag art or fic with tags that mean they can find them again. Tags are versatile! But reblog, don’t just like, and tag! The more you interact, the happier content creators are!

What not to do

Don’t repost. If you see something you like on tumblr, reblog it. Even if it’s a really old piece of fanart (like circa 2011). Reblog that old post! Reposting means people don’t get credit, and it doesn’t link back to them. That’s not cool, and in the long term makes fandom less happy.

How to cultivate a happy and healthy fandom

Send happy anons! Ask how people are doing, do question memes, say how much you loved fic/art/edits, etc.

Reblog art. Reblog fic. Reblog what makes you laugh. The more you reblog, the more other people see, the more the fandom moves! Content creators just want their things seen; every time you reblog, their phone gets that little notification and you’ve given someone a bit of happiness.

Unfollow people who annoy you. Follow people who make you happy!

If someone has a take about 1D that you don’t agree with, don’t tell them or send them argumentative anons. Find people who will agree with you, and complain to them privately. Or make your own post, not shading anyone, just presenting your own opinion and theories!

Remember that everyone is a real person. Cut them some slack when you find them being annoying. But also, unfollow. Curate your dash.

[sprinklecipher]

How much dialogue each character has in the AA Trilogy (in graphs)

I made some graphs showing the total amount of dialogue per character for the AA Trilogy

Graphs broken out by game and additional details below the cut

AA1/PWAA (including RftA):

AA1 excluding RftA:

AA2/JfA:

AA3/T&T:

Details:

Data source: I’m using a dataset that I put together pulling from the episode transcripts on the Ace Attorney wiki (which I did almost entirely via Python, but with a bit of manual cleanup).

Word counts: The word counts are based on all dialogue attributed to that character in the episode transcripts EXCEPT for dialogue that appears as a pop-up gif rather than text in the dialogue box (“Objection!”/”Take that!”/”Hold it!”). This includes all optional/skippable dialogue. The counts are split based on who the dialogue line is attributed to in the transcript, which means that characters with aliases have separate word counts for each name associated with them.

[mistergandalf]

ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO MASTERPOST

Who is THE blorbo of the Tolkien fandom here on tumblr dot com? Let's find out!

What are the criteria for voting?

What is a blorbo to you? As Aragorn would say: What does your heart tell you? Therein lies your answer. For me, it's who I'd like the whump the most. Maybe for you it's who is the most shippable. Maybe it's the one that means the most to you for what they represent. Maybe it's your poor little meow meow (looking at you, Angbang lovers). Let your feelings guide you.

Is this only supposed to be about the books, or is it based on any Tolkien-based media?

This is about blorbos. Wherever you found your blorbo, that's fine. If you want to be a book purist about it, you're valid. If you love Thorin Oakenshield simply because Richard Armitage is hot, you are also valid.

***PLEASE ALSO NOTE that my blog is a Rings of Power positive blog! If you don’t like it that’s fine, but if you post negative comments or reblogs on my posts, I will block you! I don’t want negativity in my activity feed, thank you!***

When will polls be posted?

Polls will be posted daily at 12pm EDT (GMT -4), staggered by 5-10 minutes on each poll. There will be a day between final votes as the data will be needed for the next poll!

Schedule is as follows: (Updated because I’m dumb and didn’t realize how many rounds the second chance bracket has)

4/23 - Round One 4/25 - Round Two (Primary Bracket) 4/26 - Round Two (Second Chance Bracket) 4/27 - Round Three (Primary Bracket) 4/28 - Round Three (Second Chance Bracket) 4/30 - Round Four (Second Chance Bracket) 5/2 - Round Five (Second Chance Bracket) 5/4 - Round Six (Second Chance Bracket) 5/5 - Round Four (Primary Bracket) 5/7 - Round Seven (Second Chance Bracket) 5/9 - Round Eight (Second Chance Bracket) 5/10 - Round Five (Primary Bracket) - decides the finalist 5/12 - Round Nine (Second Chance Bracket) - decides the finalist 5/14 - FINAL ROUND - THE ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO

Check the tag #ultimate tolkien blorbo to see new posts! Feel free to share your thoughts in the tag as well!

I have more questions!

Okay, click the readmore then!

Hey! Why did you pair this character with that character?

Because I spent a whole evening googling how tournament brackets work (I am not a sports person) and then I did a lot of math and sorting.

Okay, but I really want to know!

WELL first I thought: "How can I quantify and rank blorbos?" The answer: AO3. I went into the Tolkien fandom general tag and ranked the first 32 characters by the number of fanfics in which they appear.*

Then I split them by story. I roughly kept Hobbit characters with Hobbit characters, LotR with LotR, and Silmarillion with Silmarillion to keep it as fair as possible and give all corners of the fandom a chance to see their blorbo win. Some characters are in multiple sources, like Elrond or Gandalf, so I tried to keep those characters with someone who is probably just as well-known.**

Then I followed the rules the internet told me about how tournaments work. The highest-ranked character goes with the lowest-ranked character, the second-highest with the second-lowest, etc.

And that's how I did it! It was a fantastic way to waste an afternoon.

*I may have eliminated and/or played with a couple options. Some of these characters had fewer fics than the character "OC," which makes sense. I took off Erestor because literally only Glorfindel stans would choose him, and Glorfindel is on here. I also lumped together Elladan and Elrohir because if you can tell them apart, it's because they're both your blorbos. Tolkien did NOT give them distinct personalities. Also if I didn’t lump them together, I wouldn’t be able to fit Celebrimbor, and that would be a shame.

**Characters who appear in multiple stories had their rankings weighted to account for that fact. I got a C in statistics in college, though, so I frankly have no idea if the way I weighted them is correct, nor do I care, because I'm satisfied with how the rankings turned out.

I don’t like how you did this!

Okay, don’t vote then. Nobody’s making you.

FORTH EORLINGAS! Have fun voting! As Gimli would say... May the best Dwarf win! ;)

Round One [results & analysis]

Thorin vs. Bard | Bilbo vs. Dwalin | Kili vs. Gandalf | Fili vs. Thranduil | Legolas vs. Eomer | Aragorn vs. Eowyn | Elrond vs. Elladan & Elrohir | Frodo vs. Merry | Gimli vs. Pippin | Samwise vs. Boromir | Faramir vs. Galadriel | Maedhros vs. Celebrimbor | Maedhros vs. Celebrimbor (RoP free version bc some of you are whiny babies) | Maglor vs. Finrod | Glorfindel vs. Morgoth | Sauron vs. Celegorm | Fingon vs. Feanor

Round Two [results & analysis]

Thorin vs. Bilbo | Legolas vs. Thranduil | Pippin vs. Éowyn | Maglor vs. Frodo | Gandalf vs. Samwise | Elrond vs. Maedhros | Faramir vs. Glorfindel | Sauron vs. Fëanor

Round Two (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Aragorn vs. Elladan & Elrohir | Gimli vs. Morgoth | Merry vs. Bard | Finrod vs. Celegorm | Boromir vs. Kíli | Fíli vs. Celebrimbor | Éomer vs. Galadriel | Fingon vs. Arwen

Round Three [results & analysis]

Bilbo vs. Legolas |  Éowyn vs. Frodo | Samwise vs. Elrond | Faramir vs. Fëanor

Round Three (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Aragorn vs. Gandalf | Gimli vs. Maedhros | Merry vs. Glorfindel | Finrod vs. Sauron | Boromir vs. Thorin | Celebrimbor vs. Thranduil | Éomer vs. Pippin | Arwen vs. Maglor

Round Four (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Aragorn vs. Gimli | Merry vs. Finrod | Boromir vs. Celebrimbor | Pippin vs. Arwen

Round Five (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Aragorn vs. Bilbo | Éowyn vs. Merry | Boromir vs. Elrond | Pippin vs. Fëanor

Round Six (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Aragorn vs. Éowyn | Boromir vs. Pippin

Round Four [results & analysis]

Legolas vs. Frodo | Samwise vs. Faramir

Round Seven (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Éowyn vs. Faramir | Pippin vs. Legolas

Round Eight (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Éowyn vs. Pippin

Round Five [results & analysis]

Frodo vs. Samwise

Round Nine (Second Chance Bracket) [results & analysis]

Éowyn vs. Frodo

FINAL ROUND

Samwise vs. Frodo

[cursedcola]

Synopsis: Years have passed since your homecoming to Earth. Your 'time' concluded and farewell inevitable at the hands of fate. After concluding their years at NRC, Wonderland's finest take it upon themselves to transcend dimensions and find the person who left without so much as a farewell. The catch is, they have no idea where you are, what this universe is like, and have to make a life for themselves in the meantime. How would they adapt to life on earth? A/N: Hey guys! I had this idea during a 4am mind-dump and rolled with it. May reference it if I do any Modern AU writing. Just some general Headcannons like what their residence, settlement of choice, work, general modern interests, style, etc. would be. Characters: Everyone. Warnings: None lol. This is for my own enjoyment! Part(s): Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde, and Diasmonia You are here!: Heartslabyul

Nothing could have prepared the students of NRC for what lied beyond the mirror. A world unlike any of them ever known with magic being virtually non-existent ( or so it appears to the general public). With nothing but the clothes on their backs, falsified basic identification, personal items, and the small bits of knowledge gathered from you; these young adults have one mission - find the dimension hopping prefect, and try to stay out of prison. It was time to split up, cover as much ground as possible, and make a life in this unfamiliar reality.

Let us see how these fresh minds conform to 'Life on Earth' !

Heartslabyul Residence: United Kingdom

Riddle Rosehearts

Residence: Cambridge, England

Lives together with Trey in Cambridge, England. They share a two-bedroom apartment that's settled above the small bakery Trey works at.

Occupation: Government official. Likely somewhere in politics and law enforcement.

Riddle doesn't have a specific job listed simply because no one actually knows what it is that he does. He's very hush-hush about his personal affairs, which is understandable considering he respects the rules and confidentiality laws. Do not ask how he got a government job or how his falsified documents were overlooked. He has his ways, and that's all he is going to say.

Uses his job as a foot-in-the-door to try and find you. All they have is your data that was imputed into your TW account and phone app store, so he's going to cover all ground.

Very well off financially. He's taken more to the 'dark academia,' aesthetic going around on earth. Despite this he still shares his home with Trey, but is decorated like an academic's laboratory. Plenty of cherry wood furniture, plants, warm tones, and he surprisingly has pictures of the Heartslabyul gang everywhere.

One look at his clothes and you'll know who decorated the apartment. He loves corduroy pants, loafers, sweater-vests, turtle necks, and don't tell his mother but he got his ears pierced. Ruby red studs are his staple to match his hair.

Riddle easily conformed to earth's more mature audience. Just like in TW he struggles to understand recent trends and social media (Example: man will not go near Tik Tok). He picked up Linkdln and buisness platforms quickly, and not a week goes by where he doesn't have a buisness dinner. He's so well educated that he breezes through university life on earth and is on the path to get his Ph.D. in Political Science.

He loves the literature your world has to offer. He's collected so many new books that Trey had to convince him to rent a storage unit for them all (or get a kindle but Riddle likes to have the physical copy, so that's vetoed). He likes audio-books though because they're convenient, and he's taken up gardening

The one to consistently contact everyone with updates on your whereabouts. The leader of the UK gang in the search.

Ace Trappola

Residence: Cardiff, Wales

Lives together with Deuce in a one-bedroom apartment. They're broke as all hell and so they've got to make due. They've accommodated so that the living room is Deuce's room and Ace gets the actual bedroom. They're the tenants that constantly get complaints for being too loud and always scrape the deadline for rent. The type of duo to use bowls as cups because they fought over who would do the dishes. Now they've got angry neighbors, no clean dishes, and are at each others throats until the next day.

Occupation: Mechanic in training

Ace can't stand customer service but also isn't the type to do university. What is up his league is trade work, and the man wants a motorcycle so bad. At first he wasn't too into it but with time the field grew on him, and he gets along great with his mentors and coworkers. He's got the spunk and charisma to handle the job that's for sure.

He blends in so well, deadass. Yeah people know he's a foreigner and that he stands out appearance wise-but like, he's so outspoken that people take him for what he is. Basically the fresh youth on the block who's everyone's annoying little brother. The kind invited for after-work drinks (he is of age here. Remember they are all of age) and spend a couple rounds telling fun stories with.

We touched a bit on the living situation, but his bedroom is full of pop culture references from earth. He's a big marvel fan and he loves doing those lego-sets that come with instructions. He's got the infinity gauntlet model one on display and is eyeing the lego-store for when he can afford another big project. He's dreaming of seeing Disney world, and his room has lots of travel brochures for exciting trips

He often plays sports with the neighborhood kids and his friends and has random supplies thrown everywhere.

He's taken a liking to grunge fashion. Lots of flannel, skinny jeans, beanies, layered t-shirts, etc. He's a skater boy. Loves fashion jewelry and fidget rings

I feel that if Riddle or someone else had an idea of where you were, Ace would be the one they send to go see in person. Both himself and Deuce are confident that they'll know you when they see you without much work. Ace also has this disarming affinity where if he offered to buy you a coffee, it would just come off as a chill guy shooting his shot at a spontaneous date

Deuce Spade

Residence: Cardiff, Wales

Lives together with Ace in the one bedroom apartment mentioned prior. He's the one who tries to keep some semblance of order in the house. His space is generally clean but he gets super annoyed when Ace makes trips to the kitchen in the middle of the night. He's definetly the more responsible one of the two and the favorite if his neighbors had to choose. Deuce just wants some privacy and to get a full night's sleep, but knows that he couldn't afford a place of his own. He's the one who chose Cardiff on a whim, but ends up liking that they're close to the coast.

Occupation: Firefighter also in training

If coming to your world did one thing for Deuce, it was knock him on his ass in a good way. At NRC it was his focus to do well in school and make something of himself. He was doing it for his mom, but here he had to work with what he had to succeed. He gave university a shot for a semester before deciding that it wasn't getting him anywhere. Then he saw that dangers on earth couldn't be fought with magic, and was amazed at how firefighters, medical staff, etc. work to help others. All was history from that moment, and now Deuce is playing to his strengths AND doing something meaningful.

Like Ace, Deuce is loved by many people. He is the polite young man that all the grandmas bake sweets for in return for him carrying their groceries. He has amazing manners, and this pure aura that makes people want to help him. He's the guy you call when you need help during a move, or when you want someone to keep you company while building ikea furniture. He has such a genuine interest in people's stories, and often comes home with leftovers because he was invited to chat with the family next door over dinner.

He talks a lot about his mom and about the person he's in search for. He doesn't go in detail about you aside that you were friends and he moved here so you can be together. It's always a tear-jerker that pulls at people's heart-strings. He just loves and misses his mom so much, and he wants to see you more than anything. So touching~

Deuce is definetly a sports and social gathering kind of guy. In the living room there are many picture of events he's volunteered at and prizes from contests that he's entered. Like Ace, he wants to travel your world. He wants to go to all the famous nature spots and climb the highest mountains. He's also a gym jock. If he's not volunteering, at work, or socializing then he's at the gym

He's bought into the department-store aesthetic 100%. It's sweatpants, mesh shorts, dorky t-shirts, and too many different sneakers to keep track of. He actually let his hair grow out after coming to your world and now we have man-bun Deuce.

Trey Clover

Residence: Cambridge, England

The one who suggested splitting up in the first place. He wants in-and-out of your world as soon as possible (at least at first), and is by far the most lowkey of his the Heartslabyul gang.

Lives with Riddle in an apartment above his workplace. It's simple, really. He saw a 'help wanted' sign in the window of a family-own bakery. Strolled in, asked for an application, and then did a test run to show them his skills. He played a bit dirty and used his magic to cater to the owner's tastes but got the job instantly. The shop was run by an old couple that was conveniently looking to rent out the loft above their shop, and Trey jumped on it. Now he lives quietly and lets the others do the dirty work as he does what he knows best.

He lets Riddle take over the entire apartment aside from his bedroom. That he keeps very simple, and it's a complete contrast from the rest of the apartment. It has neutral whites with tinges of lemon yellow and lavender purple here and there. A bed, dresser, desk, and honestly it's so orderly that you wouldn't know someone was living inside. He often invites the bakery owners for tea and they're in awe of what the duo have done with the place. Trey and Riddle are the perfect tenants for any landlord to have.

He's by far the best at blending in with the common folk. Like Riddle, he does dress a bit more formally than the rest of his friends. He likes to stick to loafers, tan pants, and a button down shirt. Occasionally he'll toss in a sweater or a blazer to spice things up. However, one look at him and you'll think 'that's someone with their life together alright'

Occupation: Baker, if it isn't obvious by now.

As stated before, Trey sticks to what he's good at. He saw an opportunity and he swooped in. No doubts or questioning. The job was his before he knew it and he loves the quaint life he's been living on earth

Trey is also beloved by all in his neighborhood. Riddle is seen as someone to be highly respected and is slightly intimidating to the common man. Trey though? He's the cute baker boy that recently moved in and will happily chat about the weather with you over tea. He's mischievous and reads the atmosphere well. He's got a level head, and is very good at getting people to spill gossip. He balances out Riddle's imposing aura, making the two a good conversation topic for any passerby.

He uses this attentiveness to his advantage. If Riddle's the one snooping around the government and politics, then Trey is the extra eye and ear he needs to catch missed information. when Riddle gets home from work and Trey closes up shop, the two are good at working together to combine their formal knowledge with city gossip to find clues.

Trey and Riddle's place is where Heartslabyul meetings take place. It wasn't hard for Trey to convince the shop owners to lend him the lower level for 'family gatherings' on days the shop was closed.

On earth, Trey loves the freedom he has. The planet has it's own issues yes, but there's something about a world without magic that is utterly calming to him. No spells, no competition, no worry of overblot, etc. He just gets to live the simple life that he has always wanted, and a part of him wants to stay once he's found you. He likes learning the world's history, exploring different cultures, and spending his time outside.

Cater Diamond

Residence: Aberdeen, Scotland

Now if anyone is going to last by themselves, it is Cater.

Riddle was initially supposed to go to Scotland alone but everyone knows that he needs someone for emotional support. Cater offered himself to the wolves in his stead.

Cater owns a studio somewhere around Aberdeen. It's confusing because while he owns it, he is never there. No one has ever visited his house or been invited over once. His landlord doesn't have to worry about paparazzi or anything because no one ever sees him enter or leave.

Just for an idea though, it is decorated very retro-chic. He's got everything you can imagine from the 70s and 80s. The style just really resonated with him, y'know? All the bright colors and fun textures. He loves shag rugs, lava lamps, chalk-painted walls, etc. He definetly has a water bed and incense burners. I think he would have a cat if he was home to care for it.

Occupation: Influencer

C'mon, this is to be expected. It's why he's never home! He's a travel influencer that runs a pretty well-known blog and many other media pages. There isn't a day he doesn't live stream his latest adventure and is the easiest to get a hold of out of everyone.

There isn't a single person that doesn't know of Cater Diamond. Need I say more about his social life?

Despite it all, he's still off by himself and he always makes sure to video chat everyone every day. Not to get too deep...but while he's loved he definetly has that outsider complex. Out of everyone, he is the one who is excited to go home the most. He's thriving but there is no place like home.

Just like Deuce, he tells people about you. He's had his friends appear as guests in his videos/streams (imagine the crowd when Riddle of all people appeared lol), but the one person they've never seen is Cater's supposed 'special person'. He's hoping by some miracle that one of his videos will reach you, and that you'll know it's your Cater. I mean, you must have noticed the missing characters in your game, right? Connect the dots hunny.

Cater's known for his exploration with fashion and hobbies. He's tried everything from gothic lolita to cottage core. The man flips like a light switch on the daily. One thing that's constant though is the color red. It reminds him of his roots, so he always has a splash of red or a hidden rose in his outfits.

I mentioned a travel blog, right? Well mixed in there he writes about new hobbies or discoveries he makes along the way. Imagine the first time he saw a rubix cube? He streamed himself trying to solve it and it's one of his most quoted moments. No one could believe that he had never seen one until that moment.

[racefortheironthrone]

Please innumerate for us the specialized problems of the library sciences.

Let me start with the caveat that my information is based on my experiences at the National Archives more than a decade ago, and policy has definitely changed on this front as we can see from this graph of recent digitization - apparently NARA wants to get to 85% digitization by 2026. (Even still, I'd note that the records of the WPA are <0.001% digitized.)

However, back when I was doing the research that would eventually become my first book, I remember being at the National Archives II building in College Park, Maryland (Go Terps!) and getting really frustrated that all the records of the WPA were only available in their original physical form and that all the guides and indexes were also in paper only and were all from the 1970s, and I asked the archivist why the hell the National Archives hadn't been digitized already.

This is what they told me: if it's handled correctly and stored in the right environmental circumstances, paper can last a thousand years. Carbon copies can last even longer, if they don't rip. (Seriously, the bastard things are like onion skins, they'll split if you look at them funny.) Microfilm is slightly more technologically advanced than paper, but it only lasts 500 years in the right conditions.

We've only had computers en masse since the 1980s, and already there's a huge amount of records (especially from the early years) that we don't have any more, because the hard drives got re-formatted due to higher costs of storage space back in the day, or because old computers got thrown out when they were replaced by newer models and the hard drives are all rotting in landfills somewhere, or because backwards compatibility broke down and we just can't read those file types on our modern computers, or because the actual data got corrupted on the disc, or because some legacy company is asserting copyright against a video game museum, or because some political hack and/or president of the United States decided to violate the Presidential Records Act.

While we thought that the internet would cause an explosion of written records from ordinary people on the scale of the advent of mass literacy, there are vast swathes of the early internet that simply do not exist any more because the servers got switched off when Geocities et al. folded in the dot-com bubble burst or when everyone migrated to Web 2.0, and the Internet Archive tries its best (bless its heart, affectionately) but it can't be everywhere and save everything.

As a result, the archivist told me, digitization is a fraught question: what file format do we use? How do we know that file format will still be compatible and backwards-compatible in 50 years? 100? Longer? Do we keep everything locally or store it on the cloud, and how do we ensure that the storage mechanisms won't fail if there's a blackout or a virus or whatever? Do we digitize everything now, or do we wait until optical character recognition improves enough to the point where digitized records can be searched for words and phrases? Etc.

Keep in mind, I am a public policy historian who studies the 20th century U.S - I work primarily with the official records and the central archives of the richest government in the world. From a library sciences perspectives, this is kind of an ideal scenario, and it's still kind of fucked up. (Let me tell you, the rage and grief I felt when I learned that most of the General File of the Public Works Administration was thrown away by the National fucking Archives and Records Administration in the mid-1950s because they were running out of shelf space in the D.C location and didn't think these records were important...)

Now imagine what it's like at a local historical society or a small liberal arts college, or the national museum of a developing nation for that matter, who do not have the resources for the kind of grand digitization project that NARA started doing five years ago. Think of the sheer scale of historical records that sleep, unseen and untouched perhaps for decades and perhaps for ever, in little cubbyholes all across the world. Among professionals, historical records are measured in linear and cubic feet - think about that for a second, how many pages of paper there are in a foot when you stack them up, and how many hundreds and thousands and millions of feet there are across the face of the world. Think of all the millions of feet of pieces of paper that have been lost to us because of fire or rot or war or time itself.

This is why Peter Turchin is a quack. Historical records are not a standardized little database for social scientists to plug their fucking spreadsheets into; historians don't play that kind of bullshit t-ball, with all our data neatly packaged and handed to us on a silver platter. Our profession is not a social science, it's a goddamn treasure hunt through boxes that were never catalogued or categorized (or that were re-catalogued so many times no one remembers how they were put together in the first place) to find writing that no one has read since the authors died. All of us know that our work, our understanding, will always be partial and limited, because memory is infinitely fragile and the very idea of historical preservation is a mad existential defiance of entropy itself. These records are real, they are fragile - to hell with the Library of Alexandria, remember the National Museum of Brazil? - and they are all that is left to us of the dead.

[skittlewaffle]

Ġ̸̨̞̟̬̤̤̺̦̆̏̀̐̾̀̿ͅE̷̛̝̻̫̫̫͆̂͆́͋͌T̴̨̜̩̲̜̣̺̜͓̖̫̱̔ͅ ̵̩̤̥͕͗̈́̍̈́̊̄̂̾̊͋̕B̸̡̛̘̺̬͖̘͙̝̘̖͖͕̣̟̅̀̊̉̌͜Ą̴̞̤͈̮͔͉̳̦̞̱͓̞͈̠̂͒̊͛̏̀͋̃͒̈́͒̈́͝C̸̟͕̭͎͖͂̎̀̃̃̈́͛͝K̸̢͌̉̒́̊̋͌̀̑̆̔̚̚ ̶͕̝̯̲̩͍͓̞̱̪̈́̈̔̓͑͝H̴͍̞̬̜́͒̄͑̈̽̋͒̓͋͊̄̽E̴̛̛̱̪͔̘̻͚̝͖͚̲̝̭̔̊͜ͅͅR̶̮͔͈̣̎̎͑͛̀̂̐͛͆͠ͅE̵̩͙̺̼̮̦͖̠̎̓͛̍̕ͅ!!

… :) Hi. My friend said I should make an animatronic OC into a character you would see in the Security Breach Ruin DLC. boy did I have fun forcing myself to figure out Rain’s internal mechanisms 😵‍💫 (more info below the cut :)) But genuinely I absolutely LOVE rendering; I’ve never actually been more detailed in a piece like this tho. I’m improving! :D

Little timelapse for you too, since I decided to test out the feature on CSP :V

This is what Rain originally looked like! (Post here)

Internal Mechanisms

There are two wheels beneath her dress on either side of her where her “shoulders” would be from which wires are dispensed, creating “hands” that are useful for grabbing things that are hard to reach. She was designed to only let out wires individually; however, in her Ruined form, the central cylinder containing the wires that feed into her spools has unscrewed from the bottom and burst through the front panel, allowing more wires to spill out. I was going to have some of the cables frayed in some places, causing an electric hazard, but I was too lazy to draw something like that.

Her head is intentionally split into three pieces for venting out heated systems. A small rectangular shape can be seen along the edge of the unhinged piece; this is where the plates latch and unlatch. You can hear them clicking, locking and unlocking, when Rain has to think really hard. She may be “right as rain” when doing her job, but in interactions outside of childcare, she has proven to be pretty inept, overthinking and overheating easily. You may notice how her hair is burnt in a line where her face is split. Her processors, memory, local data, cooling fans, battery, and the like are built strategically along the inside of her head, while giving room for some extra long-reaching wires to be stored inside behind the framing for her LED eyes.

In her Ruined form, Rain’s legs are missing. Normally, her leg joints sticked out from pathways along her central cylinder. One around the circumference allowed her to spin her body while keeping her feet in place, while two along the sides allowed her to store her legs away (think of Eve from Wall-E), normally to enter rest mode, though she also uses it while active to sit down. Her dress touches the ground and gives her the appearance of an adorable chess piece.

[nostalgebraist]

hi there! In a recent post (April 26) , Frank mentioned a molecule, “methylhexahydrocannabinol”, that is similar in name to a real molecule (C(11)-methyl-hexahydrocannabinol), but which by itself doesn’t have enough info to specify a particular chemical structure, which is probably why I can’t find any google results for without the carbon number prefix and the dashes. So my question is: can Frank make new words on her own? Is it possible that she’s picked up how chemists tend to concatenate prefixes into new words, and has done so imperfectly here? Or is more likely that this exact word appeared somewhere in her training data and just isn’t google-searchable? Thanks and have a great day!

Yes, Frank can make up new words on her own.

Important context: in most large language models, including the one that Frank uses, text is represented as a sequence of "tokens." Tokens are not exactly words, nor are they individual letters/characters.

Here's how I described it in a post from a while ago, referring to the tokenizer used in GPT-2:

As it happens, “ Hawkass” is two GPT-2 tokens, “ Hawk”  and “ass.” Many common words are one GPT-2 token, but rare words are often more than one token, and made-up words are always more than one token. GPT-2′s vocabulary has 50,257 “slots” in it.  There are way more than 50,257 words in English, so rarer words can’t get their own slots.  Instead, they’re built out of slots containing sub-word units: morphemes, common groups of 2 or 3 letters, or (in places where all else fails) individual letters one at a time. (The vocabulary also has the building blocks necessary to express the UTF-8 for any Unicode code point, so it can also express any emoji, non-English writing in one of >100 scripts, etc., generally as sequences of individual bytes.  Not that GPT-2 has any idea what this stuff means, most of the time.)

Frank is using a different tokenizer now, but the principle is the same.

Common words are usually 1 token, but uncommon words get split up into multiple tokens -- often, but not always, at morphological boundaries.

Long uncommon words, like these chemical names, are long strings of tokens. This happens for both real words and unreal ones.

In Frank's current tokenizer, "methylhexahydrocannabinol" gets broken up as:

['m', 'eth', 'yl', 'hex', 'ah', 'yd', 'roc', 'ann', 'ab', 'in', 'ol']

That's a made-up name, but "hexahydrocannabinol" is a real chemical. It gets broken up like this -- just the suffix of the previous list:

['hex', 'ah', 'yd', 'roc', 'ann', 'ab', 'in', 'ol']

So it's probable that Frank saw "hexahydrocannabinol" in training, and also saw lots of chemical names prefixed with "methyl" (i.e. with ['m', 'eth', 'yl']). And she's putting the two together here.

Or, alternatively, she might have seen something like "C(11)methylhexahydrocannabinol," without the dashes, leading her to reproduce it with the "C(11)" part omitted.

But even if she never saw anything close to these names, she might have been able to assemble something like them, by recombining units she's seen elsewhere like "hexa-" and "hyrdo-".

(Note, though, how the tokenizer doesn't split those prefixes cleanly at morphological boundaries. So the model has to reason about them them in a manner that feels unnatural to us.)

[blacktabbygames]

For Scarlet Hollow have you made any changes to the story based on the response of your fanbase towards one character or another? Have you been surprised by any strong responses to certain characters?

We have a hard rule about not making any major changes to the story in response to the community.

The main way we interact with fan theories or community discussions of characters is to see how far interpretations drift from our initial intent, and then we'll course correct to make things more openly in-line with that intent.

We also strive to have competitive splits on important decisions in the game, and will sometimes make edits to the script if we feel a decision is too lopsided one way or another.

Spoiler examples under the cut.

When Episode 1 released, a lot of people were confused by Stella's actions and reactions towards the end of the episode, generally not realizing that she's written to be an aloof person who intensely and immediately buries her trauma. We wanted her behavior to raise questions, but there are challenges, especially with interactive media, with writing something so that people question the character rather than the portrayal. Her content in that episode's gone through quite a few revisions, with the most recent being an addition we made in January of this year that depicts the ride back to town.

In the end of Episode 3, we had Sybil shut down speculative conversation following the ghost hunt, mostly because we find that sort of exposition-heavy conversation boring both to write and play. This led to parts of the fandom having a serious bone to pick with her, and it definitely influenced parts of our approach to Episode 4, even if it didn't change the general structure of that content.

In terms of major decisions, the two most imbalanced decisions were in Episode 1 (Duke vs Gretchen, ESPECIALLY after we added Talk to Animals) and Episode 2 (Leave the mines vs go after Becka and Alexis) We did a few iterations of edits to try and balance that out, including more graphically depicting Rosalina's injury.

One of the lessons we learned from Episode 3's survey was that whatever the player is last told by an authority figure heavily influences the decision they make. So in the library, there's about 45-55 split between leaving the ghost in the library and somebody making a sacrifice (excluding Book Smart). But if you cut that data based on whether you spent the haunting with Wayne (who tells you leave the ghost) and Tabitha (Sybil tells her to make the sacrifice), it switches into a 70-30 split in both cases, favoring either what Wayne or Sybil tells the player to do.

We eventually applied that information to the Episodes 1 + 2 decisions. Originally in Episode 1, narration about Gretchen struggling against her harness was the last information you received before making the choice, and in Episode 2, it was Rosalina pleading with you to rescue her friends.

We changed those such that in Episode 1, it's now Duke begging you to get the flashlight because the creature is "getting closer" and in Episode 2, it's now in this order depending on what's available: 1. Tabitha stressing that this isn't a movie, and if you don't leave, you're going to get yourselves killed.

2. One of your traits emphasizing the danger of the coming collapse.

3. Narration emphasizing the danger of the coming collapse.

While they're still lopsided decisions, in the case of Episode 1, this small change shifted things from 20% of players saving duke and 80% saving gretchen to 30% of players saving duke and 70% saving gretchen (excluding powerful build)

In Episode 2 this shifted things from 15% leaving with Rosalina to 20% leaving with Rosalina.

[phantomposting]

Honestly been thinking about making a lil au but also I kinda don't trust myself to write the characters correctly. So I'm gonna instead share my ideas here :D if anyone likes them feel free to use them! Just let me know so I can see your awesome work.

This au is a DP x DC au I've been plotting out an entire plot line for this for months now. It's another Batfam oriented one cause I'm absolutely obsessed with this dynamic

Also warning this is super angsty this contains implied Experimentation/Torture, Dissection, and some major character death

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

It starts with Jason getting discovered by the GIW for having an ectosignature courtesy of the Lazarus pit. Jason ends up getting kidnapped and Batman catches onto this development. Batman has already failed Jason in the worst possible way and no matter what he's not gonna let there be a repeat of it. Batman is on the case! He's going to hunt down whoever kidnapped Jason and save his son no matter what! Jason wakes up in a glass cell where he notices a small thin kid with white hair sitting hugging his knees in the corner of a cell next to Jason's. The kid doesn't look to be doing so hot which ticks Jason off. Soon the two get acquainted and bond over the whole getting kidnapped and experimented on thing. Phantom is managing to keep his secret from the GIW so he's a bit worse for ware especially since the poor kid is starving cause what ghosts need to eat right? Jason is only in there for a week but he and this kid who calls himself Phantom have absolutely bonded and he would go to hell and back for him. Near the end of the week though Jason overhears the GIW scientists talking about Phantom (who has been there longer than he has) they say that Phantom isn't looking too good and that they expect him to soon destabilize. The Scientist plan to get in one last bit of data while they still can which means its off to the dissection table for Phantom. This absolutely ticks Jason off and this guy is absolutely determined to do whatever he can to stop this. Though he isn't successful. However this is the same day Batman manages to find the GIW hideout and raid it with Robin, Red Robin, and Nightwing. They split up to cover more ground. Phantom is the first to be discovered by Red Robin and Nightwing in one of the labs. Phantom is awake enough to manage guiding the two to Jason and they all proceed to break out. Promptly after being free of the GIW Phantom accidentally reveals his secret to the bats by passing out and reverting back to human. They rush to get the kid help opting to take him to Alfred since the kid is clearly some meta with lots of inhuman things going on and absolutely cannot be discovered or else he risks ending up with the GIW again. After some recovery time it's discovered that Danny is a halfa and his parents were killed in an accident (which involved the GIW and actually is what landed him in the facility). Jason has a sit-down with Bruce and asks the guy to please take the poor kid in and help him. Jason has an internal struggle wanting to take the kid in himself but not feeling like he himself is the best option. Bruce can tell Jason cares a lot about the kid and though he hasn't known the meta long and has a strict no metas rule (in which he has absolutely already broken) he decides to agree to take the kid in. Someone needs to protect the poor kid from their messed up government (in which he is totally gonna have to talk to the Justice League about this one) and it might as well be him. And well by the end of everything Danny ends up with a caring family who wants nothing more than to help him and keep him safe.

Hope you guys enjoy my little rant! I've had a few more ideas but for now I'll live it off on this lil rant/prompt

[autismswagsummit]

howmany tf2 characters have ppl submitted. like all of those guys reek of autism (positive) and i anticipate the rest of the fandom has probably submitted a good few... particularly anticipate soldier, pyro, and sniper

Your anticipations are (mostly) correct! There are a total of 7 tf2 nominations, split between Soldier, Pyro, Sniper, Medic, and Heavy. Disclaimer that I have never interacted with tf2 at all before, so I have no clue if I'm adressing these characters correctly, but there's the data!

[fujowebdev]

Recently we ran a survey to solve one of the most important questions in modern development:

Which programming tool is the most breedable?

Friends, the public has spoken! Follow us down a rabbit hole of numbers and statistics to solve this mystery together, and don't forget to back us on Kickstarter!

As they say, "Dammit, Jim! I'm a programmer, not a statistician!"

Please take this analysis with a huge grain of salt. Non-Tumblr polls were split between Localhost and Browserland due to platform limitations.

Our data is not statistically significant, nor are we any good at statistics. Still, you’ll find lots of fun tidbits!

Find the original poll on Tumblr here.

First of all, the winners:

Twitter: Terminal

Tumblr: GitHub

Mastodon: Git

Congratulations to their designers @brokemycrown (Git, GitHub) and @mappapapa (Terminal) for bottoming the competition. 😏

Looking at the winners, we can already tell results differ across platforms. But that doesn't even begin to cover it!

Both Git and GitHub, who earned 1st place on one platform, rank LAST on another one! And Terminal is consistently at the bottom when not winning.

Full results���

A shout out to CSS for being ranked 4/5th place on every single platform. We have seen some individuals be very passionate about his breedability, but the numbers don't lie: CSS has officially been deemed a top!

(Only possible explanation, clearly.)

Funnily enough, counting everyone's appearances in the top 3 paints yet another picture:

CSS (our top) never appears, Terminal appears once, and *everyone else* appears exactly twice.

ARIA and HTML fans, it's vindication time!

Speaking of vindication, here's another fun tidbit: if you sum the ranking of each character on each platform (so lower total = higher ranking), HTML performed exactly as good as Git, and passed both Github and Terminal in ranking!

Now, if you rank by total votes, it’s totally different again. While Git and GitHub maintain their coveted top spots, HTML ranks third, CSS fourth, and Terminal fifth.

This is mostly due to Tumblr having the most responses BY FAR. Thank you to @nianeyna for blazing the post! 💖

Still, if you sum the percentages accrued on each platform*, this ranking remains unchanged!

* Does it make sense to do that? We don't know! It doesn't matter! It's fun!

Behold, a graph! A generous helper donated us this super professional "Non-metric multidimensional scaling" graph to help us further make sense of the data. In short: the closer a tool is to a platform, the more their users judge them breedable!

And lastly, the winner of the write-ins is...

🥁🥁🥁

...PHP!

Full disclosure: PHP was only shouted out two times. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Other honorable mentions: javascript and AJAX.

...and that’s all for today! In conclusion, we can say Twitter is full of grandpafuckers, Mastodon really hates GitHub (the spawn of capitalism), and Tumblr is a fine appreciator of both catboys and tentacles!

Support our Kickstarter here!