#technically they still mod that blog

[daily-grian]

he sit (photo by yours truly)

Mod Owl actually used to mod for a blog entirely dedicated to making a specific Homestuck character sit everywhere so this was a throwback, thank you.

[clair-de-soleil]

(utterly deranged) what if i started over and tried a comic format instead. much to think about

[friskxsansship]

Every once in a while I go through this blog's history and delete a ton of posts, BECAUSE ONE OF THE LAST OWNERS OF THIS BLOG JUST USED IT as a PERSONAL BLOG?

Literally one of the posts was the old mod showing a picture of their mom as a kid shouting "MY MOM AS A KID WTF THATS SO WEIRD"

I have no idea how this blog got 1500 followers when it was barely on topic to frans AT ALL. 2016 was just different times I guess!

[sometimes-banette]

Soft Reboot

Decided to do a soft reboot and essentially redraw/lead up to the previously drawn pages back from 2018, and hopefully it'll have much better pacing 😭✌

So!! Essentially! The previous pages? Not canon and will be disregarded kinda! The characters/events will technically still happen, but with a lot more thought put into them, so it isn't as rushed jhdjkf

Old pages and everything else will stay up for preservation’s sake, and to just see how much I have improved over the years XD

Also!! Scheduling wise!! I'm not going to give myself a hard schedule, as it'll only stress me out, so this blog will stay true to the “sometimes” part of it! XD

I'll be accepting asks as soon as I post the official “first” post, which is already finished! :D

i mean the askbox is technically open now, but yknow XD

[real-justice-for-beforus]

i'm ALSO back here! i got a NEW HUSKTOP that was TOTALLY NOT STOLEN

[midoribai]

This aint eben a public askblov anymore

nope. this is like. a rp blog at this point

[cripplecharacters]

Small Announcement

[Large text: Small Announcement]

Hi, mod Sasza here!

I have decided to stop taking questions about characters with facial differences experiencing disfiguremisia. This is mostly for my own mental health, as well as just the fact that I don't have much more to say about this topic for now. I believe that the resources that can be found on the blog are plenty.

The same goes for rubber-stamp questions that ask some combination of;

"my character has a facial difference and wears a mask that's not technically a mask, is this fine?"

"is it okay if my character wears a mask for this extremely specific and convoluted reason?"

"my character with facial difference is evil but XYZ, is it okay?"

"i want my antagonist to have a facial difference for totally legit reasons, is this a problem?"

I have simply said everything that I could about these, there's nothing left in me. Almost all of these questions have already been answered somewhere in the #face difference tag.

Some asks that relate to these have been answered and are waiting in the queue, so there's a chance that your ask will be answered if it was sent before this.

All other questions about facial differences are still fine to send.

Thank you for understanding,

mod Sasza

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for removing “minor” from my bio?

there’s been a lot of posts about this, wondering about my situation. so i turned 16 fairly recently. this does make me still a minor, but the age of consent in my country is 16, so i don’t feel like i’m being sneaky/misbehaving/a freak (lol) when i’m lurking in nsfw stuff anymore.

i still don’t interact with it (i’m lurking, no liking, reblogging etc) so there’s no connection at all to my blog. i probably wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that anyway, since most ones (justifiably) require an age in your bio which i just have not put. i understand why blogs require this, but i don’t think i’m putting anyone in danger because

a) not interacting, so again there’s no link to my blog

b) according to the posts this is relatively common? there would be cases about it all the time otherwise

anyway, a lot of blogs that had “minors dni” in their bio followed me when i still had minor in my bio (technically it was actually in my pinned, but again not hard to find). i don’t think they were being malicious, just the nature of the circles i’m in on tumblr means there’ll be a lot of kinky people (think d&d) and they just didn’t check.

i don’t think it’s my responsibility to block them, they’re breaking their own DNI, not me, and not everyone goes through their new followers blogs.

however now with the minor part gone, they won’t know if i break their dni or not.

i’m not planning to and haven’t interacted with any primarily nsfw blogs anyway (some of my friends do “hornypost” and i just ignore it) because to be completely honest doing anything nsfw on my main is kinda a turn off lol.

lurking feels safer and more comfortable so i think i’ll stick with that.

but yeah, i’m worried people won’t be able to uphold their boundaries when interacting with me directly anymore, but i also feel like i’m maybe not obligated to disclose that? i get id be in the wrong if i was Lying about my age to get into nsfw spaces, but i’m not doing that.

i don’t feel comfortable disclosing my age on my blog anyway, minor was a blanket term i was comfortable with to get nsfw blogs to stay away but i feel like i’m in a weird in between space atm (i know. i know im still a minor. but i’m in an adjusting period and i’m trying to get comfortable with the idea of being an adult in two years.)

a lot of this info is probably irrelevant, but maybe i am an asshole for other reasons, so. mod if this gets deleted for being too long/weird/rambley i understand 👍

What are these acronyms?

[pudding-parade]

I guess we can consider this something of a mini world overview, which is something I want to get back into doing one of these days.

This is Qornenthus, an alien world by @risastorm. So far as I can tell, it's only available on their Exchange account, not on their Tumblr blog, for whatever reason. It's a world that I've had on my radar for a long time, wanting to create an alien society on it. So, I've decided to have a stab at it, to create a homeworld for these guys, whom I'm considering to be sort of mostly-post-technology. Not in a disastrous/apocalyptic way but rather as a society that mutually agreed to screw it all and "return to monke" -- Or in their case, "return to archosaur-ish" -- while still retaining some technology and such.

Anyway, I haven't really done any kind of "technical" building in Sims games since my early, pre-sharing-on-the-internet days of playing TS2 back in the mid-aughts, mostly because I generally don't enjoy playing the resulting kind of lots. They tend to be more complex and multi-level than I like to play. But for some reason, I've been itching to do some more "technical" building, and want to build something here. It will involve large lots spanning peaks, valleys, and bodies of water, with some elevated architecture, maybe some treehouses, so it's going to involve some terraforming, both temporary and permanent, if I can get it to work like I want at all. So before I tear things up, I thought I'd try out some lighting mods and take some "before" pics, with no Reshade or any image editing.

The lighting I landed on is Brntwaffles's Dystopian lighting, which is what's shown in the pictures on this post, though I edited the mod to make the moon unnecessarily enormous. It has the "feel" I want for these aliens and, as a bonus, it makes the water look suitably swampy, though I'll be adding fog emitters and more plants to make it more so. Then I'll need a suitable rainy/stormy alien Tempest preset. Oh! I should also mention that I have defaults for the game's "fantasy" trees, to make them a bit less fantasy-looking. For some reason, it lops off the heads of the mushroom trees; I can't remember if that's what it's supposed to do. LOL

Anyway, here are some more pictures because I took a lot of them at various times of day and in various conditions…

I'm calling this an "overview," but really there's not a lot to say about the world. It's extremely cool-looking, if you like alien-swamp sorts of environments, as you can see in the pics. But, it has no roads, no lots, and no flat building areas at all, anywhere, so if you want to use it, you have to place lots in Edit Town. Lots will place just about anywhere and, as far I saw, sims can route pretty much everywhere, too. Once you get lots placed, you'll need to do some more technical building for yourself because downloaded pre-built lots aren't going to fly here.

The world does have lots of spawners, especially insect and rock ones, except that it has no fish spawners at all, which is kind of funny given the amount of water. It doesn't have spawners from Island Paradise or Into the Future, either, but everything else is there. I'm not really sure what EPs it's going to need, and anything it's going to need is going to be vegetation-related because there's literally nothing else here. I do know that those bamboo trees come with World Adventures, and I'm pretty sure the rainbow eucalyptus trees come with Pets and the banana trees and alocasia come with Island Paradise. So there's that.

And that's about all there is to say, really. The rest, as they say, is silence pictures.

Oh! The one and only thing that I'm not fond of in the world is that it has a lot of rainbow spawners. And by "a lot" I mean a riotously excessive amount.

That's not even all of them. Thankfully, they aren't there all the time.

So yeah! Cool world. I'm looking forward to doing some work on it. If I'm at all successful at doing what I want to do with it, I will, of course, share pics.

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Unfortunate mod update: There's a high probability that I will have to take a three to four week break starting this friday due to technical issues on my side (aka my laptop is breaking down and I'm hoping to get a new affordable one during my universities laptop sale, but that only starts in three weeks). We still have around 200 polls to go (10 still in queue), so I will be back and I really enjoy running this blog and seeing all your votes & replies. I might be able to borrow another laptop sometimes to queue some new polls here and there, but I can't promise the same frequency of polls as right now.

[daddecember]

DadDecember 2023 Event Announcement

Welcome to DadDecember 2023!

While this is technically our second year running, we’ve changed purposes a little bit from last year. Last year we were very centric on MHA with DFODecember but this year we are instead multifandom to welcome in everyone!

So, with no further ado, everyone who participated last year, welcome back! To everyone joining this year, welcome in! We cannot wait to see what you create.

Please make sure to read this post carefully, as many questions have been answered here already. We have also answered all the questions that were submitted through our anon voting form already. If you don’t find what you are looking for there, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here. The mod team will get back to you as soon as possible.

This year’s AO3 Collection → HERE

Before we get more into the rules, I’d like to give a special thanks to everyone who submitted a prompt through our discord server back in September and all 85 of you who voted on the prompts these past few weeks. Event Info & Rules

DadDecember is an annual prompt month featuring platonic father and child relationships. We have a collection of prompts for each day meant to inspire works to be created.

*Due to the nature of this event being platonic, do not submit father/child incestual content. That is not the point of this event. This event is strictly platonic. Thank you for understanding.

There are 62 prompts this year with 10 alternative prompts. Each day has two prompts, one situational/trope prompt and one dialogue prompt. You do not need to use both. While we do encourage you to mix and match prompts with different days to fit your specific WIP, we do ask that you tag the prompt you used, not just the day.

This is a prompt month meant to inspire works, so please don’t take any of the prompts too seriously! If you want to get silly with it or really angsty, that’s up to you! How much of the prompt you use and how you use it is all up to you! If you think it fits the prompt, then it does. There is no gatekeeping in DadDecember.

It’s up to the creator how much they want to produce or what media form they want to create in! Anything and everything counts (and if you’re really unsure, you can always ask!). The idea of the event is to create, no matter in the manner you do so. 

As far as “how much do I need to do in order for it to count?” – Well, that’s up to you! All participants, regardless of how many works they put out, will be recognized for their efforts! A google form will be sent out after December ends in which you will be able to say how many works you completed. Works do not need to be published in any way shape or form to count. Participants will be ranked by completion in a tumblr post after the form closes and a custom role will be available for completionists in our discord server.

Should you wish to upload some of your DadDec content to Tumblr, use these tags:

Required tags:

#daddecember 

#daddecember2023

#sfw or #nsfw

Optional Tags (but appreciated if used)

#DadDec No.1, #DadDec No.2, #DadDec No.3, ect.

#fandom or #OC, … (ironman, originalcontent, oc …)

#teeth, #gore tw, #etc …..(trigger warnings and content warnings. Add “tw” or “cw” AFTER the trigger/content warning )

For the sfw/nsfw tag, please use your best judgment. A Mature or Explicit rating (for anything except gore) should be marked as nsfw.

Reblogging Policies:

Due to the nature of the blog and for the safety of all fellow participants, nsfw posts will not be reblogged. - These works are still very much welcome in the AO3 collection.

You MUST tag @daddecember if you wish for your work to be reblogged

If you notice your work has not been reblogged (+ you tagged us) and it has been 2+ days, please send us an ask! It is likely that tumblr ate the notification.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Do I have to do all 31 days?

Participate as much as you would like! Whether you can get out one piece between now and the end of December or 45, we are here to encourage you all along the way!

Q. Can I post early/late?

Yes, you can post whenever you want. Due to time constraints, we may not reblog posts outside of December (pinging @Mod Addri via discord will always get you reblogged, though, so you can always try that ;) ).

Q. Can I combine DadDecember with other creation challenges?

Yes, as long as the other challenges allow it as well. Please reference their rules.

Q. Can I use prompts to write a new chapter for an existing fic?

Yes.

Q. Can I use a prompt multiple times?

Yes, but it only will count once for your total completion number (unless combined with a different unused prompt).

Q. Do I have to finish a fic I started/can I post WIP’s?

Yes, you can post WIPs. Snippets or other forms of WIPs are completely fine and will still count for completion! As long as you started it, feel free to count it!

Q. Is collaborating allowed?

Absolutely, we even encourage it! Collaborations can be an amazing way to get full completion status (especially if you’re competitive) without as much work! It would count towards being a completionist for both/all of you.

Q. Can I combine prompts? Is there a limit on how many?

No limit and combine as many as you’d like.

Q. Can I start working on the prompts before December?

Absolutely! That’s why we post the prompts a little over a month in advance. We recognise how difficult it can be creating for 31 days in “real time” so feel free to start creating early!

Q. Do I have to use your required tags?

If you want your work reblogged, yes.

Q. Does combining prompts count towards completion?

Yes

Note: This is a creation challenge, please don’t repost your old work under our tags (unless it’s been changed or edited for the event).

Best of luck,

Mod Addri

Also: A special thanks to @eliserael for creating the prompt images!

Written out Prompt List:

Day 1: Reverse Adoption | "I trusted you." Day 2: Snowed In | "I thought I would never see you again" Day 3: Snuggling | "Midnight fast food run?" Day 4: Forehead Kiss | "I'm going to kill you" Day 5: Little Things | "And what about rocks in snowballs?" Day 6: Prison Visit | "There's no gift better than revenge" Day 7: Blizzard | "I won--- WOAH!" Day 8: Holiday Reunion | "Is it supposed to tilt?" Day 9: Abandonment | "You've never wrapped a present before, have you?" Day 10: Emergency Room Trip | "Say goodbye now." Day 11: Patricide | "It's alright to be afraid" Day 12: Hero & Villain | "Oh, I thought presents weren't a thing." Day 13: Vault | "Close your eyes" Day 14: Tucking Into Bed | "Would you hold my hand?" Day 15: Late Nights | "Why didn't you tell me?" Day 16: Decorating Gone Wrong | "You remembered?" Day 17: Secret Santa | "I swear if you fail---" Day 18: Meet the Parents | "Don't do that again" Day 19: Parent-Teacher Conference | "Who are you?" Day 20: Warm Drink | "Is Santa actually real?" Day 21: Home Alone | "Breath in an--- breath out" Day 22: Overseas | "I don't think that's how snow angels work." Day 23: Adoption | "Did you put in sugar or salt?" Day 24: Glitter Overload | "You made bricks, not gingerbread" Day 25: Holidays | "My snow castle is bigger than yours!" Day 26: Disappearance | "Do you have any idea how much paper this thing took?" Day 27: Snow Angels | "Let me sing you a lullaby" Day 28: Burnout | "You hurt me, you know?" Day 29: Injury | "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this?" Day 30: Parentage Reveal | "I love you" Day 31: A New Year | "Would you rather…"

Alternative Prompts:

"I'm not a fan of pain"

Early Mornings

"It wasn't my fault"

In My Time of Need

"This is what I call a surprise!"

A Scooby-Doo Worthy Mystery

"Could I have some flowers?"

A League of Their Own

"Liar, liar, LIAR"

Family Murder

Discord Server + AO3 links for previewing:

[bltngames]

Mod Spotlight: Sonic Forces Overclocked

So this is an interesting little thing. For those of you not aware, Sonic Forces Overclocked (if I'm remembering right) was originally an attempt to "fix" Sonic Forces by expanding all of the levels and even completely rewriting the story. Obviously that's a big task, and the developers eventually realized that, scaling it down into what could best be described as an "Encore" of sorts -- an epilogue story where the villains make one last desperate final push, spread out across remixed versions of eight of the game's best levels. All told, it's about an hour worth of content.

Which is... actually totally fine. With eight (technically seven, but the final boss still counts) levels, there's plenty to see. Actually, pacing is probably Overclocked's strongest suit.

The original Sonic Forces was a pacing disaster; levels often felt like they were cut off at the knees, usually ending just as they were getting started. That's never true in Overclocked, as each level took me a good 3-5+ minutes to finish. Levels in Overclocked are also massively improved in other ways, too -- all that extra length is put to good use with Sonic's trademark alternate pathways, new enemies, and new interactive elements. Interactivity is up across the board. Sonic Forces loved to lock you into long, obnoxious scripted set pieces but Overclocked keeps you firmly in control most of the time.

Which brings me to something I'm not entirely sure is a complaint: difficulty balance. If you've been reading this blog long enough you know I can be pretty picky about difficulty balancing, and the way its handled in Overclocked is interesting.

Generally speaking, Overclocked treats the boost like "expert mode." It's there for people who know the levels already and want to push themselves to do it faster. At first it's fine -- boosting means you'll miss some alternate paths (shortcuts, most likely) but you can still bumble your way to the end of the level and coast by on C ranks. The further you get into the game, though, the more it starts to punish you for trying to go fast without knowing what you're doing. The safety nets that would catch you in earlier levels go away and Overclocked tells you to either slow down or get serious.

Which... I think I'm fine with? The thing it brings to mind for me is the two Sonic Rush games. My favorite one is Sonic Rush Adventure, because it's more accessible (read: easier to learn) than the first Sonic Rush. At the same time, the first Sonic Rush ends up being the more replayable of the two games, because it's a lot harder to master. The higher skill ceiling has kept me coming back to Sonic Rush long after it felt like I wrung all of the gameplay out of Sonic Rush Adventure.

So the idea of a Sonic game not only facilitating a higher skill ceiling but maybe even encouraging that? Not the worst way to balance things, as long as you keep the less skilled players in mind and communicate things correctly. Which, at least for me, I feel like Overclocked does. It started to kick my butt at certain points, but never in a way that felt too mean or unfair. And that's exactly the way it should be, though it should be noted I haven't exactly put myself through the hell of trying to go for higher ranks.

The one real complaint I have about the levels is something I've been observing for years, and unfortunately my fears came true: the lighting.

I've talked about my monitor in the past. I bought it somewhere between 2011 and 2012, so it's getting up there in years. I believe it was the first thing I ever purchased with my Youtube Earnings. It's starting to get kind of dim in its old age, and it's exacerbated by the fact I like to keep it on its "Theater Mode" setting, which gives me really good black levels (for an LCD) and amazing color. But it's an aging monitor, so those amazing black levels end up feeling a little dark, depending on the game. For those of you who caught my halloween streams this year, you know I ended up switching my monitor to its "Standard Mode" because it flattens the contrast and makes the darkest darks more visible. It could be argued that I should just leave the monitor in "Standard Mode" at this point, but I can't stand how Windows looks with it turned on.

To cut to the chase, I had to turn on "Standard Mode" for Sonic Forces Overclocked. In keeping with the theme of this being an encore, a lot of levels have wildly new lighting applied to them, with many levels set later in the evening or at night.

This blankets a lot of levels in a single color and lots of high-contrast shadows, which makes character, enemy, and hazard visibility incredibly difficult. In some levels with a lot of high-frequency noise (like Chemical Plant) it can be difficult to tell where your character even is on screen sometimes. In other levels, like the revamped Mystic Forest, the blue-on-purple-on-teal color scheme makes for a readability nightmare (as does the Death Egg Core level with Buddy, with a red character navigating a level full of orange fog, lit by pink and yellow lights).

When you're running through these stages at a couple hundred miles per hour, it all blurs together into something that's sometimes either too dark or too muddy to parse. At one point Sonic jokes that Infinite's aesthetic is "monochrome colors" but I'd rather have the levels be readable at a glance than hanging a lampshade on it. Things just need to be a little brighter, with a little more diversity of color to highlight the edges of roads and incoming hazards.

The story is... fine. It's not incredibly deep, and it doesn't need to be, so it works well enough. There's actually a surprising amount here, though, from mid-level chatter, map screen debriefings, and even full on cutscenes. Voice acting duties seem to be handled by Adrenaline Dubs, who I subscribed to last year for their surprisingly good dubs of Archie and IDW Sonic comics. They turn in some pretty high quality work here, often rivaling Sega's official dubbing efforts. My only real complaint is that Sonic's dialog is a little too referential; his call-outs during levels often reference other infamous lines from different Sonic games ("The whole city's on fire!", etc.), and sort of like how the game pokes fun at the monochromatic lighting, there's a line where Sonic even cringes at his own dialog a little bit. "We're admitting it's bad, but still doing it anyway" is not a healthy design ethos.

Earlier I mentioned cutscenes, and rather than the complex, high-budget cutscenes Sega had in the original Forces, Overclocked instead opts for motion comic videos. Artistic duties for these cutscenes are shared between a handful of 4 or 5 different artists, each bringing their own art style to their scenes. Generally, I think this is a good move. A little more consistency between artists would make it feel a bit more polished, but seeing the art style change between scenes has its own charms, too. It really drives home how much of Sonic Forces Overclocked was not only a team effort, but to some degree, a community effort. Many different hands touched this project, and it is better for it.

It's easy to focus on the negative things I said about Sonic Forces Overclocked here and think I came away not really liking it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think this is a genuinely impressive mod, with significantly better level design than the base game. It has a few problems, sure, but the overall product, when taken as a whole, is absolutely wonderful. This might be a bit incendiary and hyperbolic, but this close to the top of the list as the most fun I've had with a Sonic game this year. If you own Sonic Forces on Steam, it's not to be missed.

Download: https://gamebanana.com/mods/485051

[askspookyfox]

Wow, my artist, my guy, thanks for a whole lotta nothing for 3 years. It's a'ight. It's fine. Cool cool cool cool. Don't worry my sinners, I do still exist! Imma try to make plans to make a dramatic return and have an explaination for everything, but the timing just isn't quite right. Those of you who still watch this blog, I 'presh you. ✌️ Until then, I hope y'all been taking good care of October in my absence (and by 'good care', I mean annoy the heck outta her, heh).

Mod Mutt: Heeeeeyyy.... So... 'Bout droppin that ball that I mentioned in my last post... Three years, huh? My bad, y'all. 😅

As it was stated in that post, I had some serious financial priorities that I needed a second job that demanded a lot of my free time (thanks student loans, always a blast whenever you sap up a third of my paycheck every month 👍👍👍). As of 2023, even though some things are new in my life, I’m still technically in the same situation as I was back in 2020. It’s really hard to have the energy and motivation to do art in general and when I do, I usually couldn’t do more than a sketch before I tuck it away and don’t finish. I’m knee deep in a burn-out, stuck in a cycle of working two jobs and taking care of adulting shit on my weekends. 

Honestly, I’m tired of living this way. 

I feel like a shell of who I used to be, giving my life to work. I miss the creativity that comes with art and telling stories. I adore watching my best friend do their October’s blog, year after year, and every year, I get the inspiration from them but lack the time to jump back into it. Such as this year, it’s just too late as we only have a week left in the month. 

However, if you’ll have me, as a New Year’s resolution for next year, I want to refocus back to art and sharing Spook’s stories and help Night push October’s storyline along with Spook’s help. If this means having to work on Spook posts once a week every week leading up to October 2024, then so be it! I can’t guarantee anything, I can’t make promises as life do still take priority, but I do have a lot of sketches and answers to your questions sitting in my computer, waiting to be completed, so who knows what you’ll see! For right now, please accept my apologies for literally disappearing on everyone in 2020. I want to do better and I want to bring Spook and all of his scary toothy sassiness back to you. Thank you to those who’s still around, I hope that you’ll come back in 2024.

Until then, stay spooky!

[stop-spreading-this-poll]

Round 1 Poll 30: So Much Over A Mistranslation

One Piece submission:

A while ago a translation of a translation with bad English translated Law's line calling Corazon a ""大好きだった人"" (literally just ""someone [he] loved"") as him being his ""most treasured person"" and people just fucking RAN with it and I still saw it in edits years later. I've always hated it and I always will. People were using it in meta analysis and theory discussion about how he loved Corazon more than his family like,,, he literally did not fucking say that.

Ace Attorney submissions:

Manfred von Karma is not a child abuser!!!!!

Manfred von Karma is a canonical child abuser. That's just fanon and the only ""evidence"" is a mistranslation.

Manfred von Karma is often painted as abusive on fanworks, and while there's technically nothing wrong with that, the people who subscribe to this headcanon often refuse to entertain the idea that what theyre saying is just that. A HEADCANON. Theyre also sometimes downright hostile to anyone who likes Manfred in general. Usually, what they quote as ""proof"" is a line translated incorrectly and likely in bad faith in a side game, or just straight up fanfic. My friend group encounters this so much that we have a name for this phenomenon.

Manfred Von Karma is an abusive father

the fandom says that manfred von karma is canonically an abusive father. he literally isn't.

Manfred von Karma was not a child abuser

Manfred von Karma is a child abuser

manfred von karma beat his kids

these motherfuckers make up SO MUCH DUMB SHIT all the time but the one that kills me most is that they have a widely based fanon that manfred von karma is abusive when it's completely up to interpretation in the games. he's just a mean bitch and a murderer so they decided he beats/grooms/emotionally neglects his kids too and its so boring i took this to another blog and so did a lot of others in the fandom, the ""misinterpreted blorbo""/""he would not fucking say that"" bracket. immediately the mod was FLOODED with these people claiming that i was straightup lying, WITH MORE LIES. the most insane thing i saw was someone said that manfred allegedly burned letters that miles sent to phoenix when they were separated. not only did phoenix never send letters in canon (popular headcanon) but manfred most certainly was never said to have intercepted them! they were literally quoting wrightworth fanfiction they had read or some shit. its so fucking weird. people who see him as just kind of a silly murder dad with a really fucked up place in the story literally get called abuse apologists. and then when we're like 'BRO WHERE IS THE ABUSE' the other side is just like. 'play the game lol!!!!' meanwhile i, autistic, have played it 546445 times and half the people arguing with me watched one LP in like 2013 and have subsisted entirely off of twitter fanon and ao3 every since. please let me exit this hell

Manfred von karma abuses his kids

manfred von karma was abusive reasons it is false: he most definately was not the one line of ""proof"" (from a dubiously canon source) was a mistranslation from japanease to english von karma did not call miles worthless he called him inexperienced yes von karma is a horrible man but he was not a bad father

[askspiritfukase]

Updated: 11/29/2022 (new info in asterisks)

So I heard there might be more new users on Tumblr. The Vocaloid ask blog community here has been sputtering for a while now, and I realized it might be intimidating to get involved. As an active participant in the ask blog community since 2013, I thought I could share some tips.

Disclaimer: I am basing this off of my personal experience in the VOCALOID ask blog community. I don’t know how other ask blog communities are faring or what their conventions are.

THE BASICS

What is an ask blog?

In this context, it’s a blog where you roleplay a character and respond to people’s questions. Tumblr’s ask and submission boxes make this very simple. While an ask blog can technically be text only, I really recommend you get creative and make your own image responses. Most people draw, but some people back in the day used to use MMD. 

What is a muse?

I don’t know if this term is still used outside of the Tumblr ask and RP communities, but this basically refers to the character(s) you roleplay. Many mods feel personally connected to their muses and may even feel that their muses have a mind of their own. Don’t worry about it too much, but if you come across ask memes for “mod and muse,” they’re just referring to you and your character. Incidentally, “mun” also means “mod” so you’ll see posts using that sometimes too.

HOW TO START AN ASK BLOG

Choose a character!

If this is your first tumblr ask blog, I highly recommend starting with one or two characters you really enjoy drawing. Starting off with too many can become overwhelming. If you want to expand your character and world focus, you can always do that later!

Your character does not have to be fully fleshed out, but giving them some background and personality is definitely a good start! If you need inspiration, look up voca synth modules and songs! You can even use an original character that’s been featured in a voca synth original.

Ex: Ask25jiMiku, AskMeltdownRin, AskReincarnationApple, AskSynthVShian (all these blogs don’t exist as of writing this post)

Choose a name!

You can get creative, but I suggest choosing names that make your character easy to identify, especially if you’re using an original character featured in a Vocaloid song. I also recommend adding “Ask” somewhere in there so people know at a glance that you’re an ask blog.

Sideblog or main blog?

I highly, HIGHLY recommend you create a new main blog for your ask blog unless you don’t plan on updating often. You’re more likely to gain attention while using a main blog since you can follow back other ask blogs and send asks. Sideblogs cannot send asks at this time.

Figure out your blogging style

Many voca synth ask blogs I’ve seen fall roughly into one of two categories: Plot-focused and ask-focused.

Plot-focused blogs: These blogs take a more active role in providing information to audiences. They may even act like an interactive webcomic. Some blogs follow the course of a main storyline, while others may have only a series of smaller storylines and arcs within the blog. They can focus on a select number of characters and launch themselves into their own events. The mod may have clear endings in mind for these events, but audiences can influence what information is revealed by sending asks, such as the character’s thoughts. Overall, while asks are important to this blog, major events may occur even without much of their influence.

Ex: vocalads

Ask-focused blogs: These blogs take on a more passive role in providing information to askers. They may not have preset storylines that the characters will take, although they might have developed backgrounds. Without asks, these blogs might not reveal much information and may not update at all. Events can still occur, but they’re often triggered by asks(ex: magic anons) or through interactions with other ask blogs rather than started on their own. These blogs feel less streamlined and tend to go more with the flow of asks and interactions.

Ex: My ask blog, and 85% of voca synth ask blogs I’ve seen fall into this category. It’s the most common type by far.

Of course, you do not have to adhere strictly to one or the other, and there have been those that were a mix of both. You could even come up with something totally new that I haven’t thought of! But if you need a starting point, decide how you want to reveal information to your askers.

Lay down some rules

Do you have limits? Do you not want to be bombarded with asks about a specific topic? Make a page or post detailing these rules!

*Announce your ask box is open!

The final step is to let people know you’re open! You can make a simple post with an image of your character and an “ask box open!” message. Others can reblog your post and spread the word. If you have more energy, you can get more creative with your “ask box open” post, like making it into a short comic or something. 

Ex: askvfurawa’s, My blog’s 

HOW DO I GET ASKS?

Is your ask box open?

Seriously, it’s a common mistake so check your blog settings. And make sure your anons are on since people can be shy! If you feel safer with them off though, that’s okay too.

Provide some information

An “ask box open” post is a great way to get the word out there that you’re open for business, but it might be difficult for people to send you asks without more information. Make a quick profile for your character! Fill in some basic information about their likes and dislikes, what they do, etc. For mobile users, utilizing the pinned post feature is perfect for this.

Think about how your characters live their lives

When you answer asks, it’s also important to think about what your character might be doing as they answer their asks, as well as providing some extra information that could pique interest.

Are they cooking as they’re answering the ask? Are they in the park? Did the ask remind them of something they saw last week? Providing simple answers can be okay, but it may be hard to pique the interests of askers if that’s the majority of your responses. If you’re providing simple answers because you feel pressured to answer asks as soon as they’re sent—don’t! Well-thought-out responses are always better than a bunch of rushed ones!

Reblog ask memes!

Ask games exist on various social media, but you can find many on Tumblr tailored to ask and RP blogs! You can also reblog “M!A lists.” A “M!A” refers to a “magic anon” which is a special anon that is sent to change the conditions of a blog for a certain duration of time. For instance, an anon can send in “M!A: Character is turned into a mermaid for 3 days.” M!As are not mandatory to accept, and you can alter the duration if you feel you cannot handle it. You can also make your own ask memes or M!A lists. If you don’t accept M!As, be sure to list that in your rules or blog description.

As a bonus, ask memes can help spark character interactions or interactions between mods!

Ex: M!A List, Muse ask meme, Another Muse Ask Meme

Send in asks yourself

The asks you send to other blogs don’t necessarily have to be in-character but if you want to start interactions, sending in-character asks are a great way to do that. Additionally, if you send asks to others, they might return the favor. *In a similar vein, if you follow other ask blogs, there’s a good chance they might follow back. If they don’t, they might just need to get to know you better by seeing you around the community and stuff first!

Vocaloid Community events

Octoberloid is the main Vocaloid ask blog event still running, but there’s Vocatines and a few other stray events here and there! The host of the event will usually make a main post detailing what will be occurring, the venue and timeline, and what to tag your posts if you’re participating. These events can be a great way to have your characters interact with others! Feel free to start your own event as well or revive any old events!

Ex: Octoberloid, Vocatines, Vocasummer

Keep things in character

It’s generally recommended not to use your ask blog as a personal blog. The occasional OOC post is okay, but reblogging loads of OOC art and text posts that don’t relate to your character is discouraged. This is particularly true if you don’t tag your posts properly with “OOC.” There used to be weekly events on ask and RP blogs called “Munday” where you could ask the mods questions. This probably still exists in other communities but it’s pretty dead on the Vocaloid side of things. There are even ask memes centered around Munday! If you really wanna talk and show things about yourself, how about reviving Munday here?

Ex: Munday ask meme

Tag wisely

I don’t know if this is still true, but back in the day, only the first 5 things you tag would actually show up in the tag search. Everything else was for your own archiving purposes. I still think this is a good rule of thumb. Tags I recommend using are #ask, #vocaloid, #vocaloid ask blog, and the name of your character. I also tend to tag the asker out of habit so people can search their own name.

However, if you’re producing a large quantity of posts in a short amount of time because you’re making low-effort sketches or making a lot of text posts, I recommend reducing how many tags you use so you don’t spam the tag search.

I HIGHLY recommend you tag all your asks with something. Tumblr has a chronological order feature but as far as I know, it only works with tags. For example, I tag all my asks with “new ask.” If you want to see all my asks in chronological order, you can type in “askspiritfukase.tumblr.com/tagged/new ask/chrono” and BAM! For mobile users, you can add this to your pinned.

And of course, you can add your own thoughts as mod in the tags if you want. I’d encourage this compared to writing your thoughts in the captions, but that’s just a personal preference. Do what you feel is fun!

TIPS & TRICKS

*Don’t make too many ask blogs!

*No matter how much you like the characters, making too many ask blogs might be spreading yourself thin and it’ll be hard to keep track of. While I think you should do whatever’s fun, it might not be good to accidentally overwhelm yourself either. From experience, it doesn’t feel good to open another, brand new ask blog only to abandon it within a few weeks. So just a word of caution!

Trim your posts!!

If you at least occasionally use Tumblr on desktop, download xKit and the addon “editable reblogs.” It works best if you use the text post feature to post your ask and art responses. Basically, it enables you to trim your responses in interactions which is important in sparing everyone’s dashboard from novel-length posts. If your ask response is gonna be particularly long, use a read more!!

Stay within fandoms

This might be more etiquette than anything but generally, ask blogs stay within their own fandoms but it isn’t a hard rule. *I mostly bring it up in case you try following ask blogs from other fandoms but they don’t follow back or want to interact. Some blogs are completely chill with it! OCs are a bit of a gray area so I can’t speak much for them. 

Communicate behind the scenes!

If you’re interacting with another blog, you should communicate behind the scenes if you want a successful interaction. In my experience, interactions without mod communication tend to die quickly.

Join the community with some friends!

A lot of the fun in ask blogging is in making connections and having your muses interact with your friends’ muses.

Reblog the end of interactions

Let’s say you and another blog are interacting and the interaction has ended on their side. Even if you have nothing left to add to the interaction, I recommend still reblogging their post so that readers of your blog will be able to have context since your audience may not follow your partner’s blog. This is something I used to not do and I have since regretted it.

Try to have legible text

I’m guilty of having spent years using chicken scratch but in all fairness, my main art program didn’t have a textbox feature. If your handwriting is naturally neat, then perfect! If not, and your art program has text features, use them! Just make sure your font is easy to read.

Don’t worry about consistency!

Ask blogging should be a hobby that encourages you to experiment without pressure. You can make your art as consistent as possible, try a different thing with every ask, or even just use uncolored lines. I’ve found that what’s most important is the thought put into the response.

Because this is a hobby, don’t worry about being inactive!! I’ve gone months without updating. It’s normal!! This should be a low-stress fun activity, and there’s no shame in having breaks :)

[hlvr-online]

Loading (New) Introduction...100%

Welcome, to Half Life VR Online, fellow player!

Hello players! This blog has been on hiatus for quite some time due to me (Mod John) and my partner, Mod Ben, being hyperfixated elsewhere. We still technically are- but since the big excitement about hlrvai 2's trailer has stirred up attention and my personal feelings regarding the fanbase i've decided to try and return to this blog. My partner won't be able to help me as much as when we started this blog due to various reasons, but i still consider this blog to be OUR blog nonetheless because i really valued making this AU together- so updates will be slow.

As a recap for what the AU and blog is about: As you can see, this is a Hlvrai Au ask blog run by two mods where you follow Gordon Freeman, a video game streamer who has recently bought a recreation of his long time favorite game, and old classic, Half Life, but now as an Full Virtual Reality MMO created by a dying game company. However, something bugs out and now Gordon finds himself rushing to win the game with his strange party of other players caught in this situation like him.

You are a watcher of his streams, and can interact with them and influence what he or his party does simply by sending in asks!

You must escape HLVRO! Hopefully, all in one piece...

I have also Updated the reference sheets for characters that are important as of right now to fit the current art style:

Fun Mod Note: You can ask the players to use their skills and they might actually do it!~