#this is part of the reason why i've started a new blog on tumblr

[curlicuecal]

Anyone else notice that, at least on certain browsers, tumblr has started generating links to posts like this? (1):

[x]

Instead of the older, more typical way like this (2):

[x]

I get different versions of the link depending where I click on a post:

(If you're on your phone browser, make sure to click and HOLD #2 and select 'copy link'--clicking through on mobile redirects me to the new style.)

I tend to edit urls to do quick tag searches and such and you can't do that with the first url, which is why I noticed, but I've since noticed some other issues.

For example, if I post the new style link in discord it will embed a picture rather than the post's video (forcing people to click through). The second, older url still properly embeds the video on discord.

And of course, the reason the new url wants to make you click through is tumblr is also using it to pressure people to sign up with tumblr.

Which becomes an issue when you're sharing a link with people who don't use tumblr, or, say, on discord, where anyone using the app's native browser is going to appear as not logged in.

Going to the first link when logged out and scrolling down quickly hits this wall:

This blocks the whole blog, does not scroll, and cannot be opted out of. (Also adds this to the url:)

On the other hand, clicking the orginal form of the URL and scrolling down only triggers the older, less intrusive "wanna try the tumblr app" prompt on mobile browser:

And the "wanna sign up" prompt on PC browser:

These appear only on a small part of the screen, still allow scrolling, and have an opt out option that banishes them making them INFINITELY MORE FUNCTIONAL AND LESS ANNOYING

tl;dr I think platforms increasingly gating their content behind log in prompts is extremely sketchy and a bad direction for the internet to go, and also if you're sharing tumblr links it's worth knowing which format will do u better

[ms-demeanor]

why do you delete your posts after a month??? couldn't you just make a new sideblog to keep things organized?? /genuine question

I currently have *counts* 55 sideblogs.

My main blog has the largest readership of any of my blogs by miles and miles, and for a while I tried to do things like "make a post with compusever as the OP then reblog compusever to ms-demeanor so that it still travels" or "set up ms-demeanor-art-blog as a portfolio so I don't have to link people to my main if I'm submitting to a collection" but by the time it became an issue, one of the bigger problems with that is that most people send asks to my main, not to my sideblogs, so I can't answer computer questions as compusever and reblog to ms-d, I have to answer as ms-d and reblog to compusever. (this, btw, is the correct thing to do. I don't answer most of my asks on main and I answer almost NONE of my asks on my sideblogs because I just don't look in the inboxes for the most part)

And I don't see much utility in keeping 30-50 asks about password managers on my main. If I look at the total posts on my sideblogs I've got something like 150k, whereas on my main I think I just broke 6000. That is a reasonable number to dig through for my own purposes, and the *important* blogs where meaningful stuff gets filtered off are in my pinned post. (Nobody needs the link to my stucky blog. That is a notebook with stickers on the cover and stick figures scrawled on lined paper, not someplace that I do anything that I want anyone looking at. I do, however, want people looking at the porn on my venom blog or sending me memes for my dune blog)

IDK it got confusing someone at a coffee shop convinced me to sign up on tumblr in 2012 and at some point my personal blog became something that people looked at for information and it's hard to balance "this is where I put the dolls that i'm mashing against each other and also where I put computer repair information and also where I talk about mental health stuff and also discuss the problems with the supreme court and also where I put a book about what to do if someone dies and also there's a bunch of snapshots of my dog and my spouse."

That's part of the reason I've started ms-demeanor.com - there are a lot of things that people ask me about repeatedly and I'm happy to keep answering the questions but it's a lot faster if I can provide a link and even searching in my own blogs that I've curated for the express purpose of organizing things by category is impossible on tumblr, so I'm (slowly) writing down the stuff that I think will be helpful to people somewhere else.

So I guess TL;DR: Tumblr is a weird combination of public and private and this is the balance I've struck between trying to share information that people will find useful and still having this be a fun place for me to hang out.

[lucozadehulahoop]

Star-crossed. Lo'ak x fem!human!reader

This was originally posted on my side blog @thankeywa. It's a brand new blog and tumblr thinks it's a bot so it's not giving it visibility. Please go give it some love, I want all my avatar!related stuff to be on there.

PART 2 HERE PART 3 HERE PART 4 HERE

I know that literally nobody asked for this, but I've noticed a disturbing lack of Lo'ak fics out there, so I've decided to give my input. I've had a story in mind for a while now, and I needed to get it out there. It will be a reader insert to make it more accessible, but it's somewhat based around an original f!character, so I apologize for that in advance if it gets too specific.

WARNINGS: Lo'ak is 20 years old in this and so is the reader, I do not write about minor characters. There will be eventual mature themes in this so MINORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS WORK.

For everyone else, if you like my writing, please let me know if you want to be on the tag list for future installments and SEND ME REQUESTS (head canons, imagines, sfw/nsfw, ecc.) ! I love that shit.

words: around 1.200

summary: reader is a human left behind on pandora, she grew up with the remaining humans who'd been aloud to stay on the planet after the war and has been friends with the Sully clan her entire life. She and Lo'ak were best friends until he began to pull away from her in their teen years for seemingly no reason. This story is about them reconnecting on the day of her twentieth birthday, and dealing with the feelings they have for each other and the obstacles that come with them being from two different worlds.

TW for this chapter: angst, smoking (don't do it, ever), brief mentions of alcohol, brief mention of war and death, brief mention of child birth, reader can breathe on pandora.

Y/n looked at the 'birthday cake' made out of cookie rations that Norm and Max had made for her. No matter how many years would pass, her dads always knew how to get creative.

"I'm twenty years old, you guys don't have to keep throwing me a birthday party." She reprimanded them softly, though her heart was filled with joy. Y/n was so thankful to have people in her life who cared enough to make her day special every single year.

"Considering you spent most of your early existence tied to test tubes to stay alive, we're merely celebrating the scientific marvel your continued survival has been." Norm joked, raising a beer, and y/n shoved him, before blowing out the single candle that had been meticulously re-used each year. It was a wonder how there was any wax still left on it.

"What did the birthday girl wish for?" Max asked, reaching for a dried-up cookie and cringing slightly at the taste as he chewed on it slowly. "The whole point of a birthday wish is to keep it to myself... or it won't come true. Honestly, I question your two's knowledge of Earth's traditions." y/n shook her head, before taking a celebratory sip of alcohol.

Norm and Max left eventually, back to the main base. They were more than capable of piloting a helicopter those days, and y/n was all grown up. More than capable of living by herself. What once had been an avatar lab, smack dab in the middle of the forests of Pandora, had been converted into her home. Pandora's rapidly repopulating fauna had surprisingly left her residence alone, well... mostly. There were still some creatures who couldn't help but keep themselves away. And by creatures, she meant Spider. Y/n was also friends with actual people like Neteyam, Kiri, Tuk, and... Lo'ak. Truth be told, she didn't know whether or not she and Lo'ak were even friends anymore. They'd been thick as thieves for as long as she could remember, always getting him out of trouble and fixing him up after a scuffle with his siblings. But then, around her sixteenth birthday, he'd started pulling away, and y/n had never understood why. They'd had a big fight about it, bottom line, he hadn't wanted to be around her anymore and y/n had to accept it.

"Open up! It's fucking freezing out here!" Came Spider's loud voice followed by an incessant banging on the door that immediately pulled y/n out of her reverie. "Alright, alright..." she laughed a little as she went to let them all inside. The Sullys were always insisting on spending birthdays together, even though some of them were now getting too big to even fit inside her 'home'. Neteyam had to walk around with his back bent forward, and Kiri knocked over quite a few things before they made it to y/n's main living space, which was more or less Na've-proof. "Happy birthday!" Tuk hugged her and y/n struggled not to feel crushed by the embrace. Even the littlest Sully was now nearly as tall as her.

Y/n let them all inside, already giving them dirty looks at the sight of gifts. "I told you guys not to..."

She stayed on the doorstep a little longer, gazing out into the night, desperately hoping one last uninvited guest would turn up. She felt Neteyam's hand on her shoulder. "He's not coming. I tried to talk to him but he was being a skxawng as usual..." Y/n blushed, not really wanting Neteyam to know she was pining for his younger brother. "Oh, right! I was—just checking you were all here..." she closed the door and they both went back to join the others.

___

"Alright come on, your mom is going to kill me if you get back late and I don't have enough space in here for all of you. Spider would have to sleep outside." Y/n teased, trying to let Tuk understand it was time to go. "Hey!" Spider protested at her lighthearted jab, but knew it was time for them to get going. Nobody wanted to get on Neytiri's bad side. Y/n hugged them all goodbye and thanked them for the presents: Tuk had made her a lovely drawing, and the others had collectively made her a rather beautiful necklace, which she immediately wore. Y/n waited on her doorstep till she could no longer hear the sounds of her friends chatting, and then proceeded to do two incredibly dangerous things: she sat outside of the protection of her bunker, all alone in the cold Pandora night air, and lit up a cigarette.

She'd discovered a terrifyingly endless supply of cigarette cartoons back at the base almost a year prior, and as soon as she'd tried her first one, she'd gotten addicted. Y/n hadn't told Norm or Max, of course, as it would have broken their hearts, especially because of how fragile she was. Y/n's mother had gone into labor in the aftermath of the battle for Pandora between the Na'vi and the Sky people. The soldier had lost her life giving birth, but her baby had survived, taking her first breath in the inhospitable Pandora air. Norm was convinced Eywa herself had kept her alive, had given her the ability to take in the air that hadn't previously failed to kill any other human. Sure, it had come at the price of being particularly fragile her entire life. And how was y/n repaying that gift? By cutting her miraculous existence short more and more each day. Thankfully, it was a while since she'd been used as a test rat, or had check ups of any sort. As far as the Sullys were concerned... they were way better off not even knowing what she was doing to herself.

A sudden rustling in the trees instantly made y/n alert and she didn't waste any time getting back inside. She showered, and shamefully hid her smokes somewhere her dads or the Sullys wouldn't look. When she had nothing else left to do, y/n forced herself to crawl into bed, placing a hand over her necklace. Her wish to see Lo'ak hadn't come true in the end, and while not surprising, it still hurt like hell.

"A pack of viperwolves? Seriously, Lo'ak?" Y/n groaned in frustration as she cleared her table for her best friend to lie on.

"I thought I could take them." He hissed as she doused him with disinfectant. "Yeah, well, you know human medical treatment hurts like a bitch, so it's either my way, or you're going to have to fess up to your parents about what you did." Y/n tried to sound cold, but she'd always been too soft on him.

When they were younger, and Lo'ak still hadn't grown to be double her size, they would often fall asleep together in her bed. "You don't have to keep doing this shit to prove something, you know?" She whispered to him one night, turning over to look at him and gently touch his face. "Your parents love you. And so do Neteyam, Kiri, Tuk and Spider. Lo'ak, I— we— don't want to lose you."

Y/n was almost asleep when a loud 'thud' coming from outside woke her. Something was moving on her roof, or rather, someone... Y/n didn't show whether she was dreaming or not as she looked out the window and locked eyes with Lo'ak, because the second she did, he seemed to slide off the top of her bucker, falling down into the grass below with a loud groan.

He'd probably just woken up half of the animals on Pandora.

[incorrectfmaquotes]

Today marks 6 years since I started this blog!

Thank you all for following! Whether you followed back in October 2017 or earlier today, I appreciate every single one of you.

And for some other things I wanna say, which I don't think affects anyone and isn't exactly news, especially to anyone who might be paying attention, but more just me acknowledging it: I haven't really been attending to this blog that much in the past couple of years, but especially this one. I've largely just let the queue run and fill it up with older quotes every couple of months. I made this blog when I was in high school and had more free time; I am now something that somewhat resembles an actual adult (if you squint maybe) with more Adult Responsibilities and Situations (but as I have unfortunately realized, adulthood does not erase feeling teenage emotions all that much). I've had less time and frankly less bandwidth to devote more time to this blog - especially to create quotes at the rate I did the first 3 years. And something that has hindered me even more in attending to this blog and is in part why I started to do so was that starting around 2020, a lot of times, I could not open my inbox, direct messages, or activity page on this site. I don't know if the culprit of that was my browser, my old laptop, or our famously well-functioning website Tumblr, but this would frequently happen and would do so for weeks at a time. I'm not saying this was the only reason why there have been unanswered asks and submissions for years (see above: increasing Adult Situations and the Toll they have taken on me), but that certainly played a heavy hand.

I'm in some new circumstances and over the past couple weeks, they have been a bit more stable and consistent - I've actually made about 85 new incorrect quotes and have put them in the queue, an amount I don't think I've been able to manage since the early months of 2020 before quarantine. Opening the inbox and DMs seem to be less of a problem lately, so I've also put in the queue a good amount of those submissions I've had sitting in my inbox for a while and will try to do more, though unfortunately some of the blogs that have submitted quotes have since been deactivated. I'm going to try to answer some asks in the coming days, but again, a lot of these are months and years old, and a part of me feels a bit awkward only just responding now and I'm wondering if it's respectful at all, but I still wanna do it.

That is to say, even though I am in a more manageable situation, I'm not promising that I am now going to attend to this blog like I did in the beginning, or even that much more than I have the past few years. I have learned that circumstances can change with no notice at all. I'm also not saying there's no guarantee that I'll be even less present here or won't stop running this blog altogether when the current queue runs out - not that I'm planning on it, but I can't completely rule that out as a possibility. But even if I ever stop attending to this blog, I don't think I'll ever delete it altogether, if you're worried about that.

So, thank you for sticking around with this blog for the past 6 years! And for sticking with this post that got a lot longer than I thought it would be. This post probably sounds like a whole lot of nothing, but I still wanted to say it, and I thank you for putting up with it. Hope you have a good day! 💕💕💕

[astronomodome]

Tumblr Poll Tournaments & MCYT

So a while ago I made a post expressing my frustration with the way a lot of tumblr poll tournaments seem to exclude mcyt characters- or if they are included, people in the notes are rude about it. The first situation of these- the poll organizer including rules against submitting characters from mcyt- is something I can easily quantify. I've crunched some numbers in order to find out two things:

How common is this phenomenon, really?

Why does this happen in the first place?

A note before I start: I'm not blaming the poll organizers for this, and I don't want anyone to get angry at them for excluding mcyt. At the end of the day, it's up to them to curate what they want their poll to be, and if they don't want to deal with the toxicity that often comes with letting mcyt characters run (or if they just don't like it for whatever reason), that's their decision. Trust me- poll organizers have to put up with a lot of shit already, and I don't want to add to it, regardless of their opinions on mcyt. If any poll organizers recognize their own words in the later part of this overview, they can contact me and I'll remove it. This is also why I have chosen not to identify the blogs from which I took the examples- I mean no harm to any poll organizer. They are a symptom of a much larger problem and they haven't done anything wrong except be a little misinformed at worst.

Excluding mcyt characters from poll tournaments really isn't that big of a deal on its own- though it is frustrating- but it does speak to the larger attitude of the general tumblr population towards mcyt. While not without its flaws, this can be used as a metric to measure the extent of this attitude and maybe get a hint of why it exists.

...Please note, also, that most of these polls date back to around March-June 2023, when poll tournaments were a big thing on Tumblr. Not super outdated, but I still should note that opinions might have changed since then.

Also also, be warned that there are examples below of some organizers being pretty toxic! It's not a whole lot, but if you don't want to expose yourself to that, maybe pass on this post!

With that out of the way, let's get started.

Part One: The Numbers

The first thing I decided to do was figure out a rough percentage of how many poll tournaments have a rule that excludes mcyt characters from being submitted. To get a sample batch of poll blogs, I used one of the blogs that pits the winners of tournaments against each other and checked each blog included in that. This ended up being a more tedious process than I had thought, since there's a lot of variation in the way poll organizers, well, organize. I ended up with 123 blogs sorted into three categories.

The first category included tournaments where a rule for or against mcyt characters wouldn't really make sense, for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, the tournament was between letters of the alphabet or animo acids or government agencies, not fictional characters, so I counted them out. There were also a handful of blogs where the contestants were determined by the organizer, not by nomination at all. Combined, blogs that did not fit my criteria made up 60/123 of my samples.

The second and third categories were the blogs that either had a rule against mcyt characters, or didn't. Most of the blogs I looked through had rules I could find, and some were more thorough about it than others. For my purposes, I counted the blog as a no only if they explicitly had a rule against mcyt characters, or clarified later that they weren't allowed. Most poll blogs didn't mention mcyt at all. (This will become relevant later.)

Of the 63 blogs that fit my criteria, 11 (17.5%) of them had a rule against mcyt characters, while the remaining 52 (82.5%) did not.

To me, this seems like pretty good news! I had honestly expected the percentage of blogs that excluded mcyt to be much higher. This is definitely a good sign! But I wouldn't really jump to assuming that mcyt characters would actually be accepted in all of these blogs. I will explain this in the next part of my research.

Part Two: The Examples

The second thing I wanted to find out with this research was why organizers end up having rules against mcyt in the first place. Is it just the bad reputation the mcyt space has (largely a result of one green man in particular)? Let's look at a few examples of poll rules against mcyt characters. Some of them are from my sample blogs and some of them aren't.

Type 1: Not understanding the difference between real people and characters in mcyt

The majority of the rules against mcyt I saw were of this type, and honestly, it's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty major debate in the mcyt community over whether mcyts' characters are separate enough from their content creators to count as fictional. However, there are a considerable number of mcyt characters who are explicitly stated to be different from their cc in the same way as a character in a movie played by an actor is different from the actor playing them. Excluding all mcyt characters for being 'real people' is just incorrect, though I can kinda understand where the organizers were coming from with this one.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of poll blogs had a rule against submitting real people. There's a possibility that some poll organizers might have lumped mcyt characters as real people even if they didn't specify it explicitly. Therefore, an attempt to actually submit an mcyt character into one of these tournaments might be against the rules based on what the organizer thinks. I have no way to quantify this, which is why I said earlier that the results of my initial test might not be accurate.

Type 2: 'Problematic fandom' (toxicity warning for some of these)

This type of rule is usually broader than just mcyt, but lumps it in with other fandoms known for being associated with bigotry (often hp, which is... yeah i'm definitely not going to argue in favor of harry potter but yikes. really? we're as bad as terfy potter? really.) At least one of them let dsmp characters in with the exception of dream, which is a lot fairer than... some of the others.

If we want to give the organizers benefit of the doubt here, we can say that these rules are made to keep the poll less toxic than it would be otherwise... but to be perfectly honest, some of these might be more about that phenomenon of purity culture that has had a habit of popping up in fandom spaces since forever. That's a whole other conversation I'm not ready to have now, but it comes as no surprise to me that mcyt has become a little taboo in some places (likely to a large extent because of dream and all the drama he's generated). There's also no telling whether the poll organizers in these cases even know that there are other smps besides dsmp... but that's besides the point, since there are other dsmp characters that aren't associated with dream at all. Excluding them reveals a misconception about the mcyt genre anyway. And of course, I think we can all agree that some of these are just pretty rude.

Which brings us to our conclusion.

I feel like a lot of the toxicity towards mcyt as a genre and mcyt characters boils down to people either not really understanding what mcyt is (i.e. mcyt -> minecraft youtubers -> real people) or hearing stuff about dream and assuming the entire mcyt space is reflective of that. Of course, it's a frustrating issue that some people think this way. I think it's nice to be reminded, though, that this sort of thing isn't very widespread. Alongside the bad examples, I saw a lot of organizers confronting their preconceived notions: one organizer let in an mcyt character after admitting their 'unfamiliarity with the source material', another allowed mcyt characters 'on the condition that you can explain how they are a separate character' and a few others fiercely defended mcyt characters against toxicity in their polls. Every day we grow as a community and we can't let a few people with misguided notions of what we are keep us down. Keep watching, keep creating, and as Zedaph once said, It's okay to be silly!

[thana-topsy]

Ok I gotta come out and say it. I envy you. Like, to a painful extent. The amount of people you get interested in your characters, how you're incredibly skilled in both visual art AND writing, how readers your fics have. I absolutely adore your work, but seeing it fills me with so much envy it's honestly ridiculous.

Did you deal with similar feelings towards other creators when you started writing fic by any chance? If so, how did you deal with those feelings? I feel genuinely stuck feeling worthless about my fics. I'm not as verbose with my language despite over 10 years of writing under my belt and it seems as though my plots don't interest people as much either. So I feel like there's just nothing of worth about any of my work.

I know that this is a lot to dump on you, but I felt like I would burst keeping this all in. Much love to you and I hope you have a wonderful New Year!

Hey there my friend, I've been sitting with this all day trying to decide how I want to answer you. I genuinely appreciate your honesty, because I know this is a familiar feeling for a lot of people, myself included.

I remember when I first rejoined Tumblr in early 2019, desperately trying to find anyone to talk to about TES, I would look at all these blogs gettings asks about their OCs like they were little celebrities and feel envy and longing. Now, when these feelings start to bubble up, I force myself to take a break from sharing my work, be it art or writing, if only to remind myself why I'm creating it and who I'm creating it for: myself. I know it sounds cheesy, and I probably sound like a broken record, but genuinely I just do this because it's bursting out of my skull. But I won't lie and say the engagement and the support doesn't have a big impact on my motivation. I love sharing with people and getting an enthusiastic response.

I think something people might not realize, or maybe they just forget, is that I used to write a lot of smut. Like...a lot of smut. (I still do). Hahaha and it doesn't get a lot of comments or engagement, but it does draw a lot of eyes. Once my smut stories started taking on heavier plotlines, a comment I'd get a lot was "came for the porn, stayed for the plot." And I wasn't writing smut because I thought it would get me an audience, I was just horny LMAO. But it encouraged me to branch out and experiment with the types of stories I was telling.

Anyways, art is another big part of it, yes. But that also didn't get a lot of engagement in the beginning, and my skills were rusty as hell. I was getting maybe 15 notes on here, 30 likes on instagram. But that didn't really matter to me, I was just insane with inspiration. I'd reach out to people and ask to do art trades, got ghosted a lot, made some good friends, (some people who are still my good friends to this day!). But it took a lot of risks, and I made a lot of accidental enemies and learned a lot of hard lessons. But having visuals to go with the stories I'm writing is like advertisement in its own way. I'm just lucky enough to hyperfixate on this shit like it's my lifeblood. I've always obsessively drawn my favorite characters, ever since I was a wee bab. Long before social media was a factor or the words "content creator" even existed.

And I think that's what it all comes back to. Above all else, do what you do with unbridled joy. If someone else finds joy alongside you, all the better! Even if it's just one person. Take risks, make friends, make enemies, draw that blorbo unapologetically and with wild abandon. Love what you create, even when it's bad. Even when it makes you cringe years later, don't delete it. Even when people try to find every reason to hate what you do and who you are. Don't stop.

Every act of creation is bringing something into the world that didn't exist before you made it. And that alone gives it worth.

Happy New Year!

[lil-lost-mind]

(This is a bit of a along post about my general experience in the qsmp fandom, both good and bad, and it does mention xenophobia but not direct experiences)

I'm happy to see people here being so nice and reminding that we(Brazilians) are welcome here

I was really hesitant about interacting with fandom at first, I actually was there the Brazilians arrived because suddenly tazercraft live appeared for me on YouTube, I joined for a moment but didn't stay long, but I did look about it later. Because Brazilians youtubers/streamers are on a server with a bunch of people from other countries? I was curious about what this would lead to

Didn't regret it, but since then, I was a bit scared of interacting on fandom. Some comments on clips were fine. But then I started using tumblr because of a friend's recommendation, I kept a look on what was happening on lore on general but didn't really interact on fandom. Hence why I created this blog, and also why it took me so long to link this blog to my main one

Because, well, if I got hate for any reason, it would only be a sideblog that I only posted about qsmp. I could just delete it or just ignore them

I am by nature a person who is very shy to talk about my interests, it might have nothing wrong about it but I'm shy, I'm the type of person who goes on asks box on anon because is too shy, even if I'm not doing anything wrong there's this fear of judgemeent.

In the light of the recent events, I am once again reminded that's why I don't use or plan to use Twitter, but still I couldn't avoid but feel... scared in a way, I don't think anyone would like to be treated that way. And even a bit ashamed of saying that I'm brazilian. Ashamed might not be the right word, but there's this feeling wich is similar, and while I'm proud of being a brazilian, I just... maybe invalidate is a more fitting word, it's just feels like my culture is unimportant compared to others.

And this is what it seems, in my understanding, what looks like suffering from xenophobia is, but I imagine it's worse suffering it directly ofc, and ironically, I don't think I ever felt like that for those reasons before. And while I can't talk about how it feels when suffering from it directly, I feel bad for the people who had to go through it(not only Brazilians). Nobody should feel ashamed of their culture or ethnicity

Ofc tumblr isn't free of people like that. After all, no social media will be free from intolerance. But it feels like it's harder to see it. But I can't emphasize enough how it makes me happy to see so many people saying their blog is a safe place for us. After seeing this stuff, it makes things better, for me, at least. It reminds me that my culture isn't less important than any other

And qsmp brought something beautiful, the unity of communities. Because even with those bad things happening, it's not the only thing in fandom, it happens, and any fandom has this, unfortunately. But I love to see every time someone talks about their culture, facts about their languages, to see people motivated in learning new languages. It's beautiful and makes me happy each time

I don't regret making myself part of the fandom, the opposite, really, I've met creators that I would have never without the qsmp. I've met amazing people there, I've found incredible artists and writers. I've had fun

I've found the motivation to learn new languages again, more passion to draw

And I'm thankful to everyone there who is incredibly nice and so made me more comfortable interacting here, even if they will probably never know

So despite everything, I think it was worth it

Was worth reading character analysis and theories, enjoying stories, seeing fanart and animatics, learning new language facts and about other cultures. Was worth seeing people being happy

Again, I'm very thankful for all the people who made me, and I'm going to assume a lot of other people who needed to hear that, comfortable and validate here, I can't express how much this made me happy, I hope everyone coming from twitter have a good time here<3

And a very big and sincere "VAI TOMAR NO CU" to any xenophobic and racist person

I know very few people will see this, or even read everything, but I had to say this somewhere, so yeah, I'm rambling on tumblr again:D

[slytherinshua]

warning: sappiness ahead fr

it's been 424 days since i started my blog, and here we are.

1000 followers.

1000.

10 to the power of 3.

that is, in fact, a lot of people.

i can't even begin to understand how 1000 people like my writing. i think that it will still take me a while to feel like a good writer, even though i've just accomplished this milestone of followers.

i feel like a novice all the time, because, well, i've only been writing since january of 2022 (613 days, if i've calculated correctly). this hobby of mine was spontaneous and new and is still something i need to get a lot better at. i never wrote when i was younger apart from academic essays, it just wasn't something i found interesting, but since i've gotten into fanfiction, i've found my place where i can write and be creative.

the sincerest thank you to everyone who likes my writing. whether you were my first follower or my 1000th follower, i love you.

somehow this has started to feel like a well thought out thank you speech for some big occasion, even though it's just funny old tumblr dot com where little zanna reached a milestone. but this feels like an eventful day, but i'm still writing just whatever comes to my mind, none of this post was planned beforehand.

i want to really really thank the people who have been a big part of my life, my tumblr moots and close friends. (more sappiness ahead ew)

@eternalgyu hannie is the entire reason i am even writing on this platform. she was the start to everything, from the very second i created this blog to now, she's been here for all 424 days. and i can't even understand why she has stuck with me for that long, but i love her more than anyone else on this planet. i've dumped all my ideas on her and given her spoilers for fics i was writing. she's given me so many ideas and suggestions that have really helped along the way to create this blog and get it to where it is today. she will always be number 1 for me. she is irreplaceable. hannie, i love you so much.

@blue-jisungs axe :D the first blog i followed, and my first moot. she has been here from before i hit 100 followers. she's read my shitty old writing from when this blog was just starting to form. and i thank her for sticking with me cause my writing back then was not the greatest, let's just say that. axe has always been someone i looked up to, especially when i was first starting. i loved her writing and it inspired a lot of the first fics i wrote for this blog!! she'll always be one of my closest friends, i love her so much.

@hannahsophie0103 thank you for being one of the first people to send in requests, and for continuing to give me ideas. i get a lot of requests now, but when this blog was still a fetus, my inbox sat empty for weeks and weeks. i got so inspired and motivated whenever i got a request, and writing was truly so fun whenever i felt like i was writing for someone.

sorry for lumping you all together, but all my caratblr moots, i love you so much. everyone in the moot circle especially-- who i've talked to on the discord server-- you are some of my closest friends, and i love how we're all here, just writing some silly little fics for seventeen on tumblr. some of you have absolutely incredible writing that i can only hope to achieve one day. when i read some of your fics, it feels like actual art. words strung together so beautifully that i can say with no hesitation that you've created an actual masterpiece. thank you for inspiring me and talking to me daily, i hope you haven't gotten bored of me. you all feel like my close friend group, who i could share anything with and you'd still support and love me. thank you for being friends with me, and i love you.

i think that we've passed all the sappy speech part yay!! now to announce my 1K follower event :) *drum roll*

the love sight event.

what's the love sight event, you may ask? well, although i had dozens of ideas for what to do once i reached 1K, i decided that since txt was the start for this blog, i wanted them to be the centre of my event.

love sight will be a multiple part series where each member of txt will get their own fic.

i've put a lot of thought and planning into this event (only the planning though, i have a long way to go for actually writing the fics, but i'll get there eventually). i expect that actually completing this event will take... a very long time. so please bear with me as i write these fics!!

i have some other things planned soon for fics, such as the caratsland song event and some possible collaborations, so if there is a wait between fics for love sight, i'm sorry about that!!

i hope you all really enjoy the event, and once again, thank you. all 1000 of you, thank you so much. - zanna

[cabaretofwords]

Hi! Do you mind me asking how writblr works? I am new to tumblr and writblr.

Hey Love, thanks for the ask! And welcome to this little part of the internet.

I know there are detailed posts out there on this but I haven't been able to find them (if anyone has one, please feel free to link it!)

Writeblr is a community on Tumblr focused on writing. Most people I interact with are writing novels (as am I), but there are definitely people writing poetry and short stories and comics. Anyone who thinks themselves a writer can have a writing blog, even if we are not actively writing (me again).

Writeblr works best when you are interacting with other community members. This can be done in lots of different ways.

You can use the dash - liking, commenting and reblogging are all ways of interacting with other writeblrs. Liking won't create further interaction or spread a post but it does say you were there, and you enjoyed yourself; a comment allows you to interact with the op (original poster) and other users without spreading the post, and a reblog puts the post on your blog and the dash of your followers. You can use tags to talk if you don't want to add to the post or you can leave your thoughts in text for anyone who reblogs from you to have on their blog.

You've figured out asks already - these are a great way to publicly interact with other writeblrs.

You may encounter ask games: a post of a list of questions with symbols or numbers, usually related to writing or the users writeblr. You can send these questions to the blog who reblogged them to find out more about them or their WIP. The etiquette around these posts is that, if you reblog one, you send an ask to the user you reblogged it from. You can also send asks to anyone who reblogs it from you, to help everyone who wants an ask is getting at least one.

Then there are tag games. When you get tagged in a tag game go and read the rules on the post and read OPs post while you are there. Then create an original post following said rules. Tag the person who tagged you at the top of the post, and then tag people to nominate them to play at the bottom. Sometimes the game has a number of people you should tag, other times it's up to you. I like to tag 3 people I've interacted with recently.

You do not have to play if you've been tagged. No one will harass you over it. Writeblr should be fun for you. There is no algorithm - you create your own experience here, so if you don't like someone, unfollow or block. Those buttons are there for a reason.

So you have a blog, you've followed a few people, you've reblogged some great posts. Might be time to tell us you're here and what you are interested in!

Enter Intro Posts.

There are two main kinds of intro post:

one that tells us who you are and what you like, what you are working on and what you like to write.

Then there is the WIP (work in progress) intro post that tells us about what you are writing, the characters and themes, why we should be interested.

Both posts are useful for finding your tribe on writeblr. To find new blogs and wips, or to look at different examples of what you can do you can search for "Wip into" and "writeblr intro". There are more tags but these terms will get you started.

I'm going to end this here. I hope it helps. I'm sure there is more, but I have to take my cat to the vet!

The main thing to remember is that this is a community. If you want interaction and for people to care about what you are working on you have to put it out there first. Interact in the ways you want to see in your notes.

[blazehedgehog]

ICYMI: My Sonic Frontiers Criticism/Essay Is Out Now

So here's the last four months of my life come to fruition: the longest piece of edited criticism I've ever put on my Youtube channel, clocking in at just over an hour. For those of you that may be new around here, I am pretty against making long videos. I don't know if I overthink things too much or what, but it's rare for me to have much tolerance for feature-length reviews of things. They can wear me out just watching them, and it definitely wears me out to make them.

But sometimes you just have a lot to say. And I didn't even necessarily say everything I could have said here; there were things I would have added if not for the looming deadline proposed by the video sponsor. That's not a complaint -- sometimes you need someone else to tell you "be done by this date or else." Limitations foster creativity and toiling away at perfection can sometimes be just as toxic as crunch.

What I was trying to say is it's a big video, and it was hard keeping everything straight in my head because there was so much. One of those times where I was glad how I planned things out in advance, because sometimes the thoughts you had four months ago are not the same thoughts you have today, and the thoughts from four months ago were better.

It's already proving to be a bit of a divisive video, given I am going against the grain here. But I'm a big boy. I've spent time on the front lines of these sorts of things before. I know how to handle myself. I mean, half the reason I started my tumblr back in the day was pointing out some of the truly deranged takes I'd get in the replies to my Sonic 06 video.

Though I do worry. I'm getting a lot of people who are... politely declining to tell me what they think. More than a few "I don't agree with you, but I'm glad you released this video" that then never elaborate further. And that makes me feel bad? But why? Do I want to argue with my friends? Not particularly.

But more to the point, are people afraid to argue with me? Do I get too aggressive? I've picked up on a vibe, not just from friends, where people seem to go out of their way to avoid arguments with and/or around me. I mean I literally just said I started my Tumblr blog as a "get a load of this guy in my comments" spotlight (which, for the record, I don't do anymore). I don't want to be scary. But is it scary, or is it a strength? Or am I just imagining the whole thing? History says it's probably that last one, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. It's a lot to chew on.

At the end of the day, I do think parts of this script could have been better. I do kind of get a little mean at a couple points in ways I could have written around. A lot of people are bristling at the opening spiel, where I get more than a little "you people" about the Game Awards voting situation. There's another part later in the video where I also feature actual comments from a previous video and as I was editing it together I thought, "this sounds mean." But given I was less than 24 hours away from that deadline, I just had to roll with it (so I at least blurred the names and cropped the avatars out).

I'll end this post by quoting what I wrote on Patreon day before yesterday for the early access version of this video:

What a march this has been. I've worked on some videos that felt like they took forever, but nothing like this. This felt like the project that would never end. Some of that's because, after pushing myself so hard on the Sonic Adventure 2 video, I tried to be a little more casual with this one. I think I started the script around the end of April, a couple weeks after finishing the game on-stream. The idea was to avoid burnout.  And then the script grew, and grew, and grew, to be the longest script I've ever written. After doing voice over, I had three hours of material I had to cut down. I captured more than 60 hours of gameplay from more than 50 games. Thank goodness I took the time to stop and "storyboard" out this review like I did with the SA2 video. It actually proved to be extremely valuable here -- with a video this long, that takes so long to put together, it's hard to keep all of your ideas hot and ready in your head. Often I'd fall back to the storyboard and realize I planned something months ago that was way better than what I was doing in the moment.  And then in July, a sponsor came calling again. Suddenly I had a real deadline. The last four weeks have been a race to move this mountain of material into something resembling the shape of a video. The last couple days in particular have felt something like a miracle. A work ethic I hadn't tapped into in years suddenly roared to life as I locked down 20+ minutes of video in a matter of hours. It may have involved several actual panic attacks and me running on about four hours of sleep, but here we are. I was revising the script all the way up until a week ago. In retrospect, the sponsor segment probably leans a little too much on SAGE content, but by the time I realized that the train was barreling down the tracks too fast to stop. Thoughts for next time, I guess.

Patrons get a PDF of the script I used, including an unfinished earlier draft I abandoned where I think I was actually even meaner about it, if you can believe it. They also get a PDF of what my "storyboarding" process looks like (which is all just text).

I'll probably toss up a post for all the art I made for this video, too.

[twistedapple]

Miguel O'Hara: What's his deal

Ok so ever since the theatre realease of Across the Spiderverse back on May 31st (yes in France we get our new releases on Wednesday, this is why the early videos on YT had French subtitles btw in case you were wondering), I have been deep in it. Like. DEEP. The main offender for that being Miguel O'Hara, who immediately started living rent free in my head and he is clearly not leaving any time soon. Anyway, this is completely out of topic for my blog but I do what I want so let me rant about the aforementioned Depressed and Overworked DILF because we love men with problems in this house.

WATCH OUT FOR THE SPOILERS (and unhinged ramblings that totally sidetrack).

Ever since the release of ATSV, a lot of videos have been available on YT to dissect everything, and of course I have been having an intense focus on character analysis, because that movie is absolutely brilliant at establishing character arcs and presenting new Spiderverse characters in one of the most efficient, thrilling and engaging way I've ever had the pleasure to witness. We've been blessed with Gwen's heartwrenching character arc (and she deserves none of the hate she's been receiving, but don't get me started on that), Hobie more like Homie in the span of 5 minutes on screen... And Miguel, who blesses us with his ego, anger issues and massive trauma while also dropping bits of a gentler side - but only bits of it. And I have been extremely normal about Miguel, since he absolutely doesn't tick all of the boxes of the Tickle My Fancy list.

I have been ranting about him in many YT comment sections for more than 2 months now (hi Purple Kisseokjin and Schnee lol), but with the digital release of the movie, I finally remembered I have a Tumblr blog where I can yell about Miguel all I want, so here we are now. Now where do I start...

First Part: Miguel's character design

I've overall been highly impressed by the various art styles given to the Spiderverse cast, and how it reflects who they are and where they come from. Miguel in particular hits many soft spots for me for a good reason: his association with architecture and industrial designs, which are topics I'm interested in (especially architecture). As such, I will begin this study by analysing both the character and environmental designs for Miguel and Nueva York, and how the depiction of Nueva York 2099 reflects the state of the narration as well as how Miles and Miguel feel and think - following the same logic as what we get to see with the use of watercolours on Earth-65B, during Gwen's sequences, to express emotional states. A mandatory tangent will be made in regard to Miguel's themes as well, because they fall in line with my arguments for the character and background designs.

There are some main points to take into account when it comes to anything related to Miguel's design: straight lines everywhere, light rough sketch lines, gouache tones. Where do we find these elements? In architecture design. Older ones made in a traditional way usually have gouache for the colours (although ink and watercolour are also present), and the light sketch lines and straight lines are present to study the perspective, as shown in the example below:

Feels familiar? Well, will you look at that:

One of the reasons why I am giggling everytime he appears on screen is because of these delightful sketch lines. Looook, it has the same style as architecture concept art! Even better, from the mouth of one of the character designers, Kris Anka: NO CURVES!

Even his face has sharp angles (he truly has the most powerful cheekbone game), look at the sketch lines:

And you know what else has a lot of straight lines and sharp angles? Nueva York.

Look at this. Look at this. It's even in the title card when Miles arrives at the Spider Society.

Allow me to make a slight detour to explain what we are looking at while looking at the architecture of Nueva York 2099. What we are seeing here is a blend of brutalism and eco-brutalism. Brutalism is characterised by its materials, steel and concrete, as well as its intent: in a post-WW2 world, architecture is seen with more pragmatism and values function first. Eco-brutalism is a branch deriving from Brutalism, and aiming to reintegrate nature in the concrete jungle in order to create an harmony - albeit a fully man-made one.

The concept artists took (eco-)brutalism and ran away with it for a massive Solarpunk vibe, which makes the whole setting very interesting considering that in the comics, Nueva York is also very much a futuristic dystopia. Yet, using (eco-)brutalism to have us experience the place for the first time along with Miles is a great way to give a sense of awe by way of what we envision as the future to be now:

The interesting bit about it is how (eco-)brutalism and the adjacent solarpunk aesthetic are associated with a rather hopeful future, one where humanity manages to harmonise its modern way of life with a new development of nature. It feels like a haven mixing the relaxing greens of nature with the sharp lines of brutalism architecture, and that's how Nueva York feels on first sight. Similarly, Miguel O'Hara's first appearance leaves quite the memorable impression: tall, with broad shoulders and everything about him being sharp (it's even exagerated in the comics part), even his web.

(Fun fact time: ball pens have initially been designed for architecture and industrial drawings, they are fantastic tools to draw neat lines and create a nice variety of shading as well based on how you push on the pen and how you hatch/cross-hatch to modulate the intensity of the shading. You know who and what could be drawn solely with a couple of ball pens? Check the answer below.)

He also shines at the Guggenheim by showing how competent he is, with a certain benevolence on top of it: he initially rejects Jessica Drew's suggestion of adding Gwen to the lineup (yes Miguel, you don't want her because she's buddy buddy with Miles), yet saves her from being shot by her own father and ends up getting her on board as she finds herself with nowhere to go. It certainly leaves a similarly good first impression as the bright and harmonious first sight we get of Nueva York.

However, the environmental and character designs both give us a deeper look into Nueva York and Miguel, and it's certainly not as pristine as it seems. Just as Miles is about to discover the truth of the Spider Society, he enters a darker lab and Hobie keeps warning him, until they reach the area where Miguel is pretty much playing Big Brother by watching them through some of his screens:

I'd argue that the darker space is a callback to the comics, in which Miguel becomes sensitive to light after his genetic mutation, But it is the very opposite of what we've been shown when introduced to the Spider Society: soft whites and greens are traded for deep blues and the stark orange of multiple screens as well as the tone on Miguel's own costume - the bright orange light of the screens is even reflected on him. This is not a pleasant place, and everytime we see it (the Go Home Machine area has a similar style, albeit more organic in the creepiest way, as displayed above on the 4th screenshot), we witness Miguel having outbursts of anger as well. There is also something that feels disconnected from humanity in the sense that it's colder and more methodical in the design, either with all the sharp angles and stark contrasts, or the alien design of the Go Home Machine.

It's an impression that can also be found once we discover the underbelly of Nueva York, while Miles is being chased:

Here, we also have dark tones with stark neon lights that create the impression of a colder, less caring place, that points to the dystopic nature of the place. The impression is created with great efficiency not only by intense contrasts, but also by using the classic codes for a dystopic society: the solarpunk tones can be found in other stories such as the video game Mirror's Edge (classic case of solarpunk hiding a dystopia), and of course the darker cyberpunk aspects are a staple of the Dystopic Futuristic Society, that goes as far back as the first Bladerunner movie at least, and that can also be found in movies, series and games such as the Ghost in the Shell movies/series and the Cyberpunk TTRPG/video game (which pretty much gave its name to the genre) - I'd even argue we could go further back in time for the references with classics such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It matches with the atmosphere of the Spiderman 2099 as well, which is set exactly in that type of darker, cyberpunk dystopia.

I argue that there's something coldly methodical in Miguel's design and, by extension, Nueva York 2099's design as well. And it is delightfully balanced through an initial positive introduction of both, before being broken down for a darker turn later on during the movie, as it matches Miles' own amazement-turned-disappointment throughout the sequences in Nueva York when his initial desire to belong somewhere is brutally turned on its head by the very persons who could have given him that sense of belonging he was seeking.

Interestingly, even the soundscape for Miguel, "Spiderman 2099" and "Lab 2099", expresses the underlying coldness of Nueva York 2099 and Miguel's own scientific, methodical approach to problems. As explained by Youtuber Azcona in his Miguel O'Hara Suite playlist:

"I'd argue that it has the same tonal resonance that the Prowler theme in the first movie had, though is less villainous and dreadful as that theme. Miguel's theme is a five note synth line that sounds akin to an alarm or siren. It's blaringly loud, but is also used for more calm dialogue scenes in an effective way. The words that come to mind when describing the musical soundscape of Miguel O'Hara is "methodical", because no matter how loud or abrasive his theme gets it has an underlying feeling of coldness and efficiency. This is further shown through a repetitive synth ostinato that plods and chugs during a lot of his scenes/scenes involving the multiverse at large. It's reminiscent of Blade Runner in tone and it's mechanical nature, and I think it suits someone as jaded and distant as Miguel. Not only is his theme alarming and efficient, but also efficient in it's cold, electronic soundscape and melodies."

And this very methodical, cold tone is itself used during the infamous Train Chase and Miguel's on-screen mental breakdown... But more on that in the next part!

[ladymirdan]

As someone who just reblogs posts without saying anything, the reason I don't say anything when I reblog them is because one part, I often have nothing to say. And the other part is that most of the time when I comment on a post by reblogging it, the original poster never sees it or interacts with it. I feel like I'm screaming into the void, too.

I'm not trying to call anyone out, I'm not trying to shame anyone. Your point is still valid--it is 100% reasonable for you to feel the way you feel. I'm just providing my excuse for why I don't generally leave comments on your posts or on your blog. I'm pretty new to the fandom and pretty low on the fandom totem ladder, I think I'm one step up from an unknown. I don't get interaction most months, either, and I know that my interacting with anyone doesn't count for anything.

You are not under any obligation to interact with everyone who reblogs your posts with comments. I am not saying that you have to interact with me or that you're under some obligation. You are a popular member of the Tumblr 40k fandom with a lot of followers, I am one scream in the darkness. This is just me explaining why I just stalk your blog (do we still say that? We did back in 2012...) instead of talking to you. Also, I think our interests in the fandom are very different? But I love watching your enthusiasm, seeing your takes. I feel like I'm watching a Very Important Scholar dispensing wisdom in the public forum. (I won't even leave likes on peoples' posts because of what you and Tage have said about the likes! And now that I finally have a post that got popular, I kind of get that???? Sucks that it's not a post of literally any of my art, none of my drawings or writing, just a stupid picture I took where I tagged someone Very Important in the fandom without their permission, very rude of me...) Anyway, it's like, 2am here and I didn't get much sleep.

Pre-emptive sorry for wasting your time!

No no! My post wasn't a callout to anyone specific. And You reblog a lot of my stuff on here and I appreciate it a lot 💙 (I am also a notorious no comment reblogger a lot of the time 😅)

Reblogging on Tumblr makes me happy. It reaches new people with new perspectives and im still allowed to see the interactions. What I ment was taking the post offsite, to a discord or telegram or whatever where im not a part of the post anymore.

And second of all, you aren't a nobody. There are no hierarchy in fandom, (and anyone who says they are some kind of higher tier is a bit of a cunt imo) I value a good commenter/reblogger the same as a would an artist or writer.

But this is a good response, it clears the air a bit I think. I know I might look and sound scary from afar, but I'm (kind of?) nice. And I don't bite(impossible through the screen, I've tried). Lurking used to and still is encouraged way too much in my opinion.

And to you, and anyone who reads this thinking they are nobodies. That is not true. I was a nobody to Tage when we started talking, and now we (at least from my side) are really good friends, almost more then my afk friends.

It is always ok to comment on my posts, everything from “you are wrong and this is why *proceeds to write a 20page rant* to “I want to eat this post so I can carry it inside me” makes me smile.

(I have one rule tho; No unwarranted bashing of Abaddon, that leads to an insta block)

[mirjam-writes]

What about you? What writing are you happy about this year?? Is there anything you want to brag about?

Happy Yule, solstice, Christmas, Festivus, (belated) Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Doctor Who Day! And anything else you might celebrate, or happy Monday if you don’t!

Thank you so so much for asking 🧡🧡

This was quite a writing year for me. I wrote only four stories, but I'm quite proud of all of them. To Love Somebody was my first foray in rare pairs. An angsty backstory for Shadwell, and what made him the way he is. It has an hopeful ending, and I'm quite proud of the structure, and how much I managed to squeeze into the small word count. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is a short and wholesome outsider pov story I wrote for an event. I was surprised how much people liked it! It was also my first attempt on present tense, which continued in A Stable Relationship, one of my FTH stories for this year (the second one will probably be a bit late, and be completed in January). I had fun writing it, and it turned out to be a good one, and the only one of these oneshots that was Explicit. It was set in horse riding world.

The reason why I wrote only three oneshots, and why my second FTH piece is late, was of course my favourite story of all time: Be Still My Soul trilogy. A human AU story set in the sad moments of Finnish history.

Despite the class differences, landowner Azirafel Fjäll and sawmill worker Anton Crowley have been friends since childhood. The Great War rages over Europe and the Empire of Russia is in the firm grip of a revolution. The echoes of these fateful events carry over to the Grand Duchy of Finland, vaguely sauntering towards independence. Azirafel and Crowley find themselves on the opposite sides of a conflict that will eventually lead to a bitter civil war, tearing the country apart.

Is there a possibility for them to find their own side, or will this be the end of their budding love story?

I started writing the third part in January, and finished it just before S2 aired in July. It finished posting in October, and it's now complete and done, though I'm still commissioning art for it. This story took over my life for over two years, and it's my baby. I've had such a hard time to let go of it! It also has its own blog @be-still-my-soul-fanfic where I posted dozens of posts about historical and cultural facts. The story is written in a way you don't need to know anything of the Finnish history beforehand (my American betas made sure of that). It's a lovestory, not a history lesson, BUT if you want to learn more, there's a lot of extra info available 😅

I think it's the best story I've ever written (and probably ever will). Many readers have agreed, but it's angsty with very heavy themes until the happy ending, so it's not for everyone and I think posting it just when S2 aired cut some of the potential readers. The third part of the trilogy is now five kudos shy of 100 kudos, and I'm hoping it could get past that milestone before new years. 😂 So yeah, my own personal favourite gets the least interaction of them all. Oh well.

I'm gonna sound a bit self-absorbed, but I'm proud I finished it and it turned out even better than I hoped. My dream would be to print a physical copy or to record a podfic of that, but both might be a bit too much work.

For the next year I have two zine fics to finish, and I have applied to a third one. I have one event fic in the works as well, but the FTH story will be the one I'll concentrate until it's done. It's an oneshot human AU which somehow grew limbs and now it's 7.6k words and nowhere near done 😱 That's my holiday project.

Thank you for asking!! I was so delighted to get a chance to ramble myself 🧡 There's never enough chances for writers to gush about their own work because it always feels a bit self centered. That's why I like to wander around Tumblr and give people the perfect excuse to do that! Peek at the #writer's favourites tag if you want to see other fanfic writers sharing their favourites! And feel free to use the tag yourself if I forgot to ask someone (I was very much not organised when going through the blogs and I'm not good at matching blog names with writer names 😅)

I hope you'll have a magnificent new year 🧡

[elderlingacademic]

Update

So, tumblr just saw fit to tell me that this blog is now nine years old, which is... wild and strange to me. It's been a long time since I've been on it, and some of the posts are still getting notes, so I thought I'd stop by with a catch-up on how things are.

So:

I've finished my PhD. The process was bad enough to make my mental health plummet to previously unseen depths (for me, anyway), which is why I dropped off the face of this earth blog. I managed to pass with technical corrections only, which is a huge achievement that I think one day I might figure out how to feel about, but it's too soon right now.

My mum has read it, and thought it was very good - I'm hoping sometime (it's gonna be years, but) to be able to reread it with a clear head and appreciate it. Same with Realm of the Elderlings, honestly.

End of PhD meant some big life changes, some of which I'm still in the middle of. I live in a different city now, and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, because academia is no longer the answer.

I guess for the last year since I finished I've been wanting to post something about this but trying to work out how, and I think that the core of it is this: it is okay for things to not work out how you expected. If you are neck-deep in academia right not, it is not the whole world, I promise you. I finished my PhD, but I seriously considered quitting, and I still don't think that would have been the wrong decision. (Neither was carrying on. They were both acceptable options, no matter how fraught I felt about them at the time).

We are taught to view our lives like a kind of funnel - we start with a plethora of options, and then we narrow down further and further until we specialise (oh we might have other unrelated hobbies, but the core of it is Our Thing). But that's not how that works, that's not how any of this works at all. The world is wide. I can choose anything now. I mean, most of the things I've thought of so far I don't actually want to do for various reasons, but I know myself well enough to know that I'll figure it out eventually. If I just let it simmer in the back of my head, and give it time. You don't have to know the answer; in a way, you are the answer, if that makes any kind of sense.

I stuck with the job that I picked up part time to fund my PhD, and took it full time. It's definitely not a forever option, but it was a blessing to be in a new city, strangely liberated from the PhD that took up eight years of my life (and the general academia that took up the majority of my whole life before then), and doing something I already knew how to do. It's helping rebuild my confidence, and I know that whatever come next is going to be something I can make something of.

I hope that's not so rambly as to be incoherent; regardless, I'm glad I wrote it. I do still see asks on this account, so if you ever have any queries about academia (not the technical side, but what it feels like to get through sometimes), let me know. I can't promise quick answers, but I'll try to answer most things.

I hope you are all well, and thank you for the notes that remind me this blog still exists - a testament to the love and enthusiasm I had for this project at the start, and that I still hope to rediscover some day.

[slytherinshua]

I'm not asking you to rush things out but you were being way too unfair, don't you think? You write the requests that were requested by your FAV ANON or MOOTS. If you won't be able to write them, don't open a request

....i thought i explained myself well enough in the original post, but i guess not.

i am being unfair, but not in the way you claim i am. if you look at all my fics, i'd bet that the majority were ideas that i came up with, from my own brain. my writing is extremely unfair because i value my own ideas above anyones. i enjoy writing my own ideas more than anyone else's, even my best friends. isn't that unfair?

your point about writing the requests from my favorite anons and moots, isn't even accurate. it should be, because when i write something for my moots or a favored anon, at least they'll thank me for it or give some feedback (which is extremely rare on tumblr). more often that not, random anons that aren't named won't claim their request and thank the author for it. when they do, it's like a happy little surprise and honestly makes my day. but it's not common. writing for my moots and favorite anons is more fulfilling and more fun, which is why i like it. but requests from my moots are still lying at the very bottom of my inbox-- some of them were requested in summer of last year. that's how old they are. what i don't see is my moots complaining to me about not writing their idea.

not all things in life are fair, i'm sorry to say. should i be complaining because the things i've requested my moots to write haven't been finished yet? or what about those requests that i sent into writers when i first joined tumblr in august of 2022? those weren't finished-- so should i be mad about it? i'm not. because i requested them not feeling entitled that the writer needed to finish it. think about it, you're asking that someone else use their creative skills to write something for you. AND FOR FREE. art commissions often cost money, people get paid for journalism. these things are usually valued and the original artists get something out of it; money.

but fanfic isn't like that, and i definitely don't think it should be. it's for free and that's part of the charm. us authors are writing because we want to, and the fact that the readers can request something at all and the author might write their idea is a beautiful thing. but the relationship between author and reader needs to have that balance. we are giving you something to read, something to enjoy out of your day, all for free, and because we want to. the least you could do is send in feedback (which tumblr struggles with). a comment or reblog makes an author's entire day believe it or not. but if you then complain to us about not writing enough or about not completing requests, that is only going to deter us from doing it.

anonymity can be a great thing, but one of the negatives is that when 1 anon sends us a complaint or hate, we can't associate that anon from another. named anons, we can, of course. but among the dozens of requests in my inbox, i don't know which one is yours. you really could be anyone-- all i can see is the anon icon. and my inbox is full of that icon. when one anon complains, an author is going to start to get a bad feeling from interacting with anons in general. some authors won't take requests from anons, i've seen blogs do that.

i don't want to do that, and i'm not going to. i like taking requests both from moots and anons in my inbox. unlike some other blogs, i also like to keep my inbox open at all times. and there's a reason why i do that, and it all comes back to my writing process.

i don't work with the mindset that an old idea needs to be finished before a new idea. when you get an idea that you're really excited about (whether from my own brain or from a request in my inbox sent in that day) you want to write it immediately. and you should. as authors, we learn that you have to work with the motivation, otherwise you'll get frustrated. when you're motivated, writing becomes easier and more fun. when you're frustrated, it becomes harder and you're usually less happy with the outcome.

it was probable that i was just not motivated in the moment to write your prompt, whatever it was that you sent in. i don't delete requests, though, because i never know when i'll get the motivation for an idea. usually on days when i'm not particularly motivated to write anything in particular but still want to write something, i rng my list of requests. if i land on one that i'm not motivated to write, i simply skip it.

but i never delete it.

i don't feel overwhelmed by my inbox being full because i've never put pressure on myself to finish these requests. i remember my sister being worried about me whenever i said that i had to work on a request. she didn't want me to feel pressured to have to write something. she emphasized that it was okay to not write requests. but i told her that i was only doing it because i wanted to and that it was fun.

there is a way to ask a writer if they've forgotten about your request or ask them how it's going without being entitled and whiny like you, anon. you could come into our inboxes and say something like:

"hi! i requested something from you a while ago [let them know what the request was], and was wondering how it was going? please take all the time you need to complete it, i don't want you to feel pressured. thank you ^^"

a request like this, more often than not, will motivate the author to look back at the request, check how much they've written on it, or if they've started it at all, and maybe write some more. next time, i'd suggest you try this method instead of complaining that an author completed a request from one of their named anons.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

My breaking point...

//Hey, so...I hope you guys don't mind, but I need to vent for a bit.

//I'm here to announce that I need to take a break for a bit and...I'll explain why. Just a warning, I'm gonna be talking about some pretty heavy stuff.

//I don't really want to go into proper details, but these last few months since the start of the year have been...rough for me.

//I've been stuck in a horrible place and suffering from depression and unfortunate circumstances, even with the arrival of my new university year. I've been trying to make some changes and better my physical and mental health, so I can work my way through it.

//But it hasn't really worked. For some reason, every time I try and do something better, my life and mood just gets worse. And I will admit, some of it has derived from me doing stupid things and I'm the only one who can be held accountable for it. However, a lot of it also comes from other people both around me and online, who are making my life difficult for literally no other reason than what I can assume to be an innate desire to want to hurt me, with no rationality behind it. You guys have no doubt seen my complains about Tumblr's changes and how they've completely ruined my usual setup, and I still hate that I'M the one who has to change my way of doing things just to adapt to what are unquestionably stupid and terrible changes to what was once a perfectly good website.

//And even if it's completely unrelated to me, I just hear so much negative, and just horrible, terrible stuff going around that makes me question what the point is of even having a life to live. Take this past week leading up to today for example. If you've been following social media and the latest news, the situation with SSSniperWolf and JacksFilms and how YouTube are protecting her. Even today, I logged online to see what was happening, only to find out Wendee Lee (Miu and Akane's VA) is deciding to be a cunt and talent agencies fucking people over.

//Additionally, on AO3, I caught one of my followers being homophobic, saying they were desperate to not have any gay relationships in PToH. Because they post from a private account or whatever, I can't block them either.

//Inconsequential to me in the grand scheme of things, but the knowledge that other people are suffering at the hands of others is making me sad and prompting me to just reflect on whether there's a point or not in even trying to do what you love or make something of yourself if it only means someone else will hold it against you for the sake of their god damn ego.

//Because ultimately, people are horrible. They just are. To be honest, I'm still shocked that I have an understanding and kind audience on this platform like you guys, because I know a lot of you sympathize with me and have done in the past. And for that, I'm grateful.

//That being said, even though I would REALLY rather have avoided it, there's something I DO need to make perfectly clear, because it's happening again and I'm not in the mood to put up with it this time. I know I said I wouldn't go into detail, but I kind of need to here, even if I really rather wouldn't.

//If you follow me on other platforms of have seen my other work, you'll know that I have a sprite edit blog called @creepercraftsprites, and recently, I was requested by Mod Bubbles from A Student Out Of Time, to make some sprites for their blog. These sprites involved Kanata Inori from Another Despair Academy in a bunny girl outfit.

//A while back, I uploaded a series of sprites of every DR girl in a bunny girl outfit on Reddit; a series which included Chihiro, Hiyoko and Himiko, and sparked some heavy controversy on the subreddit. It gradually got worse, and eventually, I got permanently banned from the subreddit entirely.

//I still assert the moderators for the subreddit are ungrateful and favouritist cunts, but that aside, part of the reason why the situation got worse is because I was harassed, threatened and verbally abused by multiple people, and accused of pedophilia.

//And low and behold, I got some messages saying the EXACT same thing in light of the Kanata edits.

//I knew this would happen, but I still wanted to go through it anyway because I respect Mod Bubbles, and in no way am I saying this is THEIR fault. Of course it's not! I had every right to refuse making those edits, but I accepted. But I will not let myself be held accountable for statements that are just blatantly false, and I know even back then, the people who did this kind of harassment to me didn't actually care about the edits. They just wanted to hurt me.

//Case in point, they went out of their way to CREATE ALTERNATE ACCOUNTS after I blocked their mains, JUST TO KEEP HARASSING ME!

//And it's PATHETIC! It's just a sad state of existence and it makes me angry just thinking about it! That people do this!

//And do you know WHY they do this? Because the internet is the perfect place where you can say the worst thing imaginable to someone, or accuse them of something that is just completely and utterly ridiculous, ruining their reputation for no good reason, and face NO repercussions for it.

//Twitter, or X as it's now known, is the prime example for this. Almost EVERYTHING about that platform is horrible. It's a toxic platform full of toxic people, owned by a toxic manchild. But this is a problem that exists EVERYWHERE. Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook; if it's a social media, there's going to be someone who's going to take advantage of it with the intention of HURTING people.

//Whether it's because people can't think for themselves and have to be led by some influencer or whatever, because they can't take a joke, because they like seeing people suffer or because they misunderstand someone's intentions and refuse to let them explain themselves.

//If somebody offends you, or you don't like what someone's opinion states, then that's fine! Either ignore them, or block them! Blocking someone might be toxic, especially if they haven't gone out of their way to harm you, but at least it ends the problem right there and then! Why do people think that a perfectly reasonable solution to saying you don't like someone's work or statement, is telling them to kill themselves!?

//That's NOT funny! And you deserve some kind of punishment for saying that! Do you really think telling someone like me, or someone else who you think has screwed up, to kill themselves, or to die, is going to make YOU the BETTER PERSON!?

//It makes you WORSE by a SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT!

//People over react to everything nowadays; you cant even talk without pissing people off. GenZ and people on the internet are just really fucking immature, and I hate that it really does get to me. It shouldn't. But when people tell you you deserve to die just because you made one innocent piece of artwork of a character you like...

//...I won't lie, I considered it for a brief second, just if it means I can get away from the world that I share with these horrible, disgusting people.

//Before anybody asks, I AM seeking help for this. I just needed to rant a bit because this keeps happening, but I need to take a few days to just...readjust, focus on myself and my life, and what ACTUALLY matters right now, because frankly, I'm on the cusp of losing my fucking mind.

//I'm tired...I'm just...so...damn...TIRED...I'm fed up of ALL of this.

-Mod