#we build databases

[touchmycoat]

on one hand, I can recognize that not everyone loves methodically logging changes on 100+ pages into a spreadsheet, and failure to document is a human condition so fundamental that calling it a failure feels kind of weird, 'cause I certainly can't begrudge anyone for it on a personal level

on the other hand, I fucking told y'all future steps are contingent on logging these changes and I've already minimized the entries you needed to log why didn't you log the fucking changes aaaaaaaarrrggghhhhh

[bf-rally]

i put him in the sun for content

[cherriesandpomegranates]

I can't believe I walked into my first (ish) day of work at a new part time job today and basically said "why are you all so white" 💀💀💀

[reasonsforhope]

"Claire Cao was only a senior in high school when she saw a vital need in her community — and filled it. 

In 2024, the teenager spent her time outside of school volunteering at Blanchet House, a Portland-based nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness through food donations, clothing drives, and mental health assistance programs. 

As she logged hours as a Blanchet House student ambassador, Cao soon realized how difficult it was for community members to keep track of shelter openings, rotating food service programs, and available mental health resources. 

“During one afternoon meal service, I met Dano, an unhoused man who shared his struggles with accessing basic services like food and shelter,” Cao said in a recent press release. 

“Left disconnected from essential services, Dano described his struggles of not knowing where to go or which shelters had available beds.”

Combining her love for technology, law, and public policy, Cao pulled available resources into a database and created the ShelterBridge app, which connects users to shelters and services in their area. 

“ShelterBridge wasn’t simply inspired by Dano — it was inspired by the realization that access to resources is a fundamental need that we, as a community, can do a better job of providing,” Cao emphasized. 

“I wanted to use my skills to build something that could bridge that gap, ensuring that no one falls through the cracks simply because they don’t know where to turn for help.”

In addition to linking users to services in their area, the app also has a rating system similar to Yelp. This system allows people to leave star ratings and reviews on shelters, food services, hotlines, and legal aid. 

The ratings not only help users differentiate between services in their area — but they also provide invaluable feedback to the nonprofits, organizations, and government programs that service them. 

“We've been asking for an app like this for a number of years now,” Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House, told Portland news station KGW.

In mid-January, Cao won the 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Oregon’s First District for her work with ShelterBridge — outcompeting 12,682 student submissions. 

Since the app first launched, Cao and her growing ShelterBridge team — which includes enterprising high schoolers and college students from across the nation — have expanded services to California, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, and North Carolina. 

“Claire and the team she’s working with deserve all the credit in the world because they're doing something that frankly nobody else has really stepped up to do,” Kerman said. 

“To have the kind of technology that we use every day with hotels and other kinds of reservations [to] help people get into safe, supportive and dignified shelter would be a game changer for our community.”

Although the app started as a class project, Cao said ShelterBridge’s success has far surpassed her expectations. 

“I do hope to keep it up,” she told Oregon outlet KOIN 6 News, as she looked ahead to college and beyond. “I’ve made a lot of efforts to expand it to other cities as well — and it’s something I can mostly do from a computer or my laptop at home.”

-via GoodGoodGood, March 21, 2025

[damienthepious]

watching @nanowrimo within a single hour:

make an awful, ill-conceived, sponsored post about "responsible"/"ethical" uses of ai in writing

immediately get ratio'd in a way i've never seen on tumblr with a small swarm of chastising-to-negative replies and no reblogs

start deleting replies

reply to their own post being like 'agree to disagree!!!' while saying that ai can TOTALLY be ethical because spellcheck exists!! (???) while in NO WAY responding to the criticisms of ai for its environmental impact OR the building of databases on material without author consent, ie, stolen material, OR the money laundering rampant in the industry

when called out on deleting replies, literally messaged me people who called them out to say "We don't have a problem with folks disagreeing with AI. It's the tone of the discourse." So. overtly stated tone policing.

get even MORE replies saying this is a Bad Look, and some reblogs now that people's replies are being deleted

DISABLE REBLOGS when people aren't saying what nano would prefer they say

im juust in literal awe of this fucking mess.

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

[menop033]

My favorite crimes Barbara Gordon has committed

Full disclosure, I am considering only New Earth Babs because the other versions are simply inferior. I will ignore the typical masked adventurer crimes she did as Batgirl, like assault, breaking and entering, trespassing, obstructing justice and vigilantism. I will also not really consider the very classic Oracle shenanigans like hacking, accessing some databases she probably shouldn't, stealing from rich criminals to fund her own (kinda criminal) operation, invading privacy and literally doing illegal spy work with Birds of Prey. Because those are boring and I want something that's not just another Tuesday. So, in no particular order:

Changing the light on traffic lights

Stupid and small but I love it. Very iconic and very Barbara-like.

+Extra Helena who has very logical and understandable qualms about Oracle's power and influence

[Birds of Prey (1999) #58]

Blackmailing Catwoman into returning stolen paintings

And threatening to send her money to charities. Catwoman begrudgingly obliged.

I am not too sure about what happened leading to that moment. That comic didn't have a particularly strong story. I think Selina stole them while Barbara was still Batgirl?

Either way, the ending is pretty memorable for me. Ultimate irony - threatening her into returning stolen goods by stealing funds from her.

[Birds of Prey: Catwoman/Oracle]

Making a deal with Gotham City's emergency services

and then using the tech she implemented to override the control of the vehicles when needed. Or, when she wants to. This one instance was because Steph just got shot in the head and didn't really want to end up in an ER where her mother worked, exposing her (third) secret identity. It worked out so yay?

[Batgirl (2009) #6]

Sort of kidnapping Wendy Harris

To be fair, she did it because Calculator, Oracle's arch nemesis and Wendy's father, was endangering her and she did it to protect her but a little more explanation couldn't hurt. But that wouldn't be Barbara without her genial tendency to keep everyone but herself in the dark. I guess she really did keep Wendy in the dark. In the basement.

[Batgirl (2009) #11]

Political corruption

We never get to learn what exactly she did. She just said that many leaders owe her their positions. it sure as hell doesn't sound legal. World-wide corruption? Why not. Entirely too much power for one person to hold. 10/10

Also, I bet you that those power grids aren't exactly controlled legally.

[Birds of Prey (1999) #103]

Blowing up a government facility and getting rid of some evidence

Well, Cass decided to break into a government facility and free a terrorist to prove a point that everyone can change. And in doing so she left them some photo, video and DNA evidence.

Oracle therefore later sent her back there to destroy it, blowing the building up in the process. Oh and she also presumably helped the guy get fake documents but that's not 100% confirmed (Cass said that it's from her friends as she gave them to him).

She really cares about her not-quite-daughter <3

[Batgirl (2000) #17]

Her father/uncle (the Gordon family was kind of a mess after Crisis) might be the commissioner of Gotham but she clearly doesn't respect the law in the slightest. They love eachother, of course, they just don't share the same views on the law.

I simply enjoy how unhinged her methods sometimes usually are and we need to recognise that. Also, while we are at it, get rid of Prime Earth Barbara's characterisation and bring back the competent and sarcastic control-freak.

[copperbadge]

So, I got tagged in a post, and I wrote a bit of a novel in a reblog in drafts, and then I realized that probably it wasn't for the best to post up All That Nonsense when the OP was just making a funny post about Wikipedia's fundraising. And it is a funny post! So I'll link here to the post and where I was tagged but I decided to put my thoughts here. Please take this as a hint to be respectful of OP and the person who tagged me both :)

I will say my initial reaction to seeing Wikipedia selling merch AND asking to be in your will was "Well, they're trying something." It's just such a weird topic to bring up, it's hard to be graceful about it, so I think what they were doing was probably the best you can do.

And the response did make a lot of the points I'd make about making a will and such. In fact, FreeWill is what I made my will with and we recommend them to our donors.

There was a study that came out a decade ago or more, so my numbers probably aren't accurate, but the statistic that knocked me back was that most donors who leave surprise large bequests (gifts to charity in their will) give an average of $17 a year during their lives. So there's likely a reason that Wikipedia is targeting users and not huge donors.

It's an ongoing issue that most people also don't document their bequests. By all means, leave money to charity in your will, they will be happy to have it, but they will be even happier to know ahead of time.

Perfect example, THIS WEEK we got a check for six figures from a woman's estate. It was an eyebrow-raising amount of money for us. My boss, who handles both "eyebrow raising money" and "gifts from dead people", immediately went to look her up in our database.

Which she is not in. We had no idea this woman existed. Never gave to us before.

Had we known she was leaving us this money, my boss would have made sure she understood how grateful we were and like, bought her lunch a couple of times a year, and when she did pass we would have known who to reach out to in order to offer our support.

Instead, he came to me and said, "I have a name and an address," and I set to work to find out why she gave and who we could thank. I found her obit, but she didn't die of anything related to our work. Using information from the obit, I confirmed none of her family were in our database either. I looked up her second husband, mentioned in the obit, and his obit said he died of lung disease, which told me that this gift is because she lost her husband.

This helps because I knew from her obit that they had a blended family; they didn't have any kids together but they each had kids when they married, all of whom are now like, my age. So we want to thank her kids but we want to make sure her stepkids, who lost their dad, get a specific kind of outreach as well. I told my boss their names and he said one of the husband's kids was listed as the executor of the will, but there was nothing (surname-wise) to indicate they were related. I found contact information for that person, and my boss was able to reach out to her. She didn't realize we didn't know about the bequest, and now she and her siblings are talking to us about their dad and their own health while her stepsiblings, whose mother left us this very generous gift, are getting condolences and thanks and getting to say how she will be thanked in our documentation.

And I mean, that's why my job exists, to fill in those blanks. We just...would really like to have told her thank-you while she was alive.

SO! The moral of the story is: please consider leaving money to charity in your will if you can, use FreeWill to make your will (they will also help you document your gift) and let the charity know you're leaving them an estate gift. Not only will you maybe get cool swag but especially if it's a concern close to your heart, you'll get to build your relationship with the charity.

[darlingdaisyfarm]

Have you done headcanons about how the pines brothers(Stan and Ford) eat pussy before? :0

꒰ Stan & Ford making a meal outta you hcs ꒱

a/n: i regret nothing. i literally spent like 5 days writing this lmao + listen, if we have Stan & Ford bj headcanons, it's only fair we get Stan & Ford eating pussy hcs too, right?? anyways this is absolutely porn. i fought cringe and i won!! now i’m free to be as cringe as i want!!!

warning: nsfw!!

STANFORD

ᝰ.ᐟ he was SO awkward the first time. fidgety. fumbling. “am i doing it right? oh dear, i— tell me, please.” while your legs were literally shaking because he accidentally hit the right spot with his nerd mouth

ᝰ.ᐟ you have to guide him. gentle hand on his hair. soft praise. “right there, baby, just like that, don’t stop. yes, god, that’s perfect!” and he WHINES into your cunt like he’s found a portal to the fifth dimension idkk

ᝰ.ᐟ so eventually Ford learns and memorizes what each of your gasps mean. over time he builds a mental database of what little sighs = need more pressure, what whimpers = overstimulation, what shudders = keep going, keep going, don’t stop

ᝰ.ᐟ he is addicted. i mean Ford becomes obsessed with the idea of making you shake on his mouth

ᝰ.ᐟ i always hc that Ford is very sensual lover so he intertwines his fingers with yours during sex in general. and eating his sweetheart out is no exception. even when he's too busy to undress you properly or when he’s kneeling and can barely reach, Ford grasps your hand in his, squeezes it and holds you. he loves when you squeeze his hand when you cum

ᝰ.ᐟ he gets so overwhelmed by your taste, rutting his hips into the air like he’s suffering because he loves it too much

ᝰ.ᐟ also loves overstimulating you. like, gets you off once and then doesn't stop. pins your hips down with one arm and keeps eating you until you’re clawing at his hair, sobbing, begging for mercy

ᝰ.ᐟ kisses your clit after he's done with you<3 soft, delicate kisses like thank you thank you thank you, bc he’s grateful you let him worship you!!

ᝰ.ᐟ dont get me wrong, he’ll kiss your mouth after too. sloppy and gentle, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. he blushes about it afterward but loves it

ᝰ.ᐟ ABSOLUTELY eats you during research breaks. like he's been holed up in the basement for twelve hours, comes upstairs glassy-eyed and exhausted, yanks you onto a table and gorges himself on your pussy like it’s his only nourishment

ᝰ.ᐟ im sure he would love to eat you standing up, that's like. . . the first thought that comes to my mind. wants you standing, gripping onto a bookshelf, table or wall, and he's just kneeling below you, big hands on your hips keeping you still, burying his face in you shamelessly. bonus point if you interrupt him like that during one of his science projects. if you'll just show up at the door, wearing only his sweater and nothing underneath. he'll get the hint immediately

ᝰ.ᐟ Ford was so shy about his extra fingers at first. hesitating when you begged him to use them. “they’re— im sorry, they’re different, i might hurt you.” but you insisted. and he trusted you enough to try, so once he saw you crying and grabbing the sheets because he could reach places inside you that no one else ever could?? he became a menace. you actually gave him more confidence about his extra fingers

ᝰ.ᐟ so now he absolutely loves to scissor you open so perfectly you feel like you're breaking apart. he thrusts them deep slowly, curling them up until your stomach tightens and you cry his name

ᝰ.ᐟ PLUS loves dragging one extra finger across your clit while still eating you just to see you spasm harder

ᝰ.ᐟ he accidentally made you squirt once and then spent two hours taking notes on how he did it, yeah, Ford tell us ur secret

ᝰ.ᐟ prefers to do two things at once. licking you and fingering you deep and perfectly at the same time, curling his fingers up against your soft walls while he sucks the clit into his mouth hard. he learned this move studying you obsessively.

ᝰ.ᐟ hehehe loves when you trap his head there. he wants to get smothered.

ᝰ.ᐟ whines softly against your pussy when he’s close to cumming untouched from how sweet you taste!!! nerd.

ᝰ.ᐟ he gets dizzy when you call him good boy while he’s down there. at first he blushes and fumbles, but the first time you whimper “good boy, Ford, just like that, baby” he shudders so violently and groans in response

ᝰ.ᐟ since he's very sensual and tender lover, he also kisses down your whole body before getting there. slow and torturous. he starts with your neck, then your chest, pausing to mouth at your nipples, worshipping, then goes to your stomach, then kisses the inside of your hips before he even thinks about touching your clit. Ford talks between kisses, too. like murmuring little praises against your skin. “so beautiful. so soft”

ᝰ.ᐟ when he accidentally makes you squirt, Ford gets so obsessed with it he feels like a total pervert. the first time he’s using his fingers inside you and licking at the same time like a man possessed, and suddenly you’re gasping and flooding his mouth, and poor Ford just stares up at you stunned with his whole face dripping like “fascinating! i- was that?? made you-?” he looks SO proud. im sure he wants to print out a certificate and hang it on the wall

ᝰ.ᐟ he's lowkey addicted to the way your thighs tremble. you’ll feel his big hands gripping you harder whenever you start squirming, because he loves making you feel so weak you can't even stay upright

ᝰ.ᐟ sometimes he pulls your legs over his shoulders and just ruts his hips into the bed while eating you. he’s moaning into your cunt, getting himself off from the sheer act of tasting you. and. . . you don't even realize it at first, until you feel the mattress shaking under you and realize this man is grinding wildly into nothing like a desperate dog

ᝰ.ᐟ he uses his fucking smart tongue so good. . . mapping you out and teasing every inch. focusing carefully on your clit for long, overwhelming stretches until you’re shaking and he’s just murmuring, “you can take more, darling, just a little more for me, yes?”

ᝰ.ᐟ Ford loves to observe so he sometimes tugs your knees open wider without saying a word. especially when you’re shy. he loves gently but firmly spreading you, baring you completely, staring for some agonising seconds with those hungry eyes before ducking back in with a desperate groan

ᝰ.ᐟ Ford gets breathless when he eats you out. poor boy working so hard to please you that he’s short of air and it makes his mouth sloppier, wetter, hotter.

ᝰ.ᐟ he gets so into it he forgets time exists. you have to physically pull him off sometimes. lips puffy, eyes glazed, hair a mess. and he looks up, raising his eyebrows “did i do something wrong?”

ᝰ.ᐟ he leaves marks WITHOUT realising. for example, suction bruises on your inner thighs

ᝰ.ᐟ will write about it later in his personal journal. entry titled ‘reactions observed from beloved subject during intimate oral exploration’

ᝰ.ᐟ he loves when you guide his head, push it deeper. tell him he’s good. tell him he’s yours. call him your genius, your good boy. he eats it up, literally and figuratively

ᝰ.ᐟ he's pretty strong, so once he gets into his pussy drunk state, he pulls your thighs wide apart and pushes them to your chest. gets his shoulders under them so you can’t move. so he can eat you with his whole face

ᝰ.ᐟ Ford wants you above him. sitting on his face. so he can grip your thighs and keep you there. grind on his mouth and smother him. he’ll edge himself while he does it. sometimes doesn’t even let himself cum because you always just cum first

ᝰ.ᐟ he wants to make you cry from pleasure. not just cum. cry. shuddering, sobbing, overstimmed, shaking all over, with your legs twitching and your fingers buried in his silver hair. that’s his goal. every time.

ᝰ.ᐟ and when he’s done, he pants against your cunt and asks “did i do well? will you let me again? please?”

STANLEY

ᝰ.ᐟ ohh that man dives in like a fucking dog who found a steak in the trash

ᝰ.ᐟ Stan believes eating pussy is a man's duty and pride. he thinks it’s the hottest thing in the world. he doesn't even expect anything back half the time, he just wants to see you all needy and desperate for him

ᝰ.ᐟ in fact, is obsessed with it. he will eat you out on the COUCH. in the BACKSEAT. in the SHOWER. standing in the KITCHEN because “lemme get my mouth on that sweet thing, c’mon. been thinking about you all damn day.”

ᝰ.ᐟ he doesn’t care about being sloppy. i mean, he WANTS to be messy. soak his face, give him that mess. he’ll rub his nose against your clit and grin when you moan. he likes to talk with his mouth full

ᝰ.ᐟ he’s so good at it. like scary good. like make-you-cry good. because. . . Stan actually gives a shit. he listens, watches your face, keeps his tongue right where you twitch and he’ll tease you like “right there, huh? that’s the spot? i could do this all night, baby”

ᝰ.ᐟ “some folks just go for the clit. amateurs.” he knows how to tease, so when he's in the right mood, he starts slow. lips kissing up your thighs. tongue barely grazing you. he won’t even touch your pussy at first. he’ll hover there, warm breath on your folds, smirking. “you want it, huh? say it. beg me.”

ᝰ.ᐟ gets so fucking cocky when you squirm. you try to close your legs and he just pins them wide with his elbows and keeps licking, “nuh-uh, baby. don’t run from it now. lemme take care of you.”

ᝰ.ᐟ such a fucking tease tbh. he wants you spread out and begging. makes soft licks, hot breath, little kisses so close but not quite until you're whimpering “please Stan, please touch me.” then he grins so wide and dives in

ᝰ.ᐟ he talks while eating. "fuck baby, you’re so sweet—mmph— keep makin’ them sounds, huh? you like ridin’ my tongue, don’t ya? greedy little thing.” god, Stan never shuts up. just keeps mouthing at your clit between sentences

ᝰ.ᐟ “that’s it, baby. drip all over my fuckin' face. yeah, you miss me, huh? missed this mouth, didn’t ya?”

ᝰ.ᐟ slaps your thighs mid-act. that usually means “stay still, sweetheart, lemme do my job.” in his language

ᝰ.ᐟ he’ll pull you down onto his mouth, slap your cheeks, moan into your folds like he’s drowning and he loves it!!

ᝰ.ᐟ Stan grinds into the mattress sometimes while he’s doing it. gets so turned on that he humps the sheets like a teenage boy

ᝰ.ᐟ kisses your thighs after. “damn, you’re delicious. gimme five minutes, ill do it again.” he means it, you know it

ᝰ.ᐟ uh. . . imagine him dragging your panties down with his teeth, grinning at you the whole time

ᝰ.ᐟ and then shoving your thighs apart roughly before he eats you. loves to pick you up, set you down on the bed, and manhandle your legs open without giving you time to be shy. “lemme see that pretty little thing, doll, c’mon.”

ᝰ.ᐟ absolutely shoves your panties in his pocket after eating you out <3

ᝰ.ᐟ buries his face so deep you think you might suffocate him, but. . . he literally doesn’t care if he can’t breathe. he will drown in you happily!!

ᝰ.ᐟ loves eating you while you’re still wearing half your clothes. theres just smth hot about it, like he couldn’t wait long enough to get you fully naked. shirt bunched up, panties shoved to the side, pants around one ankle, etc

ᝰ.ᐟ oh boy, he sucks on your sensitive clit in little pulsing motions and that makes your toes curl and your hips buck. and he LAUGHS when you try to wiggle away, like “nah-uh, baby, stay right there”

ᝰ.ᐟ gets so drunk on your taste. . . genuinely slurring afterwards, dazed and happy, wiping his chin with the back of his hand “fuuuck baby, you taste better than anythin’ in this world”

ᝰ.ᐟ licks you slow and teasing when you’re being bratty. like if you mouth off at him he’ll go extra slow, keeping you on edge for hours just to punish you, refusing to let you cum until you’re sobbing and begging

ᝰ.ᐟ will literally fuck you with his mouth, Stanley makes a fucking mess every time and your whole lower half is drenched

ᝰ.ᐟ he grunts into your pussy when you pull his hair. gosh just imagine hearing that “mmfhh, goddamn, yeahh” sound. id cry

ᝰ.ᐟ sometimes cums untouched while eating you. especially if you praise him because man's got a heavy praise kink “good boy, such a good boy for me, Stan, just like that” he whimpers against you and next thing you know he’s cumming in his pants

ᝰ.ᐟ if he’s eating you bent over, he’s slapping your ass every other second. “c’mon, baby, stay still— slap— fuck, you taste so good—slap—don’t run from me now, sweetheart” while laughing under his breath when you squeal

ᝰ.ᐟ eats you even when he’s drunk. like, you’re trying to get him to come to bed and he’s got his face between your thighs, half-dozing off, still licking you lazily while mumbling against you, “mm. . . just a little taste, baby, lemme finish my dessert first”

ᝰ.ᐟ absolutely loves to do it during a movie night. just casually slides down his armchair, spreads your legs over his shoulders, eats you under the blanket while the TV flickers <33 romantic isnt it? Stan craves physical closeness so he wants your thighs around his ears, your heels digging into his back, your fingers twisted in his hair

ᝰ.ᐟ hear me out okay?. . . uh, mullet!Stan + tongue-piercing?? he definitely thinks about getting a tongue piercing at some point just to “drive you crazy, doll”

ᝰ.ᐟ anyways, honestly if you’re loud he will double down on how hard he sucks and licks just to keep it going

ᝰ.ᐟ and if you're into it: slaps your clit before starting. just a little teasing smack<3

ᝰ.ᐟ sometimes i look at this man and think. . . he loves to eat it from the back. Stan likes to pull your hips up, spread you wide, growl into your folds. he makes your thighs shake and your knees buckle as you’re gasping and trying not to collapse under him

ᝰ.ᐟ in most cases, he jerks himself off while he eats you out

ᝰ.ᐟ im sure he's a face sitting guy. i mean they both are, but Stan's not that shy to ask you to do it. literally begs you to ride his face. grabs your hips and drags you down onto him, smirking up at you, “c’mon, baby, sit on me, lemme taste you proper.” and dont even try to whine about your weight or that you're shy or whatever. Stan doesn't really care and he's pretty strong enough to hold you.

ᝰ.ᐟ it's not just “he lets you ride his face” NAH, STAN ENCOURAGES IT. and bounces his hips up while you grind down onto his mouth, groaning into you because you’re the best meal he’s ever had!!!

ᝰ.ᐟ and he keeps slapping your ass every time you try to pull away. because, “nope, you’re staying right here, princess”

ᝰ.ᐟ tell you what, he’ll literally order you to “fuck his face”. “c'mon sweetheart, ride it. don't be shy now.” while grinding you down onto his tongue until you can’t even think straight

ᝰ.ᐟ he’s tongue-fucking you stupid

ᝰ.ᐟ and i think he loves cleaning you up with his tongue after you squirt, if you did

ᝰ.ᐟ sucks your clit like he’s trying to drink you dry 😭 idkk, i don't make the rules. he's got no mercy and he's ruthless. he’ll tongue you hard and messy, then back off and spit right onto your clit to make it even wetter, then suck again

ᝰ.ᐟ prefers to stay between your legs after you cum. Stan doesn’t pull away immediately. he licks you through the aftershocks, chuckling when you twitch and whimper from overstimulation

ᝰ.ᐟ uhh. . . sometimes he eats you out just because he’s horny. i mean, not even to get sex out of it. just because he needs to taste you or hear you moan. he just wants to make you feel good

ᝰ.ᐟ listen listen!! Stan 100% leaves handprints on your ass. after eating you out bent over the desk, the mirror, the back of his car. whatever. you look later and there’s full red handprints where he gripped you to spread you open

ᝰ.ᐟ of course, he fingers you while eating but he's more rough (or better word, desperate and passionate) about it. shoving thick fingers deep, twisting them while he tongues your clit, making you arch and wail for him

ᝰ.ᐟ Stan will bite the inside of your thighs during it, that's what im 100% sure of. like soft little sharp nips to leave marks. then grins proudly at them later like “my pretty thing all marked up for me.”

ᝰ.ᐟ he’ll put one arm across your belly to hold you down. needs to feel you squirm under him. he loves when you say “Stan, too much—please” and he just goes “nah, baby, not done yet.”

ᝰ.ᐟ afterwards, he lights a cigarette, and says “you’re gonna marry me, right?”

[takumiraine]

Once Upon A Time Chapter 2

<prev> <next>

So Danny? 100% has PTSD. I do have a vague plan for this. And most of the next chap written. The Fentons may or may not be terrible parents. You’ll have to wait and see. I do have plans to break everyone’s hearts at least once. Anyways. This is considered my like…. Audience test before Ao3. Things may change. As a reminder all I know about dc is from fandom and wiki and everything I remember about dp is prob poorly remembered.

—

Once upon a time, there had been a young boy who was happy. Once upon a time, there was a young boy who had dreams and a future. Once upon a time, there was a boy who had been alive in every sense of the word. Once upon a time, everything shattered. Once upon a time, there was a man who was filled with anger. Once upon a time, there was a man just as alive as he was dead. Once upon a time, there was a man who was haunted and hunted.

As the stabbed kid shuffled off, leaving Jason baffled, he grabbed the guy who he had slammed into the wall. His head was bleeding but his breathing was steady and Jason huffed. He knew he definitely cracked the guy’s skull, but he had survived worse.

“O, what do we know on this guy?” He asked the woman in his ear. Oracle’s answer would determine whether he took the guy in to the ER or let him roll the dice of fate.

“Rap sheet about a mile long. Pretty basic stuff. Armed robbery, possession with intent, B&Es, assault and battery, the usual.”

Jason shrugged then and dropped the guy against the wall. Rolling the dice it was. He turned away, looking towards where the kid disappeared around the corner “and what about the guy he was mugging?”

“That’s where it gets weird.” Oracle’s typing was coming through loud and clear. “It’s hard to get a clear picture of him. He has some sort of distortion on the feed. Everything else comes out clear but…. He’s a mess of pixels. Voice too. Scrambled. It’ll take time.”

“Think he’s a meta?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, considering he got knifed and just…. Walked off with it. Wonder what his issue with B is though.”

“Couldn’t tell you. Think it might be time to update my armor if I’m being lumped in with people B and the bird brains have pissed off.” Jason took an evidence kit out of his pocket and swiped at the blood on his chest. Old habits and all. “Got a sample of the kid’s blood though.”

“Good thinking. Wonder if he’s in any databases. I’ve got a cleaned up picture now. Enough that it’s pinging in GU’s database. Dan Nightingale, Mechanical engineering major. It says he’s 19, it’s his freshman year and he’s in like every remedial class he can take, high school transcripts are mediocre at best. No other information about him really. Rogue in the making that one.” Oracle reported. Jason groaned, grapneling up to the rooftops to follow where the kid went off to.

“Someone should keep an eye on him. Ugh. This’ll be a conversation for B and the birds won’t it? Kid won’t like having a bunch of birds following him.” Jason flicked through the different visual modes on his visor, finding…. Cold moving through one of the apartment buildings. It was human shaped, but where he expected to find heat…. “Weird…. You seeing this?”

“Very weird,” Barbara agreed, tapping into his visor’s feed. “And hey, you could just…. Not tell him. You wanted a Lit degree right? Go to class, befriend him. Do some recon.” Jason knew Babs always walked the fine line between what Bruce needed to know about the rest of them and what she had to keep secret to keep helping them. He didn’t envy her position. Jason still wanted Bruce to hurt sometimes. Not as much as he used to, something about the sins of the father and all that. He just wanted Bruce to be aware that everything he had ever hoped for his boy to be was… out of both of their reaches forever.

“That sounds annoying.” He was 23. He didn’t have any interest in taking on a degree on top of his full time crime fighting and criminal empire running jobs.

“Yeah, but what other choice do you have? It’s go back to school, tell B, or wait for him to become a rogue.”

“I hate you sometimes.” He muttered, unsure of what made him suddenly so interested in that angry guy.

“Feeling’s mutual Hood,” She replied with what was definitely a fond tone. He grimaced.

—-

In the apartment, Danny was less than thrilled. That was his favorite shirt! Now not only was it covered in blood, it had a huge hole in it. His core still thrummed with the urge to fight, but he tamped it down. Slowly, as he pulled the knife out, he sealed the wound with a layer of ice, pulling his shirt off and throwing it into the bathroom sink. The knife was dropped into the kitchen sink. His keys and phone in his bedroom on the battered nightstand next to the bed.

He returned to the bathroom and turned the water on cold. He let it spray full blast before working on scrubbing the blood from his shirt. He looked up to eye himself critically in the mirror before noticing the waistband of his jeans were saturated with blood too. Damn it. He kicked off his shoes and pulled his pants off, throwing them into the now overfilled sink. The bathtub would probably be a better choice. Turning off the sink and turning on the tub Danny picked up the sopping clothes and dropped them with a wet thump into the basin of the tub. Carefully he lowered himself onto the floor, wincing at the way pain clawed through him.

He would need to actually eat food to heal from this at any reasonable speed. He thought of the two dollars he had, then the emergency stash of….he racked his brain to remember how much of the emergency cash he was left with once he got to Gotham…right. Twenty bucks…. That was all he had in the wall.

He missed the days when Sam would just throw money at him whenever his parents forgot to do things like pay rent or put food in the fridge.

As if agreeing his stomach rumbled loudly, demanding actual food to sate the expense of energy healing his injury would take. He thought about calling Sam. Seeing if she could arrange a prepaid card for him. He knew she would in a heartbeat.

Even cut off from family money she seemed to be doing better than he was. Wracking his brain, Danny thought she was working in Bludhaven as some sort of personal assistant. He wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion that came from sustaining a human body on nothing but ecto or if he had been too distracted in the moment to pay proper attention, but he couldn’t remember if that was right. Getting the blood out of his clothes he wiped at the remaining blood on his body, getting most of it off. He grabbed the clothes and turned off the water.

Slowly, Danny pushed himself to his feet. He had survived worse, multiple times. But pain never seemed to stop being painful. It lanced through his side and he almost fell back to his knees with the way it stole his breath and doubled him over. He wished he could go back to the Zone and just… wait it out. But in order to do that without drawing attention he’d need a portal. The only ones he knew of were either destroyed or…. Compromised.

Maybe he should call Vlad. Danny shook that thought away almost immediately as he realized how silly it was. Vlad spent most of his teen years antagonizing him. Besides the GIW had probably gotten to Vlad too. If he wasn’t captured he would likely be compromised. Memories of Amity Park flooded in before Danny could stop them. Of asking for help. Over and over. Of the GIW storming in and locking everything down. Of Danny frantically telling his parents, only for their eyes to dart to the kitchen before they could stop it. Of the sound of energy. The smell of his flesh burning. Of pain.

Danny forced himself to take a breath. He focused on the wet clothes in his hands. On the tiles beneath his feet. Of the too harsh fluorescents in the bathroom that buzzed. The sounds of the people above him arguing over bills and needing better jobs.

Slowly he banished the memories back where they belonged. He’d… figure it out. He had to. Somehow. For now, sleep. Danny hung up the wet clothes over the shower bar, made sure there was a towel on the floor and shuffled into the bedroom. Double checking that his alarm was set, even though his class wasn’t until early afternoon, he didn’t want to miss it, he slid into his bed and pulled the pile of blankets up over him.

Almost instantly, he was out.

—-

“B,” Jason said in lieu of a proper greeting as he stepped into the Batcave, hood tucked under his arm.

“Jason,” Bruce looked up and turned the surprised expression into something more fond. “To what do I owe the visit?”

Jason leaned against the rock. Foot braced against the wall. “I know semester’s already started, but something came up. How hard would it be to start at GU?”

Bruce stared at him for a long moment and Jason knew it was his way of trying to figure out what buttons to press. Then he tilted his head and turned back to the computer screen. “Not too hard. It is early yet. Anything I should know?”

“Babs was lonely.” It was an out and out lie, but it seemed to soften things in Bruce further, reminding him of the two children that failed him within months of each other.

“Hm.” Bruce was silent at his computer for a long moment. Convinced that was the end of the conversation, Jason tightened his grip on the helmet he had tucked under his arm. “Either way. It is a good choice. Literature?”

The comment and question rankled Jason, the thing from the pit scratching at his carefully contained emotions. Pushing for any crack. Bruce was trying he reminded himself. Too little too late, but trying.

“Yeah. Going in in the morning.”

“Should I call ahead?”

“No. I can handle it. If not I have no business being there.”

“You will do fine.” The ‘you are a Wayne’ was left unspoken.

Jason snorted. “Right. Good talk.”

“Are you staying the night?” An olive branch. Jason wanted to burn it. He tempered the impulse to a spark.

“I have my own place.”

“Your room is still yours when you want it.”

“Yeah. The room of the worst Robin in history. Pass.” Jason turned and walked stiffly back up the steps. Hearing the soft growl of Batman behind him. The start of an argument.

He considered it a victory that he didn’t run into any of his siblings or Alfred on the way out.

[marlynnofmany]

Correct in Size and Opinion

So, most intelligent species get their common names by suggesting an idea themselves when they enter polite society. There’s a whole database for making sure there are no duplicates, and minimizing confusion. Sometimes their existing name for themselves makes it in, if it’s pronounceable enough for the average intelligent being (“humans”), and there’s no easily-agreed-on description for them. But usually the common name is a descriptive word (“Heatseekers”), or even a long phrase, shortened down for casual use (“The Mesmerizing Ones” / “Mesmers”). Sometimes a nickname becomes more popular than the official name. (Nobody calls Armorlites “The Mighty” unless they have to). At any rate, an intelligent race’s common name generally tells you something about the way they see themselves.

Which made it all the funnier when I found out that the gigantic elephantlike folks I hadn’t seen in ages were officially called “Those Who Are the Correct Size.” Sizers for short. They were the biggest aliens I’d interacted with personally, and it seems they had opinions about that.

“How do you suppose that conversation went down?” I asked Mur as we walked. The raised sidewalk was impressively sturdy, and I felt confident that I could carry on a conversation while carrying the package for delivery. The fact that there was a clear wall instead of railings helped. It was a long drop to the ground.

“The diplomats probably thought it was funny,” Mur said from behind me, making quiet tentacle-step sounds. “Or these folks were pushy about it, but they always seem pretty easygoing to me.”

Sizers ambled past on the main road, behemoths in shades of sunset pink, largely ignoring the smaller citizens on the walkway at head level. None moved with any particular urgency. They probably would have noticed if someone was in stepping-on range, but thankfully the architecture had been modified to reduce that risk. Raised walkways lined every building, some leading to ramps and stairways while others had their own little doors cut into the walls.

It was all very thoughtful. I wondered how many accidents had happened before those alterations were put in.

Mur suddenly said, “Grab on!” then the walkway shuddered.

I clutched the top of the railing-wall, looking about wildly for the danger. It wasn’t hard to spot. A handful of babies — toddlers the size of a city bus — had tumbled against the side of the building. The street below us was now a riot of clumsy pink limbs and flapping orange ears, the babies squalling and whapping each other with their trunks. Those trunks came in pairs, top and bottom, and their tails were similarly grabby. These little ones didn’t know how to use any of them yet.

An adult Sizer waded in and separated the children, calming them with strokes of his own trunks and with rumbling words I couldn’t hope to interpret. But the walkway was stable now.

A giant eye focused on the pair of us, then the Sizer switched to a more recognizable language. “Look, you almost made some of the littles fall. Apologize for scaring them.”

A chorus of badly-pronounced apologies drifted up to us.

I waved a hand. “Apology accepted! No harm done.”

Mur agreed, his tone a bit forced.

The adult shooed the children away down the road, keeping them corralled between his trunks in the center of the road while they stumbled eagerly.

Mur collapsed dramatically into a squidlike puddle of relief. “I am so glad they’re leaving. What absolute menaces.”

“Ah, they can’t help it,” I said. “Cute little things. Well, relatively speaking.”

“Not the word I’d use,” Mur said, pulling himself together and getting upright.

“I know, none of them are little.”

“I mean cute! What is cute about those terrors?” he demanded, pointing with a tentacle to where they disappeared in the crowd. One of the babies was spinning its top trunk like a propeller, and another had just tripped over its own feet.

“They’re adorable,” I told him. “You saw them shuffling around looking shy and saying ‘sowwy.’”

Mur squinted up at me. “You and I have very different ideas of what should be adored. Do humans always appreciate other species’ infants?”

“Well,” I said, thinking. “Probably, yes. Somebody once explained it to me that since our own young are helpless for so long, we got evolutionarily overclocked for thinking babies are cute, just to make sure we take care of them. That might have spilled over to other things.”

“That explains a lot,” Mur said. He stepped past me to lead the way. “I remember Zhee losing a bet about whether you would pet that spiny little creature a while back.”

“It was precious once it calmed down!”

“According to you.”

“It had a cute little face, and made the most charming little noises,” I insisted.

“Even though it looked nothing like your own species, huh?”

“I can’t believe you don’t think it was cute, honestly.”

The conversation lasted until we reached our destination: a door with the word “Medicinery” written somewhat clumsily above it. When Mur pushed on the door, it swung open as easily as a cat flap.

Our walkway continued along the interior wall, giving us a good view of several adult Sizers waiting patiently in line while others moved about behind a counter. It was all similar to any number of other places I’d been, just at a much larger scale.

Since the walkway only led in one direction, we went that way: down a bit of a slope to a wider platform at the end of the counter. One Sizer saw us coming and finished talking with a customer, moving over to greet us instead of the next in line. A different receptionist called over that person instead.

“Hello!” she said, deep-voiced and cheery. “What can I do for you today?”

I lifted the box. “We have a delivery for you. Medicine, I believe.”

“Oh yes, I heard we were running low on something!” She reached out her trunks for it and I handed it over, feeling like I was faced with a pair of animated engine chutes. I’d seen Mimi working on parts of our own ship this size.

While she set the box aside, I got out the payment tablet with Mur whispering unnecessary reminders of how to set it on magnified holographic mode. This particular client had no chance of being able to sign for the delivery at our scale.

She made an elegant swooping signature in midair, then typed in her other identifying information on the holographic keyboard. “There you go! Thanks for bringing this. We don’t get too many patients your size, but it’s important that we have the proper medicine in stock for when we do. Un-expired, even!”

“Yes, that part’s important!” I agreed.

She asked, “I hope the walk over was agreeable? Everything accessible and in good repair?”

“It was fine!” I told her, folding away the holographics. “Great setup you have here.”

Mur grumbled an objection, but not loud enough for the Sizer to pick up.

“So glad to hear it,” she said to me. “It’s the least we can do to keep you little folks out of harm’s way. Wouldn’t want anyone to step on your cute little heads!”

Mur made a snorting noise while I answered diplomatically. “Our cute little heads appreciate it.”

She flapped her ears and waved a trunk in body language that might have suggested she was embarrassed about her own choice of phrasing.

Mur spoke up. “I have a quick question, if you don’t mind.”

I raised an eyebrow while the Sizer encouraged him to ask his question.

“We were having a conversation on the way here about the respective adorableness of other species,” Mur said, flipping a tentacle between the two of us. “Is there a general opinion among Sizers about small folks being cute?”

She definitely looked embarrassed now, waving her trunk and glancing away like an elderly aunt who’d said something improper. “Oh, well, some definitely are if you ask me, but I can hardly speak for everyone. Some, yes! With your cute little heads and tiny eyes. Absolutely precious.”

She was looking at me. Mur’s head was shaped like a squid; hardly little.

“Anyways!” she said, standing up straighter. “That hardly factors into making sure everyone has a safe route through town, without a danger of getting stepped on. I’m very glad you found the walkways acceptable. Thank you again for the delivery!”

“It was our pleasure,” I said.

Mur added, “Have a nice day!” but she was already moving on to the next Sizer in line.

I met Mur’s eye, holding in a snicker, and headed for the door. I made it outside before collapsing into laughter.

“See, it’s not just humans!” I exclaimed. “She thinks we’re cute!”

“I can’t believe it,” Mur said. “She really does. And the others probably do too.”

I pointed a finger at him, still laughing. “And she doesn’t think you’re cute!”

Mur folded half of his tentacles, standing tall on the other ones. “That’s up for debate.”

“We have to tell Zhee. He’ll think this is hilarious.”

Mur agreed, “He really will. Pity he didn’t come today. I wonder if the Sizers would think he looks like an adorable little youngling too.”

“Probably not, if I had to guess.” I started the long walk back to our ship. “My species isn’t historically charmed by exoskeletons, and theirs may not be either. But who knows? We can always call them up and ask.”

“I am absolutely not doing that.”

“Yeah, me neither. But it would be funny.”

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[wickworks]

Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith

(from this month's backer update)

Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.

This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!

This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:

I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?

It's all about perspective, baby.

Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.

Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.

(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)

We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:

they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.

they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)

or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.

So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:

(fullsize here)

The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.

I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.

So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:

We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)

We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:

Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:

I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.

Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.

Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.

[zeravmeta]

the comedy of nian unemployed memes isnt just from the bad arknights ads, nor is it in how both her shut in sister and perpetually drunk sister have more paperwork and cooperation done with rhodes islands to where both are official members in their database while nian is considered a hobo who hangs around, its not in how the other two siblings are literal vagabonds just travelling the road with nary a cent to their name but still vastly more respected for their contributions to the communities of terra, its not even in how nian has a side hustle as a movie director making exclusively home movies on rhodes islands own budget

the comedy of nian unemployed memes is in how she can be commissioned by the government to build them a gundam mobile city slash artificial machine god and every single one of her siblings (even the ones working on it) will see it and still say "when are you gonna stop being a lazy bum we know this isn't any challenge to you"

[nowoyas]

Trying to make sense of the Nanowrimo statement to the best of my abilities and fuck, man. It's hard.

It's hard because it seems to me that, first and foremost, the organization itself has forgotten the fucking point.

Nanowrimo was never about the words themselves. It was never about having fifty thousand marketable words to sell to publishing companies and then to the masses. It was a challenge, and it was hard, and it is hard, and it's supposed to be. The point is that it's hard. It's hard to sit down and carve out time and create a world and create characters and turn these things into a coherent plot with themes and emotional impact and an ending that's satisfying. It's hard to go back and make changes and edit those into something likable, something that feels worth reading. It's hard to find a beautifully-written scene in your document and have to make the decision that it's beautiful but it doesn't work in the broader context. It's fucking hard.

Writing and editing are skills. You build them and you hone them. Writing the way the challenge initially encouraged--don't listen to that voice in your head that's nitpicking every word on the page, put off the criticism for a later date, for now just let go and get your thoughts out--is even a different skill from writing in general. Some people don't particularly care about refining that skill to some end goal or another, and simply want to play. Some people sit down and try to improve and improve and improve because that is meaningful to them. Some are in a weird in-between where they don't really know what they want, and some have always liked the idea of writing and wanted a place to start. The challenge was a good place for this--sit down, put your butt in a chair, open a blank document, and by the end of the month, try to put fifty thousand words in that document.

How does it make you feel to try? Your wrists ache and you don't feel like any of the words were any good, but didn't you learn something about the process? Re-reading it, don't you think it sounds better if you swap these two sentences, if you replace this word, if you take out this comma? Maybe you didn't hit 50k words. Maybe you only wrote 10k. But isn't it cool, that you wrote ten thousand words? Doesn't it feel nice that you did something? We can try again. We can keep getting better, or just throwing ourselves into it for fun or whatever, and we can do it again and again.

I guess I don't completely know where I'm going with this post. If you've followed me or many tumblr users for any amount of time, you've probably already heard a thousand times about how generative AI hurts the environment so many of us have been so desperately trying to save, about how generative AI is again and again used to exploit big authors, little authors, up-and-coming authors, first time authors, people posting on Ao3 as a hobby, people self-publishing e-books on Amazon, traditionally published authors, and everyone in between. You've probably seen the statements from developers of these "tools", things like how being required to obtain permission for everything in the database used to train the language model would destroy the tool entirely. You've seen posts about new AI tools scraping Ao3 so they can make money off someone else's hobby and putting the legality of the site itself at risk. For an organization that used to dedicate itself to making writing more accessible for people and for creating a community of writers, Nanowrimo has spent the past several years systematically cracking that community to bits, and now, it's made an official statement claiming that the exploitation of writers in its community is okay, because otherwise, someone might find it too hard to complete a challenge that's meant to be hard to begin with.

I couldn't thank Nanowrimo enough for what it did for me when I started out. I don't know how to find community in the same way. But you can bet that I've deleted my account, and I'll be finding my own path forward without it. Thanks for the fucking memories, I guess.

[rpgsandbox]

I drafted a legal argument against Wizards of the Coast - and you can too!

WotC is trying to pull off a licensing clawback just two years after the OGL Debacle, and I figured out how to punch back.

If you've played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you've probably heard of the legendary "Deck of Many Things" – one of the game's most iconic magical items. It’s a lot of fun, and it has always been something associated with brand-name Dungeons and Dragons.

This article is about the legal usage of “Deck of Many Things,” and about how Wizards of the Coast seems to be trying to take it back in 2025 after giving it to the community in 2023. And it’s about how you can hit them where it hurts.

The History of the Deck

The "Deck of Many Things" has been a staple of D&D since the earliest days of the game. It's been included in every edition and is as much a part of D&D lore as dragons themselves. For years, this term was effectively the property of TSR and then Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro.

But something important happened in January 2023. After the massive backlash to their proposed OGL changes, Wizards of the Coast – through Executive Producer Kyle Brink – announced that they would be releasing the Systems Reference Document version 5.1 under a Creative Commons license:

Kyle’s announcement goes on to say: “This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.”

This was huge news! For those who don't know, releasing something under Creative Commons essentially means giving it to the public with very minimal restrictions. In this case, they used the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows anyone to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially – as long as appropriate credit is given.

The SRD 5.1 document, which spans hundreds of pages, explicitly includes "Deck of Many Things" on page 216, along with a full description of what it is and how it works. By releasing this under CC 4.0, Wizards effectively released this term into the public domain, allowing anyone to use it in their own works.

The gaming community praised this move as a step toward rebuilding trust after the OGL debacle. It seemed like Wizards had learned their lesson and was committed to supporting the community that had grown around their game.

The Betrayal

Fast forward to April 2025. WotC announced that they were revising their SRD 5.1 with a new and improved SRD versioned 5.2. For 5.2 they listed a bunch of milquetoast fantasy terms that I’m sure they’re very proud of, and kind of squeeze in a couple of footnotes. Those footnotes say that they’re going to be clawing back the term “Deck of Many Things,” as well as “Orb of Dragonkind.”

Well lo and behold, on the USPTO’s trademark search database, Deck of Many Things is in fact a pending word mark, with the latest application updated in April of 2025.

The serial number is 97260475, and you can look it up yourself on the USPTO website. This is what it looks like:

So here’s the problem. This application effectively attempts to claim exclusive rights to a term that Wizards had already released under Creative Commons just two years earlier.

Why They Can’t Do This

So why can't Wizards of the Coast trademark "Deck of Many Things" now? Let me break it down:

The Creative Commons 4.0 license they chose is explicitly IRREVOCABLE. Here's what the license actually says in Section 2(a)(1):

"The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material."

That means once Kyle Brink proudly published the SRD 5.1 under this license on that fateful day in January of 2023, they could never take any of it back. The license explicitly prohibits imposing "additional or different terms or conditions" on the licensed material.

Attempting to register a trademark on material you've already licensed to the public represents an attempt to impose additional restrictions on that material, a violation of a term of the Creative Commons 4.0 license. Specifically it is a violation of Section 2(a)(5):

“No downstream restrictions. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material.”

My Attempt to Challenge the Trademark

When I discovered this trademark application, thanks to Dark Kelsey, I decided to take action. The USPTO has a process called a "Letter of Protest" that allows anyone to submit evidence showing why a trademark shouldn't be granted.

I drafted a carefully formatted Letter of Protest following all the USPTO guidelines. My evidence was straightforward:

The official announcement of SRD 5.1 being published under Creative Commons

A copy of page 216 through 218 from SRD 5.1 showing "Deck of Many Things"

The full text of the Creative Commons 4.0 license highlighting its irrevocability, etc.

I TRIED to submit this through the USPTO's electronic filing system, confident that the evidence was clear and compelling.

The Setback

Unfortunately, when I tried to submit the Letter of Protest, I received this error message:

"This form cannot be submitted because it has been more than 30 days from the date the application published in the Official Gazette."

I had missed the narrow window to submit a Letter of Protest. The USPTO only allows these submissions either before publication or within 30 days after publication in their Official Gazette. By the time I discovered the application, this deadline had already passed.

This was frustrating, but it doesn't mean the fight is over.

The Path Forward

If the USPTO does grant this trademark – which they shouldn't if they're properly interpreting the prior Creative Commons licensing– there's still another option: filing a Petition for Cancellation with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

A cancellation petition allows anyone who believes they would be damaged by a trademark registration to challenge it even after it's been granted. The filing fee is $600, and the process typically takes about three years.

For this specific case, the grounds would be:

The mark doesn't function as a trademark because it was published under an irrevocable Creative Commons license

The applicant's actions in seeking the trademark contradict their prior grant of rights

The process is more involved than a Letter of Protest, but it's completely doable even without an attorney. The TTAB provides clear guidelines, and everything can be filed electronically through their online system.

Conclusion

What Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are trying to do here is repugnant but not surprising. They're attempting to double back on a license they've already granted – something they've developed a pattern of doing every couple of years now.

First it was the OGL controversy, where they tried to revoke a 23-year-old license. The community pushed back and won. Now they're pursuing trademark terms they explicitly released under Creative Commons, trying to AMEND a creative commons license that they just published (5.2 amending 5.1), perhaps hoping no one would notice or care.

This is more than just a legal technicality – it's about trust. When a company publicly garners praise for licensing away intellectual property, only to sneakily try to reclaim it later, they're betraying the very community that supports them.

The irony here is that Wizards didn't even need to do this. They could have trademarked specific implementations or product lines featuring the Deck of Many Things without trying to claim ownership of the term itself after releasing it to the public.

So why am I telling you all this? Because you don't need to be a lawyer to challenge corporate overreach. The systems exist for regular people to participate in these processes. Whether it's a Letter of Protest or a Cancellation Petition, the tools are there for you to use.

If you care about not getting bamboozled by incompetent, dishonest corporations, consider getting involved. Watch for these kinds of trademark applications, be ready to file your own challenges, and spread the word when companies try to walk back their commitments.

Simon Says: An Addendum

After publishing this article, I received some valuable feedback here from Simon, an academic lawyer in the UK who teaches trademark law. Simon pointed out an even more straightforward legal issue with Hasbro's trademark application that deserves attention, one that transcends the Creative Commons argument.

The fundamental problem? "Deck of Many Things" likely isn't even eligible for trademark protection in the first place.

Under trademark law (both in the US under the Lanham Act and similarly in the UK), a valid trademark must be distinctive – it must have the capacity to identify goods as coming from a specific source and not another. But here's the kicker: "Deck of Many Things" products have been created by numerous publishers over the years, not just Wizards of the Coast.

This widespread use means the term has essentially become descriptive or potentially generic within the gaming industry. It no longer primarily signals "this is a WotC product" but rather "this is a type of magical card deck with random effects" – a concept that's been implemented by countless game creators.

Think about it – when you hear "Deck of Many Things," do you automatically associate it exclusively with Wizards of the Coast? Or do you think of the general concept that's been part of gaming culture for decades?

This distinctiveness requirement exists for a good reason. Trademark law isn't supposed to give companies monopolies over common terminology in an industry. It's meant to prevent consumer confusion about who made a product, not to let corporations fence off widely-used concepts.

So beyond the Creative Commons issue, there's this even more basic problem: Hasbro is trying to trademark something that likely fails the fundamental "distinctive" requirement of trademark law.

This remains an example of a corporation trying to claim exclusive ownership over community cultural elements that have been widely used and understood for decades. Whether through Creative Commons “revisions” or by ignoring basic trademark principles, the effect is the same – an attempt to monopolize what should remain in the public sphere.

[aealzx]

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Prologue | AO3

Previous Next

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“You came all the way out here to ask me to identify a plant?” Pamela was understandably incredulous as she blocked Tim from entering her current residence.

“Weeelll,” Tim drawled, shrugging with one shoulder. “Spoiler and Orphan said you’d be the best to contact. We could go elsewhere, but then I’d have to find somewhere else for these bacon and egg sandwiches,” he explained, revealing the hand that was behind his back to be holding a paper bag for a local food joint. It was a bribe. Or payment for services rendered if one wanted to be posh about it. But he was fine calling it a bribe.

“Aw hell yeah!” Harleen’s voice came from further in the establishment, and Tim caught just the faintest hint of a smile twitching Pamela’s mouth. She tried to resist, but Tim held his ground with a decidedly innocent smile, the bag of egg sandwiches still held in offering.

Eventually Pamela sighed and held out her hand. “Fine. What identifiers do you have for it?” she relented, letting Tim set the bag of food on her palm.

“Not much honestly. The locals call it a blood blossom, but I doubt it’s a haemanthus coccineus. We don’t have a picture, but we’re told it looks like a red rose bud with black leaves,” Tim answered. He’d done his own research already while waiting for the food to be made, and that was part of the reason he didn’t feel bad for following through with the others’ idea to ask Pamela. He had a few guesses already, but it would be nice to get a second opinion.

“A rose with black leaves?” Pamela repeated, her disappointed expression becoming thoughtful. “That’s it? Nothing else?” she asked soon after, frowning deeper if possible.

“Nothing else,” Tim confirmed, both disappointed and pleased that Pamela also didn’t seem able to come up with an answer.

“Sounds made up,” Pamela answered bluntly, shifting to move back into the building. “There aren’t any roses with black leaves unless they’re mutilated. The closest you’ll get is a begonia switzerland if you’re just going by appearance.”

“Oh…. that’s what I thought too,” Tim hummed, raising a curled finger to his chin.

Pamela’s eye twitched. “Then why did you-.... Goodbye,” she stammered, then figured it wasn’t worth her time to deal with Tim further, and closed the door on him.

Tim could only snort in amusement, raising his voice for just a moment. “Thanks for the info! Enjoy the food!” he called, grinning as he turned to grapple himself back to the rooftops.

So the blood blossoms were either an extremely obscure name for some other plant, or they didn’t actually exist. And if they didn’t exist, then what had poisoned Danny? At least Dick and Damian were heading straight to the manor to follow up with Alfred about meals, and bring the tissue sample with the plant based poison to where Bruce could use their tech to better analyze it. And Barbara had already mentioned she’d meet them there, so while they might not have a good start on two of the three questions they should at least be able to figure out who these kids were exactly.

—----------

“They don’t exist,” Barbara’s conclusion about the five Phantom kids they had custody of was short, but did little to answer any questions the others had. After spending a few hours gathering her data she had decided to join the others at the manor, the three who had returned from the rescue mission, Bruce, and her now gathered in the Bat Cave by the computer. Admittedly that hadn’t been something they fully expected to hear, so there were sagging shoulders from both Dick and Tim at the announcement.

“You ran the search in all of the databases, yeah?” Tim asked, immediately trying to figure out what they had missed. Barbara was usually extremely thorough. It was hard to believe she came up with nothing on a group of five people. Especially when two of them had superhuman abilities.

“Yes, Tim,” Barbara responded quickly. “If you’ll let me continue before you try to solve the problem yourself I’ll save you some steps,” she added, getting a mildly teasing smile. When Tim relented with a mild shrug Barbara turned her chair back to the computer, pulling her reports up on the huge monitor.

“The DNA samples came up with no results. Amity Park doesn’t exist on any map. There’s no social media posts about any combination of their names. And the photo Jason sent of Jazz’s ID also has no results. It doesn’t even resemble the official driver’s license format of Illinois or any of the other states, so it’s not hard to see why the bank teller would call it a fake,” she listed, bringing up the reports from her data scouring as she mentioned them. “The only activity I can track from them is here in Gotham, starting 72 days ago. I believe that’s when they first arrived here.”

The date caused Bruce to shift, breaking out of his silence once it seemed Barbara had finished summarizing her findings and drawing a connection to a separate report he’d gotten more than a month ago. “72 days ago is when the Justice League got readings of an anomaly on the outskirts of Gotham. Investigations revealed some remains of unknown technology, but no one was there with it.”

“...What kind of anomaly?” Dick asked, tensing slightly at a thought that crossed his mind. Unknown DNA, unusable bank and ID cards, two of them claiming to be beings that were never heard of before now.

“Please don’t say multiverse breach,” Tim whined, revealing that he’d had the same thoughts as Dick.

Instead of answering them Bruce just opened a different report, having been locating it as his sons had been speaking. When the data appeared on screen both Dick and Tim let out extended groans, their forms sagging even more as Barbara chuckled softly.

“It had to be dimension garbage,” Tim whined more, squinting at the report confirming suspected multiverse breach residue in the affected area.

“That explains all the missing data,” Barbara commented, just glad to have an explanation for why all her research was coming up blank prior to the anomaly. It was because they literally had nothing on this earth before then, and not because they were some sort of geniuses that could manage such an extensive data wipe to make even her systems come up with blanks.

“That also explains why Dr. Isley was unfamiliar with the blood blossoms,” Damian added, seeming unfazed by the revelation.

“And literally everything else that was weird about them,” Tim encompassed, frustration bleeding into his tone. What kind of puzzle didn’t even have answers in this world? He felt like that was cheating.

“Do they seem aware that they are no longer in their dimension? We’re sure this wasn’t a deliberate transport?” Bruce asked, masking his growing concern for the dislocated children by suggesting they might still be hiding something.

“Please, these kids can’t hide anything that well,” Tim huffed, giving a wry smile. “The only reason they’re able to hide anything is because they’re also oblivious. Otherwise it’s way too easy to tell they’re keeping something a secret.”

Bruce only frowned more at the response, and Barbara couldn’t help add her own support of the idea that the Phantoms had no idea they weren’t even close to home. “They seemed to have had enough to deal with, I don’t think they had time to consider it. Almost 80% of their activity ties back to them looking for ectoplasm. The other 20% is just general medical care and necessities of living.”

“Ectoplasm is the stuff they said Danny needed,” Dick added unnecessarily.

“I remember,” Bruce responded, though he could also understand why the kids had such a hard time tracking down a source. Most of Gotham didn’t even believe in ghosts, and the only people he or his family knew that matched the category were Boston and Greta. “Their search led them to a Lazarus water exchange.”

“Yeah. But apparently even though it’s similar enough, the Lazarus water is ‘freaky’ and they don’t want to use it according to Danielle,” Dick confirmed, using air quotes for what the small girl had said.

“All five of them have traces of another substance I’ve never seen before that seems similar to residue from Lazarus water as well,” Barbara spoke up to add, reaching over to the computer once more as she once again had their attention. The DNA analysis reports were enlarged, and she used a screen sketch app to mark the unusual traces. “It’s most prominent in Danielle and Danny, though Danny’s levels read a lot lower. But the other three have small traces as well.”

“The one called Danielle made mention of Danny having expended a significant amount of energy, to the point his accelerated healing ability has been hindered. And that there was a lack of locations with an abundance of said energy for them to absorb,” Damian recalled, ignoring the face Tim pulled as he slowly turned to look at him.

“You made that sound way more complicated than she did,” Tim grimaced.

“Silence Drake,” Damian retorted simply.

Dick could only snicker while keeping his gaze on the reports like Bruce was doing. “This will make it easier to track some of the substance down. I’ll see if I can create a collection device to make it easier for us to get larger amounts, and work on a way to neutralize the residual plant material,” Bruce commented, already making plans for the next course of action.

“After dinner,” Dick enforced, resting his hands on the back of Bruce’s chair.

Bruce seemed to consider it, falling silent and keeping his gaze on the monitor, giving no answer other than a short grunt after a long stretch of quiet.

Dick only leaned on the chair more, pulling it back slightly. “Aaaaafter dinner, Bruce. Thirty minutes isn’t going to be that big of a loss,” he prodded.

“...Alfred put you up to this, didn’t he,” Bruce pointed out instead of responding to the request.

“He did,” Dick confirmed, admitting to being requested to make sure Bruce got at least one hearty meal before getting lost in his work once again.

Bruce considered it longer, and by then the rest of his children were already on their way back upstairs. Did he really want Alfred hassling him again? “... Very well. After dinner,” he relented, getting to his feet with a slight sigh and locking the computer screen.

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Dimension hopping confirmed~ And I just realized I now have 2 fanfics that involve dimension hopping X'D that was unintentional.

Questions for the people following/interested: because I'm not familiar with most of DC or really DP's canon and fanon content and there's so freaking much of it out there, which characters would you like to see involved? No guarantees that they'll be in if I can't figure out how to get them to fit, but I need somewhere to start researching stuff X'DD. Also there's essentially 2 goals, wake Danny up, and get Team Phantom back home. How difficult should these tasks be, and which one would people rather have more focus on?

This fic originated from a prompt I found, so I think it might be fun to kind of keep that going? A different kind of writing exercise than what I'm used to. So that's why the questions instead of me just going heheh have a cliffhanger.

Though I will say I'm still of the opinion of no romance, so please don't suggest pairings |D

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