#why is structuring texts on tumblr so hard

[spookyxsprinkles]

🎨 Colour Theory, part 1: Horizon Line [oneshot]

(formerly known as "Perspective")

shimura tenko × afab she/her and poc friendly reader ft. todoroki touya.

-> safe for work // 4.8k words // AO3 // part 2. -> warnings: jealousy + some actions may be considered creepy. low self-esteem, shyness, a couple of very brief musical references, family member death mention.

summary: tenko goes to art school and gets a little crush on a musical theater major.

×X×

Horizon Line -- an actual or imaginary line in a work of art representing the point at which water or land seems to end and the sky begins.

×X×

Tenko had fallen asleep before the performance had even started.

He had long lost track of how long he'd been awake for. It was the end of his second semester in university and the prestigious art program he was in made sure to keep him busy with project after project. He was running out of steam. Honestly, he had been running on fumes for weeks now.

He'd rather be in his dorm finishing his assignments instead of sitting in one of the theaters in the performing arts building. If it wasn't a requirement for Fine Arts majors to attend other Fine Arts events, he would have never set foot in this place. The noise of the attendees filling the room and the orchestra tuning their instruments in the pit was grating his sleep deprived nerves.

He grumbled and crossed his arms as someone took the seat beside him, his leg bouncing as he grabbed the program the usher had handed to him when he first entered. Tenko's bloodshot eyes were barely able to process anything more than The Phantom of the Opera on the front of the flimsy pamphlet, before shutting it and glaring at the scarlet curtains on the stage.

A few minutes later, the lights began to dim and he sighed in relief as the room quieted. He could finally catch some much needed sleep.

He tried stretching his stiff legs in an attempt to loosen himself up and closed his eyes.

Only to open them at the sound of your voice singing to him on the stage.

"Think of me, think of me fondly when we've said goodbye. Remember me, once in a while, please, promise me you'll try."

Tenko was mesmerized. Watching you on stage woke him up more than the energy drinks he'd been living off of all semester. He was absolutely immersed with your performance. He soaked in your every word and movement and before he knew it, two hours had gone by and the cast was being applauded as they bowed.

He sat in awe for a moment as the auditorium lights flicked on and he stood, shuffling through the crowd. He found a nice corner of the lobby behind a pillar as he and some other audience members waited. He skimmed through the program and found you. He whispered your name like a secret only he could ever know.

The cast slowly came out one by one and thanked the guests for coming. Tenko's eyes darted around impatiently. Finally, out came you in the white gown you wore in your final scene, looking like an angel that had come down to offer his sin-filled existence some respite.

You greeted and thanked the attendees as they praised you and handed you flowers. It was the final night of your musical and you were beaming. Tenko's fingers fidgeted at his sides as he yearned to get closer to you and experience your radiance himself.

A guest bowed and left, leaving an opening for him to approach. He took a step out from behind the pillar, but you turned at the sound of your voice coming from behind you. Tenko recognized the person as the man who played the Phantom and sighed when he saw you turn and leave the room.

When Tenko returned to his dorm, he searched your name online and found your social media. His night was spent watching your videos. He didn't realize how much time had passed until his alarm went off and he saw the sunlight peaking out from behind onyx curtains. It was time for him to get ready for class.

The semester had finished with him acing art and barely passing his core courses. It was winter break and with most students away, the campus was deserted. The thought of having no one to go home to didn't even cross his mind as he spent the break filling his sketchbooks with your image.

His second semester started off much better than the first one. His art had rapidly improved from how much he'd been practicing recently.

He found a spot he liked. It was a small outdoor table nestled between some trees on the southern campus dormitory area. The weather on this side of the country wasn't as cold as other prefectures would be in January, but there was still the occasional breeze that made his dry skin prickle up with goosebumps. It was the rain that was more likely to get him sick, although, since he was under the wide umbrella of the table, he found that unlikely and continued his sketch of you.

A week and a half later, he gulped down the last of his cold medication and slammed the container down in frustration. He leered at the harrowed reflection staring back at him on the dirty bathroom mirror. His eyes were heavy with deep bags, his skin a sickly colour, and his black hair hadn't been brushed in 2 or 3 days. He let out a sigh.

×X×

He found another spot he liked, safe from the chilling late January rain. It was in the performing arts building, in a seating area by the entrance. The art program may have been the school's top program, but the grand architecture and romantic interior design of the performing arts building clearly showed it also wasn't anything to scoff at, despite being was a few stories shorter than the building across the quad that Tenko was more familiar with. It was much noisier here, too.

Tenko had his earbuds in as he slouched on the upholstered chair, sketching, when he noticed a familiar form in the corner of his eye.

It was someone he recognized as your frequent scene partner that you seemed to be joined at the hip with, if your social media was anything to go by. Tenko felt a spark of excitement bubbling inside of him and he looked around hoping to see you, but your face was not among the crowd of students. His hope deflated to disappointment and he scratched the side of his neck. You were likely already in class.

It was ten minutes into the hour when Tenko decided to leave. He gathered his things and carried his sketchbook in his arms as he stood and walked away from the seating area.

He tripped over his feet and bumped into someone, his sketchbook flying out of his grasp.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry!!"

It was you.

Your sweet voice was full of apology as you bent down to grab his sketchbook for him. He watched in awe at how swiftly you moved. He was at a loss for words. Your fingers froze over the edge and Tenko realized what page it had landed open on.

"Is that... me?"

Your voice sounded so pretty, even when you were confused. He felt his face burning as you grabbed the sketchbook and stood. Your eyes stared down at the sketch of you he had just done while in the seating area, when he was itching to catch a glimpse of the top of your head through the crowd.

You were so close now and it was going to kill him.

"This is from my Jekyll and Hyde audition in Spring 2220, right? Back when I was trying to get the role of Lisa. I can't believe it's already been three years since then..."

You were so close now and he knew you'd think he was a creep for watching your old videos and bumping into you. You probably thought he had it all planned out, like some sort of stalker.

"Is it okay if I flip through..?"

His brain was screaming at him to say 'no, give it back' but his head nodded, unable to deny you of anything you wanted from him. Yes, there were sketches of you without any clothes on and he was well aware of how that would look, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. He would rip out his heart for you to use as a hand warmer, if you asked.

He watched with a gut wrenching mix of horror and delight as you flipped through and took your time to study every page. Drawing had always come easily for him, with hands being his favourite body part to draw. Expressions were a bit more difficult for him to feel satisfied by so he preferred to leave faces blank or smudged out. With you, he actually put in the effort to capture your expressions.

He could see your eyes carefully observe every stroke he had made and take in the details. The furrow in your brow as you focused had him contemplating whether or not he wanted to reach his hand over to your face and smooth it out or leave it perfect the way it was.

You hand him the sketchbook and he snaps out of his thoughts.

"Huh?" He had been too in his head to hear what you had said.

"Thank you, I've never had someone draw me before. It feels really nice." You say with a soft laugh.

The sound made his skin itch and the tips of his fingers tingle with electricity. He clutched his sketchbook tight enough to pale his knuckles. His nails dug into the material as he barely remembers to stop staring and nod as you offer him praise and he feels dizzy. You were so nice. Why were you so nice? To him? He wanted to speak but he couldn't decide on what to say.

"I gotta go. I'm super late to practice and my partner's going to be on my ass about it." You sighed. You wave goodbye and disappear down the hallway.

He was also a bit late to class. His figure drawing professor shot him a judgmental look as he entered the room. Tenko couldn't bring himself to care.

You knew he existed.

×X×

The weather was nice and Tenko was sketching at the outdoor table, when someone sat across from him. He looked up and saw you with an ice cream cone.

"I knew you looked familiar! You're the person that's always out here working on something."

He felt his face heating up as you took a lick of your ice cream. You were so forward. He didn't expect you to approach him again. He had chalked the positive end of your last conversation up to politeness.

"I guess you've been drawing this whole time, huh? Mystery solved. Also explains why you're so good at drawing."

"Thanks to your performances," Tenko says without thinking. He immediately panics at how creepy he sounded.

"Oh, is that why you draw me? I thought it was the outfits since the costume department goes all out. Huh, interesting."

You continue licking your ice cream while watching him and he has to look away. He felt so shy in your presence. He didn't feel worthy of your attention. You were so soft, so pretty, so talented and he was just a creep with a crush that couldn't stop himself from sketching you constantly.

He looks down at his hands as he stumbles through his nerves when he explains how watching you had helped him with movement, making his art more fluid and dynamic. When he finishes, he looks up and sees you smiling at him. The sight made his breathing hitch and he rasped out a small, "What..?"

Were you making fun of him? Is that what this was? Were you actually just here to--

"I could do some reference work for you, if you'd like?"

His eyes widened and he could feel his face heating, the corners of his lips tugging. He didn't know how to speak without making a fool of himself and he was thankful you kept talking. He was happy to sit quietly and watch you.

"We could schedule private sessions, that way it can be just the two of us without anyone interrupting."

"What?" Questioned a third, deeper voice.

The two of you look up and see your partner staring down at you while holding an ice cream cone of his own. "What kinda weird shit you getting into now?"

Your brows furrowed. "Hm? What do you mean?"

"Your wording sucks."

You took a moment to think about it and became flustered. "I didn't mean anything strange," you assured Tenko.

"Sure, pervert."

"Anyways, this is my new friend, uh..." you look over at him sheepishly, "Sorry, what's your name?"

"Shimura Tenko..." His fingers fiddle with the corner of his paper.

"Can I call you Tenko? Or is that too familiar?"

Tenko's face heated up, "Th-That's fine..."

You nod enthusiastically before looking back up at your partner. "This is my new friend Tenko. They're the artist I was telling you about!"

"Oh, so you're the creep who draws her naked."

"I-It's art..!" You defended.

"S'weird, but whatever." The man seemed bored as he licked his ice cream and took a seat in the chair beside her. "Todoroki Touya. She's like a leech so you're stuck with her now. My condolences."

You nod as you take a lick of your ice cream, "We are now bonded for life."

Tenko awkwardly looks between the two of them, unsure of what to say. The two performers end up in a conversation and he can tell you were trying to include him so that he didn't feel left out. After some bickering, Touya takes a bite out of your ice cream.

"How can you just bite it like that!? Doesn't it hurt your teeth!?"

He shrugs, "The cold never bothered me."

You hum a song from a children's movie as you pull out your phone and hand it to Tenko, asking him to insert his Line I.D. because you want to friend him. He looks between you and Touya, crimson eyes glancing at the arm the other man was lazily resting on the back of your chair.

"Is that okay..?"

You tilt your head in confusion, reminding him of a puppy. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Tenko looks from your kind eyes over to the man beside you whose turquoise pair that seemed to be blazing with fire. Tenko blinks and Touya's now impassive expression. Perhaps the dark look directed towards him was simply his mind playing tricks on him.

He typed in his username and you send him a friend request as soon as the phone is returned to you. You angle the phone above your head to take a selfie. Touya shoves his head into the frame, lazily sticking his pierced tongue out as he photobombed.

You notice the time and stand up in a hurry. "I still have that history paper due tonight and I haven't even started it yet! Bye guys!" You run off towards the student housing that happened to be across from the outdoor table, swiping your student I.D.

Tenko watched as you disappeared into the building before looking over at Touya who still sat at the table, only to find that the man was already staring at him. Tension thickened the air like smoke from a fire that made him feel almost suffocated. He opened his mouth to speak, but Touya merely scoffed at him. He finished his ice cream in a single bite and left. He watched as Touya swiped his student I.D., shooting the timid Tenko a cocky grin as he entered the same building as you.

Before he could think much of it, Tenko felt his phone vibrate and unlocked it to see you had sent him your class schedule so that you two could plan a time to meet up. He eagerly studied the photo and you sent him another photo. It was the selfie you took before you left.

"It was nice seeing you again, Tenko! Let's set up a day to hang out!! Here's a photo in case you forget who I am."

He could feel the heat rising from his neck to his ears.

You were too cute.

He could never forget you.

×X×

Over the next 3 weeks, Tenko lost track of the amount of times the two of you had hung out. Sometimes for drawing references, sometimes to eat at the dining hall, sometimes just for the hell of it. Your schedule was busier than his, so he was appreciative of the fact that you went out of your way to be with him. Especially on today, of all days.

You and Tenko sat on the floor, your backs against the mirror of the small practice room as he clutched the bag of chocolate cookies you had given him.

They were homemade, you said. You had baked them on your dorm floor's shared kitchen. They were in the shape of hearts, flowers, and there was even a bunny shaped. He didn't think he would ever forget the ache in his chest when you told him he reminded you of a bunny. The cookies had pink and red icing made with natural ingredients, which was why the palms of your hands were stained red from the beet juice. He licked his dry lips at the thought of you working hard. Just for him, too, because apparently Touya was a picky eater so you simply bought blue food colouring to use on his cookies. He swallowed anxiously as you continued speaking.

"I was hoping that maybe I'd get chocolates today."

"Isn't Valentine's Day when the girl gives the guy the chocolate..?"

You nod, "The norm is that girls give chocolates to guys on Valentine's Day then on White Day the guy can give the girl chocolates in response, but you never know! Girls can give girls chocolates, too. It happened to a friend of mine in high school, though it was the guy version of that. Anyways, why do Valentine's Day and White Day have to be gender specific? Just show the person you care about that you were thinking of them."

You sighed before continuing, "I've never gotten chocolates before. I know, it's kind of silly to whine about this, but I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic so can you blame me?" You laugh softly to yourself. "If Touya was here, he'd say yes and that it's my fault. He's always teasing me about these kinds of things." Tenko watches as you purse your lips deep in thought.

Tenko chewed his lip before quietly asking, "And Touya..? Won't he give you any on White Day?"

"Maybe, but it'll be different." You pull up your knees and hug them.

Your thighs were distracting and he struggled to keep his eyes off of them.

"The cookies I gave to Touya were obligatory chocolates, not the 'real feeling' kind you would give to someone you like. Last year, I gave Touya obligatory chocolates and he started complaining because he had already received too many sweets. I was so jealous. At least I managed to convince him to give me his chocolate."

Though he enjoyed snacks, Tenko didn't really care for the holiday. He never really had a reason to... until now.

"Tenko, have you ever gotten chocolates? I mean, other than the ones I just gave you?"

"No."

"So, I'm your first?"

He nodded, moving his head to stare down at the sketch in his lap. His fingers fiddled with the corner of the page, crumpling it more and more until it became limp from wrinkling. He had always found destroying things to be quite soothing for him.

"I..." Tenko was hesitant but decided if you were going to reject him, it was better if you did it sooner rather than later. "I used to live in an orphanage..."

In the corner of his eye, he can see you moving your head quickly to look at him. He tried to swallow his nerves as he continued speaking.

"My family died in an accident when I was five. I was sent to live with a distant relative since there was no one else and the situation was not... ideal. The kids at my new school picked up on my gloominess and shunned me. Even when my great uncle died, my presence would be deemed too unsettling to anyone that tried getting to know me."

He was too afraid to turn his head to look at you so he continued fiddling with the page, ruining more and more of it. You place your hand over his, calming the destruction.

"I used to live in an orphanage, too."

Tenko's eyes widened and he looked at you. "Are you... lying?" He whispered.

"My parents died in an accident when I was little. Wrong place, wrong time. I had no other family in Japan, so I got placed in a children's home."

His eyes scanned your face, looking for any sign of this being a trick but he could tell from the warm sincerity in your eyes that you were telling him the truth. "I don't know what to say."

You smile softly at him, "You don't have to say anything."

The feeling of your thumb rubbing circles against his thumb made Tenko's heart tremble. He wanted to swim in this feeling, to drown in your touch.

He watched your eyes glance down from his dark eyes to his lips, his breathing hitching in anticipation as you leaned in slowly to--

The practice room door opened, making the two of you flinch. Tenko missed the feeling of your hand as you leaned back and glared at the intruder.

"I thought I told you to knock before opening doors. You scared me." You folded your arms against your chest.

"I guess I won't give you my chocolates," Touya taunted as he walked over to you. He dropped his bag at the side of you Tenko wasn't on, making a loud 'thump' as it hit the wood floor.

"Chocolate!!"

Touya smirked as you opened it and pulled out a heart shaped cookie with the kanji for love written in icing.

"Whatever, eat later. We've got rehearsal."

You look up at Touya while stuffing your face before looking over at Tenko, then back at your partner. "Already? It's not for another twenty minutes."

Touya rolled his eyes and grabbed the bag before you could reach in for more sweets. "Early is on time, on time is late."

"Hey, that's what I tell you! Don't use those words against me, they sound weird coming from your mouth." You wipe your hands against a handkerchief before moving to stand up. "By that logic, you're always late."

Touya moved towards the door, beckoning you closer with the bag, "Here, doggy."

"Doggy..!?"

"If you spin around and bark I'll give you a treat."

The two of you could hear him laughing as he walked out of the room with the bag.

You pout, "That Touya... doesn't he know dogs can't eat chocolates?" You shake your head and Tenko stands, pulling his backpack on. "I guess I'll... see you later then?"

It felt kind of awkward now, but Tenko didn't mind that much. He only wished that your time together wasn't cut so short.

"Yeah..."

"Can't wait." You grin and walk out of the dance practice room together. You wave as you go down the opposite side of the hall to catch up with Touya. In the distance Tenko can hear you woof.

As Tenko exited the performing arts building, he felt his phone vibrate. He opened it and saw a selfie of you with chocolate smeared on the side of your face, while trying to shove Touya's face out of the frame and seemingly getting the chocolate on his face in the process.

He grinned. He also couldn't wait to see you again.

×X×

"Chocolate? For me?" You gaped at the small bag of chocolates.

Tenko nodded, his eyes shyly peering up at you as you grabbed the bag and opened it. "There's only four. I made more but they… got ruined…"

"They're handmade?" Your face softened at him, making his heart flutter and his fingers flex at his sides in excitement. You took a bite of one and grinned wide, covering your mouth with your hand as you spoke. "This is really good, Tenko. I didn't know you could cook."

Tenko couldn't but he wasn't going to ruin the moment by speaking. He watched as you ate. The two of you were sitting side by side at his favourite outdoor table near your dorm.

Last month, on Valentine's Day, the end of your conversation was a little awkward but thankfully it was gone the next time you guys saw each other. Once again, the two of you had hung out together a bunch of times. The biggest difference though was proximity. Tenko had noticed you getting closer and closer to him at every encounter.

"I finally received chocolates from someone. I'm really happy that it was you, Tenko."

He felt like he died and went to heaven. It would explain your presence. You just needed a halo.

"They're…"

Your eyes looking up from the bag made him nervous and he shook his head, deciding it was better if he didn't finish the sentence.

"They're what?" You ask, sensing his hesitation. "It's just me," you reassure.

"Just you..?" Just you? Just you?

You smile at him before looking down at the bag of chocolates with a pensive expression for a few moments. You look back up at him.

 "Tenko."

"…Yes?" His voice nearly broke. Did he go to far? Did he?

"Even if your hair is always in your face, you're pretty cute." You reach out and brush his hair to the side, tucking it behind his ear. The warmth of your finger tips were no match for the heat flaring across his entire body at your sweet gesture.

You giggle and slowly lean in to his face. He doesn't move. He is frozen. You place a kiss on his cheek and he panics, moving further away in his chair with his hand coming up to hover over the site of your affection.

"Y-You kissed me…"

"I-- I'm-- I'm sorry! I didn’t think you would be offended by it. Are you okay?"

"What about Touya!?"

You look at him with a puzzled expression. "What about Touya?"

"He's your boyfriend, isn't he!?"

"Huh!?" You sat up straight in your seat, eyes wide with shock. "I don't have a boyfriend??"

"What.!?"

"You mean --this whole time-- you thought Touya was my--" A laugh escaped your lips for a brief second until you collected yourself, looking at him seriously. "Touya's my best friend. I mean… I did like him at one point but it wasn't reciprocated. Not that it matters, that's old news. I like you, Tenko."

The air left his lungs and he was pretty sure it wasn't going to come back anytime soon.

You liked him?

You?

Liked him?

Shimura Tenko?

Was he dreaming? Hallucinating this entire conversation? It was the only way any of this made sense.

"Here, eat some of these chocolates with me. They're really yummy. The perfect mix of sweet and salty." You pluck one from the baggy and lift it towards his lips. He stares into your eyes then down at the chocolate.

"I'd rather you eat them…"

You pout, "Okay, I won't force you."

You nibble on the chocolate and Tenko licks his lips at the sight.

"What?" You half-laugh. His eyes snap back up to yours.

"I like you, too."

"You do?" You look at him shyly. "I guess now would be a good time to tell you those chocolate cookies I gave you last month were the 'real feeling' kind?"

You've liked him for that long?

Tenko couldn't control himself anymore and, without warning, he leans in and takes your lips into a kiss. It's clumsy and awkward just like him, but you don't shove him away.

He can taste the salty sweet on your tongue as you kiss him back and though he wants to keep going, his lungs protested. He pulls back and the two of you stare at each other as he gathers his bearings.

"Was that your first kiss?" You ask.

He offers a small nod, "It was that bad..?"

"It's okay, we'll have plenty of time to practice."

Surprise filled him. "You want to d-do it again?"

You giggle, "Of course I do. As long as you're alright with it…"

"Right now? We can do it again right now?" He knew he sounded eager but he couldn't bring himself to care. He needed to feel the softness of your lips against his own.

"I like your enthusiasm." You laugh. "Let's do it when it's just us, okay? We're in public. I'm sure we can schedule in some more uninterrupted private sessions, right, Tenko?" You teased lightly.

Tenko gulped, nodding since he didn't trust his voice at the moment.

You weren't disgusted by him, you wanted to kiss him. You wanted to be alone with him. You accepted him and all his faults.

You liked him.

Tenko, impatient as he was, could wait as long as you needed him to.

He loved you.

[anistarrose]

Imagine, for a moment, that your internet just stopped loading images one day. Your dash might look pretty different (and less usable), but at least you can still make posts — whether about your internet situation, or about completely unrelated topics.

Now, imagine that one or more of your posts blew up, to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of notes. Imagine people started adding images to your posts.

Imagine your post circulating almost entirely in the form with four or five images attached, and with everyone in the notes laughing about those images — except you, who started the post in the first place, who can't even see those images because you're trapped in Tumblr's loading gradient hellscape.

You're excluded from any further conversations on your own post, because someone added a mystery image with the caption "don't leave this in the tags," but you have no idea which set of tags it is, and can't tell if it's one of the good takes from the tags or one of the horrible takes from the tags. You're excluded from the Tumblr users playing with JPEGs like dolls. You can try to guess the contents of the images based on people's reactions, but it's hard. And no one adding images even seems to notice the irony.

This is, of course, a real problem plaguing Tumblr users with regularly slow internet. And it's also a huge, insidious problem plaguing blind and low vision people who rely on either screen readers, or image descriptions in combination with enlarged text on their device.

People with disabilities around comprehending images, people who have images (or gifs) disabled due to photosensitivity, and many others are also affected.

If you add an image to a post without either alt text, an in-post image description, or even both for maximal inclusivity, you don't know if OP — or the person whose tags you're peer reviewing, or whose reply you're screenshotting — will actually be able to see it. From their perspective, you might just be shoving a mystery rectangle in their face, expecting them to be able to guess — or responding to them without them being able to know.

Imagine being on the receiving end of that expectation constantly. Imagine how isolating that must feel.

We need, collectively, to stop making assumptions that everyone we interact with online will be able to access, physically see, and mentally process images. The assumption that disabled people are vanishingly rare and statistically shouldn't really need to be considered is an assumption of structural and/or implicit ableism.

Write image descriptions. Write image descriptions for every image you post, if you're able — but if you have limited energy, or you're still learning, you should at least start trying your absolute best to describe images you add to other people's posts. If you're starting a conversation, even an online conversation, you should make your best effort to be accessible.

So: Write IDs, especially if they're as simple as just text, like screenshotted tags (link to guide). Write IDs even if you think the best ID you can write is too short, or too incomplete (link to post explaining why even "bad" IDs help).

Write IDs in general (link to a huge compilation of guides). Challenge ableist assumptions and inaccessibility.

[riggedbones]

making a dashboard simulator post from my octopus world that is so inscrutable .

2 notes

🐕 themodernwisdom

stop fucking telling me it’s problematic to have “humans dni” on my carrd none of you understand how traumatizing a symbiosis breakup can be.

👨‍💻 typical-hue-man follow

traumatizing for who 🤨 lmao you weren’t even the one dependent on them for survival

🐕 themodernwisdom

do you not know what dni means.

#blocked. #youd think after all these millennia they’d evolve some reading comprehension

52 notes

⚡️ psychiclesbian

like i don’t esp like how often were asked about our sex life but like yea i mean they’re right. tentacles 👍👍

#minors dni #like if they rly want to know just find an octopus whos dtf not that hard #i mean. okay maybe a bit hard. but idk they’re online sometimes?

3 notes

🎛 oldstructuremusings

just got the most insane piece of fanmail what the fuck. why is this child learning local human language from my radio show. in the middle of the fucking ocean. apparently they can’t pick anything else up that isn’t the occasional raven station but like i feel like i have some sort of responsibility to not teach this kid how to say fuck every five seconds.

#text #its probably too late tbh #if the kid is seeing this. get off of tumblr

12 notes

🦋 lonesomedreamer 🔁 why-no-pigeon-emoji follow

🐦 why-no-pigeon-emoji follow

does anyone know how human symbiosis works i saved this guys life right after his cat friend died and i think he is getting attached. or something.

🚧 mazemaster follow

ur not a dog or cat ur fine.

🦋 lonesomedreamer

it’s a common misconception, but humans can actually form symbiotic bonds with any sapient creature, actually! the relationship mostly helps with their social and mental requirements, and if there are enough humans in an area to form a community, they’re actually not at all reliant on forming interspecies symbiotic relationships! doesn’t really happen where i’m from though, i think last i heard there are maybe 6 humans in the area max 😅

🐦 why-no-pigeon-emoji follow

everyone stfu he made us matching outfits im gonna cry

#omg this is so cute 🥺 #i'm glad things worked out

5,923 notes

🌿 grasstoucher 🔁 toogenericusername follow

🐚 molluskfan12 follow

currently keeping some smaller snails atm after you-know-what >_> their shells are a more fragile but the meat is better imo. hope it'll work out still!!

🪶 aviandinosaurs follow

cottagecore bloggers off the shits lmao what is this

🐚 molluskfan12 follow

what the fuck is a cottagecore

10,239 notes

⚡️ psychiclesbian 🔁 undereclipse follow

🗼 prehistoric-structures follow

i'm curious!!!

🌅 sundownscare follow

op i appreciate the button for humans in theory but are you under the impression that we don't show up in our own creation myths???

🕸️ veryseriousmonkey follow

maybe they just want to know about other species, like humans appearing in their own myths is p much a given lol

🗼 prehistoric-structures follow

oh yeah thats... totally why that's there

#they forgor 💀

42,143 notes

🌿 grasstoucher

do you think they had discourse like this pre climate disaster like it was just humans at that point how bad could it rly be

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I am in the process of engaging with Marxist and Leninist theory, and it keeps me awake, and it is currently 4AM, my shift begins at 8AM, so I am sorry if this might be a bit rambly.

The one reason why I kept my distance from seriously considering myself a communist for quite a while is that historical materialism in its conceptualization of especially the early forms of human societiex seems quite... monolithic and racist? Like one of the members of the local communist party I spoke to sent me several texts from marxists dot org, and I had to put several down before ending them. I can fully agree on the notion that a social structure is more likely to propagate itself across generations and especially in conflict with other social structures if it maintains a tighter and more stratified hold over the means of production. But these texts speak of "mankinds ability to dominate over nature and build civilization" and... isn't the dichotomy of civilization versus wilderness one of the foundational building blocks of the superstructure that supports and maintains the process of accumulation that is the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples? Several of the texts go on to cite the existence of real, contemporarily still existing Indigenous groups as an example of hunter-gatherer societies "as the earliest and least developed stage of human civilization". I just don't know. I have for a long time considered myself a Fanonist first and foremost, and I find much use in applying materialist analysis to the foundational processes of Western modernity (settler colonialism and extractivist imperialism as forms of accumulation, for example). But I have a really hard time with the eurocentrism that seems to underlie quite a number of assumptions Engels and Marx make about history. I am by no means Anti-Civ, I just consider "civilization" and "societal development" as a discourse as deeply entwined with settler-colonialism.

You don't have to engage with this, I don't want to annoy you. My analysis is probably not complete, and you are under no obligation to educate me. I ask this all in good faith because the absence of consideration for the material situation of Indigenous peoples in a lot of the Marxists I have spoken to has been the principal thing keeping me away from Marxism. You are one of the first Marxists I followed on tumblr and I appreciate a lot of what I have learned by reading your posts. Keep up the good work.

The language used in many foundational Marxist and Leninist texts is undeniably chauvinistic and colonialist because - like everything else - they were written by people who were a product of their time and place, which in this case was for the most part Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is certainly objectionable from our contemporary position after decades of Marxist anti-imperialist and anti-colonial theory has been produced by Indigenous and colonized peoples applying a dialectical materialist analysis to their conditions. However, this language does not and should not negate the validity of these same theories which have been used as the basis for the most successful movements towards decolonization in the past and present centuries.

[qqueenofhades]

as a starting history major i wanna ask how do you read/evaluate academic history papers/books? i'm trying to avoid just blindly agreeing with whatever the author is writing because it seems correct. how can you tell what is good scholarship and what is more shaky?

This is a great question for you as a freshman history major to ask (many of my toiling colleagues and I can attest that we wish more of you would!) and shows that you're already taking initiative and investment in your studies and want to be the best prepared you can. So truly -- thank you! Us on the faculty/staff/administrative end of academia can feel as if we are pouring into an empty bucket at times, and it's always gratifying to hear otherwise. We really appreciate it.

As a college freshman and/or underclassman (or so I'm assuming) your first job is learning how to collect basic information from the things you read, collate and cite them accurately, and make them converse intelligently with each other in an entry-level piece of academic writing (such as an essay responding to an assigned prompt). So before you have to worry about understanding complex nuance and granular-level fact-checking, the first step is just getting comfortable with academic forms, styles, and conventions. There's an occasional anti-intellectual strand of thinking that pops up on Tumblr, basically insisting that everyone everywhere should be able to understand everything in fifth-grade words and if not then it's Elitist Gatekeeping, but this is a symptom of TikTok brainrot where people's brains have been literally rewired to only process spoon-fed chunks of incredibly simplistic (and uh, often wrong) information, and literally can't parse anything longer, even if it's written in accessible language. Yes, many academics are not necessarily great writers, but you also have to let go of the mindset that you can speed-read once and understand everything. You will need to slow down, take your time, and make a note of concepts that are confusing or that you want to double-check, words you need to look up, and things that make you say "hmm I should look into that more," whether because you're interested or they seem questionable. I always read academic texts or papers (I prefer hard copy, because I am Fucking Old) with a pen in hand, because if I don't, I often feel like I didn't read it at all.

Basically, this is an interactive process between you and the text, and requires you to develop a different kind of reading mentality than just buzzing through a novel or fanfic for pleasure. You have to expect that it will take time and that if you regularly skive off the readings, you won't be prepared for class, your professors will be annoyed, and you won't be able to write good essays, because you haven't engaged with the material. In your case, it sounds like that will be less of a problem, because you are eager to know how to do it right, but I can tell you from my experience that nothing frustrates us more than students who just won't do the reading (and you know, use ChatGPT to write their essays) because then what are you even DOING here? What do you want to get out of this? Why are you wasting your precious tuition money like this? Yes, you probably have to fill a requirement, but STILL. It's disrespectful to your teacher, who has invested a lot of effort in being here to help you with this and doesn't want you to just quit because it looks hard, and your peers, and to you. So anyway, /Captain Holt voice/ apparently that's a trigger for me. Basically, if you learn nothing else from this ask: please do the reading. Even if it's only to admit you need more help or want to talk about this concept in class or otherwise take advantage of all the structures that are in fact there to help you understand it! Thankee.

Likewise, because you're an underclassman, you have an advantage in that your teacher will select the class readings for you ahead of time. That means you will be receiving things that a professional has already checked, decided are useful and trustworthy, and you don't have to do independent research and vetting yourself (that will come if you decide for some godforsaken reason to pursue graduate and/or doctoral study). So you don't need to spend tons of extra time and effort deciding if the sources given to you in class are reliable on a basic and functional level; your professor has already done the work for you to make sure that they are. Your job is now to read those sources, keep a record of what they say (hence the aforementioned pen or other way to make quick notes) and figure out how to put them together in an essay. For example, if Author A cites Factor A as, say, the main cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and Author B insists that Factor B was in fact more critical, what is your best approach to reconciling that information? You would search in the rest of those texts to see what else they say in support of their position, and you would probably end up with a qualified statement to the effect of, "While Author A argues A, Author B thinks B, representing the lack of consensus and the difficulty in attributing one single cause to an event as complicated as the fall of Rome." (And then because you're smart, you would go on to mention Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire and show that you are aware of the further context.) All of which is true! Historians do that all the time! You don't need to select THE RIGHT ANSWER and vigorously discredit all other theories, ever, and we tend to look suspiciously on people who do (cough cough Philippa Langley).

In other words, we are certainly not expecting you as a freshman, and even as a more advanced student, to be able to pick out ONE ANSWER from the material. We just want to see evidence that you have in fact read it, are able to evaluate and place theories side by side and possibly make a judgment as to which one you find more compelling, and also to properly cite where you got that information. We've seen a lot recently about plagiarism and that being the pretext on which Harvard president Claudine Gay was forced to resign (which is a whole other can of worms, but never mind). A lot of professors think that saying "Don't Do Plagiarism" is enough, but then don't explain what it is and the different forms it can take. It's not just a matter of copying verbatim chunks of someone else's work (or you know, ALL OF IT, like certain recently discredited YouTube scumbags) and acting like it's your own. If you are relying substantially on someone else's work, whether in their wording, arguments, conclusions, structure, or anything else, even if you've changed some of the words (yep, still plagiarism!), that needs to be cited appropriately according to the relevant style guide. Direct quotes from anyone need to go in quotation marks or indented blocks and have the author cited immediately afterward. History usually uses Chicago, MLA, or MHRA, and you can find cheat sheets for how to do that online. It's a pretty simple and straightforward style, and your professor will be extra impressed.

If you're expected to do an independent project or a senior research thesis, as some undergraduate history students do, then it will come when you have already had three years of experience in reading, evaluating, and writing historical scholarship, you will probably have a faculty member assigned to you for one-on-one mentoring and personalized feedback sessions, and they will be able to provide suggestions and support for useful sources. So even then, you still don't have to do it entirely on your own. They'll probably also be MORE than happy to debate with you which ones are good and which ones are suspect, because it's all a part of developing your ability to flex that muscle for yourself. (And as noted, faculty members Will Have Strong Opinions.) That likewise doesn't mean you just have to copy whatever they say (at least if you have a good teacher who wants you to think for yourself and not just be a mini-clone of their pet theories), but it means that by the time you reach that stage, you will have been prepared enough to feel confident in taking more steps on your own. I think not enough people realize that studying history (or anything, really) isn't just throwing you out there and being like "tough luck sucker, do it all yourself."

That's why academia is so collaborative, why plenty of historians with doctorates and tenure will still have to say "I don't know, let me get back to you" when someone asks them a question at a conference, and you don't have to fear that if you don't have The One Right Answer, you will be immediately exposed as a fraud and thrown out. History as a discipline is also moving away from the 19th-century German approach that attempted to systematize it as a singular social science with One Right Answer, and to focus more on multiple perspectives and incomplete answers. That's why the goal is not necessarily to know everything (which alas, is impossible), but to make better sense of what we can know and search for ways in which the existing record is flawed and needs to be revised, expanded, or reworked with new perspectives (which have existed all this time, but haven't been privileged by the white male western academy for the obvious reasons). And that work is fun and important! I don't want you to be scared of getting to that point, because someone will be there to support you the whole way and by the time you do, it will make sense to you in a way it probably doesn't right now, just because it's a new skill and like any new skill, it takes a long time to learn and to be able to apply confidently, consistently, and at a high level. And plenty of us who do it as a career still often have to say "I don't know, let me ask Dr. So-and-so who specializes in this," so yeah. It's a process of becoming comfortable with both learning how to answer what we can, and to ask others for help with that, and it never really ends. Which is the fun part. There's so much more to do.

Good luck!

[demodraws0606]

Why I am a die-hard believer that Whit is the mastermind

You know I was going to make an entire structured theory thread about it but Tumblr decided to be a little bitch and remove all my writing so I'll just kinda throw a messy list of evidence here.

Notice how Veronika's summary of Forever Dead is suspiciously similar to the secret dialogue

Notice how the main character's gender is pointed out

It's also interesting how the mysterious dialogue in the beginning who seems to be related to the hidden text (the idea of not being able to remember anymore link those two) seem to often mention the fact that they're grieving the loss of someone.

That someone most likely being Mai who seems to have suffered a tragic fate due to Teruko, which can explain the mastermind's hatred of her.

Guess who's character is linked with grief ?

(I know this is most likely about his mother but there is nothing contradicting the fact that he could be idolizing multiple dead people)

Wow it's interesting how these secret texts about Mai seem to be really idolizing her.

We can also add how the person who wrote the note to Xavier is very clearly the mastermind and how Whit's tool is a Stationery (it's spelled Stationary but i believe its a typo) which is commonly known as writing and other office materials.

Which includes paper, pens, ink, highlighters and other tools for writing

It's even made worse by the fact that the note seems to be written by a specific type of blue pen that we haven't seen anywhere in the series.

And even worse is that Charles, who knows Whit's handwriting, couldn't point out the writing is his as he couldn't access the scene of the crime due to his trauma therefore he couldn't see the note's handwriting.

It's really really interesting how the hidden text points out how they can predict everyone's behavior in a killing game and Whit's intuition is highlighted three times in this game.

Another suspicious thing is how the mastermind of the game talks about how they basically can predict anything that can happen. It's almost like how Whit jokingly predicted Arei's death.

Along with how Whit is the only one who has directly talked to the audience (him showing the papers) or how he's nudged the killing game into more interesting directions/avoided it from going off the rails.

Other exemples would be him defending Teruko/Charles in the first trial, him not revealing David's secret until the last minute (as well as the note that suspiciously pointed to Eden), him not trying to help with the fight in episode 4, him insisting that Charles and Teruko talk about their family life (aka nudging them to talk about their backstory which would entertain the audience) and other stuff i don't feel like adding.

It's also important add that Mono-TV and Whit also have similar personalities. They both don't take anything seriously and make constant jokes about the killing games, Mono-TV and Whit also act constantly incompetent and like they're a lot dumber than they actually are.

Another thing is that it's interesting how Whit opens up about his secret so easily, even though almost everyone's secrets are something they're at least flustered about and at worst completely ashamed by. If he was the mastermind, it would make sense that his secret wouldn't be anything that could ruin his character and that he could just admit easily.

Also another point, the mastermind character talks about a time when they cared so much about people and how it hurt them so much when they died. Which you can see that caring nature shine through a lot with Whit as it's possible that Whit's personnality is not actually a lie but more so a reflection of how he used to be before he went through all this alledged horrible stuff.

We can also note how the mastermind has to be one of the students and how there is an extreme likelyhood that Mono-TV saying it isn't bait because it's not actually told to the students but to us. Why would Mono-TV tell it to us and not to the students if it was a lie meant to make the game more interesting, wouldn't it be more entertaining to reveal to the students of a fake mastermind among them to get them to kill one another more easily. It's why I have no doubt someone in this class has to be the mastermind behind it.

Mono-TV also seems to not have any contact with the person controlling him which would make sense if it was someone in the killing game as they would have a hard time communicating without being caught.

(It's a stretch but it would make more sense if Mono-TV didn't know if the mastermind was one of them as if the mastermind was behind the scenes there would be no reason why it wouldn't interact with Mono-TV, although take this with a grain of salt as he could be lying)

And just really there aren't a lot of other options for the mastermind that would be compelling unless they introduce a mysterious new character.

It could be the mysterious red haired girl but everything hints towards her being dead or hurt and it being the cause for the killing game rather than her being the one behind it. There is some decent evidence that it could be her but I genuinely don't think so considering it again feels a little too obvious and doesn't work with how the story/secrets present her.

(It's just not very compelling to make your ONE mystery character the mastermind and again it would be weird considering Mono-TV telling the audience the mastermind is in cast doesn't make sense logically as he would have no reason to try and trick the audience)

Not a lot of characters in this cast can be really put into the mastermind category as they are either too obvious (teruko, veronika) or too farfetched (eden, hu etc...).

I honestly am a die hard believer that Whit is the mastermind however what's interesting to me is not If Whit is the mastermind but more so the Why ?

Which honestly might be a question for another time...

But yeah this is why I 95 pourcent believe Whit is the mastermind

If anyone has anything more to add I would be really interesting in seeing what other people have in terms of evidence.

[autumnslance]

Another thing for new Tumblr users: Read Mores

We don't use excess spaces or ROT13 or anything to avoid spoilers here! We use a Read More cut. This is also handy for shortening long posts.

As of July 2 2023 (it can and does change over time, but mostly in where to find things) on desktop when making a hard return space in your post it pulls up the formatting menu for selecting images, gifs, links, etc. The last icon on the list--the straight line, squiggly line, straight line--is your Read More cut

On my iOS tablet app, the menu's found at the bottom of the post editor.

This lets you hide spoiler content and/or trim down longer posts, like long lists or longer fanfiction or character info or lore or whatever.

Now, this is also where your blog's customization comes in; someone clicking on a Read More cut will be taken from the dashboard to your blog post, to read it with your font and color choices. Please make sure they're actually readable and accessible. Even with only a minor astigmatism correctable by glasses, I've run into a LOT of unreadable blogs.

For readers, a way around this on Desktop is the XKIT REWRITTEN browser extension. Handy for a lot of ways to tweak your Tumblr browser experience in general, one of the options also lets you open Read More cuts directly on the Dashboard, which can be a lifesaver if avoiding badly formatted or inaccessible blogs.

Another strong word of warning: Read Mores link back to the original post. Handy if you want to Edit what came under the cut. But also--if you delete the post, or change your blog name/URL, it may break the Read More link on reblogs. The information is either gone or unable to be found, due to how Tumblr structures posting and reblogs, especially in the older text editors. This is often why you'll see people advocate not putting image or video descriptions under a Read More, even if they get long. Other vital information on a post can be lost this way as well.

So go forth without stretching your mutuals' dashboards or worrying about spoiling folks who haven't filtered their tags/words properly!

(Speaking of: please use filtered words and tags for things you don't want to see or interact with!)

If you want to make static Tumblr pages (like all the ones I have on my blog), or have questions about how and why to Customize your blog (don't be mistaken for a spambot and also gain access to your full blog features!), I have other tutorials for that!

[trillscienceofficer]

idk if you’ve seen this post but it very much made me think of b’elanna and a lot of the conversations we’ve been having about her recently: www(.)tumblr(.)com/weltenwellen/614081842448056320/lindsay-c-gibson-adult-children-of-emotionally

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, this quote is SURE relevant to B'Elanna (here in plain text):

Not Trusting Your Instincts Emotionally immature parents don't know how to validate their child's feelings and instincts. Without this validation, children learn to give in to what others seem sure about. As adults, they may deny their instincts to the point where they acquiesce to relationships they don't really want. They may then believe it's up to them to make the relationship work. They may rationalize why they have to try so hard in the relationship, as though it were normal to struggle daily to get along with your mate. While effort is needed to maintain communication and connection in a relationship, it shouldn't feel like constant, unrewarding work. The truth is, if both partners fit each other, understand each other's feelings, and are positive and supportive, relationships are primarily pleasurable, not arduous. It isn't asking too much to generally feel happy when you see your partner or look forward to time together. When people say, "You can't have everything," they're really saying they don't have what they need.

As a human being, you can trust yourself to l know when you're emotionally satisfied. You know I when you've been given full measure. You aren't a bottomless pits of ceaseless demands. You can trust the inner prompts that tell you when something is missing. But if you've been trained to discount your feelings, you'll feel guilty for complaining if everything looks okay on the outside. If you have a place to live, a regular paycheck, enough food, and a partner or friends, conventional wisdom says, "How bad can it be?" Many people can readily enumerate all the reasons why they should be satisfied and be shy about admitting that they aren't. They blame themselves for not having the "right" feelings.

— Lindsay C. Gibson, “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”

You're right, this is B'Elanna in a nutshell. The constant racial stereotyping she was subjected to and the fact that her own father bought into it really did a number on B'Elanna's self-esteem. So many of her childhood memories revolve around people goading her into a reaction then berate her for her anger once she finally snapped. It's like she was gaslighted into believing that every single one of her feelings was unreasonable, and therefore now she doesn't trust herself when it comes to evaluating how she fits within any social structure, deferring to the opinion of others.

This is most obvious in her relationship with Tom (honestly, this quote describes their relationship so well it's kind of uncanny) but I'd argue that B'Elanna trying to get into Starfleet only to quit the Academy is a twisted symptom of this as well—she didn't trust herself enough to know whether she could actually graduate, so she believed the people who told her she would never make it (and never mind the fact that in reality the Starfleet instructors were impressed with her—rattling cages doesn't work with everyone and was clearly NOT what B'Elanna needed).

And in “Drive” we see this coming back with a vengeance, she doesn't trust herself enough to call it quits with Tom and when he eventually proposes she just... goes along with it, mixed feelings suddenly irrelevant in the face of someone else's (apparent) convictions. I think Tom has similar issue as well so this is truly a 'but who's driving the car??' situation, they're both thinking that the other wants it more than they do and that they don't actually deserve any better!

(ETA: frankly their entire relationship started this way too, like... with all the alien crap making a latent attraction actually become overt in a way they wouldn't have chosen otherwise, B'Elanna and Tom practically pulled each other into a relationship)

I also think this is why B'Elanna seems to latch onto authority figures (like Chakotay and Janeway) so readily, though she would never admit it. It's a way for her to figure out what's the 'correct' way to interface with other people, so she can orient her feelings towards fitting into any expectation they might have. Of course that never really works out as well as she'd like because she is an actual person, and one with many feelings and opinions, even if she's spent so many years running away from them. And running away from feelings is sure another one of B'Elanna's traits (it's the entire plot of “Extreme Risk”).

The part of that quote about parents not validating their children's feelings makes me now wonder about what would've happened if B'Elanna had had parents who consistently and explicitly supported her, and made sure she understood that she was not overreacting when she was being bullied. Mostly if she'd had a father who didn't suck so bad; I think Miral tried in her own way to support her daughter as best as she could, although she was completely isolated and probably dealing with a lot of self-doubt of her own in the middle of a crumbling relationship. I'm not so naive to believe that better parenting would've solved every single one of B'Elanna's issues (you can't just wish away the impact that racism has on children, unfortunately), but she would probably be better equipped to trust herself and her own emotions than she is on the show, at least.

[monstersinthecosmos]

What if Marius cums in the ice cube tray while filling it up so when he pushes something to drink on Armand he’s also drinking bits of Marius up as the ice slowly melts? 🥺👉👈

I think that would be lovely and fun!!!!

I’ve written a bit of this kink for Sheith fandom LOL but i realllllly love when this type of play can be done in public because it’s so subtle. Like Armand can be carrying that around in his tumbler all day and no one has any idea!!

especially if it’s like an insulated tumblr, it would take hours and hours to melt, and the taste would slowly change over the course of the day! I wonder if he’s the type of neurodivergent where he really loses steam towards the end of the day—especially if he’s a student, like if he really struggles in his last class of the day—like really very done masking and having a hard time staving off the sensory overload, really wants to go home, and that’s when his drink starts tasting super bitter and weird and it gives him the second wind to make it!!!

I love this idea as a human AU in general for any situation but I think you sent it when we were taking about Vantablack so like I wonder if you intended for it to be noncon/non-negotiated LOL. Poor naive Armand doesn’t know why his drink tastes funny !!

but at what point does his relationship with Marius become unprofessional, does he realize that being dommed actually helps him focus so much, he’s doing better in school, getting the best sleep of his life, etc. How long before Marius being his manager or employer of sorts evolve to a 24/7 dynamic in which he lets Marius help him with structure and routine ? Does Marius text him to remind him to take his meds, and ask for a selfie with them on his tongue? (does he FaceTime to watch armand swallow them with one of these special drinks?) Does he demand Armand send him pictures of his kitchen to prove the dishes are done? Imagine him asking for a selfie while he’s in class or maybe even wanting to watch live through the webcam on Armand’s laptop to make sure he’s staying hydrated, and Armand is being watched as the drinks it in front of his class?

🥰🥰🥰

[theempresstrash]

Welcome! :3

If you are here right now more than likely you are a Twitter crypto artist denizen who has heard me, @maxcapacity and probably many other shouting about Tumblr on Twitter. Why Tumblr? It is part nostalgia, part necromancy, part homage to the the Web3 greats who spent years here (some are still here), part rebellion, and part reminding artists to come together to help each other.

Twitter heavily favors text base tweets - it's just a fact. Here is not the case. Many of us are also maybe a little jaded on what is happening overall and feel ignored as artists. Discord is full of scams, twitter group chats are cliquey, but here we are free to roam, explore each others works, and create a visual digital identity we want to present.

Come play with us and remember why we are all here! For the art, to make friends, express ourselves, have a good time and build a better future for artists. Yes we all want to sell work too ofc - we have physical bodies to take care of and bills to pay - but what if we share with each other our wins and how we got them, and our failures and what we learned from them as artists so when we go back to the rest of the internet hellscape we can find more success? At the very least, make some friends here or rekindle connects that may have been lost to not feel so alone. For some of you this is a trip down memory lane, for others you have never been here before. Old or new a like I encourage you to check out who I am following to get started finding each other.

This isn't rocket science - if you can understand blockchain web3 stuff, I have faith you can understand this old beast of a social network. Love you all ~~~ <3

P.S. I'm writing this for specific purposes of a pinned post. It feels so good to be able to write more than 150 characters. Also here are multi gifs side by side -- for the culture.

EDIT: Because I can edit and also adding this - for the culture 🫡🚫

~We are here to focus on the art and building up artists and to build an open, non hierarchal structure to provide mutual support for each other while showcasing the hard work and dope art crypto artists do to try to shape the landscape of web3 to be more artist friendly for ALL artists from diverse backgrounds. ~ Here are some guidelines to foster a healthy community growth:

~ NO SHILL POST/ART SHARE POSTS - why? we want the focus to go back on the artist and deep thoughts, not engagement farming. Shilling/art share is a viable way on twitter to get your art out there because of how the social media is structured. Here - content is the focus. You can discover new artists a multitude of ways including searching hashtags, looking through your fav artists feed of who they are sharing or following, and generally just wandering around.

~ INDEPENDENT ARTIST FOCUS - 10k pfp projects are a part of the nft ecosystem, and thrive on twitter, but here we want to again have the focus stay on independent artists. A basic issue with these projects is to access a lot of their communities they are token gated, and a lot of artists just can't afford them. Also many feel we are drowning in the noise of a lot of the politics and drama that goes on between projects, and need a place again to share ourselves with each other for feedback, support and overall good times.

~ REPORT AND BLOCK THE HATERS / KILL WITH KIDNESS- anywhere on the internet hate is prevalent for lots of different reasons related to our content and not. Bullies are cowards, and to bully someone for a technology they use is boring. Tumblr also does not tolerate hate and harassment in any form. Maybe someone is having a bad day and if able extend kindness. For extreme comments, report them. For continual harassers, block them. This is your space to curate how you wish. We deserve to be here as artists as anyone else, and hope to on top of supporting each other showcase our dope af work we are doing within the crypto art ecosystems to show we aren't all scammers, just artists trying to build a better future.

[dkniade]

Translating Neuvillette’s Opening Chest (II) & Joining Party (I) Voicelines

UEEE SO YOU UNDERSTAND

(An attempt to translate based on what little I know of his character.) I will show the Chinese line, then the official English localization, then my English translation, then some thoughts on the word choice in Chinese, and English localization. For the first voiceline, I’ll also show the Japanese localization and my English translation of it, to support a claim.

Game: Genshin Impact

Developer: miHoYo / HoYoverse

Fan Localizations: Dusk

Opening Treasure Chest: II

(Original Chinese)

是不错的东西吗？至少打开它的一瞬间是不错的心绪吧。

.

(Official English Translation)

Is it what you wished to find? Hopefully, the excitement of opening a treasure chest has at least made it a worthwhile experience.

.

(My Chinese-to-English Translation)

Is it something nice? At least the split moment of opening it felt nice, right…?

(Official Japanese Localization)

悪くない代物か？少なくとも、開けた瞬間の期待感は、心地良いものだったのだろう。

(My Japanese-to-English translation)

Is it something nice? Even if it’s not a lot, the anticipation you felt the moment you opened it was pleasant, right…?

.

THE FLEETING MOMENT OF ANTICIPATION UE UE

(@ EN ver: my, so formal Monsieur Neuvillette)

It feels to me like Neuvillette doesn’t know what’s in the chest, so he asks if the Traveler—who’s opening the chest—has found something nice. But then it seems he automatically assumes that the Traveler is disappointed at the treasure, so then he assures them that—and this is key—at least the split moment between opening the chest itself and seeing the treasure inside felt nice. (Morphologically, Mandarin Chinese doesn’t really have affix-based verb tenses like English so it’s a bit hard to explain.) It’s so sad… Why does he assume that… I mean, as players we might be more excited to open a chest than to see what random artifacts/materials/weapons are inside, but in-universe, why would Neuvillette say something like this, I wonder…

Though, 心绪 (xīnxù) is a literary word that means state of mind, but that word usually refers to negative emotions (compared to 心情 / xīnqíng which can refer to both positive and negative emotions), so I’m not sure why Neuvillette would use it in a positive sense. You could say it’s because he doesn’t understand human emotions well, but linguistically speaking, Genshin Impact text in general often has Chinese sentences in a strangely wordy structure or overly complicated/fancy word choice, to the point that it either feels like a weird translation, or that it’s just not a syntactic structure native speakers would use (e.g. using too many prepositions where it could all be omitted and simply implied)

Still, 心绪 alone doesn’t make the tone of the whole Chinese line formal, compared to its official English localization. I can’t comment as much on the Japanese localization, but content wise it’s much closer to Chinese, since the two languages are more similar… It seems the Japanese localization is politely casual too since he uses the casual verb form.

Another important thing: In the Chinese line, the second sentence starts with 至少 (zhìshǎo) which is at least, and ends in the question particle 吧 (ba) which marks uncertainty at the end of a declarative sentence. This makes the sentence structure something like a rhetorical question such as At least [statement], right? (E.g. At least it’s not raining, right?) even though it’s not marked with a question mark. This tone is… quite difficult to translate. It’s common in Chinese (and I believe Japanese too) for rhetorical questions or casual comments/observations to end in a period, but it’s not so in English (unless it’s social media, like Tumblr, right).

—

Joining Team: I

(Original Chinese)

感谢你许可…嗯，邀请我同行。

.

(Official English Localization)

Thank you for permitting— No, inviting me to join you.

.

(My English Translation)

Thank you for permitting… Ahem, inviting me to travel with you.

.

Official translation is good here. Granting permission vs invitation huh… Is it out of formality or does he feel so out of place with humans that he thinks he needs permission to even join them on their journey

(There’s that rhetorical question again)

[specialagentartemis]

you bring up women and female too much... feeling pretty terfy tbh

This is so fucking funny. As bait it’s like you’re not even Trying

(for context: transphobes just found my post about why it’s important to not spread historical misinformation and they are mad about it. This is from a transphobic radfem angry that I said trans people exist and existed in the past too.)

Shockingly I bring up women and being female because I am a woman and I care about feminism and women’s rights. I firmly believe most people should! Being a woman kind of makes it pressing in a certain way though.

I went through the whole gender questioning and gender exploration thing, thinking about gender and womanhood and femaleness and what they mean and how I relate to it and don’t. I was a tomboyish girl who liked to read and climb trees and hated shaving my legs and participating in gym class and was resentful and resistant to Rules but also enthralled by history and particularly suffragists and women who Did Things. But also, for a while, as I started to increasingly reaize I was queerer than I supposed and felt alienated from other girls my age, I felt pretty disconnected from womanhood; I didn’t know what it meant to me. I’m aromantic asexual, and that self-knowledge was hard-won and required a lot of soul searching and fear for the future and trying really hard to be allo and crying alone at the dining hall. And the question of “what is my gender for, anyway?” felt pertinent in that regard. If it’s not there to structure romantic/sexual attraction and relationships, what is it there for? What does it do for me?

Reading feminist texts by cis feminists was important for thinking about political organizing and political necessities of combating sexism and misogyny in its many pervasive and awful forms, but it didn’t really make me feel any more of a personal sense of womanhood. Political coalition building is not necessarily the same as personal sense of self, nor should it be.

You know what made me feel more secure in my gender? In feeling like A Woman?

Reading the work of trans lesbians.

I mean it. Reading trans women lesbians writing sci-fi stories about apocalypses and AIs and identity, and realistic stories about longing and coercion and freedom and joy and fear and just being, is what made me go, oh, this is it. This is what it’s all about, this is what it means to be a woman. You get it. And you make me feel it in a way I haven’t in a long time.

(I’m also an anthropologist. Thinking about human societies and social constructs and performances of identity is my job.)

But if you want to read the work of the trans woman who really made me feel comfortable and seen and resonant in my womanhood for the first time in a long time, I highly HIGHLY recommend Jamie Berrout and particularly her Portland Diary: Short Stories 2016/2017. They have a spark of brilliance. This Pride month treat yourself to these stories. (This is a direct download because unfortunately Berrout scrubbed her entire internet presence, including any place to legitimately buy her work, but I paid a fair price for these before she did, and I think they deserve to be read.)

(I won’t currently link the other trans woman writer who helped my through my Gender Epiphany, because unlike Berrout who has gone off the grid, she has an internet presence and I don’t want her to get targeted by any transphobes camping my page waiting for my response to their brilliantly crafted bait.)

TERFs, and some overzealous tumblr/twitter users, want so badly to believe that feminism and trans rights are at odds, that if you believe in one you can’t believe in the other. That’s bullshit, of course. My feminism is fully bound up in trans rights; non-discrimination by sex and gender means non-discrimination by sex and gender. Bodily autonomy and authority on one’s identity are the rights of everyone. We need to end sexism and part of ending sexism is ending the belief in gender essentialism; we need to end transphobia and part of ending transphobia means ending the idea that women can only be One Thing and men can only be One Thing and there are unbreachable distances between them. I believe in gender equality and that means the equality of all genders. And from personal experience, I believe that trans women have a lot to say about feminism and what it feels like to be a woman.

Also I have a lot of trans and non-binary friends and I like them much better and trust them much more than I like or trust transphobes. So.

Women’s rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights. Trans rights are women’s rights. All of these things are true, and inextricable.

[dumpsterfireofsubtext]

Those were the two points that made me come to terms with the open ending you wrote. And it's glorious and painful both, at once. Your art moved me in a way no other story had done so far, it reached into my psyche and pulled a cord that is still taut and the snap it caused reverberated in me. You and me thinking about how love is always going to be complicated for them, about why an open ending left me in such an emotional place, about god and divinity and my own relationship to those concepts. Which talking about it would be another wall of text, so I'm gonna wrap it up. Thank you, thank you thank you so much sincerely. You gifted me a story that shook me, that has a personal meaning. And made me look at a couple issues about myself that I keep working on, topics of love, god, truth, the alchemy that is being loved by someone special and the possibility that letting go is the end of the road sometimes. But theirs is an open ending, as such I'll have to work hard to make my brain picture what could happen. To find the possibility under that bell curve that makes the most sense to who they are. I'm so sorry for clogging your ask box this way 😭 I could have written this dumb essay on ao3, but for some reason I do feel that reaching out through Tumblr is almost like knocking on the actual door of your house and drop by to say 'hello your art has touched me deeply, thank you' I sincerely hope none of the various parts of this ask are lost by Tumblr's system (it has happened to me sometimes) and lastly, your story moved me in a way that's made decide to try my hand at writing for them. Maybe I'll write my personal end to your story, if only for myself. I'm sure I will be bad at it, but they have taken hold of my brain and won't let go until I puke out whatever they want me to. Thanks for your story and your vision for it, you are insanely talented, this fandom is lucky to have you. If you want to publish all parts of my ask publicly it's ok, and if not that's ok too

This ask is in regards to my Avatrice Wings of desire AU (becasue i'm structuring this ask weirdly)

First off, thank you!! It took me a while to respond to this simply because I was figuring out just how exactly to respond. It'll probably be a bit unorthodox but I'm going to respond to your penultimate ask and paste your other ones in if anybody else wants to read through them and get a little context. 

To be frank, I’m pleased my fic gave you such a visceral reaction. I knew people were going to have mixed feelings over it, but I never intended for the ending to be easy, though I’d like to think it's not such a devastating open ending, but fairly hopeful. It’s so interesting to see people connect with my writing on a personal level (I also had a relationship that ended weirdly. The feelings were there but the circumstances were, quite frankly, dog shit. It didn’t work out, and you're right: those partings are always worse). 

Also, don’t apologise for sending me such a long ask! It was all so fascinating and really made me think. I had to read your comments a few times over to really appreciate the beautiful points you were making :) very interesting stuff.

In regards to this ask (which is long and wouldn't fit into one screen shot):

I’m so so so pleased because it seems like you’ve really grasped and understood the version of Ava and Beatrice I was angling for. This ask specifically… i think you really nailed what i was going for, and nailed Ava and Bea’s characterisations in general. This line particularly:

 “Ava did exactly what she was going to do. Keep trying to outrun her pain, with or without Bea. And Bea would stay behind because she's her own person, the person Ava helped to develop, and thanks to her she has the strength to say I cannot follow this time.”

And to answer this ask! All is not lost, an epilogue is still on the cards!

And in regards to your own endeavours, the first step to writing is just banging something out on a page and pushing through the discomfort of trying something new. I salute you on your journey :)

Thank you so much for such a thought out response to my work. It means so so much to me that I've written something that warrants this kind of response, truly I'm profoundly touched.

I really really appreciate people who not only comment on ao3, but also take the time to send me such thoughtful asks here on tumblr (you're right, it does sort of feel like knocking at my front door hehe)

Thank you, friend <3 I’m honoured that my work has touched you like this :’)

[accessibleaesthetics]

hello! I've been reading through the resources you've compiled and I really appreciate them! You seem pretty experienced with image descriptions, so I was hoping I could possibly ask you for some advice on how to make my poll tournament more accessible. If you don't have the capacity to help out right now, that's totally fine—let me know if there's someone who you think could better answer my questions!

Anyways, currently I'm running a tournament for poems that are popular on Tumblr (@poetrysmackdown). For Round 1 I just included the images of the poems, which I'd still like to include in future rounds just because it makes it easier to compare side by side, and a few of the poems' precise line structures would be pretty difficult to faithfully replicate on Tumblr. That said, I want to also include text transcriptions in the future rounds for obvious accessibility reasons (and I'm now really wishing I did for Round 1! I didn't realize the tournament would be voted on by anyone besides like ten of my mutuals haha). Do you have any advice on how to format text transcriptions for poems? I'm not sure how best to convey a line break for text-to-speech, for example—should I write it as a "/" between lines, or is it preferable to just write out the poem as I would otherwise? Is it okay if I put the transcription below a read more (some of the poems are quite long), or is that considered rude? I may be overthinking this haha, I just wanna make sure I get it right so everyone can enjoy the poems. I'm attaching two sample poems just so you can get an idea of what I'm working with—thanks in advance!

Not overthinking at all! Before anything else, let me describe the two examples you gave and then I'll put some more detailed thoughts under a read more.

[Image Description: Two screenshots of poems.

The first poem is titled "Scheheraade." It reads: Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake / and dress them in warm clothes again. / How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running / until they forget that they are horses. / It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, / it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, / how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days / were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple / to slice into pieces. / Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means / we're inconsolable. / Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. / These, our bodies, possessed by light. / Tell me we'll never get used to it.

The second poem is titled "Having a Coke with You." It reads: is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne / or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona / partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian / partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt / partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches / partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary / it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still / as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it / in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth / between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles // and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint / you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them // I look / at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world / except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick / which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time / and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism / just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or / at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me / and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them / when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank / or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully / as the horse // it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience / which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm telling you about it.

End Image Description.]

Now, obviously I went with the traditional academic rules for quoting poems in the above ID, and I did that because the location of line breaks can be very important in poetry, and that's not always going to translate with a screen reader if you just format it that way. Additionally, if you have someone who sight reads but needs to make the text large, this will often change the location of the line breaks.

I don't know of a good or natural way to convey the right-aligned text in some places via a text description, but if any of my followers do, please feel free to comment!

Capitalization, punctuation, and even font choice are all things that can potentially convey significant meaning in poetry. I opted not to attempt to transcribe those in the above two, but if you're more familiar with the poem and thing those aspects are important in context, you could always make a note about the capitalization. And for things like italics, you could do something like "except possibly for the [italics] Polish Rider [end italics] occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick."

Punctuation is also a tricky one...I tried to keep the description as true to the text as possible, because the lack of punctuation in the second poem defintely seemed very intentional and internal to the flow, but I did add a period at the end of the last poem to give a proper stop between the end of the poem and the "end image description." Your call on how you deal with that, just be aware that not all screen readers are going to pause between lines or paragraphs.

I would generally discourage putting descriptions under a read more, though I do very much understand the concern about length. The formal poem quoting rules above can help condense things space-wise, if that helps.

I also want to encourage alt text! Don't put the entire poem in the alt text of course, but if you put a little blurb in the alt text of each picture, that can signal to screen reader users that it's worth their time to continue down the post. Some screen reader users will simply skip the post entirely when they start hearing "photo, photo, photo," and never even get to the image ID, since it's often not there. Such a blurb could be something like "Screenshot of the poem Scheheraade. See body of post for full description" for the first photo, and "Screenshot of the poem Having a Coke with You. See body of post for full description" for the second.

And finally, just to throw it out there, you don't necessarily have to do a traditional image description the way I did, especially if you provide the supplementary alt text. You could simply transcript the poems too...it's all up to you!

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any more questions, I'm defintely going to follow, this is such a neat idea.

Oh, and one more thing: don't be afraid to let AI help you with this! And I'm not talking about the neural network kind, I'm talking about good old-fashioned optical character recognition. For example, I plugged that first poem into onlineocr.net and got this:

Scheheraade Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again. How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

Sure, it required proofreading, a bit of clean up, and of course the line/stanza breaks, but made the process of creating the image description much less effort than it would have taken to type it all out manually. Of course, if you have access to a text version of the poem, that could work even better, but this is a great way to do it if you only have access to the image for whatever reason!

[granulesofsand]

tw for just programming shit in general

hey, so i’ve been questioning if what i experienced is related to programming and hc did. for a while, ive know of some sort of complex system structure. the problem is that there isn’t much abt programming ive found, especially the aftermath of it.

some experiences are..

- recently we had an alter split very rapidly; we didn’t notice he split but very soon after he split, we experienced rapid switching and a higher gatekeeper being forced into dormancy. i didn’t know of this gatekeeper but one of our main gatekeeper did. this caused deep disassociation for us. later we learned a sublayer had a missing alter we already had an assumption was programmed disappear and have the host of said sublayer to be kicked out of the sublayer (i think, i still dont know how to word it) and replaced with a very strict alter

- sometimes when we research hc did too long, we have an anonymous alter front and force a almost sleep like trance onto us where we’re almost paralyzed and then deletes any signs we researched it and forced us to forget everything we learned (he hasnt showed up much so imma make this before he shows up again)

- we have a rotation of alters in a very far down sublayer; they switch with the seasons and most of them can interact. our autumn group is most definitely organic, or mostly organic, share some names of alters in other groups that are most definitely odd (like just numbers and letters)

in addition we have a sublayer of alters who speak their own language and can only be translated by the host of that layer (same sublayer that replaced the old host), we’ve had a history of forced dormancy, as well as what id assume is shatter splitting.

sorry if this isnt related to ramcoa; there were more experiences but we really don’t remember much of what happened to the system. ty for any help you can give, stay safe.

Are you ready for the single most helpful answer I can give?

Maybe.

All of things things are possible in programmed systems, but they aren’t impossible in organic systems. High levels of control, forced splitting and dormancy, cycles and languages, those things can happen in either.

I am interested in the sleep-like alter. That would be strange for a system without any history of RAMCOA. Alters erasing trauma material is common, but I have no idea why they would do this without having those experiences.

It’s also the trance; where I can see a non programmed, non RAMCOA alter deleting potential triggers, that looks like something we’ve seen in programmed systems before.

The number names are another pointer. Combined with the trance alter, I wouldn’t dismiss a potential past of RAMCOA.

In case you& are a programmed sys, I would recommend setting up safeties ahead of time. Even if you don’t see active programs running, gather support people and resources like they will.

Programmed systems also come with passive programs to keep alters in their assigned spots and prevent memories from leaking over. You might get some pushback if you look too hard at things like structures or periods in your& childhood.

Tumblr and TikTok have a surprising number of survivors, some of whom share their own experiences or have links to reading they found beneficial. It’s unfortunate, but there aren’t many professional documents like studies or peer-reviewed texts.

Most of the paved road was laid out by previous survivors, and there is a beauty to the community we rely on. Set up some failsafes, then come back and start digging with peers. As of now, what we have is each other.

Your stability will waver as you go. Take lots of breaks and care for yourselves. Good luck!

[sabakos]

so you appear to be studying Ancient Greek—that’s really cool and I have to ask, 1. why and 2. how

I am! Mostly out of necessity, because I'm also interested in ancient Greek philosophy, especially metaphysics, so I've been picking it up mostly as I go along reading the source material - I'm nowhere good enough at the grammar to read it on my own but I can usually recognize enough of the vocabulary to read the greek and english in parallel and get a rough idea of what it says. It's especially helpful when the english is really awkward, which is usually just a butchered translation / situation where it's hard to convey the exact meaning of the Greek in English. Also, I find that now that I know enough to realize how misleading the English can be it's almost impossible to read a translation again without having a million questions about what the text is actually saying, it's as if I never really read any Greek philosophy before so much as a bad interpretation of it.

As for the how, I don't actually know very much Greek yet, so I lean pretty heavily on Perseus to look up words in LSJ when I want to just translate a passage. I also occasionally refer to Greek: An Intensive Course by Hansen and Quinn, which is probably what I'll eventually sit down and work my way through if I decide to learn it "for real." If you want to learn it, that's where I'd recommend starting, it has a lot of translations exercises and goes through the finer details of unusual tenses and grammatical cases we don't have in English, noun declensions, etc. There's also a youtube lecture series by Harvard's Ancient Greek department that runs through that whole book. It's definitely what I would do if my primary interest was the Ancient Greek language itself.

I've mostly only gotten away with not doing that yet because I'm primarily interested in pre-Socratic philosophy at the moment, and most of the surviving fragments from anything before Plato are pretty short. They also often use rare words (or common words in weird, archaic ways) so half the time there's debate about what exactly some given word means anyway. So I haven't learned much "Attic" Greek really like I would through the book because the things I want to read the most aren't written in it. I'd absolutely need to do that before tackling Plato or Aristotle though.

For example, I'm reading the fragments of Parmenides' poem "On Nature" right now and there's a lot of words where the example reference (and sometimes the only use of the word) is... Parmenides himself. So i need to look it up anyway and even look at the etymology sometimes to get a better sense of what it's really saying. That's also where the grumbling about γίγνομαι comes from - "come into being" implies a much closer link to εἰμί/εἶναι, "to be" than someone in the early 5th century BCE might have intended. Or it only took on that later meaning because of Parmenides or interpretations of him. basically it's really complicated even with very simple, common words like that.

My tumblr url is another example of that kind of archaic word, other than the Philodemus poem I translated where I rendered it as "brittle" the only uses of it are two mentions in Hippocrates' On the Sacred Disease (i.e. epilepsy) and a byzantine dictionary of rare words by Hesychius. The few things like that I've actually gone and translated have been pretty good practice, but it takes a really long time - I think even after I could read that poem, for example, it took me a good 10 hours or so to render it in English so that it makes any sense. It's really worth it to learn though - there's a lot of structure, wordplay and, ambiguity in Greek poetry that just disappears in translation.

If you're also interested in philosophical works in greek, I've also found the philosophical lexicon by F.E. Peters pretty useful (though it's kind of dated) and also Beekes' etymlogical dictionary especially for older works and rare words. everything i mentioned is on library genesis too, I pretty much never buy books.