Drawn around the time of Days of Nature (2021)

That shower video “someone” made has bothered me for months. I’m sure no one wants to rethink on this but I have some thoughts about the whole thing that may or may not be delusional. But really with everything that’s happened, is anything too far fetched ? Lol

So when you post a story to IG, I think it allows like an under 60 sec uploading time. Within that time frame, I think you can still delete the post without it being fully uploaded and seen by your followers (someone correct me if I’m wrong).

What if - “someone” made her shower show and then preemptively uploaded it to her IG story but as it was still uploading, SS and deleted it (again, I do not know how and if this is actually possible to do before the story completely uploads) and then deactivated.

After the deactivation, she knew ppl would be checking for her as they have for months. As ppl are wondering what happened to her, suddenly some dummy account on twitter (or was it tumblr? Or IG) asks if anyone else saw her post that story…and then the SS of the story are leaked. Idk if there was ever an actual video that made it around (I HOPE NOT) or if it was always screenshots only.

The source of the SS conveniently disappears or is never really traced? but the work is done. The pics are spread and there’s hope that ppl will feel sorry for her or that she’ll go viral and make the news (she doesn’t lol).

Her trolling friends are mysteriously silent and never address the situation. Her fans seem determined to ignore it completely and instead focus on her deactivating bc she was being bullied. (Which she was, TBF, but if she willingly posted a story like that on Beyoncé’s internet unprovoked I have to wonder about her priorities). Nobody around her orbit wants to address the situation but she then pops up on twitter two days later (that timing…so convenient).

Now I can’t prove any of this happened the way I described, but I have an even stronger inkling the truth may not be too far, bc of the most recent sister IG story.

Again - a mysterious SS appears out of thin air looking oddly like it might have been tampered with. Where did that second X on the top left hand corner come from? That’s not in regular IG stories or even screenshots of IG stories. Did her sister REALLY post a story tagging Cap A? Why would she have done that if not to make it so obvious where she was? And how did a private account IG story suddenly make its way through cyberspace when nothing from her sisters account has ever leaked to blogs b4? Surely if ppl had been checking for her before, there would have been other stories she posted - esp when they were together in Paris or elsewhere.

This SS has a backyard backdrop that would not mean anything to anyone unless it’s eagle eyed stalker fans who can recognize the man’s backyard (IDEK wanna go there). Then add that location tag…obvious trolling bc if it were just the background without the tag, I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. Assuming that the sister’s following would not see that post and know she was in his backyard. She adds the cap moniker tag and now the hint is clear as day. Then the SS gets sent to multiple tumblr blogs that are CE/fans. Get ppl talking, angry, riled up. Then “someone” follows a person who has a connection to her famous bf. It all unravels from there.

Now..why do all this? Why would you go thru all this trouble to troll? She could simply post a pic from his backyard herself. She could have posted a pic or video from inside his house in his bathroom showering if she really wanted. If she’s his SO, she’s allowed to do some of that within reason. IMO, she very much wants to keep up appearances that she’s super private and respectful of his privacy and she doesn’t troll. She’s above that and not like all of those other clout chasing women. However - by physically posing for that awful video, she literally proved she was proactive in creating that content. It’s not like it was a candid where she was doing something and was unaware she was being filmed. She posed willingly - that video was going to someone or somewhere intentionally. Her sister allegedly posting from his backyard and tagging that also means she wanted ppl to connect the dots.

Maybe all this is delusional overthinking on my part. There’s no way I can prove any of this is true. But I just don’t trust this chick. Can’t explain it.

Sweetheart, I hope you didn't wrote this long essay right after you woke up. 😅

How to Download Marvel comics for free!

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while especially since we’re all stick inside but last week Marvel made the shitty decision to transition various print titles to digital only, meaning they’re directly taking revenue away from local shops rather than delay the titles, so since Marvel thinks digital comics is such a cool idea I’m gonna show you how to download as many as you’d like! (oh also this is for windows only, idk how to do it if you own a mac but also you’re rich anyways so who cares buy the comics richie)

I don’t want to take money away from the people that need it, not the actual companies of Marvel and DC fuck them they’re dying and they deserve it, but for my own rationalizing I want to take a minute to plug the Hero Initiative, basically what it is an organization that provides for comic creators that are having hard times, comics are a rough industry and you don’t get into it to get rich, I won’t go into it too much you can read for yourself but it’s been endorsed by Stan Lee, Justin Ponsor, Mike Grell, Skottie Young, Rags Morales, a lot of big names, so I’d ask if you do follow this guide and download some comics for free please consider donating to the Hero Initiative (they also sell autographed prints and you can commission some really famous artists)

anyways onto the good stuff! I’m going to be doing a fairly brief but easy to follow guide, there will be links at the bottom of the post so look for those, I’ll probably be making a few other posts with some more info so also check back for those if my blog is still here

What do I need?

You’re going to need 4 basic things if you want to do this as easily and safely as you can 

1) a good anti-virus

2) anonymous web browser (Tor)

4) a safe and reliable source for the comics

4) a torrent program to download the comics

Also optional: VPN

Anti-Virus 

it’s good to remember when torrenting that no one is your friend, everyone is out to trick you and no one cares, honestly you should also have a good anti-virus though, I’m not really gonna tell you which one you should have but Norton 360 is pretty good but say that in a room of CS majors is the quickest way to start a fist fight, honestly just google it, you’re gonna have to do some research, but really you’re good as long as you don’t go with Avast or Kaspersky, I’m going to go over typical tricks and traps later to ensure safety, this is just basic overall security thing

Anonymous Web Browser (Tor)

next we’re gonna download Tor (you can do this before getting a VPN, like I said either one is going to put you on a list but using one to cover you getting the other at least mitigates it lol) Tor is a great open source project that allows for basically complete anonymous web browsing, it’s a project dedicated to privacy and disruption of corporations ability to control every aspect of our lives, also a friend of mine bought K off silk road with it once in highschool, really not too much you need to know about it before using it, just download it, let it configure and you’re good, also use Duck Duck go that it comes with, don’t switch it to chrome or anything, Duck Duck go is anonymous search service which better lends to Tor’s protection

Where to get the torrents

Now this is really important because you can have everything else set up but without a safe reliable source none of this is gonna do any good, but this is the dangerous part, torrent sites are notorious traps (I bricked more than on family PC on limewire) and this is why I said earlier to remember these people are not your friends and are out to hurt you, don’t click banner ads, don’t believe pop ups, make sure your virus protection is on and it’s a very good idea to have an adblocker on, also look out for another post I’ll be making on what download buttons to trust for different popular torrent sites

when talking comics (and remember specifically only Marvel comics) there’s no other name out there than Nemesis43, he is a god and he’s going to be your new best friend, there are groups and sites out there that do comic scans that you have to pay to join or like apply to join, that shit’s dumb as hell and I’ve never used them once and I’ve got more comic than I can read in my lifetime, you don’t need em and you especially don’t need to give them money, donate to the Hero Initiative instead

Nemesis has moved around a bit in the past (if you remember the WWT debacle) right now the main site for him is ettv (there will be a link at the end of the post) sites a bit barren but he’s there, he also has a reddit he gives updates on very rarely, generally if he moves he adds where his new home is in a text doc in his recent uploads, I fully trust him and his uploads, he’s been doing this for years and I’d never have a second thought downloading from him, also because he uploads so much he’s often very highly rated and verified on whatever site he’s on

The second place I’d recommend is getcomic (again there will be a link at the end), now this is very important, never donate to them, they kinda suck, basically they’re plugged into a bunch of different scanner groups and just steal those scans and put them up and then ask for donations, basically they’re just an aggregate (Nem kinda is too but he doesn’t ask for donations and stuff), they usually use browser downloads which are a complete pain so I’d really recommend Nemesis over them but they do have TheComicGuy on torrent galaxy for larger files but that updates a lot less frequently then the main site, again I trust these guys (as long as you’re on the actual site) but don’t trust any banner ads or pop ups, also for downloading they give multiple options, a lot are very sketchy, just use the main server

also there’s other sites like readcomics or newcomics, never used em, don’t like em, use at your own behest 

On sites like ettv you’re gonna want to use the magnet, someone years ago told me it was safer and I just believed them and have always used em, not sure if it’s true but it’s worked so whatever, really you shouldn’t be too worried about this stuff and if you follow this guide you’re going to be way over prepared to download comics, really no one cares about comic torrenting, movies, video games, tv shows that’s the stuff people really get caught on, this is just nerd shit

I’m going to be making another post showing how to use these sites, and other sites comic can be found on so look back at my blog for that

Torrent program

This is pretty basic, just get utorrent, it’s what I’ve always used, it works, whatever, definitely look this up with a VPN on or on Tor, it’s simple to use, I’ll be doing a short tutorial on how to make it even safer

Lastly this one is optional but a pretty good idea, for more than just this

VPN aka Virtual Privacy Network

honestly you can get the anonymous web browser (Tor) or the VPN first, their both going to help cover you downloading the other and honestly both are going to put you on a list for googling them (which is why I suggest looking for someone who just already has the .exes ((I always keep them on a thumbdrive for when I have to reset one of my computers)), I might try to make a google drive with em but also I might not bc that sounds like work and I’m already typing all this up), anyways I’m not really gonna explain what a VPN is, there’s a lot of resources that can explain it better than I can but basically it masks what you do on the internet, there’s a lot of choices when picking a VPN but the big thing I looked for when choosing mine was 1) non-US based so it’s harder for US investigation agencies to request stuff for them or get anything from them 2) one that doesn’t keep logs, honestly they all do even if they say they don’t, but you wanna look for one that hasn’t turned over many logs to US agencies and 3) unlimited peer 2 peer connections which is complicated but basically means you can torrent stuff anonymously and with decent speed. Like Anti-Virus there are a ton of different VPN’s out there, you really have to do research because there are actual accounts of FBI agencies crating VPN’s telling people they’re anonymous when really they had direct access to all the info, I haven’t done any research but NordVPN seems kinda like one of these, really the more they advertise the more suspicious I am, Just google “best vpn 2020″ and look at like 5 lists and read the the stuff, personally I use IPvanish which unfortunately is US based and while it gave over logs in 2016 even thought they said they didn’t keep any but now they’re owned by a new company that super double promises they don’t (again who cares they all do) but they’ve allow P2P and use 256-bit AES encryption

I wanna take a second to mention that this isn’t going to be free, this is the only place you’re going to be spending money (besides donating to Heroe Initative of course), a good VPN is about $100 a year which all in all isn’t terrible, technically you can just get by on the anonymous browser but this gives you an extra layer of security to pretty much ensure you won’t get caught and plus in the ever worsening internet hell world a VPN is becoming more and more important, I’m sure you can find articles about it but yea you don’t technically need a VPN but it’s useful for more than just this

How to work it all

Ok so this is gonna be a little stream of consciousness, as this all kinda has been, so sorry but I’m gonna try and explain it as best I can and also feel free to ask any questions on this blog, I’ll check back eventually I’m sure

So first thing first, make sure you’re virus protection is on and you’re connected on your VPN if you’re using it (you can google “what is my IP” to double check it’s working) then load up Tor, let it load and connect up and whatever, then go to https://www.ettvdl.com/user/Nemesis43 (I’m just gonna show this with Nemesis43, maybe I’ll make another one for getcomics but that’s pretty straight forward, also nem is better)

now remember we’re only here for Marvel comics, so scroll past all those thousands of other comics this would work exactly the same for, I’m gonna go for Ant-Man #4 which was released on the 13 as a digital only comic despite the first three issues being physical copies and now sit on my shelf forever unfinished making me look like a complete penis

it may take a while but it’s going to look like this, click on the blue words, it’s gonna take you to a page that looks like this

now from here we’re going to get the magnet link, right click and select copy link address, I like doing this because it limits my interactions with the page, note the advertisement at the top telling me I need a VPN despite thinking I’m in Guadalajara (which for legal reasons I am)

just copy that and then go to utorrent and click the add link

it’ll open a little box, it should add the link automatically, if it doesn’t just hit ctrl+V

hit ok and it’ll load it up, it might need to download some metadata but after that it should be good, oh also it might bring up a window basically asking where you want to save it and what to name it, you can set all that up in preferences, I did so I just turned that window off and can’t be assed to turn it back on, just hit ok if you don’t wanna bother with that stuff, it’ll go into your downloads by default

and that’s it really, it’s that easy, I might make another thing talking about how to make utorrent more anonymous or whatever so look for that, but stock it’s fine, also when it’s finished downloading it’s gonna start seeding (like uploading to someone else) I’ve always been a scumbag and I never seed but Nemesis seeds stuff so much you really don’t need to anyways, just select it and hit the stop button (the black square on the tool bar)

here are all the links I could think of

Hero Initiative

download Tor

here’s a guide for VPNs

download utorrent

song I found recently that I like

getcomics

Nemesis

so yea that’s pretty much the basics, be smart, be safe, any viruses you get are on you but I hope you found this helpful and feel free to ask any questions

oh and also this is all parody and I’ve never actually torrented anything, I don’t even own a computer

hot milk tea, thoughts and feelings

I’ve only mentioned it briefly, but I’ve said that I’ll be taking a break from my SetsuAyu series - mainly because of my uni workload though.

But for now, I have a lot of thoughts about the entire thing as a project as well as myself as an artist. So I figured that I’d write a reflection of sorts (warning: it gets kind of personal).

Can you believe it’s been 3-4 months since the series started? I can’t, and I’ve been the one drawing all of these!! If you’ve been reading my work, I’ll say it over and over but I really appreciate it!!! Like I’m dead serious!!! Completely!! Utterly!! Without a doubt!!! I love all of you!!!

When I posted that first comic, I didn’t think it’d get the positive reception that it did get. Like, I’ve been producing basically entirely Muse content for years and suddenly decided to tap into Nijigaku? You could argue that it didn’t get that much attention, but either way, the attention it did get surprised me. I was so happy that people were engaged (and it still makes me stupidly happy, like on a level where I’m almost embarrassed to admit HAHA)

Recently I’ve just uploaded the bonus for the 3rd update which wraps up that part, and it really just clicked - that I really have invested soooo much time into this series. 36 pages now! And we’re only 3/10 main updates in!! I have so much passion for this - like a fire that can’t be put out. Every single update has something that I want to communicate/show so I always feel fired up. Heck, if you’ve spoken to me during the process you’d catch me always saying “I’m excited for the next one!!!” while working on it LMAO. It’s been my longest string of non-stop work. Usually I feel burned out more quickly but I was always so excited that I couldn’t stop! You’d find that I’m usually in a  state of conflict bc I alwaaaays want to talk about it but at the same time I don’t want to spoil anything. (THE NEXT UPDATE JUICY)

I think it’s a clear reminder of why I draw actually. The answer between each artist always differs, but I think it’s something important to be aware of. And well, for me? I’ve realised I’m a passion-monster. Passion keeps my blood pumping 100%. As a result... you could say I might be a more selfish kind of artist. Maybe it’s burn-out from running all those ask-blogs/RP when I was like 13-16, but I’ve realised that I’m having the most fun drawing what I genuinely love. It’s kind of why you’d rarely see me do requests and why I no longer do commissions. That isn’t to say that I hate drawing for other people. It can be fulfilling! But it’s more like - I barely have the time to draw for myself, so drawing for others is kind of a lower priority in general. It’s also why I’ve decided against studying graphic design when I graduated highschool. It’s just not happening as a career.

When I ask myself, “what kind of artist do I want to be?” I always think “Somebody who marches to her own beat and works hard to make content that she loves.” It’s also why I never delete anything - even my oldest art that makes me cringe. Because the me from 5 years ago put her love into that too. It’s really cheesy sounding but that’s how I see it LMFAO. I couldn’t do that to her. And also, just because I don’t like something anymore, it doesn’t mean that no one else does. So I’ll continue to never delete my old work. As a bonus, we get to see how far I’ve come too~.

I feel a little vulnerable admitting something like this and I’m pretty sure I’ve only told like 4 humans, but I think my #1 goal as an artist is that I want people to be able to look at my work (that I actually put my heart into) and think “this person loves this” or “this person works hard”. If you can do that, and sincerely feel the feelings I put into my comic, then I’ve already reached my goal. Can people tell how much I love these characters? The series? The concept? Can people tell how much work I’ve been putting into these updates? Can people tell when I’m having fun? It’s something I think about a lot. The idea of that people might think so makes me tear up HAHA - I get really sappy thinking about these kinds of things. And well, if people can’t tell then I’m not working hard enough!

That isn’t to say that I’m always putting my life-blood into everything I make. I’m mainly referring to the stuff where I do. I think it’s pretty clear when I’m pumping a lot of love into something. In general though, there’s always an intention for me to like communicate some idea or feeling and doing something like that requires maybe a bit of love~.

I feel like that as a character, Setsuna really resonates with me a lot. In personality? Not at all LMFAOOOO (she’s such a nice girl!!). More because of her ideals and principles. After typing like everything that I did up until this point, I bet you can guess why. I’ll keep it short and simple though, since this post is getting stupidly long.

Basically, I really resonate with her drive and passion as both an artist, and just in general actually? I’m a believer in that if you’re passionate about something, you can spread that passion. That’s the mentality I have with my art. If my love shows, then maybe other people will understand why I’ve come to love something. And maybe they’ll come to love it too. If I’m having fun, maybe they will have fun too! Very cheesy, I know, but that’s just how I roll!!!

Like rare pair? New fandom? Still applies. It might take awhile, but eventually either the people who love that thing will find me, or I’ll help people come to love something new (or at least see where it’s coming from lolol)! 

And as Setsu says:

You tell ‘em girl !!! That devotion is my driving force!!

Of course I know this is idealistic, but I think that’s fine. It’s no bother to me if someone feels indifferent/ negative towards my work because that’s just natural.

I think it’s a form of communication and that’s what drives my art. I’ve been intending on writing a guide/ or talking about my art process for comics for some time now and I think that’d be the first thing I’d mention? I’m always trying to communicate some sort of feeling/tone/idea and that comes from a place of love y’know.

I feel like I’m saying “love” and “passion” a lot - you can really tell I’m vibing with Setsuna huh LMAO. There are other reasons I vibe with her too, but I won’t touch on that.

Coming back to my SetsuAyu series. You can tell why I’m so happy about it right? The story, the pairing dynamic, I feel like that people are understanding what I’m trying to communicate - that people are receiving my feelings of love for it and that makes me smile so widely. I really put a lot into it!!

This series is the first large project I’ve ever taken you see and I’m so so happy that I’ve been able to get this far! It really means a lot to me. But it wasn’t actually the first comic series I’ve tried to do. I actually had a Muse long-running comic planned years ago - a Dancing Stars on Me! AU but it never came to life. I think it was my lack of confidence that held me back. It might be weird of me to pat myself on the back, but I’m proud that I managed to get going this time!! I’ve actually written the SetsuAyu series in a way that for the first half, I could drop the series if I really wanted to at any point (each part is pretty independent, and that description I always copy-and-paste is all the explanation you really need), but now I know for sure that I don’t want to drop it! I wanna keep going!! Even if it gets tough. Although it might be a little early for me to make such bold declarations, I’m only 3/10 through LOOOL. But that’s just the way I feel right now!

I know it’s irrational and it’s something I’d rather not admit, but an anxiety that’s always looming over me is the idea that I’m not working hard enough - or that people think I’m not? Each comic update...takes like a month right? And a month is a long time. There’s this part of me that is convinced that people think I’m lazy for working so slowly. And I know it’s not true!! It doesn’t make sense for it to be!!! But like I said it’s irrational.

I’m really proud of this comic y’know. It’s a really big commitment and I’m proud of myself for being able to commit. I work full time 9-5, and I also am in my final year at university. I’m... kind of busy lol. So the huge factor in that month-long update turnaround is just that I don’t have the time to always be drawing. But I try to draw as much as I can! If you have me on discord you might notice me work on it for like 2-5 hours, almost daily before I go to bed (1am). Of course I’m not only drawing, but after I get everything plotted out sometimes that’s all I do. This comic is super time-consuming LMAO - and I try my best to work on it a little at a time.

So yeah, the entire month of comic-production is me drawing every almost every night.

Yeah it, - it’s kind of exhausting. Even though I’m itching to work on my next update, I’ve decided to take a break for uni crunch which is why I say the next one might be two months. It���s really odd though. The other night I was in bed feeling restless. It was so weird not drawing till 1am that I felt like I needed to be doing something. This comic series might have weird effects on my habits...

It makes me anxious thinking that it’d be so long till next update. But I’ll do my best to push that aside ! Hopefully I can get uni done and dusted ASAP! I want them to date dammit...

I've decided that I want to see this series through to the end. It’ll probably be May next year when that happens though LMAO! Please bear with my slow turnaround time. It’s only been 3 updates, but I can already see that I’m improving with each one. With each update I feel like I really learn from the previous and I always feel this sense of excitement with trying out new techniques and trying to create different feelings. I really want to see how the last updates will look compared to the first!  Technically we’re 3/10 (10 is an epilogue), but after 6 I actually stop doing bonuses? So teeechnically I’m like 40% of the way through~.

It might be a little over-ambitious, but I kind of want to print it out and make a hard-copy when I’m done. I’m not sure about what the demand would be if I were to sell it, but I definitely want to print it for myself first and foremost (after touching up the earlier updates of course LOL). It’d be like a physical representation of my achievement. I hope I can make it there.

Anyways, I’ve rambled for far too long. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt like talking about uh, everything but yeaaaah. If you’ve read this far, kudos to you! You now have a window into my soul that I’m still not sure if I’m comfortable with revealing (but I’m comfortable enough because I’m posting this so...)! 

After reading all of this, can you tell why I always get so so happy after each update? It’s the fruition of what’s usually 2-3 weeks of non-stop hard work! Seeing people connect with it always sends me to another realm of bliss and I always feel soft like putty LOL.

Survey #361

“the world is a vampire, sent to drain”

Have you ever been through a phase of thinking emo guys were hot? A phase? Hunny, they're still hot lmao. Have you ever dated someone that could play an instrument? Yeah. Juan could play guitar, and Girt played I think the tuba in band. What’s so horrible about wearing leggings like pants? I've actually never understood why people freak about this. Like so long as they're not sheer and fit you fine, why exactly is this a problem...? Weirdest picture you’ve ever taken of yourself? Oh dear. When someone claims to be suicidal, do you take them seriously? FUCK you if you don't. Honest to god, fuck you. This is NOT something you just don't even blink at. Even if it's surprising to hear from that person, you take that shit seriously and try to talk to them about it. Ever been kicked out of anywhere? Colleen's house. Ever had Skittles vodka? No, but that shit sounds good. Ever punched someone in the face? No. If you haven’t, do you want to now? Uh, I'll pass. Do you truly HATE anyone? No one I know personally, but people like rapists, pedophiles, etc., I sure as hell do hate them. Most historical/famous landmark/building you’ve been to in your country? No clue. Favorite flavor for most things? Strawberry, watermelon, or blue raspberry, depending on what the thing is. Ever taken pictures in a photobooth? Who with? Yeah: Summer, Jason, and I'm pretty sure Sara and I did? What is the closest book to you? It's a full collection of Poe's poetry that Mom got me. Are you reading it or someone else? I'm not right now. I may eventually. Milkshakes or Sundaes? Hm, I gotta go with milkshakes. Do you like watermelons more or cherries? I'm not a fan of either, but I'd definitely pick watermelons over cherries. Who was the last person you ate with? My family and I went to Ichiban (a Japanese steakhouse that we have here where they cook directly in front of you) yesterday to celebrate Nicole's graduation. Do you prefer broccoli or asparagus? Broccoli. I hate asparagus. Do you have any bug bites? No. Do you have any flowers in your room? No. Do you know anyone that owns horses? Loosely, anyway. It's a family I took pictures for, and I still have the mother on Facebook. When you were little, did you ever go to feed the ducks? Yes, I LOVED doing that. Don't feed ducks bread, by the way. Have you seen any of the seven wonders of the world in person? No. Have you ever won anything out of one of those crane machines? Yeah. Can you remember being taught how to ride a bike? Was it hard for you? Yeah. I don't THINK it was too hard. Did you get carded the last time you ordered an alcoholic drink? No. Do you know anyone who uses medical marijuana? No, it's not legal here. Do you know anyone who’s died in childbirth? No. Which was the worst phase in your life? 2016 was. Towards the end of '15 was the breakup, and through aaaaaaall of 2016, I was just dead inside and totally useless. Every day I wanted to be dead. Can you remember your last dream? I had a nightmare some stupid kids were fucking with my snake Venus, so I was trying to protect her. Do you ever use Snapchat? No, I don't have one. What’s your favorite musical? I don't like musicals. What happened at the last party you went to? Summer prepared some little Halloween treat bags for us guests, we watched a horror movie, and everyone but me smoked some weed. Are you more comfortable sitting or lying down? I would assume everyone is more comfortable lying down... Have you ever been a fan of N*Sync? Yeah, as a kiddo. Favorite kind of cake: Red velvet, yum yum. What is your middle name? Marie. TV shows and anime you watch regularly: None. Do you want to have a big family in the future? Just a big family of pets with a spouse. What was the last thing you did that gave you a rush? Oh boy, I couldn't tell ya. Is Vegas one of your must-see places? No. Pet rat: yay or nay? YAY!! I've had many, but I don't think I'll get any more. I've just had bad luck with them, save for one that died of cancer at an old age. Would you call yourself a writer? Written any stories lately? Yeah. I haven't really written any big RP posts of the late, but I did recently write a poem. Are needles something that you’re afraid of? Okay, so this is super weird. Tattoos and piercings? No problem. Little prick, getting blood drawn, that sorta little stuff, no problem. I am, however, NOT a fan of big needles, which used to not be an issue. It's actually kinda recent, and it's why I'm nervous about my second Covid shot coming up, aha... What was the last unexpected hug you gave/received? I really haven't had an unexpected hug since Jason asked for one before he left my house after our final talk. Who was the last person you held hands with? Either my niece or nephew. Have you ever been in a parade before? If so, was it on TV? No. Do you have a fear of rollercoasters? If so, were you ever forced to go on one? If you don’t, what is your favorite rollercoaster? I have a big fear of them, yeah. Post a picture of you from a recent time. Don't feel like it. Who was the last person to give you some of their food? Miss Tobey let me try one of her dumplings yesterday when we were at Ichiban for dinner. The last person you met, what was your first impression of them? I actually didn't quite like her. Have you ever been to a football game? Yeah, because my sister was a cheerleader. Do you like the snow or rain better? Snowwww. Have you ever faked sick? Yeah. What is your blood-type? A-. Have you ever eaten a bug? Not knowingly. The last time you were in the fridge, what were you looking for? Salsa. Mom got these veggie chips at the store and they apparently taste better with salsa, which it did. They weren't great, though. Are you listening to anything at the moment? It's Gab Smolders' turn for me to watch her Resident Evil 8 upload, haha. I'm literally watching three different people (Mark, John Wolfe, and her) play it. Can you take a bra off with one hand? I haven't tried, I think? I doubt I could, given that I'm not exactly small. Do you have an innie or an outie bellybutton? Innie. Can you crack your neck? NOOOOO AND DO NOT DO IT AROUND ME YOURSELF. Are you donating your organs? Yeah; what am I gonna use 'em for? It just seems like a waste otherwise. They're just gonna decay. When was the last time you talked to you mom? Before she left with Tobey to go to the store. Do you like pumpkin pie? NO. I don't like pie, and I hate pumpkin. Do you own your own computer? Yeah. Did you ever have to share a room with one of your siblings? Yeah; growing up, my little sister and I did. Is there any piece of technology you want to buy? I REALLY want a PS4. Did you ever have a night light when you were a kid? Yeah. What TV show had you hooked from the very first episode? Meerkat Manor, 100%. I had to know that Shakespeare was okay. What is your least favorite Sour Patch Kids color? Orange or red, can't pick. Have you ever seen the movie Matilda? YES! I love that movie. What is the weirdest chant you have ever heard? Uh, idk. How are you feeling? Annoyed and hurt as fuck because shit Miss Tobey says without thinking for a single goddamn second. I'm honestly beyond sick of this woman. Do you know anyone with a unibrow? I don't think so. Doughy or saucy pizza? Doughy. Do you have anything that’s limited edition? Yeah. Do you have an air freshener in your bathroom? If so, what scent? I... think we do? If so though, I just don't notice it. The bathroom doesn't smell like anything in particular. Do you like Jalapeno Cheetos? Oh man, I forgot about those! Love 'em. Are you a fan of salads? Yeah, they're fine. I have to be in the mood for one, though. What’s one random thing that you don’t like? Uhhh carrots. What’s one random thing that you like? Shrimp. Do you like chicken noodle soup? I don't. Is it easy for you to accept loss? NOPE. I'm the absolute worst with it. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? I really wanna see Sara, so take me to Illinois. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you? No, but a former best friend had her birthday the day before mine. Is there someone you just can’t imagine your life without? Not anymore, honestly. After Jason, I stopped that "I can't live without you" mindset. Truth is I'm going to lose people through life, and I'm not attaching my ability to happily exist to anyone. Are you wearing a ring? Two. Have your friends ever stopped by your house just to say hi? In the past, yeah. Do you like Chinese food? Not really. I only ever get pork fried rice and eggrolls from Chinese restaurants. Have you done any shopping for something in specific recently? No. Do you still live in your hometown? No. What was the reason behind the last time you stayed up all night? I don't recall, honestly. I haven't done that in a very long time. Have you ever had a UFO sighting or a sighting of strange lights in the sky? A very strange light, yes. Have you ever seen your mom or dad drunk? Yes to both. Seeing Mom drunk is very, very rare though. My dad was an alcoholic when I was growing up, so I saw him drunk plenty. Do your parents vote? Mom does, idk about Dad. Who’s the most romantic person you ever went out with? Jason. What restaurant has the best fries? Nowhere has anything on Bojangle's, y'all. Have you ever had a surprise party thrown for you? No.

Kiddo Sites/Apps!

Hi hi! I always see a lot of posts recommending sites and apps for age regressors but a lot of the time they’re the same things, so I thought I’d make my own! All the sites and apps on here are free, don’t worry! (Some may have ads or in-app purchase, though!) It’s under the cut cause I tried to include some preview pictures which made it kinda long! If anyone would like to add more or have me add more, just let me know! Have fun and stay safe during this time of quarantine and social distancing!

WEBSITES

- DisneyClips

     This is probably my FAVOURITE site for when I’m regressed! It’s made by Disney fans for Disney fans, and is updated with new activites pretty often! It has a bunch of safe and fun games, quizzes, coloring pages, and even things like analysis charts for kiddos whose special interest or hyperfixation is Disney! It has dress up games that are super-duper easy and cute, and I love them because their style looks like it could come right out of the film it’s from! Like the dresses and everything, and they stick to each princess’s style while making different dresses from the original ones! It’s crazy!!

-PBS Kids

     A classic but awesome site!! You can watch all sorts of episodes for free, you don’t have to put in an email or anything! There are even games and episodes from shows that have long since gone off the air!

-American Girl

     Don’t be fooled by the site’s title, this site is for everyone! If you’re familiar with the American Girl characters, there’s lots of dress up and themed games, and if you’re not familiar with the characters, don’t worry cause there’s still super cute games like pet grooming and, my favourite, Coconut’s Safari! I linked to the games page, but there’s quizzes and polls, too!

-Webkinz

     I’m sure a lot of you know about Webkinz already, but it hasn’t gone anywhere even after all these years! It’s one of my favourite sites, and it’s free to play now! For people unfamiliar with Webkinz, it’s a virtual world where you can raise a pet, decorate rooms, and collect all sorts of objects, food, and clothing! You can play this one online, with their new desktop app, or with their mobile app! (I will warn you, though, the mobile app does not have that much stuff on it)

-Poptropica

     Poptropica has been around for a while too, but it’s changed a lot in recent years! You can play it online and there’s also an app. This one is probably for older kiddos, though - it has a lot of puzzles and requires a lot of thinking at times, so if you’re looking for a relaxing game this probably isn’t it. 

-Poptropica

    Poptropica has been around for a while too, but it’s changed a lot in recent years! You can play it online and there’s also an app. This one is probably for older kiddos, though - it has a lot of puzzles and requires a lot of thinking at times, so if you’re looking for a relaxing game this probably isn’t it.

APPS

- Habitica

     Habitica is a super-duper easy habit tracker/reminder app! I use it to remind me to take my meds, shower, brush my teeth, things like that! But you put in your habits and to-do list so you can personalize it! Usually I don’t like apps like this because they offer no incentive but Habitica turns it into an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons!! So you can level up and get equipment and even pets! What I love about it, too, is that if you ever have any question, their FAQ is super clear and easy to understand, which makes it ideal for autistic kids like me!

- Cookie Run

     Cookie Run is an oldie but a goldie! It’s a running platformer game where you can collect lots of cute cookies and their pets and learn their stories! Plus there’s canon LGBTQ+ rep with some of the cookie heroes! Cookie Run has a lot of bright colours and fast movement though, so it might not be the best game for kiddos with seizures or sensory issues!

- My Tamagotchi Forever

     Super cute revamp of tamagotchi!! Your pets don’t run away or anything in this one, haha! You can decorate your town and your house with coins you earn from simple minigames, and you can dress up your tamagotchis in different outfits and fill out their scrapbooks and collect them all! I really liked this app, definitely one of my favorites :)

- Hello Kitty Lunchbox

     Super simple “cooking” game! Again, this is a super easy, no hassle game and is good for really young kiddos. You get to make a lunch for Hello Kitty and decorate it, along with her lunchbox before “eating” your meal. But again, I wanna stress this one is super simple and some kids may get bored of it.

-Pocket Ponies

     A My Little Pony version of the classic ball shooter game. You aim to hit enemies with your balls, and eventually charge up your ponies so they can perform their special action. You get to collect My Little Pony characters and each one has a different ability.

-Hello Kitty Music Party

     This one’s more of an idle tapper game. It wants you to tap on your screen along with the beat of the music, but even if you don’t tap with the beat you can still get rewards! It has a couple cutesy pop songs in the app, but it can also access your music library on your device so you can tap with whatever you want! The app itself doesn’t offer much instruction but it’s fairly simple to figure out. But like the other Hello Kitty game, it can grow boring quickly for some kids, which is why it became an idle game for me. 

-Disney TsumTsum

     This one is kind of like Bejeweled or Candy Crush - you connect little Disney characters to make them “pop!” You get to collect a bunch of different characters and each character has a special ability.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

-RescueHero’s Nostalgia Zone

     A lesser known channel but it’s one of my favorites! It’s a gameplay channel, but pretty much every video is old video games like TV plug and plays, leapster/leap frog games, or CD-ROM games from the 2000s. It’s an active channel, too, and tends to upload every week or so! From what I can tell, there’s no voiceover and their videos are just simple, nostalgic gameplay.

-Shirley Curry

     This one’s a little weird but it’s very wholesome - it’s a grandma in her 80′s(?) who loves to play video games! She mostly plays games for older kiddos like Skyrim, but her videos are very calming and she’s very cute in the way she comments on games. She’s super sweet to her viewers and calls them her grandkids, and usuaslly responds in comments. Her videos are also easy videos to listen to in the background, too.

-pstoyreviews

     I don’t watch a lot of toy channels because a lot of the time they’re over the top and super corny or just... really weird, but this channel is run by two people (I think they are a couple but I’m not sure) named Shannon and Paul, and they’re very casual about their videos (despite the corny thumbnails, lol). Anyway, they mostly do blind bag openings for trinkets and toys that are currently on the shelves - things like Tokidoki, LOL Dolls, Shopkins, minifigures, things like that. It’s a very good channel if you like those cutesy sorts of things but don’t have the money to get them yourself! To my knowledge they’re not really sponsored, so there’s no encouraging you to buy a product or anything like that. Like I said, they’re very casual and do talk during the videos but they talk a little slow and there’s no background music, so they are very easy to understand! I believe Shannon also has a doll-specific channel, too, if you’re into that.

-nana825763

     Better known as piropito, this channel is well known for its really cute and wholesome Minecraft gameplay that you can start watching here. This is a Japanese channel, but he captions his own videos, so don’t worry! Anyway, his goal was to figure out everything in Minecraft with absolutely no cheats or searching the web for information or anything like that. That’s really the only thing I’d recommend on this channel, however, and do be careful because they do have some horror game playthroughs on there so stay safe!

-Sesame Street

     Not much to explain here! It’s Sesame Street, and they post clips of the show, songs, and sometimes even full episodes.

855

Have you ever turned down someone that you’ve liked? I haven’t been in this situation. I’ve had to turn down someone, but I didn’t like them.

When was the last time you were at a loss of what to do? Probably late May when I had *just* finished my thesis and everything felt overwhelming because it was literally the last thing I needed to do to conclude my time in college. Once my final draft got approved I felt pressured to do a lot of things in an instant – get a credit card, apply for social security and a TIN, upload my resumé in a bunch of websites because at that point that felt like the only way to go.

The last time you let someone go, was it to make yourself happy or them? Myself. I just did not blend well with my college blockmates no matter how hard I tried; and whenever I hung out with them I always had to be a little bit fake, and I hated having to do that every time. I found my true friends in my org so at some point I just stopped going out with my blockmates, but I honestly didn’t feel too bad about it because I was happy with my decision and I’m sure they didn’t mind me leaving our little group anyway. 

Who was the last person that could tell something was wrong with you? My mom. She gave me a verbal beatdown but was fine like ten minutes later, but I was no longer ok and was starting to tear up. I pretended to scratch my eyes but she could tell, and asked me “What’s wrong” as if she didn’t abuse me minutes before that. 

Anything bad happen today? I saw my uncle (who is Filipino, but grew up in the US) talking about his trip to Spain earlier this year and used the hashtags #LetsMoveOn #ColonialismSucks. That pissed me the fuck off because he’s a historian and founded an NGO essentially focused on preserving Filipino precolonial culture; and with those bullshit hashtags I just felt my head lose all its braincells at how hypocritical his words were. I don’t understand why he’d campaign for us to move on if he thinks colonialism sucks. I don’t know why he wants anyone to move on if I still have a Spanish surname, he has a Spanish surname, Filipinos still count their money in Spanish, and a big part of our cuisine is based on Spain’s, among other long-lasting effects. I don’t know where he got the audacity to tell his fellow Filipinos to move on if he never even grew up here and was always super sheltered and privileged in America, where he could very easily shield himself from the bullshit happening over here. It’s so dumb and I just rolled my eyes and moved past the stupid Facebook post.

Have you ever thought about online dating? If so, were you desperate? I’ve never considered it. As a demi, it sounds terrifying lol. But Gab and I each have downloaded Tinder on our phones at some point just to people-watch and see what it’s about.

Do you try not to take a lot of medicine or do you take it whenever? The only time I take it immediately is when I have headaches, because I hate them and wanna get rid of them ASAP. Otherwise, I’m not very dependent on medicine.

Are you ever scared of people reading your survey answers? No. I never intended my surveys to have an audience and at the end of the day they primarily serve as my journal and a place where I can vent. The people on here who’ve been nothing but super nice and non-judgey are just a great bonus and make me feel less alone on here.

Do you like cuddling with someone you like? Only if I’m already in a relationship with them. I don’t just give away cuddles lol.

What did you do last night? Hahaha welp I was in a Mood to take surveys last night so I took five, which is more than usual for me. I also watched a couple episodes of Good Mythical Morning and before I went to bed I had an Oreo Cadbury bar.

How frequently do you get fed up of doing a survey and give up before you’ve finished it? It was much more frequent before when I was busy with school stuff, but now I’m able to finish surveys. I don’t like getting my drafts all clogged, so.

Who did you last ride in a car with besides family? Gab, and I drove her home after picking her up from school.

Did you ever join a gym to look hot and get back at an ex bf/gf? I’ve never joined a gym but I have definitely done that thing where you go great lengths to look good so that an ex would feel like shit. Idk, I was 17 and thought going the petty route seemed fun. I had and still have no regrets doing it because it wasn’t my loss anyway lol.

Would you ever go back to your most recent ex? I did.

Has an adult ever allowed you to smoke a cigarette? I mean, my friends are technically adults and most of them don’t mind me smoking...

Run your tongue over your teeth. What do they feel like? Like...teeth? All that happened is that I felt self-conscious because I felt my protruding front tooth lmao so thanks for that.

Does crying mean that you’re weak or you’re just expressing grief? It means you’re expressing emotions, one of which can be grief. < There you go. Also I really hope this question isn’t implying that being weak = bad. It’s healthy to accept and acknowledge that you’ll get weak sometimes.

Wait, I forgot to ask! How are you feeling today? I’m fine but boy is it fucking hot.

When we were younger roleplayers

So a friend of mine recently uploaded an older comic she did detailing an experience from her youth involving her first time roleplaying. This story really speaks to me, so I’ll link it here for you to see. 

https://twitter.com/WolfenWingsShop/status/1135553476526821377 

You know, this makes me wanna tell some of my own roleplaying stories, because boy do I have a few. ^^’’’ My nutcracker friends Freckle and Pepper hear be joke about ‘The Night of Angst Mountain’ far too much, but that’s only been within the past year. The story I’d like to tell you today come from when I first came online, back when my only account was on YouTube and we roleplayed in the comments sections of our channels. 

Let me tell you the story of dreamerofchaos1 and her first time working as one of the Freedom Fighters.

Let’s set the stage. I was 14 years old, the year was 2011, and I had finally been deemed old enough to get a YouTube account. I’d asked my folks if I could have it for my birthday that year, which is March 29th. On April 2nd, my dad made a YouTube account for himself and then helped me to make mine, just so he could keep an eye on me should I ever need his help, but for the most part he wasn’t watching what I was doing. I had made this account intending to post tribute videos, you know, those fan art slideshows set to a popular song, and that is what I started out doing, but during that summer, I ended up hanging out with a bunch of roleplayers, and sometimes it was hard to distinguish fiction from reality. I’m still not sure how that started or how I ended up meeting these people, but we were an interesting bunch. A lot of this is really fuzzy for me

To start, even though we called ourselves the Freedom Fighters, it wasn’t at all the Freedom Fighters from the Sonic SatAM or Archie comics. We had a Sally, Tails, and Sonic who were barely present, otherwise, it was a lot of fan characters (most of which were recolors of Sonic, Tails, and Amy), along with an emo version of Kirby, Stitch and Angel from the Lilo and Stitch TV series, and a few others that referenced other franchises. We had a lot of fun on fictitious scenarios together, having picnics, fighting the Suppression Squad, it was a good time.

I didn’t stand out a ton among the good guys, but I definitely had my stuff together a little better. I didn’t have a character when I started interacting with everyone, but I developed one around the theme of my username named Dreamer. They were a tanooki that was an imaginary friend abandoned by their creator, a little girl named Ruth, that needed belief from other people in order to exist. Note that I refer to them as a ‘they.’ At that point in time, nobody online knew what my gender was, they all just kind of assumed I was a guy, and I didn’t say anything about it. I specified that my character was genderless, since why would an imaginary friend need to have a gender? But because you basically WERE your character unless you were in YouTube’s Inbox system, everyone thought I was a dude. To be honest...at the point in time, all of my friends outside of the web were dudes with the occasional girl that was super tomboyish. I was the girly one, I could never be “one of the guys,” and more than anything, that’s what I wanted. I’ve grown out of that now as an adult, I’m much happier just being me and not worrying what other people think about my body parts. I never directly lied about my gender, it was more that nobody ever asked, but eventually I did come clean about it. Unfortunately, the minute people found out I was a girl, my PMs (private messages, which are the same as DMs, but there was some amount of respect in actually keeping it private back then) got flooded with boys that wanted cybersex out of me, which was disgusting and utterly embarrassing, but that’s a story for another day.

The Suppression Squad was the main group of enemies, hell, the character you saw causing trouble the most was Miles, aka the Anti-Tails from Moebius/Anti-Mobius. That’s where I found two of my closer friends, Venice and Violet. Venice was the Anti-Silver, a fanmade concept as Silver never officially had an Anti version in the comics, using the concept art of Silver from Sonic 06 back when he was Venice the Mink. Violet was a fan character who was his girlfriend. Venice played a lot of different characters though, including a villain named No-Heart that had some Kingdom Hearts inspired elements. Sadly Venice, or rather Wyatt, dropped off the face of the earth, I never saw him again after YouTube changed its channel layout and everyone gave up our games there, but I do hope he’s doing well wherever he is. Same with Violet, or rather Whitney, I saw her a few times on deviantART, but not much. 

There are a few roleplays that stick out to me from that time. No Heart stealing Dreamer’s heart and having them fight for the villains temporarily is one of the finer memories, hell, when I had her betray everyone and join the bad guys for real later on was quite fun. Duking it out with an evil clown and Anti-Guy from Paper Mario was kind of cool too. But the one that really sticks out to me is the one with Albert Wesker. Now, Albert Wesker is a Resident Evil character to my understanding, but I have no idea what his story is, and I wasn’t smart enough to look it up as a kid when this was going down. This guy came out of hecking nowhere, I never did learn who played him in the end. I remember he was going after everyone with needles, and once pricked, they’d be under his control. Dreamer of course had ended up kidnapped and trapped in wherever his domain was. Being the rebellious and narrow-minded child that I was, I had Dreamer go off on a long speech about how Wesker would never win, and good would always prevail over evil, blah blah blah, it had to have sounded so stupid and naive to him. 

And then he killed my character. That had never happened before. Another player ended up godmodding them back to life with a “revival seed,” but like? It was so garbage. I felt so bad about it after the fact, like yeah, we beat the bad guy, but I felt like a dirty cheater, and I was! But it dawned on me why it happened later on in time. There was no formal system to how any of this worked, just a set of unspoken boundaries that were never crossed, and therefore a lot of godmodding happened, where people would be defeated who shouldn’t have been, powers were unfair, etc. But the thing is, I was one of the few who ever bothered to get creative with my attacks and have some sort of strategy, which in turn meant that I was often the one doing most of the fighting. During the Wesker stuff, I was the only one online that actually had any of that going on, the rest were content to play damsels in distress, that’s why my character got revived. I think Wesker showed up one more time after that and there was a fair fight before they disappeared, but dang. It was an interesting experience. I think it was the fact that I was the only one doing anything in battle that I opted to join the bad guys for a while, not to mention the good guys weren’t all that great to me. There was a lot of hugging and saying “you’re one of my best friends” all the time, but no one meant it, it was just fluff. 

I wasn’t there for fluff, I was there for action, to do something, to challenge myself. Yeah, I wanted to make friends, friends with respectable people who were interested in actual plotlines. But I didn’t find that there, I didn’t find that anywhere in an RP community up until recently. Things have changed with my style over the past eight years. I’m a lot slower to jump to combat nowadays, in fact fighting hardly ever comes up, which is nice, even though I do have times where I miss it. I think I’ve realized that I’m happier being in a smaller group, about three people, where we ask each other about the plot and figure out where its going with a mix of improv and planning. One day though, I’d love to run an RP blog where I invite a bunch of people to participate in the chaos, one where I get to run the story and challenge them to survive. That was the idea behind OATS, maybe one day I’ll be able to run it. For now though, I’ve got some bigger fish to fry than roleplays. ^^’’’ Still, it was fun to reminisce on this, I hadn’t thought about this for a while. 

slightly long stream of consciousness rambles but not like super ~angsty~ or anything. just thinkin out loud

i think.. i do want to delete my most recently written fic from ao3.

i have a few (minor) issues with it but atm I’m just not in a good state to post anything new, and if I leave it up there i’ll just feel worse and worse about it and it’ll just get buried and hidden anyway. also i never really promoted it so like it just. feels silly. that i was so excited to have written a thing and have it be utterly ignored (my fault for shipping a rare-pair and posting before garnering attention from more popular ships oops)

i guess what i’ll focus on doing is 1) getting to a better place 2) finish sprucing up and reposting my old fic for like, archiving purposes, and then that way i’ll have time for 3) finish up some ore current work and upload new things hopefully in a better state of mind. there’s the other stuff too like quitting my job and moving out and all these things which i need to do in order to feel better, but gotta start with therapy first before stressing myself out attempting the Big Stuff

idk i just want to get back into the mindset i had this time last year - that is, gleefully writing self-indulgent fanfic for my newest ship fixation and not really caring uch about what others thought of it, and just enjoying the creative process. just generally feeling happy and stuff. i’ve gotten so hooked up and anxious about what others think because of my mood and negative thought patterns, and this happened before a while back and it’s why i stopped writing for ages. it’s going to be difficult to talk about in therapy cause like. how do explain fanfiction. i don’t even dare approach posting my original work - let alone even writing it half the time - for the exact same reasons of embarrassment etc. but i just. idk. i want to be able to express my creativity in various ways and not feel so awful about it at every possible stage. i think maybe if i can start to enjoy my old work once again, and sort out some other stuff, i can start feeling generally better about sharing my works, regardless of what they are?

and i also just wanna socialise more and feel better doing that, cause i don’t have many friends who share my interests (whatever those are??) and that is part of the reason i feel like this too, but it’s a constant cycle of me feeling lonely, then afraid to reach out and isolating myself, then feeling more lonely...

idk i guess i just hae a lot of stuff to sort through. it’s annoying cause i know what most of it *is*, i’m just not sure what to do about it

ASKS 12

spoookyyyy season, lmao I tried answering as many as I could but now I am going to be deleting the rest of my inbox so sorry if I didn’t get to answer you :( also WCIFs are on hiatus rn but you can find a lot of the stuff I use on my cc finds blog

Anonymous said: hey, have you ever thought about making a blackpink inspired hair?            

Most of my hairs start off being K-Pop inspired and then don’t look like what I was trying to achieve, so if I tried making one it wouldn’t look right once I finished it haha, I have a hair based off Lisa though!

Anonymous said: are all of your hairs also male compatible? there's a guy sim i want to make who has shoulder length hair and one of yours would be great to use

I never check that since I make them for female sims, but if you change some tags in S4S you should be able to check the hair you want yourself :D

Anonymous said: would you be ok with people converting your hair?       

Sure! I plan on converting some hairs eventually but if other people do it then I don’t mind at all. Just credit me obvi and link to the original post

Anonymous said: Hey, I love your CC (especially the hairs) and your sims are so beautiful! However, I noticed that so far you only uploaded your female sims (not that I’m complaining, they’re all gorgeous!) but I was just wondering if you could upload one or two male sims sometime? They look amazing too!            

I actually have had my male model sim in my drafts since JANUARY ready to post, I just need to get his tray files haha. Will try to do it soon! Also ty

Anonymous said: Have you posted your female "model" for everything on the sims 4 gallery?

yeah they’re on the gallery! Aharris00britney is my origin ID

Anonymous said: hiya, i was wondering if you created your own hair textures or if you used ea's (or anyone else's textures)? thanks!            

I use EA textures as bases and usually edit them somehow by combining different ones together when needed.

@ellebellsims​ said: Hello! Tysm for all the lovely hairs you provide for us! I end up using at least one of your hairs for every household in my game, haha. I had two quick questions.. the first, for someone that has limited abilities in making recolors (and never with hair before) how difficult is it to add an ombre accessory or recolor for one of your hairs? Also, how difficult would it be to convert for kids?    

Recolors are really easy to do, there are tons of tutorials on YouTube that will help with that. Ombre accessories are a bit challenging but hopefully I can get a tutorial for those out one day. Converting to kids is really simple if you know Blender basics, you can use my converting to adults tutorial to get an idea of how a conversion would work.        

Anonymous said: You had a obession with the flowers lmao            

lmao, very true!

Anonymous said: wcif the ice cream in this post? /post/174729716466/icecreamedit            

the ice cream was drawn in by @ayoshi-sims​ :( so it isn’t a real thing

@wholegrainsims​ said: hey there! i saw in your about that your favorite show is game of thrones! mine too! also your hair that’s coming out on 9/30 looks like a mm cersei hair & i’ve been dying for some mm got cc! looking forward to it!            

omg true! I didn’t even think of Cersei while making it lmao, thank you for pointing that out to me :D

Anonymous said: O M G  your selfie in the 57 facts tag was the most adorable thing ever. You're like insanely handsome?? I am shook???

Anonymous said: how does you feel being extremely beautiful?          

@theforgottensimblr​ said: omg, just saw your post at the fire alarm and I just have to say that you are so cute. That's it, you're cute. Hope you're having a good day        

Anonymous said: YOU ARE SO BOOTIFUL      

Anonymous said: You are a very beautiful human being. I like your face and personality very much.❤️                  

haha thank you guys! I don’t find myself that attractive of a person so the compliments helps keep me from being super self conscious :P thank you again <3 very much appreciated

Anonymous said: not sims related, but opinions on the most recent bts comeback?            

I don’t keep up with a lot of the boy group comebacks, but I listened to it and thought it was okay? I am pretty strictly into girl groups/female singers though so I’m not the best person to ask about it haha

Anonymous said: hi austin!! i just wanted to say i love your creations and you are one of the most amazing hair creators out there! but i had a quick question: will you ever put your "dean" hair model available for download? 

I don’t know if he is saved, but if he is I will try to put him for download!

Anonymous said: ok so i have a question if you dont mind, i feel like it's kind of stupid but how do you manage to move parts of the hair mesh in edit mode without the part you selected like 'seperating' from the part you didn't select and making a big ass gap in the mesh? like does that make sense? when i try to edit shit in edit mode i cant ever bc the faces separate from eachother when i try to translate a part of it or make it smaller, etc. if this makes sense, thank you if not im sorry im just stupid.            

REMOVE DOUBLES!!!! lmao that is the only way you will get anything done in edit mode. Proportional Edit Tool and Removing doubles from the entire mesh makes it a lot easier than sculpt mode. Make sure to split edges later though

@bishyouknowit​ said: I just recently went cc free and now I see your new hairs and I just wanna download all the hairs I had from you again and put them back in my game. I love your stuff so much!! ❤❤❤❤❤

aww thank you!! I am glad you like my cc <3 good luck staying cc free haha I could neverrrr

@bangtansabotage​ said: who's your loona bias?        

Kim Lip <3 then Yves, Jinsoul, and Hyunjin

Anonymous said: Absolutely love the content you're coming out with! You're so talented. 💝

thank you so much <3 glad you are enjoying my cc as much as I enjoy making it :P

Anonymous said: Is it wrong I forgot you were a guy?            

Yes.... LMAO egfdbv I am joking :P It is fine you forgot, it isn’t like I am posting a selfie everyday showing off my radiating masculinity sfdcfbvb which I don’t even have

Anonymous said: you’re very good 👌🏼

at what 👀👀 ****** ***?

Anonymous said: Do you put your things up on Simsdom? because I just found you Em hair on there            

I don’t :( but as long as they are linking to my post and not to the download link there isn’t much I can do.

Anonymous said: Columbus never set food in North America, he landed on various Caribbean islands. Also, Delaware was the first state.

take that up with my history teacher from like 2nd grade ok rwedffvb

Anonymous said: you're in virginia? I go to college in virginia too but i'm from missouri!! it's cool to think that one of my favorite content creators is so close to me! much love!!!!           

ooooo exciting!!! I go to Radford lmao it is like 30 minutes from Virginia Tech

Anonymous said: Yooo! You're from VA! Ive never met anyone online from VA except from me!

omg that is crazy you’ve never met anyone from here before haha, I have only met like one or two so makes sense I guess

youtube!jimin

jyn posting?? wow what a concept i can’t believe it either

in this one you’re the youtuber! enjoy~

okay so

you’re a lifestyle/ talking kinda channel

not the white girl ‘what i got for christmas was 4 ipads’ kinda lifestyle but more like talking to the camera and making jokes and stuff

and alot of carefree vlogs and casual talk!! cause you’re a laid back hooman with a Great Amount of Chill

very unbeknownst to you, park jimin (The Park Jimin, from bts) (ya) watches your videos

!!!!

tbh he only watched one video at first on “top foods of 2017″ and then through recommended vids he started binge watching all your videos

and he never comments but?? give him a timestamp for any one of your videos and he knows exactly what you said right then and there

(or not)

he really likes lying in bed after a long day of schedules and just unwind with your videos

(he laughs really loud and gets a pillow thrown in his face from hoseok’s bed)

and he likes your random haul videos too, where you buy like four (4) things that don’t relate??? at all and just introduce them to the camera for 5 minutes and say bye

anyw!! you’ve always shown your face in your videos and stuff but jimin never really paid much attention because hey the content’s interesting that’s kinda all that matters

UNtiLLlLLlLl 

one day you move into your new apartment and decide to make a vlog!!

okay well you’re in your pajamas and your hair’s not done At all but honestly? you don’t really care and you’re too lazy to change anyway

so you start your vlog in all your disheveled glamour in a high schoool event t-shirt, your plaid pajama pants and pink rabbit slippers (beauty blogger much??)

the day the vlog is uploaded jimin immediately clicks on it and jumps into bed to watch it

you’re talking to a mirror with your camera in front of you and as you run your hand through your hair, you flash a crazy bright grin and 

lol jimin’s heart stopped

u broke him

were you always??? that? good looking???? what the

how do you look good in a crappy orange shirt and brown pajama pants what 

were you really the person who filmed all those hilarious videos????

jimin’s kinda stunned for a while and checks your channel name to confirm

“wah... they’re good looking and funny? what a catch I can’t believe it”

“TAE CAN YOU COME HERE”

“is this y/c/n or am i blind”

“uh...... bro you’ve been watching their channel almost daily for the past month?? you tell me,,,,,, but yeah it is”

anyway

he continues watching your apartment tour (in partial shock and disbelief,, he still can’t comprehend how good?? u look)

and then

hey that bathroom looks rly familiar

jimin squints a bit

hey the flooring is the...... same as the one in our dorm... ........ .........

“taEHYUUUNNNGG CAN YOU COME HERE”

“WHAT”

“is this our dorm”

“ya bro-- we’re in our d-”

“NO THE VIDEO”

“oh yeah . Yeah it kinda looks like the one bedroom version of our place”

“LEGIT (ok u know how he says jinjja ye that)”

jimin’s eyes are wide and he’s doing that face of disbelief where his eyes are big and his lips are parted in a slight smile to a side (like when he says seolmal)

he runs out to yoongi and starts hitting him frantically on the arm, “oh mY GO-” “hYUNG HYUNG HyuNG IS THIS OUR DORMM”

yoongi is confused for a while,, and then stares at the screen “oh uh yeah i think so,,, why?”

“hyuUUUUNG Y/C/N LIVES IN THE SAME BUILDING AS USSSsSSSsss”

at this point jimin is shaking yoongi by the shoulders and smiling rly brightly but still in Disbelief (good one jimin)

when he lies in bed that night,, he can’t help but think of your face and how good you looked in all your carelessness and the thought of you just being a block or two away made him smile as he looked up at the ceiling before falling asleep............

“jiMInnNNNNnn can you go get the doOoooor”

“mmdfpphhh”

jimin wakes up and feels his back muscles screaming at him to lie back down before he has to dance the entire day again

dingdingdingdongdongdingdongdigndondkdfbakdf

but while he can ignore his back muscles’ silent begging for him to stay down,, he can’t block out the horrendously shrill doorbell at 7 in the morning

and so,, with his crazy bedhair and his half-shut eyes,, park jimin,, idol singer, 1/7 of world famous band bts,,,, shuffles to the front door and opens it to reveal,,,, well, you

with your hair messily done and in a tshirt and shorts looking like a Goddess to half-awake Park Jimin

needless to say, our man is reallllLly shocked and surprised and a bit dumbfounded

“wh-”

“hi!! uh i just moved in next door, i’m y/n, it’s really nice to meet you! sorry if i woke you up haha,, um here’s some kimchi jeon, have a nice day!”

“oh uh no Hhahaahah it’s okay um thanks for the kim jeo- chi jeon kimchi jeon”

you giggle abit because well, this dude has really messed up hair and really puffy eyes that haven’t really opened fully yet but he’s still smiling as wide as he can for 7am

and that’s really cute 

fast forward a few days,,, jin finally manages to successfully nag jimin into bringing over some pork for you!! their new neighbour 

“beCause it’s POLITe jimin!!! >:0″

aaand another (endearingly adorable) doorway conversation takes place,, this time with you in your pajamas and him Looking unfairly good in sweatpants and a shirt??? 

and after shy thanks and awkward small talk,, jimin says bye and after you close the door,,, jumps a bit and silent screams and runs back to his dorm aisabsdfn

after you close the door,, you smile a bit because 1) you just settled dinner 2) hey your new neighbour is really cute 

and this whole food thing continues for a while,, just a lot of living off each other’s dinners,, and in that time the both of you become a lot more comfortable with each other (because the boys always make jimin give you the food lmao what kids psh)

and of course,, you’re still making videos and stuff, mostly just vlogging and the occasional 5 minute video of you talking about mosquitoes and how horrible they are

of course,, jimin still watches all of them

not that he’s ever gonna tell you,, LOL 

but one day he sees a notif from your channel,, and he clicks on the new video!! but then.,, he as he watches it,, he realises,,,,, he’s in the video........

you left your front door open and he so happened to walk by and Oh no

i mean the comments are literally flooded with “omg is that jimin” “oppa!! omg jiminie oppa” 

and yeah you see the comments!! of course you know bts i mean how can you not,, you know pi ddam nunmul,,, you’ve just,,,,, never seen their faces,,,,, heh 

so....... that’s a revelation

that night jimin rings your doorbell!! and as y’all make small talk,, you congratulate him on their new music show win 

(you might have gone online to search up bts’ recent activities,,, and their photos,,,,, and seen jimin looking Completely different,, like some reeeeeally attractive, out of your reach celebrity)

and yeah you gotta admit you’re a bit flustered because dude!! world star at your doorstep.......

and he’s super taken aback because whenever he talked to you,, he kinda forgot,, he was famous LMAO

and this is the first time you’ve brought up anything bts related,,, so he gets a bit wary,, and starts to back up a bit

“you,, watched our encore stage??”

“yeah!! you- y’all looked really good :) i didn’t know you were part of bts until i read the comments on this vlog i uploaded though!”

“ah-”

“um, i forgot to mention i upload v-”

“oh i uh,, watch your vlogs- videos- i watch all yo- i’ve watched so-”

“oh!! that’s really nice to hear actually,,,, um,, jimin,,,, if you’re free after a stage sometime,,, do you wanna go grab dinner?? instead of just passing food to each other like this,, I MEAN i know you’re an idol but if you want free food just-”

right on cue, jimin’s cheeks turn pink,, and the air suddenly feels still and like something out of a dream,, he has his flustered tiny smile on his face and a bit of eyeliner at the creases above his eyes,, and ‘wow,’ you think to yourself, ‘he looks like an angel.’

“-come by anytime.”

“OH GOD NO NOT LiKE THAt”

requests are open! 

in the middle

why is it that since I got requests I have just gone a bit AWOL? i’m sorry, it has been a few days since I posted and it’s been me and my headspace right now- i’m spacey. i hope you like this though, and of course it had to be the artist that it is, if you know anything about me this is who I personally am in love with right now (music and person wise). 

if you requested something from me it is coming! i promise I haven’t forgotten about it (entirely) and they will all be done before wednesday as that is when i’m at reading festival for almost a week. 

also I wanna do a q+a for my youtube, so if you have any questions about anything (literally anything) send them in! if you want to be anon be anon I don’t mind. just something I want to do and tumblr is a good platform to ask for mixed questions :)

love you guys  🖤

prompt list / collection of my writing / requests open *nudge nudge*

Unable to get the lyrics out of my head I find myself tapping on the keyboard, my foot bouncing to the rhythm and soon enough I am singing the words under my breath. I can’t stop myself from going online and straight to Twitter where many of my bizarre thoughts lie filled with numbers from others in agreement or sheer curiosity. 

cannot get the song ‘In the Middle’ by dodie out of my head! the lyrics to ‘intertwined’ are something else #obsessed 

Immediately I see lots of responses in agreement, some from pages dedicated to the singer and others recommending me other songs. The known smile forms on my face as my screen goes dark, giving me the chance to see my reflection before it turns itself back on and becomes flooded with life. Twitter is one of those platforms where you can just talk to anyone, I’ve been lucky enough to connect with various artists through Twitter, have them praise my lyrics and even ask for my help with producing a song or two for their albums or EPs. 

My job isn’t the easiest, it can be challenging at times, but it pays off when you can hear it on the radio, or talked about online; just like dodie’s is. I sit for a while and scroll through the tweets change in my mentions and focus around someone besides dodie, instead they focus around Bastille. 

Leaning in closer to my laptop I analyse their comments; ‘omg dan loves her work!’ ‘shit you know her too? dan was tweeting about her the other day’ ‘@bastilledan another reason why you two could be super cute together’ they all differed in opinions, but they all kept mentioning him and me along with dodie. Seems like I am the one in the middle this time. 

Part of me wanted to see if he’d respond too, if he even knew who I was. I’ve worked with bands like his, but none of them have ever been as unique as Bastille is. Their lyrics hit you somewhere unknown inside, they delve through all the hidden and buried emotions, bringing them to the surface for four minutes at a time. They are a reminder at times of what we should value, what can easily be lost when we least expect it. Eventually I give up on waiting, I leave my phone at my desk and go to my music room and work on some lyrics knowing that I have a meeting with a new musician in a few days. 

A few hours had passed and I had barely been able to get anything done, the jitters over Dan were settling as curiosity was consuming me and ruining my creative abilities. I kept telling myself to just test these lyrics with these notes, but it was no use. Sitting I stare at the blank notebook, nothing achieved due to my phone calling my name, whispering possibilities in the other room. “Oh fuck it.” I mumble to myself as I rush to my phone as if my life depends on it. 

Scrolling through the masses of notifications to do with the three of us I see one that catches my eye and makes me smile. ‘EeeeeEkkkk it’s you! you like my music??? I listened to your work for YEARS l o l <3′ dodie, a true sweetheart. Shifting my focus from dodie I can feel my heart pause until I see it, until my eyes can find it fast enough for everything to resume. 

‘I wasn’t sure if anyone else really knew of her for the music she does? good to know you love her too!’ ‘as much as I admire her talent, instrumental is a great piece of music, don’t you agree?’ 

I glanced over his words, the words he had aimed at me to read and respond to. Fans immediately got on board, responding, freaking out and fanning their hearts out; which is exactly what I wanted to do, but no I am going to keep my cool. It’s only Dan Smith, an incredibly talented musician and lyricist. Only.

We talked back and forth via tweets, dodie along with others unable to keep up with the excitement of fellow people within the music realm discussing her work, but it was getting to that point where fans were suffocating. Suffocating is that point where the meaning of the conversation is lost in the feed of fans losing their shit, those who love bastille favouring or protecting them/Dan from wanting to speak to me. 

Rolling my eyes I just went to DM him instead, knowing it would be easier in some aspects, but more difficult to not mess it up. After a few messages were exchanged I eased into it more, we both did. Our conversation slowly moved away from dodies music, towards the direction of my own- specifically my writing process and how it is to write for others and not so much myself. 

‘Writing for myself is always a personal thing, some songs I write and I know I can’t share it or give it to someone else to release. Most things I write I tailor for them specifically, I work with them to get the best result rather than put myself in them, I put them in me- not literally obviously!’ 

Why did I send that, it sounded so rare and professional, but like always I cocked it up. 

‘No no, I see where you’re coming from. There are so many songs I wrote and published, but I never perform them, really talk about them. Sometimes I wonder what if I did? What if I were willing to perform them again? But it was before Bastille, that was when I was just ‘Dan Smith’ and it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.’ 

‘As if it is outdated?’

‘I think it is and isn’t. Some music can be timeless.’

‘Like The Beatles?’ 

‘Yes, but also the likes of Kendrick Lamar.’

‘So you’re an in between then? Somewhere along the scale of being too caught up recent affairs and stuck in the past?’

‘Unfortunately so. But how come you’ve never published under you, as in become an artist and not just lyricist?’

I lean back in my chair as I read over the message. It’s not something I’ve been asked for years, my parents enquired why I wouldn’t do it myself, but I felt too vulnerable in my young adulthood. Now it is a different story, but I just don’t think I could do it. 

‘Conformity, pressure, the stress. When I write a band or an artist a song that is my role done, I get the contract, I write the songs and I get paid. I hear it and my name is written legally as the lyricist, but I have no other ties that are so severe. It prevents me from getting overly exposed, risk of being watched 24/7. I’m just afraid to try really.’ 

He doesn’t respond for a while unlike before. Maybe that was too much, a bit too honest for someone he doesn’t really know besides the work I produce for others. I resume my work as I listen to the rain beating down against my window, trying its hardest to fight through the glass with little success. Now I find myself humming his songs, not dodies. I tap my pen and play a few notes that I can remember off of the top of my head. Interrupting my moment of distraction my phone goes off, he’s back. 

‘Would you like to meet up with me sometime? It may seem a little forward, but I would love to discuss music, possibly working on something together. Only if you’re comfortable doing so. I’ve heard your work, as in your work when you did a few videos prior to writing for others. I didn’t know how to tell you that without sounding like a creep, but I would love to see that person, only if you’ll let me?’ 

My mind wanders back to those years when I would set up my brothers camera on a stack of books as I played on my piano with a small microphone by me to hear my voice above the piano. I forgot I had those uploaded, now no one really knows about it as it remains hidden in the depths of the internet, yet somehow he found it. He actually watched my 19 year old self nervously introduced myself and the song before that part of me melted away into the song. It was an offer to get back into that, to reopen that side of my music that has not been truly revisited for years. 

Glancing over to my notebook, to the second one that is filled messily with tea stains, small doodles and hundreds upon hundreds of lyrics I compare it to the neat, carefully colour coded organised one that I use for other artists and not myself. I used to have fun writing songs, but of late I’ve lost the heart to it. 

Licking my lips I sit behind my piano and envision myself again, that part of me I loved. I close my eyes and my fingers naturally find the keys that I memorised, my mouth opens and the lyrics are still there, despite being shrouded in multiple songs since. It was the first song I truly wrote, the one that I was actually proud to call my own that only few have seen online; Dan being one of those few. 

I reach over for my phone, wanting to thank him for a reminder of why I write music. That sometimes you need to just re-evaluate what is happening around you, to go back to what you know in order to keep creating music. 

‘That sounds like a plan, thank you Dan. It may seem odd, but having a small conversation with you I feel as if I have rediscovered my music. It’s something that is easier to explain in person. How is next week?’ 

As I send the message I can’t wipe the smile, it differs from the smile for the fans on Twitter. It is one of giddiness, of excitement for what is to come with my music, with meeting the musician and lyricist who has lived in the same boat I have for possibly longer. Fans still conspire amongst themselves about our absences, so I leave them wondering with a tweet to an old song of mine. 

‘For the person who made me realise why I do what I do’

The Low Hanging Fruit of Web Performance

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/the-low-hanging-fruit-of-web-performance/

The Low Hanging Fruit of Web Performance

There is so much to know about making websites fast. It’s rather incredible. Things like understanding servers and networks, how browsers parse things and make decisions, efficient coding choices, and file format nuances make being a performance expert a full-time career in itself.

But you don’t have to be an expert to care about web performance nor be an expert to start making changes to your websites to make them faster. Even total beginners to the web industry have the power to make significant performance increases to the sites they work on.

Perhaps you’ve heard this one?

If you save the length of an array first rather than calculating on each iteration of a for loop, it’s faster:

// this is faster var l = arr.length; for (var x = 0; x < l; x++) dosmth = arr[x]; // than this for (var x = 0; x < arr.length; x++) dosmth = arr[x];

That’s exactly what I’m not talking about. Haha. Sorry.

I want to talk about low hanging fruit. Easy changes that have big impact on web performance.

I have some of my own ideas. As a front-end developer and someone who thinks the web is a pretty darn great thing, I’m into any idea that makes it better. A few years back I did a whole talk on 10 things you can do to make your site faster, all of which are pretty low-hanging fruit.

But more recently, I asked on Twitter, and lots of people had some ideas of their own.

What are the LOWEST hanging fruit of web performance? Nothing fancy, anyone can do, big impact. Gzip. Optimize stuff. Reduce requests… What are other big ones? — Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) August 17, 2018

Lemme squish it all together and make a list! Remember this isn’t a comprehensive list of performance-increasing tactics. The requisites to be on this list are that they are fairly easy to do and that have big performance returns.

1) Reduce Requests

This one is my favorite. Anytime I can rip something off of a page and not really sacrifice anything, it feels great. Are there some CSS files you can combine? Tracking scripts you can remove? Sharing buttons that could be just simple links?

Dave Rupert recommends keeping an inventory of all the stuff on your pages so you know why it’s there and what it’s purpose is.

ImageAlpha + ImageOptim (Mac) / RIOT (Win) before upload SVGOMG before upload Keep an inventory of wtf is being added and why

— Dave Rupert (@davatron5000) August 17, 2018

You should also consider the concept of a performance budget. A performance budget might say: you have X requests for Y total file size and Z seconds of load time and nobody can do anything to exceed them. Make it part of the culture around your site!

2) Optimize Assets

Your images can probably be a lot smaller in file size than they already are, without losing any or much quality. Download an app like ImageOptim and drop images onto it before you use them on the web.

The same concept applies to all sorts of other file types. Rather than linking up the “raw” JavaScript that you write by hand, it should be run through a minifier to reduce its file size. This does stuff like remove whitespace and even fancy stuff like rewrite function names and calls to shorter versions. Same with CSS, it should be minified. There are loads of ways to do this that any build process can handle. For one example, here’s me using CodeKit and making sure the output of my SCSS is compressed:

For SVG files, check out SVGOMG!

Google performance expert Das Surma says compressing/optimizing images is the lowest hanging fruit of all for web performance. For images and video specifically, I’d also recommend checking out services like Cloudinary or Imgix which specialize in optimizing and serving images in super performant ways.

3) Make sure you’re gzipping

As a test, open your Network tab in DevTools and pick a CSS file. Look under the Response Headers and see if the content-encoding is gzip.

If it’s not, there are massive savings you could be having by just making sure gzip encoding is turned on on your server. Your host should have information about this for you. Here on MediaTemple, on an Apache server, here’s some info for that. It’s about making sure mod_deflate is on, which does the gzipping.

You might even investigate Brotli, which can be ever better than Gzip, and I notice is supported here on MediaTemple through the Securi firewall.

4) Make sure you’re browser caching

See that second arrow in the screenshot above? That points to an expires date for that CSS file. Notice it expires in the year 2037. That means the browser will hang onto that file essentially forever and not need to re-download it when needed again. That’s a massive performance booster. Need to change the file? Change its name! style.css?v=16.4

Speaking of caching… the general concept of caching is a massive part of web performance low hanging fruit. Your web host can probably make recommendations here. For example, perhaps they can flip on nginx reverse caching for you. Or if you’re running something like a WordPress site, perhaps you can toss on a plugin like W3 Total Cache and reap the rewards from that.

5) Use a CDN

Like Tim Murtaugh says… set up a CDN.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are for serving your flat files (like images, CSS, and JavaScript) from super fast servers that are specifically tuned for that job (for example, they are “cookieless” which saves some network data overhead). Plus they serve those files from servers that are geographically as close as possible to the user requesting that file. Big gains!

This is low hanging fruit as it’s generally a one-time setup and it’ll benefit you forever. Look into setting up Cloudflare for your site, or something like Stack Path or KeyCDN.

Media Temple offers a nifty a CDN and Web Application Firewall, all-in-one.

6) Lazy Load and Defer Loading of Things

The idea of lazing loading is that you don’t request the asset (like an image or video) until it’s needed. Imagine you visit a blog post that has 6 images on it, but 5 of them are down the page pretty far, and you never bother to scroll down. Why request the other 5?

There are lots of techniques for lazing loading, so allow me to just link you to Jeremy Wagner’s article on Google Fundamentals which covers the concept.

The idea of deferring the loading of JavaScript is simple. There are fancy ways of doing this like code splitting, but perhaps the lowest hanging fruit is deferring the loading of a script by putting it at the bottom of the page, or literally using the defer attribute.

Just add `defer` to any script element. Takes 0.7s to implement, makes your page a gazillion times faster. Pretty good ROI if you ask me.

— Benjamin De Cock (@bdc) August 17, 2018

7) Use responsive images (or at least use reasonable sizes)

Zak Nicola says he’s hit “home runs” for local business clients by simply resizing images on their sites to reasonable sizes. They had massive 4k images being put into a 120x60px spot. Yikes. It’s more common that you’d like.

Using reasonably sized images is a quick win. Check out Dave Rupert’s 1.5x images thinking. That might be a good default for everything.

Doing a bit more, look at using responsive images, which is special HTML for your images that has the focused purpose of serving the best possible image for the situation.

<img src="small.jpg" srcset="medium.jpg 1000w, large.jpg 2000w" alt="yah">

<picture> <source srcset="examples/images/extralarge.jpg" media="(min-width: 1000px)"> <source srcset="examples/images/art-large.jpg" media="(min-width: 800px)"> <img srcset="examples/images/art-medium.jpg" alt="…"> </picture>

Also, consider stuff like using muted autoplaying videos instead of GIFs.

Animated GIFS to videos (Autoplay, muted, loop). Remove the audio track too.

— Doug Sillars (@dougsillars) August 17, 2018

8) Mind Your Fonts

Using custom web fonts can be just as much of a performance burden as the usual suspects: images and JavaScript.

Do you need them at all? If you can get away with not using any custom web fonts at all, or removing some/all of the ones you have, you’ll certainly see performance gains. Perhaps check out using a system font stack.

If you need to use them (I don’t blame you, typography is fun and gives a site a lot of life), then you’ve still got options for improving the performance of them. The lowest hanging fruit is to try out using CSS in your @font-face declarations for those custom fonts, in the form of font-display: optional; /* or swap */. With that, the custom fonts will never hold up the loading of the page, so you might experience FOUT (Flash of Unstyled Text) but never FOIT (Flash of Invisible Text). The “invisible” situation is the one that impacts web performance the most. Pages with no text are pretty useless.

As Brian P. Hogan says, that’s perceived performance as much as it is actual performance.

I’d say understanding what blocks the page from loading and what doesn’t. So, not just “actual” performance but “perceived” performance.

— Brian P. Hogan (@bphogan) August 17, 2018

If you wanna get hot and heavy with the performance of loading fonts, dig into Zach Leatherman’s Guide to Font Loading Strategies.

9) Good Hosting / HTTP2 / PHP7

There is some performance low hanging fruit in your web hosting itself. If your site has slowness issues in the form of response time being slow, perhaps it’s time to upgrade to something more powerful than shared hosting. Throwing money at a speed problem doesn’t always work and isn’t always an option, but sometimes it’s the perfect solution. And it’s definitely low hanging fruit as the effort is minimal.

Speaking of hosting, your web host can probably help you upgrade or configure your hosting to take advantage of the best technologies available.

Turn on http2 and make sure PHP is upgraded to PHP 7 (if applicable)

— Megan Zlock (@meganzlock) August 17, 2018

Ask your host about the possibility of taking advantage of HTTP/2, and if you’re running a classic CMS like WordPress or CraftCMS, getting on the very latest versions of PHP and MySQL which have had massive performance improvements in recent years.

10) Turbolinks

This Turbolinks stuff is a bit of a wild card in this list, but I like it because if it can possibly work for you, you get some increase performance with little work (again, low hanging fruit).

Have you heard of SPAs (Single Page Apps)? The whole idea there is that once the site loads, even as you click around, interact, and go to other pages of the site, the site never reloads. For example, you’re building a React site with React Router. URLs still change and all that, but the laborious process of a full page reload never happens. It’s all Ajax requests and re-rendering. Done right, very cool.

Turbolinks brings that kind of behavior to a site that wasn’t originally built that way. Rather than refresh the page, when you click a link it goes and fetches that page and re-renders what is needs to on the current page.

Resources

Source: http://mediatemple.net/blog/tips/low-hanging-fruit-web-performance/

ASKS 08

rip it’s a lot of stuff, some good, some weird….

Anonymous said: do you like eating ass? I bet your booty is thicc and juicy :)

idk who would even send this but ummm I’m a bottom so yeah.. that answers that wedhfnsh have u nice day/night <3

@thesimpley2k​  said: your cc is so beautiful! and you’re a britney stan :) ily sis

thank youuuuu omg ily2 lmao I don’t voice my Britney stanness much but once B10 starts getting more hyped up I’ll be back up there! Thank you again and rip original make me MV

Anonymous said: Oof I need all of your wip hairs right now            

oof you haven’t even seen half of them sweetie ;) I have 10 wip hairs as of now so like… you’ve seen 4 on this blog through edits/playlists. the rest are on my patreon and some go on my wips section in my discord (omg shameless plug im sorry but its true)

Anonymous said: Can we gift you packs through origin?

if u want?? idrk how that works tbh ;-; if u did tho like rsdfgfbvc thank you!!! I prob will only buy packs that I can use for cc from now on tbh ;-; my computer is at that point where i need to be really picky about stuff, plus imo they arent worth it wedfgdbfn i regret buying most of the SP’s

Anonymous said: Are you posting a shorter version of the Zoey Hair as shown in your latest post because it looks amazing?!!!!!

thank you!!! That is basically what the idea of it is lmao, but I think im gonna make an accessory hair clip for it too. Not 100% sure yet tho

@agentwashsims​ said: Crying over the wip hair and the grimes reference! Okay you’re still perfect and ily that it all okay bye. 

aaah thank you! grimes is so good omg Art Angels is my favorite album but there are a lot of ongs on Visions I like as well. I like a little bit of Halfaxa toooooo

Anonymous said: Hi, would it be possible for you to just reupload the lydia hair post? As it’s marked as sensitive content, I can’t see the picture and I’d really like to be able to have a look at it before I download it.

Hi! I emailed tumblr support about it since it has been over a month since it has been up for review. Hopefully they get it worked out soon <3 there is a picture of it on my download page if you want to look at it there

Anonymous said: Hey, how do I do Patreon? I want to but i’m new to all those things of Patreon cause now I want lots of hairs that need it, and I wanna learn how can I Patreon you!

Hello! Hopefully you see this haha. Patreon is sort of like Netlfix in it is a monthly charge for goods. To get 3 cc hairs early each month, it is a $1 pledge. Higher pledges get better rewards(such as watching me work on cc, getting to vote on hair releases, and more). I think that Patreon is a great way to help support creators as long as they do it right (no exclusive CC). I really hope this helps you and thank you so much if you decide to pledge any ammount <3

Anonymous said: When are going to upload your maxis match hairlines? Like in a post

oml I am horrible lmao I deleted them and don’t seem to have them backed up, but I will maybe make more in the future?? I honestly don’t find them that usable on most hairs but everybody is different so we will see <3

Anonymous said: Is the black braided hair on your April Playlist a WIP? If not WCIF it cuz it’s gorgeous <333 Ily.

issa wip for Juneee

Anonymous said: how old are you?

18 d2f m4m

Anonymous said: What is your Origin ID?

spotharris

Anonymous said: Hey! I 🖤 ur content btw and I wanted to just like clarify something. Ur posts say u can recollect but don’t include the mesh. What does that mean exactly??? Do people still need the mesh for the recollections to show up in game?? Sorry if this is really dumb, I’m a new simblr. Thx!            

hey!! sorry for the super late reply omg, welcome to simblr!! it is kinda crazy here but hopefully u can find ur peeps and make a nice home :) anywaysssss i think u mean recoloring, which is like when people add different colors other than the 18 EA base colors. I don’t allow people to use the meshes mainly bc I know that sometimes I have to go back and update things and this way the recolors don’t have a broken mesh and require that person to redo their package.

Anonymous said: whose ur fave member of lOoNa

my rankings as of right now: Kim Lip, Go Won, Olivia Hye, JinSoul, HyunJin, Chuu, HeeJin, Choerry, HeeJin, HaSeul, ViVi, and then YeoJin

also omfg if u have jinsoul/kim lip/choerry limited edition mix&match photocard and would like to gift me it then umm PLEASE they are impossible to find and i need for my collection ;-;

@disneynsims​ said: I am also a massive Britney Spears fan, and I have to say I appreciate you naming your hairs after her songs. I do make one small request, that a hair eventually be named after one of her best bonus tracks, “Up n’ Down”.

omg Up N’ Down is one of my least favorites on femme fatale grfbg but thank you!! I don’t really name hairs after her songs anymore :(

@issharky​ said: you’ve improved so much over the time! ive been following (on tsr and tumblr since i joined) since like 2016! ♥ still love your blog!            

ygvhbjn i didnt have a tsr but go awf lmao thank you!!! i was a mess in 2016 and a lil of 2017 <3

Anonymous said: Ur such a babe austin            

thx for sending this @dogsill​ ur a babe too 😘

Anonymous said: Discord? Patreon? And this are how a good simblr die

oof discord is literally like a groupchat thing but go off also patreon makes it so i release 3 hairs a month when before it was like 1 or 2 so ummm

Anonymous said: I have recently downloaded blender to make cc hairs, but I can’t zoom in, rotate, or do anything basically. Do you know of any tutorials that explain how to use it well/ in detail? (I have a windows laptop). Anyway, I recently discovered your hairs and I am in love!! Thank you for making so many beautiful pieces of cc!

urgg i really wish i could make video tutorials and stuff for blender and hairs :( I have tried about 3 or 4 times to record/stream and it is so laggy and just pure shit on stream and twitch. I kind of just learned stuff as i went in blender but a must have is a mouse of some kind, otherwise it is 10x harder

@alexschmidt629 said: Hey! I hope you’re doing a bit better than the last time you made your last post! I’m sorry to hear about all of that, being a senior is so difficult and college stuff is even more difficult. I hope you’re doing better!

thank you! I’m doing a bit better now :)

Anonymous said: holy shit it sounds like everything that literally could’ve gone wrong did. wishing u love and luck bb. and also i think its absolutely FINE that u put ur stuff up on patreon early, it’s still free in the end!! its just a choice to actually compensate cc creators for all that they do for us. god that person was just so rude and im kinda surprised at how kindly you took it. props to u xx 

yeah dsgf everything kinda went shitty the past few months but hopefully it all turns itself around :) and I try not to pick at any rude anons/asks in general bc I feel like by doing that it just causes more attention on the issue and more people/trolls want to jump on the band wagon. Thank you!!

Anonymous said: Oh honey, you need prayers and I wish you the best of luck with fasts, college, moving, and the rest of your life. Stay strong hon you got this!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

thank you <3

Anonymous said: hi is there a version off the Ella hair that has a bun in the back or am I crazy? probs crazy honestly, but thx for answering

I think you are thinking of my Maja hair? It has a different bottom but it has those same bangs! It is here