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xamag-draws · 2 months

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BBR thoughts 2024

Since I mentioned that I finally dusted off an old project of mine and was ruminating on how I'd remake it, I thought I'd elaborate a little, now that I've solidified some concepts. For funsies

This is gonna be a bit of a long and unfocused one, but I don't share my personal thoughts here often, especially the stuff about my projects I always marinate in. And for once it's something that people have existing context for, so hey why not

So for anyone who hasn't been following me for a gajillion years, The Black Brick Road of OZ was a webcomic that I posted around 2013-2015, back when I was in highschool going on college (which is kinda crazy to think about). It was sort of a darker twist on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, although I definitely leaned a lot more into dark humor more than anything in those first few chapters

I don't think it's available to read anywhere anymore, and I know people have been asking me about it. So here's the full proper archive of BBR, as full as it can be with deceased Flash

I totally used it as an excuse to shamelessly and self-indulgently experiment. It had interactive pages and GIFs and was wayyy too overproduced for what I could handle or what was necessary, but I did have great fun making it while it lasted

Unfortunately, that excess and the fact that I've changed too much as a person by the time I was in college is what ultimately killed it. The direction I wanted to go in was practically unrecognizable from the original idea started back in 2011, so there were many old hold-ups that I felt ruined it

At the time I kinda wished I could start/rewrite it all over, but considering that I pretty much had the entire script done at that point, it felt like a pointless sisyphean task. So I just put it on a shelf and didn't look back for about 8 years, because I didn't know what else to do

Now to be fair, the nature of my art has always been iterative and cyclical; when I feel like my creative juices have run dry I prefer to leave a project to marinate and move on to something else; cycle through other old things and bring in new skills and perspectives into the mix when I'm ready again. Not very productive, but it is what makes me happy to work on my OCs; I'm doomed to hit a wall with them eventually and I need some time to be able to find a new direction

So that said, I'm glad that BBR was left to marinate for that long. I don't think I was prepared, emotionally or intellectually, to tackle it again until now. The Wizard of Oz book (and the entire series of them, really) has always been near and dear to my heart, but there's a lot of context around it that I'm only unpacking now that I'm older

I think I always inherently feel negatively about the stuff I've made in the past, like its faults always jump out to me more than the positives, especially the more time passes. I've never liked that, and I do really appreciate the kind things people have to say about BBR to this day. The fact that it still can be recognized and remembered is very sweet

When I left it, I already found it "kinda cringe", and that feeling only deepened with years. When I took my first look back at it, asking the question "how would I rewrite it now?", at first I took a very cynical approach, as in "everything would have to be torn down"

But the more I sat on it, the more I found that I still see some merit and charm in the ideas I was putting out; I just didn't know how to execute them at the time (not to pretend that I know what I'm doing now, but I certainly know more at least). Turns out a lot of my old concepts could be changed substantially with just a few small tweaks. So I'd say that's a nicer way to think about my previous work

If you haven't seen yet, I posted a first draft of my new designs for some of the characters (the main group, the Goods and the Wickeds). Definitely subject to change, but more or less how I see them now

I'm just playing with these concepts; by no means would I attempt to remake BBR right this moment. Call it a pipe dream among my other ones. But just for fun, this is the direction I'd like to take:

Nowadays I'd probably make it a visual novel, with more emphasis on the visual part than the novel because I'm no English prose writer by any means. It'd still let me play a little with the interactivity while helping cut some corners on the drawing part (only some, I imagine I'd go hog wild anyway)

I've always intended for some events inspired by the sequel books to take place in BBR's past. Stuff like Jinjur's revolt or Ozma's rule preceeds the main events here. So I think it would be fun to follow the past of a few key characters alongside the main story. One chapter focusing on the present quest to see the Wizard, then one focusing on the past events (that are maybe reflective thematically); rinse and repeat

I'm also sticking a little closer to the original text in some regards. Not everything that I enjoy from the books would be translated here, it's still just a very loose fantasy on the material; but I'd like to be closer in spirit at least

I like mature, wise and powerful Glinda, I like kind and vulnerable Tin Man, I like the Wizard being a pathetic yet loveable liar, so I'm sprinkling in more of that for example

I'd like to keep some whimsy, but make it more grounded and a bit more serious to be coherent in tone. I think the original TWWOOZ book was a more realistic fantasy in some ways, even for the standards of the time; I like its simple but vivid tactile descriptions and details like bringing attention that Dorothy needed to eat and sleep

I find it funny that Baum specifically was averse to making his books scary or unpleasant, finding that unnecessary for telling a compelling kids story, but they still can get pretty dark and disturbing, at least for our modern sensibilities. Let's just say that I intend to use the Evoldo and Chopfyt storylines for my purposes. In that way, I feel like a "darker" Wizard of Oz retelling can still mostly be tonally in line with the original and balance it with enough heart and occasional humor

I slowly grew to appreciate the quaint old-timey quality of the original series, as well. The first book is both timeless and very much a product of the 1900s. Originally I tried to give it a little modern or at least anachronistic spin, but it was moreso because it's what I knew best, so these days I'd rather intentionally lean into the time period. Still not fully historically accurate by any means, but at least directly acknowledging the influence

The events of the story span across 40 years of these characters' lives, so I'm drawing inspiration from the entire so-called La Belle Epoque: the time period around 1880s-1920s. Basically I'm cooking, and my soup is old Victorian fashion morphing into Edwardian fashion and slowly inching towards flappers

Some new Dolly outfits

Lots of crazy things, political changes and innovations were happening at the turn of the century, which I think is noted and reflected by Baum in the books as well; the character of Tik-Tok might not blow any minds now, but he was one of the first robot characters in literature at that point; and don't even get me started on Jinjur, etc. Plenty of really interesting stuff one could lightly ponder in an Oz adaptation these days

Aesthetically, art nouveau has always been a big artistic influence for me, and it'd definitely be its time to shine here. John R. Neill's illustrations of the Oz books often keep me company as well. Nouveau architecture in particular fits that fairytale whimsy extremely well imo

I'd allow myself a little bit of art deco here and there, but ultimately its intimidating geometrical splendor is an antithetical to the flowery nature of nouveau and I associate it with a completely different era. Definitely fitting some characters like my Wicked Witch of the West, but shouldn't be overused

One of my main problems with the original BBR was that eventually I lost track of what it was even about; and the original ending felt too mean and unfulfilling to be worth it. Now I'd like to stick to the theme of home and family as my main theme, but in a different, more bittersweet way than in the book

An interesting connection I made is that a lot of my aforementioned older key characters (the Witches, Jinjur, the Nome King, etc) all came from the same reformatory as kids, that's how they know each other. In my recent research I learned that in those reformatories it was usually frowned upon to release the children back to the families, which were seen as the original corrupting influence regardless of the circumstance. The reformatory did everything in its power to cut that connection and make itself the only family those wayward kids were supposed to know and love. That's an unexpected tie into the theme of home that I'd like to explore as well

So yeah that's the current state of it. I have a bunch of outfit concepts I'm slowly cooking, although I'm now sure whether I'd post them... But I do miss these funny guys, and I'm glad some people still do as well :)

#my art #xam rambles #the black brick road of oz #long post #ohsees tag

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lucabyte · 2 months

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obligatory ramble about postcanon loop ask

also your art is amazing

Hiiiiiiiii :D thank you :)!!

and thank you for the excuse to post the. just absolute wall of text that i truncated down to form the tags of that post. (i did,,, hit the tag limit. i forgot tumblr had one of those...) so let me just paste that and tidy it up a bit...

I am putting this under a readmore because it's a bit long. but:

This is like. The General Context for all* of my postcanon doodles? (Except AUs obviously) Like this is the base idea I've been drawing them all in. So, feel free to backread with this in mind. I've basically had this 'postcanon' timeline set in my brain since finishing the game...

My general thoughts are that I like the idea of Loop (even if through dubiously ethical means) being able to slowly reintegrate with the party as a whole new person, because they are, in fact, their own person.

It's a muddle of thematic threads im pulling on and "wouldn't it be fucked up if", but. (at its core, it's powered by the fact that like, while narratively isat's theme of 'the only person who can truly take the first step to help you is yourself'. (wrt: loop helping the party help siffrin in act 5) which i LOVE AND IS GREAT NARRATIVELY…. would be super fucked up irl to learn that your friend 'learned as a lesson' while you stood by kinda uselessly. I know i'd be upset about it. but thats mostly background here. doesn't really come up. at least not until loop has to explain who they are and the party realises they had to fall back on literally themselves again for help, but i digress,)

The real core concept is: Occam's razor. It is like, inherently, a buckwild thing to accuse a person of being somehow a clone or copy of your friend. Even if they start vaguely alluding to a backstory it's far more likely they were some other person before all that. (I still think Odile has that theory in the back pocket but she's rational enough to know it's a really long shot without a solid explanation. and i think Loop deep down knows this, and would, if cornered into confessing, turn the situation around to go J'ACCUSE and make HER explain it instead. Ever longer dodging being direct with their emotions...)

And the party are nice! And if someone has changed and wants to keep stuff secret it's kind of not their business? (Though it's hard not to speculate… see: the main joke of the doodles) And they seem important to Siffrin so they just try to accept them abrasive quirks and all. And eventually the question of their prior identity just fades away since, well, they're Loop. Their friend Loop.

but yeah. personal headcanon is that a few months/weeks after picking up and getting aquainted with Nille** (since that was presumably the IMMEDIATE TASK postgame), Loop reappears (either after a literal period of nonexistance, or just spending a few months wandering the french countryside alone being attacked by wild dogs). Since Siffrin has had a while to be therapised by the party they're doing mostly okay, but Loop showing up and still being agitated/aggressive pulls them both into a bit of a backslide behaviourally and puts the party on the back foot again.

Hooowever, I do think that due to no longer being literally stewing in the worst pressure cooker of all time together, the two do mostly actually sort themselves out with productive conversation. (Via a cycle of: genuinely distressing argument -> weeeird lovebombing -> ok we're good -> repeat, that gets less intense over time)

Thus, allowing the party to just. Integrate loop as a new person. They and Siffrin shuffle into different ecological niches (Loop taking over stuff Siffrin is now too squeamish for, etc (see: hunting, mostly)), and while it's not exactly what Loop wanted they generally get that beggars can't be choosers and it's a pretty good deal. And the rest of the party does straight up just like them as a friend, especially when Loop quits trying to actively antagonise them after a few weeks of being around them, since they just can't keep up being mean to people they like forever.

As for how I think the truth eventually drags itself out. This is where I invoke The Isabeau Torment Nexus™. So its gonna get shippy here for a bit hold on.

Which is, I think giving them time before Loop reappears long enough that Siffrin and Iseabeau actually manage to become established, Isabeau has to be the one to nudge the pair of them and go. "Hey. You know we're in Vaugarde right. I'm okay with polyamory if we all communicate." Before Loop and Siffrin actually even acknowledge that whatever the fuck they have going on kinda looks a lot like a relationship of some kind. (or have already been agonising about that via fighting and arguing, depending) (Obviously this comes after Isa "Emotionally intelligent enough to keep a lid on the jealousy" Beau has managed to use that big brain of his to Not just go Scream somewhere on the daily because oh godddd they keep talking like theyre suicide-baiting each other jesus chriiist. is it overstepping his boundaries to bring that up?? god)

This, taking a bunch of the tension out of Loop and Isabeau's relationship (Since I imagine Loop is a. being weird for the obvious reasons and b. feeling kinda guilty about 'getting in the way of' Siffrin and Iseabeau), allows them to actually get close in a normal friend way. (I think an interesting turning point could be Isabeau actually taking Loop's side in an argument vs Siffrin, which would absolutely break Loop's brain. Especially if it's an argument that matters. Like what do you mean he isn't just going to play favourites. What?)

Then Isabeau, just actually open minded and charmed by Loop (and maybe even somewhat at Siffrin's suggestion?) tries to close the final open side on the polyamory triangle here and that's the final straw for Loop on "This lie by omission is too unethical to keep up, this is just actually sick and wrong. I can't do this while he doesn't know who I am." Though. Obviously it probably goes. Very poorly with emotions high like that. And the added element of several months of deceit. Getting dark here for a second but that dagger is going MISSING and so are THEY for a hot minute.

Then yaaay everything works out in the end 👍 yippieee!! all it took was maybe a lot of harrowed recontextualisation of all the weird shit your new friend said and did when it turns out they're your old friend. It's fine.

But yeah. this is basically the context all of my postcanon doodles have existed within? And those exist to give other people something to chew on. So this does too.

I suppose TL;DR: Imagine if sloopis almost fucking happens before isabeau knows who loop is. can you fucking imagine. can you imagine having to navigate that. nightmare.

*Yes this includes the implied cannibalism comic. Uhh. Comes part and parcel with headcanoning that Loop went way off the deep end similar to A5 Sif But Maybe Worse before giving in. Add weepy half-asleep confessions to murder wherever you see fit in your mind palace. 👍👍👍

**Re: Nille footnote. I don't have anywhere to put this besides here! I have some thoughts on Loop and Nille having an odd dynamic. I don't imagine Nille to be super gung-ho on trusting a bunch of adults (even if they are majority around her age) given their implied backstory. It's probably a big shock to the system, especially since Bambouche is a good couple hundred Kilometers up north from Dormont and these guys don't seem to have trains. She would've been unfrozen and without Bonnie for some time....

Which is to say: I think she's suspicious of them. I think she may be looking for excuses to distance herself, keep Bonnie safe. SO.... A new guy showing up? And antagonising the party? What do they know that I don't...? I should find out.

And since... Loop didn't ever know Nille, they have no ammunition or real reason to be cruel. Plus, if they're trying to stay on Bonnie's good side (SINCE... if Bonnie thought Loop was cringe they may as well kill themselves. In their mind.) they SUPER have no reason to antagonise Nille.

Mostly, they might be able to open up to each other easier than they can the rest of the party?

I feel like this resolves with Loop feeling compelled to apologise for what they and Siffrin let happen to Bonnie, though... Hmm... Depends on how you interpret Nille that they'd be glad nobody else had been told about that yet, or furious it had been secret this long. I lean toward the former.

#PHEW THIS IS LONG. i wrote some extra footnotes and tidied it up a bit. but uh. here you go! my personal headcanon baseline for postcanon.#i could probably elaborate more but that would get unwieldy. like i have opinions on loop's dynamics w each party member but. LONG POST...#lucabytetalks #isat #isat spoilers #in stars and time #isat loop #isiloop #sloopis #WONT be tagging everyone thats absurd. loop centric post though with a chunk about nille at the end #isat act 6 spoilers

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sanctus-ingenium · 1 year

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Another one of these since i haven't done it in a while! Sketch -> finished illustration

Thoughts & process below the cut :>

Out of Bounds: i deleted the sketch of this off my ipad because i didn't like it, and for months it only existed as a screenshot on discord. finally in january of this year i was like Wait Actually and decided to keep working on it. I didn't achieve the look I was going for (kind of foggy and vague. It came out too sharp and high contrast) but it was fun to throw the kitchen sink at it for an afternoon and then call it done finally. I don't remember which horse this was originally supposed to be, I think Macha?

I reused the pose, you'll find the same one in my Pascal sketchbook from the section on gait studies. That's the cool thing about doing 30 sketches at once, you can finish them up any time you like for a different drawing

The Fool ft Islin: the original concept for this is from [takes a moment to decipher the american date system on discord] January 2022

It wasn't dynamic enough, but I've had this on the backburner for sooo long. I think I completed like 4 cards in between this sketch and the final version lol. But, for a bit of background, this is from my series of major arcana based in Inver, and in particular the events of the 1860s-era book series, Moth Viper Foal (a demo of the first book, Said The Black Horse, is available for free/pwyw in my shop). This scene is a companion to Said The Black Horse, depicting the aftermath of the traumatic fight that caused Islin to storm off. He had been working at the mill as a semiprofessional back alley surgeon when he received an offer to join the church and work as a trained surgeon in their hospital. But when he brought the good news back to his friends it was met with utter rejection, driving him to basically run away to join the church. while gay and trans. thus the card.

he didn't actually bring a bag with him when he ran out but for the sake of the card i drew him with one

Gryfon and Pantera: This is how 99% of holy beast drawings start out, even the super stylised ones. I struggle a lot to draw them in procreate so they start in sai and then i transfer them over. The story of this is already explained in the caption of the original post so I'll just talk about the process which was... honestly torturous. I actually don't like too much textures and effects on things (wild, I know) and this one and Out of Bounds are ones where I kind of preferred it pre-texturising.

The text on the side is the official in-universe report of the event, detailing the casualties, the valiant actions of Gryfon's knight before he died and so on. There's also spoilers in there :>

My main struggle with this art style is how it always ends up slightly TOO sharp and crisp in a way the just a blur filter never can correct. There's not a lot of immersion to break, to be fair, but I think this still does it a little. I need to get more comfortable doing the lines with larger and softer brushes, and allowing imperfections.

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shubblelive · 9 months

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— NOT MUCH LONGER

summary : wilbur has always been dedicated to his viewers, sometimes too much. his fans are aware of this, you are aware of this, and he is aware of this. so when you go multiple days without seeing your boyfriend because of how hard he's working you take matters into your own hands, not realising that thousands of people are there watching you do it.

genre : fluff

warnings : mentions of eating/food, a few swearwords, wilbur not taking care of himself, very small panicky moment

pairing : cc!wilbur soot x fem!reader

pronouns : she/her, reader is called wilbur's girlfriend/wife

featuring : cc!wilbur soot

requested : Could you do a fic where the reader isn’t a very public person (in regards to the internet) and one day, wilbur’s streaming and she goes in and brings him some food and kisses him, not knowing he was live, and when she notices, she just gets all red and embarrassed and wilbur goes out of frame with her and its just all fluffy, and the chat goes craaazy

word count : 1.3K

note : hi lmao. i know, i know it's been nearly 2 months since i 've posted anything. school really caught p to me, i was so stressed out i was crying like multiple times a day for a few weeks. i wanna thank you guys for your patience, i have one more week of classes before spring break and then exams are right after that so i am really unsure of how much free time i'm gonna have until like mid-november.

There was a lot of things that you loved about Wilbur. Of course there was, the two of you had been together since university, nearing on 5 years. Knowing for someone that long, though, and there were obviously aspects of your boyfriend that you were less than fond of. There weren’t a lot, but the main one was the fact that he was a major workaholic.

You were completely understanding of how important his job was to him. He had been doing it longer than you’d even known each other and you’d never want to do anything to make it seem like you were anything less than supportive.

But the last couple of weeks had been driving you crazy.

He’d be out all day filming for twenty different videos or in the studio - that was fine, you had your own work and hobbies to keep you occupied. But then he’d get home and it was straight to editing, or writing, or meetings for merch, album art, new videos. It had gotten to the point where you hadn’t even seen him in two days. You knew he’d been home, you vaguely heard the shower running while you were asleep, so tired you couldn’t bring yourself to lift your head. Clothes had been added to the laundry hamper, and water glasses had been added to the sink. He’d messaged you, of course. You were high on his list of priorities, it being a no-brainer that whenever he got a free minute he was texting you to let you know where he was going, promising that he’d be home soon.

When you got home from work, you were pleasantly surprised to find his docs at the front door, neatly kicked to the side so they were out of the way along with the rest of your collective pile. You put your stuff down and practically floated around the house, searching for your boyfriend. Not in the kitchen, though the dishes had been done for you, left to dry. Not in the living room, though there was a coat draped over the back of the couch that you picked up and deposited in the bedroom (also empty, but his side of the bed was rumpled like he’d fallen straight on top of the blankets).

You were walking down the hallway when you finally heard him. He was talking softly, not outside of the norm for him. His office wasn’t soundproof, and you often heard him through the walls as you went about your day, whether that was laughing loudly as he streamed, or the muffled sound of him strumming his guitar, trying to write a new song. He was being quiet, probably editing a video. You knew he had his own room in the group office, just for him to edit, but he liked to bring them home sometimes.

You went back into the kitchen to dry the dishes for Wilbur and you noted that there weren’t any new plates added to the pile. You knew that Wilbur had eaten while he was gone, he’d texted you every time they ordered food, but you also knew that it had been a couple of days since his last home cooked meal. You, admittedly didn’t have much in the pantry, but it was made with love, which was the thought that counts.

That was the thought on the tip of your tongue as you knocked gently on the door, a plate of mac and cheese and a glass of water in hand, smile breaking out at the sight of your boyfriend at his desk.

Wilbur’s viewers had always been aware that he had a girlfriend. He mentioned you for the first time after you guys had been together for a year, and since then you were a sporadic presence in his online life, maybe a mention every couple of weeks or months. They didn’t know anything else though, not even your name. His viewers, over the past couple of years had developed their own nicknames for you. It started from one of the first streams you were mentioned in, someone in chat asked if you were Wilbur’s wife. He’d laughed, said no, and then tried to say you were not his wife, and instead pronounced it “wiff.” It got slightly out of hand over the years, with most people lovingly referring to you online as wiffleball. Wilbur had apologised profusely for the slip up, but you found it too funny to actually care. It was definitely weird for you to see, though, the phrase ‘Wiffleball’ randomly trending every couple of months.

So, they didn’t know your name, and they definitely didn’t know your face. Wilbur was usually on high alert for even your footsteps outside the door, let alone you wanting to come inside. He’d yell that he was live, and you’d wait dutifully at the door for him to come outside. It was more for your sake than his, but he cared just as much about your right to privacy as you did. But today, he was so preoccupied with the fact that he hadn’t seen you in nearly three days that he completely forgot to.

The monitor with his own face in it was tilted away from the door, and you were so entranced by the smile on his face that you didn’t notice until it was too late. He was standing to meet you, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Hi, lovely, I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you too, Wil,” Your hands were on his arms the second you placed the food down, and you were right about to kiss him properly when you saw a fast movement out the corner of your eye. His chat was whizzing by so fast that you almost couldn’t read it. You backed out of frame immediately, almost out of instinct, wide eyes meeting Wilbur’s. “You’re streaming?”

“Fuck,” Wilbur made sure that you were definitely out of the frame before putting his stream back on the loading screen and going back to check on you.

Your breathing was much faster than usual and he could all but see your heart jumping out of your chest. “I am so sorry, darling, I was too busy being happy to see you that I completely forgot that I was even streaming. Are you okay?”

Your hands found Wilbur’s shirt, clenching it between your fists and burying your face in the fabric across his chest. His hands were securely on your back as he held you while you calmed your breathing. You weren’t crying no, he could tell you just needed to slow your breaths down and you’d be alright. He was whispering reassurances in your ear and within a few minutes your heart had calmed down. “I’m alright.”

“I’m so sorry,” Wilbur launched immediately into apologies again but your vice grip on his shirt stopped him.

“I’m alright, Wilbur.” You strangely were alright. What you could see on the chat were all nice things, they were all so excited to see you. “Never want to go back on your stream again, but I’m okay with them seeing me.”

“You don’t have to be okay, love, if you’re not. I’ll get the VOD taken down when I’m done and edit you out and say something about not circulating the video, I am so sorry-”

“I’m fine, Wilbur.” You pulled the fabric closer to your chest, the movement effectively silencing him. “Like I said. I am still good not showing up on your streams and stuff, but you can leave the video up. I’m alright with it, I promise.”

He softened at your determined face. “I love you,” he said in place of another apology. “I love you, and I am still sorry that I forgot to tell you. No more until you say so, I promise.”

“Thank you,” you said earnestly, loosening your grip on his shirt. “I’ll let you finish up now, do you think you’ll be a while?”

Wilbur kissed you softly before sitting back in his chair and looking up at you full of love. “Trust me, I definitely won’t be much longer.”

#wilbuh #wilbur soot fluff #wilbur x y/n #wilbur soot imagine #wilbur soot x reader fluff #wilbur soot headcanons #wilbur soot x y/n #wilbur soot x reader #wilbur soot fic #wilbur soot x you #wilbur soot fanfiction #wilbur soot angst

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haliteatiger · 1 month

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Happy Werewolf Wednesday, ya'll! We're serving up a big pot of tea tonight so get those cups ready!

Special thanks to Blackbackedjackal and King for their help in putting this together, editing, and especially to Jackal for being so supportive and encouraging. I'm very much not normally the type to do call-out posts, but people need to be aware of Dogblud, as she has hurt, not only myself, but quite a few others as well, and seems to have somehow gotten away with behaving like this for 20-odd years. I'm of the mind she shouldn't be allowed to do so any more, hence this post.

TL;DR - Beware of Dogblud, aka Ashryn, aka DogofBlud, aka ThatDogMagic. Very, very long post under the cut.

With everything happening with DogBlud and Blackbackedjackal's studio, I felt emboldened to come forward with my own experiences with her. This is something I've been carrying around since it happened roughly 2 years ago. It was one of the main reasons that put me off drawing werewolves, my own characters, or engaging any more in the fandom. I've hinted at it a few times but I've never had the energy to come forward and deal with the fall out. I wanted to move on with the rest of my life because IRL was more important than online drama. And I knew her behavior would come back to bite her sooner or later, regardless of what I did.

It's been very validating to see that I was right.

It was around the time that Blud and I became friends that I was feeling a bit burnt out on werewolves. I'd been trying to pull together my own werewolf-related project for something close to 12 years. The past 4 years had also been pretty draining on me creatively and socially, as it had for a lot of artists with regards to the pandemic. I also had some IRL things I was dealing with: mainly with my marriage and transitioning between medications to manage my anxiety + bipolar.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to screenshot everything at the time. I do have logs from back when we roleplayed together. There are several conversations in them but because they were saved as text documents, they're pretty dubious in terms of solid evidence.

It would have been better if I had taken screenshots as it was happening, rather than just saving the logs. With what I *do* have, however, I feel as though it may be enough to make the point that I'm trying to make, and to exhibit how horrible things got.

I'll provide some context.

I had talked with Blud on and off over the years, and we had always gotten along. We had a lot in common and after we had started talking more, our friendship eventually grew into a collaborative project. We were going to combine our stories and write a comic based on it. We had a lot of discussions on how Blud was reticent to do this in the beginning and how she wanted a contract to be made up so that in the event that something *did* happen, we could both walk away feeling like it was handled fairly.

Honestly, I should have listened to the first alarm that went off in my brain, when, in an act of ominous foreboding she said something along the lines of don't be so sure, it could happen. It was in response to me being like "we're getting along so well and share so much of a bond right now. I can't fathom that being a problem!"

The contract never materialized. It was something we had decided to do *after* we had put together something of a prototype project to see how well we worked together. It made complete sense to me at the time as we were both eager to focus on the fun parts of writing and drawing together.

It was decided that I would be the lead artist (doing coloring and final lines) while Blud would do everything else (which was inking, layouts, and the majority of the writing). The both of us felt that she had more experience in those areas. I also believed that she had a better knack for it as well. I had felt that she had a better understanding of story structure than myself. And I thought that Blud had felt the same way about my art. That I had the experience to take point on that.

Since I had collaborated with other artists and writers before, I attempted to approach the project with the same sort of professionalism I always do. Especially the projects that I genuinely thought stood a chance of being published in the future. We had started out trying to get a feel for each other's flows and rhythms. I had expected Blud to try and meet me in the middle of where our processes would potentially differ from one another, so that we could develop a fairly smooth workflow.

I had also expected, according to our discussions on the matter, that we would value each other's opinions on things and take them into consideration. We had such good synchronicity already.

In the beginning, there wasn't any unusual behavior that caught my attention. Blud was a bit uncomfortable with trying out new things but I did my best to accommodate her so that our project could move forward without too much turbulence. She had also mentioned to me before that she was autistic, and since my husband is also autistic, I knew how difficult it could be when it came to adapting to new routines. But when it was time for her to deliver the first set of layouts, it wasn't at all what I expected.

What I had expected was something with margins, clearly marked boxes, and figures that I could do rough lines over. I also expected notes that confirmed what we had discussed earlier about the project; that way I knew what she wanted or if there would be any changes. She took offense to this, feeling like I was violating our agreement. Though Blud did try to give me space with regards to the actual art, and while she would offer criticisms here and there, I trusted her opinion as an artist and as a friend. But apparently that didn't go both ways. In fact, Blud seemed to be offended that I expected more from her.

Blud agreed to concede. She suddenly seemed fine with the changes that I had asked for after seeing the layouts. I guess she was feeling overstimulated by the change and I might have been applying too much of a critical tone to her responses to begin with. I have had to deal with rejection sensitivity throughout my life and it's certainly prompted me to approach what people say to me online with a bit of scrutiny (sometimes too much).

And while I was mildly annoyed, although admittedly I was more concerned with Blud's overall reaction to my asking for clarification about several things in the layouts, I let it go. But it seemed like there was a problem. The majority of my ideas were either rejected or outright overridden with Blud convincing me that my faulty memory had made me unable to remember what we had agreed upon. Or that I might have been misremembering in my own favor.

There was one time where we were discussing a monster's design. Blud had already decided to settle on one design that she had come up with, even as I continued to offer other suggestions. The story was to take place in my setting, so I was under the impression that I got to decide what kind of creatures should populate it. The conversation ended somewhat ambiguously. I had assumed that we'd come to a solid conclusion later.

I came back the next day and it turned out that we were using her design because that was what we had decided on. "Don't you remember? You really need to do something about that faulty memory of yours, Tek. I can't be doing this for you all the time."

At which point, Blud would go back and meticulously scour the conversation until she managed to find a set of lines that would make it seem as though I had 100% agreed. Even when I tried to explain that I had meant something else, she took it as an affront on her inability to understand nuances due to her autism.

I admit that my memory isn't that greatest at times, but I've never had anyone complain about it before. And none of my friends have ever minded providing reminders to me if I did misremember something incorrectly. We all forget stuff at times, right? It's *still* something that I'm self-conscious about because (like a lot of people with ADHD) my memory seems selective at times. This was, apparently, a problem that I needed to manage.

And even as I'm remembering these incidents to the best of my ability, I've already spent so much time recounting all of this to friends. I feel confident in my recollection. There are some details that may overlap or become entwined with other things, but it all basically tells the same story. Especially in conjunction with what's been said by others. You're free to take it as hearsay since I do not have screenshots to back this up.

I will mention (since I've been told it's something that Blud has taken particular interest in) that at one point, I did have a crush on her. I was having some problems IRL, and it was nice to have someone whom I felt actually understood me. I also felt like I saw a lot of myself in her. I think that, at one point, I did describe her as the kind of "girlfriend" I would want. Blud seemed to indicate the feeling was mutual.

Between our collaborative partnership and all of the details we shared about our lives, it did feel like an intimate relationship at times. I had no intentions of pursuing it. We were not compatible in our romantic and sexual identities, and I had no intention of leaving my current partner for her.

I had begun to notice red flags, even if I wasn't ready to accept them yet.

I've had experience with abusive relationships in the past but they were in person, and not online. I knew what to look out for and yet I was being willfully ignorant about our friendship. I wanted to give Blud the benefit of the doubt. I wanted the project to work *so* badly that I was willing to work with her increasing demands as the months went by.

I had no idea that those demands would change into, quite literal, temper tantrums. It would then trigger my fawning response which was due to an abusive family situation that I had dealt with before I moved to Canada. The tactic was this: concede to someone until there was a time that they either understood reason or I had the chance to use it against them if necessary.

I started to take screenshots. I wish that I had taken a lot more of them so that everyone could get a better idea of what was happening. I did go back and manage to record the majority of the first outburst. It was the first inkling I had that Blud wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. I knew that that would be one of the first conversations that she would promptly delete. And consequently, I was right.

This assortment of screenshots will exhibit the first serious confrontation that Blud had with me. I am absolutely *not* proud of how I handled this. I was literally panicking at the time and doing whatever I could to get her to calm down. Because I have a temper that can look similar to this in person, I knew that I had to wait until the post-tantrum clarity would hit Blud. I tried my best to not lose my own temper in turn but looking back, I feel that I came off as sounding too timid.

I didn't want to ruin this project.

I wanted to make a comic with an individual that I admired and respected as a fellow artist. And, with me not knowing how to respond, my main priority was to not make things any worse than they already were.

Below is the conversation in its entirety:

I had taken this screenshot on my phone after I had stepped away to compose myself. Blud had handled the confrontation and criticism with a reasonable amount of apprehension. But what had not occurred to me was that I could have said something that would remind her of past experiences with a roleplaying group.

It was something that had evidently scarred Blud for life.

I took away the wrong things from what she had told me, choosing to focus on the aspects of the "betrayal" that had appeared to bother her the most. And in hindsight, I did not see the correlation. I was genuinely apologetic that I had hurt her feelings.

But I *will* critique Blud for her poor handling of the situation. Whether or not I had hurt her feelings, no one is entitled to act like this or claim that this is what attempting to resolve a problem should look like.

I wasn't sure on how to initially respond to Blud. It had been ages since I'd had to deal with someone flying off the handle like that.

The following screenshots are where the conversation picked up, after she had already deleted the above message:

We had weathered the "storm" and after Blud calmed down, she was ready to communicate. There was a part of me that was genuinely sincere when I apologized to her. I did mean it when I said that I had no intentions of hurting her and that I hadn't considered how my statement would sound to her.

I had hoped that this had been a stress response due to factors outside of our collaboration. And especially when I took into account how she had interacted with me in the past. I knew that Blud had a lot going on IRL, and that she had already put a considerable amount of energy into this project.

I had taken her meltdown more personally than she could perceive that I would, because this was something that was acceptable to her. She had a "condition" that would absolve her of these abhorrent meltdowns and I needed to get used to them if we were going to continue working on that project together.

I was shaking the entire time we were typing in the chat.

I was sincere in my responses. I really did want to work things out with Blud and give her the benefit of the doubt. I could have been taking the things that she said too personally or maybe I had been reading too much into the situation. Was there a chance that I could have been misreading her outburst? I tried my best to keep an open mind though I was still somewhat baffled by the fact that she would have meltdowns as often as she did.

I confided in my husband and some other friends about the situation. They were also bewildered by Blud's actions.

By this point, I was struggling with the reality that this collaboration was most likely *not* going to work out but I still wanted to try. I still cared about Blud. We would still hang out together and talk about things like music, our characters, or our stories.

While I did have the foresight to go back and screenshot this section, I wasn't fast enough to get screenshots of everything else that I will be going over. Blud *did* admit to going back and deleting certain exchanges due to a mixture of shame; not wanting to look at them when she would scroll through our conversations.

In retrospect, it was very telling.

And even after that meltdown, I still enjoyed the friendship that I had with her. I kept my guard up but I was willing to make compromises on her behalf if it resulted in better communication between the two of us. Blud made me promise to immediately tell her if I had a problem with something. I also agreed to keep notes of our conversations.

It worked for the most part.

In the end though, it became apparent that Blud wasn't willing to do the same for me (even after we had an extended conversation about it). I then realized that I had been tasked with basically *managing* her autism for her. I was already busy with my supposedly "bad memory" at the time; and Blud was more than ready to scroll back up through our conversations to cherry-pick a line or two of text to remind me of what was said earlier.

Because, for her, circumstances couldn't ever change. If they did, it would mean that Blud had lost control of the situation and that she was in the wrong. She could *not* be in the wrong.

And if she was in the wrong? It would take solid evidence, three witnesses, and a court of law to prove it.

She had two other major meltdowns after this. I managed to step away from communicating with her through one of them and I don't remember the other meltdown lasting very long. She immediately deleted the texts of both of those instances before I could take screenshots of them.

It seemed like I could do nothing right when it came to Blud, no matter the lengths I would go to accommodate her. I knew that it was a common tactic used by abusers. I finally accepted that our partnership wasn't going to work out and I began thinking about an exit strategy. The final straw was when she began to expect me to be at her beck and call.

I had promised that I would be there for her, within reason, and I was willing to offer reassurances whenever she would ask me for them. The promise had been made back when we had first started to talk to one another with more frequency, before Blud had shown me her true colors. I would end up completely underestimating just how badly she would need reassurance.

To be frank, I underestimated a lot about Blud in the beginning.

I would end up mentioning that I enjoyed my space in several different conversations with her. That there was a chance that I might be offline for several days so I could take care of things IRL and recharge my social batteries. I'm somewhat of a recluse. And an adult who enjoys things that aren't online.

She said that it was fine.

I became incredibly anxious when I would talk to Blud, especially after her somewhat abrupt change in personality.

I then attempted to put my foot down about boundaries and this is what she had to say:

I decided to walk away for a bit and I came back after I had had some time to think things over. This wasn't healthy for either of us. I wrote a couple of sentences to say goodbye to Blud before I blocked her. I knew that my actions would probably infuriate her. She had told me in the past that she *hated* not being able to have the final word... which she was able to do through email:

“And I'm not letting you pretend you have control over the situation, or the high ground. You distinctly have neither. But since you're determined to stick to your 'principles' on this, I've decided to make it easier for you.”

She thought that she was absolved of all sins just because I had said that I would stand by her at her worst. And at the time that I said that, I had no idea that her worst would be her trying everything possible to protect her boundaries while stomping all over mine. It didn't matter what she said or how often she would apologize when I would confront her. She kept doing it.

I admit that I wasn't perfect in this situation either.

There were times when I was condescending, critical, or downright mean when I talked to Blud because that was the way I had felt when she was talking to me. I soon realized that it didn't matter either way. I could have been using the friendliest tone imaginable and she still would have perceived it as either mocking or dismissive on my end. There were even a few times where I would preface my explanations with an advisory “please know that I am not attacking you and try to read this in an understanding tone,”etc. I would then post an explanation I had spent hours picking at to ensure that there was no way she could misinterpret the intent. Even so, she still read the majority of what I said as criticism and would take it to heart.

I never expected Blud to do something that made her uncomfortable; nor did I expect her to overextend herself when it came to our project. I would go out of my way to make sure everything was fine when we would talk about it. I only expected mutual respect in return.

When we would get into discussions (arguments), she would never attempt to understand my point of view or let me explain myself. It would have made it about me when it should have been about Blud and her needs. She sometimes would agree to come to a compromise about something, but only if I would admit that I was in the wrong.

I know that if Blud was to look at these screenshots, she'd be incredulous that I'm trying to distract from the horrible things that *I* did. And those horrible things that I did? I tried my best to work with her.

It wasn't just her poor teamwork that bothered me. It was her attitude and the lack of respect that she showed me. She would never ask me to clarify something that I said; always assuming that it was a criticism against her. I can only speculate that Blud did not want to hear about how any of this was her fault, like in the email she sent me.

I don't know if I was actually her friend at any point. Friends make efforts to understand one another. Ideally, they’d want their friendships to continue, and they would want everyone to be getting along and having fun. She seemed to actively defy that.

I would argue that things like this don't just happen in a vacuum. There's almost always a reason for such things, but it's honestly a mystery to me as to where this vitriol comes from. I don't know why Blud sees monsters in every word, especially if they come from a "friend".

I've seen her viscously mock herself during meltdowns; it seems like she hates herself and expects everyone else to hate her too. I think that she wants it to be the truth, so that it validates the feelings she has about herself. The behavior patterns that I'd been exposed to are consistent with the idea that Blud is seeking confirmation about the personal assumptions she has about herself. It's what makes her so volatile to those around her. Yet, she refuses to break the cycle.

I hope that she can make that choice in the future but at this point, I'm not holding my breath.

#dogblud #it feels a bit dirty doing a call out post #but people need to know #she's gotten away with this for far too long #i generally tend to give people the benefit of a doubt #clearly too much #but you can only make up so many excuses before you begin to realize that #at the end of the day #people still have the ability to make a choice #“everyone always leaves me”#well maybe you should really consider what the common variable is #just sayin

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transformers-synergize · 3 months

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synergize mini update

first couple pages of synergize are illustrated/done. Not sure how long it will take for me to finish the first chapter since it's been a long time since I've done a comic, and those were released page by page, not chapter by chapter.

first two chapters of synergize have been nightmares to write, establishing the world, the characters, the basic lore, the main conflict/main plot while also trying to keep it toneally somewhat consistent with future chapters since this is a introduction and I dont want it to toneally clash to much with future chapter and give off a false impression of what synergize will be like. Beginnings are hard, but it's something I have to do to get to the plots/stories I actually want to write.

also, major thing, take everything posted on this blog with a huge grain of salt, the problem with writing, vs planning is things I originally thought would work, sometimes don't, or I come up with something better while writing, or dynamics change as I flesh them out more. I feel guilty for changing things I shared publicly, but as i writes things are bound to change hopefully for the better. The final say on what is truely canon is the comic. Many things on the blog are out of date or could possibly be changed in the future. (Mirage is no longer going to be a part of the starting cast, he's going to show up later, Smokescreen will fill his spot)

still won't be a ton of art for a while, since comic, so here's some ship design references I don't think I have shared yet

#mirage doesn't have much to do plots wise for the first few chapters of synergize #mirage is a extremely plot important characters but i think his story works better if he shows up later #characters he has the most lore with don't show up till later #some screen has stuff to do early on and was going to be the first lost bot found #*Smokescreen #my phone auto correct to some screen lol #update post #tfs #transformers synergize #text post

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anghraine · 18 days

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thatinsufferableb-st-rd said:

@anghraine so i have read the books multiple times and am an avid fan of the movies. I enjoy both for what they are. I think the main difference is that Peter Jackson was very open about what they chose to cut and why from anything I've ever seen. They even have Sam give a nod to the book readers by saying "by rights we shouldn't even be here". No I'm not happy about what they did with Faramir and Glorfindel got jipped, and I would have lover to have seen Elronds sons but at the end of the day there were acknowledgments of what and why. Rings of Power to me has always come off as hiding from any criticism by using the shield of "well if you don't like it it's because you don't like POCs in it". To which I genuinely could not give a fuck less, like there are so many branches of elves that went different ways so that could make sense within what Tolkein established. But don't hide behind that when your writing is just "Sauron is evil. We know. And we know she knows. But we have to make it seem like she's the only one who Has A Clue so we must all try to shoo her off to make a plotline"

@lesbiansforboromir has already correctly and politely pointed out that you are doing the very thing we were criticizing in that post—intruding on ROP fan discussion to unfavorably contrast the show to the Peter Jackson films, while also applying a degree of scrutiny to ROP that the Jackson films are rarely subject to in a remotely comparable way and could not bear. Frankly, @lesbiansforboromir is nicer and more restrained than I am about this, but you chose to tag me as well, so I'll also respond.

We (lesbiansforboromir and I) were talking about being excited about costuming in S2 of ROP and disliking the fandom meltdowns over ROP's costuming looking (somewhat) different from the films' aesthetic. Since it had already come up in their discussion, I added that I'm not convinced by the anti-ROP contingent framing their seething hatred of the costuming and design as just caring so much about fidelity to Tolkien's vision. I pointed out that Tolkien fandom broadly cares far more about their preferred, film-influenced aesthetics than Tolkien's actual descriptions and gave some specific examples of this.

There's been a lot of talk, for instance, about how the universally long, flowing hair for Elves preferred by the fandom and used in the films is actually totally canon according to Tolkien even if it's rarely mentioned in LOTR proper. This is inaccurate. Galadriel's brother Aegnor is typically depicted in the fandom/film-preferred style rather than per Tolkien's description of his hair as "strong and stiff, rising upon his head like flames" (indeed, in general neither Aegnor nor anyone else is ever depicted this way, and this description rarely shows up in the lists of "no it's about ethics in adaptation" Tolkien hair quotes).

Tolkien repeatedly describes Elvish, peredhel, and Dúnadan women as wearing their hair bound up in braided coiffures with jeweled hair pieces/nets rather than loose and flowing à la the films and the fandom. Nobody cares, any more than they care about Tolkien's description of Arwen's clothing as soft, grey, and noticeably devoid of ornamentation apart from a belt and netted cap (i.e. the opposite of her highly elaborate film costuming and typically loose, unbound, uncovered hair in the films and most illustrations).

Meanwhile, my fave Faramir's hair is nowhere near long enough in the films or most art to mingle with Éowyn's as Tolkien describes. It's usually also depicted as blond, reddish, or brown rather than black as in the book; in Tolkien's LOTR, all described Gondorians have dark or black hair, with the only difference in coloring being that some Gondorians are dark-skinned and some are pale. Again, almost nobody in the fandom cares about this when they're going on about costume design and casting to reflect Tolkien's vision, and male Gondorians are overwhelmingly depicted with short or shoulder-length hair in the films and in Tolkien illustrations.

Popular depictions of Gondor, including the Gondor of the films, very rarely reflect Tolkien's description of Gondor's aesthetic as similar to ancient Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, and the Roman Empire. Film Gondor has, at most, extremely vague allusions to Byzantine architecture amidst the general and deliberate westernization of Gondor's design—as just one example among many, Tolkien's explicitly Egyptian-based design for the royal crown of Gondor is converted to a generically western European-style crown in the films and overwhelmingly in the fandom.

I then pointed out that it's been very noticeable that ROP haters tend to have a powerful double standard wrt fidelity when it comes to the Jackson films. For over 20 years, most film fans have been constitutionally incapable of tolerating even slight criticism of the films without jumping in to defend their greatness and condescendingly explain the most basic elements of adaptation. (Yes, we know film is not the same medium as text, we know changes are part of adaptation to another medium, we all know that, we all know that a word-for-word adaptation would suck and never be made, this is not new information and does not make the PJ films' every choice a good one.) Yet most film LOTR fans who vocally despise ROP display none of the charity towards ROP that they demand for the films (demand even from someone like Christopher Tolkien, a dead man the entire fandom is deeply indebted to, whose dislike of the films still leads to regular attacks on his character from Jackson film stans).

This hypercritical yet hyperdefensive tendency in the fandom is neatly illustrated by the fact that you responded to a conversation about the double standards in evaluations of ROP's costuming vs the films' to go on about how ROP is objectively bad for reasons entirely unrelated to costuming, how you're totally not racist (something nobody was talking about), and to quote you directly, "Like the show was just Bad." Truly, an incisive critique. Meanwhile, your concessions with regard to the Jackson films are mainly about extremely minor and defensible omissions like removing Glorfindel and the sons of Elrond rather than the serious and fundamental problems that lesbiansforboromir and I have with them, or even the ways they do pretty much the exact same things you're lambasting ROP for.

I mean, if we're going to talk about action hero Elves in ROP vs the Jackson films, what about the action hero-ification of Legolas in the films? He was described by Tolkien himself as the Fellowship member who accomplished the least, so super badass battle-skateboarding Legolas hardly represents fidelity to Tolkien's vision. Why should that get a pass while film-stanning ROP haters seethe about ROP!Galadriel being too special, even though Tolkien described her as one of the most special Elves to ever live and specifically as remarkably athletic and insightful?

Meanwhile, film Gimli is reduced to comic relief, the only dwarves taken seriously are conventionally hot ones in The Hobbit films, and Frodo's expressions of strength and fortitude are consistently removed to glorify other characters. Film Gondorians were deliberately designed to seem like useless tin soldiers (which they are in the films, as well as whiter and blonder than Tolkien wrote them) rather than the physically imposing and highly effective fighting force of the book. ROP imagining Elvish rituals upon approaching Valinor that aren't based in Tolkien canon but don't directly conflict with it is absolutely trivial compared to the films' handling of Denethor and Faramir.

The point is not that you, personally, are not allowed to like the films or dislike ROP despite all this. Many people do love the films, including most of my followers. They do have their strengths, though they are extremely racist and few film fans will acknowledge this without soft-pedaling it in some way (esp, since you brought it up, given the context of the truly unhinged degree of racism that has accompanied much of the broader discourse around ROP).

The point is that film fans who hate ROP are constantly showing up in our conversations to be "well actually ROP is just objectively bad, unlike the films, because the show has failings that are also in the films but it's totally different there because of the contents of Peter Jackson's soul" or whatever. The point is the absolutely glaring and obnoxiously hypocritical double standard of defensiveness about the films and obsessive nitpicking of ROP that leads to ROP haters continually going on rants to ROP fans that are unwelcome, uninvited, and usually (as in this case) irrelevant to what was even being discussed.

#legendarium fanwank #respuestas #anghraine rants #legendarium blogging #pj critical #tv: lotr #ondonórë blogging #long post #jrr tolkien #aegnor #arwen undómiel #peoples of middle earth #letters of jrr tolkien #faramir #legolas #galadriel

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snaccpopstudios · 11 months

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Hi everyone! We're here with the long awaited post on our newest bachelor, Simoun. We know you've all been abuzz with questions about him so we hope to answer some of that in this deep dive into his creation. This post is in lieu of our usual Wednesday devlogs as we've been writing this over the span of several weeks, and was co-authored, edited, and reviewed by Tobias, Jude, ToyboxToonz, Primarvelous, and Sauce. The above image was drawn by @toyboxtoonz.

You can read the full post for free on Patreon, or click the readmore to see it all!

Personally speaking, some of my concerns since Simoun's debut are thoughts like "Do people think I'm making SnaccPop Studios push an agenda?" and "Do people think I'm going through a checklist while making new characters?" It's made it difficult for us to write this quickly because this is quite personal to myself and the rest of the sensitivity consultation team on the DachaBo team.

Concept to Creation

The story of DachaBo begins way before SnaccPop Studios itself was even a concept (that's Sauce's story to tell though). Early Patreon art of Simoun exists from November 2022, back before I was signed on to manage the Patreon and any other projects besides Sunny Day Jack. Sauce had some ideas laying around for several other characters in the DachaBo universe that didn't make it into the proof-of-concept demo:

I dug up an old draft for the DachaBo cat character we teased and it featured a story concept where the cat character was originally a female DachaBo character, referencing the original female design. And overtime he got tired of how he was being treated and decided to change his own self to reflect who he wanted to be, not the sycophants who collected the toys and whatnot ... It was shelved because I didnt have the means to sensitivity check it The designs are half cooked is all but he was supposed to be Indian ethnicity coded for no other reason than I've never seen a character like that

One thing that's important to note is that there definitely are Indian folks who are gender diverse (see Hijra on Wikipedia for a quick primer on one of the traditionally recognized nonbinary genders in South Asia) so it's not a novel concept by any means, but it's also not very common in media whatsoever.

Why The Long Wait?

One of the other contributing reasons as to why Sauce wasn't able to do much with the concept at the time is because we didn't have a VA for him confirmed yet, as I explained in May:

One thing that's rather unique to SnaccPop Studios in all of my experience as a game developer is the fact that all of our series involve coordinating with Voice Actors from the start, which means we need to take the VAs themselves into account when making characters. Adding another layer of complexity in hiring is the fact that SnaccPop Studios is a strictly Erotic Adult brand focusing on masculine love interests, and even if we focus more on the softcore, there's still the unfortunate stigma that any 18+ work has when attached to your name. All of these contributing factors make the potential talent pool that much smaller. This isn't to make excuses: I know SnaccPop Studios can do better on this front. While we can't make changes to some of the existing series' main cast (we don't want to put people out of a role they've been promised), we will do better moving forward to incorporate more diverse characters into our future titles, and that's a pledge

In the field of voice acting, it's best practice to cast actors with similar backgrounds to the character they're voicing, particularly for characters from marginalized populations (ethnicity, culture, gender, etc.), because it's a recurring issue in all professions where marginalized folks are regularly turned down for employment or career opportunities. You don't have to look far for instances where other voice directors failed to cast the proper talent for a character, even in the AAA sphere where they ought to have the resources to be able to find the proper talent; at SnaccPop, we wanted to avoid that situation at all costs.

Finding Simoun's Voice

So we had to confirm a VA first before we could do anything. Sauce, Reece, and I all tried to put private ads out for a trans masc POC (any ethnicity with dark skin) actor for a R18 game, which was largely met with silence at first, then responded to by folks who didn't fit the role in a full capacity (many only hit one or two of the criteria we laid out, some of them none at all). And it's not hard to imagine why: it's common knowledge that the majority of erotic works often fetishize marginalized people who are otherwise underrepresented in mainstream media. Things such as skin color, body type, hair color, age, etc. are treated as traits to be objectified, and on the off chance that queer folks or people of color might see themselves in porn… it's usually not for the most flattering or empowering of reasons. How could we, an exclusively Adults-only studio, convince someone who isn't familiar with us that we wanted to make something for people like them rather than something that turns them into mere masturbating material?

We were almost about to give up on the Catboy until I decided to take a chance on contacting a VA whom I hadn't had any formal and proper interactions with before. I'd been a fan of his work and knew him from an audition he sent in from a previous game I had worked on, but he knew me solely by name at best since we were following each other on Twitter. Still, it was a lead, and after chewing my nails for half a day, I shot off a message to Soren Viloria.

And what do you know? He said he'd give it a shot as his first NSFW role.

Naming the Lad

Soren is a Filipino VA, and despite the fact that I myself seem to be mistaken as Filipino by other Asians quite regularly, I'm actually not as well-versed in that culture as I ought to be.

There's actually a reason why we were so secretive with Simoun's name for a while: he didn't have one yet, so internally we just kept calling him "the Catboy." We wanted to pick a culture-appropriate name for him, something that was meaningful: Soren initially suggested "Siopao" as it was a common cat name (it's a type of Filipino Steamed Bun, so think of how many pets you've seen who have names like Cupcake or Nacho Supreme), but that didn't seem serious enough for a tsundere catboy like him. A few days later, Soren did a little research on a few well-known characters from Philippine media/culture that fit the bill a bit better:

Elías from the Philippine Revolution novel Noli Me Tángere (a required reading in the Philippines). Cat may like his radical tendencies for revolution and his deep, devoted connections.

Simoun from Noli's sequel, El filibusterismo. Holds revolutionary values similar to Elías, but far less noble and more of a loner. Violent at times, and will do what it takes to get his way.

Panday/Flavio, a very popular hero. Part of his charm is that he doesn't have special powers, but took matters into his own hands and forged a magical blade. Has been portrayed in both 'cool' and comedic ways.

Ricardo "Cardo" from the Philippines' longest-running TV drama Ang Probinsyano. Just a cool action hero dude who cares about family, but is also very ambitious and angy.

Seeing as how we already had an Elias Gallagher, Simoun seemed to be the perfect fit, and the name stuck pretty easily.

Simoun's Boundaries

Now that Simoun had a name, we were able to talk about him more seriously beyond the simple "tsundere cat" tropes. You've all already met Gil Finnegan, who we originally brought into SnaccPop Studios to handle the narrative design for DachaBo but was then onboarded to help with Sunny Day Jack, and those of you in the Patreon Discord server are familiar with our mods Tobias and Jude; along with me and Soren Viloria, that brought the grand total of openly trans masculine members on the team.

We all talked about our personal experiences as trans masc/AFAB people, what things we rarely saw reflected in both mainstream and indie media, things we wanted to see more of. Something we all agreed that was difficult to find was trans masculine folks in sexually dominant roles in erotic media, whether that was live video, audio, writing, art, or a combination thereof; there was only a handful of series we could count on our fingers as far as sexually explicit content that featured trans masculine people in roles that weren't exclusively submissive/bottoms, and the majority of us had already seen those or at least heard of them before (ie. Gummy and the Doctor and Sasha From The Gym were prominent ones). Either discovering this content was difficult due to Search Engine Optimization favoring depictions of trans feminine folks, or it simply didn't exist.

All of this, along with the backstory that Sauce had for Simoun, led us to determine that Simoun would be adverse to submissive roles in intimate situations. Simoun isn't the type to want to be penetrated either due to previous trauma surrounding his gender. Bear in mind that this isn't meant to imply or suggest that there is only one "acceptable" sexual preference for trans masculine folks, nor is Simoun meant to represent all of trans masculinity; he may be our first trans masculine character but certainly isn't the last, as we hope to feature more types of characters at SnaccPop Studios.

As an aside, it should be noted that the trend of erotic trans feminine content being more readily available doesn't necessarily mean that trans women have more positive representation per se; for every kinky piece of art created by trans feminine folks out there, there could be ten more works that fetishize and objectify their bodies. We probably don't need to tell you about the common derogatory slurs that have been used to refer to them; trans feminine and trans masculine people deal with varying levels and types of transphobia as well as situations that oversexualize (or even undersexualize) them, and it's important to focus on content that doesn't strip them of their autonomy.

There actually was a period of time between the release of his concept art after Soren was onboarded where the team observed comments both on Patreon and in the Discord regarding Simoun, and we discussed how we could avoid having people try to ship Bo and Simoun together; because Simoun hasn't had bottom surgery of any kind, we wanted to ensure that tokophobia (fear of pregnancy) or dysphoria wouldn't become a thing for any of us involved in the team or for our trans masculine Patrons. It was a bit of a chicken or the egg situation, trying to keep up with the evolving comments about Simoun to try and anticipate what people might accidentally say.

Debut Day Thoughts, & Moving Forward

We were quite happy with the general reception everyone had with Simoun, and we're excited to see so many people taking a liking to Simoun after his reveal. SnaccPop Studios has always strived to provide inclusive and diverse stories for those who don't often get represented in media, much less NSFW media, and the team was quite elated to see folks who were just as happy to see Simoun.

We hope that the love and care we put into building Simoun has shone through in this post and will continue to shine as we write more of him for DachaBo, because we're just getting started.

#dachabo #character design #trans masc #transmasculine #transgender #minors dni #gamedev

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artfulacrostic · 1 year

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had my second high definition viewing of atsv in the theater today and here are my favorite details that i missed due to being overwhelmed on my first viewing:

LONG AF POST:

-gwen is literally wearing a rainbow shaped trans pride pin on her jacket with her prom outfit. she's soooo so canon trans <3

-captain stacy HAS A TRANS FLAG PATCH ON HIS POLICE UNIFORM JACKET?????? when i'm telling u my eyes popped out of my head 😳 SHES SO CANON TRANS!!!

-poster outside miles's guidance counselor's office reads: "visions sciences: telling you your story".

-parallel of miles's and gwen's dad kicking things out of general exasperation towards the beginning and end of the movie respectively

-when miles as spidey is talking to his dad and giving him advice (for himself) there's a reference to miles possibly reading vonnegut? (maybe in class??) "if this isn't nice what is" is a collection of kurt vonnegut's commencement speeches. (literally subtitled "advice to the young". the writers were extremely clever for this reference. if not reading it in class, miles has been searching up life advice on his own)

-i barely caught this but i'm PRETTY sure that in miles' room near his door there's a MICHELLE OBAMA presidential race sticker??? was president obama in the earth-1610 dimension michelle obama?? iconic if so

-fedex on earth-1610 is REDEX

-gayatri seems like they took elements of both gwen (police dad) and mj (young model) for her background as i believe i caught her visible on a "zomato" ad billboard (which appears to be the earth-50101 version of ubereats)

-i spent all of hobie's scenes trying to pick up the details of his many pins; but the only one that i could really make out with the quick shot changes besides the union jack pin was the one right above it, which is a three-leaf clover. i wondered if maybe it had some kind of significance to maybe irish independence or smth but i couldn't find anything online that backed that up so not sure what it means. if u know pls drop it in the replies.

-hobie's boots are definitely NOT ladder laced. i KNOW there is concept art and poster art of him with ladder laces but in the actual movie they are 100% crossed. also unlike the poster art, both boots have blue laces, not one blue, one yellow/orange. i wanted to be all on board the ladder lace code train but i'm pretty sure they just made his laces blue so that they could contrast against the red boots and be spidey colors. they probably abandoned the ladder lace part of the visual when someone realized what blue ladder laces meant in lace code. "HAS hobie killed a cop," you ask? given his comic backstory i'd say the odds are HIGH. but i would bet they didn't want people to think that since he's gone through canon event asm-90 ("a police captain close to spider-man is killed by falling rubble during a battle with a nemesis") that there's any possibility THAT was the cop he killed and he's proud of it (since it's supposed to be all abt character development from the ✨trauma✨ of the event)

-during the whole "intervention" scene, while all the other spider-people are facing directly in towards miles and miguel from wherever they are standing in the circle, hobie is the only one whose back is turned. he watches most of the scene over his shoulder. also, during a couple shots facing miles before the entire society of spiders show up, hobie is separated in the shot from all the other main spiders (Peter B, Gwen, Jess, etc) BY MILES. he is visible over one shoulder and everybody else is visible over the other. these two details are great signals of hobie having already MORALLY turned his back on miguel's authoritarianism, as well as giving a nice inverted "devil/angel on the shoulders" nod.

-peter b asks miguel to take a picture of him and mayday since it's her first chase; miguel brushes him off but mayday understands and uses her webshooter to click the camera button on peter b's phone and take a selfie without him noticing 😂😂😂 shes everything to me

-when miguel is pinning miles to the train, after gwen and peter b have caught up, there is a very fast moment when miles calls for help ("PETER!!") and peter doesn't reply to him, but calls out to miguel to calm down (smth like that) instead 🥲 peter for the love of god step up your mentor game and look out for this kid i can't handle it anymore

-when gwen takes the watch hobie made her out of the box, the screen is briefly visible and reads "project botleg". bootleg -> bot -> "botleg"; I SEE YOU HOBIE. people think he's so cool (and he is!!) but he's also just as much of a dork as all the other spiders. what a goofball

-in miles-42's room, a speed bag/speed ball/maize ball is attached to his wall near the door. there are other substantial differences to their rooms, but i think this is clearly a reference to uncle aaron-42's large presence in miles-42's life, given the association from both movies of aaron with the punching bag and miles getting guidance from him/looking to him for support.

-in addition to all the miles-1610 vs miles-42 prowler vs spidey reflection imagery in the end credits, guess who else has several moments of flashing from spider-man colors (red and black at least) to prowler colors (purple and green)?? miguel, that's who. miguel and miles-42/uncle aaron-42 team-up in beyond the spiderverse? or just an extra parallel for the antagonists sharing goals/possibly methods?

OKAY ANYWAY if ppl want i can try and dig up images of some of these but i figured that would make this post long af so that's all for now folks!! go see across the spider verse again and marvel at how much more fine detail you find like me 🕸🕸🕸

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sambuckylibrary · 1 month

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SamBucky Summer Bingo 2024

The @sambuckylibrary will be holding a Summer Bingo! The event will start on June 1st and run until August 31st. During that time, we will be reblogging and sharing the work you guys create here on our blog.

You can post fanfiction, art, fic rec lists, comments, moodboards, podfics, edits, etc. It’ll be a low-stakes event. No need to sign up. Just remember to tag @sambuckylibrary in your post for each fill, and we will be tracking #sbsummer2024 for reblogs.

If you are posting on AO3, please add it to the SamBucky Summer Bingo 2024 Collection.

The Bingo Cards are:

There are also badges for each fill. For those badges, as well as the FAQ and rules, check the information under “keep reading”.

FAQ

What is this?

It’s a SamBucky bingo event.

Is there any pressure?

No pressure at all. Fill one prompt. Fill all the prompts on every bingo card. Do however many you please.

Can I fill more than one prompt with one piece of art/one fic?

Yes! You can fill one prompt with one piece of art or fic. You can try to fill all nine prompts on the card at once with one piece of art or fic. If you can fill every single prompt from every single bingo card in one fill, that’d be wild but it’s okay by the rules. You can do any number in between.

Are there any prizes for making anything for this event?

Just the satisfaction that you made something cool.

Is it just SamBucky?

Yes please, just SamBucky. There can be side ships, but the main ship should be SamBucky.

How long will this event run?

It will run from June 1st and run until August 31st.

I heard there are badges I can use for each fill?

There are! Here they are:

1) Vacation Bingo Badges

2) Mission Bingo Badges

3) Loving Bingo Badges

RULES AND GUIDELINES

What are the guidelines for the bingo?

I will be borrowing some of this from the MYSU Valentine’s Day Bingo 2022 Guidelines, since they were fantastic.

For Everyone:

1. Remember to @sambuckylibrary in the post as well as #sbsummer2024.

2. Please also tag the prompt you’re filling (for instance, if the square is “Redwing”, use “#redwing” as one of your tags when posting about it on Tumblr).

3. If you’re uploading to AO3, please:

a ) Say somewhere which prompt you’re filling.

b ) Add it to SamBucky Summer Bingo 2024 (SamBucky_Summer_Bingo_2024).

For Artists:

1. Create at least one piece of new art that can’t have been posted anywhere else before this.

2. All visual art forms are welcome:

a ) Gifsets, at least 3 gifs.

b ) Aesthetic boards or moodboards, at least 4 images each.

c ) Drawing/painting, that is not a sketch.

d) Fan video.

e) Graphics edit.

For Authors:

1. At least 500 words.

2. Posted on Tumblr or AO3.

3. Can be part of a series, but should work as a standalone.

For Podficcers:

1. The podfic should at least be 5 minutes long.

2. It should be posted on either Tumblr or AO3.

3. The podfic can be of a fic made for the event, a fic not made for the event while still adhering to the prompt, or a notfic.

For Fic Rec Lists:

1. You must have at least three fics or podfics on the rec list.

2. Make sure to give brief descriptions of the fics or podfics as well as their rating and wordcount.

For Commenters:

1. Any amount of comment counts, from a heart emoji (“❤️”) to an essay.

2. We would rather this be about what makes you happy and joyful about reading than any scathing critiques.

Things to be mindful of when creating:

For Sam

Avoid framing Sam only as a caretaker or emotional support for Bucky. Be mindful of Sam acting angry or aggressive in an out-of-character way and falling into the angry/sassy Black man trope (check out the MCU source material to help with character traits).

Avoid decentering Sam as a main character and refrain from focusing entirely on Bucky.

In art: avoid whitewashing Sam’s skin and research drawing Black characters.

General disclaimer: Race affects every aspect of his life, including interacting with police/government and the white structures of the world when it comes to performing his duties as Cap and simply being a Black man that lives in the U.S.

For Bucky

Avoid phrasing “flesh/normal/human hand” to refer to the contrast between his prosthetic arm and his right arm. The phrasing is ableist. You can simply refer to his prosthesis when relevant, otherwise use “right/left arm/hand”.

For more information, please check out this document suggested by @ninesdb on how to write Bucky as an amputee. @ninesdb is also open to questions if you have any queries not answered by the google doc.

Specific Tags:

Avoid tags in AO3 like “Sam Wilson is a Gift”, “Sam Wilson is a Saint”, and “Bucky Needs a Hug”.

Have fun and we look forward to your TFATWS Anniversary fics!

- The Mods

#sbsummer2024 #sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #sambucky fan event #sambucky fanfiction #sambucky art #sambucky edit #sambucky moodboard #sambucky fic rec list #sambucky podfic #mod: thatmexisaurusrex

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riririnnnn · 4 months

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As I mentioned in my post earlier:

His cuff (that thing around his neck) is near transparent which gives us a lot of room to ponder since we don't exactly know what this chain even represent.

Taking Hiori as an example, let's suppose the chain represents the burden that holds back someone's true ego.

His cuff being transparent gives us two things:

1. It might be plastic which doesn't really make any sense if I were to be honest.

2. It is glass which makes a lot of sense because how's glass? Hell yeah, my geniuses, glass is really fragile which completely fits into what he said:

Further, in that volume cover, he has pulled down his collar which puts a lot of spotlight into his blue rose tattoo, and we all know what that tattoo symbolises for Kaiser.

In case you don't remember: Kaiser got this tattoo as a reminder to himself to never fall back into his weak mentality because Blue Rose symbolises the achievement of impossible, and he saw it as an example to turn impossible to reality since Blue Rose, itself, is artificial and defies the natural order.

What is said above can be found with a quick Google search:

But what grabbed my most attention is this panel:

WHY?

If he only wanted to push the soccer industry to despair, then why he is adamant about winning the Champions league and the World Cup?????

Also, contrary to popular beliefs, I don't actually think Kaiser has a superiority complex because, look:

What Chris said could be considered as an exaggerated way to rile someone, but isn't this, indirectly, exactly what Kaiser says after the Manshine City match ended?

Kaiser said something along the lines of, "BM's main character is Noa and it's impossible for me to be the current number one, that's why I came to NEL to use Isagi as a way to increase my value." He even went as far as to say that he is a secondary character in BM because BM is Noa's team.

I don't think so that anyone with superior complex will admit such real facts.

Further, why did he got so angry when Chris said those things? Isn't someone bound to be angrier if the other one was to point out their obvious weak point? So, does this mean, Kaiser actually got an inferior complex?

I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not dwelling too much into it.

However, there is another thing I want to point out:

So, because of that spreadsheet/official art of a very damaged soccer ball beside Kaiser's foot, the Fandom widely believes that Kaiser was poor while growing up .

BUT!

Being poor as a backstory has already been used three times: Naruhaya Asahi, Noel Noa, and Lorenzo Don.

I understand that in any sector with a lot of money and/or fame, there are many people who come from a poor economic background, but this is fiction, baby. No author wants anything be repeated to the point it feels overused.

That's why, I highly believe that Kaiser was either bullied or mistreated by his seniors when he started playing soccer which explains that he practiced fucking hard that the soccer ball was damaged, and also his supposed hatred towards the soccer industry. It also explains his long, unkempt hair because he was too indulged in practice.

OR!

It goes a bit darker, so proceed with caution:

Soccer somehow destroyed his family's peace just like the brotherhood of Itoshi brothers.

I may write about others in another post, but in this post, I would like to think that the person who destroyed his family's peace was his own father. It could be that his father was a soccer player himself and due to some circumstances, he fell off the soccer industry which took a toll on his mental health, and he started physically abusing either Kaiser, his mom or both.

Why physical abuse? Because Kaiser is shown having an affinity to choking.

If we get our minds out of the gutter, then there have been instances when he choked himself because he was frustrated. Also, didn't he say that he stroked his rose tattoo as a good luck before matches and compared it to, "as if tightening a noose," or something.

That's why, I kinda think that, AT LEAST, someone has choked Kaiser as abuse/bullying.

I'll rant about the above thing in another post tomorrow or some time later because I don't want this post to be too long, and also because I'm hungry af.

I remember a vivid dream when Kaiser threatened me to join BM.

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock theory #bllk theory #michael kaiser #雪 ranting

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discord-lurking · 6 months

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Dungeons and Daddies Wiki Drama: A Greek Tragedy Told through the Medium of Forum Posts (Part 1)

Prologue

Greek tragedies are typically formatted in three or more acts interspersed with choral interludes, beginning with a prologue, and ending with an exodus. In these, protagonists often meet their downfall due to their fatal flaw, or hamartia: the ways in which the protagonists are their own undoing. Our own human failings are the things that bring us the most pain.

When considering a three-act Greek tragedy structure for this, my first thought was to use the Oresteia as a framing device, a trilogy of plays written by Aeschylus about Agamemnon's family in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Upon reflection, though, the themes of the Oresteia (revenge vs. justice, perpetuating a cycle of violence, honor and punishment) didn't quite fit the story I was trying to tell.

No, this is a classic tale of hubris: excessive pride and its ultimate downfall.

After all, what position could come with more power than that of wiki moderator for a Dungeons and Dragons podcast series?

Act One: The Beginning of the End

The D&Dads wiki has historically been... unhelpful, at best. (Source: Myself.) Trouble had been brewing for a long time.

Forum posts from spring 2022 began noting issues cropping up around the wiki. First, it was a complaint about anonymous users "disrupting" the wiki (specifically on Jodie-related pages) while also fixing mistakes in articles.

I'm unsure what specific "disruptions" were meant, but the proposal to ban anonymous users didn't garner much traction.

March 21st, 2022:

After little activity for months (only one forum post, related to infoboxes), wiki user TwoRatner had a radical proposition: wiki migration.

December 17th, 2022:

TwoRatner suggested an alternate platform that would have different editing options, then made a potentially-prophetic statement: the wiki might be cursed.

This warning went unheeded.

December 27th, 2022:

Ten days after the migration suggestion, TwoRatner came back to ask if there were any recent changes. This went unanswered for months until new user Penguinwithafancytophat reported adding art to character pages (including Glenn, a main season 1 character since the start of the podcast in 2019, who incredibly might not have had any official art on his wiki page before March of 2023).

Spring of 2023 seemed to bring along a revival of the wiki, with new editors coming in, engaging with the forum, and attempting to make suggestions on how to improve wiki organization.

March 31st, 2023:

May 27th, 2023:

July 17th, 2023:

October 2nd, 2023:

Interestingly, the only administrator seen to be interacting with these enthusiastic new editors? Gaycowboyrats. Let's put a pin in that.

Enter: the drama.

It started out simple enough- a forum posts for administrators to discuss changes that needed to be made.

November 3rd, 2023:

76 replies.

Seventy. Six. Replies. Each deeply interesting in its own way.

However, this is a Tumblr post, not an Hbomberguy video essay, so I'll keep it brief.

The discussion started out as one might expect a wiki admin discussion to start:

Mods discussed blocks, deleting stub pages, spam, etc. Standard wiki business.

The first reply to ping my interest:

Removing cast pages from a wiki about their work seemed like an odd decision, in my non-wiki-editor opinion, but the last line is what really stuck out: "Besides, I hate the idea of someone vandalizing the pages to defame them."

Several questions arose for me:

Was this a known problem? Were people constantly vandalizing cast pages?

Would a vandalized fandom wiki page really defame somebody?

Isn't the point of wiki editing to remove vandalization on articles?

The administrators began to stand out to me as deeply invested in a very specific sense of wiki justice.

Users TwoRatner, Brazil86, and TheOneTrueGod41 agreed with Honic's take.

Another thing to ping my interest: these users seemed to share a similar odd, slightly stilted, writing style. Almost Tommy Wiseau-esque.

Brazil86 expressed optimism about users engaging with wiki pages, something that would begin to set them apart from other administrators.

As I read, themes began to emerge: wiki justice, and incongruous one-liners.

Quoth Honic Washington: "I just found a wave of nonsense fish. My backyard is full of them. Hey, TOTG41, do you like jazz? I like jazz."

Truly, modern poetry.

Administrator Marth8204 suggested giving people more time. More time for what? Unclear. It seems a plan was afoot.

TwoRatner came in with a hot take: "I feel like we need a community more right now, than adding links that people can search for in the search bar."

Brazil86 agreed: Changing the navigation was less important than getting people editing and making friends.

Another theme began to emerge: wiki community as more important than wiki functionality.

Gaycowboyrats had some (incredibly reasonable) objections to this, pointing out that the wiki was a resource for many visitors who might not participate- something that is generally true of wikis as a form of content.

Honic Washington responded to this, the signs of wiki-related stress beginning to show.

Honic posts a long rant about the thankless task of moderating a wiki, which goes largely unacknowledged.

Notable TwoRatner quotes:

"You can't crack open a few omelets without punching a few egg-rolls."

"Now Freddie will get more money. What do you all say? I think I helped quite a bit."

Another theme emerges: discontent in the wiki moderator ranks.

Honic reaches full Joker mode. Again, this goes largely unacknowledged.

Honic: "I am leader. I am a painter! Keep your rules. Keep your status. Keep your friends."

"Keep your status"- words that will reverberate throughout the rest of this tale.

The final theme? Wiki moderator status, and the maintenance of it.

After Honic's bomb drop, conversation about regular wiki moderation continued, with mods considering the addition of a bot to make edits.

Admin Discussion Zone, first started by Honic Washington, ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Over nearly a year of forum posts, patterns emerged.

Firstly- users attempting to engage in the wiki, wiki administrators not engaging with these new users, then wiki administrators bemoaning the lack of user engagement.

The notable exception was Gaycowboyrats, the only wiki administrator to engage with new users in the forums. Gaycowboyrats, the administrator whose (incredibly reasonable) suggestions ended with Honic Washington's villain-esque monologues and denouement as a moderator.

Secondly- administrators putting forth large-scale, drastic solutions to real or perceived wiki problems. This includes Cheesoid4 wanting to ban anonymous users, TwoRatner suggesting site migration, Honic deleting cast pages to prevent vandalism, and more to come.

Thirdly- wiki administrators seeming to share similar styles of speech and occasional non-sequiturs. Interestingly, this mainly seems to include the wiki administrators who agree with each other.

Funny how that happens.

Chorus

Stay tuned for Part 2, where the forum drama really starts to heat up.

#dungeons and daddies

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