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hungry-eel · 4 months

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The Gluttony showcased in Octavinelle (reupload)

Before I begin with the main content, if you see this and notice that it may possibly seem familiar, that’s because it is. I originally uploaded this onto an old and abandoned secondary account, where around the time I was still in a bit of denial of my stuffing interests. I decided to polish and RE uploaded this analysis onto here because one, it honestly suits this account more, and two, I want this to reach its intended target audience that this blog revolves around, I hope you enjoy this analysis, and with that, let’s get back to the regular scheduled program. —

Hello! I hope you are all doing well! In the past, I have mentioned that Octavinelle is the embodiment of gluttony, and that I would elaborate on that statement more. Well, this is the post where I elaborate on the statement.

Please be aware that although I am going to try and show some cannon proof, at least for this first part, this is still overall just something silly that I enjoy talking about, and having dumb fun with. This is something that doesn't have to be taken entirely seriously, nor is this a statement that I am trying to prove as absolutely true. It just happened to be that I found some cannon connections from my observations.

Be prepared for spoilers from here on!!!

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Azul ~

As of right now, the Azul we have currently doesn't seem to be all that much of a glutton (when it comes to food). However, something else that is also a highly crucial part of Azul’s character was how he was an ex-glutton. Azul goes out of his way to avoid going back to his old roots and maintaining a slim figure, often trying to eat a restrictive and balanced diet. Although Azul has the desire to maintain his health and slim figure, he still does not enjoy the process, and especially preferring fried foods over health foods. He still doesn’t like when others pressure him to eat a lot, even if it’s with his favorite foods, but will still seize any opportunities that he can to enjoy his favorite foods, weather it’s birthdays or other private occasions. Azul is also very well equipped in knowing how to run restaurants as his grandma ran a restaurant, and runs a restaurant himself currently, that being the Mostro Lounge.

Azul’s incessant want to create new contracts as well as the consistent desire for power and control, can also be interpreted as a form of overindulgence on Azul’s end; no matter how much power he has over those he is controlling, it is never enough for him and he always wants more of that power.

In Azuls Birthday Boy card, his groovy art has Jade handing him a plate of chicken and also has a couple of home screen lines asking what we were implying when we were giving him food.

Floyd ~

Floyd has his own personal knack for food, as he enjoys snacking, and indulging in various amounts of his favorite foods such as takoyaki and candy. Even the shelves in his room is lined by snack bags that he uses to have midnight snacks. Floyd has also mentioned in his birthday boy vignette, that he likes to play food games with Jade where they try the most outlandish food combinations possible. Whenever Azul comes back during any of these games, they would try and eat all of the evidence. There was also a brief moment in Treys lab coat vignette where according to Jade, he had to look for more strawberries as a result from Floyd gorging on their current strawberry supply.

Jade ~

Now with Jade, he is an entirely different beast in it of itself! I have always been fascinated with Jade in the sense that when you first see him, he would be the last person you would expect would have a large appetite, especially as he always appears to be very poise and classy, but the more you look into his character, the more clear his tendencies become and its so hard to not see. Because of such there is much more to talk about with Jade than with the other two characters.

Here is a list of canonical things that Jade has done already.

Jade loves to heavily indulge in his hobbies and passions especially when it comes to mountaineering, terrariums, cooking, and his fascination with mushrooms. When it comes to mushrooms in particular, he both enjoys eating mushrooms himself, and finds pleasure in watching others indulge in mushrooms as well (showcased in Jade’s Labcoat Vignette).

In Book five, Jade mentions to Grim that primarily goes to the mountains to search for food. More specifically to try and harvest edible plants and organisms. During which Grim asks, "So basically, you just go to the mountains and scavenge for grub?" and Jade responding with, "Heh heh. I certainly wash and cook what I find, but generally speaking, yes."

There are two notable Home Screen lines where Jade mentions about his eating. One with his PE uniform where he mentions how he has to eat before working out as he lacks energy efficiency. The other one is with his Birthday Boy where one of his lines states, “Are you surprised by how much I eat? Heh heh, I get that a lot. It's why I'm so tall.”

It is hinted and shown throughout various Home Screen lines and vignettes that Jade likes to try many various types of unique foods, either out of interest and/or to create new recipes for the Mostro Lounge.

Legitimately almost all of the harveston event! Just in his event vignette alone he ate over five servings with Sebek and even afterwards wanted to grab desert. Even Sebek, who is also a pretty hearty eater, even admits that Jade has eaten more than him. Jades and Sebeks escapades are just as prominent in the main even itself where Jade is tasked by Azul to try as many unique dishes as possible so they can be added to the mostro lounge menu. Jade proceeds to try out different kinds of foods at the vendors, and in the celebration the night before the game, Jade and Sebek were tearing through the buffet.

In addition, here is some other moments that revolves around Octavinelle in general.

At the very end of the Beans day event, Jade and Floyd have an exchange on how they were craving shawarmas.

Jade and Floyd generally point out how little Azul eats and occasionally tease him about it as well. In the Halloween event when Azul comments on how watching Ruggie eat gives him heartburn, Jade replies by saying, "I believe you could put him to shame if you felt so inclined."

In Jade’s Halloween Vignette, Ruggie mentions on how Jade and Floyd are well built for Apple bobbing as they are tall with pointy teeth.

Both of the tweels have mentioned at least once that they eat a lot because they are so tall or that they are growing boys.

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A question that I have heard often is why say Octavinelle in particular? Besides, there are other characters that also showcase gluttonous tendencies, some may even more so than most of the octatrio.

I say Octavinelle in particular as it is the only dorm where all of the students exhibit the traits in one way or another, as well as serving the aesthetics of the dorm, with its lounge being a restaurant. Octavinelle is also the only dorm where this topic had at least a bit of a curtail point in its Book, that being with Azul’s backstory and how he used to be chubby and an ex-glutton.

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Headcanons!

Here is a small list of some of the headcanons that I have that circle around the topic. I might add more headcanons to the blog as I go, and if anyone else has any headcanons of their own, feel free to share them with me.

Jade is the complete opposite of Azul regarding food and dieting. While Azul tries his best to eat healthily, with moderate portions, Jade eats the most unhealthy foods out of the trio and eats the most out of them as well. Jade also likes to taunt Azul with that fact as well.

Floyd is the kind of character who would most likely eat anything even if it seems inedible.

Jade and Ruggie like to often join together just to try out many different kinds of foods together, similar to what happened in Ruggie's School uniform vignette, and Jade's harveston vignette. There would also be times were I would joke that Jade, Ruggie, and Sebek would band together just to have food.

I like to imagine that the Coral Sea is like a dog-eat-dog world, and along with this, the tweels have to rely on hunting other live fish for their own survival. When coming onto land, the tweels had to learn that they shouldn't hunt for animals publicly.

Whenever there are instances where Azul has to leave the Mostro lounge for an extensive amount of time, Jade and Floyd would keep trying to take advantage of that time to play their game where they eat weird food combinations (mentioned in Floyd's birthday vignette).

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Thank you so very much for reading my essay rambling on a topic that, to be frank, is overall goofy and silly. If there was anything that I missed or forgot to mention feel free to let me know. Otherwise, I certainly had a lot of fun making this, and I hope you found some entertainment or even some insight from this as well!

#foodie #hungry boi #hungry boy #glutton #big eater #twisted wonderland #jade leech #stu//ing #twst jade #twisted wonderland jade #floyd leech #azul ashengrotto #analysis

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educating-bimbos · 7 months

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The Pinned Post 2

new pinned post because tumblr hid my old one from my view so I can't see, edit it, or reblog it to add an addendum. I only have a few things to add, so I am just going to copy and paste it.

Who is Educating Bimbos?

My name is Nicolette. I am a technical artist, musician, and an outdoorsy type of gal. I enjoy the finer things in life, and I fancy myself a traditional woman and a bimbo. I don't really enjoy mindlessly obsessing over labels, but if it helps people gauge where my brain is at, I am pro-patriarchy, in favor of traditional gender roles and dynamics, an ex-feminist, and before all else a believer in one's ability to exercise personal freedoms. My beliefs, mannerisms, and presentation attract the ire of feminists, born-again-religious types, and any number of anti-fun douchebags. At the end of the day, just remember that behind this silly blog is a silly person.

What is Educating Bimbos?

It is a blog and small community of bimbos looking to learn more about and express a traditional lifestyle. It is also about people who may not be familiar with or comfortable around things like BDSM get a nice and soft introduction to it without being exposed immediately to the idea of how people can enjoy things in a pseudo-sexual context. At the end of the day, it is a blog and community where I and other like-minded people can express silly ideas without the fear of being lambasted by people seeking to harm others.

Where is Educating Bimbos?

Educating Bimbos can be found in one of these two places.

Why is Educating Bimbos?

Well for a while I was annoyed by the lack of communities that focused on a kind of "hyper-feminine" aesthetic while also promoting more traditional ideas. There was also the issue of communities that have tried this before of devolving into bigoted and abusive communities that would do everything under the sun to create an insular and ToS breaking community. I spoke with a friend of mine who runs a similar community a while ago and she inspired me to give this a shot. Now - close to 3 years later - I have a steadily growing community that pulls from all corners of ideology, cultural, ethnic, and interest level and the discord has been almost completely drama-free in its whole existence.

When is Educating Bimbos?

I am alive and doing silly stuff all day, every day. Except when it is nap time in which case I will be in the realm of dreams.

What's an ex-lesbian and why do you call yourself that?

For a number of very personal reasons, I have decided to call myself an ex-lesbian. I did this of my own volition, and I was not pressured into doing so. For a long time, I had thought of myself as a lesbian, mostly because of socialization and how all the girls around me were so might as well follow suit. I experienced a number of harmful and traumatic events when I considered myself a lesbian and it effected how I view myself. After a while and talking to some friends who I trust dearly, I came to the realization that I am not a lesbian and that it really isn't a thing I identify with the same way others do. I am still trying to come to grips with that given I only relatively recently had that realization. I also feel that people use that term in bad faith to harm people and to push bad narratives and ideas so I thought "hey might as well try and take back what should be an innocuous phrase."

In short, I think an ex-lesbian is just a way of identifying one's sexuality similar to asexuality or demisexuality. It is not that I am one sexuality or another, it's that my sexuality is defined by my experience and coming of age.

I have had a number of people confront me about this, talk to me about it in sincere curiosity, and even attack me. I welcome anyone who is curious or has a genuine contention to come to me in DMs, I am not a mean person, and I will love to talk honestly and respectfully. I find that disagreement is not grounds to discredit or avoid befriending people, I hope you can do the same.

Further questions for Educating Bimbos?

If you find that these questions are unsatisfactory in any regard, or you wish to try your hand at doing what I do, follow these two links!

Ask me anything!

Ask me anything you want! I have some personal rules with regards to what I can and cannot upload, but this is generally the best way for me to answer any question you may have. I also have anonymous asks enabled just in case you are shy.

Submit a post!

If you think I should be made aware of something, post something, or if you just want to signal boost something try this. So far, I have no real rules or expectations so do whatever you want with this button.

#educatingbimbos #femininity #tradfem #housewife #traditional gender roles #stepford wife #traditional femininity #traditional women #ask a bimbo #bimbocore #ex lesbian #ex feminist

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cbk1000 · 6 months

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Anyway, here is another preview of the infamous Train Fic. (There are three or so others I've posted previous to this; if you search the tag 'preview' on my blog, you can find all of them as well as some other bits and bobs.)

“So. Speaking of. Last night. And this morning. Are you--is this…some kind of experimentation? Because it’s fine. If it is,” Merlin said. “Obviously I wouldn’t say anything to anyone. If you just need to. I dunno. Burn off some frustrations.”

The shirt was open; and came down with Arthur's back still turned, with the voice coming to him from the room which simultaneously was too small and vast a thing between them. He imagined turning round, and saying openly into the open, that Merlin as usual was a gibbering cunt; was so obtuse, so worryingly, so curiously a devotee of that ancient art of mouth breathing that his brain, when last its feeble struggle was ended, ought to be given to science. It was not doing much good for him; but somewhere in a jar it might do good for human learning. But he would have to put himself, naked and trembling, into the world where Merlin would feel obligated to tenderness; and though he could have qualified the, ‘No, I love you’ with a blistering ‘you tit’ still he would have had to offer it hopelessly in the first place. And so he said, whilst he was folding up the shirt to go beside the tie and jacket, “Yeah, sure.”

“Yeah. Ok. That’s Fine.” There was a little rustling, and then: “I guess you’re not as much of a prude about your sexuality as I thought. I mean, I don’t know if you remember, it was like a decade ago, but you did snog me just to convince my ex we were together at that Halloween party. Remember, the one where you went as like a zombie footballer or something and I was a vampire and I had to take my teeth out?”

“Vaguely,” said Arthur, who would have gone home with him after those ten transcendent seconds of tongue, and given up heterosexuality and virginity at once.

“Yeah, I was trying to make him jealous, remember, so you went as my fake boyfriend, and he was like, ‘That’s your hetero footie mate you hang out with all the time, you pathetic arsehole’ and you walked up and put your arm round my shoulders and tried to kiss me but the teeth were in the way so I took them out and we made out a bit and it was kind of awful but he was really pissed off, so I won.”

“It was kind of awful?” Arthur demanded, throwing the shirt down. “Nobody has ever complained before.”

“Yeah, look, it was pretty obvious you’d never kissed a guy before. Plus you drank that really manky thing Morgana made out of, what was it, red wine and Coke? Your mouth was the scene of a crime.”

“What crime, the drink, or my kissing?” Arthur snapped.

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot, you were a 20-year-old straight guy; none of those kiss very well. And if it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t the worst I ever had. Do you remember Anna? She was that girl I started dating shortly after we moved in together? The blonde? Doing Asian and Middle Eastern Studies?”

Arthur, who remembered everyone who had slept with Merlin, whilst he put a pillow over his ear, to crush out the sound of others’ enjoyment, said, “Sounds a bit familiar, I suppose.”

“Yeah, well she used to, I dunno, almost unhinge her jaw or something, every time we snogged I felt like she was going to swallow my whole head, and it was like, ok, the sex is actually pretty good, what the hell is going on with her kissing, it was so bad I had to start avoiding it, because I tried to, you know, direct her a bit, like, look, you don’t have to actually put your whole mouth over my whole mouth and shove your tongue down my throat as hard as you can, and she never seemed to get that, so good luck to whoever the next bloke was, I guess. Anyway, all you did was use a little too much tongue.”

He was running to babble the way he always did when he was nervous, or trying to sell one of those absurd lies which he always pulled out of orifices even more indiscriminate than his arse, which never would have told a copper he was in the library after hours because he had been chasing after a stray cat: undoubtedly the criminal who had not only smashed the window, but made off with the librarian’s Jaffa Cakes. He was still standing in the doorway to the bathroom with one shoulder casually leant on the frame, as if he did not see much excitement in this new line which they were about to cross in their friendship; but the mouth was going on, quite independent of his brain, which must have been observing the tragedy in defenceless horror. It had gone to Oxford; not only gone, but winnowed out one of those firsts which were achieved by so small a percentage of students. Somehow the brain had done that, and was also doing this.

“You know what the proper amount of tongue is, then,” Arthur said, to preclude hearing anything else which might turn his stomach, or penis; and turning now to raise an eyebrow at the figure in the doorway, which finally had done the nigh on miraculous, and shut up.

“You want me to demonstrate or something?” Merlin asked, and shifted in the doorway. One of his hands in his pockets noticeably flinched; and he crossed one foot over the other, then crossed the other foot over the one foot. He took out one of his hands, to itch under his chin and at the nape of his neck.

#preview #fic #train fic #merthur

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dj-of-the-coven · 6 months

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Hit me with your favorite defunct website

You will regret this.

Have you ever felt isolated by the modern internet, or nostalgic for the way that you can vaguely--but not entirely--remember experiencing as a child? Well I can't speak for everyone, but the past few years certainly have left me feeling that way. Certain nostalgia posts made circa 2021 got my brain churning in that direction, dredging up ancient memories of reading personal blogs and spending hours on flash game websites that were more or less entirely nuked from the internet by my adulthood. The more I remembered, the more distressed I felt by their absence, even though it'd been years since I even remembered most of that stuff existed...

Aside from Animal Jam, I wasn't sure if anything I knew from my mid 2000s-early 2010s childhood experience was out there on the web somewhere--so, I did as any normal teenager would and I started doing copious amounts of research into a subject that basically didn't exist. I discovered the internet archive entirely on accident; spent days examining the layout of early youtube and any other sites I could remember, navigating by year and trying to figure out when everything took a turn for the worst. I started browsing through webcore tags on tumblr just to get close to what I wanted, because "old internet" yielded few results at the time, and google's input was less than useless. Only a few blogs on tumblr had the kind of content I was looking for, but eventually I struck gold when one of them pointed me in a brand new direction of hope.

This is when I discovered neocities.

Of course, I was already familiar with the webhosting platform of geocities from the old days. Geocities was one of the primary hosting platforms that I remembered without the help of research, but you may already have guessed by the lack of a link that it's dead--and you'd be right. It actually shut down back in 2009, which I learned through the same post that advertised its independent successor. For some reason, I'd always associated the memory with the time I was in kindergarten, but the date of shutdown actually confirmed that I must've known about it earlier, making the platform one of my first memories! It's been gone for a while, but not the impression of it that I had as a core pillar in my early web experience. And then there was neocities. What was that? I immediately went to investigate.

Of course, I was mostly doing this in between two late-night bussing jobs to afford my shitty apartment, aside from being in my final year of high school, so progress was slow. At the starbucks next to my school, I was always holed up in the corner during my short window of off-time with a coffee and my computer setup. It took some time, but I began browsing through the top pages one-by-one, following links and cataloguing where they led to. I took stock of which sites linked to one another. Eventually, I noticed a pattern: a lot of them linked back to a website called sadgrl.online, a purple and black neon haven of internet culture run by a webmaster known as Sadness. Everyone say hello to our defunct website of the hour!

At the time, the thing was absolutely bustling. Almost all of the most popular sites on neocities were linked to Sadness' site somehow, usually through her button collection. My own personal site, which I started building around that time, also contained one of her web buttons. She has several, but her most popular one looks like this. (I apologize if you're on mobile. It will NOT look good.)

I was intrigued! In a community so removed from the usual mainstays of the internet, there existed a blog that hundreds of neocities users were visiting every day, and I very quickly became one of them once I finished looking through her thought-provoking essays on programming and web culture. Her site went through a number of layout changes while I was a regular visitor--the vast majority of them are catalogued on the site itself if not also on the internet archive. It was a blog dedicated to the exact thing that I was interested in; what I had been searching for since the modern web started rubbing me the wrong way in my burgeoning adulthood. Her page prominently featured an essay on the faults of centralized internet and her journey to foster a space more accepting of individuality, information, and creativity without thought of profit. I was totally enamored, especially with the appealing gothic graphics that surrounded the lengthy text!

(here's a capture from August 2022)

Aside from Sadness, several other active community members had formed an alliance of websites dedicated to the preservation of old internet culture and the cultivation of unique online spaces. These people called themselves the Yesterweb. The yesterweb was run mainly by webmasters known as Auzzie Jay, Madness, Tsvety, Grafo, Cinni, Vincent, Iris, and Sadness herself, but webmaster Melon (of MelonLand fame) also ran a forum that was parallel to the movement. The yesterweb was a massive project that included an online newspaper, a web radio station, several introductory programming manuals, a forum, web-themed essays from neocities users, button makers, layout creators, and terms and definitions for people new to the decentralized experience. It was easy to get lost in it all... for a time, the rabbit hole felt endless and exciting.

Every day, I returned to check updates on Sadness' various projects while I began work on my own website. She had totally convinced me of my own convictions--I bought the dream hook, line, and sinker. My only goal for a while was for my site to eventually be included in the yesterweb webring alongside all these amazing programmers. I wanted to contribute to the world of creativity that I could only dream of when HTML was still just meaningless jargon to me! But I was too slow learning the languages necessary, and the yesterweb was just growing too fast to be contained. I dipped for a few months to focus on my move to a new city, and by the time I returned, the whole yesterweb had disappeared scorched-earth style.

Okay, so what the fuck happened?

Currently, on the front page of what used to be a hopeful and inspiring collection of internet resources, there's a long essay made by the webmasters who founded the project, detailing burnout and massive stress due to the community growing faster than they could moderate it. It is certainly not poorly-intentioned. However, the discovery was absolutely devastating to me. My dream had gone up in smoke before I could even try to reach it, and I was apparently a part of the problem by caring so much about it. The radio station is gone. The webring was deleted. The forums shut down. My favorite webmasters' sites were no longer being updated. I felt awful for the people who had been affected by all this stress and pressure, but after so long of working to join the movement, I felt betrayed by their abandonment. The yesterweb disappeared in almost exactly the same way the old web did the first time--ripped from my fingers before I was able and ready to participate. And I can only wonder... what happened to the goal of turning the internet back into a place for us? How did it get to the point of ruining these people's lives within the span of maybe two years? I'm really not sure. There's a lot about this story I still don't know, and there's not really a way to access the drama that happened in a discord server that I never joined. The information published on the yesterweb's page is the only reliable source I'm currently aware of.

Still, in spite of it all, Sadness' website has remained one of my major inspirations in programming and web philosophy. I may be in mourning about a dream that died before it could truly live, but whenever I think about the months that I spent eagerly browsing her site for updates, I remember that spark that initially inspired me to begin researching the net in the first place. She was a major player in the game--not the only one. The website that she created was my favorite while it was active, and now it is my favorite website that is currently defunct.

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

#web revival #neocities #programming #personal websites

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genlossneg · 1 year

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thank you for this blog im boutta post a lot of my suffering in here enjoy the essay

I’m not a ranboo fan at all, i just heard about a cool horror project from a name i’m familiar with and i was excitedly waiting for perhaps a new kid on the block with cool content and the resources to do so. I’ve seen what people with three coins and a piece of lint can do out of passion, and so i expected that someone that has far more resources out of the gate would be able to really take it out of the park if they were equally as passionate. I’ll just grab a couple of points and elaborate.

Intentionally bad.

This is the poorest excuse for low quality content I’ve heard. Not a single self-respecting creative that actually cares about their project would make something ACTUALLY bad. Anytime you see something that’s intentionally bad and yet somehow beloved, look DEEPER. Because behind that veil of “bad” is actually often a HUGE amount of effort and care put into something a creator cared about.

Intentionally bad content is still made with the intention to be fun to watch, to be entertaining. There is very little entertainment found in any of the genloss bad content.

Lack of horror content

The main excuses i’ve seen is that they were scared of Twitch TOS, to which I say lolwhat. You had two whole years to contact twitch and talk it out with them and figure out what part of your project and show would fly and what wouldn’t, and instead you opted to really cut out any horror aspect at all for fear of being banned on twitch? And even then, content more gorey and disturbing than this is allowed on twitch. If Until Dawn flies on twitch, I think gen loss could have gone wilder.

And if they REALLY didn’t want to risk it, for the love of god at least be creative with your attempts to circumvent it? The goofy poor editing of the red in ep2 during the surgery sequence took me out of it entirely and confused me so much. You know what they could’ve done? TURNED THE LIGHTING A STARK RED. THAT’S IT. THE MOST BASIC THING, TO AT LEAST REALLY GET ACROSS THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG.

The acting

I was a theatre kid in highschool and let me tell you even the 13 year olds acted with more passion and devotion to the role than 95% of the cast in gen loss. Even during improv. You can tell that there is basically no script to gen loss and that its purely “X will happen then Y will happen and we need to fill it with conversation and improv” with zero direction on tone or anything. It was so painful seeing how little effort had gone into the acting. Ranboo can’t act for shit and should have gone through some acting classes before taking on a live show. The only ones that were visibly trying were charlie and jerma and the people who were frozen robots during ep3 (because as someone who had to stay frozen in pose hours on end for a play while on-stage, that shit is HARD)

Hetch’s acting was even more laughable, and his fakeout death was… something. An incredibly cartoonish “uguguhh” exiting his mouth- really? Also It was so frustrating to have his voice come from seemingly nowhere. There was no source to his voice.

It sucked so much seeing ranboo actually TRY to be better in his acting in episode 3 because when he suddenly started being intense it felt WRONG and out of character, because there was no natural leadup to him being like that. ep 1 and 2 were so bad that even when ep 3 was better it felt disappointing.

Lighting

Its already been mentioned by film student anon that the lighting is such a huge amateur mistake but I want to touch upon the creative aspect of the lighting a little more.

There was such an utter lack of using colored lighting to really set tones in scenes and it SUCKED. Like, already with the lack of outright horror blood and gore, they NEEDED creative lighting to at least intensify scenes! Add some damn flickering lights! Green lighting? Something- anything. Again, TEENAGERS have been more creative with lighting in a performance and all they had was four colors to work with and nothing fancy.

Camerawork

I wish they would have actually done good camera work. Set up some cameras in locations and acted in front of them instead of having someone follow ranboo around and having some “lore” explanation for it that makes little sense. Having moving cameras that are shaky and constantly cutting people frame-wise is just not pleasant to watch and does not add anything useful. On top of the camera quality jarringly changing between shots constantly it just… ruined the flow.

in ep3, we had an explanation for why there’s a camera following ranboo, and we got some REALLY COOL ESTABLISHING SHOTS THAT…. made no sense in lore. Why would the “drone” following ranboo take establishing shots? It’s supposed to follow ranboo- but then later it gets dismissed and we suddenly have sharp camera cuts to what im guessing was a prerecorded scene due to the camera quality change and it just felt. So sudden and jarring? Like okay you just dismissed the camera and now we suddenly get a different non-canon camera because they remembered we actually need to still see whats happening.

Lore/Story

The lore and story we have gotten so far is so scatterbrained and nonsensical. + knowing that this project isn’t actually what gen loss was supposed to be (which: Why are you advertising it as gen loss then, ranboo? You’re just staining the name of your passion project). So much of genloss is in the “I guess” category of why things happened. But the consistensy also felt so off. From what I understand, Charlie is the slime demon, and was the guy on the gurney, and was also in ep 3 as himself. And all those other versions WERE the ep3 charlie. How? Charlie died? twice? According to what has happened? But he’s alive anyway at the end until he gets killed again by a cheap backrooms monster? But supposedly everyone else did actually die?

I just. Genuinely do not understand what the story here was. What the point was of everything. I’m not gonna ask who the characters were because the characters were just the streamers and nothing special or new. If you know the streamer, thats the “character”. It’s just godawful writing.

Viewer interaction

Viewer interaction was pointless and didn’t matter. Either every choice the viewers made was gonna happen anyway, or ranboo decided to ignore it lol. It felt like there was no impact to viewers doing anything to influence the show and the show probably would have been largely better had viewer interaction not been a thing at all.

also idk maybe making ranboo’s “character” aware of the audience from the get go would have been more fun as they could’ve been trying to get the audience to do anything while we’re just watching quietly. And they could’ve gotten more and more desperate with the audience as things went on. But then again that requires actual acting skills that ranboo barely has.

Just as some final words, this really feels like a case of someone who has never done anything like this thinking they can do this because they’re famous and well-liked online. I know ranboo makes a lot of money, so they certainly had enough money to make something good. Take some film classes or acting classes. Instead they became overambitious and made just a generally unpleasant show that is not going to make me want to watch any future gen loss content in good faith.

The entire show depends on going “MY STREAMER!!! THATS MY STREAMER!!!” and would not survive on its own merit. The hype towards gen loss was misleading on what it’d be, and the fans made amazing fanart that does not live up to the reality of what they got and i feel genuinely sad for them. The fanbase made a better interpretation of what gen loss is WITHOUT EVEN NEEDING GEN LOSS TO BE OFFICIALLY RELEASED.

also a final thing about the merch but why is the merch so bad lol. Its such boring design. The gen loss logo appears barely anywhere in the show itself. The fans could’ve had some sort of cool merch, like masks based off of ranboo’s mask and the showfall robot masks. Shirts and merch based off of the slime demon and warehouse master.

Anyway sorry for the huge wall of text I have just been going insane abt this to my friend in dms enjoy

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i could probably spend hours responding to all of this! thank you for the mini essay, you make a ton of great points. i really sympathize with the “not a ranboo fan” stance because my friends are way more fans of him than i am, and were way invested.

i personally haven’t heard any “it’s supposed to be bad!” defenses but i can totally believe there are people like that out there lol. i definitely in the “there’s no entertainment when it’s bad”. you’re entirely right about the lack of horror! i was so confused after the first stream and everyone was like “it’s not supposed to be horror yet! you don’t understand!” and then it took until the 3rd stream for anything significant to even happen, and even then it was weak.

charlie and jerma did so much for gen loss man, ranboo’s acting was just.. not that great and when it was, it felt so jarring. more interesting lighting would’ve been so fun! so much could’ve been done with that, and that’s especially clear when they switch cameras because they had the ability to film this incredibly and just.. didn’t. i feel like we didn’t get so much lore that we should have, especially with how long the streams were. i hope we get something clearer later on.

the idea of him being aware of chat the whole time would be cool, but idk if it would’ve worked with the “brainwashed” thing he was doing. overall i agree - gen loss was super hyped up and in this form, it didn’t live up to it as well as it could have. once again, ty for the mini-essay, it was a great read!

#submission #gen loss neg #gen loss crit

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asterhaze · 9 months

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Author Ask Tag Game

Thank you @doublegoblin for the tag here! And also @gummybugg for tagging me here!

(1) What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

That we are what we make of ourselves, despite our traumas, despite our gifts, and despite our faults. That there are things that people do that are unforgivable, even if they are forced. Also, that true love is patient, kind, and understanding despite its awesome fragility.

I chose these themes because I think they're realistic, they're lessons that are easy to swallow, and that don't need to be pushed in people's faces to be understood. I don't want to spell things out but I also just want to tell a story, so if this ends up not being the real main lesson then I hope you all still like it.

(2) What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

I studied Romanian and European fashion from the 1850's to the 1870's. Then I studied American (United States) fashion from then on until I was familiar. I studied history, slang, folklore, LGBT history, etc. As far as what my world looks like, its a cross between where I grew up in a state somewhere along the Missipiipii-fuck Mississippi river and living in Florida but make it gloomy.

(3) What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

Glen is trying to become himself again after visiting the horrific and disgusting Tiletsu Clan. There he is confronted with a question that someone asked him long ago: If vampires are just more powerful humans, aren't they more dangerous? And conversely, if humans are just weak vampires, are they worth keeping safe?

As a writer, I want to tell a good story where all of the characters (except the Tiletsu and friends) are morally grey, make bad decisions that they thought were good ones, and have to grow up despite having plenty of time to do so. While trauma causes many reactions, I read a lot where the reaction is to forget everything. My experience is that I can't forget anything at all and I wanted to explore that in my writing.

(4) How many chapters is your story going to have?

About thirty chapters. The outline of Masterpiece is 70 pages long, granted it is an okay-detailed outline, with 33 parts currently. So please expect 33-40 chapters.

(5) Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

Original Content 100%. There isn't anything wrong with fanfiction at all, but I love my original characters and the worlds I build, and I'm not a big enough or cool enough fan of anything to write fanfiction.

I plan to post the first 5 chapters of Masterpiece here on Tumblr, over at Wattpad, and Ao3. Smaller novellas and the entire story will be published with a limited print run at first and the eBook somewhere that I haven't decided yet for purchasing. Starry Skies and Like Minds will follow this same process, but Henrietta and Apocalyptic Cat Lady (Working Title) are web series!

You'll be able to find more information after my website is up and running!

(6) When and why did you start writing?

I started writing when I was 11 and did collaborative writing roleplays with other people my age. Eventually, I became a big enough fan of Star Trek (Kelvin Universe) that I did a massive fanfiction with my friend that lasted years. I made many OCs, had whole stories, had lots of adventures, and then when I went to college it died. One of those OCs will be reborn into Starry Skies and Like Minds whenever I decide to write it and share it here!

(7) Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?

My blog is under a year old and I have less than 100 followers, it's just the name of the game. When I posted my first piece of writing, absolutely no one found it for a while despite ABCDEFG. What helped me the most when it comes to finding mutuals that actually interact with you is to find "Looking for Writeblr" posts and go through the replies. Check every blog. Start interacting, that's why my intro post has a "Please, I promise I'm just an idiot and really like you blog" disclaimer because I do, genuinely, like a lot of stuff on other people's blogs. That is how I found the great and powerful @doublegoblin @mthollowell-writes @pinkchaosstories and @gummybugg who tag me and make my life great.

Thank you all for tagging me in everything, you make my life a joy.

#writeblr #writing #writers #writers of tumblr #writblr #writerblr #writing community #write #seriously feel free to tag me #writing advice

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runwayrunway · 8 months

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No. 49 - Discover Airlines

You know, 'Discover Airlines' is kind of what some readers on this blog do when I review an airline they're unfamiliar with. Anyway.

Earlier this week I talked about Eurowings. To be honest, that was me laying the groundwork for another post in response to a new development in Lufthansa's quest to kill Eurowings.

I'm sure some but not all of you are familiar with the fact that Eurowings is incapable of going too long without a subsidiary-of-a-subsidiary. They were probably still feeling quite full from their main course of Germanwings when, in 2021, Lufthansa said it was time for another one.

Yay, new subsidiary! Just one problem.

Well, okay, that doesn't look like all that much of a change. But zoom in a bit closer. That's...yellow. That wasn't in the Eurowings livery at all. A seemingly minor change of logo disguises an actual new livery. Despite this, it hasn't stopped being quite...Eurow, if you know what I mean.

This screenshot contains multitudes. The fact that they haven't even changed the page title from Eurowings Discover. The fact that they call it the new leisure airline of the Lufthansa Group - yes, the only one, and it's new, it just started existing now, cross my heart and hope to die. The generally awkward phrasing even though this isn't my browser trying to translate it from German or something, this is actually the way it's written. Chef's kiss.

Happy to announce it, are you? I'm sure you are.

I'm surprised it took them this long. Honestly, I'm surprised they made another Eurowings to begin with. (Especially since Discover Airlines doesn't seem to be low-cost, given it offers business class. 'Cheaper than Lufthansa' is not the same thing as low-cost.) It's a pretty laughable and pathetic admission of their own failure, but to be honest it was obvious from day one that Eurowings Discover would be short-lived one way or another. Even on the old logo the 'discover' is about twice as large as the 'Eurowings', as if begging you to forget what airline this is. That's a reasonable thing to want people to do, since you'd probably like to not be stranded in Cuba for 60 hours during which you are technically an unauthorized arrival. Only one airline has ever provided that particular experience!

I did mention last time that it's weird Eurowings doesn't use any of that cyan up front, but here's the thing: if you just put it on white it's downright illegible. They may have realized this in their initial design of the livery. They then immediately did it anyway for Eurowings Discover! Some real mind experts on the job here. Anyway, I'm not going to comment on the Eurowings Discover livery because it's just the Eurowings livery with a word added.

Discover Airlines (the former Eurowings Discover) is a long-haul vacation airline, and they'd love to fly you to sunny destinations like Funchal, the Maldives, Corfu...Halifax... Alaska...or Tenerife, or maybe Gran Canaria if you're not feeling Tenerife for some reason. Or Ibiza!

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Unfortunately Venga Airways has had its Air Operator's Certificate revoked and the Vengajet is currently in storage.

Discover Airlines' main competitor in this market is another German airline, condor. I said this before and I'll say it again - condor is worth a billion examples of Eurowhite dreck. There's a legitimate sort of fishhook theory where while I prefer a good livery to condor, I strongly prefer condor to an unsatisfyingly average livery despite the fact that I do think their planes are truly poorly designed. Sometimes a good concept just overpowers bad execution. And, to quote a friend of mine's quip about Unfriended (2014), a film with way too many good qualities to be Unfriended (2014), "it sucks but at least it does it well".

Surprisingly given this is the Lufthansa Group, the website actually contains a bit of insight into their creative process. Worryingly, this implies that there is something of a creative process and it's simply had these sorts of results. But let's dive into this and see if they've made any changes that aren't worse. Discover Airlines, like Icelandair, condor, Riyadh Air, and others, have included a page dedicated to the inspiration behind their livery and brand. All upcoming images, unless otherwise specified, are taken from this website.

Let's begin with the color scheme.

This palette is pretty interesting. Blue and yellow isn't unheard of, and blue with a yellow accent is the most common variant of this, but it's still a pretty uncommon color scheme. It helps that they're not common colors for flags, and even the countries that have it in their flags don't use it. Sweden is part of the SAS throuple instead of having its own flag carrier; Air Astana doesn't use yellow; and Palau and Barbados do not have flag carriers. This leaves Ukraine International Airlines as the only flag-derived user of this palette. I don't like yellow on its own, but I actually like it with blue for its distinctiveness. If you pick the right shades it can look pretty nice. Actually...

image: lufthansa bildarchiv

The most prominent user of this palette, in my own mind, is Lufthansa, back when Lufthansa had a livery I actually approved of, which I thought stuck out and which I miss dearly now. We've fallen so far since then, lost so much, but I wonder if this Discover Airlines palette is an intentional nod to the thing we were robbed of. Indeed, they mention at least the blue being an intentional homage:

Despite the distinctive character of the new design, our connection to the core brand Lufthansa is subtly indicated by elements like the dark blue and the wordmark in the Lufthansa font.

...and they're using Lufthansa's proprietary typeface, Helvetica Neuer. Joy.

At least when you make it larger and lighter colored it's not quite as cramped and you can sort of forget it's a hideous font. Something about the all-lowercase styling also cushions the blow by making it look intentional instead of, like I said when discussing Eurowings, not bothering to change from the default font on your word processor.

...well, it also uses the exact same livery layout as modern Lufthansa, that's for sure. Booo. I've gone on a lot about the eponymous Lufthansa Line and how abominably bad it looks on longer planes despite seeming deceptively decent on shorter ones, so let me just show you Discover Airlines's various planes.

Hmm, yeah. You can just see it getting less and less offensive from left to right. This is why this type of livery needs to adapt on different airframes to work, and airlines are so unwilling to do it.

This fuselage layout is so overdone I could probably end the post here, but I'm not going to, because I'm not done with their website. This is where this post actually gets a bit interesting.

Fittingly for an airline, it’s inspired by a view of the horizon. More specifically, by the various lines and color nuances that emerge when the blue of the sky meets the landscape. These “skylines” are the most important design element of our brand and arise from various blue tones as well as a sunny yellow.

(Why is all the copy on this website so awkwardly written?)

So, this concept...this is really good. I like this. I like something about Discover Airlines. This is a great idea for a leisure airline. And, like condor, a good idea won't spare you my wrath, but in this case, when it's so similar to so many Lufthansa Line liveries it does earn a few points from me. There's not much else to comment on, so you could be fooled for not realizing this, but there's actual lost potential here. It implies the Lufthansa Group is capable of some measure of improvement over time, which is disturbing.

This picture, featuring the deeply generic and sort of frumpy Discover Airlines cabin crew uniforms, represents me giving them a condescending high-five as a teacher might give a student aged in the single digits. Good job, sweetie!

No, seriously. The uniforms are fine to wear to summer brunch but very poor for cabin crew. I think you can buy this off-the-rack from Vineyard Vines. Also, that is the most pre-tied looking scarf I've ever seen.

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I do like the use of the colors as well. The circular highlight, which keeps the tail stripes from being as boring as they might be, puts me in mind of the sun, or a lens flare. The balance of light and dark is tasteful, and I love the hint of yellow. My issue really starts and ends at the Lufthansa Line, that ever-present ruiner of liveries.

I think the solution was fairly obvious. And I'll probably do a Project Runway Runway on it, because I think I can make it happen with a mouse and keyboard - it's genuinely that simple. And that's about where the meaning the website offers ends, so that means it's time for my rating.

I find myself conflicted, much as I did with Eurowings. There's definitely enough here that I don't want to give it a D, but at the same time I do. I've given Lufthansa Line liveries grades as high as C+ in extenuating circumstances, and I stand by those, but I don't want to do it for concepts that don't translate to visuals, and I don't want to give it to liveries that I don't think are exceptionally good examples of adding elements which mitigate the archetype's inherent flaws. Given its modern relevance, at this point I despise Lufthansa Line adherents more than the old Deltalikes, and I think I'm going to make it a policy that they're all going to get D+ or below unless they really demonstrate something different. Or unless they only fly really stubby planes that the livery looks okay on, but basically no airline has that excuse. Discover definitely doesn't with their A330s.

But given this tangible improvement, given the visual interest added to the tail, given that they have an actual philosophy this time, is a D+ really fair?

...what am I talking about? I gave Saudia and Eurowings D+ for doing nothing despite actively liking how both of their liveries look. Discover missed the most obvious idea ever in order to toe the Lufthansa Line. They're not special and they're getting no mercy.

D+, for Discover

That's it for today! If I have enough time, I'll fit in a redesign as a bonus post later this week. It doesn't take a genius to know how to make this good. Maybe if they read my reviews, don't send me a cease and desist, and learn from my critiques, in the future the Lufthansa Group can Discover some decent liveries.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: d+#era: 2020s #region: west/central europe #region: germany #lufthansa group #discover airlines #eurowings #leisure airlines #galley gala #lufthansa line

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cathyl-washere · 8 months

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Hey gamers, this is my first actual post here.

First things first, terfs, nazis, homophobes, racists, you and your lot can and should fuck off. No sissy blogs either, that's not for me.

Minors should maybe not be here either if only for the odd NSFW post, so here's your warning.

Bit of a length warning I suppose? I ramble a bit, but it's my pinned so I guess now's the time.

As my blurb says and avatar implies, I'm a 20 year-old transfem, working with she/her pronouns currently. I'm generally kind of hesitant to really talk about myself to strangers or to even say something in the first place, even when it's just to the void like I have been since I started here about a month and a half ago. You may recall my mentioning that this is my first actual post, or have noticed that I've only tagged like, 2 of my reblogs at time of writing. I'm trying to get out there a bit more which is why I'm even making this, but if I take some time to reply to a pm or whatever, know that there's this on top of anything irl. Also I have a tendency to write in a way as though I were actually talking, so apologies for any overuse of commas or really long sentences. Trying to be mindful of this way of writing myself though.

Should say that whatever eldritch critter lords over us all gave me the delightful combo of being able to remember a bunch of absolutely bizarre and incredibly niche things about whatever while also forgetting it all when it miraculously becomes useful. You may be familiar with the "Spirit of the Staircase?" Gamer, you're looking at her. I mention this to say that despite the length of some of the later parts, they're still not exhaustive.

I've also got into the habit of referring to people as gamers because it has that wonderful combo of being both gender-neutral and oddly funny to me. Not in a demeaning way, my sense of humor has just kind of veered into nonsense.

On that note, I should also mention that I myself have committed a cardinal sin and am indeed, a gamer. Platforms I'm on are Playstation and Switch. PC gaming is unfortunately out of my purview currently. I prefer PvE generally but also don't mind pwning some children if the vibes are there. Hope you have your bingo card ready because yes, Celeste is my favorite game. I have WAY too much time into Warframe and I like Dead by Daylight, Deep Rock Galactic, Risk of Rain 2/Returns, and Slay the Spire quite a bit. Tragically I've been a gamer for a while, so I'm just naming a few of my main ones right now while totally not ignoring a sizeable backlog, no sirree!

Music is also a bit of a vibes thing. Generally more of a fan of less intense songs, which may be an odd thing to follow up on by saying prog rock's also pretty cool. Longer a song is, the better is my usual take. City pop's also superb, language barrier be damned. Vaporwave's awesome. Born and raised on the rock of the 70's and 80's with parents that rarely listened to anything after Kurt Cobain rose to power for most of my younger years, so a good chunk of that has worked its way into my playlist. Video game music has a tendency to be wonderful to my ears as well. Solar Ash, both Risk of Rains (although yes, I lean towards the second + DLC here), Night in the Woods, songs from several of the Persona series (Layer Cake, Beneath the Mask - Rain and both versions of Specialist, oh my!), a few from Warframe and of course, the titular Celeste. Lena really is just something else, and I think I can say with some confidence that Quiet and Falling is just my favorite song generally. It does have some competition, so in no particular order I'll rattle some off: Anri's Shyness Boy, Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence (primarily the Hands and Feet Mix version), Hall and Oates' Out of Touch, Mac Demarco's Freaking out the Neighborhood, ABBA's Dancing Queen, Yoko Takahashi's The Cruel Angel's Thesis, Prince's Little Red Corvette, Kensuke Ushio's Crybaby, Jane Pop's Drive to 1980 Love, Shakatak's Bitch to the Boys, Komm Susser Todd from End of Evangelion, Mystical Composer by Momoko Kikuchi, Love don't come Easy by The New Jersey Connection, Once in a Lullaby by Chris Christodoulou, No Tengo Dinero - Maxi by Righeira, Seaside by Dan Mason, In your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, Dinner is not over by Jack Stauber's Micropop, Dress Down by Kaoru Akimoto, Radio Ga-Ga by Queen, Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, and this list is getting kind of long, huh? God, music is just so freakin' awesome. Truly, one of my biggest regrets will be that I didn't hear enough of it. Band-wise, I'll mention I quite like Steely Dan, Chappell Roan, 1986 Omega Tribe, Car Seat Headrest, The Comet is Coming (loving Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam right now), Dan Mason, Mitch Murder, Desired, Nyarons, Seycara Orchestral, Shakatak, Ibrahim, OSC, Both Jack Stauber and his Micropop, Prince, Queen, Junko Ohashi, Anri, Meatloaf, Gorillaz, Night Tempo, City Girl, Yes, PKCH, Chris Christodoulou, Cape Coral, Tupperwave, Oresama, Weird Al (EBAY in particular will forever take up some of my brain space at any given moment) and good ol' Lena Raine. While we're here, I guess the one album I'll mention is Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. Make sure it's the original though, some of the songs were revamped in recent years and personally I'm not partial to that rendition of them.

If you inferred that I might like some anime given the above section has quite a few Japanese artists then yes, your intuition was correct. I have fallen off of it recently, but stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Mob Psycho, and My Life With Monster Girls are some that I enjoy.

Romantically, I'd say I'm into women. We're entering kind of weird territory for me here though because while I would quite like a romantic partner and someone to cuddle with, I'm kind of not so sure how keen I am on any actual sex? Half of me wonders if I'm just asexual while the other half wonders if it might actually be a case of finding the proper someone. I don't know, it's very much uncharted territory for me and I'm not sure where I'll end up on it. Also the whole "finally accepting that I'm trans" thing probably has its influence somewhere in there.

Politically, just give people stuff. Meet their basic needs, implement a UBI, make it so that every grandparent has a bottomless jar of sweets for the wee ones. Public transport good, cars bad, Golf is actively terrible in multiple ways. Chuck bricks at cops, detonate an oil rig (in Minecraft, I guess), eat the rich, the usual. Ideally, mix the three. Abortions and contraception are healthcare, and alongside education all should be free. Kill the cop in your head, both in the sense that if you saw someone shoplift, no you didn't and that you don't have to impose yourself on people just having some earnest, unconventional fun. These are some of my viewpoints, but I'm hesitant to try and pin myself down with a specific position due to a lack of having really read well, any greater political works, still needing to flatten some views I've kind of just had seep into me from the greater culture ("But is x really the proper thing" is tragically a constant, but I've needed to quash the Devil's Advocate voice in my head for years at this point. The little bastard never truly seems to leave. Yeah, having a little gremlin constantly try and check my thoughts can be handy now and then, but it gets really annoying when I think about topics like how the death penalty shouldn't be a thing because like, what are you doing here you idiot? Don't let your personal misgivings with a person allow for executions), and honestly a little because I need to try and be firmer as a person. I put a lot more stock into the thoughts of others than my own, and sometimes it's tough to remember that me and my thoughts also have value, whatever that looks like. Is that the best thing to just type aloud? Also don't hit your kids, regardless of circumstance.

Uhhh got to say I'm blanking a bit on what else to put in. Closing remarks now I suppose. Life is fucking awesome, and I mean that to apply to most-every instance of it. We're all just here on our queer little blogs having a time with one another, and isn't that wonderful? The past 5 years or so have been terrible mentally for me with a few really bad months in particular this year, but I finally feel like I'm on the up-and-up. Accepting that I'm trans after repressing it for a while, finally cutting off a bad friend (hopefully for good), working on getting HRT. With any luck, I'll have some patches in my hands next Friday, the 15th of September. That's huge for me, not only in the obvious sense but because my brain somehow twisted itself into thinking that I can't take this whole topic seriously outside of hair growth and shaving facial hair until I actually get some form of HRT into my hands, AND IT'S HAPPENING! AAAAHHH!!! I'm moving into the next chapter of my life after being kind of stagnant for a while, and I've had such a wonderful vigor these past few weeks that I haven't known in ages. I've really embraced an appreciation of what others might consider mundane, and just trying to be a bit goofy. Letting things roll off of me, even if the anxiety tends to really weaken my legs and make me nauseous. I stay silly. The horrors may persist, but so do I. So do you. How lovely.

Also,

#transfem #tw child abuse #Not my own abuse though #My parents are just so amazing #I love them both so much #Did that come off wrong? Apologies #I just gush about them whenever possible #Did I even do this post correctly?#Let's find out baby first time for everything #I'm also on mobile if that's relevant I guess

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jennablackmorebooks · 6 months

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@kvr0ii if you don't mind, I'm going to answer on this blog, since I want to keep it somewhat separate from my main blog so I can remain uh. employable. extremely dystopian world isn't it

(Context: I made a post on my secret personal blog something about how it's totally cool for my friends to message me at 1 AM to ask about what textiles my characters wear; I considered doing the same thing to some of my friends before getting nervous about it.)

Mae turns 20 just before mid-2016, though the year is never quite stated in the text because every year we move farther and farther away from 2016. She's 19 when she gets her wings at the start of Rainbow. She's not at the point of developing a professional wardrobe for a workplace, she's still able to afford the clothes she wants, and because of the year she's relatively uninfluenced by microtrends and tiktok aesthetics (in fact, if you asked her about Tik Tok, she'd probably think of the song). At this point, business casual was on the back end of having its moment, narrower pants were in style, and while people were talking about sustainable fashion, it wasn't as prevalent casually as discussion of it is now.

There are a few styles that are pretty popular around this time, which she probably gets at the shops. Specifically, we see her with items such as a blazer, a couple of dresses (including one full of glitter), a hoodie, and knit leggings. The blazer is never really something that the origin is revealed of, though it is something Mae hadn't seen in a few months at one point but was familiar enough with to recognise, so we can't be entirely sure if it's perhaps an old wool blazer, or one of the new polyester blazers that were so easy to find in just about any mall clothing store in the mid-2010s. She cut a hole in the arm of it, so it couldn't have been too expensive. She does wear it to go flying over a lake, which wouldn't be the ideal thing to do with wool. Still, I'm going to suggest this might not be completely a win for polyester, since Mae complains of the heat quite a lot, and wool would be more breathable than polyester would be. I'll suggest perhaps this is a secondhand wool blazer. It still holds its structure after being owned a while and also cut in the sleeve, which , having personally owned some of those 2010s mall blazers, I know they wouldn't really have done all that well. The blazer is long, so it might have been a vintage oversized.

Her glitter-covered periwinkle dress, however, is all polyester and plastic, and her knit leggings are probably acrylic and elastane. I think her white dress might be linen, because of its pairing with the azalea crown as a sort of counter to the deeply unnatural Deirdre and Mae's change since acquiring the wings. But, it would have to be quite fitted at the top, since it's strapless. She describes it as a flowing dress, so the bottom is probably quite loose; it's great for the weather since it's an excellent material for hot days, and it flows quite well when there's enough fabric. The sequins on her concert suit are plastic, and the velvet of her boots probably acetate or polyester. The shirt she wears with it is silver, which suggests a non-natural fibre to get that really shiny look, and it wouldn't be silk since she's buying it in a random mall store for one specific event.

(As an aside, when she borrows Kaio's clothes, those are cotton. He's a flannel and jeans and t-shirts sort of lad for his everyday outfits.)

Mae, for the safety of her wings, can get away with wearing whatever she feels like; she never really has scale troubles. Perhaps due to the engineered nature of her wings, physical limitations such as the permanence of scales or the weight of her bones for flight never really matter that much. She notices that the small wing she activates her own wings with is not subject to the whims of physics that regular butterfly wings would be:

And I imagine the same is mostly true for the wings she develops. She never mentions taking precaution (despite her nervous nature) to keep her scales from falling off, and perhaps they do not. As butterfly scales do not grow back, perhaps the solution was for Kaio to engineer the wings in such a way that the loss of scales would not be a factor in the first place. This lets Mae wear whatever she feels like, and she seems to prioritize cut and colour over fibre content, recognising articles of her own and other people's clothing by these features instead of by their fibre content, excepting Keiko's silk dress, something that others Keiko due to its anachronistic nature to the time they live in, and the leathers of Feris who is still apart from Mae and Kaio in the sense of how she gained her wings and her connection with Tornin, and Iron Filings for concert outfits, which are deviations from what she's used to seeing them wear. So, textiles are mostly important to Mae when they serve to mark the wearer as different.

Thank you so much for asking, this was so fun to answer! :D

#i love textile fibres i love textile fibres #Rainbow #Mae Chouko #ask

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illusioncanthurtme · 6 months

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I just... need to say... I HAVE BEEN A FAN OF YOUR WORK FOR YEARSSSSS like i remember you were one of my first tumblr blogs i ever followed once i made a tumblr account in 2018 and have been following EVEN before i had a tumblr blog in 2017 because i was so obsessed with your one south park creek art XD like? your art has improved so much? like? OMG????? and its like? so good? and so amazing? and such an inspiration? (and tbh learning a year or two ago that you also drew invader zim art before was just like??????? omg) AND also that you drew danganronpa art too! just like! wow! and zelda and like so many other cool fandoms too!!! its super awesome! AND NOW learning that you are back into invader zim? is just? omg? (and plus ship and draw zadr) its so mega awesome for real. like? your art is so awesome? love your shading? like how you draw? like i can go on and on .... you art is amazing! seriously! Have a good one!

@cinnamonghost I am SO GLAD I checked my inbox. I never look in here ever at all, so I apologize if this has been sitting here for a while!

But holy shit, I am SO flattered. This really did make my night. It's so crazy when people say they've been following me for years, I honestly can't wrap my head around it, but it means so much to me. In this weird parasocial way, it makes me feel like I have these ancient friends that I share old memories with. I'm pretty sure I know EXACTLY what creek drawings you're referencing, I was weirdly proud of that post because it did NUMBERS, but hell if I know why. Looking back on it, the drawings weren't very good, but I guess tumblr had more users then, and sp was popular.

AND YEAH, I really do get around when it comes to fandoms don't i?? I really don't tether myself to any one thing, I just draw whatever I like at the time. Iz is a source of nostalgia, now in more than one way (childhood watching the cartoon, my teenage years participating in fandom), and not to be cheesy or anything, but it's like a Home in a way. Familiar territory I guess. I'll always like iz!

Thank you so much for sending me an ask!!! Literally so kind of you, this means the world.

#ask #answered #cinnamonghost

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nanjokei · 8 months

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i didn't see a post about mtl that you deleted, i was just talking about annoying stuff i saw in fandom and it sounded like you knew the feeling, i didn't mean to sound like i was vaguing something specific

that said i don't speak japanese at all so if you do have thoughts on japanese mtl specifically i'd love to hear them, i'm sure they're insightful!

i see!

im not fluent in japanese at all and if i were to list the languages i actually speak id never list it, i barely know enough to enjoy things amongst myself and even then its a lot of mining terms and looking stuff up EVERY TIME (for example if something has a reading time of 1 hour, it will probably take me 4~5 hrs to get through it best case scenario). so i am not the person to ask at all for this kind of thing. this is not me being humble. it is objective truth. i guess it would be "being familiar enough to enjoy my hobbies" rather than even "knowing" or "being learned". i never made any effort to study so in the end i really only know my native arabic and taught english. so to be honest, it isn't in my place to talk like i do know... (though sometimes... because i am human and a dumbass... i make this mistake)

i would not really share my explicit opinion or retelling on certain happenings and events of what i watched/read because id be afraid of making mistakes that influence the other person's opinion incorrectly. but hey, this is the exact kind of responsibility you're talking about, right?

my opinion squarely comes from being someone who DOES speak at least two languages fluently though, and has been in spaces where fan translation is prominent. so it is a mix of "yeah i completely understand the sentiment even if the target language is different". i don't wanna link a random ass throwaway blog, so i pasted the contents of the old post i made into a pastebin. i thought it was way too emotionally charged and aggressive, which is why i deleted it. im not too fond of coming off like that or "ranting" T_T but i guess it's fine to link now that i'm very removed from the feeling of annoyance i had when i typed it up.

#ask #anonymous #though to be clear when i say i dont like ranting (on my own accord!) i dont mean im against 'negativity' i am not a toxic positivity mf #but id also rather spend my energy doing things that are fun for me #im also a very anxious person to begin with

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suborbitaltrash · 1 year

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I hardly understand the Book of the New Sun and I'm enjoying it a lot

If you're familiar with this series, this post will probably echo a lot of what you've already thought or read about Book of the New Sun. If you've never heard of it and/or are looking to read it, this post might contain a couple of minor spoilers - beware, if you're the type of person who likes to dive in without any prior knowledge. It mostly serves for me to get my unstructured thoughts about this book series in order, and because this is my blog and I want to write my little book report.

I finished reading Shadow & Claw, comprising the first two volumes of Gene Wolfe's science fantasy epic, Book of the New Sun, a couple of days ago. When I first picked it up earlier this year, aside from loads of enthusiastic praise from a certain kind of sci-fi fan, the biggest draw for me was how dense and puzzling it allegedly was on your first read. "Not me", I thought, "I'm different". lol, I say in retrospect, lmao.

The first read-through of Shadow of the Torturer took me a good month or two to get through - the first and biggest hurdle for me was the narrative voice. The book is narrated by its protagonist, Severian, a resident of Urth and a disgraced torturer's apprentice. The most obvious obstacle I encountered at the start was the book's obscure terminology - something I personally am a huge fan of when it comes to sci-fi. Severian lives in a very, very old world and makes many, many assumptions about how much of it the reader is supposed to already understand. The result is a delightfully confusing lingo that uses a lot of (I assume) classical and medieval terms to describe fantastical concepts made mundane to the inhabitants of Urth (I am still not sure if it's pronounced "Earth" or "Oorth"). In the appendix to the first novel, Wolfe credits himself as but a humble translator who has done his best to adapt and estimate concepts unknown to the reader. He's being a little cheeky, and I like that about him. Book of the New Sun lacks a glossary - at least, the edition I've read - but a fan-made one exists online. Personally, I think it's more fun to peek at it minimally and try to guess at the meanings of the verbiage yourself.

Aside from the language, Severian's narration is noticeably all over the place - he jumps between events on the drop of a hat, omits and glosses over crucial details (partially, again, due to the difference in perspective between himself and the reader), and skips very important bits of the fiction, leaving holes for devoted fans to speculate about. All the while, the torturer swears up and down about his supposedly perfect memory. He establishes this early in the book for credibility, and does not neglect to mention it in pretty much every single interlude. My biggest early mistake was taking him at his word - the book gets noticeably easier to read once you understand the crucial detail that Severian is a little shithead liar. The first-person narration made me unconsciously sympathize with him throughout his tale, and it took me longer than I should have to realize that he's not a reliable narrator - or even a decent human being (he's kind of an asshole). Through trial and error, the book teaches you not to trust it, to question every turn of phrase or unexpected action - and comprehend it better for it. Understanding that, the rest of Shadow of the Torturer and the entirety of Claw of the Conciliator were much smoother reads, comparatively. The series is still peppered with unexplained events, hidden connections between the pages, and references to things I may or may not be supposed to understand. I don't catch onto these things that quickly, anyhow. Book of the New Sun is one of those books-as-puzzles that refuses to reveal its whole until you have understood the sum of its parts - that is, read the whole thing multiple times. My first engagement with the Gene Wolfe fandom was the in-joke about rereading his books.

To me, reading Book of the New Sun for the first time is a balancing act between probing the book for answers and accepting that you might not have the tools for it. As much as I wanted to read every page several times to really get what's happening, I had to take things at face value with the faith that I will get that other piece of the puzzle I'm looking for, eventually, in a throwaway line somewhere. The book makes it easy to slip into that pattern of thought, employing the same kind of deadpan presentation as magic realist fiction. Wolfe's writing reminded me the most of Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić - both present extraordinary events with a blank expression, play extensively with structure and language, and require you to find their meaning beyond the actual telling of events. I can see it being a frustrating experience to many, and I was left feeling a little stupid myself, having to put down the book for a while before returning to get a fresh outlook. Nevertheless, I think it's a wonderful read if you like books that reward you for being inquisitive and reading a little too much into things - which I am not convinced is possible when it comes to Wolfe. What I like so far: the insanely imaginative worldbuilding, the sense of mystery, the language, the mind games, the corkboard theorizing. What I dislike so far: Severian as a person, some of the authorial decisions regarding female characters and the use of sexual assault as a tool of characterization - there is a scene in Claw that is left up to interpretation, but in my opinion, you'd have to be going out of your way not to see it. It's a minor part of the story, but it was enough to slightly sour my reading. I'm excited to finish the series and post my thoughts upon getting the whole picture, which might take a while.

#book of the new sun #gene wolfe #sci fi writing #sci fi literature #book report

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rocksinmuffin · 1 year

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answering a bunch of things under the read more.

No, sorry, I know of the game itself but am unfamiliar with the lore and the fandom.

Sorry. I’ve seen a playthrough of one of the games forever ago but it’s not really my jam.

Yeah! Back in the day, Red vs Blue was my jam. I can’t say I’m familiar with any of the newer stuff once they actually started doing their own animation, but if you want something from the original old silly universe then I would be comfortable with that. Sheila is a queen and I would fight Caboose for her.

My first experience with a Kevin Smith movie was seeing Clerks 2 in movie theaters and I did not get the hype then. I think the Jay and Silent Bob characters are fun but otherwise I am not really a fan of his work.

SAD!!!! Honestly, though, I spent so much time on Luna so sad to see what happened to it. A lot of great works were lost. I will forever miss you strangely sexually-charged Valtiel fic. F

I’m genuinely not sure if this was meant to be a request or if you were just telling me in general about the tall dark and handsome dudes in the Gargoyles cartoon but you’re right. Lowkey had a crush on Goliath.

Hey anon! Glad you’re enjoying the blog and sorry for any issues you might have experienced. Honestly, it is impossible for me to say whether the request sent or not because, whether you meant two days or two weeks, I get multiple requests so without any further details there’s no real way of me knowing which one is yours. Still, if you’re nervous it didn’t get through for any reason, you are more than welcome to resend it. If I got the original then there is no problem and I can just delete one of the duplicates.

I haven’t watched or seen it, so as of now I would not write for it. However, it looks interesting enough so I might try watching it sometime in the future. If I like it then I could potentially write for it in the future.

Not really anymore. Trippin’ Balls was in its peak back when I was still writing on Lunaescence and I hadn’t even heard of Tumblr. I’d take requests from people in the reviews and so on. But now that I have a Tumblr and requests are open in general it feels kind of silly to continue taking requests for that specific old series when you can just ask me to write for anyone right here. Though this did remind me that I had a piece on the Ginyu Force that I never uploaded to AO3 (I think I posted it somewhere on this blog but for whatever reason never uploaded it to the actual story on AO3) so I will do that and make it the final update.

You are so motherfuckin real for this 😎✊ Theo fuckers unite!!!!

I am so fuckin sorry fam because I know the pain of being in a small fandom that is desperate for content but I have literally never heard of this in my life. I hope one day an artist you really admire starts posting stuff for you to enjoy 🙏

I’m gonna be real with you, I have never watched a Nintendo Direct in my life. I did hear about them finally announcing the sequel to Breath of the Wild though and if Sidon is in it I will never shut up about it.

Doctor Who is already on my list of series I don’t write for. I have a feeling if I had a normal exposure to Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I would enjoy it, however, the only times I ever caught it on TV the absolute worst/darkest episodes were on. One was an episode where Buffy was in a psych ward because they were doing a whole thing where her life as a vampire slayer was all in her head or some shit. And the other episode I saw had a vampire that ate skin and he would skin his victims alive and I remember him using his sharp nail to cut a slice of skin off his victim and it fucked me up. So, yeah, I never wanted to watch Buffy atter that lol. So no Buffy either.

Eh, probably not. I mean, I watched the first season on Netflix and I enjoyed it but it also didn’t stick with me enough for me to remember anyone’s names. So unless another season releases where it is easily accessible for me to watch it and I am SUPER into it then probably not anytime soon.

You are so real for this. Like, Borderlands is a very dated series but I genuinely enjoyed playing 1 and 2 a couple years ago and I love Claptrap. I felt so bad when no one else came to his party. I will always go to Claptrap’s parties. he is my homie.

I never heard of this and when I went to look it up I was expecting some kind of animated movie or something but it was literally a movie starring Tom Hanks?????? Like, I’m not shocked that you are recommending it as a good movie I was just genuinely so shocked to have a movie with a big star like him completely slip under my radar.

Nah, sorry. I vaguely remember this show running on adult swim for a small amount of time but I never watched it.

Yeah, I mean, I still write stuff for Dragon Ball and Piccolo. I never stopped. It’s just what people are requesting. You are more than welcome to send a Piccolo request my way. But also you guys must understand I have been so explicitly clear in the past about how I headcannon that Namekians don’t have junk so if every request I get is about Piccolo banging the reader with his big meaty cock then I am probably going to feel less inspired to write that since it is just not how I picture him.

I haven’t watched it but he seems hot as far as furries go. But I would probably have to see the movie to get the full context to understand WHY he is so hot because apparently, against all odds, this movie is really good? Or so I’ve heard.

Hard to keep track since I get new requests every day and not everything in my inbox is strictly a request but as of right now my inbox is showing about 177 messages. So, nothing too wild. But I’m also not forcing myself to answer every request if I don’t want to either so right now the numbers are constantly fluctuating and mean nothing.

To be honest, while I have fondness for the old game, I haven’t really paid attention to Overwatch since they dropped the hamster as a character and I stopped actually playing it even earlier. As far as I’m concerned, it stopped being a fun game when you could no longer have a team of all Winstons.

I used to watch it but not religiously or anything. And, honestly, I have no plans of watching it or giving it any support in the future in light of the recent news about Justin Roiland’s domestic abuse charges.

I haven’t but maybe now I will because I am digging butch dino lady.

Sorry, but no. I have browsed past it before in an fye but have never actually watched it.

Okay, so!!!! I think I have watched the first 2 seasons of the show and I would be willing to write my little pony friendship is magic. HOWEVER! No NSFW. And honestly if I write it then it would probably be a shitpost.

I did try it out a long time ago and as a whole I have a lot of mixed feelings because some of the writing is genuinely very good but frankly none of that excuses the overly sexual depictions and drawings of characters who are meant to be children and it is such a shame that this LGBT+ friendly game with some very hot buff furry characters also feels comfortable enough drawing kids with bulges in their pants.

#ask #anon #rantsinmuffin #long post #will i won’t i

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xoxomarijo · 1 year

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Where do we draw the line between imitation as a form of flattery, and imitation as a form of stealing?

Part I - Instagram

I’ve been away from Tumblr for a heck of time but only one crazy discovery got me back ranting in here. The reason? Someone stealing my content. There is no problem taking bits of inspiration from everywhere but this one’s a whole new level of pro. Let’s start from the very beginning and I’ll leave the judgement to you.

PS. I’m censoring some details out of pity for this person.

It’s funny how Instagram would sometimes lead you to the most unexpected suggested people. I stumbled upon a suspicious suggested account (I use the word suspicious because I was instantly drawn to how familiar it looks), and behold, it’s very much patterned to my IG poetry page and I knew for sure it belongs to this person.

I’ve been writing since 2006. I usually kept a handwritten journal for everything but you really don’t get the time for it anymore as an adult. So my iPhone Notes became my go-to until all my thoughts were consuming too much of my phone memory already. I started transferring some of my writing on Tumblr during 2018, and around June 2022 I decided to put up an Instagram account for some selected content. Creating each layout for @poetrybymarii had also became a much-needed break from my day job as well.

Upon discovering this suggested account and distinguishing the theme that had been copied from me, I immediately scrolled back to its earliest post to determine how old the account was—the account was created August 2022, exactly two months after I’ve created @poetrybymarii. I messaged this person to confirm if the account belongs to her (which, even if she denied was obviously hers). In the beginning she admitted ownership, not knowing what’s next to come.

You see, I was already aware how this person was stealing bits of captions and whatnots. I was ready to let it slip away again until one of her posts truly alarmed me—it was one of the proses I wrote and posted here on my Tumblr dated September 10, 2018. It was copied and minorly tweaked! You can see how the whole context, sentence per sentence are still the same. Words were just jumbled or replaced with synonyms but the whole chronological order of it all remains.

I confronted her again and this was the start of her denying it all. Let’s debunk her alibi here:

Alibi: “It was not mine, I just saw it somewhere and copied it because I found it nice. Someone must have reposted and that’s where I found it. But I did not copied it from you.”

Point 1 — The moment she confirmed the poetry account was hers, she was clear about how it was just an outlet account for her thoughts. Meaning she claims ownership for all the content written and posted. Not one post had a proper credit in it. Also judging the awkward English composition and grammar, it was a no-brainer that the write-up there was all her work.

Point 2 — My original prose was posted on my Tumblr account with a very few following. It did not receive any notes (likes and re-shares) so the chances of it going viral being passed around to make it into her screen apart from my very page was impossible.

Point 3 — My prose needed to become viral first to close the possibility of someone firstly related to me have it find somewhere. But had it been viral, I would have still known. Social Media is part of my job. There is no tricking me in this one.

Part II – Tumblr

The entirety of my conversation with this person was pointless as she tries to divert away from the very point of her stealing my prose. Overwhelmingly, she was ready with all her alibies and screenshots, and suddenly admitted that not all the content posted on her poetry IG was hers. She tried to justify her way out from her own lies and sent me a screenshot of her Tumblr banner (one mistake she made). And this was the second part of my crazy discovery as I began to delve into her blog. Guessing her Tumblr URL and tracking it was a piece of cake even if she changed it upon my confrontation.

If there’s one thing I can proudly claim on the internet it’s that I was a part of the Tumblr O.G. back in 2007. This very account is already 8 years old (est.2015) and my third account since then. “Ask me anything” feature was only added sometime around mid-2010’s, and it took me a flooding of Anonymous asks before I came into addressing them as “Anons”. This person’s Tumblr account was created only October 2020*. She reiterated how she has no ill intention with any of her accounts which have no followers in it, to which I pointed out—if she has literally no followers, where did all the “ask me anything” came from? Were these lovely compliments and questions all fabricated by her too just to make it look like her page is gaining foot traffic in it? But then again it was all part of her gaslighting, diverting away from the main point which was her plagiarizing my prose.

At this point all I was able to say was FOR FUCKS SAKE. I was beyond speechless to discover how even some of our photos were the same. She also had some selfies in there that were the same replica pose of my past selfies.* She denied everything once again and stated how I was not the only person who knew apps. But Pins was an unknown app. Pins is not something that would pop-out on the app store as you type in search “collage maker.” It was something I discovered hands-on as I braved and tinkered through links and links of mandarin characters I do not understand. I think I may have shared some discovered Japanese and Chinese apps in this Tumblr account as well if you scroll all the way back. Anyhow as soon as I saw her photos using the exact frame from Pins, I immediately tried to recall where I may have shared the app away. I remember sharing it through a comment on Instagram when a friend complimented my post. I have not shared it anywhere else.

Alibi: “You’re not the only one who knows apps.”

True. But adding to all the prior things I mentioned above about the app, WHY the fucking fuck does she need to use the very same two frame collages I used, out of all the hundreds of frames found in Pins?

It does not end in here. There was a heck ton of other odd similarities—from her selfies posted there that are too sensitive to share away already, to specific favorite songs posted and captioned.

Part III — Conclusion

Once a cheater, always a cheater, as cliché as it is—they would never own up their mistakes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Luna’s viral #F👁️👁️D eyes photo it’s that you gotta screenshot everything the second you find out about someone stealing your content, and you gotta fight for proper credits and rights. How this person tried to gaslight me when she said “I didn’t knew you were this shallow, why is this a big deal?” was something only a manipulative narcissistic person would say. Artists and creatives are so prone to having their content stolen in this modern era, and people like her who think things like this are no big deal are actually the first cause of this problem.

PS. Her Instagram was taken down. Too bad I already got the SSs.

*References on file

#thoughts #plagiarism #stolen content #social media #poetry #prose #fake people #diary #immitation

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jacquelinemerritt · 1 year

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The Prequels Strike Back!

Originally posted December 14th, 2015

Why is there a new hope for lovers of the Star Wars prequels?

Back in 2005, not long before Revenge of the Sith was released, my eleven year old self had fairly recently discovered the Star Wars fandom. It was the first time I’d ever been part of a group united by its shared love for something, and I quickly fell in deep, taking part in forum discussions, reading blog posts analyzing characters and their motivations, and discovering the joys of the (now retired) Expanded Universe.

But while I was in this community, I noticed something peculiar: everyone, regardless of age, race, class, or gender, hated the prequels, with a particular amount of derision going towards The Phantom Menace. This made no sense to me; I had fallen in love with Star Wars after seeing Menace, and while I had to concede that the original trilogy was better, it struck me as incredibly strange that these films which had brought me such joy would be so thoroughly reviled by its own fans!

Fast forward to today: it’s 2015, The Force Awakens is coming out in a few days, and in the last few months leading up to its release, I’ve seen a number of articles and opinion pieces looking back at the Star Wars prequels and defending them from the scorn and criticism they’ve constantly received. And as much of a change as that is, it’s even stranger still to see that the people defending the prequels are using the same essential argument my eleven year old self did: the prequels aren’t bad, they’re just not as good as the originals.

Now, I’m incredibly happy to see these pieces being written, but I have to question why they couldn’t have been written by other critics back when I was a kid and needed my love for the prequels to be validated.

I’ve come up with a couple of explanations for this. The first and most cynical one is that the reason prequel defenses have been written more recently is because all of the people who were previously cynical about the prequels have been blinded by the hype surrounding The Force Awakens.

I see this as being entirely possible, though unlikely; it’s possible because people were still excited for The Phantom Menace when it was released despite Lucas’ special editions of the original trilogy being met with a lot of derision, but it’s unlikely because from what I’ve seen, most of the excitement for The Force Awakens has been tempered with an appropriate amount of caution and skepticism, since as a fan community we are all already familiar with the pain of a disappointing Star Wars film.

Except, we’re not all familiar with that, and that’s where my second explanation comes in. See, Star Wars fans that are currently my age were, like me, children when the prequels came out, and for a lot of us, The Phantom Menace was our first Star Wars film. But in spite of the prequels’ inferiority to the rest of the Star Wars saga, we fell in love with Star Wars anyway, and were forced to hide our love for them at the risk of being ridiculed by the rest of the community.

Now though, we’ve grown up, and those of us who have become writers have matured enough and gotten clever enough to defend the prequels from its detractors; the only reason our defenses of the prequels are popping up now are because there’s a new Star Wars film coming out, and it’s a topical subject.

The second explanation makes the most sense to me, because as anyone who has ventured into the comments section of a YouTube video will tell you, the internet is an echo chamber of endless hate and derision, and this leads to minority opinions being silenced extremely effectively. And so I didn’t see any defenders of the prequels when I was younger because to attempt to defend the prequels was going to be a waste of time and energy, since your defense would be quickly drowned out by the thousands of fans who disagreed with you.

Of course, perhaps the reason these defenses aren’t being shot down now is because the fandom is too wrapped up in excitement over The Force Awakens to continue in their derisive ways, and that means that if The Force Awakens turns out to be a Phantom Menace-esque disappointment, the hate for the prequels will resurface, and I’ll never get to see anyone defend them again.

Here’s to The Force Awakens being good so that that doesn’t happen!

#star wars #phantom menace #force awakens #star wars prequels #star wars original trilogy #BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!#I WAS SO FUCKING NAIVE #GODDAMN #oh my fucking god #i am sorry younger jacqueline #you were so fucking wrong it hurts #turns out all those fuckos obsessed with hating the prequels #grew up to be the losers obsessed with shitting on the last jedi #and the presence of women and people of color in star wars #and they were drowning out anyone interested in the prequels by sheer force #back when you were a young kid #needless to say i don't think this piece holds up #but it is very funny to read #because of just how wrong i was

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