WIP TITLE MEME.

tagged by @prometheas @denerims @faarkas & @aartyom to do this – thank you all so so much ily guys! ♡

tagging: @aelyosos @brujah @cultistbase @florbelles @girlbosselrond @indorilnerevarine @jendoe @lightwardens @liurnia @malefiicarum @morvaris @nocticulas @nuclearstorms @risingsh0t @shellibisshe @solasan @swordcoasts @steelport @voerman & anyone else who is writing right now, i'm sorry i don't really know at the moment! also as always, no pressure to do this! ♡

rules: post the names of all the files in your wip folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it

so, i'm going to expose myself right now and show you guys my wips checklist doc. these are all the ewskers, obviously. i'm not really 100% on my writing rn, so i won't share snippets, but i will do summaries and tell you about all of these (and maybe bits from my little plan outlines). y'all get a variety and a half lmao

i may share snippets of last one, but no promises because it's spicy and i might get a bit uncomfy sharing. and with the first one, i showed what i had a bit ago before deleting the posts, and there's only been a bit of progress since, but the whole two fics aren't off limits for little moments or insight

Weekend Update - 01/07/2024

Nerdie! Happy New Year! How was your first week of 2024?

….I could have used more sleep, but it wasn’t horrible. Just okay overall. There were a few high points. I'm getting organized in life and in fanfiction.

That's a good thing. You're taking your planning seriously? This is The Way. So what's on the way? *laughs at their poor joke*

Don't abuse The Way like that. It's to be respected! But that did earn a giggle. Anyway...

1. The New Year began with all the Pickled Peñas! The @pickled-pena challenge fics were posted on 01/01 but by using the tag: trickle pickle you can still write a Pickled Peña fic if you so choose until January 31st. All Pickle Peña fics are listed here.

2. I finished my Space smut with feelings series Sard’ika Sessions. 🥰 You never forget your first series. It’s quite special, I feel I represented Din well and bent The Creed but didn’t remove any helmets prematurely. I put in all the feelings I wanted (because smut can have feelings too!) And Din saying the things that I giggled and squealed as I wrote them. 😘 This is The Way. Din had his way, all the ways. 🥰

3. Working on WIPs via the WIP Tag/Ask game which @trulybetty got me into. I thank her for including me. I may need to work on some of those titles.

Pedro characters from the WIP list include:

Dave York (4 from the list - guess which ones)

Marcus Pike (has 2)

Dieter Bravo (has 3)

Frankie Morales (@i-own-loki he's not dying)

Joel Miller (Frankie and he are tied for one each)

Din Djarin (one as well)

New characters to my writing:

Benny Miller (one listed, 2-3 not listed)

Santiago Garcia (two listed)

When I turn my brain off after coming home. I note different ideas or vibes I had. Sometimes there's bullet points, sentences or just a few words and a description. @tinytinymenace also has this same issue.

Well, there are three people to thank for plunge into the York Pit. The first, is @goodwithcheese with her asks to be about Dave which lead me to write 3-4 paragraphs to each ask. Also her end of the year confessional. Which is hilarious because apparently the way I misspelled someone’s name (I won’t say who, I feel embarrassed about it still 😣) was specific to me. It should also be noted, that maybe one of the two people I’ll mention next reblogged it saying they may know who it is and to DM them. So subtle, and I laughed because my reaction was, “How did they know?!” 🤣 The person who pointed out the spelling error was @for-a-longlongtime who should be a PI 🕵️ and had encouraged me to start writing the Dave cat-mouse fic. As for the reblog, that was the sweet @legendary-pink-dot who I’m not sure if it was my spelling mistake or the way I write. Special mention goes to @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin for her recent Dave York fic Inamorata

So your friends seem extremely observant!

That they are! If you want to learn about physics, keeping track of where body parts are and tantalizing smut you read Adi’s Nothing that I Didn’t Know she’s going to have more and we’re going to need all the hydration. Dot ran the Catfish Pond PhD Degree program in 2023. She knows our dear Frankie “Catfish” Morales exceptionally well, every curl and freckle I’m pretty sure. Both very smart and eagle- eyed ladies. 👀

Sounds like we should check both of them out! They sound like a blast!

They both are! And so is Megan when she and @trulybetty when they aren’t trying to get us all under control and herd cats and organize things. 😅 Or maybe they are with threats usually, but nice ones. You gotta be there.

We don’t know what to make of that. We’re concerned but intrigued.

As am I most of the time. It’s a good place to be. 😎

Making her update long enough, Hornado hooligan departs!

Wait, what does that name mean?

Ask @mysterious-moonstruck-musings and @undercoverpena they know, they’re both menaces. ❤️❤️

Love Nerdie 💕

1. I can’t send an ask/DM to this blog and I have a question/wcif. This ‘sideblog’ is meant to be a gallery only. You will only find ‘posts’ in the dashboard view, not on the actual blog.

🍀 Pease send all questions to my main blog @catharsim​​ !! 🍀 

2. How do I navigate the gallery? You can use the arrow buttons to help you. There will be indicators in a white bubble that show whether the lot is Early Access or a Commission. The download links will be updated when it becomes released to the public.

3. In the gallery, it has no download link to houses marked as ‘Commission,’ how do I get those houses? I do not and will not ever post my commissioned houses for public download. They are in the gallery as a portfolio. You may feel free to commission a similar house of your own from me, though! 

4. What are the different tiers of your Patreon? Everything is listed here 

5. How long is your Early Access period? I release my lots 3 weeks early for Patrons. 

6. What is your TOU on publicly released builds? - Please do not claim my builds as your own or reupload. - Feel free to edit my builds to your liking but keep them for personal use only. - Do not use my lots as a base for your own shared builds. - If you'd like me to see you using my lots, tag @cloverbuilds or @catharsim on Tumblr!

1. What is the process like? My process for commissions is as follows: 

You send me a direct message on Tumblr and we discuss what you want. This is when you would show me reference images. if you have a blueprint of the house, that’d be outstanding. It makes it a lot easier on me!

I get to work and may ask questions along the way about general opinions on the house, if any problems arise, etc.

I show you a finished product in pictures of the interior and exterior for approval.

Payment transaction via purchase of a Commisioner subscription on my Patreon. You will be charged the day you pledge and then charged the same day each month. You can end your subscription or change to a lower tier before you are charged again. If you’d like to keep your Commissioner access, you are entitled to one build per month! 

I send the house to you via SimFileShare

2. What is included in the price for a standard commission? The standard pricing of the Commissioner tier is $12. This is for residential homes up to four bedrooms. If you would like to commission a larger build or a community lot, DM me and we can discuss other payment methods like Paypal. 

Do you take commissions for Sims 4? No I don’t sorry. I dont play TS4 enough to be good at building, so I stick with what I know - which is TS3.

Will CC come with the house? I try to use very minimal CC in builds I’ll be sharing with someone else. But the cc I do use will be included in the file because I know how annoying it is to copy and paste links or track it down yourself.

I know there is controversy about this but I don’t have the time to track down every creator’s TOU. Honest to God I’m not trying to make money off other’s creations, I’m just trying to make it easier for people to have access to pretty houses. If someone specifically does not want their stuff included in a folder, feel free to message me and I’ll oblige.

Will your furnish the home for me if I pay extra? All my CC is in .package format and therefore will not transfer with the lot when exported. Tracking down each piece of cc for a fully furnished house is a nightmare even for the most organized person. So sorry, but no.

Are there any rules once I get the build? Yes and no. It’s yours, you paid for it. Feel free to edit it, never use it, burn it down, go nuts. The one thing I ask is please do not reupload it or claim it as your own. I put a lot of time into my builds and I would like credit given where it’s due. Thank you! <3

── get to know the author !

name: amber pronouns: she/her preference of communication: dms/discord (all you gotta do is ask). I am more likely to responde via dms though. most active muse: it varies depending on the day or mood (also which blog I'm on) experience/how many years: I've lost track, but it's around 15+ best experience: I would have to say that the best experience I've had is meeting all my lovely rp partners and making friends with them. rp pet peeves: uh, probably a lack of interest from rp partners. I tend to get very attached to pairings, and other writer's characters, so when there isn't at least some level of excitement for interactions...luckily have haven't experienced that lately. fluff, angst, or smut: all three. a nice balance between them is always good. plots or memes: a bit of both. i like being able to plot things out and nail down certain details, but it's not always possible, and memes can get you started just as well. I find memes are much more of a 'winging it' option, and quite frankly, the easier option. long or short replies: a bit of both, though mostly medium length. sometimes there are replies that I just can't stop writing, and other times it's not quite so easy to write that kind of length. I always try to have at least a paragraph. I find it a bit difficult to reply to one or two sentences, so I try not to do that to my rp partners. time to write: during the school year (I work at a private school) the best time for me to write is after work around 7:00 pm. but during the summer (which is now!!), as long as I'm awake, I'm usually writing something (or trying to at least). are you like your muses: uh, I'd like to think that I put at least a little piece of myself into my muses. I'm definitely not like all of them though. I don't think I'm like any one particular muse though, or at least not one over all the others. tagged by: @barkskins tagging: @ghostsxagain, @maroonstained, @anomalouss && anyone else that would like to do this

WIP Wednesday

Title: Extraordinary

Pairings: HotchReid (more to come)

Summary: League of Extraordinary Gentleman/Vampire AU;

Within the FBI there is a specialized team full of an elite selection of people. Unique individuals with very particular skill sets. And their job is to take the unusual cases: the ones that need to not only be solved, but are undetermined if the unsub is human, or something else entirely.

In a world filled with Vampires, non-human creatures, and subspecies unknown, there is only enough information to have them vaguely regulated. Rules that are so easily, and violently broken, all while hidden in plain sight among the unsuspecting public. Unrivaled for eons.

That’s where the BAU comes in. 

Official Posting Date: October 2021

Links: (Masterpost) (Snippet 01) (Snippet 02) (Snippet 03) (Snippet 04)

(TW/CW: Blood, blood drinking, vampirism, alcohol mentioned as context, seduction, hypnosis/trance mentioned.)

(the story so far/what you need to know for this clip at least: our romantic storyline picks up not too long after this oneshot was written, where Hotch and Spencer have formed an ‘arrangement’ that Spencer puts a stop to because of -reasons- of the emotional sort. Hotch can still feed from him when he needs, but that’s all that will happen. They have a small tiff, and Spencer is about to leave the room when he has an epiphany...) 

--

"It's the blood,” Spencer states, eyes wider in astonishment. Any melancholy gone from his face as his realization forms fully in his mind. “My blood is so…” 

Pure. 

“--undebased that you can taste the chemical composition in my blood. Or your palate is just that refined.” Which is amazing, unheard of, baffles him and his mind is whirling a million bits a second trying to process what that means, exactly. “You can... when I'm sad, you can taste it. That’s why you don’t want to feed. You’ve always been able to taste it. When I'm happy, when I’m worried, aroused, when I’m lost in... infatuation." 

Hotch doesn't answer, doesn't give away that he can also intimately feel what Spencer feels when he drinks his blood. But Spencer barely notices, is already falling deep down the informational rabbit hole and barreling towards that disastrous need to know more.

"What does it taste like?" There's a brightness returned to his eyes, and Hotch didn't realize how much he'd missed it until it reappeared. Knows he could never deny him anything, when he’s looking at the undead man like that. He pauses, collects himself, resigns himself to answer -- because by God, does he want to give Spencer an answer he’ll remember.

"It's subtle,” he begins, slow and careful, “like notes in a glass of wine. Not everyone has the nose, or the taste for it." But he explains further, steps closer, the brightness in Spencer's eyes like stars in the sky he can't look away from. Drawing him in; a creature of the night, who should not be lured by something so fleeting. But he is, and he does, and he speaks slow as he crosses the room. 

"Sadness is caused by a lack of dopamine; it tastes bitter, mineral, like charcoal but not always unpleasant.” There’s a time and a place for a sad drink, but he never wants to know Spencer’s sorrow so intimately. 

“Excitement, like what you're feeling now,” the thing in his eyes Hotch can’t look away from, “is bright. Floral. Light on the tongue.” 

“Arousal," said low and closer than Spencer realized he was, "serotonin and endorphins. Pleasure is always sweeter. Juicy, almost, yours especially. Cherries, and black currant.”

“But love…” It almost stops him in his tracks, but he carries on -- as if in a trance. Ironic, the roles reversed. “Infatuation, as you called it. It's more of a texture. Thick and full bodied, like how Chardonnays can be buttery, so can love. Something pleasant that sticks to the tongue and reminds you it's there. Long after it’s gone."

Spencer is breathing hard, pupils dilated, staring back now that Hotch is looming so close and afraid to move. Pinned by that black diamond stare. Prey in a trap of an entirely different sort. 

One he’s not sure he wants sprung from.

--

((if you want to be apart of the taglist just hit me up via comment, reblog tag, DMs or asks 💕))

I told myself I wasn’t going to make a post like this—that I wasn’t going to stoop to the level of making call-out posts—but I really can’t stay silent after what has happened in the last day or so.

The TOG fandom has a serious issue with excusing antisemitism and allowing people who have painfully hurt marginalized groups to continue to ignore, dismiss, and refuse to acknowledge their limits of intersectionality in regards to social justice. I have seen it myself, been on the receiving end of it, and have talked to other Jews in this fandom about what’s been going on and it needs to start being addressed.

Now, I’m not going to name names or tag people (mainly because I have been blocked by almost all of them for this very issue) but if you message me I will gladly tell you the users involved in this. Also, if you have doubts of any of this’s validity and would like screenshots, feel free to reach out to me here or via Discord and I will share them.

A lot of this started when a member of the All&More server had brought up the scientific and medical “discoveries” during the torture and medical experimentation that took place during the Third Reich and how a lot of the origin of it isn’t taught. LR made a comment saying that “we are three-dimensional creatures who are stuck moving forward in time and can’t go back” and added that not using the research won’t make past horrors not happen. When the original user added that there has been a movement in medicine for removing Nazi scientists names off discoveries and that progress was slow moving, she deflected the conversation onto herself, saying “Not using research won’t make my family not harmed by the Japanese” and then immediately pivoted into admitting that, from what she understood, there weren’t any particularly valid scientific discoveries made by them. She then said, in regards to said Nazi atrocities, “Take it, learn about it, put it in context, and then own it and transform it.”

A Jewish member of A&M voiced their discomfort about possibly taking medicine that was a direct result of the murder of their grandparents and other relatives, to which LR said, “Still stuck in the 3rd dimension, still moving forward in time.” I brought up the fact that medicine was built on antisemitism and racism and that starting over would be better than a lot of the procedures we have now. There is a longstanding issue in medicine of disregarding black pain and so much of what we have now is created by eugenicists—including Nazi scientists. There is still a lot of Jewish trauma due to medical experimentation and that is oftentimes dismissed.

LR then made a flippant comment about “Does this count as Godwin’s Law?”—which is about how all internet discussions lead to someone being compared to Nazis/Hitler. When called out on the inappropriateness of the comment, she did not respond and was backed up by one of the mods of the server. There was no apology made nor an acknowledgment about the casual antisemitism of the comments she made and the dismissal of Jewish trauma/pain.

Now, fast forward a couple months when I was contacted by a third party who had not been in the server at the time but had joined and heard about what LR had said there. H said they were friends with LR and had concerns about antisemitism and would like my perspective. I explained what had happened and offered screenshots if they would like them, which they did. They thanked me and apologized that it got to a point that I felt unsafe in the server and had to leave, which I appreciated.

A couple weeks later they reached out to me again and offered to broker a conversation between LR and myself because the situation wasn’t sitting well with them. I was skeptical (because I had been blocked at that point) and didn’t have a lot of hope that this conversation would actually take place but I felt a responsibility to try and be the bigger person and deal with what had been said head on, so I agreed to sit down and have a discussion with her as long as there was a third party in the chat as well—given our history.

After a couple weeks of back and forth with H and hearing that LR had said that she would “think about it”, she finally agreed. I was asked for a time and date and I gave my availability and was told she would be asked for the same. A couple days later, I was suddenly told LR would only be comfortable with this conversation if H acted as a “literal go-between” with us copy-pasting our responses in their DMs so we can “sit with the message and everyone can get to them when they can” rather than it being a session with an actual back and forth and was asked if I was okay with that. I honestly said no, because this was supposed to be a situation where she and I sat down and discussed what she said in the server, not a back and forth message relay where the conversation got dragged out for days or weeks or however long it was going to take. I said if she was serious about meeting me halfway on this, she needed to be able to sit down and actually talk.

H copy-pasted my response to LR and came back that she had backed out of the conversation, which part of me had expected from the beginning—even though all I wanted from this sit down was for her to understand how hurtful the antisemitic comments were and an apology.

These comments that were made in the server are not a secret. It’s pretty well known what was said and again, these were all on record, not privately made in some DM. She has still not owned up to the comments she said, nor has she ever apologized for them. She has ignored message after message about them and blocked more people than I can count. Many of the people defending her when the discourse begins have also been messaged about the comments she’s said and also either block people or ignore the messages completely and refuse to acknowledge them.

Now, this being said, in the most recent conversation about fandom racism, someone brought up the post that was made reducing users on ao3 to faceless, nameless numbers without saying who they were, what they had done, and how they were specifically contributing to the problem of racism in this fandom. They made the comparison of other situations like HR looking at pay stats to see how to fire and included “Nazis, capitalists, and colonizers.”

This is not an invalid argument. There have been other Jews in the fandom who specifically voiced feeling uncomfortable for the exact same reason. However, another person, LT, decided to specifically make a post calling the OP out and drag them for having the audacity to liken it to the Shoah (which, mind you, this person is not Jewish nor did they decide to capitalize Shoah or the Holocaust as they should have). She received a reply saying, “you’re offended by antisemitism? Here’s LR’s (someone LT has agreed with multiple times over racism in fandom) track record of antisemitic comments” which outlined everything I delved into previously.

LT said that they were “unaware of this incident until a couple days ago” but agreed that it was an upsetting display of casual dismissal of Jewish pain and hoped that LR had apologized. She was then called out for being aware of it and still continuing to reblog LR’s posts even after knowing about the comments and was linked to my post clarifying that LR had not apologized and refused a discussion about it, to which LT said that she had gotten “quite a different version outlined in the post linked and corroborated by a third party” and “felt uncomfortable” making a value judgement, insinuating that I was not being truthful about my side of the story.

I messaged LT off-anon and said that I was not lying nor over-exaggerating about what had happened in the server or about the following discussion about trying to broker a conversation with LR, and was immediately blocked by her. I am also not the only Jew who has sent her messages about this topic, only to have their messages ignored.

Now, am I surprised that I was immediately blocked after voicing my issues with what LT had said in that post? No.

She has a history of making antisemitic comments, most of which happened during the brunt of the Israel/Palestine discussion happening, which included statements such as “You cannot be considered indigenous if you hold a position of power”, that, despite having been displaced for 2,000 years, the Jewish diaspora was “integrated” into their respective communities (a wholly untrue statement), as well as linked to and promoted a website with extremely antisemitic articles including one about “Spartan Jews” and how Israeli Jews are violent to “send messages to their deprived self-esteem” that they won’t be victims again. Half of the comments on the site’s front page included such hits as “Death to all Jews” and “Wow, I had no idea this was happening—I guess it is true that Jews control the world and the mass media.” This website was repeated in multiple posts as “unbiased” and “a good resource” for other people to truly know what was going on.

Jewish dissent on the content of some posts and that website went unacknowledged and dismissed.

Being that LT is a relatively big user in the TOG fandom, her posts got circulated frequently. Seeing things like that touted as unbiased was extremely triggering for me and multiple Jews in this fandom that I’ve spoken to.

Now, the reason I made this post in particular was because I have seen a lot of echoing of the sentiment: “no matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is...well aligning yourself with racists.”

This statement NEEDS to become intersectional. If we are criticizing the work of people because of who they hold company with, why does that end at racism? If we are going to have a discussion about racism in this fandom, why are we letting it come from people who have openly said antisemitic things, people who have stood by them and supported them in silence, and people who have silenced Jewish voices speaking up about this issue.

These are not separate issues. This is a really good post regarding the white washing of Jews in social justice discussion and it comes full circle into the medical experimentation discussion. Jews were not seen as white during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to cleanse the Aryan race because they did not view Jews as white. They experimented on them because they did not view them as white and, thus, disposable.

Every Jewish diasporic community is still vulnerable. Even though the US has half the world’s Jews, over 50% of the religiously based hate crimes are consistently anti-Jewish even though Jews make up 2% of the population. Chinese Jews are still holding their holiday celebrations in secret due to government crackdowns. The attempted genocide of Beta Israel was less than 50 years ago. Across the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish communities are barely hanging on after centuries of attempted destruction. These are not just Jewish issues but racial issues as well because when people make the sweeping generalization of “Jew” and they only mean white-passing Ashkenazi Jews, it erases so much of our community.

I absolutely agree that this fandom needs to have a discussion about race and portrayal in fic and what we can do better moving forward—and I want to see that done—but we also need to acknowledge what so many people starting this discussion have said and the marginalized groups they have hurt along the way. I see these posts come across my dashboard and know exactly who they're coming from and what they think of people like me. If we are going to say, “No matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is aligning yourself with racists,” then we NEED to be saying, “If you are aligning yourself with antisemites, you’re aligning yourself with antisemites.”

We all need to move forward. But that means moving forward together. Jews included.

Podfics, podfics, podfics...

I'm looking to do some podfics of fics that have really hit me in strong (good) ways, and they're one of those I can't seem to track down in my usual manner (which is... probably on purpose, considering their received comments are set to be moderated and that they likely put up with a toooon of bullshit from people with Opinions.

(Keep reading to see which fics I'd love to podfic and why, and how you can help me find them!)

Also. Recs. Lots of really awesome fic recs, specifically for Tony-centric readers and those who really hit it off with Civil War Team Iron Man!

Does anyone know the Tumblr or Discord of: @TheSovereignofReality or @Wix from AO3?

Anyway, I'm a fan, and I just wanted to discuss maybe doing one podfic on a trial sorta thing, and then maybe doing a couple of my other major faves or a series of fics. As of my last major read-through of their fics, my favourite was definitely Mutantkind (this fic is so kickass, I love Logan). Not trying to spoil anything for any of this or the other fics, but taking up the chance at exploring the links between the X-Men and the Avengers (more Tony and even Pepper and Rhodey and such) was such a great move. A power move in so many ways, and I'm also really really eyeing the Transcendent Souls series that leads into the author's OC-linked series, Lennie Alice, and it all sounds like it's phenomenal and I just want to READ it, who cares about podficcing it??? I mean, I do, but most important of all: I'm just a fan who sees shiny fics all in a pretty series-row that I hadn't gotten around to yet (too busy reading Ramblings for the 10th time and wincing with each successive hit to the gut. Ouchies. But poor Tony too, woW. That one just hurts. In a cathartic way (even though I love Peggy, it's fascinating to explore these things!!)

Like Disney's "What If?" series if they weren't too scared to explore the really interesting things that make people tick and feel betrayed even decades later.

All of these authors, above and below, sure know how to throw those punches, and I like that.

I do have other podfic projects on the go, as well, yes, but spring is a great time for me and I get a lot of projects done pretty well on the regular. The Night King has been vanquished and the sun shines upon us again and offers me much Vitamin D and happy-stuff. :) :P

Doing a fic by @Wix would be awesome too, but I'm also not sure of their handle, unfortunately. Plus I've rarely spoken to them! Believe it or not, I can be shy. xD But there are so many of Wix's CW Team IM fics that I would just love to podfic and really sink my teeth into for the absolute wreckage and carnage that some of these characters would be feeling. Righteous anger, true anger, when you know you're right, when you just think you're right and the world crumbles down around you.... god I would love to really act those fics out and make people feel, just like we do and more when we're actually reading Wix's awesome body of work. It could be a real experience, and I would love to be able to help share that. All else fails, I'll just give these last two a message in their comments. ;)

And maybe @rayshippouuchiha might be interested in chatting with me about doing a (second) podfic of Hide a Heart of War? There can never be enough podfics of awesome Stuckony (or any ship, really), but I do also have my eyes on another few of yours that you don't have podficced, m'dear. :) I mean, Sore Must Be The Storm (wow, I relate to that title---and the fic itself---hard) would be really cool to do if the second chapter was up, (wing fics! CW Team IM! Woo!) Or the ever-so-classic "Assassination Attempts Are Not Flirting Toni" tag that epitomizes The Devouring of Hearts (which is hoestly epic and I am going to go re-read asap) or The (Not So) Great Pretender (it has a TextToSpeech podfic but those are hard for some people to follow along to --- I know my hearing issues mean I can't catch all of it, sadly, and none of it clearly! =/). Let's talk, if you're cool with me doing one of yours?? :) I would be so thrilled!

And @not-close-to-straight I cannot forget about you (ever) in this season of big eyes and planning out podfics all excited-like. Has anyone ever approached you about podficcing the entirety of your 3-part series Of Gods and Men that is ThunderIron, ThunderIron & FrostIron & Thorki, and then is PURE ThunderFrostIron with a super. special. twist. at the end omg???? Can we talk about that sometime? Whenever is good for you, if you're at all interested? Because there is NOT enough ThunderIron in the MCU, because I love Tony, because there is not enough FrostIron with Thor and Loki being awesome (usually), and then especially because there is NEVER enough poly ThunderFrostIron for my tastes and I just cannot when it comes to these fics. I just really would please love to podfic it, out of all your awesome fics this one just strikes right deep at the heart of me.

So. Um. Yeah.

This was going to be a quick "do you know this person!?!?! I'm desperate!" kind of Tumblr post, but it turned into me somewhat begging and complimenting at the same time, and it sounds totally shameless but I also haven't slept for about 48+ hours properly and I am in severe pain so the mania tends to be the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse with all that.

So. Yeah. Just let me know what you think, preferably via DM here or on Discord (Juulna#0508) or Ask or whatever. I'm happy however. And these are YOUR fics, I have zero claim to them whatsoever no matter how I may strongly relate to them or love them or think they should have their own awesome experience with me spitting angry lines back when required in response to pure sass. I would love to try/do it all. :) Spring and Summer is my podfic season, and I'm going to have a lot of fun with current and potential projects alike!

Ta, loves. And thank you for considering me for podficcing these awesome works! If you want a recent example of a fairly quick (and porny, hah) oneshot I did, I think you'd like what I did with @tsuki-chibi's The Shirt [fic]. Check the podfic out here, and then give the original author love because it is a DAMN FINE fic (and I want the shirt, hah).

To stop the accusation that I’m dragging this out to please the drama llamas, I’ve studied everything I got (and spent a fair amount of time searching for things on blogs), and managed to whittle things down to their bare essentials. I’ve also tried to talk to everyone about everything, which took time. I won’t address everything that everyone has said on both sides, just a few points that are either concrete, or I can’t address them privately for whatever reason.

The timeline as I’ve been able to piece it together is like this:

Vanessa made a post about more popular writers complaining about lack of feedback. 

Beka messaged Vanessa wanting to know why Vanessa had a problem with her.

Vanessa responded in a way that upset Beka.

Beka blocked Vanessa.

Vanessa got around the block and sent anonymous asks to Beka.

Beka outed Vanessa by responding to the asks publicly.

Vanessa deactivated her blog.

Friends of both proceeded to attack each other.

Claims about Beka (this is not a complete list):

Only supports her friends on her blogs and in Pond Angel Fish Awards

Although it’s been a couple of months since Beka has reblogged fics from other writers at all, by going back through her #read with me tag, I see reblogs of fics from at least a dozen different writers just in May and June. I’ve only been tracking Angel Fish Awards since February, but since then, Beka has nominated 8 stories by 8 different writers.

Ignored asks for Big Fish advice sent to her blog

If there were a way for me to prove this, then I wouldn’t be listing it here. As it is, it’s impossible to prove. As a Pond admin, I’ve experienced the weirdest stuff with asks. I spent one evening chatting with a member while they repeatedly tried to send in asks, and we didn’t get a single one. I do know that asks sent via the app seem to be more likely to be eaten than asks sent via desktop, but asks sent both ways have disappeared. 

There are other claims, this is not a complete list, but I will be addressing them with Beka personally (I have already started doing this, actually). I’m only including these two because they can be proved or disproved with facts. Some of the other claims have been leveled against Big Fish in the Pond other than Beka, as well. The Pond will deal with those privately, but we hope you will see an improvement in these areas when the Pond returns from hiatus.

Claims about Vanessa:

I’ve talked to Vanessa about these, without anything constructive coming from it. I tried. I tried to explain to her that she could have gotten further by using less provocative language and offering constructive suggestions. We ended up having the same old arguments about unrelated issues and going around in circles. The only thing Vanessa ceded was that she should not have continued to reach out to Beka after Beka blocked her. She has apologized for this. I don’t need to list the rest here, just know the conversation happened and nothing came of it.

Claims about Beka’s opposition:

Made unsubstantiated claims about Beka sending herself anon hate

I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t have a single clue how to figure out who has sent an anonymous ask on Tumblr. However, what I do know is that it requires access to the inbox the ask was sent to. In order for someone who is not Beka to say that Beka sent herself an anonymous ask, they would have had to have hacked into her account, somehow. I don’t know much about this, but it sounds illegal. Since there was proof of this offered, it’s a useless claim.

Picked apart posts on her personal blog and said they were intended for her writing audience when they were not

Beka’s personal blog was, she thought, relatively private. It was not meant for her readers to see. (There is an argument to be made about how it’s still a public blog that the world can see, but the charge is that she intended for her readers to see it and respond, and that is not the case.) Yet, someone took it upon themselves to stalk it, and then match posts between the two blogs, making it look like it all came from one blog. They then took their argument to the absurd and claimed she was using her mental health issues to drum up patrons on her Patreon. If that were the case, then it all would have been on her writing blog. But it wasn’t.

Belittled Beka’s cries for help, and then attacked her further

I don’t care if you didn’t believe her when she said she was on the edge, you just don’t do that, folks. That right there is the point where you either walk away or report her to Tumblr as a threat to herself. The last thing you do is double down on your attacks. Take a break, walk away, find a kinder, gentler way to make your point. I don’t care who they are or what they believe or have done, when someone puts the gun to their head, you do not tell them they are an awful human being.

Dissected every post, word by word, including auto tags, using intentionally provocative language

Not every post made was like this, but a lot were. This is high school stuff, guys. To rip apart words used by someone obviously in pain instead of reaching through and looking for the meaning behind it is petty and cruel. Not to mention it takes so much more energy to dig into things like that than to just respond to the meat of things. To take someone’s blog name and twist it into a degrading moniker is sickening. To attack words used in an effort to distract from the topic at hand, or to just add on to the already heaping pile of anger you’re throwing around is unconscionable and pointless. This is not what people who are coming from a place of love or kindness do. This is what you do when you hate someone, and that’s just not cool, guys.

Brought up old issues thought to have been settled a long time ago

My husband calls this “stamp collecting.” There’s a statute of limitations on things, and it depends on the thing, but my personal limit on Tumblr is about two weeks. If nothing has been said about something for two weeks, I assume it’s in the past and I try to move on. I say this because, if it weren’t settled, then we’d all still be working on it, right? If something is bothering me, and I work on it with someone, but I’m not happy, then I’m gonna keep working on it with that person. If they seem to forget (which happens because we’re all human), then I’m gonna send them a quick message. “Hey there! I’m still working on this thing. Can we talk about it again?” I do this with contractors who work on my house. I did this with clients when I worked in an office. To bring up something that happened a long time ago like it’s still an active issue is pointless, and goes against one of the main tenets of effective arguing.

Taking obvious glee in tearing down another person

Do I really have to talk about this? If you had any care for the other person, even enough to just care that they are a person, you would not gloat about how you’re going to tear them apart.

Really, all of this stuff comes down to if you are approaching the world and everything you do from a place of love or from a place of anger and pain. Even if you are angry and in pain, treat other people like you love and respect them, and you will find that everything is just better. 

If you feel like I’m coming down on one side or the other of this situation, just know that I’m not. Pretty much, I don’t like things that were done by both sides. These are just the things I feel more comfortable talking about in a public post like this.

Other stuff that’s come up in the course of all of this:

Complaining about notes/followers

So many writers, lately, are frustrated. Tumblr sucks balls on a good day when it comes to notifications and the whole algorithm mess, and that’s still being generous. In an effort to keep the porn blogs at bay, they’ve stifled all creators. Add to that how tags seem to never work when you’re searching for something, and disseminating your work is nearly impossible.

I could tell you all the different ways you can change your focus on the readers you do have, give you lists of things you can do to expand your audience, and offer advice about not comparing yourself to other writers. But you’ve already heard all of that. So, I’m just gonna say it.

If you complain publicly about a lack of notes or followers, you’re gonna look like a dick.

That doesn’t mean you are a dick. You’re just gonna look like one. You’re going to look like you’re ungrateful for the readers that you do have, which is going to turn off those readers, and you’ll end up with even fewer notes and followers. If you manage to disparage other writers while you’re complaining, you’re gonna look like an even bigger dick. So, just don’t do it, unless you don’t mind looking like a dick. 

Need to vent about it? Find a close friend and send it to them in a private message. Have a funny thought about it that you want to share? This is exactly what private messages are for. Create a group DM in discord. Heck, I think even Tumblr has a group chat option, now. Just, don’t put it on your blog, unless you want to lose followers. 

The number of admins at the Pond

Some folks seem to think that the Pond needs to add more admins in order to react more quickly when something goes down. Honestly, I have talked to Mana and Kale about stepping down as admin because I believe the opposite is true. We have a policy that we all must agree on the big things. However, we are separated by 8 time zones. There is a rare hour every few days (sometimes it’s weeks) when all three of us are awake and not occupied with caring for family members. We have a private group chat thing where we each toss ideas and questions and such into the pot when we’re doing things. When the others get to it, they add their two cents. Usually, there are two of us active at a time, and then we wait for the third to stop by for approval. Often, the third has a question or argument that then needs to be addressed, but the first or second one isn’t available. More admins would only be a good thing if we were all in the same time zone. But we’re not. We are an international group, which I believe is a good thing, but the downside is that it slows us down. Sometimes, being slow is a good thing, too. Generally, at least one of is calm and level-headed at any given time. It shifts on who that one is, but they keep us from doing anything rash.

The whole problem is that no one feels like they can tell you when there’s a problem

I’ve heard this so many times, now, but I haven’t responded to it publicly, so here goes. 

Most of you don’t know what I’m like in person, but I’m built like a linebacker. I’m tall, I’m heavy, and I have wide shoulders. I have literally scared small children. Take Jared Padalecki, add another Jared Padalecki on the side, and then take away all the pretty, and you come close to what I’m like when you see me walking down the street. 

I don’t want to be a scary person that anyone is afraid to approach. My goal in life is to be kind and fair. I will give you second and third chances, because I know how awful it feels to be written off. 

My ask box is always open. My chat windows are always open. My email address is [email protected]. I’m the same on discord and skype. I don’t care if you think your thing is stupid, if it’s something that’s bothering you, and I can help, then I want to help. I can’t always help, but I always want the opportunity to try.

If I have ever done anything that made you feel like I didn’t care, then I give you permission to tell me. I’ll hate hearing it, but I need to hear it. 

If I have forgotten to follow up on something for you, PLEASE REMIND ME. Holy, cow, I have a TERRIBLE memory. It’s really bad. I have tricks and stuff that I do to try to make sure I don’t lose track of things, but it still happens. Please, come back to me and remind me that I promised you something. I guarantee that I will not be mad or upset. I will be glad, because you’re helping me to be the person I want to be.

I think that’s about it. The Pond is still on hiatus, indefinitely. We have a lot of things we’re talking about for if/when we come back, and some of them are really exciting to me. I hope we come back. I hope we can make the Pond what we always meant it to be. We’ll need help, and constant feedback from our fishy family, but I still have hope.

#parting shot

my shoulders are feeling a little heavy as I write this, especially since it’s midnight on wednesday, and there’s literally less than 24 hours until the end of aos as a whole. but I was tagged by the wonderful @besidemethewholedamntime​ for the parting shot challenge, thank you! :)

With this tag game, I want to know the answers to these five (5) questions and then tag 5 or more mutuals. Wasn’t tagged but want to join? Join in ! Everyone is an essential part of this fandom! Name from @ agent.of.shield_ on Instagram ( @agents-of-fangirling ) who had a great idea to post a picture of yourself with a drink (or just a drink) and tag it #partingshot as a finale goodbye to the show (which I also am going to post tomorrow on IG).

Where were you in life when you first started to watch AoS?

I was 16 and in my junior year of high school; I was struggling to get over a guy that I’d thought I was in love with and chilling right through pre-calc. As one does. One of my best friends then (still is now, shout-out, honestly!) had introduced me to Marvel via Captain America: the Winter Soldier the year before. I was writing fanfiction like the world was going to end, I’d just made my first online friend...things were going about as well as they could for someone panicking about college way too early. AoS was in my peripheral (it had to be, I felt like, if you were writing Avengers fanfic), but it wasn’t something I was actively focused on. My dad was watching it on TV, I think, when I came downstairs to chill with him; he’s the kind of man who’ll just pick up on things from time to time, Marvel being one of those things. 

The episode was 2x05, A Hen In the Wolf House. The scene was “We have a mole, ladies and gentlemen.” Adrianne Palicki walked into the lab and my gay ass was done for. (And I didn’t even know it yet.)

Where are you now?

Six years later and a lot of revelations later, I’ve just graduated from uni with degrees in English and Communication with a certificate in film studies! I will admit, AoS dropped off my radar a little bit from seasons 4-6 because I was applying and going to uni; while I managed to either keep on track or live-watch it all, they’re not the freshest seasons in my mind because I’d back burnered it so hard. But now I’m back full-force, unemployed and anxious about this pandemic and wondering where the light at the end of the tunnel is.

I’ve made a couple more close online friends since that first one -- we’ve actually met a couple of times, and I put deciding to comment on their fanfiction that fateful night one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve been lucky to meet so many other people through this fandom as well; they’ve taught me about everything from dumplings to how to be a better writer. Some of them have even helped me grow as a person -- I look at the world and my relationships with people differently now because of them, and I can honestly say I’m thankful for it. 

I’m also a lot more comfortable in my sexuality now, which was a long journey that I wish had hurt less in some places but I’m glad I took. That’s another thing I’m thankful this fandom and show gave me -- in the early days of my coming out, when I was weathering it all, I was able to channel my energies into producing a work that mirrored my fears and uncertainties about my future rather than outwardly expressing it to an audience that had nothing to offer me but indifference.

What character development arc (or storyline in general) did you love the most?

That’s a hard one to think about, honestly, especially because my brain dropped out hard through a few seasons, but I’d probably have to say I enjoyed watching Daisy grow and change throughout the seasons. Every season, I’d think she was finally at her most badass and at her best, but by the end of the season, so much would’ve happened and she’d wind up so much stronger than she was at the beginning of it all. Her growth and change is something I feel like I can relate to on a very general level, if not that it means that we all have shit to go through that causes us to evolve. 

(Other than that, I am absolutely a sucker for Bobbi and Hunter’s arc, short as it was. Goddamned cancelled spin-off.)

What will you miss the most?

I’m going to miss the new episodes every week, honestly. At the end of every episode, everyone I know is abuzz about what just happened, trading theories and yelling about iconic lines/scenes they’d just witnessed and worrying about what’s going to happen next week. It means they’ll all be taking bets on just how bad the lighting is going to be next week, whether plot line A will ever be resolved or it’ll just be left in the wind, or fics upon fics coming out furthering character studies more deeply than I could ever hope to.

I’m also going to miss the iconic recaps that are the frickle frackles, live-tweeting the episodes along with the cast, watching the cast post accompanying Instagram photos to each episode. And while I hope this doesn’t end, I’m going to miss my friends swooping into DMs with me yelling about a random fic plot that they’ve just come up with either on the fly or while watching an episode, stimulated by the new canon creation. 

Favourite quote?

I’m absolutely awful with quotes, dammit. But one scene that I keep coming back to (it’s also conveniently located in 2x05, LOL) is Hunter to Raina: “Tiny violin’s playing, love. No one’s listening” because it’s just so snarky and Hunter. I’m also a really big fan of when he takes out the weapons when they infiltrate the summit, and Bobbi says “I love you” while May says “I don’t hate you quite as much”. Or Daisy’s “The one that looks like New Hampshire with legs...that’s D, right?”

(My favorite scene, even though no one asked, is absolutely the Spy’s Goodbye. I’ve never seen such cinematic magic. I cry every time. Honorable mention goes to “Get ready for a large file transfer.” “How large?” *filing cabinet crashes out of window*) 

tagging some friends I haven’t seen tagged yet to join me: @aleksandrachaev @nazezdha321 @brokenbookaddict @untying @faenavi and any aos fan that hasn’t been tagged yet -- this is for you and your parting shots! 

Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let’s hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer. When you’re investing more than you’re gaining from the collaboration it’s not really a collaboration you’re looking for.

There is a new trend going around social media, especially Instagram. I’ve been getting collaboration offers on a daily basis even pre COVID times but now the amount of pseudo collaborations increased.

Hands down it is an incredible business strategy from the business point of view.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador.

Ambassador became an even more prestigious title than an influencer. Influencer posses some sort of responsibility for their actions whilst ambassador is just being paid for simply being.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Many brands use this knowledge to the fullest and offers these pseudo collaborations.

So what is a pseudo collaboration?

Well, it starts off by being contacted by a brand.

You’ll receive a ctrl+c ctrl+v message from a brand-name-scout. The message contains several cute emojis and addresses you as a gorgeous, pretty, cutie, love, honey, sweety, and if they really want to get you, even by your Instagram name.

It’s usually followed by a bunch of compliments about your fashion style, vibe, Instagram, or whatever. Then there is a lie about following or just generally noticing you for a while without ever seeing your insta story, like any of your posts, or even actually following you.

Now it’s time for an offer beneficial for you.

Usually, it’s free products, a way to earn a commission, or just the sheer option to be able to call yourself an ambassador. Every single brand out there offers a “support” like anyone really knows what’s that supposed to mean. I had several ones even offering me a travel trips, but never elaborated on it after my further questioning.

Now comes the hook with a “do you want to learn more?” question.

If you think I’m exaggeration for the story and I can’t be generalizing all of the collaborations offers into a simple standard form I wish you were right. Here are some of the screenshots of my current Instagram DMs:

You might think: “What’s wrong with that? They’re trying so don’t be mean. Just ignore them.” let me remind you how dumb Instagram algorithm is.

If your account is followed by bots, messaged by bots, liked by bots Instagram assumes you’re one of them or you got hacked by them. Sweet of them for trying to protect you thought, but holy hell did that made everything super complicated for me.

I got several messages from the brand scouts messaging me again because their previous account got deleted.

No shit Sherlock, it’s like you can’t keep creating accounts, following and messaging a bunch of people at once and ask for money anymore.

So now every time my account gets suspicious activity such as too many likes/follows/messages Instagram suspects my account got hacked. Each time they require I change my password and let me tell you I ran out of password ideas months ago.

That’s not the worst part though.

After each time I change my password I’m blocked for 7 days from liking, following, or adding tags to my posts and that sucks. Just to get a better picture of this issue I’m blocked approximately once sometimes twice per month.

The block comes hand in hand with a shadowban that lingers for god knows how long, meaning Instagram is not gonna support you in any way. That’s why I have around 40 likes on a posts with 47K followers most of which are bots anyway.

I loath Instagram app yet I spend hours a day on the hellish site and I’m not only one.

We spend so much time on Instagram anyway so when a chance to earn money form it comes along you’re tempted to take it. Brands know that.

Imagine you’re a small-town girl with around 400 followers on Instagram. You already feel pretty popular right?

Now imagine you get the messages I shared above but you get just one. Someone out there thinks you’re so popular they want you on their team, you are just like the big influencers, you get job offers for being an Instagram star. You’re the next Kardashian.

You can have all of the things they said to you BUT you need to do something for them first. You have to pay for it.

And here is the catch with all of the pseudo collaborations.

What they don’t say to you in their first message is what it’s gonna cost you.

Many offers you free stuff but you need to pay for the one-time shipping. Some brands offer you a unique discount of around 40-60% off so you’ll pay just a part of the price and you can call yourself an ambassador.

I don’t know about you, but I thought that was called the customer. You buy a product, you wear it and occasionally you take photo of it on your social media sites. The new term is an ambassador apparently.

I get why so many people agree to this kind of collaboration. It’s new for you. It makes you feel good and successful in your friend’s and families eyes. And there is that hopefully undertone of making money from it.

Aren’t the brands unprofitable when they give away discounts and free stuff?

In a theory, yes, but there is one thing all of the brands that messaged me had in common except for the audacity.

Overpriced products.

I got messaged by jewelry stores, fashion stores and gym equipment stores most of the time. I took the time and did my research on every one of them.

When a store sold jewelry, they had the same products as the rest of the jewelry stores I got contacted by. A small variety of around 8 products most of them sold out anyway. And let’s not forget the ridiculously high prices. You can’t charge a cheap Chinese necklace you can get on amazon or aliexpress for under a 1$ for 40$.

So even if you’re paying just around 30$ for your ambassador order they are still making a profit on your wannabe Instagramer need cuz they purchased said items for far less.

Well, I’m being a little miss know it all right?

How can I talk about pseudo collaboration like this when it’s all based on assumptions. Well you know me, I’m curious as hell and I actually went through 3 pseudo collaborations myself just to prove a point.

I literally spend money so I can tell you about it right now so here is how my 3 pseudo collaborations went like.

All of the ones I choose were jewelry based pseudo collaborations. With the corona times, post offices are overwhelmed with parcels. I ordered big parcels in recent times and they arrived with around a month delay. I figured smaller jewelry in an envelope form would be quicker to arrive and I was right.

Pseudo collaboration number one VONACHI:

A simple yet luxurious-looking website with very few decent pieces of jewelry, offered me 3 free pieces to take a photo in and promote. I would also get a 60% discount code and every time my code would be used I would receive 30% of the money amount. Incredibly overpriced amount in the first place.

Here is the list of all of the benefits they offered.

The scout that approached me was very eager. They kept insisting I place my order right away. No time to waste.

To make it clear I got a simple code to apply in a check out that subtracted the price and I got the pieces for free. All I had to do was pay a 20$ shipping fee what seems like nothing but for 3 small necklaces, it is way too much.

Another thing that was odd was that I was required to take a screenshot of my order and send it back to scout. I guess to prove I was legit.

After bunch of further compliments and claims how excited they are to be working with me we ended our conversation.

If you think I was being reckless to give my credit card and home address to such a questionable site don’t be.

Honestly, I trust zero people, sometimes I don’t even trust myself. I used a card I have no to very little money on and I got it shipped to a work address.

My parcel from china arrived in around a month and a half. I got one black box with one necklace and the other 2 necklaces were in small plastic bags. I received a note about welcoming me to the program and asking me to contact vonachi’s official Instagram account for setting up my discount code and that’s exactly what I did. The official page responded after longer time period with just a “this is your code” message. I took a photo, tagged vonachi as a business partner, and shared my code. I did my part and I was never contacted by them again.

My 60% code is VONAMBNAT and as you might have guessed no one used it so far.

Or at least no one told me it was used. If someone were to use my code I would be contacted by vonachi and here is the problem. I’m supposed to trust them with their credibility cuz there is no other way for me to check it for myself. This is what it’s missing from the old Time collaborations of mine. I would get a tracking code, an account login, graphs, statistics, and one on one communication with a brand in my previous collaborations. But you know Golden times for influencers are long gone.

Now I’m left to just simply trust them.

Why would they ever confess someone used my code? If a customer gets 60% off and I’m getting 30% from already discounted item there is just a very little left for vonachi. They don’t say anything and get to keep my 30% share.

They didn’t put much effort into tracking system cuz they are not expecting their ambassadors/customers to make any sales anyway.

The products were not that bad. They came in a bit rusty and tangled but I was excepting much worse.

Hell, I was not expecting them to legitimately arrive.

Pseudo collaboration number 2: ENGELSINN

I initiated this pseudo collaboration myself. Engelsinn paid a significant amount of money to Instagram promoted post and that’s where I found out they are looking for ambassadors.

I filled out an application form.

This one felt more legit cuz they actually asked for followers count and all of the communication occurred via email. Automated emails but still it reminded me of good old days.

I was given a 40% discount code to use on my first order. The shipping was free but it still cost me another 20$ to get the product. Since placing my first order I got a 20% discount code “nat7x20” for my followers to get 20% off their engelsinn order.

When my code is redeemed 2 times I get one jewelry of my choice for free.

Do I even need to mention that I didn’t get any email since?

Well, that’s not exactly true I got 2 more emails each with another discount code I could use for 24 hours and buy more of their stuff. But none about redeemed code.

Engelsinn is a german based brand and living so close I got my parcel in around a week. I got myself a rose gold knot bracelet and I feel like a hypocrite but I actually really love this one and wear it every day. I know I wouldn’t get it if it wasn’t for the research but I’m glad I did.

Btw the ad about engelsinn looking for ambassador is still up there and it still says they have only a few places left. It’s been 2 months.

Pseudo collaboration number 3: CUZETTE

I got messaged by them on my Instagram and their offer was super confusing. They promised it all. 3 free stuff now, free stuff every month, paid trip to several destinations, and even 50$ voucher. The scout called me sweety exactly 9 times during our conversations. It was super annoying.

So I choose another 3 free items and paid another 20$ for shipping. When I asked about the 50$ voucher I was told I would need to refer 5 friends who would also become cuzette ambassador or delegate as they named it, to get the 50$. No info about the travel trips though.

I was told to contact the official page for more info but it took days for them to finally reply with nothing new just more compliments and excitement about the future. It’s been 2 months and I still haven’t received my order just as I was expecting.

Later on, I endorsed in conversation with several other brands asking for more info, looking for something different than standard copy and paste form. Unsuccessful.

Every time I asked how many ambassadors they have in their program the answer was always “around 3000“. Once again, you have 3000 customers and not 3000 ambassadors. If the only people who buy from you are people you ask to buy from you, you’re doing something wrong.

But your business plan is on point.

When I asked about who and where makes their products I was either met with a silence or a sweet talk about a responsible brand.

These brands are providing people with content. You get to take photos of the items you ordered and you get to be as creative as you want. In these COVID times so many brands had to cancel or postpone their collaborations with bloggers or Instagrammers. I saw huge travel/luxurious instagramers switch form hotel and travel collaborations to promoting kitchen wipes. Times are tough and you got to do what you got to do.

Yet these small businesses with hight prices are thriving?

You know it’s not about the product but about the potential.

Profiting on greediness.

So smart.

To prove my point even further I got to confess one more thing. I mentioned before that I manage Instagram accounts for different brands and among them is one fashion store. I was not only at the ambassadors’ side but on the scouting side as well.

All I had to do was search for people who looked like they would be willing to become an ambassador for our store and had decent amount of followers. I had saved message form and all I did was try to guess peoples names so the message seemed more personal. Once they agreed to a discussion I let my boss take the lead.

So yeah, try to really think about the offers you get.

Look at it from all points of view and ask yourself if it’s profitable for anyone else but the brand.

If you want to have offers pouring your way try adding #ad #spon #collab to your next Instagram posts. That’s how they look for their next ambassador.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador. 

Pseudo Collaborations- Everyone wants to be an Ambassador Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let's hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer.

SESSION 0! Aah, the fabled “Session 0″. Many have chosen to ignore it and many have fallen prey to their folly. It is a session you hold before the actual start of the game in order to familiarize your players with the type of game you want to run, as well as adapt your plans according to their particular needs. I can not stress enough the importance of everyone around the table being on the same page in regards to the atmosphere, content and rules of the game. Time and time again I see people complaining about DMs running their own story without regarding the characters’ backtories at all. Or having homebrew rules that no one discussed that are being pulled out in the heat of battle, having dire consequences. Or the game being more combat heavy while the players just wanted to roleplay. All of that, and more, can be discussed beforehand so everyone knows what they’re buying into.  My second online campaign that I was a player in, I didn’t really enjoy playing. My natural proclivity is towards roleplaying and having meaning behind everything my character does. With that in mind I created an Artificer with an elaborate backstory and eventual mechanical servant to accompany him in his endeavors. I had a lot of things in mind to do with this character, with the end goal being inventing some grand invention to make my PC known throughout the lands. That would be the driving force of his actions. When joining into this game, the DM only told all the players to create a character who, for some reason, ended up in jail, which they wanted to have as a starting point - I had no problems with that and incorporated it into my backstory. No other pointers were given.  As I found out a couple of sessions into the game, the DM had a story they wanted to run and any major detour would simply be turned down and squashed. They simply wanted players to play “their” game. This, naturally, resulted with me being unhappy for the majority of the campaign. My character had next to no motivation to follow the DM’s plotline and was just kind of tagging along. I was given no opportunities to “invent” something, tinker with my equipment (no pun intended) or even explore my class’ features. In fact, maybe a couple of sessions in, it was decided that having the mechanical servant with the party is too much of a hassle to deal with, due to frequently having to travel on a ship and the servant being too heavy for the ships, so it ended up being left behind in some city and pretty much unused. I was not happy.  Now, I’m not saying the DM was a bad DM or that their story wasn’t great. It was actually quite interesting and playing with them at the reins was indeed fun. If only we had discussed the nature of the campaign beforehand. If I were only given a heads up about the nature of party travel that would prohibit me from using my mech servant (which is about a third of the Artificer class), I would have gone with a different character and different expectations and would’ve had much more fun. This is why session 0s are held. But what specifically is to be discussed in these preparatory sessions? ATMOSPHERE If you’re going into the Curse of Strahd adventure published by WotC, you should know that the setting is dark and gloomy, everything is sort of depressed and not much levity is to be had. Don’t go into it expecting fart jokes, memes and puns.  On the other hand, if the DM and the whole group agrees and wants to intentionally take the opposite aproach and make fun of how the adventure is written, more power to the whole group. My point is, that is something that should be discussed. Atmosphere is important. THE THREE PILLARS Any dnd veteran will tell you that the three pillars of dnd are combat, exploration and social interaction, However the DM wants to run the game or the players play it, whether it be  more combat heavy, social roleplay oriented or based on a hexcrawl, everyone should be on the same page before starting. You don’t want to go Ranger with a focus in surviving in the wilderness, gathering food and tracking animals, and then finding out the campaign will mostly be held in a city and based around political conflict.  HOMEBREW Whether it be rules that are not official or a setting where there are no humans, all homebrew material should be brought up before the campaign starts. No one wants to create an arcane spellcaster class and find out in game that magic doesn’t work due to some great devastating magic war a thousand years ago. The DM might even have a way for spellcasting classes to be able to cast spells or maybe plans for them to be the ones who discover magic again throughout the storyline of the campaign, but players should be aware of this before they start playing.  LEVELING AND CAMPAIGN LENGTH This is a tough one. These days, while games are much more accessible via online platforms, they are also more prone to disbanding before their natural ending. It is hard to predict whether a game will last as long as it is supposed to. When there were fewer options and most games were held in person, everyone put in an extra effort to have the game continue.  Having said that, players should know what they’re getting into because it informs their choices of character creation. Maybe someone wants to play a class because of that one awesome ability they get at 14th level. If the campaign starts at 1st and ends at 10th, naturally, that player would not choose that class.  Also, how will leveling be done? Standard XP system or nowadays more popular milstone system? Each have their pros and cons, but whatever you decide to go with, you should let everyone know beforehand. OTHER Other than what was already mentioned, anything else that you would like to be known. No phones at the table, no being late, no talking out of character, no metagaming, whatever the DM or the players hold important, should be made aware to everyone at the table.  Now, all of this is maybe not so important when playing with friends you’ve known for a long time, especially if you’ve already played with them. But it is imperative for online games or games where you sit at a table without knowing the other people present. Trust me, when everyone’s on the same page, everyone’s happier. And that doesn’t mean that compromises can’t be made. Maybe the DM wants to try that critical fumble table for injuries and worse, but the players don’t - you talk it out and find a consensus. Dnd is a collaborative game, so collaborate - even before the game starts ;)  In the campaign my friends and I tried starting before the current one, we were still newbies and neglected to have a session 0, which resulted in a TPK in the first session and a few member changes for the eventual game we are currently playing for almost 2 years now. But that’s a story for another day. Thanks for reading, as always, hope you’ve gained some inspiration ;) 

Sweet Ohuhu Snail

This artwork is now available as a free Coloring Page!

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Finally, some hints of new supplies I was mentioning a while ago have manifested into a piece of art. :D

This is sort of a follow-up to my Ohuhu Brush Marker Review, as back in October, Ohuhu released a 72 set of the brush markers, and naturally, I was very curious to see the 24 new colors for myself. (And I have a bit of a story about how this set arrived to me that I'll get into momentarily.)

Spoiler alert that my thoughts on the markers themselves as a product haven't changed; they're still really nice alcohol markers for the roughly $1 per marker price tag. I'd still love to see yet more colors and additional consumer features like open-stock markers, refills, replacement nibs, etc. But overall, as I said last time and I will continue to say, I really wish these had been around a few years ago when I was first getting into alcohol markers, despite the few shortcomings they have. Aside from color selection (which I'll address further later), they're an excellent beginner alcohol marker set if you want brush tips.

But before I get into the specifics of this set and the foreseeable future (as Ohuhu just recently announced another brush tip set on the horizon), I shall tell you the (long-ish) story of how I ended up with the 72 set in the first place:

Back in November, Ohuhu put a post up in their "Top Fan Group" on Facebook, which I joined on a whim after being recognized as a Top Fan a few times by that point. This post said the following:

Hi Ohuhu Friends, Ohuhu.com is going to open the SHOP function to several products soon, so you can buy the products directly on www.ohuhu.com then. Before the shopping cart is officially public to the customers, we need 3-5 volunteers to help us test this SHOP function. 🗒️What we need are some inputs regarding How is your experience with our website, and Is the purchase process smooth? What problems have you encountered while shopping on the website etc？(We will have the conversation by DM.) 🚨The tester should be based within the continental USA. As a thank you, we will give you a free set of markers, just let us know which pack do you want via DM.📷 Thank you! Put your hands up if you would like to help us with this in the comment zone! (We will randomly choose 3-5 person within a week.)

[For context, previously you could only purchase Ohuhu's products through Amazon.com] Me, being both the frugally minded and skeptical person that I am, saw the post and immediately latched on to the "free set of markers" mentioned. (My instinct said it was probably a choice from a pre-selected list of some kind.) I was curious and figured, based on what was said, that 1. I might not even get chosen, 2. Even if I did, surely they would explain the process to me and I could then gracefully bow out if it didn't sound right to me. And so I cautiously commented as instructed. Within a few days, I was contacted by a representative and I found out through communication with them that the way this would work is that us volunteers would place orders through the website for any product, let them know of any issues or feedback we had during the process, and then once the order was placed we would provide the representative with our order number and be refunded. Likewise, if all did indeed go according to plan, this sounded like a great way to get my hands on the new 72 brush marker set, which previously I had figured I wouldn't get for a while as my 48 set has been serving me very well since August with no issues. (And it kinda didn't make sense to me to turn around and order a new set that would give me 48 duplicate colors so quickly.) I've seen a LOT of horror stories about shopping online, I watch too many "drama community" videos on Youtube that often talk about sketchy websites and scams, and so throughout this entire process I was nervous, saving "receipts" (screenshots and the like to the uninformed) where I could, and generally expecting something, anything to go horribly wrong at any second. Despite Ohuhu being a fairly reputable company at this point and having only ever heard good things about their customer service. Still, Ohuhu has made enough of a name for themselves that I hoped they'd know better than to intentionally scam their customers. If word got out to the many YouTubers covering their products, they'd have a PR nightmare on their hands. (And I also had to remind myself that the art community as a whole is not the Youtube Makeup Community; generally speaking, the art community isn't as...well, dramatic. At least not when it comes to art supply companies and scamming costumers. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm just saying I don't think it happens nearly as often as when shiz goes down in the YMC.) Naturally, this means I had some questions I wanted to be crystal clear about before making any purchases of any kind. Namely, I specifically asked to make sure I was reading correctly that once the order was placed and I gave my order number that I would be receiving a refund, and if said refund would be just for the purchase price of the product ($69.99 in this case) or if it would include the shipping cost (about $5-$6 dollars) as well. The answers to which were yes and the refund would be for the total cost including shipping. I also wanted to know approximately how long it would take for the refund to go through. The answer was within 5 days. So everything up to this point seemed to check out. I was still skeptical (this is what the internet has done to me) but I was 80% sure it would be okay, and the payment would be through PayPal, so if something went wrong I could file a claim over there and provide my evidence and hopefully at least get the money back if nothing else. I'll also note that I did notice 1-2 minor bugs on the website while in the checkout process, which I informed the representative of as I was supposed to, but I honestly wouldn't have noticed them if I hadn't been trying my best to really test the website and live up to my "job" in this situation. If I had just gone through the checkout process as I normally would have with no hesitation, I wouldn't have seen the bugs at all. I was genuinely surprised by how smooth and polished the website experience was; I was expecting much buggy/glitchier, considering that they were asking for test volunteers. And the two bugs I did notice were pretty minor things that really don't break or ruin the shopping experience. So I went through with the purchase, gave the representative my order number, and hoped for the best. I immediately received an order confirmation email that told me I'd be able to track the shipment within 1-3 business days. The order was placed late on a Thursday night, so I figured I wouldn't be hearing anything else until Monday at the very earliest. (As here in the States, Saturday and Sunday usually don't count as "business days") Much to my surprise though, that Sunday the representative I'd previously spoken with reached out to me asking if I'd been able to check out the tracking feature yet. So I explained that I'd gotten the confirmation email but no tracking email yet, and that I also didn't see a way to enter my order number on the website to track the order if I (as I had) checked out as a guest. (It did appear if I had made an account that the order number would've been saved to my account and I could've potentially tracked it that way.) But again, I hadn't expected anything until Monday, so I wasn't too concerned anyway. Sure enough, the next morning I had my tracking email and everything seemed to be in order; it even baffled me by saying the shipment was expected to arrive the very next day. I thought I was surely reading something wrong or maybe it needed a little while to re-calculate or something, but I kept an eye on and it didn't change its mind. And low and behold, it was a little later in the day, but the markers were indeed delivered that Tuesday! I eagerly got them open and gave them a good once-over just to make sure everything seemed right at first glance, as I knew to swatch them all out and get a more in-depth look was going to take at least a few hours. But I was quite relieved; we'd made it this far with no hiccups, now I just needed the refund to come through and we'd be right as rain. Miraculously, two days later the representative reached out to me yet again to tell me that the refund had been sent. And wouldn't you know it; the official PayPal email was sitting in my inbox waiting to tell me so! So in the end, things turned out pretty great. Ohuhu got their website tested, and I got my markers without a hitch. It did seem a little weird to me, the whole premise, but I assume they budgeted for this in the same way a company might do giveaways or budget for advertising, maybe even like some companies do for PR packages to influencers. And, realistically, it does kind of make sense that the best way to test your online shop (and by extension, in this case, the refund process) would be to have actual customers do it. Either way, it worked out well for me, so I can't really complain.

Once the markers arrived to me, I was very happy to see that Ohuhu is now including a colorless blender in their sets, in addition to the 48 or 72 colors. A colorless blender is one of the things that I said last time would've been nice to have (though not a necessity as you could easily go out and purchase say a Copic, Prismacolor, or another brand of Colorless Blender to compensate) and personally I love that it's 48 + the CB or 72 + CB, instead of counting the colorless blender as one of the colors you get, which is what I've most commonly seen other brands do. It's a small detail, but for some reason, I can't seem to get over it.

One of the things I was most curious about in swatching though was that, I assume as a response to me and many others that mentioned we wanted them, in the marketing for the 72 set Ohuhu seemed to really be trying to push that there were more pastel colors.

After actually having and swatching the markers for myself, I'd say about 7-8 of the colors are what I'd call true pastels. There are some beautiful new colors (R13 Clematis, in particular, might be my favorite Ohuhu color now and I LOVE the Green Grays they added) but there weren't as many pastels as I was hoping for, and personally I was hoping for some more pale pinks/peaches that would work well for lighter skin tones. Maybe some yellows since I felt we were kind of lacking those too.

And originally, I was a little...disappointed isn't totally accurate, but it's the best word I have.

However! I'm inclined to be a little more forgiving as just last week, Ohuhu announced they'd be releasing a 24-color skin tone set, which (although I'm withholding major judgment until I have the markers in-hand just like last time) is looking to hopefully be some of the pale pinks and light skin tone colors, maybe even a few yellows, that I was hoping for. We'll have to wait to see the colors in person, but using their digital swatches as a [very] rough guideline, the new colors look like they could be pretty promising.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed about at this point is that 5 of the skin tone colors will be duplicates, but at the same time, after seeing which colors are duplicates, it kind of makes sense just in case someone wants to buy the skin tones and doesn't have the 48 or 72 set, which I'm sure does happen. Just like I'm sure people buy, for example, the skin tone sets from Copic or Winsor and Newton to supplement other sets.

Still, though, this continues to support the idea to me that Ohuhu is really trying to listen to what fans of the brand are asking for; People asked for brush nibs and took a little while but we got them, we asked for pastel colors and they at least tried to address that, and now we've asked for skin tones and it looks like they're going to address that, too.

Naturally, after all of the above, I had to make some art to give the markers a go beyond swatching and to talk about all of this with you, my lovely Sparklers.

So I ended up drawing this cute little snail inspired by a picture I saw over on Pinterest.

I don't know if he thinks he's going to eat that berry or if he's just smelling it, or maybe he thinks it's just pretty (I used the aforementioned R13 in the shading for the berries), but it makes me happy to look at all the same.

Originally I had planned to try and only use the new colors to really show them off, and I did use a fair amount of them, but I felt just a little too limited so I did open up to the full 72 set. But I did use all only my new markers and not the markers from the 48 set I already had, so...

Maybe it's still fair?

I also tried some texturing on the...mushroom? branch? rock? he's sitting on, and while I don't think it looks the best close-up, from further away I think it worked out pretty well.

Similarly to the crab I drew for the 48 marker set though, I wanted a more interesting background than just plain white. After some consideration, I decided my best option would be to mix my green and yellow PanPastels. So I did.

Unfortunately, I exposed a couple of very noticeable fingerprints doing that and I ended up getting pastel dust all over the drawing so my black lines got greyed out a bit.

I fixed the fingerprints by adding some intentional ones for the sake of balance and in the name of visual texture, and I fixed the lines by going back over most of them and a little post-editing after I scanned the drawing in.

Other than that, my observations about the Ohuhu markers remain the same as last time. They blend and layer really nicely (especially, as I've observed recently is the case with most alcohol markers, with thicker paper) and the colors they do provide are really vibrant and fun.

I do still hope the new skin tone colors live up, that yet even more colors are coming, and I'll repeat that I'd still love to seem them add consumer comforts of being able to buy individual markers, refill inks, and replacement nibs. But all of that may come in time, and even so, I think they're very recommendable for alcohol markers.

I'm also really happy with how my little snail turned out just as an art piece; this whole thing is just really really cute to me.

Now I just have to wait with bated breath for the USA launch (they've already launched in Canada) of those skin tone markers and hope they're not too expensive so I can get them right away :P

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Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

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Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

NappaInAnotherDimension’s Rules Post {For Mobile Users}

                          B   A   S   I   C      ✪      R   U   L   E   S

Things To Know

✪ Please respect my rules and boundaries. I will give polite warnings if someone breaks a minor rule, but if it’s obvious that you’re blatantly disregarding what I’ve said, then that shows a lack of respect. Therefore I reserve the right to take action by directly confronting you and/or ending further interactions IC and/or OOC.

✪ Because I’ve been harassed for over a year by an ex rp partner and her friend, I only accept DMs on Tumblr from blogs I follow to keep these people from sending me unwanted messages. If you’re interested in talking to me to start roleplaying or I haven’t followed you yet, please use asks to initiate contact. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s one of the many things I’ve had to do to keep this person from sending me unwanted messages on alternate accounts.

✪ I don’t mind personal blogs/non-rp blogs interacting with muse and mun via asks. However, I don’t want anyone reblogging my asks that involve my RP partners, my roleplay threads with others, or my headcanon posts that are specific to my portrayal of my muse. That’s considered rude in the RP community as it can interfere with our activity feed and our ability to track threads. Giving likes are fine though. ✪ I am well over 18 and so is my muse. Topics that are Safe for Tumblr but are still better suited for a mature audience from the past and present are tagged as #lemon goodness and #touch of citrus if it’s questionably mature. Past and present content that I believe needs a trigger warning are tagged with #tw; _____ for possible triggering content. {Trigger Warning Tags Master Post link} ✪ I will never hold it against a person if they want to unfollow me or drop me as a roleplay partner for any reason. If you wish to speak to me about the reasons why, you may do so but please be civil. ✪ I am a Continuity Queen™ which means I want to keep serious rp threads that build serious relationships as consistent as we can. So if you or I spot any inconsistencies, I don’t mind discussing how to fix them and editing our posts.

✪  If your muse is struggling to interact with mine, you can talk to me about do-overs and re-plotting. It might not guarantee that they’ll get along the way you and/or I want them to, but if I see you trying and putting in effort, I’ll return that effort on my end.

Mun Activity & Selectivity

✪ Updated 8/04/19 -  I have been living with a physical health problem for over a year and while I’ve finished my medication treatment for now, I still have fluctuating good and bad health days. Please know that this is the reason why I’m selective as a roleplayer and why I’m slower than I used to be with replies. I won’t be as cheerful, patient, or as responsive on my bad health days, and I may only talk with close friends on those days. I’d rather not talk too much about my health condition for personal privacy reasons if we’re not close. Just know that I am better since October 2018 and I appreciate the patience and understanding from you all. ✪ As a Selective rper, I ask that nobody tags me in serious roleplay, IC interaction threads, send me ask starters, or asks with the intent to carry on IC interaction without speaking with me first. (Unless I reach out to you first OOC or IC in one way or another.) Especially if we aren’t following each other. Mutuals can still send in IC interaction asks if I reblog memes. If non-mutuals ignore this rule I will not respond to the starter and I may even block you because you haven’t taken the time to read my rules or notice my header information. ✪ If we start to/continue to roleplay together please be patient with me and keep in mind that I will be slow to respond to our threads. Sometimes my moods/muse may feel stronger with some threads more than others. Some days I’m just busy with something I’m working on and/or I’m having a bad health day and feeling tired. One way to deal with uncertainties is to simply communicate with me. If you feel like your thread got lost and/or it’s been awhile since we last spoke or I last responded come talk to me. Even if I’m not feeling good, I can at least let you know what’s going on and it’ll let me know to discuss our roleplay stuff together when I’m feeling better.

Unacceptable Roleplay Etiquette:

✪ Various types of powerplay, godmoding, force shipping, etc. ✪ Toxic behaviors and attitudes (like jealousy) that cause problems for yourself and others. 

✪ Muns projecting themselves into their character so much that muse = mun. ✪ Muses and/or muns who are under 18 approaching me and my muse for shipping and/or smut. ✪ Using me and my muse for any reason that isn’t for IC plot that’s planned. ✪ Muns assuming that muse = mun and treating me poorly because of it. ✪ Genuine lack of respect for muns as people who come first before our hobby. ✪ Muns who create rp blogs on a whim and delete/abandon them with little to no notice frequently once they lose interest in that muse, and not because the mun is just busy IRL.

Writing Fight Threads With Me

✪  I am selective with who I write fight scenes with. Some people make it awkward because of what they consider to be godmodding etc. and I can lose interest in fight threads sooner than most. ✪ I don’t mind doing a fade-to-black/offscreen fight and write the details of who won/lost. ✪ You MUST SPEAK TO ME OOC if you’re interested in doing a thread where our muses fight or spar.

If you don’t speak with me OOC I will not know what direction to take the fight and I will either respond to our thread SUPER SLOWLY or I’ll DROP the thread if I've agreed to writing one with you and you choose to wing it. I hate feeling uncertain about how far to take things, and I hate writing pointless dodge-attack responses. Fight scenes don’t have to be boring, but a lot of the times they are boring to write in roleplay. This also weeds out people who use fight threads as a pissing contest or an ego boost for their muses/themselves.

How To Treat The Muse In General

✪ This is not a blog for TFS Nappa so PLEASE don’t treat him like he’s the parody character. That doesn’t mean that the Abridged series or TFS Nappa content won’t be reblogged, or referenced from time to time. I just want my muse to be treated as the Z canon Nappa.

✪ Please don’t approach my muse with insults and an unwarranted attitude when I barely know you or the muse you’re portraying, or by being excessive with it when I’m not expecting it. It’s a huge red flag for me due to past bad rp experiences and I will most likely nope out of interacting immediately both IC or OOC.   

✪ If you approach my muse with insults and an attitude, expect to be treated like crap in response for setting yourself up for a temperamental Saiyan to roast your muse, or come at you with the intent to harm your muse. Nappa is still a sadistic violent villain from Dragonball Z, and he doesn’t like being disrespected. 

                 ♥   S T A N C E      O N     S  H  I  P  P  I  N  G   ♥

✪ As of 8/5/19 Nappa is a muse without an active shipping partner. I’m not actively looking for one. I’m really selective for this muse, but open to possibilities if I see strong chemistry between the muses IC and good writing chemistry with another mun. 

✪ When I was actively shipping with Nappa he was a single-ship blog  and his shipping partner was an OC, Poharu Belle-Hélène. (Formerly known as @thedameblancheofcontoncity​.) Due to serious things happening in her life, Poharu’s mun decided it was best for her to delete her blog. Neither of us know if she’ll come back. No matter what happens --  whether I find chemistry with another muse and mun and want to ship with them or not -- Poharu and her mun will always be welcome back to continue our ship where we left off.  ✪ REMINDER: I do not ship with muses or muns under 18. 

✪ If you are interested in writing a ship with me seriously please talk to me OOC. I don’t mind sitting back and keeping an eye on if our muses have chemistry IC, but I won’t consider it official until we’ve had a discussion OOC. 

Past and Present Adult Themes

✪ Past NSFW content for past adult subjects that are now not safe for Tumblr are tagged as #lemon goodness or #touch of citrus if I find it suggestive. ✪ As of 12/17/18, it is supposedly alright to write erotica based on Tumblr’s guidelines, but I prefer to fade to black whenever things get spicy between our muses and move to Discord to discuss or continue.

If you’ve read these rules up to this point, send me an ask saying, “I’m ready to follow orders, sir!” This isn’t an obligation for me to interact with you. I just like knowing that people read my rules.

Two Things Pathfinder:Kingmaker Does Better than Pathfinder

I'd been vaguely following the Kickstarter adventures of a CRPG called Pathfinder: Kingmaker for a while. I wasn't getting my hopes up, mainly because the last Pathfinder-adjacent CRPG, the proposed MMORPG Pathfinder Online, burned through multiple large Kickstarters and still hasn't released anything but an Early Enrollment client, but then the game actually launched. Having played roughly two-thirds of the actual pen-and-paper Kingmaker Adventure Path, I was curious to see how the computer game compared to its tabletop inspiration, but reports of bugginess suggesting the game had been pushed out the door too soon and what seemed to me a high price tag at $40 dissuaded me. Then enough time passed so that Pathfinder: Kingmaker became available via Steam Sale at half-price, and with reports that many of the bugs had been squashed by the diligent development team, I figured I'd take a shot at it. I'm about 16 hours in now, and while much of the game seems to be a direct pitch to nostalgia: not only does it borrow heavily from the actual Adventure Path and will thus be very recognizable to those who've played it, but the interface borrows very heavily from beloved isometric CRPGs like the Baldur's Gate series. Interestingly, as the developers put the game together, they made a few tweaks and compromises to the Pathfinder rule system and its CRPG implementation, and honestly, some of these decisions I like better than the systems that exist in the main tabletop RPG. I'll run though just a couple here, in the hopes you find them useful enough to incorporate into your Pathfinder game. Inventory and Encumbrance Inventory management has been a part of CRPGs since way back, and part of tabletop RPGs since the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons, so it's no surprise that Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a fairly complex inventory system. One of the genius parts of it, in my opinion, is how the inventory system interacts with encumbrance. Encumbrance rules have always been an aspect of TTRPGs that only really appeal to hard-core simulationists, and most other players and game-masters have generally ignored much if not all of it. (In my own D&D 3E games, we developed the Quiver of Endless Arrows solely so that we wouldn't have to deal with managing the inventory of our archer characters, as an example.) And on the whole, designers have adapted to this by making encumbrance less and less significant in their TTRPGs: the designers of 5th edition went so far as to basically turn encumbrance into an optional rule, with only a minimum-strength-for-heavy-armor rule in the main equipment section of the Player's Handbook. This is kind of a shame, though, because speaking as a game-master, encumbrance does do one really useful thing in your RPG -- it requires your players to make choices on what they prioritize and value. For example: after defeating a fortress of giants, do your PCs roam the halls trying to tear tapestries off the walls and loot art objects, or do they raid the larder and restock their food supplies? Or do they try to do both and find themselves staggering under the weight of all this loot, making them easy pickings for other monsters on the way home? Pathfinder: Kingmaker does track encumbrance for each individual character, but it also allows for a communal inventory where characters can freely equip and un-equip items outside of combat. (In combat, items that characters want to use need to have been equipped to the 'belt' area, or for weapons, previously set as a weapon set.) The communal inventory has a carrying capacity equal to the carrying capacity of all characters in the party, with the individual gear carried by each character already counting against that capacity. The communal inventory basically represents the characters who have the carrying capacity finding space in their backpacks, belt pouches, or what-have-you to carry the party's 'extraneous items', and when the party as a whole goes over an encumbrance boundary, the entire party suffers the effects. This is a fairly brilliant solution to the time-sink of encumbrance; if the game-master already has calculated the party's carrying capacity, and knows the weight value of the items the party might choose to take into their inventory, it's easy enough to figure out when the party hits Medium, Heavy, or Overloaded encumbrance and alert the group accordingly, which can then trigger a discussion over what to leave behind to keep from heading over that level. Changes to the party's encumbrance limit can also be pretty easily handled this way: if a party member loses Strength to a poison or gains carrying capacity from a spell, the character's change in carrying capacity directly modifies the party's carrying capacity. In the case of lowered carrying capacity in combat situations, it makes more sense to only hit the affected PC with the encumbrance penalty until the combat ends and the party has the opportunity to 'repack'. Meanwhile, items like the bag of holding can directly convert to increased carrying capacity based on the capacity of the bag minus the bag's own weight. It's a cool system, and requires much less overhead than tracking individual characters' encumbrance values. In a system like Pathfinder 1.0 or D&D 3.5 that still cares about encumbrance, it's worth checking out. Monster Knowledge checks In many TTRPGs that have a knowledge/lore skill or statistic, that skill is used by players to figure out what their characters know about the creatures they're encountering. Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a solution that directly takes advantage of the fact that it's a CRPG -- as the players succeed on skill checks, the game makes more and more of the monster's actual stat block available for the player to look at. This would seem like a difficult thing to implement in a TTRPG -- after all, many D&D 3E DMs often would give the party specific bits of information about a monster if they make their knowledge checks, or would alternately allow the player to ask questions about the monster on behalf of his character to represent knowledge the character would prioritize. But the implementation of the 'slowly increasing stat block' actually does suggest an implementation in the TTRPG that might work reasonably smoothly: set the 'main' DC for unlocking information in the monster block header (name, type, etc.), then set increasing DCs for information in each subsequent section, so the party making the DC by 3, for example, also unlocks the monster's attacks, and making the DC by 6 unlocks the description of the monster's special abilities. Then, let the party make use of the Monster Manual or other resource, but rule that their characters only know (and thus can act on) the information in the specific parts of the stat block they've unlocked with their skill checks. I've still got a ways to go to determine whether Pathfinder: Kingmaker is on the whole a great or merely decent game, but in these two specific instances, I think the developers did a great job solving a problem, so much so that their solution seems useful outside the realm of the CRPG it was designed for.

Sensor Sweep: Tolkien’s Letters, Taghri’s Prize, Kardios of Atlantis

Horror Fiction (Old Style Tales): When H. G. Wells first published “The Invisible Man” in 1897, the title alone ensured its success. Invisibility fascinates, attracts, and terrifies. It’s allure rests in the ability to escape notice (and with it criticism, self-consciousness, and the power of the other’s gaze), to be freed from social pressures (to be pretty, dress well, be polite, stay put, etc.), and to have the freedom to enter any unlocked space without challenge.

  Fiction (DMR Books): In the late ‘70s legendary pulp fictioneer Manly Wade Wellman created a fantasy hero named Kardios, who was the last survivor of Atlantis. The five tales of Kardios Wellman penned appeared in anthologies such as Swords Against Darkness and Heroic Fantasy, which are long out of print. For decades sword and sorcery fans have clamored for all five stories to be reprinted in a single collection, but their cries fell on deaf ears.

D&D Fiction (Brain Leakage): Before seeing this tweet, I actually had no idea the D&D novel line had been discontinued. A little googling reveals it was killed off quietly, with Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro making no official announcements and enforcing NDAs against the writers involved. Anyway, Black has a good point in regards the potential benefit of a program like this, at least from the WotC/Hasbro perspective.

Talbot Mundy (DMR Books): The second of Talbot Mundy’s Roman novels, Queen Cleopatra was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1929. Set in the years between the summer of 48 B.C. (the battle of Pharsalus) and the spring of 44 B.C. (the Ides of March), this story tells of the tumultuous end of the Roman Republic and the bloody beginning of what would become the Roman Empire from the viewpoint of one of the most famous and alluring women in all of history: Cleopatra.

Robert Heinlein (Tip the Wink): Have Space Suit–Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein. Scribner’s & Sons, 1958. Juvenile novel # 12 in the series. Published in both hardcover and paperback that year by Scribner’s as part of the Heinlein juvenile series.

Alternative History (According to Quinn): It diverges from real history in 1632 when Matsakura Shigemasa, a strongly anti-Christian daimyo (Japanese feudal lord) escapes an assassination attempt that might have been ordered by the Shogun due to his misrule and brutalization of the peasantry. Per the Wikipedia article he was planning to launch a maritime invasion of the Spanish colony of Luzon in the Philippines!. Not being dead this time around, he’s able to launch the campaign with the ass

Fiction (Scifi Movie Page): Levon’s Time, the 6th book in the Levon Cade series from comic book legend Chuck Dixon will be available September 4th but you can preorder yours today!

The latest release in the relentless Levon Cade series is full of unforgiving action. Following the events of Levon’s War, Levon Cade is arrested in Turkey and imprisoned in a hellhole on the Black Sea coast. In order to come home he must strike a deal with the United States government, and that comes at a price.

Fiction (Mystery File): AUGUST DERLETH “The China Cottage.” Solar Pons. Short story. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1965. First collected in The The Casebook of Solar Pons (Mycroft & Moran, hardcover, 1965), as “The Adventure of the China Cottage.” Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock’s Games Killers Play (Dell, paperback, 1968.

I wonder if this story marked the first appearance of Solar Pons’ brother Bancroft, a man of some size and weight and who worked, not surprisingly, for the British Foreign Office. Dead in a locked room is an eccentric breaker of codes and ciphers, found slumped over the latest set of papers he was working on.

RPG (Skulls in the Stars): Dungeon Masters Adventure Log (1980). In my old school post, I mentioned the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log, which intrigued me. Well, soon afterwards, I got myself a copy, and it is charming! A DM could use Adventure Log pages to keep track of characters and monsters, as the sample page shows!

Robert E. Howard (Don Herron): When the Two-Gun Raconteur website went down, it dragged a ton of links to Brian Leno posts with it — Brian did most of his blogging there before he wandered over here and took over the landscape with his maniacal Autograph Hound obsessions.

One of his major postings was a ten part dive into the life and times of Texas boxer Kid Dula, one of Robert E. Howard’s faves. Anything about the Kid on this site you can access via the tag below — I’m sure my posts contain dead links to that mini-magnum opus.

RPG (The Mixed GM): The problem is when D&D gets involved. I have seen too much “how powerful is X in canon” or “this random book I found says Y, that’s canon right?” lately. These statements appear to be directly related to the game we are playing, as if something outside the GM determines “canon” in the game world. Let me be clear.

Fiction (Davy Crockett’s Almanac): Zorro is 100. He made his debut in the first installment of Johnston McCulley’s “The Curse of Capistrano” in the August 9, 1919 issue of All-Story Weekly. That serial, good as it is, might have been forgotten but for Douglas Fairbanks, who bought the film rights and turned it into the huge hit “The Mark of Zorro” in 1920. That film is still plenty of fun, as you can see for yourself at the end of this post. But McCulley’s original story is even better.

RPG (Old Skulling): This is a sword and sorcery RPG, inspired by pulp literature and comics. Although this falls into the fantasy games category, there are a few key differences that might be worth mentioning between generic or high fantasy and sword and sorcery. This section will briefly outline some of the core themes of sword and sorcery stories and how to apply them to the game.

RPG (Grey Hawk Grognard): Long-time readers of this blog, and even longer-time Greyhawk fans, will recall that originally the western portion of the continent known as Oerik was completely unknown to us. All we had was a partial map included in the original 1980 Greyhawk folio. As you can see, the Flanaess proper is in the northeastern corner of the continent, and the rest is left completely blank save for coasts and mountain ranges.

Gamergate (Brian Niemeier): The man in the picture above was accused of sexual assault by conniving Jezebel Zoe Quinn. Are the allegations true? We’ll never know because he’s dead now. Game developer Alec Holowka killed himself on Saturday morning. His suicide followed his public drumming out of the industry as a result of Quinn’s accusations. Quinn, it should be noted, is the predatory tart whose escapades may have incited #GamerGate. Since then she’s ridden the professional victimhood gravy train, raising $80,000 for a Kickstarter .

Fiction (Trolls Myth): This novel (link is an Amazon Affiliate link) is of the genre of not-so-young-man-does-good stories that were fairly common in days of yore. Writers like H. Beam Piper and David Drake used to give us lots of these. They deviate from the young-man-does-good stories of authors like Alan Dean Foster in that our protagonist has at least a decade of adult life under his belt.

Tolkien (Imaginative Conservative): The re-publication of Tolkien’s collected (though by no means comprehensive) letters should help place the English author as one of the great Christian Humanists of the twentieth century, in league with his closest friend C.S. Lewis, his sometime rival, T.S. Eliot, and other greats such as Christopher Dawson, Romano Guardini and fellow traveler Eric Voegelin. Contrary to Rissek’s assertions, it was Tolkien’s desire, through sanctified and created myth, to attack the “annihilating traumas” not just of the twentieth century, but of modernity at large.

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