#I'll probably answer questions like this in the discord channel

[atrial-ofhorror-if]

Hey, I just finished playing through your game for the first time, and it's really interesting so far! ^_^ Originally I wanted to go for Nasir, but after seeing the scene with Tama protecting my mc from her ex-bf, I'm leaning more towards him now.

Will it be possible to romance Tama if my mc initially doesn't have a crush on him from the start?

Yay, I'm glad you liked it 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿! Honestly Faizan is my favorite LI to write even though technically I shouldn't have favorites 🤭🤭

Now, I usually don't try to answer any questions about whether Tama is a LI. But I'm in a good mood, so ill answer this question underneath the cut. It technically is SPOILER.

Teehee 🙆🏿‍♀️🙆🏿‍♀️🙆🏿‍♀️

(you can always hop onto ATOH's discord and leave any questions in the spoilers channel. I may or may not answer them depending on the level of spoiler, and if its bad I can always just hide or black out the text.)

#they say the more trauma you induce on a character shows how much you love them #i guess i love faizan a LOT then teehee #a trial of horror #if wip #twine game #interactive fiction #a trial of love #char: tama shirosaki #interactive game #twine #atoh #I'll probably answer questions like this in the discord channel #if they are spoilers that is

[ultrainfinitepit]

When you first started making pins, how did you advertise them? And vs now? I really want to get into making some of my own :]

That's a great question! There's lots of ways to advertise and I'll share what worked for me. But your mileage may vary or you might find ways that work better for you than they did for me.

Here are my first angel pins, by the way, it's been four years since I first started if you can believe it.

Here's what I did at the beginning that I still do now:

Build your following on social media and post about your pins. This is probably the most important thing to do, but also the hardest. Focus on a small number of social media profiles that you can manage comfortably, don't stretch yourself too thin as it is important to engage with your audience to build it. Each site has their own quirks as well. I can go into detail on my favorites and what I've observed for each if anyone is curious, just send a follow-up ask.

Run crowdfunding campaigns to fund your pins and then advertise to backers. Specifically start on Kickstarter if you are a beginner. While I am loving Backerkit it is a lesser-known site and it's harder to get discovered on it. I have gotten comments from artists who worry that they need to be popular before doing crowdfunding. However in my case it was my first campaign that built my audience the most. And in my opinion, it is never a waste of time to try out a campaign. If it fails you still have the artwork ready, you can gauge interest and see which designs are popular, and you will have a starter pool of people interested in your art that you can build off of.

Create a merch newsletter and share monthly updates. Since it is independent of social media it is a lower barrier to entry for customers interested in your art; and doesn't require them to check social media and happen to catch your posts. It takes some time to build a list but you can be assured everyone who signs up is invested in your merch.

There's quite a few things I did at the beginning to get started pin making and then advertise, that I don't do now. Mainly it is an issue of time. I used to spend hours and hours running around on all these sites, as well as reading over posts for research. Nowadays, social media and shop following are enough for me. But I would recommend the following for anyone looking to start out in pin making.

Things I used to do that I would recommend, but don't do much of now:

Join PMR on Facebook and post in their weekly share thread. "Pin Maker Resource" is the best place for beginner pin makers. It is a huge group of dedicated pin makers, all eager to answer questions and provide valuable insights into pin making. Most of all, it has those manufacturer reviews and names that everyone is always asking for! I have personally posted many reviews to this group. It is open for applications once a month. You have to apply because they specifically prohibit pin manufacturers from joining so people can post their reviews freely.

Post in Facebook groups. These communities can be large so your post may get lost in the crowd, but it will be seen by people specifically looking for pins. I like "Pin & Art Collector Marketplace" and "Pin Nation." "Enamel Pin Collectors, Artists, Trades and Kickstarters!" is decent but smaller.

Join a pin Discord server and share your designs in promotion channels. Many pin collectors such as myself join these servers to look for pins to buy. We are also in multiple servers and will crosspost if we like something. I have found these servers mainly by joining pin creators' Patreon clubs.

Post on Reddit. The communities are small but a guaranteed place to find people interested in pins. I like r/EnamelPins and r/pinprojects. If your pins are for a specific audience, you can post to relevant subreddits. For example, I have shared my work on angel art subreddits.

That's just about everything I can recall. I hope this is helpful, good luck on your pin journey!

#ask #pin making

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

So... Where You Going?

For those not in the know, tumblr's doing its swan song and is going down to a skeleton crew for running the site. The site won't be gone immediately, but given how things run on tumblr now (will sometimes be totally unusable, I've had my blog automatically killed for nonsense reasons, held together with duct tape and glue) I'm going to treat this as if it could go down tomorrow or else that it will probably collapse by Christmas.

I'll probably be here until it's no longer usable but I'm not going to hold my breath that that's going to be any significant amount of time.

So, there comes the question of where I am going to go.

@therealvinelle and I have been discussing that and what we're likely to do is pivot what would be text meta into @rankheresy content. Things that would have been long text answers to questions will become episodes (note this is what the episodes essentially are already). We're also looking into doing Q&A style streams/videos where we'd answer questions from the audience to get to what would have been the short/more ridiculous 'what if' kind of things we usually do.

Of course, if people want us to run certain episodes/do certain content, we're open to suggestions and feedback.

As for Ao3, I'm not going anywhere on there, because if I could have shaken the fanfiction habit, I would have years ago. I'm in this for life, baby.

Neither of us have any plans to move all the blog content somewhere else in part because a) nobody seems to know where they want to land yet b) all the existing options are collapsing or else are terrible and I hate them. As much as this place is a hellsite, there's nothing quite like it. This could change but, for now, them's the breaks.

Also, since I've now published things, I can't disappear from online entirely.

So, here's the places you can find me.

Me, Myself, and I

The_Carnivorous_Muffin on Ao3

Amazon Author Page

If you're interested at all in my venturing into original things/what's been going in there, follow the Amazon author page as that will for sure alert you when new things come out, I'll make announcements other places (e.g. discord) but of course that depends on other places existing which who even knows at this point.

Rank Heresy (@rankheresy i.e. me and @therealvinelle meta stuff)

Rank Heresy Spotify

Rank Heresy Podcastaddict

Rank Heresy Apple Podcasts

Rank Heresy Amazon Music

Rank Heresy Player FM

Rank Heresy Google Podcasts

Rank Heresy Patreon

Rank Heresy Kofi

Rank Heresy Discord

Rank Heresy discord will probably become the best place to catch me or @therealvinelle as well as catch any announcements we make. In #announcements we drop anything we update (either the podcast or fics) and #notice-me-senpai channel can be used when you really want to get our attention/have us answer a question (we do lurk there but as of right now it's not a super active server).

Podfic (me and @therealvinelle podfic stuff)

Podfics on Spotify

Podfics on Amazon Music

Podfics on Podcastaddict

Podfics on PlayerFM

Podfics are what it says on the tin, it's me and @therealvinelle podficcing only our own material (which so far is just partway through For The Love of a Woman)

It's been a wild time, friends, hope to see you all in the future.

#about this blog #rank heresy #meta #vinelle #therealvinelle #announcement #discord

[wickermayne]

Hiii!!!! 10. What's your favorite part about the fic writing process?, 4.How do you channel characters' voices and personalities?, 17.What's the most memorable comment or review you've received on one of your fics?, 24.What advice would you give to someone who wants to start writing fanfiction?

10. What's your favorite part about the fic writing process?

The conception of the diea/day-dreaming part haha. I'll get so many ideas randomly, especially when I chat with people on discord, we'll just go on tangents about fic ideas...and then I actually have to write it 😅

4. How do you channel characters' voices and personalities?

How do I do it...that's a hard question to answer. Honestly, I just like Naruto so much it feels kind of easy to characterize him for my fics. Now I'm not saying I do him perfectly. I like softening his flaws, polishing his imperfections but keeping them there, but it's always been straightforward to me. The other characters are harder but I try my best haha.

17. What's the most memorable comment or review you've received on one of your fics?

One that was funny that I can't forget is "sometimes we need smut that makes our heart orgasm" that had me crying haha.

Of course the longer comments I adore, the ones telling me they appreciate my writing or characterization or that they never liked a pairing until they read my fic. It's rare, but sometimes people do gush about my fics and it's awesome everytime!

24. What advice would you give to someone who wants to start writing fanfiction?

My first piece of advise would be to write! You can't plan forever, you've got to put the words down on (digital) paper!

Second is if you haven't written creatively before, your first couple of attempts probably won't be well written. Writing is a skill, you have to practice it, expecting greatness from the jump is foolhardy, but you shouldn't let that discourage you from writing. You'll get better with time and attempts!

Finally, I love the saying "perfect is the enemy of the good/perfection is the enemy of progress." I feel in fandom spaces, would be writers are so obsessed with their writing being 'perfect' that it never gets off the ground. We are doing this for fun! Just write, be happy, enjoy yourself, that's more than enough!

Thanks for the ask Dayeongi!

Ask Games Link

#ask games

[sierice]

3, 11, 12, 13, 19, 23, 27, 37, 44 for the ask game? SORRY SIERICE I KNOW THIS IS A LOT IM JUST REALLY CURIOUS 😭YOU DONT HAVE TO ANSWER ALL OF THEM LOL

the longer i sit here the longer this list grows.. ill just have to come back next time (threat)

HI HELLO HIIIII !!!!!!!!!!!!!! i hope this is for that pjoverse ask game thingy bc if not this is gonna be uh. a little bit awkward but whatever here we GO

3. Favorite character

meg..........lester.......... explodes and dies (they are a package deal do not SEPERATE !!)

11. Favorite scene

oughhhh uhhhhhhh there is a lot tbh. im a very impressionable person you make a scene even slightly cool and i'll be like WOAHHHH WOOOOAHHH WOW. anyways i hope top three is fine instead

the scene from tdp where apollo shields meg from chaos and then they both come back out alive bc they both remembered that they need each other. this was only in the second book rick was insane for this

sorry 2 be cringe on main but. the bit in tlt where percy gets claimed. idk that changed my brain forever i loved it. the way it was shown how much of a serious and insane and never seen b4 event so ppl were both in awe and in fear and percy could tell that his life was never going to be the same. chills literal chills

TTT COMMODUS DEATH SCENE !!!!!!!!!!!! HE DIED THE SAME WAY BOTH TIMES BY THE SAME PERSON IM JUST GRAAAAAAHHHHH

LIKE DO YOU SEE THIS. DO YOU SEE THIS. THE FIRST IS FROM TDP THE SECOND IS FROM TTT GOD. F*CK

12. First pjo book you've read?

THO !!!!!!!!! i saw one of my classmates reading it and i was curious so i borrowed it for a bit and i was HOOKED. i WAS super confused who this 'percy' and 'leo' he was talking about so i decided to start from the beginning XD im pretty sure i was caught for reading in the middle of class that day lmao

13. Favorite minor character?

SO SO SO MANY. i collect minor characters like pokemons i adore them with all my heart. favorite is probably felix philip from tkc though. i love him and his penguins and his tendency to demolish bad guys with basketballs and also shoes

19. Favorite Olympian

APOLLO. claps and nobody joins in

23. Opinion on TSATS?

i couldn't even FINISH it i just couldnt. it was that bad like im sorry but i simply could not bring myself to like any bit of it 1/10

27. Scene that makes you cringe the most

oh the TTT reyna rejection scene for sure. and then the bit where he pees himself in TDP and TBM like girlie what 😭😭😭srsly why do subject me to this lester why do pee yourself in every single book without fail

37. 3 hcs about you favorite character

OOOOOOOOH DIFFICULT QUESTION. this one is a definite one though:

2. meg teleportation powers !!!!!!!!! (yes i know its basically canon BUT. it was used like one (1) time and then never again i need to see MORE OF IT NOW)

3. lester meg empathy link is REAL. to me. and also kind of to canon but whatever

4. basically everything in the headcannons channel in the toa discord LMAOOO i read it and then i forever incorporate it into my psyche its like my daily ritual at this point

44. Favorite rareship

apollo x happiness. apollo x therapy. apollo x revolutionizing against zeus. lester x some f*cking good things happening to him for once in his life. why are you dragging me out of the building

#I LIED i think apollo/lityerses is a good rareship XDDD #but i do believe in the above few as well #anyways TY FOR SENDING THESE ASKS !!!!!! #I HAD A GREAT TIME ANSWERING THESE twirls hair #also please do come back with more i wld love to answer them #and if this IS indeed abt some other ask game then please ignore this post LMAO #anon asks #🤍🖤🤍🖤 #asks

[rottenraccoons]

hi sorry if this is to much to ask but do you have any tips or resources for someone wanting to make a VN without any prior experience? - when it comes to artwork at the very least I can deliver but Idk how much coding id need to learn/is required for VN - thankyou

I (Violet) personally love answering these kinds of questions so do not apologise! I think making games is amazing and will always encourage people to try it out! I'll put everything under a readmore because this got a little long, whoops.

Coding is often the bit about making games that scares people the most so I'm going to focus on that. The good news is that when it comes to visual novels most engines come in two flavours: no coding skills needed to start, or it will teach you all the basics you need to know to start.

How much coding you'll need to learn depends on the engine you want to work with. There are engines like TyranoBuilder that will enable you to make a game without needing to do any coding or scripting. I personally bounced off of it so I can't say much for how it is to use, and it costs a bit of money up front. But it's a valid option! I've played games built in Tyrano and they're fun!

Our team uses Ren'py, which is slightly more difficult to pick up and use but free and very flexible. I have seen Tetris made playable in Ren'py. The benefit to Ren'py is that it is very popular and that means there are a lot of resources available to help you get started. Ren'py comes packaged with a basic game called The Question that you can play, and then look at the code to see how it works and I would genuinely recommend just doing that. There are a lot of additional great resources for Ren'py that I use frequently, too: there's a pretty good YouTube channel about making visual novels (yes all his thumbnails are annoying but the content is great), the Lemmasoft forums are an amazing repository of knowledge and if you google how to do something in Ren'py this is probably the website that will show up first, and there's an official Discord server where experienced users can help out.

If you wanna start making visual novels, here's my advice: pick an engine to play with (I stan Ren'py, obviously, but any engine that works is a good engine), go grab some free assets to play with off Itch.io, and start tooling around. Make a scene where two characters enter, one tells a bad joke, and the other leaves. Do a short dialogue tree. Give yourself a very simple goal and fool around for an hour or two and see what you make. If you need code, copy and paste and edit code from a tutorial. Just give yourself a a simple goal and keep it short, so it's easier to experiment with.

And hey, I'll let you in on a secret: I'm the main programmer for the Rotten Raccoons and I'm not very good at programming. I only just learned we're doing some stuff in a way harder way than is necessary, and I google for answers constantly. I have huge admiration for programmers who actually know what they're doing. But a lot of game engines are built so that people like us, who learn to code just to make the game go brrr, can still participate in making games.

#rotten raccoons #about us #(by which i mean our process)

[mysticdragon828]

You there! Yes, the Persona fan behind that screen there! Are you seeking a Discord server to hang out and talk about the series? Somewhere, perhaps, small and cozy, as opposed to one of those huge discord servers where you could feel icy glares on the back of your head? Well, have I got a place for you! It's called Tanaka's Amazing Warehouse, run by yours truly!

Got questions about it? Look down here!

What is it? - It's a mainly Persona-themed server, with a side of other Megami Tensei games!

Is it active? - Kinda? Sometimes? Can't say it's always active, but every now and then we get chatty! But if you ever do want to strike up a conversation there, you will probably get a reply no matter the hour of the day, so go for it!

Is it centered around a particular Persona game? - Nope, we have channels for all of them!

Are Persona and other Megami Tensei games the only things you talk about there? - Nope! There's channels for other games, other series, various arts, memes, and of course a general chat!

Is it LGBTQ+ friendly? - Yes, absolutely! I mean, I'd be a hypocrite if it wasn't lmao

Is there an age limit? - As long you're above what's stated by Discord TOS (13+), you're allowed to join the server, but be forewarned that there is a mild degree of NSFW allowed(*) there, as the admin (me) is an adult.

What language is it? - Unfortunately, it is strictly English-speaking, as I'm not bilingual, but I will probably allow brief conversations involving other languages if you can find someone else there who speaks it? I dunno how likely that is, but more power to you if you do find someone who speaks your language there!

Is there a verification process? - Not exactly, but there is an automatic role assignment that takes place upon joining the server. If you don't automatically recieve the access role when you join, DM me on Discord(**) please!

(*): "mild degree of NSFW allowed" = as far as certain demon/persona designs across the franchise goes, but no deep discussion about it

(**): "on Discord" = my username there is mysticdragon03, and please dont dm me on here, id just get confused lol

If this didn't answer all your questions (somehow), just DM me here and I'll do my best to tell you whatever you need to know about it!

Thinking of joining? We'll be waiting!

(ps, i would love for this to get a bit of traction at least, so if you're interested or think some of your followers might be interested, reblogs would be appreciated!)

#persona series #persona #persona 2 #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #megami tensei #self promo thing idk #this one is hopefully a bit better than the last time i promo'd it

[gargyshmub]

i know this is like A Very Common Question for artists but i was looking through your art again and i gotta ask (because still i really like your style). from where exactly did you like Learn to draw? or what are your main inspirations on your style and shit

First of all THANK you for looking through my art THANK YOU it makes my smile widen THA KS.

Second of all yea my biggest art-head I look up to in every way is Sycra from YouTube, they're probably THE BEST Helpful art channel on the entire website and literally everything I ever do art-wise is thanks to him. If you've ever had a problem drawing and need help HES ANSWERED IT. WITH AN ENTIRE VIDEO. The most helpful one I'll probably link once I'm done here is his foreshortening video, its probably the most helpful art advice I've ever gotten

Tldr; he has a very analytical approach to art and isn't afraid to show his mistakes, and being able to see his mistakes helps to more understand an artistic technique than pretty much all the other "art help" channels out there, he's like a hidden gospel that helps IMMENSELY, then again everything's subjective it's not for everyone abcd yea.

As far as like, purely artistic though, I'm bad with names so I can't think of anyone else specific tee hee, but if you wanted i could make like, a pdf or a discord for a bunch of PNGS of art I like if that's up your alley

It could be like, everyone can have their own art gallery of art they like, and if you like someone's taste you can save their specific channel, something like that

Anyways this is really long oopsies I'll stop now

[witch-ix]

One more thing: do you have like a discord server for this AU?

No worries about askin' questions - i'm always happy to answer, especially if it means i can share a bit more about my rewrite! :)

I feel very flattered to get a question like this, but i do not have a dedicated discord server.

However, i thought about starting a youtube channel, where i would post speed-drawings of my redesigns. But as of now it takes me embarrassingly long to draw anything (i probably just have to get back into it tho) and i don't really have enough time for that.

For now all i have are rough plans for the early seasons rewrite and the Roxy, Selina, Macy and Terrestrial Magic spin-off. I really hope i'll get to write some full on fanfictions about it in the near or distant future.

Everything else i post about here - at least the things i'm very sure about. From time to time i post ideas for this au on my main blog - @daydreamsia

Feel free to ask anything you want to know about! i might just be able to answer it and if i don't come back to it immediately i probably have to think a bit more about how whatever-is-asked-about works in my rewrite :D

#ask-ix #winx club rewrite #winx club au #winx club

[benkyoutobentou]

31 Days of Productivity Reading: Day twenty eight

Before: No plans for the day, just vibes. But I am prepping for this weekend, which is (a perfect ending to my challenge, in my opinion), Minimmersion weekend! I'll be hosting two streams over on the Discord server, あん on Saturday evening and the last four episodes of Sk8 The Infinity on Sunday evening. If you're interested in joining, you can join the Discord server here (18+ only, just for maturity's sake, nothing untoward goes on in the server).

Also, I'm thinking that I maybe want to up my Mandarin input, so does anyone have any recommendations for YouTube channels made for language learners that aren't grammar lessons?

After: I'm not completely convinced that I won't read any manga today, but I'm probably done reading novels for the day, so I can post my times for that. I read 19 pages over an hour and sixteen minutes for an average reading pace of four minutes flat! That's pretty good, and I'm pretty sure the difference was me moving to a spot with less distractions. It was too noisy inside the house, so I moved outside with the chickens and finally got some good reading in.

A friend is trying to pressure me into reading ゆびさきと恋々! I'm trying to hold off until next month, but I might have to dip my toes in...

I ended up reading the second volume of ロンリーガールに逆らえない today! I read 167 pages over an hour and nine minutes with an average reading pace of 2.4 pages per minute. A new character was introduced this volume, and although I think it's a little early to do so, I did end up liking her a lot. Listen. Listen. She's from Osaka. I promise that I like her outside of her Osaka-ben as well, I swear it. I'm also enjoying how the relationship between the two characters is progressing and the little bit of backstory we got as well. There's just one more question from 本田さん that I want answered...

Overall, I read for two hours and twenty five minutes across 186 pages. I also managed to work out a little today, which I've been neglecting way too much lately, and I cleared out my German flashcard review! I also spent a bit of time watching those easy language videos in both Mandarin and German. A day or two ago, I watched an easy Spanish video just to see what I remembered and I understood way more than I expected to! But my reaction to that video compared to the one in German was ridiculous. I think I just don't give myself enough credit with Spanish. I spent four years studying Spanish and only a semester studying German, yet I was surprised when I understood more in the Spanish video than in the German video. ちょっと考えてよｗｗ

#benkyou posting #30 days of productivity #langblr #studyblr #language learning #polyglot #booklr #im such a sucker for any character that speak kansaiben/osakaben #like. its basically a guarantee that i will love a character if they speak kansaiben #its soooo consistent too #just one of the many reasons why takeshita kyuuto was practically made specifically for me

[arceoptryx]

Vault Hunters SMP S2 Final Vault / S2 Finale Date Confirmation

June 11th, 6pm CEST/ 4pm UTC(GMT) / 2pm EDT [converter] POVs: Iskall85, CaptainSparklez, Hbomb94, AntonioAsh, Stressmonster101, X33N, PeteZahHutt, Seapeekay About: Unlike the randomly generated corridors of regular vaults, the Final Vault is a single dungeon specifically built and designed to act as a finale to the vault hunters modpack and is thus the finale of the SMP. PvE, puzzles, exploration, all that stuff. It takes several months of hardwork to even unlock, run with all members of the smp who qualified. This long awaited iteration will be played for the first time next saturday, after several delays in its development. Time and Date confirmed today in the official discord and by Iskall in his recent video.

Please come see the hard work of the dev team over these past few months <3. VHSMP S2 will be ending after over a year long run, extended many times. If you were planning on watching starting s3, I would still recommend watching it!

Edit: note that there are no confirmations that all members eligible while be there, there is confirmation that there will at least be most of them, but from what I know they are not certain it will be everyone.

Many of the streamers listed above have started doing prep streams for the final vault and will continue doing so into the next week. If you have not followed VH Before, below the cut I'll put several resources that can help explain a bit of the mechanics before the final vault

Iskall's Ongoing Single Player Series: While still in relatively early game, all the mechanics he explains are the foundations for late game and stay relatively the same throughout. he explains it really well, which i would hope he would considering hes the lead dev. Official Modpack Website: Many of the finer details of effects, gear, modifiers, abilities, and mobs are detailed here. In addition if you go to the armory, searching the IGN of an smp member will allow you to see their stats and things they've unlocked. There is also a link to the official discord, however generally smp talk is left to the Liveblogging channel, the discord is mostly for the modpack development and discussion. Jordan's S2 Playlist: This is as far as I know the only complete official upload someone has made of their s2 vods. It's a lot but you can skim to get a sense of what s2 was like. Or just watch it all if you're based??? VH Live (Unofficial Vod Uploads): A unofficial re-upload of a majority of s2 members who did not upload their own vods, however, as far as I know only iskall has endorsed this channel for uploading his own vods. you choose your fate. im probably going to make a complete in depth viewer guide for s3 even though watching from the beginning of that should be fine. but yeah. streamers and vh viewers will be happy to answer any questions in chat as well. please watch the series so i can stop shilling.

#vault hunters #vhsmp #iskall85 #captainsparklez #hbomb94 #antonioash #seapeekay #petezahhutt #x33n #stressmonster101 #mcyt #vault gods smp #vault hunters smp #put on my door to door salesman voice for this one #please clap #to elaborate on my edit #everyone else has logged on for final vault prep besides tubbo who is also incredibly busy at this time #so it would not surprise me if he wasnt available #knockoffupdateacc

[ciarancreature]

On the Madi Danger discord drama (plus screenshots)

A lot of people on Instagram have been asking about what happened in Madi Danger's discord server, so rather than just telling the story over and over and sending over all the screenshots every time someone asks about it, I'm going to post everything here so it's easier to access and so that more people are aware of her behavior. If anyone wants to harass me about this, I will just block you. I won't engage. I'll turn off anon if necessary. I'm not posting this because I want to rehash old drama or because I want to deal with more, I'm just posting it because so many people have asked about it on Instagram, and because I feel like people should be aware of this behavior since it's coming from someone with a lot of influence in online goth spaces, and goth is not a bigoted subculture.

So here's the story.

I joined Madi's discord server several months ago to find more people to talk about goth music with. Not long after I joined, I was talking to one of her friends, who is an admin in her server, about artists that people claim are goth who aren't, such as Lil Peep and XXXTENTACION. I remarked on the fact that I find it shocking that people can still stand to listen to XXX after hearing about the terrible things he did, and her friend (let's call him G because I don't know his real name) commented that he's "much more comfortable around Norwegian black metal musicians."

Now, to those of you who aren't aware, black metal, especially Norwegian black metal, has a reputation. In the 90s, one of the main ways the black metal scene resisted commodification and played up its shock value was by embracing white supremacy and fascism. It became notorious for extreme racism and church burnings. One of the most famous events in the history of black metal was when Varg Vikernes, probably the most famous black metal musician outside of their circles, murdered Euronymous, the guitarist of the band that they were in together at the time, called Mayhem. Varg has since been released from prison and is currently known for his project Burzum, an extremely anti-Semitic ttrpg he released, denouncing many genres of music because Black people influenced them, and posting lengthy essays and videos on the internet that essentially amount to some of the most racist, anti-Semitic, fascist, conspiracy theory drivel you've ever heard. While black metal has gotten slightly less racist in more recent years (there is even anti-racist and anarchist black metal now), there's still a racism problem in it; there's an entire subgenre dedicated to Nazi sympathizers (NSBM). Not everyone who likes black metal is a racist or a fascist, but it's got enough of a reputation that even metalheads I know who love it stay away from the scene and subculture because the racism is still prevalent.

So, as you can imagine, G's comment, especially in a conversation that had nothing to do with black metal and everything to do with problematic actions of musicians, raised quite a few red flags for me.

I asked him what he meant, and he said that his discord status would clarify his stance. His discord status simply said, "Also on my way to kill Euronymous."

This didn't exactly make me feel better. I kept trying to get him to clarify, because I'm a marginalized person who's witnessed and experienced firsthand how serious fascism and bigotry can be and the dangers they pose. I didn't feel safe sharing a server with someone who might have those types of politics, especially if they were in a position of power. He kept dodging questions; even his partner (also an admin) said he was being cagey. Eventually, I asked him outright if he was a Nazi sympathizer and he STILL refused to give me a straight answer. So I made myself scarce and took down links to my other social media and YouTube channel that I'd posted in the server.

Someone reached out to me via DMs and said he'd down this sort of thing before, and through talking to them and a few others, a troubling picture started to emerge. He'd create problems where there weren't any under the guise of "enforcing the rules" which he himself didn't always follow. He'd delete entire conversations to erase any record that they'd happened. He'd ban people for the tiniest things. At best, he was power-tripping. But I think it was a lot worse than that, because I also learned he'd banned a Jewish user for "being the CEO of anti-goyism" and that he'd deleted a whole conversation about how Nazi fashion in goth and industrial is a bad thing because it wasn't on topic for the server (again, this was a goth server; it was quite relevant and on topic).

Not long after, a few of us confronted him in the server. I don't have many screenshots because he and his partner deleted tons of messages almost instantly, but it did not go well. He and his partner actively tried to silence anyone who said anything that made him look bad, wouldn't let people ask questions, and banned us.

He did all of this in Madi's name, so someone suggested we try talking to her. She was very dismissive. I tried to remain as polite as I could from that point on, because I didn't want to be seen as unreasonable or as a crazy, sensitive trans person. She ended up sending a different admin in her place to talk to our group (I was told by someone else a few days ago that, apparently, this other admin was her boyfriend - something she never once mentioned then or since). I don't have screenshots of the conversation leading up to when I arrived (I was busy that day, and by the time I got there, everyone else had stopped talking to him because they said they were too uncomfortable), but I do have the entire conversation between him and I.

Despite all the screenshots we'd all collected, he said there just wasn't much evidence G had done anything wrong to warrant corrective action or anything else. He wanted us to compromise, but shit down every suggestion that was made. Banning G from the group wasn't on the table, but even taking away his admin status due to his conduct (not even counting the racism) wasn't on the table, either, and a rule against bigotry was deemed to complicated and unenforceable. The only action taken, we were told, was that he was told to warn people before banning them.

I let Madi know what had happened and she accused us of, essentially, storming out, and stood by everything her boyfriend had said. She told me he'd told her that he wasn't a Nazi sympathizer and that since I'd gotten my answer, I should be satisfied. She got very dismissive and dropped all pretense of politeness, so I stopped talking to her and moved on. Those of us who'd left formed our own alt discord server.

Not long after, a mutual on Instagram informed me that he had other screenshots from past incidents (I don't have any of those screenshots, but I can ask if he's willing to share them); apparently, this kind of behavior from her is a pattern, and my encounter with it wasn't the first or last time she's done something like this, and she's begun to develop a reputation.

A few weeks later, I heard she was under fire again for defending a friend wearing a Burzum shirt (Varg's other project, incidentally), so I posted a small message on my Instagram story advising baby bats to avoid her because of this behavior. Despite the fact that she literally had 184x as many followers as me on Instagram alone at the time (I did the math), she found out; apparently, someone told her. She came into my DMs to accuse me of calling her a racist (which I was careful to never do), call me a liar, and tell me I "took a joke too far" and that I "don't understand black metal," because, in her words, the Euronymous jokes and racism are "just memes" that no one in the black metal community takes seriously.

I stepped away again and assumed that was the end of it until a few days ago. Someone else made a post on Instagram promoting her and I left a comment that said, "Too bad she's friends with crypto-fascists." She and her boyfriend found it and started arguing and accusing me of slander and libel in the comments. I don't have screenshots of his comments because he's since blocked me, but I do have hers and I'll be adding them to this post as well.

Her boyfriend then found my Twitter account (my guess is he looked it up to make sure I wasn't posting about her, since she couldn't do it herself because I blocked her months ago). He replied to one of my tweets with a screenshot that had my uncensored discord name and image, so I had to change both, just in case any of her followers managed to find and harass me. I've since blocked them both on all social media.

Here are the screenshots of the entire ordeal. I'll have to add them through several reblogs, because there are tons.

#madi danger #goth #goth community #goth youtuber #goth tiktok #goth discord

[sketchy-the-changeling]

Do you enjoy being miserable? I’ve been hearing a lot about how many people apparently find misery to be comfortable lately, but how anybody could come to that conclusion is just completely baffling to me personally. So I just figured that I’d ask around about it, to see if I’m in the minority with how that I find misery VERY uncomfortable to say the least, and certainly don’t take any type of comfort from being miserable at all.

I think you may be thinking of the adage "Misery is comfortable; it's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort."

It's not that these people ENJOY being miserable, per-se. That's why the adage uses the word "prefer". Preference and Enjoyment are two different things. They don't enjoy the misery. They're complacent in it. They know it's going to take effort to be happy, and many people don't want to put in that effort, whether it's because they find said effort to be too much work, or because the brief, fleeting relief they get from venting to/trauma dumping on the people around them (even if they didn't consent) is too intoxicating to let go, or whatever else.

So everything I wrote so far probably answers the question you asked at the very beginning, but to be clear: No, I do not enjoy being miserable, and as I've gotten older, my patience for people that wallow in misery has gotten thinner and thinner. It's why I'm of the opinion that having venting channels in Discord servers is an astronomically god-awful idea.

Obviously, if someone is miserable due to factors beyond their control, like systemic poverty, homelessness, mental illness, etc etc, that's completely different. I'm talking about people for whom there are actionable solutions to their problems, but they refuse to take them.

I'll give a personal example below, but it's rather lengthy, and the original question has already been answered, so I'll just put a break here and HOPE that Tumblr doesn't fuck it up.

Example: I'm in a Discord server run by an artist mutual of mine. Said server happens to have a venting channel, so you already know where this is going. One member of the server was an aspiring writer, and would often go to the venting channel to express frustrations with how he can't make progress on any story he writes.

It didn't matter what ANYONE said. So many of us offered solutions to the various roadblocks he was having, and none of them worked. It wasn't because he attempted our advice and failed, but rather he just preferred to complain about the problem he was having rather than actually doing anything to fix it. It was the equivalent of someone sinking in quicksand, and just folding their arms rather than grabbing the dozen or so ropes that people are offering to them.

Once I recognized this was a pattern, I spoke to the server owner privately and said that this needed to be dealt with, because he was becoming a nuisance to other server members and he was just gonna keep doing it if there were no consequences. She didn't do anything, and the guy kept going, and more and more people just stopped bothering to try helping him, but then this behavior spilled out into other channels, and several of us, myself included, went to the sever owner privately about this. Again. Several Times. After dragging her feet on it for months, she finally started allowing mods to time him out when he acted like this, and when that proved to not be enough for him to stop, the server owner FINALLY made the decision to boot him.

Mind you, my stance on people that act like this was already solidified beforehand. This situation just reinforced that stance.

Protect your peace, y'all.

[basiliskonline]

Advice from a GM that just Started Pro-GMing

You'll see my thread on my experiences here.

But this thread is more of a bullet point general advice or things to expect. Will update as I think of things so definitely keep an eye on it and return to the original post regularly if you want to see (or ya know follow me xD)

Between September and November I had familiarized myself with Startplaying, tried some things that didn't work, adjusted my prices and eventually had my first paid campaign underway at $12/Person, about $60/3 hour session.

Between November and January I recruited for my second campaign at $14/Person and got my minimum player count so a session is coming up on Wednesday the 4th. Fill this group up will eventually bring me into about $80 a game for a 3 hour session.

My next campaign I'll be aiming for $16/person.

NOW ONTO THE ADVICE

I am running the same campaign for different groups, this provides me a variety of benefits:

This campaign is one im already running for my personal group, which means any prepwork, is prepwork i'd be doing already. This is definately important at a "starting salary" for a new Pro-GM.

It allows you to practice, familiarize yourself with and getting focused feedback. Everytime you run it, you'll be running a better product.

Warning: For many people this may lead to burnout or getting bored with your campaigns.

What to Run?

I'd love to run indie games and smaller stuff, but tbh the pickins are slim there, especially with how the website is formatted, you will really need someone searching for your games in order to find them.

Your best options are D&D5E and PF2E, though I imagine WoD and other mid-tier games have some possibility too, the Big Two are your best bets for getting regular traffic outside your own bubble.

Campaigns or One-Shots? Campaigns!

Campaigns tend to be more popular than one-shots, and luckily for you, new Pro-GM, they are obviously more consistent.

A Campaign takes, in my experience, a couple weeks to get filled up, people will get impatient or find other opportunities and they'll come and go, but on average I probably get about a person a week, once you have 3 or so, they can and often start to come in much faster.

To prevent issues in regularity, make it clear up front in the description that you are not looking for a "drop-in" campaign, and you are aiming for people that at the very least intend to stay when joining.

Organization and Tools

look around at other startplaying games to see how they set up their templates and adventure pages.

I'd suggest setting up a discord or guilded server and set up campaign specific roles, so that only people in those campaigns can see the role-related channels. this also allows you to tag everyone in the game for reminders of game start and the like.

Foundry VTT is absolutely fantastic for some games, not as a fantastic as others, if you are running PF2E I strongly suggest familairizing yourself with Foundry because quite frankly its an AMAZING VTT experience.

Feel free to ask questions i'll answer as best as I can!

#Mine #paid gm #pro-gm #ttrpg #pf2e

[jeannereames]

So, I did a Thing. Or rather, my son did a Thing for me.

Instead of an author newsletter like most of my friends have, he convinced me to start an author Discord server instead.

While it will certainly include talk about the Alexander series Dancing with the Lion, I'll also use it to make announcements about other things, including the epic fantasy series I've been working on for a couple years now, Master of Battles. It will also have announcements of academic articles/books/conferences. Plus some media appearances that are pending.

I'll continue to announce those things here too, and I'll continue to answer "asks" here, as it allows much longer posts. I'll likely link any questions there to here. So if you don't want to mess with yet another social media platform/don't have Discord, I won't be disappearing from Tumblr. But especially if you're already on Discord, you might want to join, as it's a slightly different format. There's even a channel for cooking and cats because, you know, I like both! (And I'll probably share some of my beading projects as well!)

#Discord #author discord #Jeanne Reames #Dancing with the Lion #DwtL #Master of Battles #Alexander the Great #Hephaistion #Hephaestion

[brutalia-week]

Brutalia Week starts tomorrow!

Because of this, I'm going to go through the full instructions of participation below:

Read the Rules, About Section, and if you have any questions, the FAQ.

Although realistically, you likely have already done this and step 1, create a BruTalia-centric fanwork (anything from art to fic to edits) for one of the prompts listed below.

Day 1: Masquerade | Justice League Finds Out

Day 2: Canon Divergence AU | Second Chances

Day 3: Royalty AU | Getting Back Together

Day 4: Secret Relationship | Talia Needs/Gets A Hug

Day 5: Bodyguard | "I Want My Beloved To Be Happy"

Day 6: Childhood Friends AU | Bruce Needs/Gets A Hug

Day 7: Unexpected Pregnancy | Free Space

3. When the day for said prompt comes around, post it.

3A. On Tumblr, this would mean posting it with "brutaliaweek2022" as one of the first five tags. If you want to be extra safe and make sure I see it, you are also welcome to put @brutalia-week in your post to give a notification.

3B. On Ao3, this would mean posting to the collection, Brutalia_Week_2022. Please remember, if typing it into the "add to collection" bar when posting a fic, the underscores are neccesary for it to work. Similar to tumblr, you can also tag BrutaliaWeek2022 on top of this if you wish.

3C. If you happen to be posting it on discord, then the only way to really do this (that I would be able to instruct on, at least) is through posting it in the #brutalia-week channel of my BruTalia server. The message details don't matter.

4. In the case that it's on tumblr, wait for it to be reblogged onto here. Please try to be patient on this! Give it at least twelve hours before you make any further actions (aside from perhaps tagging @brutalia-week if you haven't already).

4A. If I actually miss it (24+ hours), make sure to contact me. That can be through messaging this blog, messaging my main blog (@baticorngirl), dming me on discord if you have it (Baticorngirl#5309), or even sending an ask to this blog (preferably not on anon, though, so I can know who's work I'm looking for and answer it privately).

5. Enjoy other people's fanwork! This goes both for those of you who are contributing your own and not. If you do end up really liking someone's work, in most cases, they'd probably appreciate a reblog or leave a comment, so keep that in mind! We want to make sure we're giving our wonderful fanfic writers, fanartists, editors, and other contributors love and appreciation.

Here's the link to the Navigation/Tag Masterlist page if it helps anyone with the last one. Currently, I haven't updated the year-related tags, but that's much easier to do once they are works in those tags, so I'll make sure it's updated by the end of tomorrow.

Thank you for reading! Have a good BruTalia Week!

#brutalia #demonbat #talia al ghul #bruce wayne #batman #brutaliaweek2022 #brutalia week announcements #talia head #bat family #al ghul family #dc #dc comics #batman comics #dc fan week #batman fan week #dc fandom event #one day left #bruce wayne x talia al ghul #bruce x talia #talia al ghul x batman