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copperbadge · 5 months

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Feeling a little overly perceived by Dr. Dodson right now, not gonna lie.

I'll throw a transcript under the cut, but both reading the transcript and listening to the video can be difficult as it's quite long, so here's some highlights. As always, these are the opinions of a specialist but only one specialist, so take with a grain of salt, and if you have research to add to this, please feel free to comment or reblog with it. I believe this presentation is from sometime in 2022.

ADHD appears to derive from issues in the corpus striatum in the brain. In most people, the corpus striatum filters out all but the most important input AND output; with ADHD, the things normally handled "outside of awareness" must be handled consciously.

People with ADHD don't see their emotions coming. Emotion is immediate, intense, and unfiltered, making therapies like CBT or ACT difficult, because you can learn the technique but you won't have time to employ it. Because people with ADHD have impulse control issues, expressing emotions "inappropriately" is common, leading people with ADHD to believe they can't trust themselves.

One function of ADHD-typical dysregulation is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which nobody understands even a little. People who have it can't even adequately describe it to people who want to study it. It is intense, painful, and apparently impossible to control. Prevention is based in maladaptive behaviors designed to avoid it entirely (perfectionism, people pleasing, generalized withdrawal). The only currently known treatment is alpha agonist medication.

Lastly, by the age of twelve, a child with ADHD has likely received twenty thousand more "negative or corrective" messages than their neurotypical peers. (This isn't relevant to the rest, I just found it sufficiently horrifying to warrant inclusion. Fortunately for me, if I got 20,000 negative or corrective messages, I wasn't paying attention for most of them.)

Anyway, here's the transcript of the first half. I did this by copying and cleaning up the auto-transcript on YouTube, but I stopped at Question Time, so this is only the first half (the presentation). Transcription of the second half is available at YouTube.

There is suddenly a very large interest in the whole subject of emotional dysregulation and ADHD. That has been driven oddly enough by the Food and Drug Administration, which has just opened up several pathways that drug companies can study emotional dysregulation and whether or not their medications can get an FDA indication for emotional dysregulation. So it's sort of follow the money. Up until then, there was not a great deal of interest for ADHD emotional dysregulation.

We have to understand that the ADHD diagnostic criteria were not made for people like you and me, either practitioners or people who have ADHD or their families. They were designed for and made by people who do research and pretty much that's it. People who do research have to have criteria that they can physically see and count. "Little Johnny was up and out of his chair three times in the last hour," and you can write a three on your clipboard. Things which are invisible, not always there, hard to count, or even hidden by the patient, don't lend themselves to research very easily and so tend to be ignored. And so consequently this is one of the main reasons why emotional dysregulation -- until there was some other motive provided -- was pretty much ignored and disregarded.

Consequently ADHD right now, if you look at the 18 diagnostic criteria, are almost entirely behavioral criteria. What is the person doing? Not how is the person thinking, what is the patient feeling, how are they controlling their emotions, how are they sleeping. Things that are all very, very important to the person who has ADHD but which is essentially ignored by the diagnostic criteria.

Why should you care? Who really cares about this? Well, the definition of what ADHD is and isn't defines who and what will be studied. It defines who will actually get into a study and what questions will be asked. It defines who will be diagnosed with ADHD and who will not. One of the most common problems I get is with a secondary referral to me -- somebody clearly has ADHD but they're not pinging off the walls, they can sit and do their work, especially when they get into a hyperfocus, and so they're told they couldn't possibly have ADHD. When really they just have the inattentive subtype and they're not being driven by their behavior, their overt behavior. Therefore it defines who will get treatment, who will get insurance coverage for that treatment, and who will get accommodations in school when they're young and at the workplace when they're older.

Consequently we should also care because the other major components of ADHD get ignored. These are the ones that if you really stand back and look at it cause the greatest amount of impairment, the greatest amount of embarrassment, the greatest amount of just…problems in general. We're talking about cognition and thinking, that people with ADHD fundamentally think in a different way than do neurotypical people. They are able to engage with the tasks of their lives in a totally different way. Their ability to control their emotions and their behavior, control their emotional responses, tremendously affects their self-esteem and their self-definition. Who am I? What am I worth? What am I valued? Why am I valued in a certain way? What do other people think of me?

It affects tremendously the nature and healthiness of relationships. How you respond emotionally to the people in your realm makes a great deal of difference about the healthiness and gratification you get from your relationships. Being highly dysregulated in terms of your energy and emotions also affects deeply how well you sleep, how easy it is to fall asleep and awake refreshed, and of course it affects emotional dysregulation.

And this is probably, when you look at it in the long term and especially with adults, probably the most impairing part of the ADHD syndrome. The vast majority of people with ADHD have found ways around their academic and work performance, but they haven't found their way around their emotional reactions to the people and events of their lives.

At all points in the life cycle -- child, adolescent, adult, and elderly -- people who have ADHD nervous systems lead intense, passionate lives. Their highs are higher, their lows are lower, all of their emotions are much more intense. And that really is what we're talking about: not really the quality of the emotions -- people who have ADHD have the same types of emotions for the same reasons that everybody else does. What we're talking here, in terms of dysregulation, is two things: one, the expression of emotions, being able to choose whether or not you let an emotion out. And then, when you do decide to express it, how intensely that emotion is experienced and expressed by you as a unique individual.

Consequently just about everybody with ADHD, but especially little children, are always at some sort of risk of being overwhelmed by their own emotions from within themselves. This is something that needs to be really emphasized: a lot of people with ADHD grow up not being able to trust themselves.

So why is this happening, especially to people with ADHD? I think that just about everybody now would agree that ADHD is primarily a problem of insufficient inhibition, being able to slow down and keep things from happening. If you look at the mass of the human brain, 85% of all the nerves in your brain and out in your nervous system are inhibitory in function. We happen to be aware of the other 15% because we can see what happens when those nerves are used: they create movement, they create emotions, they create our experience and memory. We have to remember they are a minority of the actual mass of the human brain.

Most of what happens inside the brain occurs outside of awareness. What happens is the brain starts something, it gets it moving, and then uses inhibition to guide that toward the destination it wants. It's like shooting off a rocket -- shooting it off is the easy part, guiding it to where you want it to go is the hard part.

When you look at where stimulant class medications work, they work solely in the deep areas of the brain down in the basal ganglia, and especially in an area called the corpus striatum, which is just Latin for a "striped body". That's how it looks when you look at it -- it's got many very fine stripes in it. This area, the corpus striatum, is almost entirely inhibitory in function. What it does is that it inhibits neurological input and output to just the one piece of information or one action that happens to be most important at that time. Everything else gets handled, but it gets handled out of awareness.

Probably the easiest place to see this in action is when we're driving a car. Driving a car is the most difficult thing that the average human being ever has to learn how to do. It's a very difficult process, if anybody has ever had an adolescent learning to drive. But once we learn how to drive a car we do it largely outside of our own conscious awareness. We can drive along, talk to the person on the seat next to us, think about what we're going to have for dinner, sing along to the radio, and not really pay attention, conscious attention, to what's going on around us. But if suddenly something is out in front of the car, even before our conscious brain can process what that thing is, our corpus striatum has already handled it. Slam on the brakes, swerve to miss it, start to question that person's parentage, in the twinkling of an eye. The corpus striatum has been scanning everything, handling everything.

So basically what ADHD is, is that relative lack of inhibition that should be there. Inattention, which is a cardinal feature of ADHD, is the relative lack of the inhibition of other inputs or distractions. When we look at physiologically what's happening, we don't actually pay attention to one thing. Neurologically, we suppress every other thing we might engage with except the one thing that we want. It is maximally inefficient in that way.

Impulsivity is a relative lack of inhibition, of the expression of actions and emotions before you can think about them and make decisions about that expression. Hyperactivity is the relative lack of inhibition of physical and mental activity. When the physical activity of the hyperactive little boy who's pinging off a wall goes away in adolescence, they're still very much mentally active in their own brains.

So what? The “so what” for most of us is that when this area of the brain is not working as it should, people cannot regulate the experience and expression of their emotions. Emotions are experienced as completely unmodified and unscreened. The word that most people use is that they are raw. They come out without any modification at all, they go in without any modification at all. People can see this in hyperacusis, where somebody chewing or the conversation across the restaurant comes in loud and clear because it can't be screened out.

All this is tremendously overwhelming. We get overwhelmed by entirely too much input, and the impulse to have entirely too much output. It's exhausting, and when it does get inappropriately expressed it's embarrassing, so consequently people with ADHD must always be vigilant of themselves.

Now, when we look at the traditional therapies that have been used, or tried to be used, with ADHD, they have had very very poor track records. They're largely ineffective in helping people control the expression of what they think and feel. The reason for this is that people with ADHD don't see their own emotions, their own actions, coming. They find out about their emotions and actions the same way everybody else does: it's already out there before they even know that it's coming. Consequently they don't have the time and the warning to use the techniques and new skills that they may have learned in behavior modification therapy, or in cognitive therapy. They learned them, learned them perfectly well, but the cat’s out of the bag before they can make use of them.

Right now, as we sit here today, medications are the only thing we have to offer that have a proven track record, because they're there all the time. We have two basic groups: we have the stimulant class medications which are amphetamine, methylphenidate, et cetera, which help directly with inhibition. They help slow things down, they help inhibit both input that would distract us and output. It gives you the same two seconds that everybody else has, to see an emotion or an action coming up, to play it out in your mind. “If this happens then this will happen, then that'll happen. Oh, I don't want that to happen, I'll redirect it.”

The alpha agonist, of which we have two -- guanfacine and clonidine -- inhibit the energy driving the speed and intensity of response. Interesting enough, when we look at just clean effectiveness, when we measure how effective is this treatment, the alpha agonists are significantly more effective than are the stimulants. Usually that's kind of a false choice, because most people end up taking both classes of medication.

A very special type, I think, of emotional dysregulation is -- again a terrible technical term -- what's called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. We actually don't know what it is. It's much too early to tell. But it does seem to be a thing with which many people with ADHD identify. There was a brief article from ADDitude that got posted on Reddit, on their subreddit on ADHD; that particular posting got twice as many responses, in less than a month, than any other posting that had ever been put on that subreddit. It really touched a lot of people in a strong way.

In my own checklist, when I'm asking about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, the question I have is: “For your entire life, in other words going all the way back into childhood, have you always been much more sensitive than other people you know to rejection, teasing, criticism, or your own perception that you’ve failed or fallen short?” This is directly from a psychiatric textbook, an old one, and it's the definition of a technical term, for psychiatrists called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

It's important to note, this is all a matter of degree. No one likes being rejected or criticized. Everybody hates it when we fail, we fall short, especially in front of other people. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is much more intense, and is much more than this universal discomfort.

When they were originally doing the research on this particular idea, 45 years ago, they wanted to get that intensity right up there in the name, and so they chose the word dysphoria -- which unfortunately happens to be Greek -- but it means “unbearable”. Because that was the description they were getting from people over and over and over again. Again, for reasons unknown, people with rejection sensitivity have trouble describing what the intense emotion is all about. They can describe its intensity -- “it's awful, it's terrible, it's catastrophic,” -- but not the quality of the mood. And so, over and over again, these research subjects would finally just tell the researcher, “Look, man, back off. I can't find words to tell you what this awful feeling feels like, but I want you to know I can hardly stand it.” And so that's where the word dysphoria came from. A researcher at Harvard who decided to put it into Greek, but that unbearable quality is very much a part of what's going on, a part of the experience of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

It's extremely common in people with ADHD; my guess is that about 95% of my patients report it as a significant impairment, and about a third of my patients say that it is by far the most impairing part of their ADHD. For the majority of people, and most occurrences, it is not that particularly disruptive, but when it hits, it turns your life upside down.

So how is rejection sensitivity experienced? There's no warning. It hits out of the blue; there's no way to protect yourself from it. It happens all at once, it goes from zero to a hundred percent instantaneously. It is commonly experienced as being physically painful, as if someone just punched you in the chest or punched you in the stomach -- there's an aching in the core of your being.

Once it gets started it seems to be largely uncontrollable until it's run its course, whatever it is. The quality of the mood is indescribable. Most people struggle to find any words at all to describe this feeling, even though it's massively intense. The duration can be a few minutes to several months. It's a very potent experience and can make it very difficult to risk ever being rejected or criticized again.

If this very intense emotional reaction is internalized, it looks for all the world like an instantaneous major depression, complete with suicidal thinking. And so a lot of times people do get a diagnosis of major depression, because the clinician they're working with fails to pick up the triggered, instantaneous nature of the onset of that depressive-looking syndrome. If it's externalized, it presents as a rage that is directed at the person or situation that wounded them so terribly. In fact, being “wounded” is is a very common description. This sort of sudden trigger change, with an intense emotional response, not uncommonly leads to a misdiagnosis of borderline character organization.

So if you can't see it coming, and you can't do anything once it's happened, how do people try and protect themselves from episodes of rejection sensitivity happening in the first place? Some people use perfectionism; they try to be above reproach. They feel driven to be the very best at everything they do. These are the penultimate overachievers. It works, but it's also an absolutely terrible, driven way in which to live.

By far the most common response is that people become people pleasers. They are constantly scanning everybody around them and trying to figure out what that person wants or would approve of, and that's what they give them, so much so that it is the to the exclusion of what they want for their own lives. These are people who take care of others, please others, to the exclusion of any sort of gratification in their own lives.

Another very common way that people try to deal with this is that they give up trying anything new, giving up anything in which they might fail or be embarrassed. I have hundreds of patients who have never been able to apply for a job or ask someone of the opposite sex out for a date. Just the imagination of being told no is so frightening, so devastating, that they just say, “No, I'm not going there. I'll sit this one out.”

One of the most effective ways of dealing with this are the alpha agonist medications, and when they work they can be almost completely effective. Alpha agonist again is a tongue twisting name, but it's not as tongue-twisting as the full name, which is alpha-2 selective adrenergic agonists. So you can see why we shorten it a bit. They were originally blood pressure medications that came on the market in the early 1980s. They worked very poorly -- when they did work, at most they lowered blood pressure about 10%, which was measurable but it still required other things that needed to be done in order to get most people's blood pressure down into a therapeutic range.

We have two of them, guanfacine which was marketed both as immediate release and extended release under the name of Intuniv, and clonidine, which was marketed under the trade name of Kapvay, both as an immediate release product and as a delayed release product. They have been used as a treatment of the hyperactive component of ADHD for more than 30 years, so these are not new medications for the field of ADHD. They're very much the treatment of choice for the “hyperactive, disruptive, and obnoxious little boy” that is what most people have in their minds when they consider the notion of “What does a person with ADHD look like?”

The exact mechanism of action of these medications both in ADHD and especially in rejection sensitivity is highly unclear. We really don't know -- we have a couple of ideas but they are very definitely theoretical. The only thing that we know for sure is that the stimulants don't work by stimulating anything, and that the alpha agonists don't work by being alpha agonists. How they do work is completely unknown.

We have two medications, they seem to work equally well, so there's nothing that would lead you to choose one over the other. The problem is that the robust response that we're looking for that really changes people's lives, is disappointingly low -- at about 30% to either molecule. Luckily that 30% is a different 30% of people, so that 30% of people get a good response to guanfacine but it's largely a different 30% that get a response to clonidine. So if the first medication tried does not work, it makes good clinical sense that that one should be stopped and the other one tried. There was an unfortunately worded sentence in an article I wrote for ADDitude several years ago that gave the impression that you could use the two medications together; they should not be used together. You try one, if that doesn't work you try the other.

The typical dose of either one is in the range of three milligrams of guanfacine per day or about three tenths of a milligram of clonidine per day. If you take all the people who get a good robust response to either one of these medications, about 80% are going to end up at these doses, so it's by far the most common dose.

There are of course side effects. Anything that's going to adjust the adrenaline system of the body is going to have the potential for sedation as a side effect, and this does occur for about 25% of people. It's usually mild and it does go away -- over a period of several months. So a person has to be fairly patient with that. It can cause dry mouth, and it's by a different mechanism then the stimulants can cause dry mouth, so the two of them together can really make your mouth cottony dry. And the third one is an accentuation of a universal experience we've all had, when we stand up quickly and suddenly and we get dizzy, get kind of a head rush, vision goes a bit gray. The technical term for it is orthostasis. And this can happen more frequently when you take the alpha agonist medications.

The benefits of the alpha agonist medications take a while to develop. When you change the dose it takes five days for the benefits to develop, so once again they're not like the stimulants where what you see is what you get at one hour. It takes a while for these medications to work and to see all that they can do.

Now just as a side note, Strattera has been looked at in two studies for emotional dysregulation and the results have been what they call mixed. If they did work it was only to a very minimal degree, almost undetectable, so Strattera does not seem to be a medication one could use and expect to have it help with emotional dysregulation.

So in summary, emotional dysregulation is a basic feature of ADHD, is almost universal in ADHD, and it should be considered as a core symptom of ADHD that ought to be evaluated in every initial evaluation. Rejection sensitivity…it's unclear yet -- this is an old concept that has only been brought up in the last couple of years. Its exact nature is still unclear. It does seem to be a specific form of emotional dysregulation, especially in regard that it does respond very well to medication. But again, how it fits into emotional dysregulation is completely unclear at this point. It does seem to be something that's really important, though. It is a thing that resonates with a large number of people with ADHD.

#adhd #sam has adhd #rejection sensitive dysphoria #RSD #emotional dysregulation #Youtube

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2hoothoots · 1 year

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new comic is done!! this one was a DOOZY and i changed my workflow like six times, but in the end i think it came together really nice! it's, uh, probably the last longer one i'm gonna do for a while, though :P

i'll probably add a little step-by-step in a reblog tomorrow. for now, catch the transcript under the cut!

Vanishing Act, over the intercom: So sorry I can't stay and watch you be devoured by pyro-sharks, but I've got my curtain call to make... and the audience are simply dying to see me. Ciao, agents! Or should I say... CHOW! AHAHAHAHAHA!

(Caught in one of Vanishing Act's villainous death traps, agents Zanotto and Aquato find themselves hanging by a thread in... "LOVE BITES!")

(sfx: Clink, clink)

Lili: Welp. At least now you've got an excuse to miss Franke and Kitty's wedding.

Raz: Oh, my GOD. I can't believe you're still going on about that.

Lili: I don't get why you're being so stubborn about it!

Raz: Because Kitty's a jerk and I hate her.

Lili: That's not true.

Raz: Yes it is! That cruise ship mission we went on, she left me to barf my guts out for like two hours!

Lili: Well maybe you shouldn't have eaten all that shrimp!

Raz: Well MAYBE I didn't know it was POISONED!

(sfx: clink, clink)

Lili: ...c'mon, Raz. That's not the only reason, is it?

Raz: I guess I just... I feel weird about it, y'know? It makes me think about us.

Lili: Wow. Way to make things all about you.

Raz: Oh, c'mon, you know that's not what I meant.

Lili: Well what do you mean?

Raz: It just... sometimes, I...

Raz: Relationships are - complicated, right? I'm happy for them, but it makes me think about our own relationship. And how there are... milestones, and - and certain expectations, and... and marriage is... well, it's...

(He sighs)

Raz: Ow.

(sfx: BONK)

Raz: There's give on my right wrist.

Lili: Can you pass it under?

Raz: One second...

Lili: Alright. Just gotta get my legs free...

Lili: Hey. D'you... want to get married?

Raz: ...no. No, and I feel - terrible about it.

Raz: Because I - because we don't have a traditional relationship. And I don't want to have that with you. I like how we are now. But then I see other people our age getting married, and it makes me worry that... that I'm letting you down, or not doing enough as your boyfriend, and that - that maybe you deserve someone who...

Lili: Raz?

Raz: Yeah?

Lili: I love you.

Raz: I love you too.

Lili: You're being stupid.

Raz: I know.

(sfx: paf)

Lili: ...listen. We should talk about this. But, uh, maybe not in the pyro shark death trap.

Raz: ...huh. Y'know, these are great whites. You can't keep them in a tank. They need the space of open water.

Raz: Which means I'll bet anything that this... leads to the ocean.

Lili: Then let's get a move on. We've got a party to crash.

#psychonauts #pyro-sharks lovingly plagiarised from one of caligraphunky's fics #because it's such a perfectly goofy mental image and i couldn't get it out of my head #future superstar agents au #fsau raz #fsau lili #comic #polish #and now. i sleep. goodnight all

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riacte · 4 months

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Links:

Martyn calling Ren’s TCG card “cool as fuck”, “wanted it badly”, "now I’ve seen it, I want it more” [og tweets 1 and 2]

Martyn when he didn’t get Ren’s TCG card: "I’m grieving right now, don’t do this to me"

Martyn doing demon / imp roleplay in Ren's chat but it got deleted [Martyn's response to an ask with transcript of his sent message]

Ren names an axolotl "Martyn"

Ren calls Martyn “someone he can be foolish with”

Martyn liking the above post on Tumblr

Martyn reacting to Secret Life memes. “He’s lost and lonely without Ren” Martyn: why did you have to go for the jugular?

Ren says the ear butter at Blue River Raceway “is a special batch from the vineyards of Marteen"

Ren names his cat in a new hardcore world "Marteen" [Bonus clips of him hunting down the cat 1 and 2]

Ren about Martyn: "He's one of my favourite new people that I've met in the last five years" + calls him "a legend"

Ren saying Martyn’s voice is “music to my ears” and "sometimes puts on Martyn's vods before going to sleep"

Ren mentions going to sleep and dreaming of Martyn’s “beautiful, beautiful eyes”

Umm. So that just happened. Right at the end of 2023.

HOUSEKEEPING TIME: I'm considering making an All Stars unhinged Renchanting moments poll featuring the nine winners + Last Life burning tower scene. (Altar scene is forever banned because we know it would sweep.) I've been collecting opinions (via a poll) here! For previous polls + winners, check my pinned. Feel free to reblog to spread the word (and for the chaos lol)!

I've been thinking of holding it immediately after this poll ends so we can have URMP AS (Unhinged Renchanting Moment Polls All Stars) cross from 2023 to 2024 as a manifestation of more Renchanting in the coming year <3

I hope the clips work because collecting them was a little tedious so tell me if they don't work! And thank you Ani for all your help <3 <3 would not be possible without you o7 teamwork makes the poll work!

#polls #renchanting #treebark #trafficblr #rendog #inthelittlewood #let's go guys all stars is on the horizon!#urmp9 being beautiful and driving me crazy... just like mcc9 fr lmao

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goodlucksnez · 12 days

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❗ PLEASE NO REBLOGGING TO NON-KINK BLOGS ❗

A/ngel d/ust x husk & an/gel has comes back off set with terrible hay fever after working with flowers, and hu/sk is being nice

no one gets to talk bad about my angel dust voice okay, accent are hard and i am still working on it- I made this quick after work while people were cutting the lawn so sorry if the audio isn't the best

anyway enjoy you filthy sinners

cw: sneezing, (duh) some sniffles, cursing, 2 noseblows some sniffles, and playful nicknames, mentions of s/ex worker

❗ PLEASE NO REBLOGGING TO NON-KINK BLOGS ❗

transcript:

What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.

I will. Thanks, whiskas. Trust me, you don't want to know.

Ohh I most certainly do. What overlord did you fuck this time?

Hey, I will suck all of them. Besides, it ain't your fucking business. That's me and my work. Pour me a drink hard.

I'm not pouring you anything, especially when you're dripping snot all over my counter like that.

You.Suck at it.

Come on. 6 arms. Tell me.

Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you. Val's got this new idea for all the Spring Breakers who fucked a bit too much down here? Well, the Last of Us. A lot. This is a great marketing scheme to make this whole set of tapes about fucking spring. Normally, I ain't complaining. I mean. Look. The hole, the hole I beat, but this time it's a little different.

Judging from your appearance, I can say so. What did he do this time?

Yeah, yeah. He bought every fucking flower to just assault the fucking crew with everything.and towed

Wait, wait. You're telling me that some fucking flowers did this to you? You fucking weak ass bitch Wait. What spiders like live in flora and fauna.

Well, it ain't exactly my sceane. Yeah, I mean, sure have been. Don't get down dirty, but that's what fucking planet.thinks it will strum up bussness. The only thing that's strumming up is my allergies

Breathe.I got you, baby cakes. Just sneeze. You wont feel better till you do.

Impressive. You've got anymore in there?

No. If you tell anyone about.

You ain't gonna do nothing, kid. You're gonna go March upstairs and rest. I'll have smiles. Bring you some antihistamines. You gotta get this **** off of you.

Oh, and what he's suggesting? eh whiskers. You want to see me all nude?

What I want to see is your snot filled face.I'll join you upstairs in a minute. Why don't you go do yourself a favor and start taking a shower?

Oh kitty got claws meow

If you make another fucking cat pun, I will shove this bottle so far.

Oh, don't threaten me with a good time. God I am gonna murder hin (val)

OK, arachnophobia. You get out of here. Go clean up, OK? Ill have a little talk little moth friend.

No, no, no, no. Ain't no way you're going near Val.

Says anything about me? I was an overlord once I got deals. I still know how to play my cards right.

Now you're gonna ask. Shit I'm way too congested just even think about it. OK, im out of here. Bring the fuckin bottle.

poor kids gonna kill himself one of these days. Up to me to clean up the fucking mess.

#sneeze #snez #audio #sneezy #snezaudio #sneezeaudio #wav #sneeze kink #h/azbinwav #h/azbin hotel #h/azbin h/otel #ha/zbin hotel wav #ha//zbin hotel #sneeze wav #h/usk #an/gel d/ust

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acepodcastweek · 8 months

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2023 Ace Week Fiction Podcast Fan Event (October 22nd-28th)

October 22nd to October 28th 2023 is ace week, and fiction podcasts are a great medium to be asexual.

Prompts

Sunday, 22nd October

Ace of Spades | Realisation/Acceptance

Monday, 23rd October

Cake & Garlic Bread | Invisible/Seen

Tuesday, 24th October

Ace of Diamonds | Effort/Rest

Wednesday, 25th October

Space Ace | Past/Future

Thursday, 26th October

Ace of Hearts | Isolation/Connection

Friday, 27th October

Dragons | Divergence/Diversity

Saturday, 28th October

Ace of Clubs | Mourning/Celebration

More information on each list is available here.

How does this work?

I've made up two lists of daily prompts, above, to get you started. Using them is encouraged but entirely optional, and you may do as many or as few as you'd like. One per day is great, and one in one week also great. You can pick and mix, stick with one list, do both, or even just do your own thing entirely.

You can start working on them any time from right now up until during ace week, but if you're comfortable sharing them be sure to schedule or save them for the date and either @ me here at @acepodcastweek, or tag them with #ace podcast week, which I'll check daily up until November 1st.

You can join in by:

Creating art of any kind: visual, baking, music, etc

Writing fanfic

Doing poetry

Media analysis

Making recommendation lists

Holding polls

Highlighting creators

Sharing headcanons

And whatever else might strike your fancy.

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amandacanwrite · 2 months

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The Violet Thread of Fate Part Three:

The Scribe's Guild and the Acolyte Errant

Read || Part One • Part Two

POV || Third Person, dual POV Gale Dekarios and Elinna Inklynn (Tav)

Pairing || Elinna Inklynn (Half-drow tav) and Gale Dekarios

Length || 5,400 Words

Scenario || In an alternative timeline for the events of BG3 Elinna Inklynn, an orphan from the Moonshae Islands seeks out the tutelage of accomplished wizard Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep. She has a knack with the Weave, but no money or connections to actually learn how to harness it. She has heard the wizard is a gentleman and a schollar, and hopes she can appeal to him to take her on as his apprentice in exchange for her help around his tower, with his research, and in running errands in Waterdeep. Unfortunately for her, Gale Dekarios does not take on apprentices.

Warnings || Age gap (Perhaps about 10ish years), depiction of depression and heart ache, description of very, very mild body horror. Description of scarring from corporal punishment. Slightly mature themes.

A/n || In the interest of full disclosure: I didn't edit this one. I was too eager to get it out, so please forgive any strange pacing or verbiage. I may edit it tomorrow or sometime soon, but I also primarily write this for fun so I may also not. I actually really enjoyed writing Gale softening up to Elinna a bit, and Elinna sort of losing some of her rose tinted vision for Gale. Perhaps soon they will meet somewhere in the middle. :))

If you like this, you may also like my original works! I have a writing taglist that you can sign up for simply by commenting or reblogging and letting me know you'd like to be added. OR you can fill out this form if you'd like to be specific about which works you'd like to be tagged in.

Tag list || @softvampirewhump @horizonstride @thoughts-of-bear @mymybirdie @tiedyedghoulette @drabblesandimagines @madwomansapologist @hijirikaww @tryingtowritestuff24 @laserlope @auroraesmeraldarose @puckprimrose @dont-try-pesticide @cherifrog @circusofthelastdays @nourangul

The Scribe’s Guild

Elinna cupped her hands above her eyes, trying to reduce the urge to squint as she looked out over the edge of one of the craggy cliffside peaks.

“Are you certain you’re alright up there?” Gale asked from the ground. “Not to be a pain, but you haven’t had the greatest track record with heights as of late.”

“I climbed up here–as long as I don’t try to magic my way down, I should be fine,” she called back. “I’m trying to figure out where we are.”

“Any luck?” he called back.

“You’re distracting me!” she said.

“Are you one of those people who can only do one mental process at a time?” he asked. “Do you go blind when your ears are in use?”

“I’m one of those people who needs to think to recall the details of all the maps I’ve cataloged at the Nest,” she griped looking down at him. “Now be quiet so I can think.”

She saw him lift a hand and rub the back of his neck before he turned around and sat down to have a pout. She rolled her eyes looking out over the coastline again, trying to cross reference what she could see from her view with the overhead details of maps she’d looked at before.

Gale Dekarios was certainly a…strange archmage.

Reading transcripts of conversations, reading his treatises–she’d always pictured this stately, almost dry sort of fellow. Someone who would sniff before correcting her about something–or stand perpetually with his nose pointed at the ceiling so you always knew he was looking down at you past it.

But he was just…well–a sort of awkward, somewhat humorous man.

They’d been wandering for some time–Gale had a good sense for what was north, south, east and west, but there was only so much that one could do when unaware of where the starting point was.

The shame of things was that they were in some random locale with very few cities about. She’d learned much about Baldur’s Gate, Amn, Waterdeep–places she wished to visit. If there was Gale’s tower nearby–or perhaps Sorcerous Sundries–she could have been able to pluck it out of the landscape with ease.

Instead, as she looked out off the cliff, she only saw shoreline give way to worn out cobbled roads. Some sort of village obscured the haze of distance and…well nothing familiar. She pursed her lips before chewing slightly on the bottom one; a nervous habit that often left her with metallic-tasting patches on the inside of her lip.

“Well?” Gale said a bit impatiently.

She was just about to give him the bad news–that she found nothing of note and had no idea which way to go–when a shadow darkened the ground from somewhere overhead. She looked up to find a black blot against the light blue of the sky–a dire raven with a wingspan of about 10 feet, armored in the colors of a the Scribe’s Guild; pale tan leathers, brass metal and mist green canvas.

She found herself smiling despite the fact that she’d told herself she’d never look at a Scribe’s Guild after leaving The Nest. She watched for a while longer as the large avian swooped through the sky and then landed on the parapet of a distant stone structure.

“We’re in luck!” she called down to Gale.

“Are we?” he asked. “You didn’t happen to have found a cleric of legendary skill up there did you?”

“Not that much luck,” she said as she started to climb down the rocky face of the cliff.

“Are you sure you ought to be doing that?” he asked. “It seems awfully dangerous.”

“As we just covered, I’ll be fine so long as I don’t use magic,” she responded. “I’m used to climbs.”

Looking down to find her perch, she carefully lighted her foot on the boulder where she started her climb, and turned to find Gale waiting for her, a single hand offered up to her to assist her down from the small height.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “It’s not that high up.”

“Best not to risk it,” he said. “The twist of an ankle could mean the difference between humanity and ceremorphosis, considering our plight.”

Elinna nibbled on her lower lip and nodded, placing her hand in his. His calloused fingers closed around her hand and he lifted his other hand to grasp her waist. She stepped off the stone and he supported her weight easily, lowering her to the ground smoothly.

“So,” he said, not taking his hands away yet. “You’ve kept me in suspense, Elinna. Why are we in luck?”

“I just saw a Dire Raven,” she said. “One of the ones we use to transport records between different chapters of the Scribe’s Guild.”

“The what?” he asked.

“The Scribe’s guild,” she said. “I told you, I was their ward in the Moonshae Islands.”

“Did you?” he asked.

She sighed and gave him a disappointed look. “You really didn’t listen to me at all back in Waterdeep.”

His hand twitched on her waist as his brow furrowed. “Well that’s hardly fair,” he said. “You were a stranger standing right outside of my home. Why should I have?”

“Courtesy,” she said sourly as she turned away from him and started to walk down the pathway in the direction she watched the dire raven fly.

She tried to ignore the tingling feeling in the tips of her fingers as her hand left his; the feeling of absence at her waist as she lost the weight of his hand.

“Oh, come now–” he said, his face screwing with offense and hurrying after her. “Don’t imply that I was being discourteous when you were the one showing up at a strange man’s home unannounced!”

“It’s not as if I let myself in!” she said back.

“Wait, you still haven’t told me what the Scribe’s Guild is,” he said, finally catching up to her.

“I assumed you would know what it is,” she said looking sidelong and up at him.

“I confess I’ve not heard of it,” he said.

She sighed and looked ahead. Maybe she didn’t want to tell him if he didn’t already know, she thought. She wasn’t sure she was ready to reveal just how sheltered her life was before heading to Waterdeep.

But they were now headed for the local archive and he was going to find out either way so…

“The scribe’s guild is a redundancy,” she said. “It’s one of the realm’s most extensive collections of information. If you’re looking for a book, a scroll, a record of some obscure property dispute… you can find it there. I was raised in one.”

“So, you’re a scribe?” he asked her. “You write books–collect this information and dole it out to those who need it?”

She pursed her lips. “I wasn’t a scribe myself,” she said. “I was a clerk.”

“So you were in training,” he said. “Assisting the scribes so that you could take on the task.”

She felt her skin pinken with warmth, afraid to disclose the truth–afraid of what it would look like. “Not quite,” she said. “The ArchLibrarian thought I wasn’t suited to the work.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because I was too fun,” she said, her walls going up a little higher. “If you must know.”

“My,” he said. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“It seems like you’re looking for reasons to think poorly of me,” she said.

“It seems like you’re hiding reasons to think poorly of you,” he said. “So, what was it? Sleeping on the job? Theft? Did you try to cast a cantrip and Did you come looking for me because they turned you out and cut you off?”

“Gods,” she said looking up at him, a little line forming between her brows and her face getting even warmer with embarrassment. “You really do think I’m a wastrel, don’t you?”

“No I don’t!” he said.

“What happened to you being worried about seeming an ill-mannered man?” she asked.

“Elinna–you’re young–youth is made for mistakes. You think I was always an upstanding young man while in attendance at Blackstaff?” he said. “I slept through most of my Calashite lessons.”

“Don’t lie to me to try and get dirt on me,” Elinna said as she walked faster.. “Don’t mock me like that.”

“Elinna–Elinna, would you slow down?” he said.

“No. I want to get to the Scribe’s Guild.”

“We will get there with plenty enough time before sundown,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Elinna, stop.”

She stopped but didn’t look up at him, she couldn’t make herself do it. She didn’t know what was more embarrassing for her; the fact that she’d hardly seen any of the world, the fact that her guardians felt she was inept and flighty, or the fact that she was quite acting like a petulant child with Gale when she only wished to prove to him that she could be a good student.

Maybe seeking him out had been a mistake from the start. She’d spent so long reading about Gale and his work–learning about his unique understanding of magic–reading his writings…in some ways she’d convinced herself that he was already a friend.

She’d never thought about how trying to become his apprentice also meant sharing her qualifications and the more time she spent talking to him the more she realized she had none.

She could feel him looking at her almost indulgently–like a man speaking to a child.

She didn;t know why she hated that most of all.

“Elinna, forgive me for prying,” he said. “I was just trying to get to know you a little better. From what I can tell there is a significant distance between here and Waterdeep and it will be a much more pleasant journey if we get to know one another a little bit as we travel, don’t you think?”

Elinna smoothed her amber hair away from her brow, cupping her hand on her forehead as if checking herself for fever.

“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. . “I think I’m just tired.”

“I can only imagine…what with going from the islands, to Waterdeep so climbing up cliff sides and now we have to walk even further? We can swap notes later,” he said with a gentle smile. “Let’s focus on getting to this place–maybe they can put us up for an evening or at least point us in the direction of the nearest town.”

Elinna nodded before heaving a great sigh.

“It shouldn’t be long,” she said. “Maybe just a few hours of walking from here.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Lead on.”

The Acolyte Errant

Elinna was a curious girl.

She was somehow equal measures breezy and intense; lackadaisical and earnest. He didn’t know what to make of the dichotomy. He knew even less what to do with the strange secrecy she had about her former home.

Perhaps it was a bit of paranoia–after all, he had his own secrets he was keeping. It was perhaps more than a little hypocritical of him to fault her for hers.

“So, tell me more about The Scribe’s Nest,” he said, trying to change the subject to something more informative and a little less personal.

“Specifically The Nest? Or the guild in general?” she asked.

“Mm…if it’s not too personal for you, The Nest. You said that’s where you grew up right?” he said.

She nodded, wiping sweat off her brow. The day was beginning to get hot, so he had to think they were further down south than Waterdeep and the islands. It was much cooler this time of year–hence the layers both he and Elinna wore.

“Uhm–The Nest in Moonshae is in an old abandoned temple to Ilmater,” she told him. “My mother left me there thinking that it was a safe place for me to grow up–thinking I’d be cared for by clerics. But The Nest was already there.”

“I see,” Gale said, feeling for the girl but trying not to let it come through in his tone. “I suppose they took you in anyway?”

She nodded again. “They did,” she said. “Still not sure why, if I’m honest–they have a few oaths they had to make in exchange for financial support. Even so, there were other temples in the area that probably could have taken me in. But uh–anyway. The way that the scribes work is they receive funds from the local government and they use those funds to pay a fleet of scouts to get word back to us about the goings on in the world. The scribes record it, make copies of each account and send them to the other branches.”

“Hells,” he said. “That sounds like quite the expensive endeavor.”

“It is–and the scribes outsource the work so that there’s no conflict of interest. No scribes out wandering the world trying to spin tales. They have a motto: ‘We Are The Accuracy In The Indulgent The Composed in the Chaotic.’” She said. “In other words, they try to record everything as plainly and as closely to the facts as possible. In addition to that, they try to have copies of every written work ever produced.”

“How can that even be quantified or verified for that matter?” Gale asked.

“Like I said–they try,” she said. “It’s all very tedious if you ask me.”

“I’m shocked I haven’t heard of this place–it sounds like a veritable treasure trove of knowledge,” he said.

“The scribes don’t open the vaults to many,” she said. “They consider their work one of posterity; a record of history, not a resource to be plumbed. They don’t even really indulge in reading the records themselves.”

“That sounds….extraordinarily wasteful,” He said.

He saw Elinna finally crack a smile at that. “I couldn’t agree more,” she said. “Wasteful, boring, depressing.”

He was itching to ask her if that was why she’d left what she’d had as a home for…well however long she’d been alive. She looked remarkably young, but with half-elves that hardly meant much. For all he knew she was his age.

“Elinna, do you mind if I ask how old you are?” he asked.

She looked up at him, her brow quirking. “Uhm–I’ve had twenty-eight summers so far,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

Ah–around ten years younger than he was. No wonder she seemed so restless when she’d come to find him at his tower. Most Wizards were well into their studies at Blackstaff by now, or at least had some reasonable amount of aptitude with the weave. “Just curious,” he said shrugging. “You look young but you’re also not complaining, or panicking, or well–other things I would expect a young person to be doing in this situation.”

He wasn’t sure if he was reading it correctly, but he could have sworn that she pressed her lips a bit to avoid smiling. Was the poor girl such a stranger to praise that the simple pointing out of her maturity could make her have to stop a flustered smile from forming on her lips?”

“I guess I just feel like anything is preferable to being stuck in that dusty old tower,” she said.

There was a sort of…sadness to her words. A quality he recognized first hand.

Not sadness, he realized as he saw one of his own feelings mirrored back at him. Regret.

But that was not a subject he wished to bring up–not when the questions could so easily be turned back onto him.

“Well, Elinna,” he said, changing the subject. “You have Gale of Waterdeep with you–I’m a captive audience as we walk to the guild hall. Anything I can impress you with?”

It was an olive branch, of sorts. It, of course, wasn’t the first time he’d met some hopeful magician who wanted to pick his brain. Usually he politely shooed them away, but he figured that extending the offer might cheer her up.

“I’m quite well read on the subject,” she answered.

Wait…had he missed the question while he was patting himself on the back for being open to bragging? “Sorry–which subject is that?” he asked.

Her face flushed and she gave him a furtive look with those pretty green eyes. She cleared her throat and pushed some hair behind her ear.

“Uhm–you–” she said finally. “I’ve read everything the archive has that even has a tangential mention of your name in it.”

He blinked, feeling glad for the fact that she was looking most pointedly away from him. “Ah,” he said, trying to master his tone. “Well–should we crosscheck the scribe’s records? Tell me what you know and I can correct anything that’s wrong.”

“We’ll be here for hours if I do that…” she mumbled under her breath.

Now it was his turn to flush–until he realized–

“Wait, I thought you said that the scribes don’t read the records–” he said.

“I did,” she said, looking over at him with a sheepish little smile. “That’s why they said I’m not suited for the work. It’s why they keep me on shelving duty.”

Ah–that was what she meant when she said she was used to climbing.

Suddenly there was an uncomfortable pressure in his skull as he saw flashes of giant stacks of dusty tomes, heard the squeaking of a half-broken wheel on a cart, felt rawness on his fingertips from shelving books and records; the deep ache of tired muscles.

When he was able to focus again, Elinna was crouched a few feet ahead, her gloved hands pressing on the sides of her head.

“W-was that a memory?” Gale asked. “Did you just send me a memory?”

“No,” she said weakly. “Gods…that was…I could feel you in my head–”

“I didn’t–it wasn’t something I did on purpose,” he said frantically.

He felt as embarrassed as a young man might be during his first time with a lover. It’d been years since he’d accidentally used his magic. Not since he was an adolescent.

“I think it’s the parasite,” she said. “Mindflayers are part of a hive mind–maybe it’s the start of that tether forming to it.”

“I’m loath to face that possibility, but you may be right,” Gale said grimly as he walked over to her and offered a hand. “You alright?”

“Just exhausted, I think,” she said as she took his hand. “It felt like the parasite was pulling at the seams of my mind, extracting those images like thread through the eye of a needle.”

“Aptly put,” he said, finally helping her up.

“Let’s just hurry to the guild,” she said.

It was a bit of a grueling trek after that. The pathway mostly uphill and on rocky, uneven pathways. Wherever this guild branch was, it was clear enough to him that the scribes had no interest in being bothered or visited. He wasn’t so worried about himself, though–if anything, he was worried about Elinna.

Thinking about it–she’d originally mentioned that she was looking for a place to live when he met her and she’d asked him to take her on as a student. He wondered when the last time she’d slept was. It wasn’t uncommon for passengers unused to traveling by ship to sleep poorly on them. The voyage between the Moonshae Islands and Waterdeep was probably close to a tenday, give or take a day or two.

He felt a little guilty, now, that he had let her climb up the cliffside to help them get their bearings; that he couldn’t be of more assistance with some kind of charm or boon.

As predicted, it took them about another two hours to make it to the base of a decaying old castle. He didn’t recognize it, and from what he could tell there were no real markings on it to distinguish what lineage or people it could have belonged to at one point.

He looked up as another dire raven–or perhaps the same one he hadn’t seen before–took flight from one of the crumbling parapets, then he looked over at Elinna.

She was still damp with sweat, but her exerted flush had given way to an almost sickly sort of pallor. He worried for a moment that she may already be starting the process of ceremorphosis–but if that was the case, why hadn’t the same happened to him?

“Fucking stairs,” she groaned as she bent over and braced her hands on her knees. “I think I may need to sit for just a moment.”

Gale looked at the stairs and then back at her. He quirked his lips slightly, weighing the number of stairs against the health of his knees.

“I know once you sit it will be all the more difficult for you to get up and get going,” he said. “Let me carry you the rest of the way.”

She balked at him, her verdant eyes wide and a bit of her flush returning to her freckled cheeks. He tried not to think about how charming the look of surprise was. “Y-you can’t,” she said. “I’m filthy–and drenched besides. And I’ll be too heavy.”

“Nonsense,” he insisted. “You hardly come up to my shoulder–and it’s not as if I’m a fine example of cleanliness at the moment. You can tell me proper decorum as we make our way up.”

“Gale–”

“I won’t take no for an answer,” he said with a little teasing glimmer in his eyes.

He kneeled in front of her, back toward her, and patted his shoulder. “Climb on,” he said.

There was nothing for a moment and he almost looked back to see if she was going to stubbornly refuse. But just as he was going to, he felt tentative fingertips on his right shoulder; then his left. She smoothed her hand toward the front of him, drawing a tingling line along his collarbones. He tried not to flinch as her hands joined right over the spot the orb burned in his chest, but he couldn’t stop it.

She froze and almost started withdrawing. He reached up and closed a single hand over both of hers.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked him.

“Not at all,” he said. “Remember–I’ve been a recluse for some time. Just forgot what it felt like to be touched by someone who isn’t a tressym.”

There was one more moment of hesitation and then finally, Elinna put her weight onto him, hitching her legs above his hips.

“Alright,” he said. “Going up.”

He scooped his hands under her knees and rose to his feet.

Truth be told, she was a touch heavier than he’d expected. And he realized with a bit of rueful interest that her body was a little…softer…than he’d anticipated. Even through her layers of canvas and leather, he could feel the supple swell of her thighs, her hips, her breasts…

He shook his head and cleared his throat as he started to climb the stairs.

“So, what’s our story?” he asked.

“Mmn–story?” she breathed against his ear.

Gods, she sounded like a freshly roused lover in the morning.

“You’re not falling asleep back there, are you?” he asked.

“Trying not to,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Keep talking to me,” he said. “It will help you stay awake.”

And give me something to stop my mind from drifting to what might be beneath your clothes. He thought with no shortage of disgust in himself.

“Mmh–visitors are prohibited, usually,” she said, her sleepy slurring sending a chill up his spine. “Since you’re carrying me in…maybe tell them you found me unconscious on the ground. They can refuse scholars, but they have an oath to help the needy. Hence…me…”

“The lady deceives,” Gale teased. “I thought you were above such dishonesty.”

She gave a quiet chuckle. “If the guild needs a bit of encouragement to do what is right, who am I to deny it?” Then after a moment. “Thank you…for carrying me. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s no bother,” he said.

And it really wasn’t, aside from his own traitorous thoughts about her. His knees weren’t even tired when he reached the top of the stairs. He looked back at her sidelong. “Hang onto me will you–afraid I’ll need one of these hands.”

He regretted asking her to do that immediately. Her thighs squeezed a little tighter around his middle and he suddenly wished for death. He opened the door as quickly as he could, and went back to holding her knee.

Inside there was…no one to be found. At least not at first.

Then came the sound of soft soles scuffing on stone stairs. He gazed to the right, seeing a shadow elongate as it grew further and further away from some torch or sconce further up on the stairs.

A moment later, a wizened man peered at him through small spectacles on a crooked nose.

He was dressed somewhat like Elinna, though the embroidery and fastenings on his clothes were finer. On his lapel, he wore a golden dire raven pin with a quill snatched in it’s beak.The pin was connected to a chain from which dangled a single golden key.

“You’ve reached The Scribe’s Perch,” he said, his voice quiet and willowy, like it had frayed through years of neglect. “I fear we’re not taking visitors.”

In front of Gale’s chest, Elinna’s arms went slack and her body went a little heavier. Her head rested fully on his shoulder, her sleeping breaths gusting warmly on the back of his neck. He supposed it worked better for the tale he had to weave–though he did worry for the poor girl.

“I’ve found one of your acolytes on the path some way away from here. She seems feverish–likely hungry and dehydrated. She’s gone in and out of consciousness but told me to find you here and ask for you help. Help for both of us.”

The old man merely tilted to get a look at Elinna with a somewhat disinterested expression. “Mnh…there are protocols in place for this, yes,” he said. “An inconvenience to say the least, though. We will have to make arrangements for your supper.”

Gale felt his ire flare and found himself understanding why Elinna seemed so sour about where she’d been reared. It was a wonder she made it out of childhood with her curiosity and her tenacity intact.

“If it’s too much of a bother, I can see to producing a meal for us,” he said, trying his best to master his tone.

“No, no,” the man said. “The smells–the oils–they could upset the balance and focus of the archives. Come–I will see you to a lodging for the night. I am afraid I must ask you to stay there and to not wander our halls freely. And you must leave come morning.”

“I thought you had an oath to help the needy,” Gale said.

“The qualifying criteria which defines who or what is needy is not agreed upon,” he said. “The girl is unconscious, but you stand and walk freely. Surely she is hardly needy if she has you.”

“She’s one of your acolytes,” Gale said. “Surely you can’t be so callous.”

“She’s not an acolyte from The Perch. We do not allow women among our ranks–their scents and scintillations bring focus away from posterity. I allow you to stay only because she still wears our colors and because we’ve received no missive about a disgraced acolyte,” he said. “But there has been a great collision on the shoreline and we work tirelessly to record it.”

“Well you’re in luck–we’re survivors from that crash–we can help you–”

“No. We only accept the accounts of verified scouts,” he said. “Now come–I’ve wasted precious time already. My quill will have started to dry out.”

Gale bit his tongue and simply nodded–worried that if the man showed is rudeness and disinterest again he would snap at the Scribe and lose them a night of rest and the chance to bathe and change.

Their ungracious host led them up the stairs, past a massive steel door singing with wards, and to a doorway about as tall as Elinna. The Scribe opened the lock with his tiny golden key–a skeleton key it seemed–and gestured him inside.

Gale bent a bit at the knees, careful to mind Elinna’s head as he ducked into the room.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Supper is at seven bells. Porridge, roasted carrots and river fish–you will have to come retrieve it yourself–the kitchens are down the stairs we traveled up and through the small northern wooden door,” their host said.

And with that, the man simply closed the door and left Gale alone with Elinna.

Gale looked about the room.

It was small, about the size of the larder in his tower, and barren. In one corner, a threadbare sheet hung to offer pock-marked privacy should one bathe in the water-swollen, wooden tub there. There was a single desk with a nearly-spent candle perched slantingly in a chamberstick made of brass. Against the far wall stood the bed–

The Bed.

Singular.

Only one bed.

Oh hells, it would be a very long night indeed.

He carried Elinna over to the bed and carefully cradled her against his back as he pulled back the mildew-smelling covers. Beneath was an old hay mattress. He felt loath to place her on it, but he hadn’t enough energy to conjure something more comfortable for her.

He supposed it didn’t matter for tonight–the poor girl just needed some sleep.

He carefully placed her in the bed and hesitated, pondering.

She’d spent so much time during their travels complaining of the feeling of viscera in her clothes; her shoes. He could only imagine how terrible it would feel for her to wake up, warm and damp from feverish sleep, only to still feel soggy boots and garments on your body.

It wasn’t proper. He wasn’t even sure it would be welcome. But it was a gesture toward her comfort he could actually provide.

He carefully slipped off her boots, setting them off to the side in a blood-soaked heap. Then he removed her leather gloves, and finally, the waistcoat she wore.

Beneath her green canvas, she wore a simple muslin dress that fell just slightly off the shoulders. He noted with a bit of curious mirth, that she had a smattering of freckles across the bare skin of her decolletage and arms as well. He wondered how many times she’d had to sneak away from her duties to get those.

Then he saw something else.

On the inside of one delicate wrist, he spotted the hint of a violet patch of skin. In a brief panic he turned her arm over to get a better view of it, worried that her transformation may be starting, after all.

Instead, what he found was scarring. Violet scars forming a ladder of tidy caning marks on the tender skin of the inside of her arm.

“No wonder you wanted to get out,” he said under his breath as he brushed his thumb against the marks. They were only barely raised. They’d been there a long time then. For some reason it hurt his heart to think of a smaller, squeakier Elinna as her caretakers tried and clearly failed to tame the wonder out of her.

Perhaps it was because he had also been punished severely for his ambition and thirst for knowledge, but he could no longer bear to see her in the greens, tans and creams of The Scribe’s Guild. Not when there was so much she’d had to fight to keep hold of.

He thought he could maybe find a pocket somewhere. If he rested he ought to be able to, anyway. Or if not, he could try to look around the grounds and scrounge something up for each of them to change into. And maybe a few supplies for setting up camp, too, since they wouldn’t be granted time to catch their bearings at The Perch.

He pulled the worn blanket up enough to cover her arms, but not so high that the smell of mildew could wake her.

He walked over to the tiny door and looked back over his shoulder one more time to make sure she was still quite asleep.

And then he slipped out of their sorry room to find a place to restore himself.

#bg3 #historical fantasy #romantasy #authors #writeblr #my writing #violet thread of fate #bg3 fic #fic recs #bg3 fic recs #gale /tav #gale x tav #gale bg3 #gale dekarios #bg3 au #bg3 headcanons

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purple-plum-petals · 1 year

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⊱ TWST Characters’ Reactions to Yuu Calling Their Dorm Leader “Hot” ⊰ || Multiple Character Scenario

╭─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╮

Character(s): Ace Trappola, Deuce Spade, Trey Clover, Cater Diamond, Jack Howl, Ruggie Bucchi, Jade Leech, Floyd Leech, Jamil Viper, Epel Felmier, Rook Hunt, Ortho Shroud, Lilia Vanrouge, Silver, Sebek Zigvolt (Twisted Wonderland) Reader Type: Human, Ramshackle Prefect (Gender-Neutral Pronouns) Warning(s): Nothing! I also always use the Japanese TWST Terms (Dorm Leader instead of Housewarden, Madols instead of Thaumarks, etc.) in my writing. Genre: Scenario, Attempt at Comedy Word Count: ~500 words Scenario: They were just minding their own business when you asked suddenly, sighing out loud, “Man, why does your dorm leader have to be so hot?” Author’s Note: This idea just popped into my mind and I thought it would be a nice, fun, short thing to write! I’d definitely be willing to write a more in-depth idea of this scenario, but right now I just wanted to post something since it’s been a while. I’ve been job-searching but, because I don’t have my transcripts or diploma at the moment, it’s been a bit difficult to get a job in my field. 😭

→ If you enjoyed my work, please reblog it if you can! Exposure on Tumblr is based on reblogging content rather than liking it, so your support would be much appreciated! ♡ ╰─━━━━━━━━━━━━─╯

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

Pretends that he didn’t hear you. Nope, he was not dealing with that today – especially when all he’s trying to do is mind his own business. Kind of dies a bit on the inside when those words leave your mouth, though. All he can think is why would you even tell him about that in the first place? Did you expect him to help you or something?

Trey, Jack, Jamil

Has to make sure he heard you right. Are you sure you meant his dorm leader (even though most of the others aren’t the greatest boyfriend material either)? Oh, so he did hear you correctly… Well, that’s a bit strange. You certainly have interesting taste in men, they suppose. Nothing entirely wrong with that, but they don’t see the appeal.

Deuce, Cater, Jade, Floyd

Goes off on you for your horrible taste in men. Out of all the people at NRC that you could find attractive, it’s their dorm leader?? Doesn’t understand the appeal of them or your taste in men, and they make sure you know how much they disagree with your opinion about the attractiveness of their dorm leaders.

Ace, Ruggie, Epel

Starts laughing – like, laughing out loud as they hold their sides from the stitches your confession is giving them. How embarrassing for you, huh? Man, your taste in men is absolutely abysmal if you somehow find their dorm leader of all people appealing. A part of them finds it kind of sad, but that feeling is completely overwritten by the amount of entertainment they get out of the situation.

Ace, Ruggie, Floyd

Found it a bit strange to be telling him that, but he‘s glad you find his brother attractive! He sees you as a dear friend of his, so he wouldn’t mind seeing you and his brother together! If anything, that would make him one of the happiest people on the planet!

Ortho

Agrees with you wholeheartedly! Their dorm leader is a very handsome young man with a lot of talent and future potential, so they agree – you certainly have great taste! Now, while they might not appreciate the words you chose to describe their dorm leader, they don’t disagree (cough Sebek cough) with your statement.

Rook, Lilia, Silver, Sebek

After their initial reaction(s), they also decide to tease you a bit. You just willingly gave them perfect blackmail material, you know. Now, why would you go and do that? …Because you trust them? Now that was a foolish reason. Since it’s you, though, they might keep this information to themselves.

Ace, Cater, Ruggie, Jade, Floyd

After their initial reaction(s), they decided to play wingman and try to get you to confess your feelings to their respective dorm leader. Whether it’s because they think you’ll legit be a good match together or if they’re doing it just for fun, you’ll never know. The help is much appreciated, though.

Trey, Cater, Ruggie, Jade, Floyd, Rook, Ortho, Lilia

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helioselene · 1 year

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HOW TO: WRITEBLR;

so youve migrated from writing twt to writeblr -> what now?

the following is my masterpost on the ins and outs of navigating the writeblr landscape! while it can be scary to deep-dive into the world of writing on tumblr for the first time, there are a few actions you can take to make it a lot easier to interact and share your writing.

psa: this is neither an extensive nor complete list of writeblr tips! but i hope it can help :)

INTERACTION;

interacting with others is one of the most important aspects of writeblr. im going to be splitting this section into a number of sub-sections because there are several topics relevant to creating a system of communication with other writers on here.

likes and reblogs; unlike twitter or other social media sites, likes do not hold the same weight on tumblr. as well as liking a post, the most important step you can take is to REBLOG. reblogging will share a post to your blog and thus your feed. in doing this, your followers and anyone who checks out your blog are going to see the post, rather than if you just like or comment. reblogging allows more people to interact with a post. content creators (including writers) can be motivated to continue posting when their posts are reblogged because it shows there are enough people interested in their works. the same goes for you! the more you reblog other people's works, the more likely your own posts will be reblogged, thus gaining more traction for all your hard-earned efforts.

taglists; you might be asking: what is a taglist? a taglist is usually featured at the bottom of your post when you share your writing. it includes people who have shown interest in your works - all you do is simply @ them. it means that people who are keen won't miss out on seeing the things you post about your wips! it is essentially an opt-in type deal, where people can choose to be added or removed from being notified about updates, excerpts, and the like.

don't abuse your taglist. don't tag them for every little thing you post about your wips - try to keep it to major posts like excerpts or new art, etc.

**** A HANDY HINT: writeblr etiquette states that you should never just add people to your taglist. only add them if they specifically ask.

tumblr tagging system; the tumblr tagging system is going to be your best friend as a writer. tags allow you to manage your posts + can act as a navigation system for your blog.

when tagging, make sure to not replace characters if it's for a trigger warning. 'assault', for example, should never be replaced with '@ssault'.

if posting an excerpt from your wip, i would suggest the following tags as the bare minimum: 'WIP NAME', 'WIP NAME EXCERPT'. if you're posting it as part of an event, you may also wish to include 'EVENT NAME'. you can also have a specific tag for things your friends write, for resources you may find helpful, etc. the possibilities are endless. a hint: the first five tags are the only tracked tags. the most important tags you want to add should be your FIRST FIVE TAGS on a post. furthermore, only the first twenty will show up in the search function.

tags are a good way for you to interact with other writers! when you reblog a post, OP will be able to read your tags where you can add how much you loved their work, etc.

POST FORMATTING;

do; - add trigger warnings to your posts if they contain sensitive topics. - add a plot, characters, etc. other writeblrs want context for your wip beyond just a number of dot points about tropes. - put your post under a 'read more' if it is a long post. - tag any nsfw content. - add a transcript of any photos/images under a 'read more'.

don't; - use any sort of fonts beyond the regular when writing a general post. using the 'chat' font, for example, reduces accessibility to your posts and makes it difficult for people to read. - just post dot points of your wip. - plagiarise. - use other people's posts as a place to self promote.

PINTEREST IS NOT AN ART SOURCE;

this is one of the biggest differences between tumblr and other social media sites: pinterest is. not. an. art. source. the truth is that people aren't going to care if you post a moodboard with nothing beyond a few random photos of a castle and a knife, etc. sure, they may look pretty, but don't do it for a number of reasons.

first, you should always post art directly from a credited source (e.g. unsplash or picrew).

second, it doesn't show enough about your wip! people want context! not just random photos!

thirdly, most photos or art on pinterest do not CREDIT their sources. this is theft and this is bad. which leads me onto the next topic.

CREDIT YOUR ARTISTS;

CREDIT ALL ARTISTS. if you use any sort of artwork, i swear to all things holy, give credit to the ORIGINAL sources. pinterest, as mentioned, is not an art source. most artwork on that site is stolen or posted without credit, which, funnily enough, is a form of theft. if you're going to post any form of photo or art, please give credit. it doesn't matter what form it takes; link to the original artist or photographer in a way that is not hidden.

MOODBOARDS AND GRAPHICS, OH MY;

one sad truth about being on tumblr, as with a lot of social media sites, is that your posts will gain a lot more interaction if you use some form of graphic or photo along with your writing. graphic making may seem daunting but it doesn't have to be! they don't have to be complicated or anything more than a few photos - as long as they have relevance to your wip. moodboards are not necessarily a bad form to take when making graphics for your posts. however, if it just features a random collection of photos that tell your audience nothing about your work, they're not going to care. writeblr is all about actually imparting information about your wips, rather than just vibes. ****as mentioned, any form of artwork or photography needs to be credited to the original source. however, etiquette is also to not repost art without express permission from the artist. if you don't have permission to use someone's art, DO NOT put it in your moodboard or graphic.

BLOG AND BLOG THEMES;

tumblr is a really great site for expressing yourself through your blog, especially if you use custom themes! if (like me) you're terrible at javascript and any form of http coding, there are a number of blogs you can search for to find custom made themes that are easily adaptable for your needs.

but why use a theme beyond expression?

one of the best aspects of using themes is the navigation aspect. most writeblrs have some form of navigation page (beyond just simply using the tumblr tagging system) to allow their audience to find information about their wips, writing resources, and the like! it makes going through your blog easier for both you and others.

also: make sure to include information about yourself on the blog (but of course, not to the point of doxxing yourself). most tumblr users, especially those on writeblr, will think you're most likely a bot if you dont include at least some things about yourself. the most common things to add are name, age and pronouns! also a dni can be used.

WRITING TIPS AND TRICKS;

titling your wips by @crtalley

plot structure by @nouveauweird

how to blurb by @yvesdot

notion templates for writers by @atelierwriting

the tropes guide by yours truly

so you're missing a plot by @seasteading

novel length by @serpentarii

thank you to everyone who helped me in writing this post! love you all <3

#writing resources #writing advice #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writeblr community #writers #wtwcommunity

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genderful-ghoul · 8 months

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So this happened… (Important petition for the Ghost fandom!!)

REBLOGS NEEDED!!

AO3 now includes fics where lead guitar ghoul’s character is called “Sodo” in searches for fics where they’re called “Dewdrop”.

For fans that call the character “Dewdrop”, this now means the “Sodo” fics are unavoidable. For those that call the character “Sodo”, this now means the “Dewdrop” fics are unavoidable.

To be honest, grouping the tags is just uncomfortable and clumsy for everyone. You ever search for a fic and the results show fics where a character you know by one name goes by another name, and you can’t easily just filter those out? And when you try to read them, the flow of reading is disturbed if you’re not used to it? AO3’s tagging system is revolutionary and very widely used by most users on the platform. By combining these tags, it renders the tagging of this character useless for those who are looking for a specific name.

For those that feel uncomfortable hearing the character called “Sodo”, these fics aren’t only annoying to see, they’re disturbing. A good number of ghesties feel uncomfortable calling the character they write/read about (often in intimate settings) a name the person playing them goes by in their personal life. They feel this breaks the widely accepted ghestie code of keeping the nameless ghoul characters and their headcanons separate from the people who perform onstage.

Personally, I am uncomfortable. For one, the idea of having to scroll past a bunch of fics that are too clumsy for me to read is a stressful thought. And, more importantly to me, I am a person who finds it uncomfortable when a ghoul character is referred to by their performer’s real name. I personally do not want these tags to be grouped, and I know I am definitely not the only ghestie who wants them to be separate tags.

Here is a poll petition. I am going to make an appeal to AO3 get these tags separated. The people who keep AO3 running for us are busy, and we understand that there are more pressing matters that must be dealt with. Our request may take a minute to get to, and we are okay with staying patient; but we do want our request to be taken seriously. One person writing to AO3 making the request is not going to be taken as seriously in this case. We need proof that the ghestie community as a whole wants this change for the management of our fandom’s fics. Please vote in the poll to show AO3 that the Ghost (Sweden Band) fandom wants the character tags “Dewdrop|Fire Ghoul” and “Sodo|Fire Ghoul” and any congruent tags to be separated from what is currently “Dewdrop|Sodo” to their original separate tags of “Dewdrop|Fire Ghoul” and “Sodo|Fire Ghoul”. By voting for either of the two options, you are signing a petition to enact the request bolded above. The poll ends in one week, but if we can get a good couple hundred votes before then, it will be sent earlier. Please spread this post as far as the internet can reach. We need the Ghost fandom to speak on this matter. We need everyone to work together to make change.

Formally written request:

The Ghost (Sweden Band) fandom wants the character tags “Dewdrop|Fire Ghoul” and “Sodo|Fire Ghoul” and any congruent tags to be separated from what is currently “Dewdrop|Sodo” to their original separate tags of “Dewdrop|Fire Ghoul” and “Sodo|Fire Ghoul”.

The tumblr post made by user @genderful-ghoul tiled “So this happened… (Important petition for the Ghost fandom!!)” details the current AO3 conditions which prompted the fandom to make this request, as well as an explanation of why the fandom wants this change.

A transcript of the email request I will send to AO3 will be posted here the day it is sent for full transparency to the fandom. Everything is so fancily worded because it is a formal business request, and AO3 needs to be able to fully understand the situation from an outside-of-the-fandom perspective, as well as be able to accurately locate the tags we want changed out of the millions of tags on the platform and accurately understand the specific changes we’re asking for so that they can get it right for us. I hope we all collectively agree that there are bigger problems in the world that need their petitions to thrive so that they can make change. Even AO3 has bigger problems than our tagging issues right now, so let’s be polite and understanding to AO3. This is a frustrating matter, but I guarantee that the reason the two character tags were combined was because someone outside of the fandom recognized that the two separate names were being used to refer to the same character, and assumed there was no significant difference between the two tags and believed that combining them would only make tag organization more efficient.

#the band ghost #nameless ghouls #ghesties #ghost band fanfic #ao3 #aether ghoul #cirrus ghoulette #cumulus ghoulette #dewdrop ghoul #mountain ghoul #new ghoulette #new ghoul #rain ghoul #sunshine ghoulette #swiss ghoul #papa emertius #participation request

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mooondial · 10 months

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Payment up front! The audaciousness of this is because I need money. If you blaze this I’ll do a free bust up render for you. Transcription + not info under the cut. Please reblog this pleaseee

Slide one:

I’M VALERIE AND I DO COMMISSIONS!

THIS FACE NEEDS MONEY!

ABOUT ME: I’m in college as a triple major/ra/tutor/etc. Due to external circumstances I am now broke and need help paying off my bills. Because of this, I’m opening emergency commissions. They’re cheap because I really need the money.

I TAKE VENMO, CASHAPP, ZELLE, AND PAYPAL.

I’m showing pictures of myself because I am a real person who really does need help. Please share this. I draw ocs, real people fictional characters, anything that’s humanoid. I also draw NSFW. Hell, I’ll even draw furries if you’d give me the chance.

Slide two:

RENDERS PAGE ONE.

Bust: 10 USD

Waist: 15 USD

Full: 20 USD

+ half price per extra character

Simple bg free, complex bg prices vary

Slide 3:

RENDERS PAGE TWO

You could get one of these for only 20 usd! Buy now while I’m broke!

Slide 4:

PORTRAITS FOR TWENTY BUCKS!

I’d normally charge double! Don’t miss this awesome sale!

Slide 5:

FULL BODY FLATS

Slightly cheaper alternative to a full body render!

15 usd + half price per character. I can do these without reference if you describe the character(s) in detail. Good for ocs, dnd party members, au designs, etc.

Slide 6:

SKETCHES + MORE INFO

Bust: 5 usd

Waist: 10 usd

Full body: might as well get it as a flat!

+ half per extra character

NSFW?

I can do explicit artwork. I don’t normally do that, but I definitely can. DM me for examples, and I’ll need proof you’re over 18. I’ll take these commissions and price them per my discretion.

FURRY?

I don’t normally do this, but it’s good to get some practice. 5 usd for a rendered bust up of a furry.

Slide 7:

OTHER SHIT YOU CAN PAY ME TO DO that I can think of

Ponies: 8 usd + half per extra pony

Lucky star parody: 10 usd per character

Chibi flats: 8 usd + half per extra flat

I’ll do literally any show. You can pay me to make the most gruesome, hardened characters into ponies, chibis, or cutesy lucky star characters. Imagine the possibilities.

Extra things I forgot to include in the pics:

The lucky star parodies will be based on whatever promotional image suits the commission with the buyer’s discretion.

I’m pretty quick with commissions. You’ll get it latest after 2 weeks, or I’ll give you a refund if necessary. Even then, it’s super unlikely.

While I will do nsfw, I’m not going to do super gross shit either. No kids, no depictions of abuse, and I’ll let you know whether I will or won’t depict certain kinks/other things.

Thanks for reading!

#commissions open #emergency commissions #house md #hate crimes md #mlp #Mary cooper #rajesh koothrappali #the rest of the drawings are of my ocs #nsft commissions #omg I’m 19 btw #please help me. pleaseeeeeeeeeeee #I’m so cool guys #commissions

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mydetheturk · 9 months

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ive been trying to come up with a way to talk about my take on The Argument, but honesty i can't get past these pages where Wolfwood shoots Rai-Dei. there are four panels on this two page spread, and no words, but god there's so much said in it. i keep flipping back and forth between it and the next page like "holy shit wolfwood. holy shit wolfwood." like. like we know. we've known since volume two of trigun that wolfwood was one of the GHG. we've known! this is knowledge that we have had for multiple volumes.

i literally cannot get over the expression on wolfwood's face in the pages leading up to their fight (and this expression lingers through their fight, mind you)

hellO????

like!!! this is the start of their argument!!! wolfwood cannot let vash die. and if he has to kill to do it he's going to kill to do it. vash is supposed to suffer. he cannot suffer if he's dead.

and this is the lead up to their argument. they have such philosophical differences about life, Vash believing every life is precious and that everyone can change, where Wolfwood's convinced that people won't. he thinks Vash is foolish - is naive for not taking the GHG seriously. Wolfwood wants - Wolfwood needs - to know Vash is taking this seriously, is prepared to kill if Vash wants to keep everyone else alive.

Wolfwood needs to know Vash is prepared for the shit Wolfwood knows - or suspects, if he doesn't know off hand - Legato is going to send.

hence this panel.

(yes i did just straight up copy the alt text from the post i made about being unable to cope with this panel. it ruins me.)

And then Vash reads him for fucking filth.

Vash's heart is breaking for Wolfwood, who cannot see a way out of the grave he's dug. Vash doesn't want to kill but he's broken for the way Wolfwood cannot see any other way to survive.

Like. the whole of page 106 hurts, but the way the Overhaul translated these panels is. Oof.

(the Dark Horse translation differs. Vash's speech reads: You... told me back then... that my face looked better with a real smile. If you could see yourself through my eyes now... You'd see a man forcing himself to play the Devil while his own heart cries out.

It's a little more poetic, but both of the statements cut Wolfwood to the core.)

They're talking past one another! they care so much about one another but their love languages differ so hard. (and i don't even mean this in a shipping way tho you could take it that way)

Augh. They're idiots. We'll see later that Wolfwood knows what Vash is, because of his experiences with Knives. (Wolfwood was there when Knives got reborn, after all) and he's seen Vash fight. He just. Doesn't know if Vash can kill one to save the many. (The start of their first fight in Stampede, their first true fight, is because Wolfwood shoots Rollo/Monev the Gale. Vash asks why. Wolfwood says its out of mercy.)

Anyway, there's some other really good meta about this fight (@needle-noggins has a nice breakdown of it) and if/when I find the posts I'll drop links in the comments/reblog with them.

I'll also upload what i could figure out of the transcript when I read through their argument in order to figure out how i was even going to talk about it to google docs and drop the link to that in the comments as well.

If you're still here, idk, Vash read Wolfwood for filth in front of God and everybody, which in this case was an empty town, Rai-Dei's corpse, and Zazie, who's been watching them for who knows how long at this point.

#trigun #trigun maximum #trigunbookclub #vash the stampede #nicholas d. wolfwood #trigun meta #myde reads trigun #got a little unhinged so i put most of it behind a readmore

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xccentriktigress · 10 months

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Below the cut is a clean verbatim transcript of the StaffCon2023 “Live With the CEO” stream. Featuring the CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg [@photomatt], and the Tumblr COO, Zandy Ring [@zingring].

Built from the videos by @secondbeatsongs [x] and @chainswordcs [x]. Additional thanks to my fellow archivists, @eiimblr, @sharksfood, and @fokron.

The stream was about an hour, so there's a lot of dialogue. There are timestamps next to the questions and important statements if you want to skim.

A true verbatim transcript is available by request.

[archive 1]|[archive 2]

PhotoMatt: This is Zandy Ring. Zandy’s the Chief Operating Officer of Tumblr and I’m the CEO of Automattic. We’re here, trying out this experiment where we’ll do a live broadcast and take questions from users and talk about it. And I'm here in the room, actually. This is like the, kinda first ever, in a really long time since… What year was the last big Tumblr meet-up?

*inaudible, off-screen*

PhotoMatt: 2018? *chuckle* Yeah.

ZingRing: Yeah.

PhotoMatt: So, since 2018. So, basically in five years, the first time the vast majority of the Tumblr team is together and so you got a lot of us here in this room. And so pretty much everything there is to know about Tumblr is known in this room. *laugh* So, hopefully, we can answer pretty much anything. Any questions coming in so far?

ZingRing: We have some questions from earlier, and one of the big questions has been one that we just did during our trial run which was uh-

PhotoMatt: I can try this one, the one- what was that, FantastiCait?

ZingRing: Ok, great

[1:08] PhotoMatt: Says, “Why are we making changes right after people left Reddit and Twitter because of their changes?”

PM: *chuckles* I totally get why change is scary. *chuckle* Right? But also if things don’t change, if services don’t evolve I’m certain it’ll die.

ZR: Right.

PM: Now, if we change it, we could mess it up or we could make it better. The good news is that as we change things we’re listening to users, we’re looking at usage, we’re learning. And so we’re learning by doing.

[1:42] PM: Says, “Are you planning any drastic changes to come?”

PM: I mean, kind of? You know. A hundred and something people working on Tumblr *laughs* that’s their job *chuckles* is to change it and make it better. You know, we try to make changes that you all ask for, we try to do changes we think you'll like and we get it right sometimes we get it wrong sometimes, but we just always learn.

ZR: Thank you for the pizza.

PM: Thank you for the piz- ? Oh yeah. Nice *chuckles*

[2:08] PM: “We asked for a better search function.”

PM: Yeah. I agree.

ZR: That’s being worked on.

PM: Search is being worked on, right?

ZR: Yup.

PM: Actually, who is working on Search here?

ZR: There they are.

PM: Okay, we got two people here *laughs* How’s it going?

*inaudible, off-screen*

PM: It’s going well.

ZR: It’s going good.

PM: Is there anything that’s launching soon that we could preview for folks?

*inaudible, off-screen*

PM: Oh, oh yeah. Getting reblogs in search. Ought to be a pretty big one.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: But a good way, if you have ideas for Search, a great thing to do is post it to your Tumblr. *chuckles. Send us a link. We'll check it out. You know, we definitely read a lot of that stuff, and we share it in our Slack channel and things like that. So, we’re always reading Tumblr and listening to users.

ZR: Yeah. It’s a great job, we just get to use Tumblr all day long.

[3:09] PM: “Have you seen the 44 thousand note poll about the algorithm changes?”

PM: Yes. *laughs* I don’t know what it’s about though because we haven’t really changed anything. *laughs*

ZR: Yeah, we’re not getting rid of the chronological feed.

PM: Yeah, chronological feed will always be an option for people. So just, tell your friends. *chuckles* Because there seems to be a lot of misinformation. There’s things people get mad at us that we do and there’s things people get mad at us that we’re actually not doing. *chuckles* And have no plans to do, so figure that out.

PM: How many people do we have on the stream so far? Kind of curious.

[3:52] PM: “Allow us to snooze Tumblr Live indefinitely.”

PM: But then you wouldn’t be here right now.

ZR: Hmm *chuckles*

[3:57] PM: “Can we add stories to our blogs like Instagram?”

PM: Yeah. And we actually developed a story feature over on the WordPress side of things, Jetpack side. I was kinda wondering why we did it there instead of on Tumblr. *chuckles* It does seem to be like a social primitive that users expect from different networks. So yeah, would love to support something like Stories. It’s not currently on the roadmap though, so, I should be *indistinct*

ZR: We have a question that I think already scrolled by. It’s actually from one of the people we talked to yesterday when we did our trial run. BirdRhetorics.

[4:32] ZR: “How do you know that Tumblr is hard to use as discussed in the product direction post?”

ZR: *to Matt* How do we know Tumblr is hard to use?

PM: Oh! *laughs*

ZR: Because it is. It’s something that is-

PM: Thank you for the crab *laughs*

ZR: Oh! *laughs* Thank you.

ZR: We talk with a lot of users and we talk with users that have returned, people who left the site. The reason they’re leaving the site is because they couldn’t find the communities they wanted. They couldn’t figure out Search, they don’t understand trying to follow people or blogs so that their following feed actually will fill up with great stuff. So we’re just trying to make that process much easier for them so that they can have the experience that long-time users have as well.

ZR: I love these crabs.

*laughter*

[5:28] ZR: Thank you Tumblr for giving me crabs.

*laughter*

[5:33] PM: Someone says, “Would you make Live more accessible? I would stream my art but I can’t.”

PM: We’re trying to. We’ve got the OBS stuff now and you can do it from desktop.

PM: I saw kind of a bug report there go by. Did anyone catch that? Something about links to audio posts? Did someone see that go by? Do we know what this bug is?

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: What was that?

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Oh, no no no. This was about links to audio posts or something. He just reposted it? Oh, go to the bottom maybe. He just reposted-

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: I don’t know if I understand that one. Who was that? Tyote? If you could do a post about that and just tag Staff in it. And tag PhotoMatt *chuckles* as well, we’ll take a look at that.

PM: Oh yeah, we should say our Tumblr usernames by the way.

ZR: We should.

PM: I’m PhotoMatt. P-H-O-T-O-M-A-T-T

ZR: I am ZingRing. Z-I-N-G-R-I-N-G

PM: Cool.

[6:46] PM: Someone says “If you don’t like Tumblr Live, click around on people. Find people you vibe with”

PM: I agree.

[6:51] ZR: We have one here. “Is Tumblr Live gonna be going international?”

ZR: Yeah, that’s part of our plan. We just recently put into place some of the steps we need in order to roll it out in other countries so…more people will be able to have access to it if they want.

[7:11] PM: Someone says “Does Tumblr Live support OBS?”

PM: Yes, it does.

ZR: Yes, it does.

PM: Woohoo.

[7:15] ZR: Here's one. “Will you be fixing the fact that you can't zoom in on images?” Who can answer that? *inaudible, off-screen* It's already fixed.

7:32 PM: What platform’s the chip on?

[7:38] *off-screen staff member* Sorry they're probably talking about the new Lightbox feature where some zoom capabilities were different and they should now be able to pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, just as they're used to. It just rolled out, so update the app.

PM: Awesome, so if you update your app, hopefully, zoom might be working.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: And definitely run your app updates. I do it every morning, it's the first thing I do.

ZR: *chuckles*

PM: Like, I look at how I slept on WHOOP, because obviously, I don't know how I slept, I just woke up. Then I update my apps. Ah, these are going by kind of fast.

[8:12] PM: “Will there be a filter to determine bot Lives from real users”

PM: Yeah, hopefully, there's no bots. So the moderation team should pick that up if there's bots.

[8:24] PM: “Could you say why 18+ content is not allowed on the site when it does so well on other platforms?”

PM: Actually, since November of last year, we updated our guidelines so a lot more artistic presentations of the human form are allowed now. So, check out the updated guidelines. They’re a lot more in line with other services

ZR: Yeah.

PM: It's still not everything, so there's definitely other sites if you want a particular type of more hardcore content. That's probably still going to be on Twitter or Reddit or PornHub or whatever but yeah. Because Tumblr, we want to be about art and artists and stuff like for Arts. More artistic stuff, we definitely want to allow that.

[9:08]ZR: Yep. Here's one. “Is it difficult to handle a lot of incoming users, such as the ones from Reddit or Twitter?”

ZR: No, because we don't get huge influxes. People have this perception that we have massive growth right now and we really don't. So we welcome everyone with open arms. I think the thing that we need to do is improve our onboarding experience so that those new users find traction right away which is part of what that very long core product post on Staff was talking about but no. That is not an issue we currently face. What a great problem to have.

PM: By the way, I do want to recognize there was the penguin person who said Tumblr staff are heroes so…

ZR: Aw.

PM: Yay. Thank you.

ZR: *to audience* That’s you all.

*Applause*

[10:02] PM: One thing I hope you all get from this, who are watching. One, we want to correct some misinformation. For example, chronological feed is staying. It's not going away. And two, also just show that, like, there's real people behind the screen, building Tumblr, with families and feelings and dreams and ambitions and all sorts of things.

PM: And so yeah. We're trying to do more stuff in public. It's been a little challenging because a lot of it's getting misinterpreted and stuff, but we're just gonna keep trying to make things more public. We even just open-sourced our stream builder so like, how the main feed gets built. So hopefully we can open-source a lot more in the future. We want to engage with the developer community, third-party people doing things around Tumblr, and yeah, make it better and better.

ZR: I haven't been saying usernames as I've read some of the questions that are being sent to me from the feed so I'm really sorry about that. I'm gonna try to say the usernames.

[11:01] ZR: Tyote said “Could a grid view for the dashboard be implemented on desktop Tumblr like the search page has? I have all this extra screen space.”

ZR: We are doing some experiments with the different *chuckles* Better resourced, I guess, view of the dashboard that looks pretty great which I guess is not out to users yet. But more to come there for sure.

PM: Let's see, how many people do we have now? I can't see the number.

*off-screen* 302.

PM: 302, cool. Okay.

[11:45] PM: “We need hardware-level encryption.”

PM: I don't know what that means *laughs* But, okay. *laughs* Maybe we need it too, wow.

[12:02] PM: “How do you intend to help users trust the Lives, if we are keeping them?”

PM: I'm not sure if I know what that means.

ZR: I think it's a question about feeling safe using Tumblr Live. Perhaps? With data?

*chuckles at crab*

[12:23] PM: “Let's toggle off Live without a timer”

PM: Well, Live is…we're trying it out. *laughs* And in theory, this could be something that- You know, when people send gifts, we get a portion of that revenue and so it's something we're trying to help make Tumblr sustainable and allow us to invest more into the site. For, you know, getting servers, making things faster, having staff to fix bugs.

[12:51] PM: By the way, I want to address another thing that people always say whenever we do a post.

[12:56] PM: I forget what the username was but they said “Ban the Nazis.”

PM: *chuckles* Yeah. Nazi-like hate speech is definitely against the terms of service so if you see a Nazi tell us *chuckles* and we'll ban it. The Trust and Safety team on Tumblr has done a really monumental effort over the past few years to clean things up quite a bit. There is some backlog, always, but like yeah. Please report sites if you see hate speech or anything that would be against our terms of service. Which I think literal Nazism is. *chuckles*

ZR: Yeah.

[13:36] ZR: Yep, we got another question about the algorithm style Post Feed so probably bears repeating that we're not getting rid of the chronological feed. It will be its own tab, so do not worry about that.

[13: 57] ZR: Then we had another one about moderation, more transparent. And I've seen another question about this previously, too. Posts that should be fine under the new policies are still being tagged. That's from Yansie.

ZR: Yeah, and that shouldn't be happening. But humans do make mistakes so we try to fix them. It does take time, we do have a backlog, so bear with us. Stick with us, we'll try to do right by everybody.

[14:27] PM: There's a question being asked a lot about LGBT content being flagged?

PM: Yeah, Tumblr is super pro-LGBT. I think it's actually like 25 or 30 percent of our user base. So if there's a mistake in the flagging… You know, again, this is humans. So, definitely mistakes are made. Please let us know, specifically, and have to take a look at it. I wonder what the flag could have been there.

ZR: Not sure.

PM: Yeah.

[15:02] PM: So people are asking to mute Tumblr Live permanently.

PM: How much would you pay for that? *chuckles* Maybe-

*laughter*

PM: Maybe we'll make it an upgrade. Twenty dollars? Fifty dollars? Like, make me an offer. We might launch that in the Tumblr mods.

*more laughter*

PM: Okay, we got 25 there.

ZR: Going once…

PM: 500, wow! We could definitely make it giftable too. You can gift people. *chuckles* It's like an auction. 500 going once, going twice, yeah, wow.

[15:38] PM: They say “Pay streamers”

PM: Streamers can get paid actually, yeah. So, you can make money by streaming on Tumblr Live. So, that's part of the reason we were excited to try out this feature. Yeah, we launched Post Plus and other things. We're very interested in things that can get creators paid. In fact, even as we initially acquired Tumblr and during the turnaround, we actually prioritized the features that got users paid above the features that just got us paid.

[16:06] PM: Let’s see “Why can't we take usernames from older inactive accounts?”

PM: Anyone have an answer there? *silence* Sometimes we recycle usernames.

ZR: Yeah, there is a process to recycle usernames. We just need a request or we don't know that you're trying to use that username.

PM: You're “going to request Karen.” Okay, good luck.

*Laughter*

[16:40] PM: “Let Live direct stream from OBS.”

PM: OBS is supported for Live so maybe- Do we just need to like-?

ZR: On web.

PM: On web. Yes, so you can use OBS. Again hopefully, this system gets a lot more people knowing what actually is the reality.

[17:00] PM: “Why is Live stuck in portrait mode?”

PM: I think that's just how it's designed. It's a portrait experience, right?

ZR: Yeah, that's right.

[17:15] PM: “You can only use OBS for your virtual webcam on the web, not directly.”

PM: Does anyone know about that? Yes.

*Gary, offscreen* OBS can set up a virtual webcam but then you tell Live to use that webcam. But… the better way to do it through OBS is through using RTMP which I think- *indistinct*

PM: Yeah, so this is Gary. He was saying RTMP would be better and I think that's on the roadmap.

Gary: I think it's on the roadmap. Somebody who works on Live would perhaps know better when it's coming but they're working on it.

PM: Cool, and in the meantime, use the virtual webcam feature.

17:51

PM: You want the pretty-haired lady on screen, all right. That’s you, Zandy.

*Applause, Laughter*

ZR: Thank you. Thank you. Oh my God, I love it, I love flowers. Thank you.

PM: And you do have great hair.

ZR: Yeah I do.

PM: Thank you for the compliments. Thank you.

ZR: I didn't mean to say ‘I do,’ I meant to say ‘thank you.’ Here's a good one from VampSprite.

[18:26] “Can you make merch like a normal company?”

ZR: No, because we're not.

*Matt laughs*

ZR: We can make merch like Tumblr.

PM: I think we're definitely leaning into the weird,

ZR: Yeah. For sure.

PM: We're trying to be even weirder than we have been.

ZR: Let's see, uh…

[18:44] PM: People are saying “Can we keep custom themes?”

PM: Yes, custom themes are staying, so don't worry about that.

[18:53] PM: Someone's saying “Don't touch the chronological dashboard” so we'll just say it again, chronological will always be an option for y'all.

ZR: Yep.

PM: Yeah.

[19:05] ZR: Here's one, StormBlessed-Fool “It seems really difficult to appeal staff decisions such as shadowbans, content removal, etcetera. Can that be improved?”

ZR: Yeah, definitely. We are working really hard to make sure that people's content is not removed if it's not violative but we do make mistakes and we have a backlog so it takes us a while, sometimes, to realize that we have made a mistake. That's on us and we're getting better. We have a really amazing Trust and Safety team that's been working really, really hard over the last couple of years to operationalize and improve and make this a better place for Tumblr users so bear with us. I am sorry.

[19:52] PM: I don't know who Peggy is. *laughs* I guess a lot of people don't like- Peggy seems very polarizing but we don't know who she is or who they are. It's a spam account? “Peg is a troll. It keeps coming back on here on Live.” Oh.

ZR: Oh.

PM: Well I bet we can fix that.

ZR: I bet we could fix that.

PM: *chuckles* Watch out, Peggy.

*Laughter*

PM: By the way, I think I'm gonna just move my chair closer to yours then they don't have to pan the camera as much.

ZR: Okay

PM: The pretty-haired lady can be in everything.

ZR: Ooh

[20:33] ZR: “Mind if I ask” This is from WarriorPrincess666 which is a really great username “Mind if I ask why the group chat room was deleted two years ago?”

ZR: And you all have really great usernames. I am sorry for singling one person out.

PM: Just own it, that's a cool username.

ZR: It's a good username. I do not remember why we unwound-

PM: Because no one was using it. *chuckles* I think we had really high expectations for that feature and it was used a lot less. We do try to deprecate things that aren't used a lot to just, like lower the technical debt so… Yeah, now we're both in there.

ZR: Hooray

PM: High five.

ZR: We moved a chair.

PM: We moved a chair.

ZR: We can move mountains.

PM: *chuckles* Yeah. So, one thing about products and code is that every bit of code you have kind of requires maintenance and updating and, you know, sometimes things break. Or interacts in different ways. So the more complex the code base is, the harder it is to maintain. We're not great about this but- Yeah, streamlining the product you know… Someone always uses something but if something's used by just a really really really small percentage we sometimes streamline it. But I think Group is really the only thing we've done that for in a while, right?

ZR: Mm-hmm.

PM: Can y'all think of anything else we've turned off or gotten rid of? Mostly we add things.

ZR: Yeah

PM: That's why the Tumblr code base is so big.

ZR: And complex.

[22:06] ZR: Re-bee-key asked about merch. “Is there any way Tumblr could team up with more artists? I'm sure people would be more open to buying merch.”

ZR: Yeah, absolutely, and not everybody knows about this but we have this program called Creatrs. There's no O at the end, it's T-R-S at the end, Creatrs. That is where we look to artists within the Tumblr Community when brands want to work with us. We try to find people within our own Community who would like to work directly with that brand, get their work out there, build a relationship, and then we try to foster that connection. So, that is a program that not very many people know about and it's been kind of small running over the last couple years, and we want to build it back up and connect artists with brands, those who want to work with them. So, definitely want to amplify the artists on our site in ways that will work for them.

PM: Yeah. People are asking about search and we addressed that a little bit earlier. We do have some folks working on search and there's fixes coming.

[23:23] PM: There was someone named Anon that's, you know, saying that we're missing LGB tags or something like that so could someone message Anon? Like, DM them? Raise your hand if you could do that.

PM: Yes? Okay, over there? Thank you.

ZR: Thanks, Josh.

PM: Thanks, Josh. So Josh is gonna reach out to Anon and we'll try to get some more details there so we can yeah see what's going on.

ZR: That- that might be coming from the Humans account. It may, just so you know.

PM: Maybe also message TittyInfinity *chuckles* who's also reporting this. I can't believe you all just got me to say that. *laughs* I hope my mom’s not watching.

ZR: Here’s one from WormPool. Another very good username.

[24:14] “How much is coming in the way of future monetization and how will it affect the average user.”

ZR: Well, we must monetize Tumblr in some way. We have to either get to revenue neutral, where we make enough to just pay for itself. It would be nice if it made money but we're gonna do what we need to do. We don't want to do things like sell user data or make the site unusable with tons and tons of ads. So, we're going to keep experimenting with different ways to provide value to users. Matt mentioned earlier that we're trying to do more in terms of getting artists paid on the site, like Post Plus. And you know, you can give people gifts through Tumblr Live if you like what they're doing with it. So we're trying to do more things that sort of fall into that area where we can have a revenue share sort of thing. But we're also doing merch and we're selling domains. We have an ad-free subscription, we sell badges, other digital goods. We'll kind of look at everything but there's some rivers we just won't cross because we don't agree with them.

PM: And, to be honest, it has been a little tricky. A lot of the upgrades we launched, just not as many people have subscribed as we were hoping to.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: Like, we thought the no-ads upgrade, which is 30 bucks per year, would do pretty well but how many subscribers do we have for no-ads?

*offscreen* Almost 25 thousand.

PM: About 25 thousand so when you think of the millions of people that use Tumblr only 25 thousand buying the upgrade is pretty low. You can buy it for yourself, you can gift it to people. That definitely helps. To be transparent about the financial gap I think maybe David knows this. Like, what's our current- What would get us to break even? It's like 20, 25 million or-

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Yeah, so right now, we're burning. Which means spending more than we make. About 30 million per year more than we make.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: So, that's a lot. We can't do that forever and so that's why we're really trying to figure out things that y'all would value. Whether that's merch or upgrades or badges or gifts or Blaze or other things. Every little bit helps, so please if you really enjoy Tumblr and want it to stay a thriving service buy things, and ask your friends to buy things.

ZR: Yeah, we've got one here that I really like.

[27:12] Somebody write it down, from VForVincente. “Re: merch. Make socks that come in trios instead of pairs.”

*audience enthusiasm*

ZR: Let's do that.

PM: *laughs* Triple socks. Oh, that is- that's an idea.

ZR: It is. It is an idea.

*off-screen* It’s a backup sock.

PM: It's a backup sock.

ZR: It’s a backup, you always lose one.

[27:38] Anonymous asked, “Any plans for next April the 1st?”

ZR: Yes, but we won't know until, like, February.

PM: *chuckles* Someone registered PhotoMattsMom and said “I heard what you said.” That's funny. Y'all are funny. I can't believe you just created an account. Thank you for helping our registration numbers.

[28:01] ZR: *chuckles* Well, people are asking if the Live stream can be recorded.

ZR: You actually can't do that, they're totally ephemeral. That might be something that we can work on in the future but it actually isn't even possible for us right now. We don't store them they're just-

PM: Are we recording this one though? No? So this is- yeah.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: This is ephemeral.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: So it's just for y’all. Just for the 500-ish people here. Whoa, what's that say? Boujee?

ZR: Oh.

PM: Ooh. Bling bling.

ZR: *chuckles* That’s a weird gift to give.

PM: We probably just should have had someone record this on their phone or something *chuckles* Next time. This was just an experiment. Well, we might do this again.

[28:54] ZR: ArialErendeair asked “Is your plan to remain as open about future decisions that you're making for the Tumblr experience so we can provide feedback?”

ZR: Yeah, we do, we want to work in public a lot more. The core strategy post that went out yesterday is a step in that direction. In retrospect, we see how we could have improved on that messaging so it wasn't terrifying to everybody. Because we're not getting rid of the chronological feed. And could have made it a little bit more, like, punchy and maybe short. But, yeah, we're gonna try to keep doing this and do it more in public because Tumblr only exists because of the users. That's it, so we want to be in this journey with you.

PM: Yeah. Please tell your friends that chronological feed will always be an option. So yes, a lot of people- Oh thank you for the kiss there *Matt smooch sound*

ZR: I think it was for me.

PM: Oh. *laughs* Yeah, probably.

[30:03] PM: “How much are we paying the boys that come here and post emojis?”

PM: Nothing.

ZR: No.

PM: Unless they use Post Plus or something. Then they can get paid.

[30:14] ZR: DimensionalAbyss. I'm really sorry for butchering all these “How long is this going on? Please do a sleep stream.”

ZR: Absolutely not.

*laughter*

PM: What's a sleep stream?

ZR: It sounds like you stream yourself sleeping.

PM: Huh.

ZR: You can do it. I'm not doing it.

PM: I actually talk a lot in my sleep. That would be weird.

[30: 38] ZR: I'm not gonna choose this one just for the username but IntergalacticBoner asked “Any plans to expand the Help Desk? It can take more than a week to get a response from support.”

ZR: We are working all of the time to improve our processes. We have an amazing customer support team. We have amazing folks from within Automattic that help us with public support so we are trying to cut those SLAs down. An SLA is a Service Level Agreement. That's like what we promise to users as a response time. So we try to cut those response times down as much as we can. A week does seem like a long time. We can improve on that. Yeah, thank you IntergalacticBoner.

[31:34] PM: “Can we keep reblogs as they are and not condense them?”

PM: We're gonna just do some experiments with the different reblog formats and everything like that. I know that sounds scary but we also use Tumblr so if it doesn't work we'll roll it back or try something new. Everything's always a process, everything's always an experiment. Yay, Pride.

ZR: Yay.

[32:02] ZR: Trydianth asks “I buy the ad-free subscription. Can that also include other options like turning off features not like” which I think is ‘that I don't like.’

PM: Maybe, yeah. I mean, one thing that's tricky is when you add options for things it can add a lot of complexity to the app but, if you notice, a lot of the things that we've launched, we have given toggles for settings for so, in general, we're trying to be the most sort of user-controllable social network out there. And just, if we can, yeah. We'll keep trying that but, like we said, our previous approach is not working. *chuckles* I mean that Tumblr’s growth isn't where we want it to be and the revenue is not, you know. Like I said, we're 30 million below where the revenue needs to be so that's why we're trying different things to see what works.

ZR: Mm-hmm.

[32:58] ZR: “Re: Custom domains.” This is from transientURL “Do we expect to be able to host a Tumblr blog on the same domain as non-Tumblr site content?”

ZR: Salty.

*Matt chuckles*

ZR: I'm not sure I'm parsing that question.

PM: Can you embed a Tumblr blog and something with other stuff probably? Or maybe it's custom domains um-

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Second-level domains? What would be a second-level domain? Like a sub- like a subdomain? *indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Like blog dot M-A dot T-V or something? Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, definitely domain features are something we're working on and investing in.

ZR: Mm-hmm.

PM: It’s probably gonna be paid. Just so you all know.

ZR: Mm-hmm.

PM: We charge for domain mapping everything on WordPress dot com and I think we have like 300 thousand map domains so we definitely think that's going to be a good revenue stream.

[34:09] PM: “Tumblr Live is banned in Europe”

PM: It's actually not banned in Europe. We just haven't launched support in Europe yet so it's not banned that's misinformation

ZR: Yeah. And to be clear we collect the absolute minimum amount of information. We collect birth date, because you need to be over 18. And location, so that we know if you're in the US or not. And I think that's it. That's the only thing that we collect in terms of Live. We let you stream from the back camera so you never have to show your face. All the streams are ephemeral, so we don't save them. There's a lot that we try to do in the best possible way for our users' safety and health rather than just collect tons of things that get stored or that we might have to delete or be worried about.

PM: Whoa. Eagle thing, cool

PM: Very patriotic.

ZR: It's very something.

[35:18] PM: Someone’s asked why we need location.

PM: Zandy just said it. We need location because right now it's restricted to the United States so we need the location to tell between the United States.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: But hopefully that should be broader in the future. Also, sometimes that data that we collect helps us fight spammers and bots so that's another reason you sort of have some of that.

[35:43] ZR: WormPool, repeat question asker. “Would there be a way to directly donate occasionally, similar to AO3 or Wikipedia, rather than buy merch?”

ZR: We have talked about this, yeah. I thought for a while we couldn't legally because we're not a non-profit but we can, legally. So that's an option that we may look into in the future.

PM: In the meantime though, like buy the no-ads upgrade, yeah. Probably a good one.

ZR: And you can, if you really like the ads, you can turn off the no-ads upgrade

PM: Yeah.

ZR: After you buy it.

PM: That's how much we believe in user control, you can buy the no-ads upgrade and then turn the ads back on. Or you could just turn Blaze post on, which I really like. So I have the no ads upgrade but I actually turn ads on because I want to test them. *chuckles* Make sure they're good.

[36:36] ZR: Here's another one that's interesting. This is transientURL again “I've seen a lot of people worrying that, like Reddit, Tumblr has external investor pressure to monetize. Want to refute or talk about that?”

PM: Yeah, of course, we have investors. We’re a company and if we didn't have investors we wouldn't be able to spend 30 million a year *chuckles* on Tumblr. It's not just about the investors though. When we work on something we want to see the returns on it, and we want to make sure it's sustainable so that we can make sure that Tumblr’s around for many years to come. So, that's really our main focus.

[37:19] ZR: Mm-hmm. ShadowGirl7, this is one for our ads team “Can you please not have ads be super vibrant? It's really an eyesore for epileptics like me especially when there's no way to stop it” So take note, yeah.

PM: And maybe buy the no-ads upgrade. *chuckles* Because then you won't see them at all.

ZR: Or ask someone to gift you.

[37:40] PM: A lot of people are asking about multiple dashboards. And I do think account switching, which I guess would give you multiple dashboards, different following, being able to do actions with different accounts is definitely pretty high on my personal list for things I'd love to see Tumblr support. Pretty big feature, pretty complicated. But yeah. We just need to bite the elephant there. Was that a metaphor? Maybe I just made that up.

ZR: I don't think you should bite an elephant.

PM: *laughs* Would they notice?

ZR: Probably not.

[38:13] ZR: Oh, FeetAreUnderrated asked, “How large is the Tumblr staff?”

ZR: We have nearly everybody here with us this week and we have 192 people here this week so it's about 200. That's it, yeah.

PM: Yeah, that's a much better answer. I was going to say, you know, it ranges from extra small to extra extra large.

ZR: *laughs* You literally posted, like, yesterday about how many people we have.

PM: Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so I think we have 192 people here together in person, which is pretty exciting. For 59 percent of the people that are here, they've never been to a large meet-up like this so it's our first time getting to see each other.

For those who don't know, Automattic, which is the parent company of Tumblr, and Tumblr are fully distributed so people work from wherever they are in the world. And we mostly coordinate online. But getting together a few times a year is really key to sort of working, knowing each other better, developing our culture, making plans, learning from each other.

You can actually be hired at Automattic with never actually talking to someone. Actually who here was hired purely on text? *chuckles* Yeah, so that's a good chunk. It was like about a quarter of the audience was just chatting on text.

ZR: Mm-hmm

PM: Which is pretty interesting and I actually did kind of the first thousand final interviews. We called them MattChats. But then we were hiring a lot of people and I became a *indistinct* so I had to stop doing that.

Although, I had an idea the other day actually inspired by a donut shed I had for… missing the name but who was it? Well, he was telling me that, I guess he read about the MattChat and he was really disappointed he didn't get one. So I thought that for existing Automatticians we put up something in announcements. You could leave an emoji if you want to MattChat. *laughs* Don't worry, doesn't actually- *chuckles* You're already hired, so it doesn't change that. But I thought we could do two options. It could just be, like, more of a donut where we just hang out and, um. Or if you want a classic-style text one, I still have all the questions I ask and everything. I kind of had a little bit of a format. I would vary it but I had some sort of standard questions I like to ask people.

One of my favorites was ‘If you could require all of Automattic to read a single book what would that be?’ And they got so many different answers and I actually used it to read a bunch. So the books that people would recommend, I would often check out, and really led me down some really interesting things I never would have read otherwise. That's how I read the ‘Bhagavad Gita.’ There was a sort of an interpretation called ‘My Gita,’ which I really learned a lot from that. And, so yeah. It's been kind of a fun thing. It's always been on my to-do to, like, actually collate all the answers. There were some common ones. What was it ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ was a really common one. Who's that guy, the author? David Allen or something or-

ZR: Yeah.

PM: Covey. Yeah, Stephen Covey.

[41:54] ZR: Here's a question. JasmineFlowers or maybe Yasmin Flowers “Are all of you new to Tumblr?”

ZR: No.

PM: No, I was actually a super early Tumblr user.

ZR: Yeah, we have a lot of people here in the audience, that you can't see, who have been users of Tumblr for as long as there's been a Tumblr.

PM: Yeah. Can someone look up my user ID, actually? I'm kind of curious. David, of course, is user id1 *chuckles*

ZR: Right.

PM: David Karp, the illustrious founder of Tumblr, yeah.

*offscreen* Today it's five.

PM: My user number is five?

*indistinct, offscreen*

PM: Yeah, yeah, my WordPress user ID is five.

ZR: That makes more sense.

PM: I think Danica is number one. But yeah, look me up in the Tumblr panel.

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: What was that?

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: So I was the 2007th user of Tumblr. *chuckles*

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Oh year 2007. 72078. Yeah, so seventy-two thousand. Yeah, so one of the first that was definitely pretty early. Because Tumblr launched in 2007, right? Yeah. Actually, interesting fact. Tumblr used to have a blog on WordPress. Which I thought was pretty cool for its first X number of years. Even though Tumblr and WordPress used to be competitors, we always had a lot of respect for each other. I always took a lot of inspiration from Tumblr and I'm really glad to be able to work on it now.

[43:33] ZR: There's one addressed directly to you. UnadulteratedPenguinCreation says, “Hey Matt do you read fanfiction?”

PM: Oh no. Sorry. Sometimes, I've been linked things and I'll browse it and sometimes there's memes and I'm always trying to figure out what they are. You know I only get so much time to read books so I definitely have a pretty huge backlog. Right now I'm reading Alain de Botton’s uh ‘School of Life’ which is really nice. Probably next I'm gonna read the next book in the ‘Silo’ series, Hugh Howey’s.

ZR: I read fanfiction, not that anyone asked me.

PM: Any favorites? Anything you want to suggest?

ZR: No. No, I'm not gonna suggest anything. That is for me, on my time

[44:37] ZR: From Maiosx “What is the best blog on Tumblr?”

ZR: Oh, there's so many good ones.

PM: I really like @everythingfox.

ZR: Oh yeah, that's so cute.

PM: Yeah, cute animals.

ZR: Yep.

PM: I don't know if it's the best one but yeah. I actually would love to have, like, folders or ways I could have different lists of things I follow because my feed is a little schizo. It definitely bounces around a lot and I do really appreciate some new features. Like, ‘Things You Might Have Missed’ or other things because I would find I would actually miss a post from my friends who might only post once every week or two or something and so I really appreciated that I-

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: Sorry, what was that? How much money am I willing to pay for not missing my-? Well, 30 million so far *laughs* per year. Paying a lot for it. *chuckles*

[45:33] ZR: We've been getting a question here that's surfaced “Can we talk about the reblog chain thing?” “Can the removal of reblog chains be an optional feature rather than a permanent one?”

ZR: We made some changes to the reblog chain so that things were more consistent across all platforms and would work more like you would expect them to work. Unless you have used Tumblr for a really long time. So, everything we do is an experiment. We try things, we see how well they work, functionally, if people actually will use them. And then we make changes and adjustments and some you can see right away and some you can't see right away. Some we have to put on the shelf and revisit later, as other priorities come up. But any change that we make, I wouldn't consider 100 percent set in stone. Except that we are not getting rid of the chronological feed. As a reminder.

PM: I'm gonna actually open Tumblr. I'm kind of curious what the banner looks like for this. Live with the Tumblr CEO, cool. Oh, joining stream.

ZR: Uh-oh

PM: Inception

[47:03] ZR: LMFAO said, “Do you see streaming to become the main part of Tumblr going forward?”

ZR: I don't know, it's another experiment. If it was insanely popular and people were doing really cool things with it very consistently at a high quality, sure. But it doesn't have high usage right now so it's probably just gonna be something that we continue to play with and experiment with until it either clicks or we go a different way.

PM: By the way, I saw someone said I casually used a slur. Was that schizo?

ZR: Oh, I bet it was.

PM: I apologize, I mess up sometimes. So I won’t do that again.

ZR: Thank you.

PM: Thank you for pointing that out to me.

[47:50] PM: “Are there any LGBT people or neurodivergent folks helping make decisions”

PM: Oh yeah *laughs* We have a ton.

ZR: Yeah.

[48:02] ZR: The-Trans-Fiendling. “Are you going to fix your algorithms so they don't disproportionately target trans users to flag them as mature?”

ZR: We will check into it, make sure that isn’t happening. Or, if it is, that we’ll make changes. We definitely do not want to marginalize trans people, push them off the site, make them feel like this is not the place for them. That's not what Tumblr is about so wherever we have screwed up we'll try to fix it and make sure that perception matches reality as well.

[48:50] PM: “It's basically a stockholder update, it's not going to be entertaining.”

PM: Huh, that's funny.

[49:00] PM: So, I saw someone ask an interesting question. Sorry, I missed the username, but “How do we balance attracting new users versus supporting features that other social network sites support?”

PM: This is actually a really interesting product to design because I do think that there is an expectation. Like, obviously y’all probably also have or have used Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snap, all the other social networks. And I do think there is an expectation around certain things, like maybe messaging or following, liking, whatever that we need to support. Tumblr has always been sort of on the forefront of innovating, actually, for social networks. So a lot of things that we launched first are later adopted by other social networks. So, I think that's just kind of how technology works, right? Sometimes, we come up with a cool new idea and other people copy us. Sometimes, other people come up with cool ideas, and we can be inspired by that. Maybe we implement it like they did or maybe we riff on it and sort of do our own take on it. It's part of the fun.

[50:05] PM: “What's your favorite XKit feature?”

PM: Do we have April here, actually?

*off-screen* No.

ZR: No.

PM: No? Aw, she couldn’t make it. Yeah, April, one of the XKit- there's multiple versions of XKit, right? Which one does she do? I forget the name but, yeah, actually one of the developers of XKit now works on Tumblr. So I think that's pretty cool.

[50:30] ZR: HomemadeMonsterPants, killing it. “What's the best method of sending feedback?”

ZR: If you have an actual like you found a bug or something is broken, which is the same as a bug, uh send a ticket to Support. If there's things that you just want to give us feedback on you can ping our Work in Progress, WIP group. There's our Humans- @humans blog. You can send me stuff, you can send Matt stuff. When I get stuff that's particularly hateful, I do ignore it. So, if you have a point you really want to make, try not to skew too heavily into how much you hate me personally, and then I'll try to address it publicly.

PM: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, is that the saying?

ZR: That's- I don't know why you want to catch flies at all.

PM: “Can you remind us of your usernames?” Sure PhotoMatt P-H-O-T-O-M-A-T-T

ZR: And I'm ZingRing, Z-I-N-G-R-I-N-G

[51: 47] ZR: LiveThrowaway, “Have you considered improving the way you orient new users to Tumblr's unique features.”

ZR: Yes, that's something we want to do. We want to keep what's special about Tumblr and what makes it so great, enhance those things. Which is not code for making Tumblr like every other social media site. Enhance those things, but also make it super easy and obvious for new users to get going really quickly with the communities that they care about and the content they care about.

[52:20] PM: Someone said why we're focusing on new users versus existing users?

PM: We focus on both.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: Retention is just as important as new user acquisition. Anyone will tell you that.

ZR: Yeah. Yeah, we look at churn, we look at how many users are coming back, you know, at two days, three days, seven days, thirty days. We want the experience to be really good for both those groups, including the people who have been here with us since the very beginning. I don't think that improving things for new users is mutually exclusive. Like, we can make things good for existing users too, and improve that experience as well. Or give them more options to enjoy Tumblr the way that they would like to.

[53:07] PM: “…be a badge for people who've been here for a certain amount of time?”

PM: Yeah, I think we'll definitely do badges for tenure. I think that's pretty cool.

ZR: Actually I think that's, well…

PM: What's that?

ZR: More to come.

PM: More to come, yeah. Excited for more badges, yeah.

[53:23] PM: “Are custom themes staying around?”

PM: Yes, they are. Chronological feeds and custom themes are staying around. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. *chuckles*

[53:35] ZR: Karennnnn said, three, four Ns at the end of that “I would like to have music play in the background of my blog, kind of like Myspace.”

ZR: Right on.

PM: You can do that on a custom theme, right? If you do some HTML, you could autoplay some music.

*offscreen* Yes

ZR: Yes.

PM: Yeah.

[53:58] ZR: WolvesAndVisions, “Have you all considered going to conventions to advertise in the host booths?”

ZR: We have.

PM: Yeah, weren’t we just-? Didn’t we do one?

ZR: We were just somewhere. We were at Vidcon. I think we’re going to ComicCon

PM: Ooh.

ZR: New York ComicCon, we'll be there.

PM: Nice, I saw some thumbs up over there. Yeah.

ZR: Our amazing team.

PM: You “would love to host a Tumblr con?” Cool, I'll go to it.

ZR: Yeah, what's your address? *Laughter* We'll be right there.

PM: I do want to do more events in our office space in New York City. Yeah, try to host happy hours, Tumblr meet and greets. There's also a really cool coffee shop downstairs called Cafe Lyria and I think that I want to do some sort of integration with them. Or, like, if you've posted to your Tumblr the past day you get a 10 percent discount or something.

[54:54] ZR: SpectralVulture asks “Where is the ball pit?”

ZR: You can't see it, it's in a room just off stage that way.

PM: Oh, really? It was on stage a minute ago. It's kind of small though. It was kind of a-

ZR: It was a nod. It's a nod to a ball pit.

PM: It was a nod to the ball pit, yeah. I think Gary might be getting it. Someone maybe hold the door for him.

[55:18] ZR: Catboy-Dysphoria. “Are there any changes being considered for side blogs? Ideas for improving them or just changes.”

ZR: We know that side blogs and that whole experience is really uneven and not that great so that is something we would like to improve. Make them more like first-class citizens on the site rather than-

PM: You asked for it. Tada!

ZR: There it is.

*Applause, laughter*

PM: That's a ball bucket. Yeah, it honestly is. Maybe I can juggle.

ZR: This is making me very uncomfortable.

PM: Not so much. Sorry, we're not real entertainers. We just make software.

ZR: Yeah, we are not good at this.

PM: We should also show them the Tumblr blankets. Can someone grab me one of those or hold it up? We have some super cool swag just for people who are here at the meet-up. They're out? There's some in here. But I don't wanna- then the balls might fall down. Anyone have a spare blanket on them? No. We'll get one.

ZR: Oh there's some, if you look at the #staffcon2023 tag, some people have posted their blankets that they got here. We're at time, but I want to do one more.

PM: Sure, yeah, and then we'll wrap it up there. By the way, thank you everyone for joining. Oh gosh, I guess we're up to 765 now. Wow, so cool.

[56:56] ZR: That is really cool. It's a streamer, Tumblr Live question from Tyote. Sorry if I'm saying it wrong. “Could it ever be possible for streamers to share one Tumblr Live instance to collaborate?”

ZR: Maybe not the way you're thinking. I'm not sure. We do have an option for two streamers to be on screen at the same time so that does exist. If that's what you're looking for, yes, we have that. And, if you're thinking of something else, then you might need to send in a more detailed request.

PM: Cool, well thank you all. Also, thank you for all these gifts.

ZR: Yeah, they’re very fun.

PM: Okay wow, UFOs now.

ZR: Yeah

PM: Was that a- wow! We just abducted a fox or something.

ZR: More crabs.

PM: *chuckles*

ZR: *gasps* Oh

PM: A turkey-

ZR: That's dark.

PM: -In the oven *laughs* I guess it’s escaping, yeah.

ZR: Yay, I like that one.

PM: Thank you all for joining. This was an experiment.

ZR: Yeah.

PM: We might do it again, I don't know. We’ll see. We'll talk about it afterward. What do you all think? Should we do one of these again?

*applause*

ZR: Alright, sounds good.

PM: And also, we'll figure out how to record it so we can post it for people who couldn’t be here and other things that are-

ZR: Not in this country

PM: Cool, yeah. Thank you all for using Tumblr. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for being passionate about it. Thank you for the feedback and we will do our darndest to make the best possible product for y'all.

ZR: Yeah. Keep caring.

PM: Alright, bye-bye.

*applause*

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