#in cases where I could I've linked directly to your blogs

[hellsite-detective]

good day hellsite detective

i hope this ask finds you in good times. i came here with a humble request of finding a post which i cannot even say if it still exists here.

as seen on the picture, the only way i could find it was through reddit. as i said, this is my request which i hope you could answer(?).

with utmost gratitude and wish of great luck

Dr Fox

i've found in my work that a post on this hellsite is never truly gone, you just gotta know where to look. thankfully, this one was gonna be rather easy...

my client handed me this photo. my first step was to go directly to the addresses mentioned in the photograph. unfortunately, those searches were turnin' up blank. so, back to the drawin' board, i went down to the Search Bar to ask Google for the phrase "ouch too hot" from the final blog in the chain. they handed me the link without too much trouble. i filed it away back at my office.

here you are! i never knew this about nerve endings that's really interestin'! have a great day, Doctor Fox!

Post Case: Closed

#ive been listening to a lot of ok goodnight #so theres really only one thing i think about when i read 'fox' anymore oops #ask #hellsite detective #post case closed

[scoonsalicious]

Update

Alright! I've been doing some updating. All the links in each part and the Masterlist should be updated now (if you find one that doesn't work the way it should, just let me know!)

And I've gone through the tag list requests and added those who have asked to be added. If you've asked and I haven't added you yet, there are one of two things that could be going on: 1) Your request got buried in my inbox, in which case I apologize and ask you to please resend your ask, and 2) Tumblr will not let me tag your blog for some reason. Please check the sample tag list below, where I have noted the individuals Tumblr won't let me tag.

Uncomfortable, Part 5 is coming in a few minutes!

Taglist: (Please let me know if you’d like to be added!) @jmeelee @cazellen @mrsbuckybarnes1917 @blackhawkfanatic @buckybarnessimpp @hayjat @capswife @itsteambarnes @marygoddessofmischief @sebastians-love @learisa @lethallyprotected @rabbitrabbit12321 @buckybarnesandmarvel @fanfictiongirl77 @calwitch @fantasyfootballchampion @selella @jackiehollanderr @wintercrows @sashaisready @missvelvetsstuff @angelbabyyy99 @keylimebeag @maybefoxysouls @vicmc624 @j23r23 @wintercrows @crist1216 @cjand10 @pattiemac1@les-sel @dottirose @winterslove1917 @harperkenobi @ivet4 @casey1-2007 @mrsevans90 @steeph-aniie @bean-bean2000 @beanbagbitch

Tumblr will not let me directly tag the following: @marcswife21 @erelierraceala @jupiter-107 @doublejeon @hiqhkey @unaxv @brookeleclerc

#unwanted update #unwanted

[matan4il]

Hello!

I saw your post where you spoke about the 911's cast and writers being aware of Buddie, and the explicit support from some of the cast for Canon!Buddie.

I am quite new to the fandom and so I was wondering if there were any links you could source for this? I am genuinely curious :)

Funnily enough, I started 911 after loving LS, and saw a lot of buddie content on 911 blogs. I figured it was typical queerbaiting (tumblr 2012 era was ✨️ traumatising ✨️ and so resolved not to ship them.

But then I watched the show and yeah…there were definitely interesting choices made that make Buddie such an intricately beautiful ship. It's a slow burn to rival all slow burns :fire:

Needless to say, I'm now 100% on board!

Hi lovely Nonnie and welcome to the fandom! :D I hope you enjoy everything about it and I am so glad to hear you're on board! *hugs*

Okay, for links... TBH I mostly remember things as they happen, I'm less into saving links, but for you I made the effort, I traced my own steps (who knew I actually remembered where I yelled about certain things two and a half years ago? The power of Buddie), and found the source to the stuff I had in mind when I said Ryan, Oliver, JLH and Gavin have all shown support for Buddie. Her we go...

Let's start with Gavin! Obviously it was explained to him in age-appropriate terms, so take that into account, but still, look at how pure his response is (interview from Oct 2021):

And then they went and they filmed the lasagna scene in 601. You can't tell me that doesn't mean anything!

Now Oliver and Ryan have both expressed support for Buddie more than once, for example you can find my post showing how they were the ones who named our ship! In terms of official interviews, they've mostly given answers that are noncommittal but supportive, stuff along the lines of making sure they don't raise fans' expectations (in case it doesn't happen), but also letting us know they do like the enthusiasm for Buddie, and would be cool if 911 went that way. So most are kind of... let's say diplomatic. I will, however, throw in this live that Ryan did where at first, he had a few answers of that vanilla sort (encouraging the shippers, not promising anything, leaving room for Buddie to happen, but also leaving room for fans who don't want Buddie, and sort off summarizing with, "We'll see what Tim writes"). But then he got a question about Abby and I don't think he could help it, the Buddie shipper just jumped out of him, which I love. I edited and uploaded it to YouTube for you, since stupid Tumblr only allows me to directly upload one vid a post here:

Lastly, but maybe my personal fave, in May 2020, a gay fan of JLH uploaded to his personal IG account a video that he asked her to film with a message for his husband's bday. Here's the relevant part of the vid which I've edited and uploaded for you, where JLH is basically being all of us:

BTW, this is also a reply to the Nonnie who sent this ask:

I know about Ryan, Oliver and JLH but when did Gavin say anything about that?

I hope I managed to answer both of you! Have a great day, and as always, here's my ask tag.

#buddie #911meta #buddie meta #911 meta #9-1-1 #evan buckley #eddie diaz #oliver stark #ryan guzman #jennifer love hewitt #gavin mchugh #911cast #911 cast #ask #anon ask #mbm #911onabc #911 on abc #911abc #911 abc

[burinazar]

what motivates you artistically? :3

well right now blelaf mainly. no ok hang on. alright. so.

when i was really young i had this feeling like if we could all just understand one another, if there was a perfect way to beam your thoughts and feelings into someone's head, it would fix almost everything re conflicts and human suffering. (naive obviously but this was what i thought lol.) when i started to be aware of what it was to read good books and look at good art it felt like in some ways the closest we could come to fully articulating an idea, a moment, a feeling, and placing it in its entirety into someone's mind. relatedly, uh, bad stories/art that didn't seem to respect their audience pissed me off at the squandered opportunity (sorry the snobbery came out sorry) and made me think, dammit, the audience and types of people evoked within this deserve better and i'm gonna try. with the combo of these two things it was like ..okay i'm going to start writing and drawing. it was all about stories ideas concepts. oh and also i really liked rodents and wanted to draw them as often as possible lol. i drew so fucking many rodents. gah. these concepts were no joke deeply linked for me because as a child i genuinely felt like the bad rap rodents get from people unthinkingly condemning them via stereotypes was a symptom of a societal lack of empathy and consideration. (possibly terry pratchett's fault)

(could not locate early rat art at this moment but here's relevant scribbling. i was nine i think.)

 tl;dr plunging themes and concepts i find interesting; communicating them to other people. (sometimes the concept is admittedly not highbrow. sometimes it is very silly. sometimes it is 'hey ! it would be hot if this happened to b*laf'.) it can be hard to reconcile the desire to 'communicate' via art/writing with some of my work just not having much of an audience or even feeling like i don't want to share it for various reasons lol, but in those cases i frame it to myself as, the effort of presenting the idea was enjoyable in and of itself, an act of personal communication between me and the subject or content of the work even if the thing itself will never be shown to another soul : v anyway fanwork can be a neat way to do that because it's like shared muses or canvases where what you see in them or love about them is already partially pre-communicated to people and you can hit the ground running on evoking emotions, concepts and narratives using the shared frame of reference, as well as skewing and transforming said frame as needed. btw i found another drawing of me and the sages that i didnt use in the other post so here it is

there have been many periods of my life when i was making more original work, though. (i'm sure i've said this many times now but before the sages i had a very comparable attachment to a couple of my OCs.) i also had a pretty terrible experience with fandom around middle school that sort of drove me away from heavily engaging for a long time; i was still in fandoms but basically never shared my writing outside of like PMs and servers. that's part of why my current abyss bullshit is so precious to me and also why i can get protective over it; it pretty much singlehandedly brought me back to the Blessings and Curses of being directly engaged in sharing a lot of fan content publicly. (man for a person who doesnt like bondrewd i do quote him a lot unfortunately.)

so anyway. yes. uhh sorry that was really long. i sort of just like blogging haha thank you very much for the ask! < 3

[orangezinnia]

Marius's Mechanism, and speculation on its bioengineering

so, the elephant in the room. who built Marius's mechanism? how, exactly, does it keep him alive, if it isn't by Dr. Carmilla's masterwork?

today, i seek not to answer those questions. instead, easier ones! such as "what type of microelectrodes are used for somatosensory" and "where does osseointegration begin, and would there be wireless myoelectric leads?"

should this have probably waited until TDOBVR was released, so i could obtain potential new and updated details on the workings of Marius's brachial mechanism? no! 'cause i am not nearly that patient! anyway, 7.5k words and 3 distinct Sections under the cut!

(and for those of you who don't have the time to read 7.5k, there's a TLDR at the very very end!)

CW's for: avid descriptions of surgical procedures, medical injuries, generally invasive and fleshy experiments.

Sections-

How does it doggone move? an introduction to our dilemma - creating an external power source - alternative compliance designs in the fingers

How does it flippin' feel? peripheral nerve electrodes - reproducing bidirectional feedback - the epic highs and lows of highschool osseointegration

Why the shit does it do that? vestigial features - SKIN - closing statments and TLDR

but! before making like intrepid heros and striding into the treacherous heath of biomedical and neuroprosthetic jargon, it'd do well to get a refresher on what little lore there is to know Marius's mechanism so far, as like scavengers upon a tragedy, each scrap is sure to have its use. the checklist isn't long, but i'm enamoured with every bit of it-

Alongside Raphaella, (and potentially Tim), it wasn't created or implanted by Doc C. src: tumblr

Whereas the mechs normally 1) heal on command or instantly, 2) don't get hurt at all, or 3) may ignore a wound at leisure, Marius only "regenerates [his kneecaps] when he dies" src: Kofi's twitter

The casing of his fingers are occasionally "organic". src: Kofi's twitter (i still adore the insistence that the mechs aren't human. makes it lovingly impossible to humanize them!)

The surgical procedure, or perhaps the interface styling, that anchored Marius to his mechanism was "botched". src: Kofi's blog post about TDOBVR

Marius "always approached the concept of immortality with a little bit more skepticism than the rest of [The Mechanisms]". src: DTTM :(

way hey, look! i've got links this time!

so, How does it doggone move?! in this case, the TDOBVR post can half-help with that! (and count your lucky stars about it, too). directly quoted-

"Byron [Marius] is from a world that has devolved through an endless war of attrition. Once highly advanced, technology has regressed to circa 18th century fare..."

meaning, since we don't know where or who he got the arm from, its composition is either really advanced, or hilariously crude. but it would seem- or, i thought- if this is the same arm that's going to keep him alive for eons upon eons through supernatural powers, it's likely to be the same sort of technology which constitues those big mechas.

then, you know, i was all ready to explain to you lot about shape memory polymers, and heat wire electrodes, and the many plus sides of artifical muscle fibers, including but not limited to tolerance strain, industrial-like strength, and being the one of the most lightweight options when it comes to mass-producible robotics...

...and then i realized- i'm going too easy on him! what are the chances that Marius is receiving the "leading innovation"? nope! more likely, he's getting acquainted with pneumatic concepts from 1910's Germany that flunked! haHA!

oh, i mean that by the way. here it is-

[ID: A black and white conceptual schematic of a compressed gas-powered hand from 1919, showing a thumb-side and top-down sketch. Top down, there are four parallel cylinders in the palm, but complex gear systems only in the index and thumb. An airline, captioned "Luffzufuhr", comes up from the wrist. Thumb-side, the gear systems are clearer, as is a fifth cylinder for the thumb. /end ID]

this diagram, and that single annotation of "luffzufuhr", translating from German to "air supply", is literally all i can find about it. thankfully, there's at least one other research paper who has attempted to revive this general concept, which makes things much easier for me! both by way of not having to figure it out all by myself, and not having to choose between 300 different styles of motor systems. yippie!

to lay some basic groundwork- actuators, in the application of motorized prosthetics, operate as the replacement for muscles, providing power and resistance for an everyday range of motion- linear, rotary, oscillatory. accordingly, when looking at which actuation systems garner the most praise for prosthetic limbs, one of the first things you'll see is how sleek and precise they are, since jankiness is usually the biggest giveaway that a technology won't be human compatible.

and it's an important factor, but only half of the problem. or, well, the paradigm. it's one that's formed by no fault of our own, and bested even the most funded, functional, state-of-the-art arms. that is, dexterity vs. durability, where the more components a prosthetic requires, the more fragile it becomes. the tougher its materials are, the less agility is afforded.

generally, people who want a "tool" are going to go for the stronger one, because if a prosthetic can't hold up to the stress and strain of the human condition, then its practicality is kind of worth jack and shit.

the pneumatic arm zeros in on this shortcoming of strength, since its simplistic components- a piston pushing against a spring within a hollow cylinder, bolstered by air- need only an increase in PSI to be faster, and are stronger against torque and backlash, giving it that advantage over electric motors.

they also don't draw current when retracting, since the spring elements naturally return to position, but their ability to pull all that power means they won't get shocked under a sudden or demanding influx. though, these plus sides are often achieved at the same cost of a heavy weight and excessive size, usually in response to supplying an appropriate power source. vapor is a bit harder to shuttle along than an electrical current, you know?

but unlike their electric counterparts, the fuel being a detached compromise makes this much more resolveable. and so, we're off on our merry way to make Marius far more steampunk than i initially planned! wahoo!

one of the factors necessitating a bulk-up is getting a servo-like control of the air valves, or servovalves, to fine tune motion and pressure more deliberately. it seems hard pressed to happen on a smaller scale at all, let alone while still packing a bigger punch than electric.

funnily, the way the paper phrases these drawbacks tends to raise the problem in the same paragraph that they solve it. "ah, unfortunately, there are so small-scale high peformace servovalves... fortunately, our team invented small-scale high performance servovalves." summarized, it's a rotary, four-way motor for the gas, compacted to roughly the size of a AA battery. now That's efficiency!

they seemed pretty proud of that, and i do think that Marius's arm would make use of something akin to those, though for us, the REAL focus is the fuel!

like i said, in terms of energy sourcing, gas cartridges have largely been regarded as a poor means. in those pioneer attempts of the early to mid 1900's, the CO2 they used was a limited resource, due to expense, and the quantity demands for a full day's power. add in the heavy bulk of steel canisters, and we don't have a very pretty picture for mobility.

but this obstacle is taken care of pretty smoothly, too, by switching to a liquid monopropellant as a gas generator. in this case, it's 70 percent hydrogen peroxide, which has a hissy fit when it has to buddy up with a catalyst, and spits out more energy than the liquid-to-gas phase change of liquid CO2. the catalyst, by the way, is iridium, typically known for its durability as a metal, but its decomposition under acid is used in the- get this- the Space Industry for propulsion.

yeah, that's right! Marius's arm is a low-grade ROCKET!

because of this drastic improvement, the tank for the hydrogen can stay at about 1 / 5th the size of what the CO2 would be, while manifesting the same power, keeping it nicely in a lightweight and anthropomorphic form. (said power, according to the paper, is comparable to skeletal muscle!)

then, with a setup of 200ml monopropellant cartridge, fuel lines, and a pack of catalyst pellets as the power behind the actuator's piston movement, and the servovalves as modulators to the incoming vapor flow, a choroid of surprisingly aesthetic stainless steel tubes is what carries that oxygen gas to the pneumatic cylinders. (Not a different thing than the actuators, as i learned the hard way).

they're also taking great care to assure us how NOT flammable the propellant is, despite being, you know, rocket-grade hydrogen peroxide. i'm sure this has no implications for Mr. Raum whatsoever!

the downsides to this way of powering his arm aren't many, but in the shadow of their silent, stable, battery-powered bretherin, the nitpicks include-

- exhaust products (ooh, dieselpunk...)

- audible exhaust noise (ooh, steampunk...)

- some unpredictable internal heat (ooh, hot...topic?)

and all of these, conveniently, could compile their inconveniences to explain away the arm cuff criss-cross laces by translating them in-universe as vent slats for exhaust outlets!

on that note, i genuinely enjoy postulating on what shortcomings the mech's -anisms could have. like, jonny's heart (~steel) weighs six pounds, nastya's blood is too dense and likely causes spPOTS (space POTS), ashes's lungs might be prone to clotting (damaged endothelial response), ivy's brain is. uh. well she already can't remember dog from shit of her past. brian's joints (metal-bound) could be fucky! oh, to be a new fan theorizing on all their faults again...!

ahem, anyway. when i was still considering artificial muscles for the articulation of Marius's extremeties, particlarly what those 4 bolts on the back of the costume's hand might signify, i first imagined linear actuators tugging a false tendon strung through his digits. this, as well, turned out to be the same "fully compliant" friction design of the gas-actuator prosthetic, just with electronic back-hand linears switched out for pneumatics in the wrist.

a.k.a, he'd have Marionette Fingies. and, truth be told, it's hard to find a hand that obeys these specifications i'm getting from two different directions- follow the pneumatics, but give Marius an arm that can at least maneuver a violin bow- without coming across strange trade-offs like "we're working on making the fingers move independently" or "if you lean on this arm it'll snap-crackle-pop fucking die"

but! this is where 2009 concepts that die ignoble deaths under the technological onslaught that was the 2010's come quite in handy! (get it?) under the work of the RoMeLa team at Virginia Tech, they led the innovation of a robotic hand roughly following the same principles of "air pressure controls grip", committing to a simplicity of lower pressure = lighter grip, and higher pressure = a tighter, "firm grip that could rip out a human's windpipe."

(editor's note: while the CNET author may be biased on that front, it is, indeed, applicable to the physical demands of Marius's job.)

but this time, in order to coordinate flexion and extension of the fingers, the compressed air fills up corrugated tube actuators (built like miniature accordions) spanning the length of the digit. however, it's pertinent to comment that the gas-actuated arm explicitly does not use compressed air, and i've decided the same holds true for whatever version of this build Marius would use. the four bolts, then, are likely some cylinders or servovalves to regulate the gas expenditure.

it's purportedly "strong" under this lack of linear actuators or motors to strain, and dextrous at the exclusion of "tendon" strings or gears, as is common for most prosthetic hands on the market. feedback sensors for grip and proprioreception work in tandem with the extent of pressure, which is already much more than the highly underactuated hand of the original monopropellant arm, and further awards a gentleness fit to handle raw eggs and lightbulbs.

hmm... with one catch. unlike the self-awarded praise of our essay's predecessor, this portion might be a bit weighty for Marius? its original creation saught to eventually appendage the hand to a separate ongoing robotics project of theirs, but the team deemed it "too heavy", and so it was subsided (cough, discarded, cough) into a separate project.

yet, this isn't exactly a downside, 'cause remember! Marius's tenuous grasp on reality (as per the TDOBVR blog post) doesn't come from nowhere! eons-long pain from an inordinately heavy prosthetic would drive anyone up the wall, i think! although, they theorized that a hardier material, such as carbon fiber, could do more favours toward ease of replacement and overall weight. not that we're too worried about that ;>

in general, by the way, i think the casing (cosmetic hard shell that covers all these inner components) of Marius's arm IS carbon fiber. most real-world casings are plastic, or aluminum, and it gets into a tricker area once you start trying to replicate skin. but for now, that material figures to be a pretty easy mention, since it's well known for being Strong As Steel But Lighter, the molding process is variable and easy, and comparably more forgiving to deformation from everyday wear.

anyway, i like the RoMeLa's hand especially because, on the sparse but official page for the hand, it even advertises a potential application in "Hazardous environment operation" and "Entertainment", which if i'm not mistaken, is Marius's middle name (hyphenated.)

oh, and guess what the protoype's acronym is! too late, i'm telling you- it's the "Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments," or RAPHaEL. ah? ah, get it? like la Cogni- [i am dragged off-screen like a dead extra]

here's the beaut in action, too! what a charmer. i think Marius would love her. i may or may not be projecting.

it was very very interesting to touch on something that hasn't really been feasibly explored before, because in the event of making it work, we find ourselves in a beautiful gray area of "how!" and "why?", which i think is perfect for the technological stance of Marius's- sorry, Byron's era.

i'll do you the favour of linking the IEEE video that shows the gas-actuated fucker actually in motion too, because the beginning positively oozes 2008 "The Future Is Here" vibes

also, a quick credit to that crop of Ruth's art below the fingers tweet, whose depiction of Marius's arm with steel piping very much helped solidify the idea of throwing all that advanced technology into the garbage disposal!

but, How does it flippin' feel? first off, it feels weird to use flippin' instead of a swear, hold on- fuck! fuck! there we are. balance restored.

actually, let's take a closer look at that "botched" line.

"One of the first things I decided when creating Marius is that the effects of his (probably botched) mechanisation and his advancing years have left him with a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality..."

that doesn't give us much detail, does it? commendably so, seeing as it's a spoiler-free rundown, but that dissonance between whether it was the surgical manner or the internal mechanics that render "botched" an apt descriptor kind of worried me. i mean, how would i narrow down which configuartion worked best for him, when even the lore doesn't have his best interests at heart?

and, you know what? the question kind of answered itself! what we're capable of in the real world, right now, is genuinely pretty cool, but remains unusually limited.

i think our best example of this is the microelectrode array! the way we're using them, microelectrodes, in short, (get it?), are a rather direct interface with the peripheral nervous system on the cellular level, communicating bidirectionally (translating and sending) sensory, motor, and electrical signals with the axons they're implanted in or around.

there's different types, whose physical attributes determine their strengths and weakness per application. the one that we're looking at today is an "intraneural", meaning its needles physically pierce the nerve sheath.

did i say pierce? i meant stabs it clean through the middle.

[ID: A zoomed-in screenshot on a simplistic diagram of two intraneural electrode styles. The nerves are cylindrical, yellow, and transparent. To the left, labelled "D", a flat gray electrode cuts the nerve perpendicular. To the right, labelled "E", something akin so a slanted bed of nails is embedded up to the square base. /end ID.]

(the one to the left is our guy, transverse intrafascicular multichannel electrode! the cutie right beside him is the USEA, Utah Slanted Electrode Array, which i personally headcanon Nastya as having. talk about metal!)

i'd make a running joke where we call this microelectrode TRANS, but unfortunately, pride month is over, therefore its actual acronym is TIME. you're free to imagine that i've made an awesome pun on "bidirectional", however.

the more broadly discerning that these electrodes are, the more invasive their design is- for example, bed-of-nails USEA has some 100 channels, while a C-FINE (imagine a tiny clasp, gently squeezing the nerve) may have only 8 or 16. while TIME doesn't fair much better with 10 electrodes, and its cross-section style implantation may look a tad horrific (which is exactly why i chose it), its wider spatial range of fascicles allows it to get more picky during recruitment.

it also seems to be pioneered specifically with prostheses interfacing in mind, where most TIME studies (as per a May 2018 report) have been to test its design of "selectively [activating] subsets of axons". or, sending signals from the sensors to very particular parts of the nerves- and that's perfect when our goal is to restore a sense of "touch".

the most complete long-term configuration between human and machine of indwelling electrodes sending two-way signals that i've been able to find is the 2019 in-person trial of the DEKA "LUKE" arm, which unlike their commercially available FDA-approved version, used chronically implanted USEA's to "evoke tactile perceptions on the phantom hand". and, thankfully, this is the production that most articles i've found latch onto like a lamprey.

sorry, that's misinfo. lampreys don't latch onto their prey. that's leeches!

basically, the way this can happen is by finding a method to taper and dilute those bursts of electrical signals coming into the nerve. for this team, the key in registering actual textures, pressure, joint tension, etcetera was by recording the neural responses from primate's fintertips when touched, and alongside some vaguely referenced "calculations", coding this into a procedural model for the arm.

and like i said, the LUKE system is actually bidirectional! ...as usual, with some caveats. my sources may be outdated, taking from early to mid 2010 experiment papers as i often am, but when papers say "bidirectional", they tend to mean "microelectrodes for sensation, sEMG for decoding motor command."

the "sEMG" being a superficial electrode, stuck on the skin to sense and interpret voluntary contraction on the muscles of the residual limb. y'know, the weird stickers? it's the most common, intuitive, and non-invasive way for prostheses users to "control it with their mind!!1!1!", but when the backlog of complaints ranges from socket pressure sores, sweating interference, superficial recording and loss of contact during limb repositioning, i'm not so sure that our mischevious violinist can affort that sort of setup.

but the DEKA model, at least the non-portable USEA prototype, solves this nicely. making dual-use of implantable EMGs to train a Kalmann filter on recognizing the muscular commands, the user mimics "pre-programmed movements", whose recorded values are whittled down to a select number of "features", or what i'm guessing is potential kinematic positions. i think, in laymans terms, that entails some Physical Therapy for Marius!

since when have i been here just to praise things, though, huh? ...okay, roughly the entire time, but i ain't no liar about downsides! 'cause, when referring to "touch", we're not yet at a vis-a-vis recreation of our somatosensory. more often than not, haptic interfaces are missing ways to convey accurate temperature and pain, if any.

even though i found at least a handful of articles saying that LUKE's USEA can "help sense pain and temperature" (sometimes in a copy-paste phrasing), after turning to the official NSF pdf, the only two claims they'd made on that front was, "the LUKE does not include pain and temperature sensors", and "any evoked pain or temperature sensations are uncommon". so, man, i just dunno who to believe!

but a bigger, and more perplexing issue to circumvent, is the electrodes themselves. technically, their placement is a chronic injury to our tissues, and while it might seem like the resultant scarring is ideal for securing its positon on the nerve trunk, the fibrosis can sometimes grow bad enough to insulate it and completely cut off the signals. or other times, completely push the electrode out of the nerve. (which is just our bodies reacting how they should to foreign objects. the same thing would happen if you got a splinter)

at minimum, you're looking at a good chance for nerve damage and signal disruption. and- awe, while researching for the downsides of microelectrodes, i've just stumbled across my first ever bookmarked science paper for that essay i did on Nastya's cybernetics <3 talk about ouroboric deeds! and talk about upgrades- that thing was from 2003, jeez!

ack, distractions! moreover, unless your electrodes are wireless, their channel leads will have to trail a considerable ways through the muscles, and won't be sitting pretty when forming scar tissue can pull them taut. then, if the system can't sustain itself solely indwelling, external hardware will need a way to get ahold of the nerve signals, so a percuntaneous incision will often bring the leads to outside connector pads, opening opportunities for infection and tissue decay.

why am i saying "yours"? you don't own incredibly expensive, defense agency-funded materials. right? at least, i don't. all my tupperware is already used up.

but what i Do have is some inconveniences for Marius, fabricated purely by a nature of my own design! yeah, that's right! I'M creating issues out of thin air!!

since i made the executive decision for Marius to operate under microelectrodes exclusively, and the DEKA system i mentioned used iEMG's for motor decoding, (a.k.a muscular action potential over electrical neuron firings) there's a significant likelyhood of crosstalk and interference between commands coming and going on that shared peripheral channel.

meaning, he might get some rogue signals that are twitchy, painful, or just plain uncooperative. not a complete ravage to his range as a violinist, but certainly some obstacles to overcome. (or angst about, do how you do.) told ya that i liked downsides, didn't i?

the peripheral nervous system, by the way, is just what translates sensory information to the brain. the somatic (somatosensory) is a more voluntary divison of it, and registers the stimulation of mechanoreceptors by pressure, temperature, proprioception, etcetera, for input when considering to the appropriate actions to take. when i say "peripheral", i basically mean both.

and, hey, so long as we're taking about fudging up phrases and bodies alike, how about a little admission time? because, see, here's the thing. roughly half of the robotics that i've talked about today aren't actually... wearable? frequently being "proof of concept"s created by distinctly non-amputee college teams, they would be controlled by an external computer, or someone wearing a "master exoskeleton" glove that mirrors the motions commands into the prototype.

that, or they can be removed at will, after the connecting pads for microeletrodes are merely detached. and at risk of squandering a potential hilarity, but for the sake of preserving the "ahhh irrevocable immortality!" faustian, i stringently don't believe that Marius can separate his whole mechanism from his flesh body. at most, his fingers, maybe his hand as well. (you'll see why later on ;> and that's a threat ;D)

so, let's get a rundown of osseointegration, or OI, which is probably the most Not Portable a prosthetic socket can get. for Marius, i've decided that his amputation is NOT up to the shoulder. instead, he is a transhumeral amputee, the same as every "bionic upper limb OI" subject i've seen news of, because the status of the residual limb is of course the deciding factor in candidacy for this type of surgery.

(that's why the gas-actuated arm is conveniently also transhumeral- they crafted it with eventual OI implementation in mind)

in summary, they (the Scientists) implant a metal rod fixture, typically titanium, into the remaining skeleton. an abutement section of it protrudes out of the skin in a stoma opening, where the prosthetic is attached as an extension. (Marius, i think, does not get that differential luxury. ergo, his "arm"'s titanium bone IS the fixture itself.) obviously, there's alternative types and methods, but this is what we're giving our dear Baron.

for a basic depiction of that setup, from the OPR A Implant System site, and edited so that tungle doesn't kill me dead-

[ID: A grayscale diagram of a rounded residual limb, transparent to show a sturdy bone. Within the bone is a dark threaded metallic rod, labelled "fixture". Outside of the limb, the continuing rod smoothens, now labelled "abutement," and the thicker, bolt-like end is "abutement screw". /end ID]

i run a risky game here, folks.

the humerus is one of the 5 bones eligible for osseointegration, which does not include the shoulder, and it's reportedly ideal for the socket troubles that would come to a residual limb that's "short, wide, scarred, or painful", promptly speedrunning the checklist for "botched".

to hit those point by point- well, in opposite order- for a limb with nerve pain, the necessary compression of a socket may be a deal breaker in everyday use. energy transfer (that is, the inertial strength when performing actions) from the muscles can be put more effectively, and without much misalignment, into the prosthetic.

there's markedly less fatigue than having to work for sEMG devices to proceed with movement via over contraction of unrelated muscles, and a robustness fit for physically demanding jobs, i.e. a truck driver, a builder, a murderer. then, a stable precision for finer tasks, i.e. brushing teeth, handling eggs, setting up security cameras outside the Penelope vault.

as an added bonus, linking the prosthetic directly with the bone reopens an avenue for natural sensation, "osseoperception", where the mechanical vibration from contact (touching or stepping) can be felt through the skeleton. apparently, we can even hear the frequencies?! in our ears?! then, since this eliminates the factor of a cup socket, a suspension rig, and ideally sEMGs, a microelectrode interface is nearly a given for this system to work.

(a lot of OI is paired with Targeted Muscle Reinnervation to control the prosthesis, though. i haven't looked too far into this method myself, but it seems more helpful for transhumeral or shoulder amputees without much of a residual limb.)

(because, while TMR surgically transfers the residual nerves to defunct muscles in a gambit to boost their own signal, then communes those re-assigned nerves to the prosthetic, the TIME would talk directly to whatever remains of the upper arm's somatic. it would definitely require lots more rehabilitation than peripheral interfacing.)

so, viola! overall, a pretty marvelous way of melding a prosthetic to the body, as well as giving Marius's environmental perception and navigation a solid 2x modifier, if he can handle the months-to-years long physical therapy and rehabilitation protocol!

ah, although, the point of a lot of these surgeries is to be rather clean? like, hiding the leads via intramedullary canals, using wireless myoelectrodes. personally, if Marius's arm popped away from his limb, i'd be imagining more wires and connectors and sensors running out of him than King Cole to his machines.

which, you know who else runs the risk of infection besides percutaneous leads? a stoma! which is exactly what this exposed implant is! especially when the infection rate is "well accepted" as 100 percent! ...okay, maybe that's a bit fearmongering. mostly, these infections are "superficial", only causing inflammation or drainage at the skin around the stoma from bacteria making it past the daily hygiene.

a skilled surgeon minimizing the amount of soft tissue that can shear, or crafting an epithelial seal around the abutement can lower this risk. but when it happens, it must be intervened with strong antibiotics, and fast, 'cause any infection close to underlying bone runs the risk of becoming a "deep infection". beyond that, the pain of just that "minor" infection can purportedly keep people bedridden.

alongside the whole predictable subset of issues that can arise when melding Human and Machine, i.e. bone deterioration (aseptic) or fracturing because of the implant, when loadbearing demands on the prosthetic are excessive- machine's fault- and the implant loosening or requiring explantation because of the bone, when natural remodeling fails to fill in the gaps between metal and residuum, or after osteomyelitis (septic) failure. simplisticly, human's fault.

accidents, high-impact events such as falls and sports, patient overuse, or improper rehabilitation (cough, cough, doubling over with my coughing) MARIUS (cough.) can cause both and all of those issues, exacerbated under the event that the components were already shitty. ...do i need to start coughing again, or are we in agreement?

despite their infrequency, managing infections and monitoring the integration's efficacy is a life-long maintenance. now, you've probably seen the catch here- how for Marius, and the mechanisms at large, as immortals whose whole shtick includes (as per a tumblr ask) never getting sick and shrugging off bullet wounds like burrs, he probably wouldn't be bothered by roughly any of this...

...but, during his initial implantation, with regards to the notion that Dr. Carmilla wasn't present? as well as for reasons that i'll touch later on...? suffice to say, hooo boy! eeks! yowzers! uh-oh!

but, hell, nothing says "botched" like pioneer procedures, am i right!

Why The Shit Does It Do That?

and kicking off the final section is my favourite subsegment, titled on the fly "What The Fuck Is That"! the fuck in question-

[ID: A zoomed-in screenshot of Marius's arm, showcasing a strange brass circle on the "upper" outer forearm, where two thin side-by-side wires, colored white and red, trail up and disappear into the laced corset arm cuff. /end ID]

in my initial brainstorming post, for those who saw it, you might recall that i mentioned the similarity of the white and red wires on the back of Marius's arm and MOSFET wires, whose electric nature implied a potential utilization of that weird brass thing on the back as a Solar Cell.

wellll, if you haven't already guessed, i changed my mind. no motors here, no sir! the wires, i'm afraid i can't explain, but with regards to the gas cartridges often being treated as a separate entity from the anthropomorphic prosthetic, from even the actuators that it powers, it could be an extraneous seal for when the arm is not connected to a canister source. so, not quite an insignificant residuum.

or, imagining Marius's arm as slightly more advanced, as a stopper cap to an internal basin that stores the hydrogen peroxide. by its appearance and function, not too dissimilar from a fuel cap in automotives :>

to quote myself from a reply i made in the comments of my interest check, i do believe that Marius's mechanism is Voidily, Outer-Godily powered in terms of immortality, so i think a benign generator like this would either be vestigial of its intended applications (a.k.a., Used By Normal People), or what makes it physically operate.

as for what electrically powers the servovalves and sensors... i dunno. brother, he can just die. (/ref)

operating under that paradigm, when the monopropellant has run out, it might be limp and nonresponsive, but far from dead. kind of like a limb out of socket! the arm falling inert might also harbinger a potential return of Phantom Limb pain! i'll actually link this one, since the normal article has since become paywalled, but in 2015, one Igor Spectic who took part in DARPA'S Haptix trials, described the phantom pain from his amputated hand as "a vice grip all around."

following the experiment's development of generating communicable sensation in a prosthetic hand, where the manually varied electrical signals from pressure sensors on the hand's surface were sent to C-FINE electrodes around his remaining ulnar, radial, and median nerve trunks, the pain was reported to have decreased immensely, if not entirely disappear!

this is good news for Marius, if his arm is active. and this is bad news for Marius, if his arm isn't active. ah, aporia my beloved!

okay, self-plagiarism over. onto the most lovingly terrible section! Skiiin!

for some prelude- remember those Artificial Muscles that i kind of left in the dust? the shape-memory polymers who could hold 5000 times their own weight without permanently deforming at all? well, honesty corner, one of the features i somewhat lament losing in tandem with that whole charade is... the lead professor, Zhenan Bao.

chemical engineering is her field of expertise, and her team also pioneered a thin plastic "skin-like sensor" that could distinguish between pressures and accordingly interface with a neuron cell! and i was gonna do a little callback, start a bioengineering cinematic universe, all that fun stuff.

but, taking a step back, it becomes apparent that Zhenan's approach is So novel, that it literally can't interface with Marius in any of the ways that i've described. or that's in any way natural. what they did, see, was translate the electrical pulses into light pulses, and had those sensed by line of CNS neurons that were optogentically modified. a.k.a., they're specifically bioengineered to be influenced or activated by light frequencies.

it worked, but, not quite what we're looking for, you know? and, considering how we've already devoted lots of space to integrating Marius with the TIME microelectrodes and RAPHaEL proprioception feedback, i think we can just skip right to the part where we make this thing out of living tissue. Kofi said Marius's fingers were occasionally "organic", remember?

on that note, time to overhaul one of my cornerstone ideas on Marius's arm for, oh, say, the third time? we're getting to "she's not the same Aurora" levels, at this point! (just be glad i didn't have to turn to the fleshy phone case for research, hm?)

you know, i've noticed that a lot of these articles are just playing synonym hopscotch with each other? they don't quite care to reveal more information than the last one, the last one- just rephrase it a bit, getting more and more scant on as it goes down.

well! time to enthusiastically propogate the issue!

the broader goal by this particular team, from the University of Tokyo, is to trounce the uncanney valley by cultivating a sense of familiarity with The Artificial, under a predilection that robots would eventually be an integral staple in caretaker jobs. thankfully, i care roughly zero percent about that, so let's dig into the sciencey bits.

colloquially deemed a "biohybrid robot", the product of the experiment is cool, but not nearly so outlandish. it's actually marvelously simple! in fact, i'll keep the outline i had for "questions to answer" as a guide for us, since this subsegment runs on a big longer than my others.

How can it cover the metal?

we've already got the "covering robotic fingers" bit down on lock from the getgo, because this skin was specificially made to grow around a finger-mimicking structure! (this time, electrically driven.) it only faces strain at those typical three joints, but seems to "stretch and contract" rather forgivingly when it does!

since it's a different cadence from "grafting" on lab grown skin-sheets, adhered to each other and wrapped snug on the surface by stiches, which runs the parallel risk of the living skin incurring injury in the surgical-esque procedure, this recreation would prove a bit more complex. and fleshier.

How is it grown, exactly?

using a solution of "commercially available human cells", of course! which sounds like it should be appendaged by a * on the black market. but, hey, i know this song! from the meat berry video! we've all been haunted by Meat Berry in our recommendations, right? ...right?

okay, look, it's not as creepy as it sounds. it's actually comprised of the similar sort of ingredients in implants and hydrogels for severe burns- collagen, in that case, but the culture media also had dermal fibroblasts, both of whom are two big players in the building of connective tissue.

so with the robotic scaffold bathing calmly in that mixture, the cells, as they grew over the course of 3 days, naturally compacted and conformed to the surface's contour, as is the tendancy of collagen's elasticity and fibroblasts's traction. the team then moved it to an ablution of epidermal cells, keratinocytes, and let it develop that sealing outer layer for two weeks.

the whole sleeve ended up at about 1.5 millimeters thick, similar to an average human dermis! the scentists also lauded it for its "natural wrinkles", so... a win for Marius?

by the way, culture media- as per the meat berry video- is a solution primed with the nutrients, antibiotics, and hormones for the specific type of cell it intends to grow. it's usually a pinkish benadryl color, not naturally, but colored that way, and its hue shifts with the health of its condition, indicating to the cultivators whether it's gone bad or not.

just imagine Marius going "Raph I want organic fingers for our next performance :(" and she says, "okay, but remove them from your arm. they'll have to soak in the Science Fluids for about two weeks... beforehand."

ah, get it? get it? beforeha- [i am killed, veritably]

Does it need bloodflow?

NOPE. It pointedly doesn't have a circulatory system or sweat glands- basically only collagen and a layer to un-gooify it, right now, and it dries up (dies) when left out of the solution too long. that also means no nerves, but, eh, Marius could probably just sliiide some sensors under that bad boy.

that was actually a big selling point of one of the previous iterations of "artificial skin" i delved into researching, before i noticed that it technically duped the criteria what Kofi had originally stated as "organic". but, most incriminatingly, the prototype wasn't even skin! just some circle little sensors that "could be" placed under cosmetic silicone.

his version of the culture would also need some melanocytes, since the prototype flesh doesn't have even a bit of melanin, making it look either like a pepto bismol finger, when in the culture, or a ballistic gel dummy outside of it.

How realistic is it?

"Water repellant, self-healing, and with a texture that looks and feels like ours," as every article will happily tell you, one in particular repeated themselves 3 different ways in the same paragraph! in short- thank you epidermal, thank you fibroblasts, thank you collagen.

it's not yet up to par, however. apparently the cells weren't very mature, so although it could tolerate being pinched and stretched by the robotic joints, it was rather weaker than human skin should be. but, the epidermal could at least be picked up by tweazers! which hurts like a motherfucker, if you've ever done it.

and when these articles say "heal" they mean placing a "collagen bandage" over the clean, surgical slice, and letting the cells assimilate it into the wound. not to undercut (get it?) the achievement, though, because importantly this means the cells are living- the skin is alive! how about THAT for organic, Kofi!

Finally, what melange of mean things have articles called this scientific beauty?

icky-looking, sweaty, gooey, stinky, "westworld", "terminator", creepy, revulsive, ersatz, "out of a horror movie", and that it "looks like a, um". (you get three guesses, and none of them count. that's also why i'm giving no links this time, friends! sorry!)

also, y'all? hey y'all? this news came out, as of the time writing this (July 12th), almost Exactly a month ago. this is right now! we're LIVING in it! the future is HERE! and that just goes to show, folks- procrastination DOES pay off! because i, like, kicked this idea around for months... and months...

any! way! arriving at last to our closing statements, it is my firm bias that we would both benefit from making only as many wrap-up claims as further questions they raise. do i honestly expect any of them to be answered in TDOBVR? not a lick of hope! will i propose them anyway? absolutely!

most of these quandaries, i will admit, are conjucture stemming from one jokeful tweet. but when you add upon the more canonical layers, i.e., his mechanism lacking Dr. Carmilla's certified seal of approval, himself harboring a strangely outlier mistrust in the likelihood of true immorality, and in general, hailing from a planet that has regressed badly enough to go back to muskets, it would not surprise me if these conundrums came to pass at one point or another.

and on that peroration of resounding confidence, here goes nothing!

TLDR:

Marius's mechanism is styled, in general concept, after illustrations within a German "limb substitution" book from 1919 that ideates an externally gas-powered hand prostheses. revitalized under our "modern" technology, it is fuelled by catalyzing monopropellant hydrogen peroxide with iridium pellets in an internal reservoir.

a steel tubing network and small scale servovalves shuttle along the gas, providing the pneumatic cylinders with ample power for linear actuation, while the vapor leaves as an exhaust product through a crosshatch grille spanning the length of his inner forearm.

Plus sides are- stronger than most electromechanical prostheses, steel is very quite aesthetic

Downsides are- lacks an offhanded dexerity, constant need for fuel

as our counterpoint, let's indulge on some fun curiosities about Marius's healing factor- canonically the "device's self-regulation", as per Drive The Cold Winter Away. incipiently, if his patellas don't regenerate until he "dies," must his brain be clinically dead before he can start to heal? or does he just not share that preternatural haste of repair, where the assumption would be that he often meets death's clammy grasp quicker than any healing may have its finishing touches?

Marius's pneumatic hand is materially influenced by Virginia Tech's robotic RAPHaEL prototype, though altering RoMeLa's design to preserve the fuelant approach in its coordination. rocket-powered air fills up corrugated tubing within each finger for an enticingly individualized articulation, and an oscillatory grip strength is commanded by lowering and raising the air pressure at hand. the cosmetic shell of his entire arm, including the hand, is made of carbon fiber.

Plus sides are- fine tuned manipulation of objects, a sense of independence

Downsides are- no steampunk gears, a bit too heavy

seeing to it that his regeneration fails to be as thorough as his companions, and a stabilized form doesn't come back until death, would he still be able to recover minimally over the intervening weeks and months, like a normal person? gaping wounds to fibrous scars, deep infections to chronic sicknesses, whose remnants only get cleared away when he's fully dead, like one big reset button?

Marius has transverse intrafascicular multichannel electrodes interfacing with his peripheral nervous system to stimulate sensory feedback on the ulnar, radial, and median nerve trunks of his residual limb.

Plus sides are- increased somatosensory and kinematic precision, seeming metal as hell

Downsides are- neural scarring, and long-term glitches from signal crosstalk

on that note, during those rare occasions he survives the crew's raucous lifestyle for a continuous length of time, will his immune system begin responding appropriately untoward the traumatic, invasive, foreign implantation that is, in essence, his mechanism?

are there infections to ensue, and inflammation, and eventual scarring whose nature is inclined to cut off both his sense of touch and motor skills? by proxy, making him uncharacteristically ill and in considerable pain? (this line of thought, patently, is why i kicked up such a fuss about "wuauggh, his scar tissue! infections! stoma! blargh!")

Marius underwent a major implantation surgery to osseointegrate a threaded titanium stem, screw-fixation type, into his transhumeral. most likely, he did not have the resources at hand to abide by the prolonged rehabilitation protocol. there are no intramedullary leads going solely through his abutement, and the exoskeleton of his arm is inseparable from the indwelling fixture.

Plus sides are- remarkable stability, and rejuvinated osseoperception

Downsides are- acute infection, innate incompatibilities between skeleton and metal.

with the established hypothetical that he doesn't return to a generic save-state in an automatic fashion, we have to wonder- does he age? how slow, if altered at all? more pressingly, can his mechanism get worn down alongside it?

especially when taking into account how, while several pros-and-cons lists have praised the pneumatic actuator's simplicity under an impression of less oversight, that's once again treating the baby separate from the bathwater. maintenance of the several components, fuel lines and tight seals and valve fittings, required for reliable gas generation basically creates an inverse sunk cost.

whether he knows this or not, if the mechanism starts to act archaic and clunky after he's gone a bit too long without kicking the bucket, would he perhaps settle for a tune-up in lieu of literally biting the bullet? is he scared? is that why?

does walking head-first into certain doom become a reflex at the first sign of mechanical failure? is that why?

Marius, at a whim, may adorn his mechanism's fingers with living skin cultivated from commercially available human cells. ideally, his organics would be buffed by self sustaining perfusion channels, and melanocytes.

Plus sides- flesh, hell yeah!

Downsides- will be fingerless for a number of weeks, as the digits soak in the culture media petri dish

most of all, why doesn't he believe in immortality?

i've, well, got half an answer to that. 'cause when the contraption that's supposed to keep you alive already started out so messy, and makes no promises to keep you in top shape through your millennia of mangling and make-do, it's probably a bit hard to place the trust of eternity in its air-actuated hand, huh?

#the mechanisms #marius von raum #tdobvr #marius #oz.txt #this thing took two whole weeks to write y'all it is a Monster #oz.essay

[optogeneticist-nsfw]

Hi! I came here to ask some advice, because you inspire me and you are cool and also because this is nsfw blog (you will understand as I explain myself)

So um.. I've been working on something original of mine, and it's a comic and it's nsfw. (I mean first 4 pages are and later in line after a while and a bunch of stuff happening it will have some more, but it important to the plot and characters) And I have no idea where and how to properly post it!

Most of my art is here on Tumblr and I love the idea of it being some sort of archive of my art, that's why I don't want to skip pages, or start posting a comic from 5th page, that would be weird, but also I want to properly censor it and put warnings and stuff.

I was thinking maybe creating a sideblog as well? Just to be safe?? And putting whole page under a cut, so people wouldn't have been jumbscared in case they haven't blocked any of the spicy tags, but still i dunno, maybe there are better ways. Or also better platforms, to post something like that there, and not on burning bird app or this hellsite.

Any advice is appreciated :з

if i were you, i would probably go with one of those free webcomic-hosting websites? i don't know much about them, but google brought me to comicfury, which seems to allow nsfw:

Your comics will only be removed if they contain illegal content.

however i would still recommend posting censored versions on twitter and/or tumblr and/or other social media sites just for visibility.

i wouldn't recommend pixiv, which is what i've been using for image hosting. it technically doesn't allow nsfw, but it enforces that by toggling your nsfw art to private a couple hours after you post it, meaning you can go back in the artwork settings and re-toggle it public afterwards. i haven't experienced any consequences from doing this, but it's also not a big deal to me if it all gets taken down one day. if you're making a webcomic, though, you'd want something more permanent.

you could technically use ao3, but ao3 doesn't host images. that means you can't upload an image directly to ao3; you have to give it a link to an image that's already on the internet. so, you'd need to find another place to upload the images. if you're at all tech-oriented, you can set up a free amazon web services bucket for image hosting and grab the links from there, but that's a little complicated.

i think a webcomic-hosting site is the best bet in your scenario!

#asks

[mary-is-writing]

Patreon, moving and trying stuff for the heck of it

The tl;dr is that my writing and tag games are moving to Patreon, for free. I'm still using this blog as my main and a writeblr. You'll likely won't see more writing here but you'll probably see lots of links to patreon posts. Since I'm new to Patreon, I'm open to advice about how to use it, if I should use it at all, and anything else. More details under the cut owo)/

You probably know that they've started approaching AI in here, which is a big turn off for creators. It's me, I'm creators.

While my main blog here works both as a personal and a writeblr, I've been thinking if, how and where will I migrate my writing to, specifically excerpts and small stuff like writing related tag games. After thinking for a while and getting reassurance from some writer friends, I've decided to migrate it to Patreon.

What does that mean? I hear you ask. It means that all the excerpts, character designs and art related stuff of my wips that would've been shared directly to Tumblr will now be shared directly there. Other stuff like updates on the state of the writing progress I'm making, that's not my writing itself, will most likely continue to be posted on Tumblr since that's kinda the only social platform I use.

So it'll be behind a paywall? You may wonder. No, it will not: all of those things I mentioned earlier (excerpts, lines, character designs and more) will be free to read and see for everyone. After all, they'd be free if they were in Tumblr, so I want to keep it like that.

You won't post them in Tumblr anymore, then? Like I said, no; not directly at least. I plan to try and see how it goes with me linking the patreon post to my Tumblr every time I upload there. It may be redundant to do all this just to post it here anyway, but it's a way to avoid the Tumblr AI that makes me feel more at peace than just an opt-out button.

What about writeblr tag games? A valid question, in a lot of those you have to share your writing. For now my plan is to do them in bulk so I can have one big post with all of them there, every other month or so, instead of a lot of tiny ones, and then link it over here. I think that'll work better, and it'll also give me time to stock on them. In other words, wether we're mutuals or not here, please tag me in things!! It'll take a while, but I promise I'll get to it. Eventually.

Why Patreon though? Well, I don't need to tell you that we live in capitalist times, and as a recent college graduate without a job that wants to be an indie writer, Patreon is a good option for me to make some sort of revenue. However, I don't work fast enough to show stuff on Patreon as rewards on a regular basis, that is, if you don't count stuff like small excerpts and tag games (which are sometimes one and the same), nor do I have a massive following that'd be willling to wait more between rewards. This is the second reason why I decided to migrate things there; first, to avoid the AI; second, to have something to show for my writing and do a little nudge to say Hey, if you like what you read, there's a way right here to support me so I can continue it. I could use other platforms like Ko-Fi, but if I'm gonna put time into something that allows me to earn some spare cash, I prefer it to be the one that'd let me have those earnings on a more regular basis.

Unless Ko-Fi has changed how it works, in which case I'll be checking it out later.

I don't have a set goal nor does my income currently depend on this, so I think it's a good time to start posting things to a Patreon without stressing myself that "it has to work". In the end, this is all just me trying things around to figure out what works and what not. If it doesn't work and people don't want to do an extra click to read my stuff, like I said, it's not like there's a lot of pressure on me right now. I've had a few years living with a Just Do It mentality and this is a extension of that, so for now I'll try this out, see where it goes, and how it develops.

I have a few things to tweak and prepare for the Patreon page to be ready for launching, so if you have any suggestions about how to use Patreon or if my approach is wrong and you know a better platform for this, please do tell me! Like I said, this is all just trial and error, so I'll learn as I do.

Thanks for reading!!

#writeblr #writing #writers #writing stuff #writers stuff #patreon #can you see how new I am with all of this? maybe you can #but it's all about trying and learning

[contentment-of-cats]

Dark Fandom: Frameups and Fakers

Great Mother of Sockpuppets.

Okay - here we go.

Frameups and Fakers

Peering over the rim of my coffee cup, I looked at these posts from last night and decided that it's time to add to the reading shelf. 

Here's what happened, for the link-averse. False blogs were set up apparently to mimic BeeBee76, JadeSabre85, and Draculard (no blog to compare), then the actual parties were blocked by the fake blogs, preventing the real Jade, BeeBee, and Draculard from finding them. It is possible that these blogs are or could be used to send messages where anons are disallowed, divert traffic from the parties' actual blogs, or post content that is against community guidelines in order to get the parties deactivated by Tumblr.

Below are Real Beebee vs Fake Beebee and Real Jadesabre versus Fake JadeSabre. Drac does not have a Draculard blog on Tumblr, but is well known enough in the Thrawn, ST:TNG, and other fandoms with that name. In both cases, the elimination of a dash, or the last two digits of Jade's name leads to an empty blog where you would expect content. I use the search bar to go to someone's blog directly - I do miss my LJ feature where I could just click a name in the sidebar and boom!

Frameup 101

A frameup or setup is a maneuver designed to make someone appear responsible or divert blame for a given situation (such as a crime) using fabricated evidence and/or testimony.

I've also heard a frameup called a stitchup, though I'm not sure if that's a TikTok term or not. Generally, the person seeking to divert attention and frame another party is the perpetrator, though a third party may be acting to 'protect' the actual instigator and finds the framed party a convenient target. 

Some of the techniques used in frameups include: 

False flag - actions undertaken with a false identity, the intention being to blame the target person or group.

Joe job - old Usenet term for a spamming campaign using a spoofed email address.

Scapegoating - placing blame for one's bad actions on another party as the cause of said actions. 

'Just asking questions' - questions designed to sow doubt or create chasms in a group of people. For instance, "But how do we know that there's not a nanochip in the COVID vaccine? There could be, and it could be used to see who is complying with the New Order.  I'm just asking questions." 

Casus belli - 'cause for war' actions or causes used to justify hostilities. 

Gaslighting - manipulative behavior that over a period of time causes the victim to doubt their own powers of reasoning, validity of their thoughts, and even perception of reality. This leads to loss of self-esteem, stability, and self-confidence, leading to confusion and dependency on the gaslighter who is using the victim for their own advantage.

Red herring - information set up to be distracting and a distraction from the situation at hand.

Straw man - an argument or proposition intentionally misrepresented because it is easier to defeat than the actual argument.

In other words - know your bullshit because stalkers and trolls will use your credulousness to their advantage.

#mother of sockpuppets #fandom wank #f*ckery #dark side of fandom #internet stalking #internet harassment #counterfeit blogs #frame job

[steadfast-unmoving]

the violent threat of erasing someone's existence because they said something you don't agree with is a big reason i care so much about educating and expanding the DIY web. i think it is a vital tool against censorship and wreckerism to own as much as possible of, understand as much as possible of, your own infrastructure to connect with the internet.

over the last few years i've watched as tumblr started to move from (this is a niche use case but bear with) something i could in good faith recommend as a free and easy-to-set-up basis for an art portfolio site to something which is (ugh god i'm going to say it) actively going through Enshittification™️ and employs more and more coercive tactics to remove and paywall any meaningful sense of ownership or expansive/extensible-ness over users' individual blogs

it used to be by default when you shared a link to a post it would go to username.tumblr.com/postid and now it goes to tumblr.com/username/postid which means if you don't manually edit the link to the original formation, it forces whoever clicks on the link to make an account to view what you've shared (user capture)

it used to be free to connect a custom domain to a tumblr blog (which is a vital defense against censorship which means you can migrate to a new service/host without losing "brand recognition" with no economic penalty) and now you have to pay monthly and they want you to buy domains directly from them (i'm not sure if it's actually possible to connect a domain tumblr doesn't own to a blog now – this is the Only reason that when i converted this from a project portfolio to a personal blog that i did not set up that project on a different tumblr account and instead now have a tumblr version and a portfolio site which i self-host – i can't use tumblr as the portfolio because i can't connect the URL for free/at all)

the popups and aggressive prompts to make an account when viewing someone's blog at username.tumblr.com have become so severe that where i can i implement custom CSS to suppress them

when you DO make an account the popups prompting you to pay for ad-free browsing are again, increasingly aggressive

this all points to a pattern where tumblr doesn't see itself as a service, it sees itself as a business which needs to make profit from its users (which makes sense, it's a private company and it's following the same pattern as every other site which is free to use – draw people in with a slick user experience and no downsides, run out of VC money or whatever, start to Need To Make A Profit, make the platform ever more extractive to the point where nobody likes using it but nobody sees anywhere else to go – literally the definition of enshittification)

this is a large selling point for federated social media for me. moving your account but retaining your 'social graph' is a Feature of federated social networking. you can migrate to a new server if your admin makes a decision you don't like without losing ~most of your social connections, you can also choose to set up on a server which has moderation policies in line with what you want to post. you can also set up your own dang server and literally be your own mod/admin if you have a bit of spare cash and technical knowledge (warning: this can get expensive). this is also why i advocate for everyone to own a domain and run their own site, as independently as possible from corporate infrastructure, as if someone has your website bookmarked and your host blacklists you, you can just upload your website somewhere else and point your domain there instead

i would suggest everyone who cares about their tumblr account* export a backup of that data as soon as they can – tumblr provides a feature to do this which retains your media and a record of your social connections. i think it also provides some of it in .html form which you could upload to any web server if you wanted to. i would also suggest everyone owns a domain for a personal homepage, and maybe makes a 'home' online somewhere that's not here – my domain registrar of choice is namecheap and i pay about $15/yr for my main domain. you can get free web hosting in a bunch of places – github pages springs to mind, codeberg also offer this if you don't want it to be owned by microsoft. i think netlify still has a free version. there are options! owning a domain means you're free to move between these options without anyone really noticing anything different. i highly, highly recommend it for anyone who likes blogging freely without living in fear of being censored.

*in the current context i am mostly talking to trans women here but i think this advice applies to anyone, nobody is not at risk of being banhammered for basically nothing, these things tend to escalate in severity over time

anyway i love trans women and i am so angry about the decisions unfolding here but it's also totally Precedented and Typical for corporate owned online infrastructure and there are things you can do to insulate your social connections and retain backups of the things you make here. ultimately posting here creates value for the corporate platform owners and there are ways to blog which don't do that!

#web hosting #diy web #internet infrastructure #tumblr meta #predstrogen

[isobug]

fair warning for discussions of bigotry, n*zism/antisemitism, r*pe, and "tr*nsx" content

( to avoid issues with the post going into undesirable tags, an asterisk is used in place of the letter "a" in some places. sorry to everyone with screenreaders. let me know if there's an alternative method !! )

INB4 anyone misinterprets this post, I don't "" ban "" people from identifying with or using my works. It'd be silly of me. I also support anyone archiving them ( yes, even if it means not directly reblogging the source post from me !! all i care about is that you're accurate with your archival / don't change anything just in case the source post gets wiped or we have another mass wikia purge event like what FANDOM did )

From now on this blog is officially NOT "tr*nsx" friendly for reasons I will get into under the cut. I genuinely had a very open mind about this community but I've constantly had my personal interaction boundaries broken by those in it. I'm going to be reworking my rentry ( both my main and request guideline pages !! ) to reflect this soon.

People in this community have frequently broken my one hard rule about bodily minors with eighteen plus explict content on their blog not directly interacting with me through said blog. This is an issue because I am a tr*ns adult in a shitty country that stereotypes me as a pred*tor, so interactions like that are uncomfortable and even potentially dangerous for multiple reasons.

I can understand some of the terms used or coined in "tr*nsx" spaces, especially in regards to BIID. But things like "transr*cist", "transn*zi","transr*pist", and similar being posted and fully accepted ( especially by those saying things like "but they aren't saying they're r*cist! just that they feel they should be!" or similar ) made me realize that the "tr*nsx" community is actively unsafe for me as a multiply marginalized/minority individual even though it claims to be incredibly safe/progressive for those like me.

I feel the need to point out, this is one of many posts that makes me feel like I need to set this personal safety boundary. There are multiple posts promoting child/animal *buse ( "pro-cont*ct/*ction" ) which is also just accepted. It's really easy to just stumble on, especially if you're checking out a new follower or note.

I would not be or feel safe letting people who accept/identify with/condone terms and community standards like this onto my blog or in my DMs. Especially since many of my followers and those I interact with are similarly marginalized like I am.

I'll be going through my follower list and blocking people soon. If you're in that community and going "oh but this post doesn't apply to me !! why do I get grouped in with these guys !!", maybe work on the N*zi and *buse problem to the point where I can't stumble on it ten posts into your blog and I'll rethink it.

ALT text is provided but I will NOT be adding it uncensored to this post, sorry again screenreader users. (EDIT: I had linked the OP here so people who thought this might be a sockpuppet could go through the notes and see it wasn't, but OP and most of the notes have been deleted by staff)

EDIT: this is a warning post that includes more Tr*nsn*zi symbols, so this isn't a one-off person making a joke term or something (it still wouldn't be alright if it was btw)

#iso.bug #IF YOU'RE WEIRD ON THIS I WILL BLOCK YOU. I DO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO REPORT THIS KIND OF CONTENT #WHAT A HEAVY POST ANYWAYS !! WE GOT BLINKIES COMING UP

[bookwyrminspiration]

Hi! I found this article that mentions bestie in it (since you were looking for some). https://medium.com/the-comeback-of-culture/tiktok-language-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-aave-e1f19c6c75b3 Black people feel differently about some of these terms being used by non black people, but if anyone is curious about using them maybe look into the history about it first (like you’re doing)? Also, another thing is when people approach a black person and use these terms only with said black person. White or non black lgbtqia+ members also need to be careful with their treatment of some of these words. A final thing I can think of is when it’s almost unconscious mimicking of aave when using some of these terms. Non black people sometimes use them with what can be described as an “aggressive” tone, which is a negative stereotype for Black people. The usage of these words is usually seen as bad or uneducated when black people use them, so for white/nonblack people to use them and be praised for it is problematic! Be aware of how you use said terms. I hope this is helpful! ps slay comes from “slay queen” and it’s been used the wrong way by white people, so they’re typically made fun of for using “slay” the wrong way. Maybe this is where some of the white humor thing came from! pps thank you for taking peoples thoughts here and trying to be peaceful with this whole thing!

Hello to you, too! Thank you for the article link (here for anyone who wants to look). If you don't want to look then I'll highlight what I think is the most relevant point regarding "bestie," as it's only mentioned in passing twice.

“I had to work hard not to sound ‘ghetto’ and now I can hear little White girls calling each other bestie and sis. It’s weird,” Bernard laments.

My conclusion from the few sources I've managed to find so far are that "bestie" is considered AAVE in at least some spaces and that it's usage is similar to that of other appropriated AAVE (e.g. periodt, on fleek), but that when it comes to talking about AAVE "bestie" is not what is typically brought up and it's unknown how widespread it is. Unlike phrases like the ones I mentioned that have a clearer history you can research, "bestie" is difficult (at least in my searches so far) to find any direct sources about.

If I've missed something, please feel free to let me know! This is just what I've gathered so far.

Of course people will have different opinions, so I did a little bit of researched and found these articles with some differing views that people can look at: this one doesn't take a definitive stance but reminds to be aware of the history of what you say, and this one is against AAVE use by non-blacks because it celebrates blackness only when the person isn't black and doesn't know black history. That's of course only two resources and won't be reflective of every single person, but I figured I'd add them.

Those sources also mention some of the negative stereotypes and how non-black people using AAVE can escape those perceptions, but it doesn't touch on the queer aspect really so thank you for specifically mentioning that. I brought it up the first time not to excuse away it's usage, but instead as a "perhaps this is what happened." But yes, being queer doesn't give us a pass to say whatever we want

As for slay, I can see how that would lead to the white humor comment! I found this article talking about it last night, but also it's not loading right now on any of my devices so I can't 100% confirm how relevant it is at the moment. Including the link just in case though! I'm also seeing a lot of other sources attribute it to different places, so that may be something to look more into

And thank you for being so peaceful and sharing your thoughts! I realized that when I was saying "hey how about you talk to us directly" that that could be a little vague if you didn't know where to go, so I wanted to offer my blog as a direct spot people could talk if they were so inclined. I think it's helpful to have that kind of communication!

Thank you for the article link and for the information and explanations you've provided, I greatly appreciate it!

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc discourse #quil's queries #nonsie #there are a lot of links here but I think even if you skim you can get a good idea of what the authors' points are #and also if I mentioned something that wasn't in one of them and I said it was my bad! #I read more sources than I linked and may have gotten some muddled but it's not intentional :) #long post

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

~∘❀♡❀∘~ Hello there! ~∘❀♡❀∘~

I'm kadoodles, a fanfic writer and general obsessive nerd, and this is my personal blog (where I often talk about my Xenoblade obsession and my projects/ideas that come from it) as well as catalogue-blog (cata-blog?) for my current OTP of Shulk x Melia, Shulkelia for short! (Thank you Pachi for creating that name it's so scrunkly I love it).

See below for more info, as well as the tags I use for easy browsing (because tumblr's search feature absolutely sucks, please click on the tag links themselves)!

I have amassed a collection of as many of the very few pieces of art that have been made for this rarepair that I could find, and I wanted to create a blog to both consolidate all the Shulkelia energy that exists in this world for anyone to access easily as well as have the ability to communicate with people via asks! (And post general life updates so you know I'm not dead, I swear, I promise I'll never give up on writing something!)

My ask box (and CuriousCat if you don't have a tumblr account!) will always be open with anon on, too, so feel free to talk to me or ask me about anything, Shulkelia-related or not! I'd love to chat with you! :)

Here are the tags I'll use to organize things on here:

#aside for any personal text posts I make (i.e. updates on progress with my fics, announcements, random thoughts, etc.)

#ask for any asks that I answer. Ask me about headcanons, WIPs, general concepts/fluff, or share your own with me!

#fanart or #fanfic as appropriate for whichever type of fanwork the content is

#nsfw for any work that is sexually explicit (which will also always be hidden under a cut as well!). Please blacklist this tag if you are under 18/a minor and/or do not want to see these works!!!

#shulkelia will be used whenever the artist who made the work explicitly intended for it to be ship art between the two, whereas...

#shulk and melia will be used whenever either the artist doesn't specify/intend for their art to be seen as romantic, or if it's just art of the two like standing next to each other or something. (Listen, there's not a whole lot of actual ship content out there, and I've seen too many wonderful artworks of the two that fill my heart with joy and reinforces my love of them together despite knowing the artist probably doesn't ship them, plus if you're here you probably like just looking the two characters anyway so!)

#submission for any art that I didn't find myself but was instead sent to me via my submission box, regardless if it's something I didn't come across and you have or if you made it yourself! Either way I will give whoever found it and whoever created it proper credit!

#xenoblade as a catch-all tag for everything on here that has to do with Xenoblade 1 in general, ship-related or not

#xenoblade spoilers as well as #xenoblade chronicles spoilers whenever a post contains any spoilers at all for Xenoblade 1. Please blacklist these tags if you haven't completed the game yet!

Anything that I don't directly reblog from someone who posted their work on tumblr (which will end up being most things) will have both a direct link to its source so you can give proper love and appreciation to the artist who actually created each work, as well as an archive link I will make myself just in case something happens to the original. If you're an artist whose work is featured here and you do not want it reposted here, please let me know and I will take it down, no questions asked!

Have a lovely day! :D

#about

[arsene-fixates]

hi. uh. is this anything

(werewolf poem. it might not be very fitting, i'm genuinely not sure, but i've been seeing some werewolf related stuff on your blog as of late so i'm sending this just in case if you haven't seen it & hopefully the link works bye)

qirinnnnn ouuuughjj ough that is many many things to me… IT FITS!! not 100% but there definitely are parts that fit

it’s. 6 in the morning (randomly woke up) (bad sleep schedule) and i am going to ramble about informant because yay! yippee!

divider from here

“Maybe you’re lost in your skin today, Maybe you’re burning and wish you could tear it all off”

first off i really like how it says “lost in your skin” since he’s quite literally an animal when he turns into the werewolf

second of all it’s not a secret that Informant is so dreadfully ashamed of being a werewolf.

That man would do Anything and i mean Anything to rid of it. (he says it himself too) if i remember the line right he says “i would do anything to crush the beast inside of me”

says this along with it, and he gave me these enchanted chains to put him in if there ever comes a time he turns into one again

I’m not sure if it’s one can be counted since he was under the influence of a parasitic thought (it clouded his every judgment and caused him to go into the mist and turn into the werewolf)

but the absolute desperation in his words to have that stone to try and turn back (it didn’t work) is so crushing. They didn’t talk much about how he felt other than a fleeting mention that he was disappointed and gloomy about his hopes being crushed

he talks a lot about how it’s a hindrance to him and how much he wants to rid of it (he was under the influence here, prodded at his thoughts via realistic dreams)

Also call back to when he confessed to me about being a werewolf at the tower vs him confessing it to his brother down the road (mentioned this in the family analysis here)

one where he directly said “i am the werewolf” at the tower

as opposed to

“don’t tell me the werewolf was..” (his brother’s words)

“yes it was me.” (Informant’s words)

The way he indirectly agreed with his brother instead of stating that he was the werewolf out loud

as if he was ashamed of admitting it, especially to his brother when they were reconciling

Anyway i think it would be an interesting story line if he slowly comes to terms with being a werewolf

#something something. afraid to admit he was someone that caused distress to his family #especially when he tries so hard to be useful to the city #the way he feels dangerous and makes up for it by putting his everything on the line for the city #something about wanting to be remembered as someone who helped than someone who caused destruction #there’s some kind of connection between that: his saviour complex and him being a dangerous force of nature #but i cant make it right now #thank you qirin for sending this ^_^ i love you /p #seekers notes spoilers #Informant Under A Microscope

[mediapoliticsandcitizenshipblogs]

COMM515 Assignment 2: Blog

BLOG #1

Whether you’re a fan of Taylor Swift’s music or not, the impact and influence she’s made is undeniable. On a surface level, the music industry has evidently benefited from this but what I believe is overlooked is the power her activism has on citizenship engagement and political engagement . This Instagram story posted on the official Taylor Swift account raises some interesting ideas, specifically around the relationship between the use of social media and citizenship participation.

Before dissecting this seemingly simple social media text, let me introduce you to Taylor (just in case you haven’t had the privilege of knowing her already).  Taylor Swift is a multi-Grammy award winner, singer-songwriter, and pop-culture figure, with nearly 300M followers on Instagram. At the time of the story post, her most recent work is the album release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version). On top of her success, Taylor is also a feminist and activist- could she be more perfect?

The most interesting aspect about the Instagram story is how it exemplifies the change in the forms of citizen participation and political engagement. Political engagement can be defined by Johnston & Uberoi (2022, p.8) as one’s behaviour and attitude towards the political system. Citizen participation is attributed to the actions made by “members of a political community where all citizens can determine the terms of social cooperation on an equal basis” (Bellamy, 2013, p.17). Traditionally, political engagement is considered apart of the private sphere -“realm of the intimate”- (Dictionary of Media & Communication). Many still view this, which is why some of us get told to “not bring politics into the dinner table” when visiting extended family. Citizen participation on the other hand is traditionally apart of the public sphere –space for “open discussion of common concerns and collective social interests”- (Dictionary of Media & Communication), mainly associated with public acts such as voting. Distinction between the public and private sphere has become increasingly challenging with the rise of social media. For example, the question Taylor posed in her story “Are you registered to vote?” can be viewed as political engagement, therefore exists in her private sphere. Yet, hundreds of millions of her followers are directly involved, which would be highly unlikely to achieve without using her social media platform.

The change in how political engagement is achieved and perceived more easily is positive in terms of the reciprocal relationship with citizen participation. Taylor’s political engagement through public advocacy for voting registration increases her fan bases’ citizen participation. This is because they are influenced by the person displaying their political engagement (Taylor) to participate in acting upon their rights and freedoms as a citizen. Vote.org (2023) had front row seats to the spike in Taylor’s fan’s citizen participation as they reported “a 1,226% jump in the hour after the post.” If I told someone from even a decade ago that political engagement and citizen participation was this heavily impacted by the singer who wrote “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, they’d have trouble believing me. And that wouldn’t even include the fact that the milestone stemmed from an Instagram story.

The historical change and increase in both political engagement and citizen participation through the use of Taylor’s social media platform is significant because it alleviates the declining political interest and involvement. The political disengagement from young people has been made a focus to fix. A study on youth aged 15-35 reported that “media coverage of political issues is boring to follow, let alone participate in” (Zhang, 2022). This emphasises the differences of engagement and participation based on age, culture and education. For example, the lack of political engagement within youth is difficult to change through mainstream media such as the news, because it is barely consumed by them. It is more effective to infiltrate highly consumed media such as social media, however new difficulties arise. Within the social media world, the change in participation is dependent on the influencers, celebrities and content creators’ choice to advocate which is challenging to do without bias to their own political stands. What makes Taylor’s story so impactful is the lack of bias. Instead of using her influence to sway her fans to hold the same political view, she encourages people to act, participate and engage, based on their own. Whilst acknowledging there are those who misuse of their platform to further their own political agenda, it can be argued that social media has helped minimalize the decline in political involvement of young people. Taylor’s social media text shows that when utilized correctly, it can increase political interest, engagement and citizen participation that benefits the system as a whole.

As an individual who is a first-time voter and a major Taylor fan who viewed this social media text live, I have a greater understanding of the importance of my own political engagement and participation. I realised I was unknowingly motivated to vote because I knew Taylor encouraged it and even though I was not apart of her political system, it still impacted my citizenship participation in New Zealand. I’m not going to lie, I had no previous education of politics previous to September, however understanding the concept of citizen participation through Taylor’s story helped me identify the abundance of it within my age group. Instead of viewing voting as the only form of participation, I now know that witnessing others in marches, and signing online petitions were apart of their participation. An experience I can interpret differently is when I changed the news channel when they showed Christopher Luxon asking the audience if they’ve registered to vote, which made my older family members extremely upset. At the time, I justified my decision because I wanted to watch something more interesting however looking back, I know that was a sign I was politically disengaged due to the media form I was consuming it through. It makes sense that I only registered to vote after my Instagram and Tik Tok was flooded with others advocating for it because I actively interacted with the platform that facilitated political engagement. Knowing I had unknowingly engaged and participated changed my perspective about how much my vote mattered. Upon reflection, the act of voting carries a heavier weight in which I’m grateful to have gained a changed understanding of before voting for the first time.

BLOG #2

If you’re anything like me, you also dislike being involved with anything to do with “the public” -public ceremonies, hospitals, and most of all, toilets. In terms of the public in mediated politics, that dislike transforms into mistrust. Specifically, the mistrust in the representation of the public opinion on political issues and events. This Newshub-Reid research poll is flawed because it inaccurately represents the population group of Kiwis alongside their opinion on a momentous government decision.

The public is defined by Craig (2004, p. 47) as “both a body of people within society and a domain within which debate about that society occurs.” When discussing this social media text, Craig’s definition of the public will be applied alongside the notion that the public is the opposing group of people to those that hold political power. In defining public opinion, Herbst (1991, p. 226) can be “understood as the aggregation of individual opinions” and will be referred to being expressed through the research poll about the introduction of wealth tax.

The problem doesn’t lie exclusively in this research poll as I think all political polls that infer they represent the public opinion can all be flawed and inaccurate. This is simply due to the impossible nature of retrieving and presenting every single member of the public’s voice. However, this research poll does exemplify the issue of misrepresentation in polls, despite the scientific methodology of Reid Research. It can be argued that the timing of the results (May, 2023) suggests the research question is at a less of an interest to tax reform and more of a indication of which political party the public supports. This is based on the collaboration between Reid Research and Newshub and the anticipation of the release of major political party tax policies. In that case, the poll does not represent the public opinion on wealth tax but on the party the participants side with and benefits the politicians more than it benefits the public.

Another problematic feature of this research poll is the possible manipulation of public opinion from those whose opinion was excluded in the poll. Considering Newshub is one of the top news program and digital service, their content is continuously consumed by many members of the public who may have not been directly involved in the polling. When consuming the information shown in this poll, it is possible for many to have been swayed to agree with the majority, despite their own opinion. The flaw lies in the wording of the information presented which form a bias towards the tax reform. More specifically, the generalisation used in “Kiwis support the government introducing wealth tax” is contradictory to the poll results as only 53.1% expressed their possible support. The other 47% is disregarded as the reader may interpret the use of “Kiwis” as the whole population. This could lead to the manipulation of their opinion because some may feel obligated to align with the majority as a result of the poll release. Additionally, there is no available resources and information provided in the news article for the public to form an educated opinion on the matter. This further accentuates the dependency they have on the biased polling, which therefore can lead to their biased view and not a true reflection of their public opinion.

The flaws in representing the public opinion within this social media text affirmed my previous views on the unreliability of polling. I may very well be biased in this argument myself, and I can blame taking Statistics in high school. But, I have conditioned myself to question the accuracy, reliability and authenticity of public opinion polling because I believe there is always going to be at least one person who is misrepresented because opinions vary so heavily. As someone who has never been included in a sample group for any type of polling, it is easy to believe polling is biased and inaccurate. However, if that were not the case, I think my perspective could slightly change. The notion of people hopping on the opinion bandwagon based on what they perceive is held by “the majority” reflects many experiences in which I did the same. It was not to do with political polling, however the concept is far too familiar in which emphasises the problem when paired with a biased polling release. The aforementioned concepts within this research poll has made me even more aware of how the public in mediated politics are not always properly represented and led to a greater understanding on why polls may manipulate a person’s opinion.

-AL

#Spotify #Youtube

[animalcrossing-blogg]

are any of these your original posts? if not, please stop uploading other people's content.

Well... yeah. I can't lie... a chunk of the photos I've posted are mine or my friends. While I'd rather not have to prove myself to the anon ask, I can point out each individual screenshot from me or someone I know if I needed to.

When they're not mine I never take credit and it says very clearly on my account that I will remove or add credit to photos on request if the owner is unhappy.

If I really wanted to get into the technicality of it (this is where law class finally helps me) all photos I use, excluding art, could be used without any 'credit' due to the content being a screenshot of Nintendo brand products that's free to use (mostly) for us lot. So I don't even owe the courtesy of offering removal... of course, I would never not do that - that would just be ridiculously rude. I will always provide the option of removal, no matter the reason. What Im saying is there's, by technicality, no obligation if you want to be literal about it.

All the photos that I dont take myself are pulled from my Pinterest. My special interest is Animal Crossing and I have (as of rn) 5,924 Animal Crossing pins and by no means the time to hunt down each individual owner. And for many of the photos I use, especially the ones from old games, there is the issue of being unable to track down the original poster.... it's not even like Im bad at this... I edit the Animal Crossing Wiki, so you know I can produce sources. Its just that sometimes that source is beyond your reach. That doesn't mean Im not going to post the pretty Animal Crossing photo from 2015 or the meme that got a chuckle out of me. If I see a meme on Pinterest that originated from Tumblr then I don't save it or use it, Ill just find the original.

Finally, art is something that I respect a lot as an artist, so I hesitate to post any art if I don't have the source available to me. You might notice a distinct lack of art on this blog at a baseline and that's because of this concern.

I gotta be honest here man, unless you're the owner of every post Ive ever made then Im not just gonna stop posting. Im at no point claiming to own all these photos, but a good chunk of them are screenshots from old games, with owners who don't even exist in the ac world anymore. Many new screenshots include a handy-dandy watermark which I never remove and in the worst-case scenario most posts can be, at the least, traced back to my Pinterest.

Im not going to stop posting memes, screenshots and the occasional irl AC craft because Anonymous said it was bad. If you have a personal issue because I used something of yours I encourage you to just contact me directly and I can remove it, but until that point please have a nice day.

TL:DR - No. I dont own everything I post and I don't even claim to own everything but yeah a chunk ARE mine or my friends. I dont post art, memes never come from a direct source please be serious, sometimes posts are so old there is no credit and if nobody ever reshared the photos from 2020 and before I think we would be living in a dark and sad timeline. I want to live in Animal Crossing every day, I have given 15 years of my life to this game and you can either join me in loving the vast recorded history of the game or go about your day enjoying your life in your own way, away from me.

If it really is truly a bother, Im happy to place a link to my Pinterest somewhere obvious on my blog so people can see for themselves where I get all this from, if not my own town.

#askacb #Anonymous #animal crossing #hopefully this doesnt come off as rude #im autistic as hell idk how to talk #but I stand by posting fun screenshots #oneday when im a master blogger with thousands of photos of my own Ill ONLY post MY photos and then you guys wont even be able to escape me #how about that?

[saltminerising]

s (now k) from wind

is the representation of toxicity. Holy shit, the more I find out about this person the more exhausted I feel.

During Thundercrack, as was previously talked about here, they created a bit of a scene about the Thunderbird skin. I wanted to ask them about it, cause y'know I found their attitude a little strange and wanted to spark some type of conversation to maybe understand where they were coming from better, and all they did was dance around my points and then call me racist. For... quoting and agreeing with an indigenous person regarding the topic.

The convo is long (no thanks to me), so I've provided the imgur album that has TLDRs instead of putting the images directly into this post. 

https://imgur.com/a/o2UvpAS

They used to link their toyhouse around the time I PM'd them, which gave me some red flags as well. Funnily enough, the link is no longer in their bio, but there's an archive of their profile which includes the link if you wish to look.

They liked to claim imperials and obelisks are acts of cultural appropriation/borderline that, but then they proceed to kin characters from similar cultures/cultural elements like... I have no issues with kinning but isn't that a bit hypocritical to do from what they believe to be appropriation since S/K isn't from those cultures either? (they state in their about me in their selfdragon's bio that they're white) I'm not saying it is appropriation, but from what they believe to be appropriation, I'm surprised that they do this.

link: https://i.imgur.com/cuJHVA3.png

link: https://i.imgur.com/XZR5yqR.png

(on their carrd, via toyhouse)

Also, they seem to be really lax on giving artists credit... A bit of a warning to anyone who they commission because the way they sound is really, uh, offputting.

link: https://i.imgur.com/7xJOfPW.png

Later on, they vented in the gen1 hell discord about how "they can't take cis ppl" to which someone else responded something along the lines of "i'm not sure i like being hated because of what someone else did" and S/K got angry over that, going on to vent in another server about how the gen1 hell discord is transphobic and filled with "butthurt cis ppl" because of it, warning people to stay away.

link: https://i.imgur.com/nn6anGN.png

(The convo in gen1 hell has been deleted at this point, so I couldn't get screens of it, unfortunately. But their vent alone proves it happened and I'm sure people in gen1 hell would be able to verify further.)

And now, I'm hearing shit about how S/K denounced a lesbian person for having a dream about dating a man? That they should stop calling themselves lesbian and start calling themselves bi since it's lesbophobic to be a lesbian and in a relationship with a man? The fuck? (Take this part with a grain of salt, as I only heard about it on this blog and was not provided screenshots/could not find screenshots, so if someone in the notes could do that, that'd be great.)

Mod note: people have submitted about the s/k lesbian vs bi situation several times and we don’t post stuff like that because we don’t host lgbtq+ discourse 💕 but if you want to comment about that situation I won’t stop you

This person is an admin of a trans-only discord called Trans Rising (so is C from ice). I can only imagine what hellfire will be created once someone walks slightly out of line with what S/K believes or thinks. S/K thinks so black-and-white and picks so many fights that it just creates a toxic atmosphere wherever they go, so no doubt it's going to happen with the server they admin soon enough.

I warn you: please avoid interaction with this person. I tried, and let me tell you, I needed a nap afterward. They're so exhausting to talk to and will only leave you either angry, hurt, tired, or all three.

(also slight warning about their friend, c from ice, the links in their carrd is a grabify, meaning that it will log your ip if you click on it. i don't think s/k does this, but maybe use a vpn or something else while checking either of them out just in case)

link: https://i.imgur.com/u7clCgb.png

uhhhh

link: https://i.imgur.com/LTnVwtc.png

(a comment from s/k from wind on c from ice's profile)

(also a sidenote to the admins, i'm not used to submitting stuff on tumblr, i tried to provide both the images and their links on here (except for the imgur album linked), but if the images break, could you use the link to reinsert them back into this post? thank you and im sorry if it does break! ;w;)

Mod note: I added most of the images back, I didn’t add the kin images because it feels too far away from FR to be relevant, but I left the links for anyone curious 🥨 thank you for formatting it like that!

#submission #long post