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pandoratheprocrasticreator · 9 months

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idk im glad they didn't give us any actual details about caleb and evelyn beyond belos's memories and like. fifty-sixth-hand information from masha's story so audience members not paying attention would at least know who they are.

whatever nitty gritty details the audience comes up with on their own for what happened to these two would be infinitely more satisfying to them than what the show would have been able to depict in a flashback. especially working within what's appropriate for children's television.

caleb the person isn't important to the story anymore. the MEMORY of caleb, which belos has never let himself get over in 400 years, is the important thing. and you don't need to know much about caleb for that to work. and while i loved the parallels between the wittebanes and hunter and luz, as well as the clawthornes being a descendent of evelyn, i'm glad they never confirmed it, and it remains situational irony purely for the audience.

hunter's only connection with caleb is his DNA, which also ties back to belos's feelings. him befriending luz is something they did of their own volition. it's not because hunter is fated to play out every beat of caleb's life by virtue of being his clone. similarly, while i love a good hunter clawthorne, dell taking hunter as an apprentice and eda showing care towards him in s2 are because eda is kind to children and hunter independently had passion for palisman carving. it's not because they found out they were related, because the whole show is about found family.

having flashbacks to the real caleb and evelyn wouldn't have contributed anything to the story aside from fanservice. what matters is how belos feels about them. belos's ego and the desperation to be acknowledged by his puritan community and God aside, the idea of caleb haunts his every action. not the actual ghost of caleb-i've already discussed here why the idea of caleb's ghost literally haunting belos would be a poor writing decision. belos knew the person his brother actually was, killed him, and imagined a perfect version of him that he chased after for the next 350 years.

the tragedy is that the perfect version of caleb is unattainable, and now belos can never get the real caleb back. he refuses to acknowledge that caleb may have been flawed before the influence of evelyn. to phillip, everything he thinks is wrong about caleb is because he was corrupted by the boiling isles, and that's part of the reason he starts on a quest to kill all the witches. it's also why he makes so many grimwalkers. he desperately misses that ideal version of caleb, so he makes copies of caleb and plays family with them.

and belos loathes the grimwalkers. he kills them because he hates the magic they were made with. because he hates being reminded of his brother and what happened to him. and of course, he hates the grimwalkers for not meeting his expectations of what his "ideal" caleb would have been like. it's a fluid expectation that belos, subconsciously or not, changes as he goes, all in order to take out his anger on innocent children. he seems to recognize his enjoyment of harming the grimwalkers, though it's unknown if he understands the reason-which is that the "perfect" caleb will never exist, and likely never did. phillip's brother is gone forever, and it's all his fault.

and idk maybe in the writers minds caleb was a perfect brother and baby phillip was just a possessive little shit. or maybe it's the opposite and caleb messed up a lot in communicating with phillip on his relationship with evelyn. maybe evelyn was a perfectly nice girl who was perfectly supportive of caleb and phillip's choices or maybe she hated phillip and the other humans and did convince caleb to leave it all behind. it's a fascinating piece of backstory and i love seeing fanworks that talk about it! but anything more about caleb and evelyn that the creators add in canon would give actual context to their situation that we don't need! their story has been over for 350 years and dont affect any of the other characters beyond how it affects phillip!

nothing more about these two can be said that will contribute more to belos's character that isn't already conveyed with the barebones material we got in the show. this story isn't about "forbidden love," this is about how phillip was confronted with the fact that his brother found happiness outside of him, and that someone he's been taught since childhood to hate may not be all bad. it's about how he plugged his fingers in his ears in response to this and went on a 350 year long killing spree to prove to himself that he can never be in the wrong.

basically, i wouldn't go so far as to call caleb and evelyn's backstory "purposefully unexplained," but i definitely think the story is a lot stronger as it is than it would be if they did explain it all. not every detail of a story needs to have a word of god answer as to how it all went down. sometimes adding in unnecessary detail for completionism's sake just distracts from the point you're actually trying to convey. while there are a lot of things that i wished the show could have explored in more detail had it not been shortened, caleb and evelyn's story is not one of them.

#shut up pandora #the owl house #toh #emperor belos #phillip wittebane #caleb wittebane #evelyn clawthorne #shut up pandora indeed lmao this post is way too long #the second to last sentence?#'sometimes adding in unnecessary detail for completionism's sake just distracts from the point youre actually trying to convey?'#thats me writing this post babey!#anyway yeah the whole forbidden love schtick that caleb and evelyn had has been done so much #that the show basically expects you to get the gist via background hollow mind pics and spooky halloween stories #this isnt to say the romance was necessarily dull or bad what i mean is we dont need any more info to know how it turned out #and maybe this is just the way i write stories but if the info isnt necessary for plot or characterization of relevant characters #then including it would just be indulgence #which is great for fanworks but will make an independent story bloated if youre not careful #but anyway this could also be the danganronpa enjoyer in me but i dont think you should go out of your way to explain everything #sometimes canon logical explanations for things that only matter on an emotional and thematic level... are worse

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kayayeteae · 6 months

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#saw some posts about how basically this website is dying for one reason or another #and like usually I’m like hell yeah stick it to the corporations!!!#but one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that the amount of measures it takes to run a business in tech #is really…a lot #and to have 0 marketing involved to generate revenue is even worse #social media is a free service for the sole reason that users are technically a ploy to advertise to #what users here basically did was demand that tumblr provide to us while also remain minimal in their advertising #which basically means they aren’t generating revenue conventionally #blazing posts and purchasing check marks were a temporary problem to a long term solution #if this website requested to be ran the same way AO3 and wiki does users would immediately attack staff #it’s a really shit situation but also tumblr shouldn’t have listened so much to their users #the net worth of tumblr isn’t worth much to investors given all this unless #i should also add that gated communities (like discord) has negatively impacted the amount of users on this site #less users means less interaction with content creators (dominantly artists)#less content creators means less content #u guys get the gist #I’d like to add to question every business related explanation on this website #y’all can complain to hell and back about tumblr but it was one of the lesser evils as far as ads went

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neriyon · 1 month

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5 Character Associations

Emotions

Affection: He holds love for the whole world in his heart.

Joy: Tasty food, company of friends, lazy mornings.. Life is full of joys, both big and small.

Optimism: Fate is not set in stone, so have some hope for a brighter future.

Compassion: Try to understand how others are feeling and you'll understand their actions better.

Dependence: Being all alone can manifest some of the most horrifying moments.

Colors

Lavender purple

Turquoise

White

Gold

Other shades of purple

Scents

Lily

Freshly baked apple pie

Birch

Beef stew

Glögi

Objects

Lily hairclip: It's origin forgotten, but still an irreplacable accessory.

Menphina's Earring: Memento of his origin.

Multi-colored, woven bracelet: Basically a wedding ring.

His trusty (old) bag: Worn but still working and filled to a brim.

His weapons: Eleganty carved white staff and a small grimoire, usually hidden in his bag.

Body Language

Wide smile: Friendly and inviting.

Lively ears and tail: Ear twitches, tail swishes. What you'd expect from a cat.

Casual physical contact: Ghost of a touch on hand, tail curled around another. He feels better knowing someone is close even when he isn't actively looking at them.

Hugs: What's better than a big warm hug?

Expressive body: Good or bad, you'll have no trouble figuring out what he's thinking.

Aesthetics

Hearty homemade meals with treasured friends.

A lantern, lighting the way.

Bubbly spring flowing across ancient, unmoving forest.

Bright, playful laughter.

Hand holding hand, unwilling to let go.

Tagged by @arinaxiv !

I'll skip tagging this time, brain is still mush from flu. (￣﹃￣) Consider yourself tagged if you want to give it a go, and feel free to tag me. It's fun seeing what others associate with their ocs~

#tag games #purple catboy #somehow every time i do one of these i immediately forgot every tagging system i use #anyway uh #the amount of self control for not writing “love is stored in the catboy” as the affection explanation lol #“why are almost all his scents food?” i'm a bit hungry (￣▽￣)"#but then again so is he haha #ah glögi is basically just warm juice (or wine) + spices you'd use for gingerbread #i also did a little mixing with the two styles i've seen these done in #so some explanations added but not to every category #oh right. book.#i don't remember if i've mentioned it before but he does actually have a smn grimoire too #just uh #not in use #it sits in his bag usually #and he'll do (some) smn skills just fine with his staff #only if there's multiple healers around he'll dig his book out to focus on dps

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transfennecbuddy · 2 years

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Just recently found out that Outer Science was originally a Vocaloid song. And where did I first hear it? You guessed it, a Warriors map call.

But anyway, I listened to the original song for the first time (since the map call used an English cover by Kuraiinu, featuring Dj-Jo). And it THREW me off that the voice was high-pitched instead of deeper like the cover was. I feel like if I'd heard that version first, I might've liked it better, but I just couldn't get past the high-pitched voice. My conclusion? The original song is frickin good, but just cause of the order I watched it, I like the English cover more.

I still really liked the original song, though! The more robotic voice gave off a whole different vibe! Like what was coming was inevitable, or that the danger facing you isn't human and therefore is even scarier. (The cover gave off the vibe of a human that's so mad/insane that you can't save them, they've gone far off the deep end.) And that little peak when it starts the lyric, "Lamenting 'Give it back'"?! I LOVE it, it surprised me and I've fallen head over heels in love with it.

Also, one thing that will never stop surprising me is the level of animation in these frickin music videos! Like, I don't know if I just have low expectations, but those little moments when an eye would open wide, or when a character would mouth the lyrics? BEAUTIFUL! And when the screen would zigzag back and forth, revealing more fragments of lyrics that stab into the foreground before fuzzing out as fast as they came, only to be replaced with more pieces of lyric? It made it harder for me to read the English version of the lyric, but it was so good artistically and really added a sense of motion and urgency to the video.

I'm pretty sure no one recommended this to me since I naturally found it when I searched up Outer Science, but still! Great song, is definitely going on my new Vocaloid playlist!

#no one asked me to do a whole opinion piece of this #but I feel like I kinda owe a longer explanation of it/why I like it #plus I kinda enjoy gushing about why I liked it #and the art part was completely unneeded but as an artist it really stood out to me when I watched it #I wish I could make stuff this good in the future #also there's this random song I know from another Warriors map call that I'm now wondering if it's a Vocaloid #I will have to check #also also I'm still listening to Reckless Battery Burns and Perfectly Sweet on repeat #but when I listened to Outer Science I had the motivation to finish a big thing of homework #so it has been added to the rotation #oo ALSO BIG DISCLAIMER I know basically nothing about music and not much about animation sooo #just mi own opinion #outer science #sunny subs #vocaloid #kitty's reviews

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effysayres · 7 months

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also cursed is my inability to tell people how exactly i feel. all it does is cause me sorrow and hurt those around me.

#i know that deep down there's not much else to me but surviving. everything i think everything i do everything i am #-- it's just one escape act after another. (...)#fraise.txt #it's absolutely not a good thing #as a friend put it: “you want approval so bad that you disregard yourself”#but at the same time i can be a real prick #for example #instead of telling someone how i really felt about something #for example: i basically unfollowed someone almost everywhere without an explanation because i felt like i didn't matter to them #which wound up hurting them badly #honestly i feel like a giant bitch since this spring #i genuinely wonder where i went wrong or what happened to me that everything is and feels wrong #i guess it is what they say : survival isn't pretty #to quote effy sayre :#also adding “the more you did to save yourself the less you become a person worth saving.”#negative //

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exeggcute · 10 months

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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

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crazy-pages · 5 months

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I'm going to throw my two cents in to the conversation about why James Somerton didn't get caught earlier. Part of the answer is of course that he did get caught, he just bullied and lied to get away with it for a while, but I know a lot of people still express confusion. And of course he went out of his way to make sure his audience didn't know about other queer history sources other than himself. But still. How could he have so many viewers of his videos and none of them had seen X source material?

Well. To be blunt, most of his videos were pretty basic. He tended to copy the highlights of what he was plagiarizing, not the really advanced stuff. And insofar as he copied the advanced stuff, he had a tendency to chop it up and serve it out of context alongside other plagiarized work. The material he was presenting was revolutionary to an audience unfamiliar with queer history, but like. I'm guessing 'Disney villains are queer coded' is not exactly a new concept to the kind of people who read multiple books about queer coding in film.

Now I'm not a film studies person, I'm a physicist. But you know what I do when I get a video in my YouTube recommendations about some fairly basic physics concept?

I skip it. No shade to the creator, but like. I hit that topic a decade ago and I've added literally thousands of hours of studying and research to my brain since. I'm just going to give it a pass, all right?

These kinds of videos self-select for an audience which isn't going to be familiar with the source material. The people who know it are unlikely to keep listening after the first minute or so.

And you've got to remember how much of this content the experts have consumed! With very few exceptions for weird little things that stuck in my head after all these years, I would probably not notice a physics explanation plagiarized from one of my textbooks! Not because I wasn't intimately acquainted with the textbook, but because I was intimately acquainted with many such textbooks. Spend enough time learning this stuff and it all blurs together a little bit. Does this explanation sound familiar because you've heard it before, or because you've just read books which cover this specific topic seven different times? And does that wording or that example ring a bell because it's plagiarized, or because it's common to the field?

Catching this kind of plagiarism requires having the kind of people who are already familiar with these sources, and therefore uninterested in video summaries on the topic, to watch the video. And among those people who do, it requires them to match Somerton's words to one specific source on the topic out of many, that they probably read quite some time ago. And then you have the filter of how many of those subject matter experts have the source on hand to check, to turn a vague "...hmm" into something solid.

If you know enough about queer history to say that some of his plagiarism was obvious, now that you've watched the video, then you should remember that there is a reason you probably weren't one of the people watching his videos! And because YouTube promotes videos through algorithmic engagement, none of this stuff has to pass the sniff test for any other expert in the field before it gets released. No experts have to like it for it to get published or for it to get good reviews or for it to get a recommendation in, I don't know, the New York Times.

The only people who have to like the videos for them to get traction are people who are just trying to learn introductory queer history and film theory. The exact people who aren't going to notice this. And for those of you who to whom it is obvious, ask yourself. When was the last time you watched a basic level queer history introduction on YouTube?

#hbomberguy #james somerton

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chemicaljacketslut · 2 years

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guys i am. trying out for a solo in choir. for creep. the cover by richard cheese. guys

#PLEEK PLEEEK I WANT IT SO BAD #was just practicing and am SLAYING the final chorus so fingers crossed #even though it’s kinda out of my range like it sounds better up the octave but is kind of hard to sing up the octave so it’s a dilemma #like it’s in my range but it’s pushing it #but in class i was like am i allowed to try out 👁️👁️#and literally like 5 people were like OMG YES YOUR VOICE WOULD BE PERFECT #and it was people im not like great friends with or anything i literally felt soo hashtag validated #this may seem funny with just this context but trust me it is SO much funnier with the added context i have #i mean it’s rly a you had to be there kind of thing but basically #for like 2 years it’s been an inside joke that the choir should sing creep like it would get brought up every week at least #to illustrate how big this joke was in the middle of our end-of-year choir banquet without explanation they dimmed the lights #and started playing a creep karaoke track #and it was just this room full of choir kids all singing creep next to their confused parents #so anyway. the fact that we’re actually doing it. and that it’s THE RICHARD CHEESE VERSION #is fucking monumental

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all-the-fish · 3 months

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Oh, you know, just the usual internet browsing experience in the year of 2024

Some links and explanations since I figured it might be useful to some people, and writing down stuff is nice.

First of all, get Firefox. Yes, it has apps for Android/iOS too. It allows more extensions and customization (except the iOS version), it tracks less, the company has a less shitty attitude about things. Currently all the other alternatives are variations of Chromium, which means no matter how degoogled they supposedly are, Google has almost a monopoly on web browsing and that's not great. Basically they can introduce extremely user unfriendly updates and there's nothing forcing them to not do it, and nowhere for people to escape to. Current examples of their suggested updates are disabling/severly limiting adblocks in June 2024, and this great suggestion to force sites to verify "web environment integrity" ("oh you don't run a version of chromium we approve, such as the one that runs working adblocks? no web for you.").

uBlockOrigin - barely needs any explanation but yes, it works. You can whitelist whatever you want to support through displaying ads. You can also easily "adblock" site elements that annoy you. "Please log in" notice that won't go away? Important news tm sidebar that gives you sensory overload? Bye.

Dark Reader - a site you use has no dark mode? Now it has. Fairly customizable, also has some basic options for visually impaired people.

SponsorBlock for YouTube - highlights/skips (you choose) sponsored bits in the videos based on user submissions, and a few other things people often skip ("pls like and subscribe!"). A bit more controversial than normal adblock since the creators get some decent money from this, but also a lot of the big sponsors are kinda scummy and offer inferior product for superior price (or try to sell you a star jpg land ownership in Scotland to become a lord), so hearing an ad for that for the 20th time is kinda annoying. But also some creators make their sponsored segments hilarious.

Privacy Badger (and Ghostery I suppose) - I'm not actually sure how needed these are with uBlock and Firefox set to block any tracking it can, but that's basically what it does. Find someone more educated on this topic than me for more info.

Https Everywhere - I... can't actually find the extension anymore, also Firefox has this as an option in its settings now, so this is probably obsolete, whoops.

Facebook Container - also comes with Firefox by default I think. Keeps FB from snooping around outside of FB. It does that a lot, even if you don't have an account.

WebP / Avif image converter - have you ever saved an image and then discovered you can't view it, because it's WebP/Avif? You can now save it as a jpg.

YouTube Search Fixer - have you noticed that youtube search has been even worse than usual lately, with inserting all those unrelated videos into your search results? This fixes that. Also has an option to force shorts to play in the normal video window.

Consent-O-Matic - automatically rejects cookies/gdpr consent forms. While automated, you might still get a second or two of flashing popups being yeeted.

XKit Rewritten - current most up to date "variation "fork" of XKit I think? Has settings in extension settings instead of an extra tumblr button. As long as you get over the new dash layout current tumblr is kinda fine tbh, so this isn't as important as in the past, but still nice. I mostly use it to hide some visual bloat and mark posts on the dash I've already seen.

YouTube NonStop - do you want to punch youtube every time it pauses a video to check if you're still there? This saves your fists.

uBlacklist - blacklists sites from your search results. Obviously has a lot of different uses, but I use it to hide ai generated stuff from image search results. Here's a site list for that.

Redirect AMP to HTML - redirects links from their amp version to the normal version. Amp link is a version of a site made faster and more accessible for phones by Bing/Google. Good in theory, but lets search engines prefer some pages to others (that don't have an amp version), and afaik takes traffic from the original page too. Here's some more reading about why it's an issue, I don't think I can make a good tl;dr on this.

Also since I used this in the tags, here's some reading about enshittification and why the current mainstream internet/services kinda suck.

#modern internet is great #enshittification #internet browsing #idk how to tag this #but i hope it will help someone #personal #question mark

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sepublic · 7 months

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Interesting that pop culture portrays Van Helsing as an experienced, seasoned vampire hunter, when it's pretty clear in the novel that this is his first go around with the whole thing, his first confirmation they actually exist, and in other words he's basically winging it and hasn't necessarily thrown a punch in his entire life (Which means he can’t just throw hands with Dracula, he needs research and backup to organize the perfect trap where they won’t be instantly killed). VH doesn’t always know what’s going on, he’s figuring things as he goes along; Like yeah he's HEARD of vampires, but it's never been anything prominent to him.

If anything, his past with vampires is probably similar to a lot of readers; Familiar with the concept, knows some of the details but not all of them, and definitely presumes them fake. He sees something going on with his patient and is like Haha damn that's just like a vampire, wouldn't it be crazy if... And then he slowly starts settling into conspiracy theory mode when more and more dots show up to conveniently connect, as he does the obligatory Protagonist Searching Stuff Up bit and realizes Mein Gott!!! It might be a vampire!!!

But then at the last second VH reminds himself, Now hold on, have I actually SEEN this vampire??? But it won't do anyone harm if I added some garlic flowers, right...? And then it just gradually escalates from there into full-on paranoia and dread that vampires exist and VH needs to desecrate the dead, and then he finally gets confirmation when he sees an Undead Lucy. What the fuck.

I think there's an argument to be made that Van Helsing was doubting himself just as much as Seward and the others initially did, if not more so, and he can’t even talk to anyone about it; So there’s an elation where you finally talk to others and realize it’s really happening, you’re not crazy.

This just ties into the theme of recording that which you did see, which is indisputable, because it’s evidence and proof. So you can be certain you aren't totally insane, and can distinguish facts from assumptions and theories if necessary; Especially when one needs to consider other explanations for the same symptoms. There’s a relief confirming what is and isn’t real to dispel self-doubt, like there was for Jonathan, who also suffered from Dracula’s gaslighting distorting his perception of reality.

I think all of this makes Van Helsing's actions and secrecy a lot more understandable when handling Lucy; If you hired a doctor and he suddenly started bringing up vampires, you might be inclined to think he's insane, doesn't know what he's talking about, and has read too many vampire stories and probably believes in 'alternative' medicine. Van Helsing still has an image and reputation to uphold here, and if it's gone, he can't actually be there to help Lucy if he turns out to be right.

That isn't to say he isn't without critique, especially in later portions of the novel, but you can kinda see where this underdog stance of "I'm right and the others around me are wrong" gets vindicated and thus develops into a bit of arrogance later down the line; Particularly, in presuming his disagreements with Mina to be no different than his secrecy with Seward and Mrs. Westenra.

In the end, VH could be described as a character who wonders if he's in the novel Dracula (compared to Jonathan who knows he's in a horror story of some kind but can't name the genre), but then has to remind himself this is reality... If this is a story, it’s probably just some medical drama. And when VH does accept he's in the novel Dracula, he assumes his character development and the lessons he learns are straightforward.

#dracula #dracula daily #van helsing

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ohthewh0rror · 5 months

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I’VE DUG TWO GRAVES FOR US, MY DEAR.

˚₊ ⋆ ☠︎︎ ⋆ ₊˚ prompt — “Can I request Tom riddle x (fem!) reader angst? Basically, they have been trying for a long time to have children, but haven’t succeeded. So, to have an heir, Tom gets Bellatrix pregnant and obviously hasn’t told reader. Reader finds out shes pregnant and goes to tell Tom and show him the pregnancy test, but right outside his study she hears him ask Bellatrix „how is my heir doing? Is my child healthy?“ and reader drops the test in front of his study, where Tom finds it later, and leaves.”

Part 2

Pairing: Tom Riddle x Reader

Word count: 3.6K

A/N: “but baaaabe, she doesn’t even mean anything to me” and for him he MEANS it, that’s the worst part. Oh god I’m going to be sick. I headcanon him as loyal and now he’s out here embarrassing me. Anyway, thank you to my best friend Madie for helping me choose the right ending for this and for proof-reading for me. To the requester: I didn’t take the suicide route bc that’s a very sensitive topic that I have personal ties to. But yeah, if anyone wants it I’m 100% down to write a part 2 to this.🖤🖤

You felt wrong.

Well, not exactly you, just something felt wrong. You felt on edge, tense, like you were just waiting for the galleon to drop. There was no explanation for the way you were feeling, at least not one you could think of. But you couldn’t help but feel on edge, your mind racing as you resisted the urge to continuously look over your shoulder throughout the day.

You had hoped that the feeling would be gone by the end of the day, but as you sat with Tom having dinner the feeling was still there. You wanted to hide it from him, but you just knew he could see the slight shake of your hand as you poked mindlessly with your fork at the food in front of you. Though, either out of courtesy to you or him just not wanting to deal with it at the moment, he didn’t ask.

No, it wouldn’t be until the two of you had gotten into bed for the night that he would.

As you settled into bed, you felt Tom’s arm wrap around your waist, pulling you close. While you would normally welcome this, as it was rare that Tom would hold you in such a way, the unusual action added to your sense of unease. You felt his lips press a kiss just behind your ear before he asked, “there’s something bothering you, what is it?”

You didn’t know how to tell him, or if you even wanted to tell him. You didn’t want Tom to think negatively of you, to think you were officially losing it, but a part of you knew Tom wasn’t going to drop it. What Tom wanted, Tom got, one way or another. So, reluctantly, you told him.

“I’m not sure, I just don’t feel right, not in a sick way but—,” you paused, mentally kicking yourself for admitting it out loud, “I feel as if something bad is about to happen, something very bad.” Tom said nothing, but you could feel his hold on you tighten just a fraction. There was a few seconds of silence before Tom finally spoke again, “I see, I’m sure you are alright, you probably just need to rest.”

You know this was his way of comforting you, but it did nothing to help how you felt. You tried taking his words to heart though, and forced yourself to relax, attempting to get some sleep.

6:23 am.

You stared at the ticking hands of the clock on the wall, watching them dutifully count the time, hoping the dullness of it all would help you fall back asleep. It did nothing to help you, though, and instead just aided in helping your mind wander. You went through every possibility, until you were left with two options.

Tom was up to something… or you were pregnant. You didn’t want to think of the first option, it was a thought that left you upset even considering, but he had been distant for the past 4 months. He did not treat you any different, but he seemed… distracted. Where he once did not mind if you opened his letters for him, he now tightly guarded them. You tried asking him why, but he said it was to protect you if things went bad. He attempted to explain your worries away, saying he did not want you implicated in anything he was up to.

Not to mention he was out the house more— Death Eater business, he tells you. Always that. It almost made you angry how much time he spent working towards his grand scheme when all you wanted was just some of his time. At first you tried to push back on it, but soon realized it did nothing to sway him. Tom did what he wanted, regardless of the feelings of others.

Despite all this you refuse to accept Tom may be up to something behind your back. He was your husband, and he loved you, even if he did not express it often. So that left you with one conclusion: you’re pregnant.

It was a possibility that had been hanging in the back of your mind, but not one you wanted to genuinely entertain. After years of trying and it being false alarms have left you with nothing but negative feelings towards the process of finding out. You did not want to get your hopes up once again, as each negative was becoming more and more unbearable.

You couldn’t just rule it out without taking a test though, so you had no choice but to do so. Not wanting to go to a healer and have them check on you magically, you decided to instead go about it the muggle way. You had heard during your younger years, while at Hogwarts, that muggle women had measures of finding out on their own in the comfort of their own bathroom. So that’s what you set off to do, after getting dressed of course.

Entering muggle London, it was hard not to stick out. While you tried to dress as casual as you possibly could, you knew there was still something off about how you dressed. No one seemed to mind though, letting you walk through the busy streets without much more than a double take. It didn’t take long for you to find what looked like a small store, you hoped to Merlin that they had what you needed.

As you walked around the small shop, you realized what you were doing was beyond ridiculous. You were truly out of your league as you browsed the aisles looking for what you needed. You were beginning to get frustrated when you heard a feminine voice from the left, “excuse me, miss, can I help you find something?”

You paused, stopping midstep, turning your head to look at who was speaking to you.

The girl, who couldn’t have been any older than 19, seemed to be a shop attendant. She had on what you could only guess was typical muggle attire, and a vest with the name of the shop on it. You nodded, “yes, I need the test that will tell me if I’m pregnant or not.”

The shop girl gave you a look, and you began to worry more that you were sticking out far too much. “You mean a pregnancy test?” She asked. “Yes, that,” you replied, hoping she would just show you where it was and stop talking to you. Thankfully she seemed to have read your mind, gesturing you to follow her. She took you to the aisle furthest back in the store, pointing out the shelf that was filled with a dozen different options. You thanked her, and she left you alone with all the different tests.

Looking over them all you picked the one you thought would be best, but as you held the test you had a revelation, ‘I have no muggle money’. You froze, now weighing your options. You could leave and convert the money, coming back at a later time, or you could just…take it. Leaving was the morally correct choice, but just taking it was the more tempting one as it would save you the trouble of explaining to Tom why you needed muggle money if word got back to him.

So, looking around and making sure no eyes were on you, you silently cast a spell, hiding the box from any prying eyes. As you walked out the store you couldn’t believe what you had done. Stealing? From a muggle establishment? How scandalous! As you walked down the street you shook your head, banishing the thought from your mind. You didn’t have time to worry about the ethics of stealing from muggles. You needed to know if you were pregnant.

Thankfully, it was a little easier to find a place to use the restroom. You sat on the toilet, reading the box, and the instructions seemed easy enough. You followed them exactly before capping the test, holding it in a way where the results faced away from you. You didn’t want to see the results, too scared of it being negative once again. After what you considered an appropriate amount of time, you flipped the test over.

Positive.

‘It’s wrong, it has to be,’ you thought to yourself as you eyed the muggle pregnancy test. The test was wrong, it’s a defective muggle device. You’d make an appointment with the healer as soon as possible until you could confirm it for sure and you’d keep it a secret from Tom until then. You didn’t want to tell him, only for it to be a false positive and get his hopes up fruitlessly.

So, you wrapped the test tightly and tossed it in the bin. Washing your hands, you made your way out of the muggle establishment, and to an empty corner before apparating to the edge of yours and Tom’s property. You stood there for a moment, taking in the site of your shared home, wishing you had some calming draught on hand.

You knew as soon as Tom saw you he’d know something was wrong. Tom had always said you weren’t a very good liar, and you knew with the state you were in right now that if he tried to pry your secret would come tumbling out before you had the chance to stop it.

You couldn’t stand out here all day though, the November air was more than chilly, and you were going to freeze if you didn’t go in soon. You took a steadying breath and walked forward with your head held high, taking your time to get to the doors, attempting to look casual. You were halfway up the set of stone stairs leading up to the front doors, when they began to open. For a split second you felt yourself panic on the inside, thinking maybe it was Tom who came to greet you, until your house elf Poppy came into view.

“Welcome back, madam,” the little elf said, ushering you in.

“Hello, Poppy,” you said. You had never been happier to see a house elf in your life. As Poppy shut the doors behind you, and she ushered you to the dining room, she informed you that Tom had already left for the day, leaving you to have breakfast alone. Normally that would have left you disappointed, you and Tom made sure to always eat breakfast and dinner together, and this would be the first time in a long time that you ate alone. But, after the morning you had, you relished in the absence of conversation.

“Poppy, please make an appointment for me with a healer,” you asked, sitting down at the dining table. Poppy nodded wordlessly before leaving you to go make the appointment.

It was a week later that you found yourself sitting in a sterile room, awaiting the results. You wanted so desperately for it to be true. You’d never recover if you found out the test had lied. Tom still didn’t know about the possibility of your pregnancy, but then again, it wasn’t hard to hide it from him with how busy he’d been this past week. And seeing as your mind was preoccupied, you hadn’t pushed on what had him so busy.

Just as your mind began to drift from boy names, to more feminine names, the door to your right clicked open. The healer gave you a bright smile, greeting you. The forced politeness left a bad taste in your mouth as you just wished for the results so you could get home. You gave a tight-lipped smile back, and a similar greeting. The healer stopped in front of you, flipping one of the papers up, quickly reading its contents before looking at you once again.

“Well, Mrs. Riddle, it seems you certainly are pregnant!” He congratulates you, before explaining how far along you seem to be and that he needs you back in a month. You’re still in a daze when he hands you the paperwork, telling you your diagnosis and other information regarding your pregnancy. It feels too good to be true, and you’re not sure if you should laugh, cry, or do both as you leave the office.

You’re pregnant. You’re actually pregnant. You walk down a secluded alley, casting the muffliato charm as you buried your head in your hard, a soft cry erupting from you. You both had tried so hard for so long and it’s finally happening, you are finally having the child you both wanted. You let yourself cry from the overwhelming feeling of happiness for a moment longer before collecting yourself. You needed to tell Tom, you knew this was just the news he needed.

Tom was working from home today, something you had never been so happy about before today. It made the process of talking to him much easier than if he left to Merlin-knows-where to do what he needed. But, as you walked up those stairs to the hallway that his office was down you felt your heart plummet.

Tom was here, but so was another woman.

You quieted your steps, hoping to figure out who the woman was and what they were talking about. It was difficult as the door was mostly shut and they were talking in hushed tones. But, as you stepped off the stairs and into the hallway you recognized the voice of the woman immediately.

Bellatrix Lestrange.

A woman that you held more than just disdain for. She is the only female Death Eater Tom has recruited, and not only that, she was his second in command. While Tom didn’t see any of his Death Eaters as true equals, even you knew he seemed to favor her over the rest of them. Bellatrix seemed to revel in this fact, and despite being married herself, her loyalty seemed to lay more with your husband than her own. She did whatever Tom asked, no matter what it may be, without even a hint of resistance. You truly believe if Tom asked her to kill herself, she would do it without hesitation.

As you walked closer to the door they seemed to have stopped talking, but before you could knock and let yourself be known, you heard something that knocked the breath out of your lungs.

“You had a check-up last week, did you not? How is my heir?” Tom sounded casual, as if he was asking Bellatrix about the weather. His heir? His heir? Your mind was sent reeling as you began to hyperventilate. You quietly backed away from the door, walking as silently but also as quickly as you could away. But, as you turned to leave you nearly tripped over your own two feet, the papers you were holding falling to the ground. In your distress you left them, not being bothered to pick them up, as you caught yourself and hurried down the hallway intent on putting space between yourself and the cracked office door.

You found yourself in a guest room on the other side of the house, away from Tom and Bellatrix, away from the source of your heartbreak. You sit on the edge of the bed, and cast the muffliato charm for the second time today. After you cast the spell, you finally let yourself feel completely. Your heart shatters into tiny crystallized bits, the shards of it dig into every crevice of your sternum, leaving you clutching at your chest as it pierces your lungs and esophagus. Your chest and throat have an indescribable ache as a piercing wail leaves you, the pain of his betrayal leaving you feeling something beyond devastation.

The knowledge that he cheated on you was painful enough, but the fact that it was Bellatrix made it all the more painful. He knew how you felt toward their dynamic and his trust in her. It was as if he chose her on purpose, to tell her that Bellatrix is a more suitable partner for him.

How Bellatrix was everything she wasn’t: unwaveringly devoted to him, believed in his pureblood ideology, and stood by him on it. Bellatrix could also give him children, and she couldn’t.

Or so he thought. He didn’t know she was pregnant yet. Maybe that was for the best, you considered, as you sat in that empty room, fingers wringing together painfully as you tried to calm yourself. As you attempted to gather yourself, knocking on the door began to reverberate throughout the room, causing a panic inside you. You cleared your throat, and took in a breath, hoping to gather yourself before addressing who was on the other side. Lifting your wand you released the muffling charm, “come in.”

Your voice still wobbled as the words left you, leaving you mentally kicking yourself. The door opened, revealing Tom, on the other side. As he took in the sight of you, sniffling and teary-eyed, he walked in completely, softly shutting the door behind him. Looking at him sent a surge of anguish through you, a new wave of tears gathering in your eyes. The vision of Tom doubled as your lips began to wobble as you held back your tears. You were unable to see the look on Tom’s face as you looked away, trying to calm yourself once again, so you weren’t quite sure what he was thinking.

Getting on one knee before you, Tom placed his left hand on your knee as his right reached up, wiping at your tear streaked face. You let out a shuddering breath, finally looking at him. Tom’s face was the most expressive you’d ever seen it, if you hadn’t been in such a miserable state you would have taken a moment to admire it.

There was a look of genuine worry on his face as the both of you looked at each other. The silence was suffocating, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to be the one to break it. There was nothing you wanted to say to him, you could hardly bear to look at him, much less talk to him.

“Why are you upset, darling? This is wonderful news” Tom sounded sympathetic in his attempt to comfort you. You let out a laugh in disbelief, you could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Wonderful news? In what world is this ‘wonderful news’?” You were close to yelling by the time you finished talking, feeling your sadness morph into something far uglier: anger. Tom at least had the decency to look taken aback, seeming to not expect the response he received.

Tom’s eyes searched yours for a moment before his expression became guarded, he gave your hand a squeeze before standing up, “it seems we are talking about two different things.”

You said nothing, there was nothing you could say that he hadn’t just deduced for himself, and it seemed he knew that too as he continued speaking.

“Y/N, you have to understand, I needed to ensure I had an heir and we hadn’t been successful in getting you pregnant,” Tom tried to explain. You’re sure in his head that this was logical, just the rational choice to get around your fertility issues. But to you, this was anything but the best next step. There was no reasoning good enough to make this okay; it will never be okay. This is a wound that may scar over, but will always ache when brushed against.

“You had an affair with a woman who I already voiced my concern about, without even consulting me on your decision, and expect me to understand?” You asked, incredulously. Tom, though looking mildly annoyed, still had the decency to also seem a touch guilty. “I didn’t step out of our marriage for pleasure or some sort of validation, you've always been the only one for me, it was merely to—” you decide to cut him off. “Produce an heir,” was all you said, finishing his sentence for him.

A heavy silence hung in the air, what you said leaving a palpable bitterness in the air. Tom still had the same touch of guilt in his eyes, but it wasn't enough. The guilt wasn’t strong enough to let him take full accountability for how wrong he was. Tom reached out, his hands cupping the back of your neck as his thumbs grazed your jawline, forcing you to look at him.

“It will be okay, I made a mistake by not telling you my plans, I apologize,” Tom may have sounded sincere, but it wasn’t good enough. Nothing will ever make up for what he has done to not only your relationship, but also to your trust in him. You reached up, and gently removed his hands from your face before standing up yourself, forcing him to take a few steps back.

“No, it’s not going to be okay; it will never be ‘okay’. You didn’t just make a mistake, you ruined our marriage, and for that, Tom, I hate you.”

And you left.

Leaving your husband to stand in that spare room, alone, with only his thoughts to keep him company.

#tom riddle #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle x you #if this flops I’ll cry

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owliellder · 7 months

Text

Two's A Crowd

College Bully! Leon Kennedy x fem! Reader

MDNI 18+

(Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5)

Description: College is proving to be a lot harder than you imagined. You cannot fail this math class. So when you've tried everything else, a well-known student is recommended to you by your professor for tutoring lessons, not really leaving you with much of a choice but to work with him.

Warnings: Not proofread, No Use of Y/N, Dub-Con, Unprotected Sex, Bullying, Yelling, Cursing

Tags: College AU, Bully! Leon, Shy! Reader, both are in their early 20's, Leon is Rude AF in the beginning, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, Fingering, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Additional Tags to be Added

Author's Note: Slightly shorter chapter since I got stuck watching the last two episodes of Fionna and Cake, but I hope y'all like where I'm steering this. Pick up what I'm putting down, eh??

Cross-posted onto AO3

Chapter 2:

“This is insane. You’re not even trying.”

Leon’s cruel comments had been endless since you showed up today. He was already irritated that you even showed to begin with, now he’s just taking all his frustrations out on you. The guy isn’t even passive aggressive, he’s just aggressive. “I showed you the formula like.. five times already.”

“I don’t need you to patronize me, please.” You asked with a meek voice, bringing your hands up to cover your face for a couple seconds before placing them down on either side of the new math assignment sitting in front of you. You understood his impatience though, you were even starting to grow impatient with yourself, having been stuck on the third question for over thirty minutes now. Leon stressed the fact that you got one hour only with him and you’d basically wasted half that time bouncing from the formula he’d written down to the question itself.

The formula was helpful, but this question included more numbers than you knew what to do with. The main issue was knowing which numbers went where in the formula and you wanted to know why they went where they did, but Leon was only giving you the formula and nothing else. One vague explanation and then he was right back on his phone.

You had a glimmer of hope for the frat boy sitting in front of you. Had, being the keyword here. One study session in and you were already starting to accept defeat. “Can you explain it to me again?” You tapped your pencil on the table nervously, keeping your eyes glued to your paper to avoid the obvious glare you’d receive from him.

The sound of his phone slamming down on the table accompanied with a groan made you grip onto your pencil tighter, now holding it still as he pulled the paper away from you. “Do I have to hold your hand, too? What’s so hard to understand about this?” He reached over, yanking your pencil from your hand so he could scribble out the first few steps to the problem. Afterwards, he tossed both the paper and pencil back over to you, tapping his finger down on the work he wrote down before circling it once. “Need anything else? A warm bottle of milk? Want me to read you a bedtime story?”

He leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms with a sigh after picking his phone back up. “You’ve got fifteen more minutes.” The fuck’s his problem?

Letting out a small sigh of your own, you silently picked up the pencil and looked down at what he’d written. Surprisingly, it did help you make more sense of the rest of the assignment sheet, figuring out the placement of the numbers by using where Leon had put them. Soon, the assignment sheet was finished and you had him look it over.

“Is it-.. Is it good?” You watched Leon carefully, studying his face for any sort of emotion other than annoyance. You unfortunately didn’t find it, but his muttered “good” made you smile, taking your own turn studying your work once he handed it back. Not tossed or thrown, handed back.

He took in a sharp breath through his nose before standing up, focus still trained on his phone. There was only a few minutes left in the hour, so you guess he took your understanding of the material as his leave. “Can we.. uh.. study again on Monday?” His hand paused on the door handle at your question, looking back at you from over his shoulder with his lips pulled tight as he gave you a glare. “You just love taking up my time, don’t you?”

“Wait, is that-” The slam of the door cut you off, leaving you to watch him saunter off through the large window in the door. Your shoulders slumped and you turned back to give your math assignment one last look before stuffing it into your backpack. At least with this new understanding, you’d be able to hopefully do the next few assignments. Mr. Lebovic was kind enough to let you redo your past fails, meaning all you’re doing is slowly climbing your way back up to a better grade with make-up work.

You held out for Leon, constantly giving him the benefit of the doubt with each study session following the first. You did your absolute best to remain passive with him, but each session was filled with crude, nasty, hate-filled comments directed at you, so it was only a matter of time until you started throwing your own comments back at him. By the beginning of November, studying had been put on the back burner whenever you two met up, assignments left abandoned in favor of fleshing out full blown arguments. He always won since you’d never really had a loud voice to defend yourself and his favorite go-to was low blow insults, somehow always managing to sniff out your insecurities.

Leon’s pattern was always one step forward, ten steps back with you. He would help and then spend the rest of your hour together nitpicking your every attempt to learn. He hated you and it was driving you mad. It was impossible to learn anything like this.

You’d grown a sour mood leading up to your trek to the library for one of your regular study sessions, a scowl settling on your face. You decided hours ago that getting dressed wasn’t an option today, you just didn’t weren’t in the mood, so instead you threw on a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants to mind the brisk chill that had rolled in at the end of October.

The walk to the main building was dull; most of the leaves on the trees around campus had long since browned and fallen off, the grass was dead and crunchy, and it almost felt like it would start snowing anytime now with how quickly the cold had come. The feel in the air made you tired, it made you miss home. The weather made you long for the warmth a home-cooked meal provided, but you had to wait, and that wait was only contributing to your already piss poor mood.

Making your way into the library and into the reserved study room, you didn’t even notice Leon’s smile until he asked you to pull out your most recent assignment. It immediately put you off because it wasn't like his normal cocky smile or smirk, no, this one was oddly genuine. Soft, even.

“Can I see it?” He asked, smile widening slightly as he gestured towards your backpack. Even his tone was softer than usual. “Uh…” You weren’t quite sure how to react, not really processing his words as you tried to figure out whether he’s setting a trap or not.

“Your assignment. Can I see it?” Leon clarified, his arms resting crossed on the table as he glanced down to your bag and then back up at you. That was also weirding you out; the eye contact. Normally he only ever met your gaze when he was intimidating you with a deep glare and it wasn’t ever this long. He was making a point to look at you now.

Without saying a word, you unzipped your bag and pulled out a couple papers, only looking away from him twice to make sure you were getting the right ones. You made sure to hold eye contact with him, eyebrows furrowed as you searched for any insincerity.

You’d grown rigid with his kind behavior, even more so when he thanked you and took the papers from you. Questioning him was your top priority right now, though your mouth refused to work with your brain, causing you to stutter out a simple “..what?” Leon only hummed, tilting his head a bit as he looked down at your work, following the tip of his pen as it trailed down the paper.

“What-..” You repeated, swallowing dryly before finally getting the full “What’re you doing?” out. He seemed genuinely confused at your question, looking up to give you a puzzled look. “Hm? Whaddya mean what am I doing? I’m looking over your work.” He looked back down at your paper, clearing his throat quietly.

“No, you’re being nice. Why are you being nice?” You were quick to shoot back to try and draw his attention back to you. “If this is a joke, I’m not gonna fall for it.”

Leon sighed and dropped the pen down onto the paper to rest his crossed arms on the table again. “Why are you asking so many questions? It’s not a big deal.”

Not a big deal?! “Not a big deal?! You’ve argued with me every other day for the past three weeks!” Your hands balled up into fists on your lap, completely baffled by the dismissiveness of his complete 180° in demeanor. “I-” You stopped yourself, taking a moment to breathe. This was.. actually a nice change of pace now that you think about it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?

He gave you his normal annoyed look at your sudden pause, seemingly waiting on you to finish talking. “You..?” Shaking your head a bit, you let out a soft laugh and waved your hand. “Nevermind, uh.. yeah, nevermind…”

“Ooookay, well, you did good on this one so you can turn it in.” Leon held up the first paper before sliding it across the table to you, then picking up the second paper. “But this one needs a bit of work. I circled the questions that need to be redone, not gonna tell you what’s wrong with them, though.” You watched as he slid the other paper to you with your own smile now forming. Pulling out a pencil, you started to relax for the first time around this guy, bringing your attention down to the circled questions.

Your study session has never been more productive. He was being helpful; answering your questions, talking you through each step, giving you smiles and the occasional thumbs up. You’re not sure what changed or why, but you definitely weren’t complaining. When Leon wasn’t acting like someone shoved a stick up his ass, he was actually pretty handsome. You’d mentally recognized his good looks when you first met him, yet his demeanor as a whole masked those good looks entirely.

There was no way he could throw anymore surprises at you, but you stood corrected when he walked over to you at the end of your session, stopping you from walking out. “Listen, I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting. I don’t want to be mean to you, it’s just…” He paused to laugh to himself, looking down at the ground with an almost bashful expression. “I’m only tutoring because it’s a big part of my grade in my class, so..” Not a complete lie on his part.

“Oh. Oh, it's.. it’s fine.” You didn’t want him to revert back to his old style, so you chose to just dismiss it. His attitude did make sense, you wouldn’t want to tutor random people for a grade. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks. Uh.. oh, here-” Leon opened and held the study room door open for you, giving you a small wave as you walked out, which you returned. That was a nice mood booster, not being degraded and demeaned every time you see the one person who’s supposed to help you.

Your friends had their own opinions about the experience after you described it to them. You’d been relaying every bit of info relating to your study sessions from the past three weeks to them, a second and third opinion was good to have for such an odd trade.

“I don’t trust it. Plain and simple.” Sky placed their hands down on their thighs with an audible slap. They didn’t seem impressed by Leon’s sudden chivalry, and to your disappointment, neither did Ella when you looked over from Sky to her. She just looked back at you with a shrug. “Sorry. I’m gonna have to take Sky’s side on this. There’s just something off about that.”

You sighed in defeat, turning your head around to look out the window in the dorm room. It was nice that Sky and Ella shared a dorm, you can’t discuss stuff like this in your own dorm in case your roommate decided to randomly appear. “Yeah…”

Ella scooted closer to you on the bed and pulled you back so your head was resting in her lap. “I know you got your hopes up, but please be careful. I don’t wanna see you get hurt because some pretty boy decided it would be fun to manipulate you.” You groaned, covering your face with your arms. Nothing even happened and you’re already feeling embarrassed.

“It’s okay if you like him, he is kinda cute.” Ella giggled and moved one of your arms to poke your cheek. “But just remember that the guy’s got a bit of a reputation for being a major douche.”

Sky, sitting over on their bed, pointed at Ella in agreement. “Emphasis on major douche.” They smiled and leaned back, their head plopping onto their pillows. “It was just one instance of him being sweet, after all. Who’s to say he won’t revert back to being an asshole by Wednesday?”

“I know, I get it.” You swatted Ella’s hand away and sat back upright. Even if he was putting up a front, it was still nice to get some real help with your math without being insulted. Everyone deserves a second chance and he seemed honest enough when he told you why he’d been so rude, so why not try again with him? Start fresh, maybe you’ll get to make an unlikely friend out of this popular frat boy.

A bit of a far fetched idea, considering the vast differences between you and Leon, but anything like that is worth another try. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

tags:

@kayotee4 @k-fallingstar @bobastayhigh @mi-zer-y @chasingkennedy @l30nva @espressonerd @jjouki @5tarx @bunnybreadloaves @whoisgami @cyanscribe @c4b3r1a @darichvep @mmmangel @kingtacocat @klee-iii @baby--vera @dakiniii @kenma-izhu @aliidarling @leonsmamacita

(a few of your blogs won't show up but i tried)

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