#the link takes you to my new experiment which is how long I can post steamy things on side tumb without getting flagged | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aliennooboo · 1 year

Text

I was asked to tell more about the holidays in my legacy gameplay, so here is a super long and detailed post on the subject! 😊

How I use holidays in my game

I used to hate the holidays, cos I saw them as something my sims had to participate in and there was always so much pressure to complete all the traditions! But then I cracked it...

Holidays are a great way to add objectives to gameplay! When every day is some kind of a holiday with its own theme, there's always something for my sims to do.

I tick the "day off" box only if the holiday is a major one or the traditions would feel too rushed if my sim worked on the same day.

I try to have a lot of outdoor/traveling holidays in the spring and summer, and more home lot based holidays in the autumn and winter.

For some holidays, I add a diverse set of traditions and then choose only one or two to complete every sim year.

Sometimes my sims are just too busy with other things in life to participate at all. The No more "awful holiday" sad moodlet mod (linked below) is super useful because it completely takes the pressure off of completing holiday traditions!

It's very refreshing to use custom icons for the holidays, it matters more than you'd think! I use the More selectable icons mod (linked below) for this feature.

I've taken ideas and inspiration for some of my holidays from countless lists made by other simmers over the years.

Holiday mods

Traditions

Please note that some of these mods feature some of the same traditions - pick and choose so you don't get duplicates! Every custom tradition I use in my game is from these mods.

Icemunmun's traditions

LittleMsSam's traditions

Kiara's traditions

Renegadesims's traditions

Lychee's traditions

Pet traditions

Toddler traditions

Kids traditions

Occult traditions

Crafting traditions

Relaxation traditions

Eco-friendly traditions

Food traditions

Baking traditions

Writing traditions

A Night Out traditions

Cottage Living traditions

More Cottage Living traditions

Island Living traditions

Snowy Escape traditions

More Snowy Escape traditions

Paranormal traditions

University traditions

Realm of Magic, Paranormal & Vampires traditions

Other

More selectable icons

No more "awful holiday" sad moodlet

Holiday traditions in my game

The number next to each tradition shows which mod it's from. If there is no number, it's an EA tradition.

Spring

🌅 New Year's Day (day off) A chill day for spending time with your family after New Year's celebrations.

Family dinner ³

Cleaning

Cook pancakes ³

Play cards ³

Tell stories

🌟 Resolution Day It's time to make those New Year's resolutions reality! At least on this one day of the year...

Fasting

Exercise

Donate ³

Volunteer ³

Find penpal ¹⁵

🔫 Play Day Play is the work of the child. Child sims should invite their friends over for some play time!

Activity table ⁸

Make an experience ⁸

Monkey bars ⁸

Play pirate ⁸

Space explorer ⁸

🌄 Explorer's Day (day off) Once per season, sims have a day off for exploring the world! Maybe this year you could go on a mini vacation to Granite Falls to experience it in every season? Whatever you decide to do, this is a day for adventure!

Go hiking ³

Go for a walk ⁶

Go on a vacation or travel

Go sailing ³

Go camping ³

🌍 Earth Day You take care of nature and nature takes care of you.

Apply eco upgrades ¹²

Give gift to wild animal ¹⁷

Island clean up ¹²

Socialize with wild birds ¹⁷

Go hiking ³

🥪 Picnic Day Pack some tasty snacks and go on a picnic with your friends.

Go picnic ¹⁸

Invite guests

Play horseshoes ³

Collect bugs ³

Fire

💝 Love Day (day off) Take your significant other on a date and show them how much you love them! Or stay in and watch a romantic movie... with a special someone or alone, either way is fine!

Romantic spirit

Go on a date

Out for coffee ¹⁶

Send love letter ¹⁵

Watch romantic TV

🌮 Dining Day Today's all about eating as many different meals as you can. Taste something new or stick to old favorites!

Eat cultural dishes ³

Eat grilled cheese ³

Eat pizza ³

Hot pot ¹³

Order food ¹³

🧨 Gnome Day It's gnomes. Just gnomes. We can survive this. It's only once a year. We just have to keep them happy. It should be easy, right?

Holiday gnomes

🧽 Spring Cleaning Spring gives you a boost of energy. It's time to clean the house and fix anything that needs fixing!

Cleaning

Do laundry ³

Upgrade animal shelter ¹⁷

Upgrade chicken coop ¹⁷

Water crops ¹⁷

🪩 Party Night No self-respecting sim stays home on this wild night! It's time to partaaaaaay!

Out for coffee ¹⁶

Drinks at the bar ¹⁶

Go bowling ³

Bubble blower ³

Party spirit

🛠️ DIY Day It can't be that hard, the tutorial made it look pretty easy... Famous last words.

Build-a-bot ¹⁰

Crafting ¹⁰

Fabrication ¹⁰

Juice fizzing ¹⁰

Woodwork ¹⁰

🐇 Bunny Day (day off) Children's favorite holiday that's all about bunnies!

Egg hunt

Socialize with rabbit ¹⁷

Baking

Flower Bunny

Give gift to wild animal ¹⁷

🌺 Festival of Flowers A celebration of the spring turning to summer.

Flower arranging ¹⁰

Give flowers

Visit flower stall ¹⁷

Sunbathe ³

Gardening

Summer

☀️ Start of Summer It's finally summer and you can do all those fun things you dreamed of in the dark of winter!

Streaking

Go fishing ³

Go swimming ³

Kiddie pool ⁷

Play basketball ²

🐶 Pet Day Show your pet how much you love them on this special day!

Feeling the love ⁶

Pamper pets ⁶

Play with dog ⁶

Play with laser pointer ⁶

Teach tricks ⁶

Go hiking ³

Go for a walk ⁶

Go on a vacation or travel

Go sailing ³

Go camping ³

🧸 Children's Day Spend time with your children today. Take them to the park or the beach, or play with them at home.

Voidcritters ¹

Build sand sculpture ³

Games

Puppet show ³

Space explorer ⁸

🐄 Farm Day Visit a farm in Henford-on-Bagley and get to know the cows, chickens and llamas!

Harvest animal produce ¹⁷

Harvest crops ¹⁷

Take care of farm animals ¹⁸

Make animal treats ¹⁷

Socialize with villagers ¹⁷

🌞 Summer Vacation (3 days off) Enjoy summer to the max with 3 days of vacation!

Go on a vacation or travel

Go swimming ³

Invite guests

Sunbathe ³

Water fun

🍼 Toddler Day Take your toddler to the park or arrange a toddler play date.

Ball pit ⁷

Kiddie pool ⁷

Slide ⁷

Tiny treehouse ⁷

Jungle gym ⁷

🎵 Music Day Enjoy music in all its forms. Sing, play, listen.

Dancing ²

Music ³

Party spirit

Watch live performance ³

🌻 Garden Day Does anything make one happier than a thriving garden? Shower your plants with love (and water) today, make a new garden plan, or sow new seeds.

Sow seeds ¹⁷

Fertilize crops ¹⁷

Gardening

Collect bugs ³

Plant oversized crop ¹⁸

👩‍👩‍👦 Family Day Sometimes life feels so busy that you barely see even your own family. Make sure to spend some quality time with your loved ones today.

Baking

Family dinner ³

Games

Puppet show ³

Water fun

🏝️ Beach Day (day off) Celebrate summer in Sulani!

Build sand sculpture ³

Interact with dolphin ¹⁹

Go snorkeling ¹⁹

Go sailing ³

Collect seashells ⁵

🍃 End of Summer One last chance to enjoy a warm summer evening... Have a barbeque with your family and friends!

Bar-B-que

Sunbathe ³

Hot tub ³

Eat ice cream ³

Juice keg ²³

Autumn

🔥 Bonfire Night Dark autumn evenings are perfect for a little gathering around a bonfire. Look at the stars, roast some marshmallows, and wrap yourself in a blanket when it starts to get cold.

Fire

Stargaze ³

Fireworks

Tell stories

Fire dance ⁵

🧛 Occult Night They're creepy and they're kooky... mysterious and spooky... They're the occults and this is their night!

Alien powers ⁹

Mermaid powers ⁹

Use vampire powers ⁹

Cast spells ⁹

Use cauldron ⁹

🎲 Game Night Play some games with your family or friends to bring a bit of fun into this dark season.

Games

Go bowling ³

Play cards ³

Play darts ²

Play foosball ²

Go hiking ³

Go for a walk ⁶

Go on a vacation or travel

Go sailing ³

Go camping ³

❓ Life Change Day Do something today that has the potential to change the rest of your life!

Meet or adopt ⁶

Go on a date

Write a book ¹⁵

Go on a vacation or travel

Run errands for villagers ¹⁷

💡 Skill Day Learn something new today! Either work on skills you already know, or try doing something outside of your comfort zone.

Art & music spirit

Woodwork ¹⁰

Juice fizzing ¹⁰

Candle making ¹⁰

Craft wool items ¹⁷

🛋️ Couch Potato Day After the toil of yesterday, take it easy in good conscience today. It's not a day off, but you could always call in sick... Cough, cough.

Watch a movie ³

Sports TV

Sauna ¹¹

Read a book ³

Relaxing soak ¹¹

🍂 Autumn Day Enjoy the crisp air, the sunshine on the colorful leaves, and cosy autumn activities!

Fall fun ⁴

Fire

Canning ¹⁸

Drink tea ³

Candle making ¹⁰

🧓🏽 Parent's Day If you're in good terms with your parent(s), today's the perfect day to remind them how much you love and appreciate them.

Family dinner ³

Gift a parent ³

Hug parent ³

Remembrance

Tell stories

⚽ Sports Day Whether you like pumping iron or shooting hoops, do some exercise today.

Exercise

Go rock wall climbing ¹

Play basketball ²

Play soccer ³

💋 Date Night Whether it's your significant other or someone you don't even know yet, ask them on a date tonight!

Go on a date

Woohoo ³

Romantic spirit

🕯️ Other Side Day The veil is thinning... If you have business with someone in the afterlife, today's the day to get in touch.

Summon Bonehilda ⁹

Summon a ghost ²²

Conduct a seance ⁹

Commune with the departed ²²

Remembrance

🌽 Harvestfest (day off) Give thanks for everything the land has given you this year. Treat your garden, treat your animals, treat yourself.

Invite guests

Grand meal

Thankful spirit

Make animal treats ¹⁷

Harvest crops ¹⁷

🎃 Spooky Day (day off) It's time to get spooky!

Carve pumpkin ³

Spooky spirit

Trick or treat

Wear costumes

Use cauldron ⁹

Winter

🥧 Baking Day Get your baking supplies out, because today's all about the magic of flour and sugar! Have pancakes and coffee for breakfast, and bake all your favorite pastries.

Baking

Cook pancakes ³

Drink coffee ³

Decorate cookies ¹⁴

Make cupcakes ¹⁴

Go hiking ³

Go for a walk ⁶

Go on a vacation or travel

Go sailing ³

Go camping ³

📚 Written Word Day Read your favorite book in your favorite armchair, or go the library to find something new to read. Write a letter to someone, or finally start writing that book you always dreamt of.

Find penpal ¹⁵

My private journal ¹⁵

Writing skill ¹⁵

Read a book ³

Send love letter ¹⁵

💥 Chaos Day It seems like everyone's lost their social filter today! It's chaos all around! I hate all my friends! OOPS, did I say that out loud...

Air grievances

Fighting

Mischief spirit

Streaking

Magic duel ⁹

🎁 Do Good Day Today is all about being good to others. Make the world a better place by helping those around you.

Donate ³

Make pet food ⁶

Run errands for villagers ¹⁷

Volunteer ³

Vote for policies ¹²

🤝 BFF Day Invite your best friend over for a nice cup of tea or coffee. Share secrets, cry and laugh, have some fun.

Invite guests

Drink coffee ³

Drink tea ³

Play cards ³

Out for coffee ¹⁶

🧘 Mindfulness Day Take care of your mind and body.

Meditate ¹¹

Sauna ¹¹

Massage ³

My private journal ¹⁵

Do yoga ¹¹

🏔️ Snow Day (day off) Celebrate winter in Mt. Komorebi!

Go rock climbing ²⁰

Go skiing ²⁰

Go sledding ²⁰

Go snowboarding ²⁰

Hot springs ¹¹

🏡 Homebody Day (day off) Have you ever dreamed of just staying at home when it's dark and cold outside? Well, today you can!

Canning ¹⁸

Knitting ¹⁰

Cross-stitching ¹⁸

Practice herbalism ¹

Make pet food ⁶

🎄 Winterfest Eve Put up decorations for this wintery holiday, cook a delicious dinner, and then enjoy the evening as you wait for Father Winter's visit.

Attend holiday ceremony

Decorate

Festive spirit

Father Winter

Grand meal

☃️ Winterfest Day (day off) It's the most peaceful day of the year. Spend it with your loved ones.

Invite guests

Family dinner ³

Baking

Go skating ³

Open presents

🎨 Creativity Day Get your easel down from the attic, find your old camera in the garage, or pick up the knitting needles that have been collecting dust on the shelf. Let's do some arts and crafts!

Art & music spirit

Activity table ⁸

Cross-stitching ¹⁸

Writing skill ¹⁵

Knitting ¹⁰

❄️ Yamachan Day Travel to Mt. Komorebi to meet Yamachan!

Yamachan ²¹

Make a Tanabata wish ²¹

Hot pot ¹³

Order from Mt. Komorebi festival food stalls ²¹

Go hiking ³

🥂 New Year's Eve It's time to celebrate the year gone by, and welcome the new one that's right around the corner.

Countdown to midnight

Drinking

Eat pizza ³

Fireworks

Make resolutions

More holiday ideas

If you want to create your own holidays, but struggle with coming up with ideas, here are some things I always consider when I create holidays.

Can you match a world with a season? Summer holidays in Sulani, winter holidays in Mt. Komorebi, etc.

Alternatively, have a summer holiday in Sulani when it's winter elsewhere, a winter holiday in Mt. Komorebi when it's summer elsewhere, etc.

What if you took the default holidays and placed them in a different season? Celebrate Winterfest on the beach in the summer!

Can you match a world with a theme? Nature holidays in Granite Falls, city holidays in San Myshuno, etc.

Think of a simple theme for your holiday (games, sports, food, animals, books, etc.) and choose traditions based on that.

Create a holiday that requires your sim to travel from world to world to complete all the traditions.

Have a 3 day holiday for a vacation trip, with different traditions to complete each day.

Create holidays for specific life stages. What would a teen or an elder sim do for their holiday?

Create a holiday for each occult type. How would a Spellcaster spend their holiday?

Can you think of a way to combine holidays and clubs?

Put two really different holidays right next to each other so you have lots of variety in gameplay.

If you're playing a legacy, create a holiday for each heir sim based on their personality, and have their offspring celebrate these holidays to honor them.

Research real life holidays that are celebrated around the world to find new ideas.

Can't find the traditions that you need in your game? Follow this tutorial by LittleMsSam to create your own traditions!

#ts4 #the sims 4

8K notes · View notes

thehighpriestexx420 · 6 months

Text

Their True Self's Feelings VS. Their Ego's Feelings About You

General Collective Pick-A-Gif Tarot Reading

Our True Self is the version of us WITHOUT the programming society has instilled in us and/or the programming our physical body came with. It's your soul, your spirit, your higher self. My experience with my true self can only be described as what feels right.

The Ego can be used as a tool for your true self to use or you can fall under the automatic habits it provides. It's our mind. The brain filter that allows us to perceive reality - more commonly the reality that's physical.

My intention was to pull cards into 2 columns. One to represent their true feelings and the other to represent their ego's. I've found that the message worked when I looked at all of the cards together. If you can discern the cards can be read the way I intended with your specific situation, feel free to let me know!

Take a moment to yourself. Step back from any distractions on the outside & within your mind. Take a clearing breath. Focus your attention within yourself & what you sense. Which gif calls out to you? If it's more than one, than there are multiple messages for you.

Take what resonates and leave the rest. Be aware that the future is malleable - you can choose to follow your true self or any toxic programming you've picked up. The results will follow.

💖 New followers & those who reblog the linked post below 👇 get a FREE one question tarot reading & reiki healing session. Paid services are same hour, first come first serve, & guaranteed between 8 am - 9pm 💖

✌️ Tips are also always appreciated! Help me continue helping you by providing me with funds to purchase new decks & stuff that keeps me alive 😊 Cashapp: $coltonicholas ✌️

Pile One :

Their soul is calling them to approach you & express their romantic interest. However, there's something that happened between you that's caused them to stop & truly think about this decision.

They're trying to discern how they can balance their self-love & their love for others. They don't want to get hurt again but they also don't want to miss out on their desired connection with you.

The Universe is telling them the time to approach you is now & that they're extremely supported in this. In fact, this is a part of both of your life's purpose. It's destiny. Every aspect of existence is weaving the path to make this happen.

But they're currently being held back and stalling due to doubt & the fear of hoping just to be hurt & disappointed again. As in, they feel this desire of theirs is too good to be true. Their non-action is out of fear & self-preservation.

Pile Two :

They're not seeing the results they're looking for in this connection. There's impatience. They're looking for answers outside themself rather than within.

You may be dating & haven't made things official yet. They're questioning if you're as invested in this connection as they are because of this. They could be feeling the strong desire to marry you, and yet, aren't seeing these results.

They may be overly focused on the material/physical & not enough on what their soul is saying. They want a successful home life with you while not feeling at home within themself. They cope with this feeling by indulging in distractions. Propping their ego up, shopping, bragging, etc.

They need to be more calm, nurturing, & patient. They feel the need to rush ahead while not considering others enough.

They're overly concerned with others' opinions. They want to be able to say that you're theirs & not fear people questioning the validity of your connection. It's the vibe where people have been in years long engagements. There's often doubt from others and within the connection. "Are they not sure if they want to get married, is it going to happen, etc."

Pile Three :

They're being held back by confusion, the pressure to conform, & structure. It's like they're lost in a land of illusion. They're unable to move on due to this belief they must uphold these rigid rules.

"If it's not broke, don't fix it" is a saying that comes to mind when describing this person's mindset.

They don't want to adventure outside of these old habitual ways of thinking. The unknown is unstable & unpredictable.

Despite this, their soul is desiring a union with you & they feel it - the urge to reach out. Their ego is blocking them from seeing a way forward with you.

For some of you, they want to propose but something is leading them to believe it's not possible. There's a clashing - 2 opposing forces that "shouldn't" go together. So this can look like having a religion where you're "supposed" to be with a member of the same religion, a family disapproving of same sex marriage, or some other value/belief that doesn't approve of your marriage/union.

They've had unhealthy examples of relationships growing up so this also distorts how relationships are "supposed" to look like to them. There's some kind of codependency between you two. Like you're both chained to these toxic belief systems. Change your mentor/who you look up to & set yourself free.

Pile Four :

There's this idea - this hidden gem in their heart. I'm seeing that they need some time away from the distractions of the world so that they can look inside themselves to see what this bright, burning, blossoming passion really is before they offer it to you.

They're scared of things not working out because they haven't seen any indicators it would. Their heart is closed off & as a consequence it blocks them from receiving what they desire. That includes the positive interactions from you that they're looking for.

But I'm seeing that this beginning between you is bright, beautiful, & promising. You both can try to hide what you're feeling, but it's too powerful to be ignored anyway.

I'm seeing that you both share a heart/the same feelings. This connection is within your core. It's designed to free you, reveal your true self, heal you, & to assist you with growth. For some of you, this is your divine counterpart/twin flame. For others, it's a strong soulmate connection.

263 notes · View notes

em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 9 months

Text

darilaros (princess) │ Chapter 3: Pyre

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

GIF by @hotdcentral

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 (COMPLETE!)

Synopsis: As the second daughter of King Viserys, you experience firsthand what it means to belong to the House of the Dragon. You struggle with the passing of your mother.

Hello! My apologies for the wait. My laptop broke, so I had to go get a new one. It took me a bit to set it all up how I like, and then I had a busy time of it at work + a bit of writer's block. I hope the chapter makes up for it! Keep in mind there are some untranslated bits of HV in here, but I'll make a post + link transcribing all that for those who want. Thank you to @ewanmitchellcrumbs for giving this the go-ahead!

TRIGGERS: character death, exploration of child grief, dysfunctional family dynamics.

It is very quiet now that Mama has died.

Brella is quiet. Septa is quiet. Ana and Peony, the maids who come to make your bed neat again and pick up all the dresses you’ve worn, are quiet. Ser Harrold is quiet—but then, he usually is. None of Papa’s guards seem to want to make a sound now. Neither do Papa’s Councilmen, like Lord Corlys or Lord Lyman, who you sometimes see walking down the halls with very sad looks upon their faces.

You wonder if, when Mama died, she took a part of all these people with her.

She has taken a part of Papa, and of ’Nyra, too. Suppertime is so very quiet that you are afraid to breathe in case everyone can hear it. They both just stare at their plates, eyes puffy and red like yours are when you cry, which means they have been crying, too. They eat their food like someone else is moving their mouths, and when they swallow, it looks like the most painful thing in the whole world.

Papa and ’Nyra haven’t spoken to you since the day of the tourney. You try not to be sad about it, but it’s hard. Now that Mama has gone away, they are your family, and it hurts that your family won’t look at you or say anything to you. It’s almost like they have forgotten all about you.

“They’re grieving,” Alicent tells you, taking your hand in hers as you walk towards the Sept. The stairs are very hard to climb, so she had to help you up, and it was nearly like having Mama again when she pulled you into her arms and held you tight. “Their sorrow has made them blind to all else.”

You don’t really understand what she means. “To me, too?”

“Hm?”

“Their sorrow. It’s made them not see me?”

Alicent stops. Something very soft and sad makes her face droop, and she bends down so that she can look you right in the eyes. “Oh, Princess. They see you. And they love you. But your mother”—she takes a breath that sounds shaky—“she was very important to them. They miss her very much.”

“I miss her, too.” You wonder when Mama will return. How long is ‘never’? No one has ever explained it to you. Hopefully it is soon.

“I know you do.” Alicent stands and grabs onto your hand again, leading you toward the table where so so many candles are.

The room is very hot, all the little fires making you sleepy even though it is only morning time. There are two stools right before the table, and Alicent kneels on one. You try to do the same on the other, but it means you cannot see the candles anymore.

“How about you stand on it instead, Princess?” Alicent asks. She lets you hold onto her shoulder so that you can get up on the stool like she said, which makes it much easier to see. Then, she folds her hands together in front of her chin and bends her head, so you do the same.

It isn’t very interesting to stare at your fingers at first, but after a while, it’s nice. You count all the little folds in your skin—there are a lot—and trace the edges of your thumbnails with your mind over and over. Time goes funny, and you cannot remember why you were ever sad before you came here.

It might be minutes or hours or days before Alicent speaks. “Would you like to light a candle? For your mother?”

“Why?” you ask, frowning. Is candle-lighting how to get Mama to come back? Will she see the light and know it’s me and return with baby Baelon? Is that why so many people pray in the Sept?

Alicent picks up a candle that hasn’t been lit. “To remember her. You light the candle and… she’ll see it.”

“From where?”

“From one of the Seven heavens.”

“Where’s that?”

“I… do not know.” She stares at the candle like she is trying to light it without moving. “Somewhere far away. My mother is there, too.”

“Oh.” She sounds very sad, so you reach out to grab hold of another unlit candle. “Can I light this one? For Mama?”

That makes her smile just a little. “Of course, Princess.”

Alicent takes one of the lit candles and tilts it into yours, making sure not to spill any of the hot wax on you. You hold very still, because fire is dangerous which means you can get hurt, even though you touched it once and it didn’t feel like anything but warm. The little string at the top catches fire, burning orange and gold and swaying gently.

She lights her own, too. “Now, you place it on the altar, like so.” She carefully sets both candles down and closes her eyes for a moment, and you think she must be thinking of her own mama.

You nudge your candle back to where you took it, watching the flame dance about. I lit a candle for you, Mama, so you can see it. Do you? Do you see me?

Where are you, Mama? When are you coming back?

The candle doesn’t answer. It just sits there, the little fire bobbing about and then finally falling still. All you can hear is the sound of your own breathing. When you are done, Alicent helps you step off the stool, and you leave the Sept with the candles still lit behind you.

Just outside, you find Uncle Daemon waiting for you.

While ’Nyra and Papa are grieving and Papa’s Council are planning and everyone else is doing whatever it is they do away from you, Uncle has been making sure that you are ‘well’ by telling you stories and teaching you more High Valyrian and sitting at the table to watch while you and Brella play with your dolls together. He never stays for a long-long time, but it is still very nice.

“Farewell, Princess.” Alicent lets go of your hand and turns to curtsey to Uncle, who bows his head but says nothing, just stares with a not-exactly-kind look on his face. Then, she leaves, her footsteps fading away and then dropping as she goes down the stairs. You listen until the noise disappears entirely.

Uncle’s brow raises. “What were you doing in the Sept with only Hightower’s daughter for company? Where’s your sister?”

He never calls her by her name. You wonder why, sometimes.

“She took me because ’Nyra is napping again from crying so much, and I was by myself. So, we went to the Sept so I could light a candle for Mama,” you say quietly. “So that she’ll see it and come back.”

At that, he softens. He crouches down so you can see his face more clearly. “She’s not coming back, sweetling. You know that, don’t you?”

“Why not?”

“She…” He grunts. “Do you remember the stories about Aegon the Conqueror, and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

“Right.” He rises, gripping you below your arms and lifting you high so that he can carry you away from the Sept. It makes him uncomfortable, though you don’t know why. “Tell me what happened to Rhaenys.”

“She tried to—to get Dorne to say that Aegon was their King, so she rode Meraxes to them.” Uncle hums approvingly, so you keep going. Your voice wobbles with each step he takes. “But they were angry at her for burning the grass and the trees and the buildings and the people and the sheep and the horses and th—”

“Yes, yes, she lit Dorne aflame.” Uncle rolls his eyes. He bounces you extra hard in his arms so that it feels like you’re about to fall, and you squeal and wrap your arms tight-tight around his neck so that you don’t. “Leave the boring bits out. Tell me the rest.”

“She—Dorne took a big, big arrow and hit Meraxes in the eye, and Rhaenys and Meraxes fell all the way to the ground from up high and died.”

His lips twist at the way you say the last word. “You’ve been paying attention. Good girl.” You’re out in the courtyard now, away from the Sept. It isn’t any louder out here, which is strange, because it is usually always loud and full of people. “Did Rhaenys ever return to Aegon and Visenya?” he asks, moving towards the doors that lead to Maegor’s Holdfast where your rooms are.

“No…” you say, unsure. You don’t think she did. “Why didn’t she go back?”

Uncle sighs, slowing down so he can look at you properly. “That’s what it means to die, sweetling. Rhaenys didn’t go away. When she hit the ground, her body ceased to function. She stopped seeing, feeling, thinking, moving, breathing. She became… nothing.” Your belly twists. You don’t like what he’s telling you, not one bit. Whatever your face is doing, it makes Uncle keep talking. “It’s like your dolls—you can touch them and see them, can’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“But when you speak to them, do they speak back?”

“No.”

“Do they have beating hearts?”

“No.”

“Do they eat or piss or shit?”

You gasp. “That—that’s naughty, kepus!”

He rolls his eyes again. “No, they don’t. They’re things, not people. And your mother… she’s no longer a person. She’s a body; one we must put to rest today.”

The funeral is soon. Uncle has been reminding you lots and lots, and when you asked, he said a funeral is what people go to so they can say goodbye to the person who has died and put their body back where it is meant to go. And because Mama is a Targaryen like you and Uncle and Papa and ’Nyra, her body has to be put on fire so that she can go back to the wind.

She’s not a person anymore. She’s a nothing. It scares you.

You sniffle. “But… I don’t want her to be gone like Rhaenys did. I want her back.”

“I know.” Uncle hugs you then, pulling you so close that your nose gets stuck in all his hair. When you breathe in, all those hairs go up inside your nostrils and make them itch. You hope he never lets go. “I know.”

Put on the dress, then sit in the carriage, then walk up the Hill, then stand quiet. Put on the dress, then sit in the carriage, then walk up the Hill, then stand quiet. Put on the dress, then sit in the carriage, then walk up the Hill, then stand quiet.

You keep saying it over and over in your head, just like Uncle had said. He is the only one who would tell you what is going to happen at the funeral, because he knows that you like to know things even when you’re afraid of them. It makes you feel better, makes you feel a little less scared.

Uncle never told you how many people would be here, though.

Everyone comes to watch you and ’Nyra and Papa and Uncle walk through the Keep to the carriage—the maesters, the maids, the pageboys, the lords and ladies that like to stay in the city—but they stay silent as you pass. You wonder if pressing yourself against the wall and thinking really hard about being made of stone will turn you invisible, which is when you can’t be seen. You wish you could. There are too many gazes on you, and it makes all the hairs on your arms and legs and neck stand up. Uncle has to press you forward when you slow down to look for an escape.

You sit in the carriage beside ’Nyra while Papa and Uncle sit at the front, because Papa is the King and Uncle is his heir. She is very pale, almost blending with her hair except for her red eyes. You slip your hand into hers and she squeezes hard, but you try not to show her that it hurts. She looks less sad holding onto you, so you don’t mind at all that her fingers pinch.

It is the first time in a long time that you have been able to see any of the people outside the walls of the Keep. Before Mama died—before Mama’s belly got too big and she had to stay in bed—she used to take you just beyond the gates to where the really poor commonfolk would line up every sennight on the day of rest to get their alms, which Mama says is an important part of being good. She would say that you have to give coin and food and whatever else the people might need so that they are well and happy, because that means they will support the King’s reign and be peaceful. You don’t know what that means, but Mama is always right.

You miss it—giving people things, letting them pat your cheeks or your hair and calling you the People’s Princess. Because Mama is Queen and giving alms is what the Queen is meant to do, no one else could take you when she stopped going out of her chambers. And, when you went with her, the people were always very loud and cheerful and smiling, and they thanked you with tears in their eyes when Mama let you give them the pouches of coin yourself.

As the carriage takes you through the city today, the commonfolk are quiet.

None of them are smiling, or happy. They watch on as the horses take you through the streets, and some of them even cry when they see the long box that the cart ahead of you is carrying. It is the biggest, nicest box you’ve ever seen, made with dark wood and borders that look like real gold, glinting in the sun. Uncle told you that the box has the bodies inside it, the ones of Mama and baby Baelon.

You think that the people miss Mama very much. Maybe they miss her almost as much as you do—but not the same amount. You think you miss Mama most of all, even more than Papa or ’Nyra, because at least they have Lord Otto or Lord Lyman or Lord Corlys or Alicent or Betha Strong or Ser Harrold to keep them company. All you have is Mama and sometimes Uncle, and now Mama is gone.

After a while, the carriage starts to take you up and up, which means that you are almost at the point where you will need to stop and get out and walk the rest of the way. This is because the horses cannot pull so much weight up Visenya’s Hill. Uncle said it would be hard for you to walk, being so small when the hill is so large, but that you have to so that everyone can see how brave you are. “Targaryens don’t show weakness,” he says.

He is right—the walk is hard. At first, when you get out and take ’Nyra’s hand and start to follow Papa up the hill, it isn’t so bad. But then, it gets steeper and steeper, almost so steep that you feel like you need to use your hands to climb the rest of the way. Your legs burn so much that you want to cry, but you don’t. Uncle said you cannot be carried, either, so you don’t ask ’Nyra to pick you up. You must be brave. You must be brave.

By the time you reach the top, the men who were made to carry the box have opened it up and taken out the things inside. There are two funny-shaped objects covered in brown cloth lying in the middle of the pyre that has been built for the funeral—one is big, bigger than you, while the other is very small. They are the bodies of Mama and Baelon, and you have to hold on tight to the memory of Uncle’s words to keep from running over and trying to shake them awake.

“What remains of them will be set upon the pyre, yes—but remember, they’re not people. They’re just skin and bone and meat now. You must let them burn as all Targaryens burn.”

’Nyra’s hand feels like ice around yours as a man in a strange dress with a hood comes forward, past all the lords and ladies and past Uncle and Papa to stand right in front of the pyre. Two other men wearing dresses that look almost the same go with him, but stay one step behind.

“Tubī Arryno Lentro Dārie Aemme se Targārio Lentro Dārilaros Baelon perzyrty mōrqittot…” he says. You don’t know all the words, but you think he must be talking about the way Mama is a queen and baby Baelon is a prince, which seems silly to mention now that they’re not real anymore. “Sȳndor zijosy rēbarose, Dāria Aemma eglio ilvot trēso Dārilaros Baelon zȳhos gūros se tegot…”

Syrax is standing on the very top of the hill above everyone else. Because it would be very rude to look around at the others—Papa’s Councilmen and Alicent and the men who live on Dragonstone, your family’s special home, and Princess Rhaenys too, who is very scary, as well as so so many people you don’t know at all—you keep your eyes fixed on the dragon, admiring how pretty she looks in the sun. Usually, she makes lots of noise and is very mischievous, which is another word for naughty, but today she is quiet like all the rest. You wonder how she knows about funerals when she cannot speak in Valyrian or the Common Tongue or any other words that people can understand.

“Targārio ānogro rȳ ōrbrar ojāris, sētenondi hen ībī iemnȳ nȳmas,” the man says. His dress has what looks like an eye sewn on the chest, which seems an odd thing to want to wear. No one else in the Keep wears eyes.

The two men behind him step up with jugs in their hands, and they walk around the pyre pouring what is in the jugs over the cloth. It turns the brown even darker brown. After they bow, they move back, and no one speaks for a while.

Finally, the man with the eye on his chest says one last thing. “Hen perzȳ sīdas. Va perzȳ āmāzissi. Hen prānot istas, vapār drējī mōrī iksis.”

Something about fire, you think. Maybe he is saying your House words in High Valyrian. Fire and blood.

It is silent then, nothing but the sound of the wind whistling filling your ears. Everyone is still, from the lady with the kind eyes that remind you of your own on the other side of the pyre to the funny men to the side. No one speaks. You wonder what is supposed to happen now.

Uncle puts his hand on your shoulder, leaning in to whisper in ’Nyra’s ear. “They’re waiting for you.”

At first, you think she hasn’t heard him—she doesn’t move or do anything at all, just keeps staring where Mama and baby Baelon are. You nearly jump when her fingers tighten on yours. “Ñurho valonqro paghyro jēdunna, lo tolijī kepa ñuha kirimvī rhēdos pendan.”

My brother lived, father found happy. It makes no sense, but Mama told you once that it is rude to listen to other people’s conversations, so you try not to listen too hard.

Uncle speaks too low for you to hear him, to which ’Nyra replies with something you do understand. “Trēsy dōrī kesan.” I will never be a son.

She sounds very, very sad. Poor ’Nyra, you think. I will never be a son, either. I’m just a daughter, a girl, like you. Maybe Papa would be happier if ’Nyra or you had died instead of Baelon, if your body was wrapped in the brown cloth on the pyre and you weren’t real anymore.

’Nyra lets go of you. She looks to Papa, but all he is doing is staring at the pyre where Mama and Baelon lie. Her face is very red, which means she has been crying. When she steps forward, Uncle takes your hand and pulls you back to stop you following her. He is warm, so you try to hug onto his leg in a way that doesn’t make you weak like he told you not to be.

Syrax makes her chirping noise, all of a sudden paying attention to what her rider is doing. ’Nyra tries to speak, but it doesn’t come out. “Dr…”

She looks at Papa again, so you do too. He still hasn’t looked away from the pyre. You wonder if he knows you and ’Nyra and Uncle are even here, because he hasn’t so much as glanced at you since the night he came to your rooms and told you that Mama and Baelon had died. Not once.

“Drakarys.”

Syrax rumbles, and then begins to climb down toward all the people. For a moment, you’re worried she might try to eat someone, but the Dragonkeepers are here with their spears to stop anything bad happening. She opens her mouth, and fire comes bursting out.

The pyre lights up, and Mama and Baelon disappear in bright-white-orange.

“Mama?” you whisper, eyes stinging and throat feeling strange, like you want to be sick but not. “Mama?”

The only thing that you can hear is the sound of burning.

Papa bends his head, and ’Nyra looks away. You think that you may be the only one who keeps watching the fire as it takes your Mama away from you forever.

(When you are grown, you will not remember this day. You will not remember the ache in your bones or the wind in your hair. You will not remember the faces of the commonfolk you passed along the way, or the sorrow in Rhaenyra’s voice when she called down dragonfire upon the hill. You will not remember the cold that leached into your blood as you stood beside what was left of your family, a slow freezing that will take its toll over the days and moons and years of your existence.

Even so, the sight of the bodies on the pyre and the smell of burning flesh will remain etched into the very fabric of your person forevermore.

At night, you will sometimes feel as though ash clings to your tongue, the taste of rot lingering in your mouth. In dreams, you will see brown cloth and a faceless babe wiggling beneath wrappings as it burns to nothing. You will wake in a panic, near to choking on the air you cannot seem to make yourself breathe, looking about wildly in search of the horrors that had plagued your slumbering thoughts. Melancholy will follow you, lurking just beyond reach, haunting, nameless.

But you will not remember this day.)

After the funeral, Uncle Daemon leaves.

You don’t know why, because he didn’t say goodbye and no one will tell you anything. When you ask ’Nyra, she tells you she doesn’t “want to talk about him” and walks away with Alicent. You ask Brella, but she just says, “Not right now, Princess.”

You don’t ask Papa, because he is still grieving for Mama and baby Baelon. For you, that means he doesn’t want to tell you about anything at all. But whenever someone says Uncle’s name in front of him, he gets very, very angry and storms off with his boots making a lot of noise on the ground, so Uncle must have done something very naughty.

A big ceremony is happening today, though, which makes it harder to be sad that Uncle isn’t here. ’Nyra told you that Papa has decided to make her the heir, even though Uncle is supposed to be. Maybe that is why he left. It has been very busy in the Keep because everyone came for Mama and Baelon’s funeral, but they are being made to stay for the ceremony so that they can swear fealty to Papa and ’Nyra. And, for the first time ever, you have a special role, too.

“… promise to be—to be faith–faithful to King Viserys and his named heir, the Princess Rhae-nyra. I pledge fealty to them and shall def—defend them against all e-ne-mies in good faith and without de-ceit. I sw–swear this by the Old Gods and the New.”

Alicent claps, smiling. “Well done, Princess! Much better!”

’Nyra comes out from behind her screen wearing a pretty red dress, like the colour of the dragon with three heads on your House sigil. “Just try not to stutter so much, little sister.”

“Trying,” you say grumpily—the words are hard—but ’Nyra isn’t paying attention. Instead, she is looking into the mirror as Alicent helps her with the laces at the back, staring at herself in a way that doesn’t look very happy.

Alicent stops and hugs her. “You will be fine. This is what you were born for.”

“I wasn’t, though,” ’Nyra says, frowning. “Was I?”

They both go quiet, so you say, “You look very nice today.”

That makes ’Nyra smile, finally. “Thank you.”

It doesn’t take long for Alicent to finish lacing up her dress and helping her with her gold cape and jewels. When she is done, ’Nyra leaves the room and Alicent moves toward you so she can take your hand. “Come, Princess,” she says. “Let us walk to the Great Hall together.”

When you get there, the room is full of people. You wonder if every single lord and lady in the whole of Papa’s kingdom is here, all together in this one place. It is only because you are a princess that you don’t have to stand with all of them, and Alicent leads you over to Ser Harrold so that you can stay next to him by the Iron Throne. There is even a little chair just for you there, in case your legs get tired.

“Princess,” Ser Harrold says. His voice is funny, like a growl, and it makes you giggle every time you hear it. And, every time you giggle, he smiles, which makes all the wrinkles on his face deeper, which is even funnier. He does it again now.

A big bang at the door has everyone go very quiet.

“Presenting—Princess Rhaenyra of House Targaryen!”

No one speaks when ’Nyra comes through the doors all by herself, chin lifted straight up and walking down the middle of the two groups of people. Everyone stares at her, even Papa, and you think that it’s only right that they do because she looks so so pretty today. She curtseys to Papa at the bottom of the Throne, and then turns to face the people.

Without a word, Lord Corlys comes forward and kneels. “I, Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark, promise to be faithful to King Viserys and his named…”

You decide to sit in the chair while you wait. All the lords here have to say the same words you do when they pledge fealty, but you are going last because you’re the most important person to say it, which is what Alicent told you.

Lots of men and some ladies come up to the front to kneel and say the words to ’Nyra while Papa watches. It takes a long time, so you spend it looking around at all the different faces and dresses and coats that you can see. There are all sorts of things sewn onto the chests of people’s robes—you see a black stag on a yellow coat, a yellow lion on a red one, a grey wolf on a white one, a flower, a bird, even some boring ones like plain stripes or dots. Some of the ladies are wearing dresses that look very strange—the neck comes far far down so you can almost see some parts that are not proper for a lady to show. When those ones say the words, most of them are actually saying them while looking at Papa instead of ’Nyra, which is very rude because today is all about ’Nyra and not Papa. No one tries to make them stop, though, so maybe only you notice it.

When it is your turn, Ser Harrold taps you on the shoulder. All of a sudden, you feel very scared. So many people are looking at you now, and it makes you feel small and weak like you’re going to be smacked if you do anything.

But you must be brave. If Uncle were here, you’d want him to be proud of you.

You kneel in front of ’Nyra a little closer than everyone else did, but you think that no one will mind very much because you are her sister. Besides, your legs are feeling very shaky, and you might fall over if you have to go any further.

For a moment, the words won’t come out and you panic, but ’Nyra smiles. It is the only smile she has shown the whole time, and it’s just for you.

You find the words.

“I promise to be faith-ful to King Viserys and his named heir, the Princess Rhaenyra. I pledge fealty to them and shall defend them against all e-ne-mies in good faith and without… deceit. I swear this by the Old Gods and the New.”

You rise up, feeling like water is rushing in your ears, almost like it does whenever you have to take a bath. A sound like a heartbeat is all you can hear as you walk back to your spot, but you don’t sit down. ’Nyra said that you have to stay standing for the final part, the words that Papa has to say.

Your sister turns around to face the Iron Throne and bends her head to Papa. He says nothing.

Then, Papa stands, his sword Blackfyre in his hand and pointing down into the ground. “I, Viserys Targaryen, First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm”—so many titles go after his name, you think, glad that you only have ‘the People’s Princess’ after yours—“do hereby name Rhaenyra Targaryen Princess of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.”

Everyone bows their heads, so you do, too. When ’Nyra turns around, all the lords and ladies and knights and guards clap.

Beyond the noise in the hall, you think you can hear a dragon roar.

Read on AO3:

Taglist (😭 thank you!):

Now in the comments!

To be on the taglist:

Click here to apply for the general taglist! Click here to apply for the terms of endearment taglist!

442 notes · View notes

pocarinapyon · 11 months

Text

Happy Father's Day to the fathers, to those you consider fathers, and to those who will become fathers! 🤩

Speaking of fathers... 👑/🖥️ Just another random thought about the SAGAU / Reverse Isekai idea I had...

🌶️🌶️ What if the boys found out that they can stay in your world forever if they got you pregnant? Or in the case of the female characters, if they get pregnant? Like... They found some kind of scripture / ancient text / legend / whatever that says something about being able to retain themselves once they sire / bear your children (How many are children we talking about? IDK). Just imagine how eager the boys would be to get you pregnant!! 🤤🥵

So, again with my favourites!!

Starring : Albedo, Alhaitham, Childe, Kaveh (Separate)

Tags / Warnings : 🌶️🌶️ [Chilis] Actual seggs; The boys being obsessed with you; Petnames (if it bothers you); Contains stray cuss words; Usage of potions; A little dramatic in Kaveh's part; 👑/🖥️ [SAGAU/Reverse Isekai] Based on the SAGAU / Reverse Isekai concept linked below but spicy; Concept used if original / glitch varies

Links : Pinned Post, SAGAU/Reverse Isekai original concept, SAGAU/Reverse Isekai glitch concept, Anon's awesome concept about sleepmasks, 🌶️🌶️ JJ version A1(Albedo / Childe / Venti / Zhongli) Separate, 🌶️🌶️ JJ version Venti solo, 🌶️🌶️ JJ version A2 (Albedo / Childe / Venti / Zhongli) GangB., 🌶️🌶️ JJ version B1(Bennett / Diluc / Kaeya / Kazuha) Separate

Target audience is female (bodied) reader.

To whoever is reading, please enjoy.

---------------

Now just because Albedo was a homunculus doesn't mean he'd stop trying. In fact, he was even more inspired; even more dedicated to create new life inside your womb so he could be with you forever. As an artificial being, would he be able to get you pregnant? He wasn't sure yet but if he wasn't able to, he would find ways or die trying.

When he materialized in your room, he immediately drugged you into a deeper sleep. That way, he could experiment on you all night long without worry of waking you up and dematerializing back to Teyvat. And since he already fed you a slumber potion, why not go far as to give you something for your fertility and libido?

"Ahh...! My love, you're taking me so well. That's impressive," Albedo huffed as he pistoned his cock in and out of your abused pussy. "Ah...! Princess...!"

Albedo snapped his hips onto you and released another load of cum deep inside your already full womb. In turn, your slumbering body instinctively milked Albedo's manhood for more.

"Heh... Hehe... You really want it, don't you, my princess? I just love how you tighten around me and squeeze my cock," the alchemist sighed in contentment as he recovered from another orgasm.

"Ah, shit...! More... More! Fuck, you're so tight!" uncharacteristic cuss escaped from the Chalk Prince's lips. It felt so good to be buried deep inside you that the usually calm and poised Chief Alchemist couldn't help it.

White essence had long stained your sheets, an indication that Albedo had been assaulting you for a long time. But he wasn't done, no. He wanted to keep you as his beloved princess and if getting you pregnant was needed for this dream of his to come true, then he would gladly fuck you until your womb is full.

Alhaitham was probably the one who discovered the scriptures. Unfortunately, he was with a certain someone when he found out about the legend. It was a shame he couldn't stop the word from spreading. No worries. You usually keep Alhaitham active in your party so there was an insignificant chance his competitors could materialize in your world and get you pregnant.

Now that he was transported to your world, he must commence his plan. He stoically stared at your computer / Playstation (let's assume that's what you use to play) and carelessly unplugged the device, shutting it down abnormally. This made him glitch and stay in your world but only temporarily. Of course, he'd prefer to be in this state forever which was why he must proceed to the next step of his plan.

"Alhaitham, please stop...!!" your tongue was already lolled out while you plead for the virile scribe to be gentler with your wanton pussy.

"Oh? Don't act all shy and reserved now. You're clearly enjoying this because if you didn't-"

Alhaitham paused his movements and chuckled from seeing how your head quickly snapped in his direction. Your glossy eyes begged him to fuck you more and it proved just how much you wanted his cock.

"-well, you wouldn't be tightening around me and creaming all over me, right?"

"H - Haitham, you're being unfair...!" you cried from being on edge. "J - just make me cum already!!"

Alhaitham snickered before pressing onto your erected clit, making you squirm beneath his hard toned body. He did not move and only kept himself buried deep inside you while tinkering your sensitive little nub. The stimulation was enough to make you orgasm and convulse from the pleasure, milking Alhaitham and begging to be filled with his essence.

The Haravatat scholar knew how to push your buttons. Every time you masturbated to him, he observed you and etched in his mind how you wanted to be pleasured.

He also knew this won't stop you from playing Genshin Impact and using him as the main character. In fact, he assumed you would be more inclined to use him. You were a slut for him and giving you a taste of his sex would make you excited for more.

Now, all he had to do was to ensure you carry his child so he could make you his forever.

An interesting hearsay quickly spread across Teyvat. Word was if the active character that materialized in your world got you pregnant, they would be able to live with you in your world forever. Everyone became envious of the people who had the privilege of realizing this legend and one of these blessed people was the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger, Childe.

Childe couldn't help but feel giddily restless. Just the thought of seeing you pregnant and having a family with you made his cock stiffen in excitement. He wanted to knock you up so bad that he planned meticulously just to make sure you became his lovely wife.

"Aw, sweetheart. Don't be like that," Childe cooed at you. His hot breath fanned your ear as he whispered words that cajoled you deeper into depravity, "I know you want me to cum inside you. You feel that, right? How my cock twitches inside you and your pussy begs me to paint it white?"

"G - geez...! Fine! Today is a safe day anyway so I guess it's alright," you concurred. You then began to bounce on his cock once more, "Hehe~ Ah~! Make sure to cum tons, okay~?"

"Of course. Anything for you, my wifey," Childe responded in a husky voice.

"Hehe~ I can't believe you're actually letting me ride you on top today!" you chortled while grinding your hips to feel the Harbinger's hard erected manhood against your snug gummy walls. "Uwaaah~ this feels soooo good!"

With your sleepmask on, you failed to see the dark glint in Childe's eyes. He wanted to focus on your pleasure but it was hard to restrain himself from pinning you down and fucking your brains out. Like a bunny, you looked so adorable hopping up and down his cock that he wanted to make a mess out of you. But if it was true that you would have a higher chance of getting pregnant this way, then he would stop himself.

Patience is key as they say. He needed to tame his dark desires for now so he can reap the rewards later - and that reward was being with you forever.

The sappy architect's eyes glistened in delight. You mean there was a way he could stay with you forever? He could do something so that he wouldn't have to endure and make do with holding you in your sleep? If he got you pregnant, you would be his lover forever? What an interesting information indeed!

Kaveh stood in front of your bed, miserably debating whether to do this or not. His conscience ate at him. He loved you - he was obsessed with you - he wanted to be with you forever, but it was wrong to take advantage of you in your sleep. He sighed in agony and flopped beside you. And as if the higher beings heard his plea, your phone suddenly lit up and displayed a low battery alert before disappearing to reveal something interesting.

---------------

Kaveh smut. Tags: impregnation, cervix kissing, hard-core sex.

He wasn't sure if he could do hard-core but that was all the sign he needed to go with his original plan.

"N - nnh... You're so tight...," Kaveh whispered. He slowly dragged his cock deeper and penetrated you. "Mmh... Do you like that?"

Kaveh planted a kiss on your lips. He was being as gentle as he could in fear of waking you up.

"You're so gorgeous; nothing could compare to you. You are the embodiment of all that is beautiful," Kaveh praised you in a soft voice.

He continued to massage your snug walls with his veiny cock. A satisfied sigh escaped his chest when your warmth spasmed and clenched onto his manhood.

"Hehe. It seems you like this as much as I do," Kaveh mentioned with a proud smile.

He made love to you in the most romantic way. You were treated like a queen - a goddess who deserved all the love the world had to offer. Your pleasure was his priority, and he made sure to give every inch of you love and attention.

It was his first time doing this (with) to you, and he would be glad if he could have the chance to do more. All he hoped was for you to accept him should he manage to get you pregnant and stay in your world. After all, you were deprived of the privilege to decide if you wanted him or not.

Three among those four are triple crowned. Can you guess who's not triple crowned?

To whoever read this, thank you for your time. Here, have a pet bun-bun 🐇.

Again, happy father's day!!

#Genshin Impact #genshin imagines #Genshin SAGAU #Genshin Reverse Isekai #Genshin Alhaitham #Genshin Childe #Genshin Tartaglia #Genshin Kaveh #Genshin Albedo #Genshin Smut #Genshin Alhaitham Smut #Genshin Childe Smut #Genshin Tartaglia Smut #Genshin Albedo Smut #Genshin Kaveh Smut

406 notes · View notes

mikodrawnnarratives · 3 months

Text

TW BLOOD

(bit ltr on)

TW REFERENCED CHARACTER DEATH

@naffeclipse

Part 1 | Part 2 | This is Part 3 | Extra

Gonna add some after comic shenanigans because I have thought of a LOT

It'll be linked as Extra

likely will be comprised of memes with maybe some serious

Long post under the cut!

And rambling right after like. a lot. jkfdjklsd

It’S DONE

Well besides the extras and memes I’ll include in another part that. I don’t know when I’ll finish. But stay tuned I’m gonna go ham. I can't wait to share the memes especially loll

Fair warning my rambling here gets a little all over the place so if I repeat myself. Sorry lol.

If I knew how to include a second read more I would

anyway , I think I've made this comic lighter towards the end of this comic (both on purpose with the backgrounds and story lol) but this ending I hope is a combination of bittersweet and hopeful. Y/n gets to have a new family and connection to humanity that I think would be beneficial.

How they’d take finding out Y/n is a VAMPIRE is it’s own can of worms that you can decide for yourself how would go down. Best outcome is that Y/n continues to watch over the generations influenced by Vanessa and her family during their immortality.

Gregory and Cassie still haven’t been introduced in the Naff’s Cryptid Sightings universe by the time I post this, so if/when they are their characterization most likely will be different. And ggy likely won’t be placed in the au. Which is completely understandable! Tho an alternative path following canon fnaf more with 3 star fam, ggy n such is a concept I LOVE in the Cryptid Sightings world! I’ll go into it more ltr

Greg and Cass already have cryptid parents but now they get Uncle Eclipse and Uncle/Aunt/Pibling/Auncle/Etc Y/n. And Y/n gets to have one more purpose in protecting these ppl they will grow to care a lot about that knew Vanessa when Y/n couldn’t connect with her. Lots of sharing stories abt Vanessa occurs.

I’ll joke abt this in the extras & memes part but I think It would be so funny if Y/n can one moment be depressed and then Eclipse mentions Cass & Greg and they’re like “RIGHT I NEED TO PLAN HOW IM GONNA SPOIL THEM FOR THEIR BIRTHDAY” or “I LOST TO GREGORY LAST TIME IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN” or “I NEED TO CHECK UP ON THEM AND MAKE SURE THEY’RE ACTUALLY RESTING AFTER THEY FOUGHT THAT CRYPTID”

Eclipse is simultaneously grateful they have a new source of motivation, they haven’t seen you like this in a while, and he doesn’t dislike Gregory or Cassie. BUT since Cassie and Gregory are still Cryptid Hunters, it isn’t IDEAL lmao

On to elaborating on the comic: I love 3 star fam (by extension cassie) and Vanessa had growth offscreen so now her dying wish to y/n is like:

Nessie: hey. Make sure my kids (that aren't kids anymore) don't die ok cool cool

Sure Greg and Cass have Freddy and Roxy but between:

Demonic cryptids that have no experience being a human NOR a cryptid hunter human at that

Friend that might just be there still since if these cryptids could have humanity there's a chance my friend sending me memes that are so in character with their personality is ALSO still human despite being vampire and maybe ness & them could reconcile and Greg and Cass could finally meet the only person ness would have considered family and-

Nessie never would have considered y/n still having their humanity if it weren't for Freddy and by extension Roxy

And btw Ness would not have given her phone to y/n if she wasn't sure that y/n wouldn't hurt Greg and Cass.

She. Didn't expect y/n to go the extra mile and meet them in person. The phone would give y/n their contact information and all the photos of memories they missed out on

Y/n cries when they unlock ness's phone and Nessie still hadn't changed her password

The video she made that y/n sees at the end is when she was first entertaining the idea of y/n possibly still having their humanity, but still wasn’t sure. It was a video that she only ever planned on y/n seeing if she either died and/or she was sure y/n was still human in some regard. She wanted to leave y/n with something in that scenario.

Vanessa here meeting Vanessa in Cryptid Sightings and Lost episode canon would certainly be something. Vanessas from canon Cryptid Sightings would just. Not know how Vanessa got over it and neither does Ness here know

Also, there are some details for this canon divergence au that are completely settled to me and other details I don't have a solid idea for. Like, I'm not SET on how Nessie and Greg would meet, ness and Cass, if it would be at the same time, who would be doing the glitchtrapping. Prob becuz some of those are still unclear in canon canon FNAF and others I'm just indecisive

I'll leave it a little loose, up in the air

Also the possession being done by the same cryptid wouldn’t be possible with Cryptid sighting’s universe rules so. I’m not gonna bother figuring out those details for this comic.

But I do love the idea of Nessie growing closer to Greg and Cass and at least Ness and Greg sharing a bond over dealing with Glitchtrap

Speaking of glitchtrapped GGY in cryptid au-

The wizards FAVORITE now being in same universe as demonic cryptids that would absolutely want to slaughter Glitchtrap for possessing a KID? Making him kill multiple people, including a kid his age? Tasty. Scrumptious. I want to make a separate post just thinking Abt how canon crew for cryptid sightings might react to GGY, especially Cryptid Sun & Moon/Eclipse. I'll save most of that rambling for that potential post since there's so much angst potential.

While im here, I’ll ask. Naff, how would Eclipse react to a child, possessed by a demonic cryptid, having killed other children? Or. Is that a spoiler since these characters could be introduced in a reunion work and whether Cassie gets possessed to mirror canon fnaf is still up in the air? 👀

@/puhpandas can be blamed for my brain rot of the GGY story and dr rabbit stuffs and the potential it could bring.

Tho I don't expect to see GGY in any continuations of cryptid sightings lol I don't know how that would work when cryptid sightings already has laid down rules for possession in that universe and Glitchtrap is already gone. I'll happily see what Gregory and Freddy are like when they (hopefully) appear in future continuations of cryptid sightings

But since this is canon divergence I can indulge in three star fam real quick

To follow canon canon FNAF (or at least the fanon built off of the scrapped security breach canon as well as what stayed in sb), Vanessa would be saved by Gregory and Freddy, I'm undecided if Cassie would join in sooner or later. Nessie would regardless have to stomach being around kids that remind her of her trauma since she can't just fully IGNORE them. Gregory would have no one since I love the angst of the theory he killed his loving family as GGY

So. Nessie would probably know that and it would make the situation hard.

Vanessa would grow a bond with Gregory and Freddy at some point, Gregory has a head start due to. Y'know. Glitchtrap. Hard to not have some sort of connection to the kid that went through what you did too.

Anyway, Vanessa here would be saved by Gregory and Freddy to match up with canon. Or at least, the fanon I subscribe to for security breach since canon was lack luster and scrapped all the good ideas for Vanessa last minute.

Nessie and Gregory would have the shared experience of dealing with Glitchtrap trauma and Cassie gets roped, just like canon, with the whole Mimic situation. Then Nessie has two kids that she can't fully ignore but also can't stomach COMPLETELY being there for. Fun.

But since I adore 3 star fam too much, Vanessa is able to grow attached to Gregory like a big sister eventually (i adore big sis nessie dkljssfkld look at @/boringa55binch 's stuff you'll get ITTT)

When I'd imagine Cassie would be introduced, I bet Nessie would have a harder time with her around since what we've seen of Cassie in canon is only of her getting fooled. I bet Nessie would have a harder time around her for that reason.

But it's not like she COULD leave them completely alone since she's the one with the most cryptid hunting experience. And if these kids are SO INSISTENT about getting into trouble, fine. She owes them after all

I've been undecided if Cassie would be apart of the gang when Nessie is saved so that's up in the air for what ppls like most

Time skip is about 20-30 years ltr I've determined so, Ness did die when she was relatively young. (The circumstances of how she died are a plot device yes i will admit shush it isn’t terribly important sorry jklfdsjksfd)

I'm not the greatest at drawing aged characters so there you have it, Cassie and Gregory are in their late twenties early thirties.

Nessie knows it is a gamble to ask Y/n this favor. But, she's a worried big sis, being around Roxy and Freddy I bet would have softened her heart to the general idea of cryptids not being bad, and y/n doesn't seem to be bad atm. It could be a ghost that'll haunt watch over them, or Nessie's best friend can continue to be long distance buds with Nessie's new family.

And if Y/n was truly gone and all that remained was the vampire tendencies, by this point she has trust Gregory, Cassie, Freddy, and Roxy can keep each other safe. If it was truly a mistake to give y/n her trust.

So, that's why y/n hypes themself up and visits the graveyard when Gregory is there. And it did take a lot out of them but y'know I like the idea of y/n getting close with the gang.

It does make the next cryptid reunion a little weird.

Y/n & Eclipse: YOU DIDN'T MENTION VANESSA WAS A PART OF THE CREW NOW??

Freddy & Roxy: YOU NEVER TOLD US ABOUT VANESSA

Like, imagine both describing Vanessa in previous reunions, and NOW they're finding out it was the same person.

Vampire reveal set aside for later, this is y/n's newest reason to LIVE (mentioned earlier im gonna indulge on details down here)

They can't die yet! They still have memes to send to these kids! Jokes to tell! Series to make them binge with Y/n over a call! This is the gosh darn happiest Eclipse has seen them in decades!!

Flipping between seeing Gregory and Cassie as their nephew and niece and competing with Freddy and Roxy over the title of parent. Regardless of age. (they joke but Y/n never actually competes for the title, they are much too anxious of doing something wrong. Plus, Roxy and Freddy would be pretty tough to beat)

I also think it would be hilarious if Y/n sent out Eclipse with a chancla when Gregory does a Human Hero Complex goof up that painfully reminds y/n of their Human Hero Complex goof ups. He isn't allowed to make the same mistakes without consequence. And y/n WILL stay back in the bushes with goggles to SEE IT HAPPEN. Eclipse ain't worried abt y/n's mental state when they're too invested with their Nephew and Niece.

Gregory: We are adults.

Y/n: Yeah but you're also stupid humans who don't know when to quit.

Eclipse does get a chuckle they're now complaining so much abt human's having these stupid hero/martyr complexes when they were a human not so long ago themself lol

and

didn't mention before but

Y/n and Vanessa compared to Cassie and Gregory parallels that would could be explored.

ANYWAY (get an “anyway” tracker for this post 💀)

Cryptid Sightings doesn't have Cassie or Gregory in their cast of characters yet so (i think I mentioned this earlier but still), this could age. As of writing this, no reunion fic has been published. Might make a note of that if I release this after the fact. But still. Indulge with me in the hyjinks. I haven’t even begun on Freddy being a dad to y/n and possible Roxy dynamic with y/n lolll.

This au of an au of an au still has lots of angst to be explored like. Oh yeah, Gregory was controlled by Glitchtrap too and has a fuck ton of ptsd SINCE HE WAS TWELVE

Fun discussion for later at thanksgiving over zoom. One that Greg is just like: Can we get back to video games pls. now.

The bombshell that will be Y/n revealed to be a Vampire is still up in the air like I said earlier. But, y'know, it might go better this time.

Y/n hopes for that. Hopes. Funny, you haven't smiled this much in a while.

Vanessa's death hurts. Both of them were too young for their fates. It hurt especially when they were saying goodbye for the very last time. Nessie's death was coming and Y/n knew that, but at the same time. Y/n can focus on caring about people Nessie cared about. People Nessie trusted them to care for.

I like the idea of Y/n continuing to watch over and keep in contact with the people Nessie has impacted in some way. Nessie to Gregory and Cassie to whoever they inspire and have become their successors. And they got so much more they are looking forward to now. Knowing humans and sticking around them even digitally has its risks but I think it could be pretty grounding. They have even more dates to look forward to aside from halloween. Which, will be fun to celebrate with Gregory and Cassie fam.

They can't wait to do some more living.

117 notes · View notes

wild-dagon · 9 months

Text

Building on my prior post what does a role-reversed totk mean for Linked universe.

I have seen plenty of fics about Wild leaving the chain for his new adventure but imagine wild leaving the group and immediately getting tested back in time.

Imagine Wild once again I a new world where he doesn’t know anyone trying to navigate it. He’s trying to figure out where he is in the time line. If any of his brothers are here. You can have a lot of fun with where Rauru’s kingdom falls in the time line.

But it ends with wild swallowing the stone and becoming an immortal dragon clutching the broken Master sword to his chest.

Maybe he passes his 10,000 years watching over hyrule and seeing his brother eras come to pass.

Back with the chain.

The brothers are missing Wild. Maybe it’s right after he left, it’s still a raw wound. Right as they are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that they are now one link short they hear a roar. They jerk their heads around looking for the mister that’s attacking them only to see that in the sky is a giant dragon. Legend probably makes a snarky comment about not wanting to fight that thing. But the dragon just calmly flies over head of them.

As they continue their quest they will always spot the dragon in every new era they travel to. They can’t figure out why. All the people that they run into can’t see the dragon so why can they. Is it a part of the quest?

Meanwhile in Totk;

Zelda(flora) finally realizes what happened to Wild. She’s heartbroken for her knight as she watches him fly around the sky.

She’s also at a loss of what to do. How do you beat Ganondorf without the Master Sword. She knows that it rest with the Dragon!Wild but she can’t pull it. The blade won’t respond to her. She needs a hero, but hers is up in the sky.

Luckily Hylia drops off 8 hero’s fro her to pick from.

The chain arrives in Wild world. Originally they are confused on where they are. The world looks so different with the sky islands but Twilight would recognize Wilds world anywhere. Even with all the new monsters and that strange dragon flying around.

The group is hopeful. Maybe Wild has finished his second quest and can now join them again.

But it doesn’t take long for Sky to realize that the Master Sword is missing. They come to the conclusion that Fi merged with the current master sword which must be in Wild possession.

It takes them a little while before they see the castle. The currently floating castles with gloom spilling out from below it. It’s then that they realize that Wild hasn’t finished his quest.

Wind suggests that they are there to help Wild. That he’s probable waiting for them. Time, Legend and Warriors are less hopeful. Why would the goddess separate them from Wild in the first place if she was going to let them help in his quest later on.

They chain make their way towards the castle and make it to Lookout Landing, where they run into Flora.

One long explanation later the chain is destroyed.

Legend is furious with the goddess for letting this happen

Wind, Four, and Hyrule can’t wrap their heads around the fact that Wild is gone.

Sky hasn’t been totally with the story since finding out that Fi was destroyed.

Warrior is heart broken but trying to come up with a plan. The war prepared him to keep moving.

Time is devastated. A cross between Legend rage and Warriors need to keep the group moving.

And Twilight. Twilight can’t handle it. How can his cub be gone? How had this happened? How had he lost someone else? No this can’t be he has to get to Wild. He’s all alone up there. Why is he all alone up there.

This leads to Twilight wanting to get to Wild as quickly as possible. Maybe he goes up with Sky as he wants to check on Wild and Fi, but also because he has the most experience in the sky. Or maybe they all go up, borrowing paraglides from Flora and Purah. But either way they get up there and they find the Master Sword.

Now question of the day. Who gets to pull the sword from Wild’s skull?

#linked universe #lu wild #lu twilight #lu sky #lu time #lu wind #lu legend #lu warriors #lu hyrule #lu four #zelda totk role reversal au #Lu totk role-reversal au

283 notes · View notes

hiwelcometothemonstersancturary · 2 months

Note

weñl since I'm new to the AU and already ate every post.... Could you drop some lore of The Prototype and his link to the toys? (especially with Catnap seeing as how he recently calls him "dad" but I wonder how before he allowed Theo to consider him a God and worship him)

For my AU, the Prototype was originally Elliot Ludwig himself. He had an adopted daughter and lost her due to an illness, and then had the brilliant idea to start dubiously ethical experiments in order to bring her back. He eventually volunteered himself to be the first human to become a toy, only to realize, far too late, that without him in charge mr. Harley "what is ethics if not another rule to break in the name of SCIENCE" Sawyer would go "what if i broke every single rule Elliot ever imposed on me". Also I have adopted @lassieposting's hc about Elliot being a military veteran, which is important for this because now this man feels like he, once again, is seeing a tragedy that should have never existed at ALL.

Prototype took care of little Theo/Catnap as if he were his own son (also taken from lassieposting because good headcanons are GOOD headcanons), and after the Hour of Joy and him realizing that the toys can't go outside without risking even more death and people hunting them, he taught Catnap how to hunt. After he learned how to look after himself Catnap became more independent, and Theo was always a kind of religious boy, and that combined with him seeing Prototype as a hero made him undergo the biggest catholic moment in the history of Playtime Co.

Prototype doesn't like being called a god, but Catnap doing that did help him impose more rules on the toys ("don't go outside so humans won't find us and capture us again", "don't torture each other even if you are really hungry", "if you see a human kill it and give it to me so we can all have food"). Unfortunately their distance grew as time went on, and Prototype just. Never actually tried doing anything to stop Catnap from being like That. Again, it was helping him, and he sees Catnap as the child he failed to protect, and he just never knew how to address the elephant in the room. This entire situation was 100% Prototype's fault for not attempting to sit down with Catnap and tell him to cut it off.

Prototype has a trillion communication issues, honestly. For this AU he helped deliver Poppy's call for help to the Player/Angel, not that she knew that, because he decided that everyone had enough. He wanted someone to save the toys, even if by "saving" it meant "killing them off", because Prototype figured it was better than being alive in that nightmare.

And then Angel saved Huggy, throwing Prototype's whole plan away.

And then Bunzo, the mini huggies, PJ Pug-a-Pillar, and then Mommy Long Legs, and then Miss Delight and Dogday, and then Catnap, even when the big feline begged Prototype to end his suffering. The Angel took care of all of them. They never dared leave anyone behind.

Prototype changed his plan for it to just be for him to die, because he caused everyone to become a toy. He deserved that fate more than anyone, at least in his eyes.

And then Angel convinced him to live. The deal they made was for Prototype to help them take care of everyone and stop anyone from ever find all the documentation about how the experiments were done, and only just enough info for the humans outside to know the toys are alive and were previously innocent children. After Angel finds a bigger house, Catnap convinces Prototype to come in with them, and he reluctantly agrees.

It'll be really funny when Angel realizes Poppy was Elliot's daughter, because our favorite porcelain doll does NOT know Elliot is the Prototype. Actually, NO ONE knows that, not even Catnap himself. When Angel finds out they DEMAND Prototype to talk to Poppy because what the HECK, you already failed to communicate with one kid and now you fail to communicate with ANOTHER?

Anyways, family drama aside, Angel and Prototype unironically make a very good parent duo. Prototype knows how the toys work, while Angel knows how to be gentle and assuring. They teach the other a lot about what to do, but the majority of the toys are too afraid to talk with Prototype to learn that he's Father Material If You Ignore The Communication Issues. Catnap can confirm!

#poppy playtime #experiment 1006 #poppy playtime prototype #poppy playtime angel #poppy playtime player #poppy worldwide #save everyone au #there's so many jokes about angel and prototype being parents that i thought about #esp after catnap starts calling angel mom when everyone knows he calls prototype his dad #poppy straight up says “oh congratulations on officially being called mom by everyone!!!!! please don't refer to prototype as our dad”#angel: “how about i do that”#poppy: “HE'S NOT MY DAD! YOU ARE MY DAD AND MY MOM!”#(two weeks later and they discover prototype is indeed poppy's dad)#(cue to angel saying “can i say i told you so?” (they never told her so)

67 notes · View notes

acepalindrome · 1 month

Text

SDV Aesthetic Mod Recommendations (1.6 Edition!)

I’m back with more mod recommendations that work with 1.6! This time, we’re gonna focus on stuff that mainly just changes how things look: recolors, portraits, animal skins, etc. No major gameplay changes, but the visual changes can really enhance the experience or make the game feel totally different! Again, links will be in a reblog. And you can check my ‘sdv mods’ tag for my other recommendation post!

So starting off, recolors. I have three that I really love: Vibrant Pastoral Recolor, DaisyNiko’s Earthy Recolor, and Starblue Valley.

They all tone down the saturation and give everything a softer, more natural look. Vibrant Pastoral is probably my favorite because it makes the scythe-able grass look like it’s full of wildflowers! Also of note, Starblue Valley’s 1.6 update is a work in progress, so some parts might not be properly recolored. It’s such a pretty recolor, but you might want to just track the mod for now while they’re hammering out the kinks.

Next up, portraits! First, I wanna talk about Seasonal Outfits.

I love that vanilla has beach and winter outfits now, and this mod takes that ten times further! Not only are there outfits for every season (with matching sprites), there are also unique outfits for festivals! I love all the Halloween costumes for Spirits Eve! There are seasonal mods for Stardew Valley Expanded and Ridgeside Village too!

Next, Nyapu’s Portraits.

I love the cute, old school Harvest Moon vibe these have, but one of the really great things is that Nyapu has made portraits for almost every modded character in existence. I’m fussy about getting my portraits to match, because it’s just weird when you’ve got totally different art styles for different characters, and that is a non-issue with this collection! If there’s a character mod, there is probably a Nyapu portrait. SVE and RSV are just the tip of the iceberg! Also Nyapu is a real life farmer when they aren’t making adorable portraits, which I think is just cool!

I made a post earlier about Elle’s Cuter Coop Animals/Barn Animals/Cats/Dogs/Horses, but it’s worth mentioning again because they’re just too cute and the huge variety of different colors and species is unmatched.

And I mean. Highland cows. Just look at them. Elle also has mods for seasonal farm buildings and farmhouse kitchens with lots of different options! You really can’t go wrong with any of Elle’s mods.

And speaking of farm buildings, one of my absolute favorites is Gwen’s Medieval Buildings, and matching mod, Gwen’s Medieval Craftables.

The antique, overgrown vibes are just gorgeous.

If I do UI recolors, I usually just pick one that matches my recolor (Vibrant Pastoral, Earthy Recolor, etc) but I recently discovered Lavender Dreams UI Recolor and I adore it.

The colors are just so nice and soft, and the accents of moss and leaves in the menu is just delightful.

I’m on mobile and running out of pictures, so I’ll just talk about the next three that change your character. First is Female Farmer Overhaul. Despite the name, everything is available to any gender, although the style is definitely more feminine. It adds a lot of new hairstyles, clothes, hats, and has the option of short or long sleeves so you’re dressed appropriately for the season!

Next is Animated Hair. It makes your hair move as you run, use tools and so on. There are lots of hairstyles and it just looks so nice!

And one last one, Expressive Elf Ears. Like Animated Hair, they move around with your character! They are so floppy! If you want a little fantasy flavor to your character, they’re a must.

And that’s all for now! I might do content adding mods next time!

#stardew valley #sdv #sdv mods #long post

45 notes · View notes

accidentalshifter · 2 months

Text

Constructing your DR: a little rant on how I approach it and theories! It's pretty long, haha.

Disclaimer: Everything said within this post is my own interpretation/opinion based on personal experiences. Take what is relevant and leave whatever doesn't resonate behind. I am no authority on this subject, just a very keen enthusiast. Send me an ask if you have any further questions or comments. I'll try to answer them as best as I can. 🔮 *beautiful divider made by @firefly-graphics

This is my take on Astral Space/DR creation. It's a bit of a long-winded read. But, I figured writing about my process before I started to talk about my DRs would be good. I'm very new to the Shiftblr community but not new to the practice. I've been doing it since I was young. And I hope whoever reads this gets some ideas to incorporate into their own DR & Astral Space creation.

[Theory and Philosophy]

🌕 So first off, let's establish what the "astral plane" is. In my practice and experience, it is the liminal space between the subconscious, conscious, and intuitive mind. A doorway in the pineal gland that we can journey through to discover truth & meaning. It's a malleable psychic landscape that exists both inside & outside of ourselves which connects us to all possible places...both real and imaginary. It's one realm (or layer) we go to when we dream at night. And one that ghosts, gods, guides, demons, angels, & other kinds of incorporeal spirits use to communicate directly with the material living; us sentient beings. Everyone is connected to the astral plane. Even those people who cannot visualize in their mind or aren't particularly interested in spirituality...

I also believe in my practice that the astral plane directly overlaps 3-D reality. Parts of it, therefore, can actually be tied to actual (physical) locations, time periods, worlds, & even objects. Usually those objects that have gained a certain amount of energy or spiritual force to it. And I mention periods of time because the astral isn't limited by linear time. So, all time is accessible inside it.

🌕 What is an "astral space", then? If you can imagine the astral plane as an onion (having many layers) then an astral space would be the individual cells within the material of the onion. Our own imagination and dreams are contained within cells inside the astral plane that are specifically tied to each of us. Some cells can be connected to each other. Those who can travel into other people's dreams or inside other people's minds are adept at the art of linking up their cells to someone else's and traveling in-between them. While most people are unconscious of the collective astral spaces of the astral plane, only aware when interacting with them in dreams, through various forms of trance/meditation (focused visualization) some people can explore astral space/s, link to other people's astral spaces, and even design or add new ones to their cell.

In my opinion, I don't make any distinction between a person's astral space and a DR. Also known as a "desired reality" or "astral temple" or a "mind palace." I think the only difference, if there is any, is the purposes they're used/created for. A desired reality tends to be more self-indulgent while an astral temple is made to be a space where one can do magic and a mind palace is for memory retention or exploring yourself & your psyche. But they all exist within the same venn diagram. They're all spaces in the astral plane attached to our dreaming and imaginative functions. There's likely a lot of overlap between them.

🌕 How did the astral plane come to be? I do not know, to be honest. I only have theories. My most solid theory is that the astral plane is a natural consequence of dreaming beings & lifeforms (not restricted to life on Earth) in the same way that casting a shadow upon a wall is a natural consequence of there being sunlight. The astral is a twin reflection of the waking world; influenced by it, not restricted by it, and beholden to its own laws. Just like life here on Earth adheres to gravity/physics & chemistry. Greek mythologies say that the astral plane was the home of the Oneiros & Morpheus, God of Dreams, long before any human dreamt the first (human) dreams. Of course, it's called "Erebos" in Greek mythos. Not the "astral plane." And was likened to a dark cave in a land of eternal night beyond the rising sun. Kind of sounds like the very first settlements that our earliest ancestors had when the world was young, huh?? The Aboriginal culture of Australia believed that The Dreamtime (or what I think is the "astral plane") came before life & creation. And that both things only came about because of The Dreaming. And sprang forth from it. But no, I don't have a definitive answer here for you & I don't think I ever will.

🌕 Why is the astral plane important?? Well, apart from it being the blueprint upon which all material form derives, I believe the astral plane/s are important because of the wealth of self-knowledge & personal gnosis we can gain from exploring it. Another cool aspect of the astral plane that I think is important is how useful it is for spiritual & metaphysical practitioners who have to hide their craft. Or those people who're economically limited & don't have space for an altar/access to any tools, ritual ingredients, ect. Learning how to work with the astral plane & create your own astral space can be an invaluable resource in those instances...

Which leads me to the point of this post:

[The Taglock Method]

🌕 Step 1: Give your Astral Space a purpose.

In my experience, giving your astral space a reason for existing (even the smallest or most ridiculous reason) will solidify it and give it life. Try to make your intention/s as clear as possible. I find that the less grand & complex directives usually have the best chance at gaining energetic traction. With this step, you can also create a sigil (a sign or symbol) that embodies the purpose of your intention/s or represents your astral space in some way. If you feel a bit lost on this step, sometimes the best intention to start off with is making a space to talk to your spiritual guides, your ancestors, OCs, or your favorite comfort characters.

🌕 Step 2: Give your Astral Space aesthetics and lore.

Just like a story or fanfic, give your astral space some interesting background info. Is it filled with Studio Ghibli forest spirits? Or maybe it's an empty and vast library of sentient books? How about a world made of floating islands, wandering dragons, & medieval kingdoms??? Include whatever most inspires you!! Your ability to imagine is pretty much the limit. Giving your astral space lore can also include programming (scripting) in fixed locations or characters to interact with. According to your tastes, you can go heavy on the scripting or keep it open & loose. In my experience, allowing the astral space to develop its own myths and denizens keeps the energy of it more fun. And can also give you HUGE CLUES about yourself through the symbolism of its developing evolution. Giving your astral space lore is like tending a bonsai. Shape it. But avoid over pruning it. Along this line of thought, I hesitated giving my 4 astral spaces an official name at first because I wanted to discover it organically as I went exploring in them. Uncovering your astral space's true name could be a fun starter adventure for you!

🌕 Step 3: Safeguard your Astral Space.

When exploring the astral, you can never be too careful! Script in guardians or safe guards into your space that only activate on your command. Personally, I have set my 4 spaces up to react to a trigger word that if spoken aloud by me (and only me) will pop me out of the space and back into my CR (current reality) unscathed. If you aren't up for any risk or danger, you might want to script/program your astral space with orders that no violence/nothing weird occurs within your space at all. Or you can set it on a sliding scale of danger levels for those of you who crave chaos. Another tip I have for this step is to program in a "save point" or multiple save points that are only visible/accessible to you. The usefulness of scripting in save points into your astral space allows you to quickly recall certain fixed points within your space with ease... The same way that bookmarks help you to keep your place while reading a book. My save points are 4 specific animals unique to my 4 astral spaces. Whenever I need to "bookmark" a spot in my space, I usually look for the animal sculpture that's hidden within the landscape I'm exploring.

🌕 Step 4: Create a Taglock.

One of the most frustrating things about (consciously) creating an astral space is its tendency to erode/melt back into the astral plane over time. Just like cells in our bodies are replaced over time, the cells of our astral space are also replaced. Each & every dream, daydream, and vision for the future is a cell that eventually manifests in reality or returns back to the dream soup from whence it came. Unless, that is, you reinforce it (constantly) inside your mind. Here's where having a "taglock" comes in handy. For those who don't know what a taglock is, it's a physical item that anchors you (or a spell) to a person, physical place, idea, ect. You get the drift. A taglock that reinforces the concept behind your astral space can be a handy workaround to keep it from erosion & cement it. Your taglock can be as simple as a rock you discovered on the ground or as complex as a portrait you painted. The key factor in a taglock's usefulness is its ability to be within your line of sight (daily) or on your person so it can remind you of your astral space, thus reinforcing it, and keeping it solid in your mind. Also, in my lived experience, linking a physical object to your astral space/DR makes it way easier to shift into it.

⚠️ Side note: If for any reason you need to take a break away from your astral space, I'd recommend you place your taglock in a box and out of sight. Preferably one that's sealed up energetically/magically to prevent it from interacting with you in any way. Boxing your taglock is like putting your astral space in a deep sleep or suspended animation where it can remain fixed but won't be at the fore of your imagination.

🌕 Step 5: Imbue your Taglock with energy.

In my experience, when you first create an astral space, it's energetically taxing. Like a newborn baby, the astral space will need nurturing, attention, and care. Especially if you're creating a DR/Astral Space that has no ties to any (already established) canon. In the case of energetically imbuing a DR/Astral Space that's based on a movie, TV series, mythology, videogame, or book, it is as simple as ingesting said media while holding/having your taglock on you. Then, anchoring in the vibes/concepts from said media into the taglock. But in the case of an original DR/Astral Space (one that has no source material to draw from), it'll take more finesse than simply feeding it your favorite media. You'll have to incorporate the taglock into your life. Eat with it, sleep with it, exercise with it, breathe on it, shed your tears on it, laugh with it...or even use ritual oils sold as curios in your local witch shoppe (or online) along with binging any media appropriate to the themes of your DR. I'd recommend using "Dream" oils for your purposes if you decide to incorporate oils at all with your taglock. This step will be the longest/hardest step in the process but is guaranteed to deliver you results if you keep at it consistently. Also, don't try to do this all at once. Pace yourself. It took me a whole month for my original concept DR/Astral Space to start taking shape and gain momentum before the real fun stuff happened.

⚠️ Side note: What happens if you lose your taglock?? Nothing at all. Your taglock serves as a reminder but it isn't the core link to your Astral Space/DR. Your mind and capacity to dream is. Simply obtain a new taglock that reminds you of your Astral Space/DR & link it up. You might find that as your DR/Astral Space grows, evolves, & changes so too will the taglock you use to reinforce it. While you could theoretically have many taglocks for 1 Astral Space, I'd recommend you focus your taglocks to one per each DR/Astral Space so the energetic link to it is more consolidated, not scattered amongst many different parts.

🌕 Step 6: Document any daydreams about your Astral Space.

During the process of the fifth step (and especially if you're an extra visual person) you might receive mental impressions or other sense phenomenon while powering your taglock. In my experience, these are signs that your Astral Space/DR is gaining "mass" and is starting to stabilize. And it's a good indication that your Astral Space/DR is ready to be shifted into & explored. Keep track of these very early impressions in a book or in electronic notes. While your Astral Space/DR might change and evolve a little more past this phase, these flickers of life might contain potent symbolic and metaphorical meaning to what you'll be encountering in your newly-born dream space in the future. And keeping track of them could come in handy for you later on.

🌕 Step 7: Remember to take a break.

Birthing a world is hard work!! None of the steps I've outlined should be tackled in the span of a day or a week. In my experience, it usually takes a month/month and a half to achieve all these steps in a healthy and stable way. Both for your Astral Space/DR and for yourself. Remember to take it at a slow and easy pace. If you should feel like you need to take a break, remember that you can always box up your taglock & put it somewhere out of sight/out of reach so that your focus goes elsewhere. Also, do your best to ground & re-center yourself after working with your Astral Space/DR. This work tends to be very ungrounding in its nature and can exasperate underlying issues if you do not learn to balance your DR/Astral Space life with your current life here in this reality. Eat, sleep, talk to your friends, do something good for yourself in this world. There is as much beauty and wonder here as there is in your dream cell.

#desired reality #reality shift #reality shifting #shiftblr #shifting #shifting community #shifting realities #shifting motivation #shifting blog #shifters #reality shifter #shifting methods #shifting reality

48 notes · View notes

bryce-bucher · 1 year

Text

Basidia Post #4

Vintage CGI:

Modus Interactive and I have been spending the last week or so learning how to use Alias Power Animator 9 which is essentially an old version of maya. It was used on sgi workstations back in the day on games like ff7 and mario64 for all the pre-rendered stuff. For a long time Modus and I have been pretty invested in learning how to replicate the look of old pre-rendered stuff, and, as it turns out, the best way was just to do it how they did it. For so long I tried to wrap my head around how old cgi stuff was modeled because the sorts of shapes that were often created seemed like they'd be unnecessarily hard to create with polygons. The thing that specifically stumped me for a while was how they handled wrinkles in clothing and organic shapes. As it turns out, the answer was hidden right under my nose the whole time. They weren't using polygons at all! Instead they were modeling with NURBS! It seems very obvious in hindsight, but I feel like I deleted the memory of NURBS once I exited highschool, and nobody ever seems to talk about or use them these days. If you don't know what they are, it's basically a style of modeling that involves making a bunch of bezier curves and using them to define surfaces. It's a totally different style of modeling from polygons with a lot of pros and cons, but it achieves that smooth look we're after extremely well.

Scout Rifle Render:

As shown in the pics above, I decided to make a model of the scout rifle in Basidia so that we could use it for an item icon. The process was definitely a learning experience, and one of the things I learned is that modeling like this is super fun. It's like creating each shape is a puzzle where you need to theorize what is the best approach to take, and following through is always a multi-step process of defining a surface and slicing it up. I find it super satisfying to pull off, and making slapping materials on it is always fun as well. Moving forward we are probably gonna use this program and/or older versions of maya to create any pre-rendered item icons or backgrounds that we'll be needing. Modus actually made new versions of the vials in it as well which I will put right here \/

Wow there it is would u look at that. Power Animator just has an amazing way of outputting some unique, rich colors that are hard to get in modern software. I mean, just look at that cork. How do you make a cork have such interesting colors? Amazing. Fuck it, I'm gonna show off a little guy I made in power animator that has nothing to do with Basidia. I've been hyperfixating on this program since I downloaded it so I owe this to myself.

Here he is! Power animator has this amazing glow effect you can put on any shader that adds this bloom as a post processing layer. I used it on the head in this one, and I think it achieves a particular dreamlike effect really well. The sorts of shapes I can get for cloth out of NURBS is also super fun and rewarding, as shown with the cape here. Character modeling is something I'm always really excited about, and I'll definitely be modeling some Basidia characters in this thing.

Conclusion:

I am loving this program and I cannot stop thinking about it. Anyway, I have some commissions to take care of before switching back to midwest lost development, so I may or may not be posting about that game next week. I'm trying to buy an old sgi workstation with the commission money, and, if I can pull that off, then I will have access to all the old software they used back then (including the IRIX version of poweranimator). If you want to check out power animator yourself then here is a link to the program, and here is a helpful tutorial. Oke bye take care!

411 notes · View notes

classic80sand90smovieloves2 · 2 months

Note

totally feel free to ignore but what are some tips you have for writing? I rlly want to write x readers soon but idk how to start

Write for yourself: write what you want, when you want, for whatever reason you want, and don't let it become an obligation. It's hard to gain traction on a site like tumblr so you don't want to get discouraged by a lack of feedback/notes: which will probably happen if you're trying to write for others instead of yourself. Gaining fame should be irrelevant to you: it'll make you happier in the long run and save you a bunch of self doubt.

Read a lot. It can be whatever you prefer: fiction, nonfiction, fanfiction, etc. It simply helps to remind you what proper grammar, sentences, and characters look like. If you ever find yourself struggling to word things, take a break and read something else.

If you're creating a new blog to write on, reblog things to it or make unimportant posts on it immediately upon creating it. They can be things you'll end up deleting in the future, it really doesn't matter, it simply helps your blog be seen in the tags you're looking to post in quicker. Tumblr; at least when I started, has a sort of authorization process (for lack of a better term) where a new blogs posts will not be seen in tags until they've made a couple posts/reblogs. It's a sort of "prove you're not a robot" process that ends quicker by doing the aforementioned things.

Tag things properly and learn proper fanfiction terms.

Rewatching/rereading is your friend. Sometimes it's necessary to watch clips back again to see the little things that you might have missed on your first viewing. Even the smallest of interactions can really help to flesh out a character when writing for them.

Watch other films. There's only so many different kinds of character archetypes out there and finding similar characters to watch can help you come up with ideas for the ones you want to write for.

Don't limit yourself. Experiment with different kinds of fanfiction and see what works for you. You might prefer one type of fanfiction over the other or you might want to write different kinds. (i.e. look into the difference between imagines, headcanons, blurbs, etc.)

Don't force yourself to finish something. If you want to write ten different things all at once, don't force yourself to complete the post you're struggling with when you could finish two different ones in the mean time.

Give credit where credit is due. Don't grab a gif from a random place and claim it as your own or steal writing from somebody else (even if it's just a small segment). Always tag or link wherever you've found something and respect peoples wishes if they don't want you to use it.

Being self indulgent is part of the fun but try not to let it cloud your judgement when writing for different characters; especially if you're trying to appeal to an audience. There's a fine line between writing fanfic and making an oc out of preexisting characters: both are fine but if you're trying to appeal to the masses and/or be accurate, don't force things to fit just because you wish they were so.

That's all I got off the top of my dome so I hope that this helps! Good luck!❤

#writing tips

36 notes · View notes

xccentriktigress · 10 months

Text

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

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

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

A true verbatim transcript is available by request.

[archive 1]|[archive 2]

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

*inaudible, off-screen*

PhotoMatt: 2018? *chuckle* Yeah.

ZingRing: Yeah.

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

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

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

ZingRing: Ok, great

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

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

ZR: Right.

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

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

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

ZR: Thank you for the pizza.

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

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

PM: Yeah. I agree.

ZR: That’s being worked on.

PM: Search is being worked on, right?

ZR: Yup.

PM: Actually, who is working on Search here?

ZR: There they are.

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

*inaudible, off-screen*

PM: It’s going well.

ZR: It’s going good.

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

*inaudible, off-screen*

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Hmm *chuckles*

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

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

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

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

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

PM: Oh! *laughs*

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

PM: Thank you for the crab *laughs*

ZR: Oh! *laughs* Thank you.

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

ZR: I love these crabs.

*laughter*

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

*laughter*

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

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

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: What was that?

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

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

ZR: We should.

PM: I’m PhotoMatt. P-H-O-T-O-M-A-T-T

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

PM: Cool.

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

PM: I agree.

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

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

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

PM: Yes, it does.

ZR: Yes, it does.

PM: Woohoo.

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

7:32 PM: What platform’s the chip on?

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

ZR: *chuckles*

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

ZR: Aw.

PM: Yay. Thank you.

ZR: *to audience* That’s you all.

*Applause*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*off-screen* 302.

PM: 302, cool. Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

*chuckles at crab*

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Not sure.

PM: Yeah.

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

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

*laughter*

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

*more laughter*

PM: Okay, we got 25 there.

ZR: Going once…

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

[15:38] PM: They say “Pay streamers”

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

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

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

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

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

*Laughter*

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

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

ZR: On web.

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah, that's right.

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

PM: Does anyone know about that? Yes.

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

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

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

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

17:51

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

*Applause, Laughter*

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

PM: And you do have great hair.

ZR: Yeah I do.

PM: Thank you for the compliments. Thank you.

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

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

ZR: No, because we're not.

*Matt laughs*

ZR: We can make merch like Tumblr.

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

ZR: Yeah. For sure.

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

ZR: Let's see, uh…

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

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

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

ZR: Yep.

PM: Yeah.

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

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

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

ZR: Oh.

PM: Well I bet we can fix that.

ZR: I bet we could fix that.

PM: *chuckles* Watch out, Peggy.

*Laughter*

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

ZR: Okay

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

ZR: Ooh

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Hooray

PM: High five.

ZR: We moved a chair.

PM: We moved a chair.

ZR: We can move mountains.

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

ZR: Mm-hmm.

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

ZR: Yeah

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

ZR: And complex.

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Thanks, Josh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

*offscreen* Almost 25 thousand.

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

*audience enthusiasm*

ZR: Let's do that.

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

ZR: It is. It is an idea.

*off-screen* It’s a backup sock.

PM: It's a backup sock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

PM: This is ephemeral.

ZR: Yeah.

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

ZR: Oh.

PM: Ooh. Bling bling.

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: I think it was for me.

PM: Oh. *laughs* Yeah, probably.

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

PM: Nothing.

ZR: No.

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

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

ZR: Absolutely not.

*laughter*

PM: What's a sleep stream?

ZR: It sounds like you stream yourself sleeping.

PM: Huh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yay.

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

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

ZR: Mm-hmm.

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

ZR: Salty.

*Matt chuckles*

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

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

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

ZR: Mm-hmm.

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

ZR: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

PM: Whoa. Eagle thing, cool

PM: Very patriotic.

ZR: It's very something.

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

PM: Yeah.

ZR: After you buy it.

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Or ask someone to gift you.

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

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

PM: *laughs* Would they notice?

ZR: Probably not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Mm-hmm

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

PM: Covey. Yeah, Stephen Covey.

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

ZR: No.

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

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

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

ZR: Right.

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

*offscreen* Today it's five.

PM: My user number is five?

*indistinct, offscreen*

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

ZR: That makes more sense.

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

PM: What was that?

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

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

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

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

PM: Any favorites? Anything you want to suggest?

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

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

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

PM: I really like @everythingfox.

ZR: Oh yeah, that's so cute.

PM: Yeah, cute animals.

ZR: Yep.

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

*indistinct, off-screen*

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

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

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

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

ZR: Uh-oh

PM: Inception

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

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

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

ZR: Oh, I bet it was.

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

ZR: Thank you.

PM: Thank you for pointing that out to me.

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

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

PM: Huh, that's funny.

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

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

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

PM: Do we have April here, actually?

*off-screen* No.

ZR: No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PM: We focus on both.

ZR: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

ZR: Actually I think that's, well…

PM: What's that?

ZR: More to come.

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

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

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

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

ZR: Right on.

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

*offscreen* Yes

ZR: Yes.

PM: Yeah.

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

ZR: We have.

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

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

PM: Ooh.

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

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

ZR: Our amazing team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PM: You asked for it. Tada!

ZR: There it is.

*Applause, laughter*

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

ZR: This is making me very uncomfortable.

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

ZR: Yeah, we are not good at this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZR: Yeah, they’re very fun.

PM: Okay wow, UFOs now.

ZR: Yeah

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

ZR: More crabs.

PM: *chuckles*

ZR: *gasps* Oh

PM: A turkey-

ZR: That's dark.

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

ZR: Yay, I like that one.

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

ZR: Yeah.

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

*applause*

ZR: Alright, sounds good.

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

ZR: Not in this country

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

ZR: Yeah. Keep caring.

PM: Alright, bye-bye.

*applause*

139 notes · View notes