#domains

[wordpressdotcom]

It's time to transfer those domains you have with Google. First million on us. https://bit.ly/3KOdZpZ

[re-lmayer]

fyi tumblr is fucking over people with custom domains

if you have a custom domain set, DO NOT UNTICK THE BUTTON on blog settings. you’re not allowed to add it back. (nope, that’s not mentioned anywhere on blog settings itself.) if you switch hosts and need to update nameservers, congrats! you’re fucked

custom domains were a feature that’s been available over a decade, but they’ve been unceremoniously removed. the idea of “legacy” domains is a joke

this is doubly egregious because they absolutely could be selling domains for people that don’t have one, while still allowing those of us that already had a domain to keep using ours. they also don’t even allow you to pay to use your own. so if someone bought a domain specifically to use on tumblr, if they accidentally untick the button then poof! they’re fucked because they can’t re-buy their own domain from tumblr 

it’s honestly pathetic how much of a transparent cash grab this is at worst, and how badly implemented this was at best. this is what happens when you accept incompetency as a modus operandi bc “lol quirky hellsite”

i highly, HIGHLY recommend not investing in this feature due to that incompetency and lack of transparency

[ughigottaheadache]

SOOOOOOO, how did I imagine the geopolitics of EAH!! And I say political because doing physical geography is a bit difficult without a map. So this is more of a summary of how I imagined the division of the kingdoms to occur. (When I draw the map you will see which kingdoms are north/south etc.)

For the same reason, this explanation is mostly "generic" and does not take into account (although I already have an idea of how to place them) all the locations in the kingdoms. Those are basically the ground rules.

So, the situation for the geography of EAH is as follows: General Rules- Kingdoms and Realms

The main "problem" with establishing geopolitical boundaries in EAH is that in some fairy tales, multiple royal families coexist within it, most seriously the White/Queen family, but also the Beauty/Thorn family or the Swan/Von Barth family. So I thought the solution was very simple: differentiate between Kingdom and Realm.

Although synonymous, Kingdoms and Realms here are distinct. The kingdom is defined by a particular geographical boundary, while the realms are the domains, similar to how the communes functioned in medieval Italy.

Essentially, therefore, I thought the world of EAH followed the same pattern as the Italy of the communes. Context: Italy was geographically more or less the same as it is now, but within it there were various regional dominations of the various noble families.

So I imagine the situation is: The world of EAH (meaning the place our protagonists come from. Other continents certainly exist, but Grimm has blocked access to them.) is the equivalent of the European continent.

The kingdoms are the equivalent of countries (like Italy, France, Spain, etc.).

-> Within the kingdoms, there are various realms headed by noble families (the Whites, the Beautys, the Queens, etc.) who command their own portion of the territory.

-> Within each realm, there are various grand duchies, counties, villages, etc., headed by nobles and/or a mayor/governor, who nevertheless still control the royal family to which they belong.

So, for example, with a fairy-tale kingdom that canonically has multiple nobilities: Wonderland (which, for the sake of the example, let's pretend for a moment operates according to standard laws): Wonderland is the kingdom, and within the kingdom there are three realms- that of the Queen of Hearts, that of the White Queen, and that of the Red Queen. Within each realm, there are obviously various cities, which have their own nobilities/governors, such as the Ugly Duchess,which despite its noble status still answers to its queen.

So this paradigm applies to all the kingdoms in the world of EAH. Especially because it allows for the coexistence of the White/Queen kingdom, or the presence of multiple Charmings in places that don't need them (in fact, I'm convinced that Nottingham is headed by the Lionhearts, and that its Charmings are a lower noble fraction here).

Exceptions:

Location of EAH: Ever After High is located in the Ever After Kingdom, which is a sort of "neutral kingdom/lobby" within and central to the rest of the continent. It functions a bit like Magix in the Winx Club and is the "index" from which one then travels through the various fairytale kingdoms. It is extremely small, like Vatican City or San Marino, and contains BookEnds, the Enchanted Forest, and the other locations we see during the story. Furthermore, in addition to EAH, it also contains the other specialized schools for the heirs, such as kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school.

Fairy Kingdoms: The paradigm it's slightly different for the fairy nobility, whose kingdoms are within the forests of other major kingdoms. For example: The Beauty realm is divided into two realms: the Sleeping Realm and the Beast Realm. The Thorn Realm is located in the Sleeping Realm's forest. (I imagine the same thing for the Swan/VonBarth realms.)

Opening my notifications to find this gargantuan gold mine was a ride and a half haha!

The idea of Ever After High being a neutral and protected domain akin to the Vatican is actually such a perfect way to put it! It’s served so many generations of fairy tale destinies and has influenced future politics for so long it’s essentially hallowed ground! That’s fantastic!

I’m also very intrigued about that map of yours

The idea of the Italian communes also completely makes sense to me, if the domains have no allies they only have enemies. Like a guaranteed side effect of the sleeping curse for the Sleeping Beauty story is that the briars essentially act as a defence to keep people out, it cannot be invaded, and in the older stories the royalty are friends with most all the fairies, which implies in my head that when awake they protect the fairies in turn.

The Charmings not actually having much ruling power also makes sense to me by holt hell are there a LOT of them, and they’re married into almost every single royal and noble family in all the realms, if they had more power they’d be having an entire monopoly on all domains which would be way too much overt control.

I do have thoughts however that the Charmings do have a lot of covert power that ensures their sheer number of relatives remain in power and have incentives to do such. Well, we even see in the books Princess Charmings have to be very careful, even Darling cannot be outside on a balcony for too long or else she might get snatched by a dragon. Having a natural magnet for things that puts you in peril would be a good motivator for almost all Princess Charmings to just follow the basic script to avoid awful circumstances.

And thank you so much for send this my way it was such a fun read!

[hollow-lime-green]

why people don't write fanfic about inumaki toge

okay, so.

let's talk about characterization.

specifically, static vs dynamic characters:

(warning: kind of rambly because i'm still doing my apartment move and i'm a little all over the place)

so, i've gotten two comments like this on FIYM. which, given the length of the work, is an extremely small amount of unsolicited concrit (i'm very lucky - thank you guys for being wonderful). but both of them had the same complaint, which is:

"in FIYM (child era), X doesn't act the way I think they would based on JJK's portrayal of them as an adult"

personally, as someone who was born at the age of 47 and has never changed in my entire life, i fully agree with that.

i only go to AO3.com to read chatGPT-generated fanfic of Gojo Satoru as he exists in canon reading the script of The Bee Movie. AI is the best author because it directly scrapes the source material with none of that damn 'creative license' these newfangled authors are doing. that's intelligence, baby. but for all of you heathens that want, like, stories or whatever: what the hell are these libbed up lit-pilled genz authors doing?

while Sam Altman is busy voice acting Gojo Satoru reading the script of The Bee Movie, i want to talk a bit about my favorite mid-as-hell white haired twink who should, by all accounts, be a fandom darling:

toge inumaki

why people should write about toge inumaki:

white hair

hot mouth stuff

implicitly traumatic backstory

there's a boy to pair him with (okkotsu)

twink

why people don't write about toge inumaki:

he is not a real character

well, hold on. what do you mean, hana? toge has a good bit of screen time, though. and he's plot relevant. he's a real character? he's a main character in JJK0, and he's at least relevant in S1 of the anime. kind of. look, the girlies have shipped for less - far less. (looking at you higuruma.)

the problem is, while inumaki has the bones of a fandom darling, jjk never actually does anything interesting with him.

higuruma at least has an interesting moral dilemma (and a jawline that could cut glass). we see his backstory unfold, giving him nuance and hot divorced dad energy. he struggles, he acts, and the consequences of his actions deeply affect the plot.

inumaki doesn't do that. he does like, fight and shit. but his mindset never changes, his power capacity never changes, and his relationship with the characters around him really never changes either (excepting a veeeeeery light acquaintances to lovers friends arc with yuta)

this makes inumaki static.

it's true that sometimes, you can just goon for a character based on what they are - sometimes even just how they look (i have no idea what's going on with those ino girlies). but more often, we're here for a character arc. we are drawn to a character's story - the choices they make, the reactions they have, and their unique relationships with others.

in order to tell that story, things need to happen, and characters need to change.

that means that we need to get from point a to point b, and those points need to be different enough that the reader can see the character(s) change along the way.

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly-

WAIT shit SAM wait i'm not done i'm not done. sorry, sorry i'll speed up:

"well hold on, that comment is just saying that your characters are ooc, it's not asking you to make them flat. just, like, dynamic but in character"

yeah, yeah, i'm getting there.

so we have to establish our point a and our point b. if those are both canon points, then canon gives us our boundary conditions to work with. if, say, i write a fic that is set only on the night of the shibuya incident, then I should know where the characters start and end character-wise (if I want to keep everything canon - i might not, and that's valid too). point a is the start of the night. point b is after nobara gets a new glasses prescription.

now, if i want to do canon divergence, AU, or points not within the canon timeline, i don't necessarily have canonized boundary conditions. if i understand the character's main traits, though, i can use that to extrapolate how I think they might act and react to changing conditions. one good example of this is origin story fics - prequels to canon. this is sort of what FIYM is. here, we don't really know point a, but we are working towards point b.

Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.

christ almighty sam this shit takes TIME.

since we are working towards point b, we need to establish a point a that allows for the characters to have clear and obvious growth towards point b, portrayed by obvious changes in their behavior. some things to look out for in FIYM are:

gojo's reaction to physical touch

gojo's insomnia

geto's smoking habit

geto's control over his curses

haibara's whimsical existential dread

let's go to geto, since gojo's changes are a little more subtle to see from the outside. in canon, geto smokes and he's a special grade (somehow) curse user with no issues with his technique. however, in FIYM, he struggles with it, and you may notice that he stopped smoking entirely once he started kissing his boyfriend on the mouth a lot.

well, that's not canon, like, at all. but it's a good way to show the changes in his character that gojo has imposed on him. similarly, i gave gojo insomnia despite there not really being canon support for that (although it's got lots of fanon support), because it is a great meter for us to see geto's influence on his perceived safety level (and to justify heavy overuse of the sleeping in the same bed trope, my beloved).

these changes throughout the story take them in and out of 'character', if you define character by their portrayal in canon under canon conditions. but really, characters are a set of traits that are then squished into shapes based on the events that happen to them. in AUs, that means you sometimes have to do a lot of forensic work to make a character feel consistent without necessarily having the same backstory in your kpop setting. (although i think kpop idols are probably pretty close to jujutsu-traumatized child soldiers).

that is what i absolutely love about AUs (and canon divergence), though. i love seeing people translate known characters into new settings, and giving them new obstacles to face and settings to be shaped by. it is the most creative type of fanfiction, in my opinion. for me, it hits the sweet spot between familiar comfort reading, and new original work that keeps me excitedly guessing what will happen next.

The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

okay, okay, i'll cede the stage to Samtoru Altjo.

in closing:

the reason you like these characters is because canon gives them depth through dynamic character arcs.

fanfiction can and should do the same, even at the cost of making the characters temporarily unfamiliar.

gojo satoru obviously likes horror movies in canon because his goth boyfriend made him watch them so they had pretense to cuddle

[unbfacts]

Apple purchased the iPhone.org domain name in December 1999, eight years before the official introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

[shitty-fear-domains]

Domain of the Flesh that's just a really long and boring blood test

[honourablejester]

An idle comment, but the Daggerheart domains system makes it incredibly easy to start imagining homebrew classes over here. The fact that every class is themed around their particular combination of two domains, which decide the bulk of abilities you get access to, means a bit of my brain is already poking at interestingly themed domain combos.

Like. If you want something Monk-like, I feel like Bone and Arcana would work very well, both magic and martial prowess centered in the body.

Blade and Codex, on the other hand, feel like something closer to a spellknight. Or possibly something like a monster hunter/exorcist?

Splendor and Midnight together, light and healing alongside shadows and secrecy, would make a spectacular lunar sort of class, the shifting faces of the moon between light and darkness.

Sage and Midnight for the dark, secret spaces of the earth, earth and rot and decay, the realms beneath.

Grace and Splendor for something blisteringly holy, raw charisma and terrifying beauty.

Valor and Grace are more of a charismatic champion, something chivalric, both brutal and dangerously subtle.

It makes your fingers a bit itchy, is all I’m saying. There’s some juicy combinations in there.