@dickgraysonweek Day 7: A Celebration Of 83 Years

trios of assholes are my favorite - especially of the sibling variety

summer and winter

[images are two watercolour paintings of the pokemon Ninetales, leaping in mirrored poses, one in its Kanto form and the other Alolan.]

Fruit punch florals

If I were to be in charge of creating a Murderbot film or TV series, I would start with an introduction from Murderbot speaking directly to the audience going something like, “So, you wanted my account of these events for your documentary, but rather than just using my internal memory, I’ve pieced this together using drone footage, the habitat security cameras, and the helmet cams of the team. I’ve cut out all the boring bits and all your messy, human, biological processes. Where I thought it would be helpful to explain my thought process at the time, I’ve added my own commentary to the events. I also thought it needed a bit of ambience, so I’ve used audio clips from the soundtracks of these shows,” list of names like Adventures Through Space and Time, and Pirates of the Sixth Dimension go scrolling up the screen, “to enhance the mood. Overall, I’m pretty proud of it and I think it’s got a much better narrative coherence than a lot of serials I’ve watched but I can give you the raw footage if you really insist.”

Then the entire thing would be filmed as if on in-universe cameras, making use of having drones flying around everywhere constantly to justify wide shots and the like.

We get Murderbot’s sarcastic inner monologue like a commentary track on the whole film.

Anytime we see footage from Murderbot’s perspective, there are text overlays of feeds like IM chat in one corner, and hub alerts in another. There’s also picture-in-picture so that it can see what different groups of people are doing when they’re spread out in the habitat or whatever, and what it’s seeing can be pushed off to one side while it’s paying attention to stuff that’s going on somewhere else (or watching Sanctuary Moon). There should be several moments when a soap opera is taking up basically the entire screen, with some tiny thumbnails down in one corner showing the research crew working or talking or whatever.

Any time someone mentions the company, there’s a blur over that person’s mouth like when footage censors swearing, and the audio has been obviously dubbed over with a slightly different sound quality, or maybe the tone is slightly different. It’s really obvious that something else was said originally and “the company” has been spliced in over the top of whatever was said originally. The only exception is Murderbot’s commentary monologue which just uses “the company” in perfectly normal audio.

Any logos/written text with the name of the company is also obviously censored throughout. 

wake up babe, new reason to ditch FANDOM/Wikia just dropped

Previosuly

corporate monster infested with ads which devoured Gamepedia and other companies (feat me on their shit policies, SEO and migration process)

turning entire articles into ads if paid enough

limited functionality preventing admins to even fight vandalism

merging and removing of LGBT+ wikis (and forced domain change for educational [think serious] wikis to "fandom")

official wiki status has no meaning in controlling shit

very much censorship (same good ol' allergy to adult stuff)

gets paid by US Navy to advertise their events (one, two)

Alternative free wiki hostings (aka wiki farms)

Miraheze - started in 2015, non-commercial - no ads and runs on donations, wide array of MediaWiki features, wide array of allowed types of wikis and content, much autonomy for projects, custom domain and private wiki options

wiki.gg - started in 2022 by former Gamepedia staff, limited to video games, accent on involvement of game devs and thus hosting official wikis, has ads for anons (but only of games having wikis here)

Telepedia - started in 2022, limited to entertainment (although might allow other themes upon review), has ads for anons, replicates Miraheze structure

WikiTide - started in 2023, no ads and runs on donations (but also tied w/ premium version called WikiForge), largely replicates Miraheze but has stricter content policies, custom domain option

Other free options I'm aware of are either too limited in allowed content or are very outdated/unstable in technical department to recommend here (or in case of Neoseeker - I'm completely unfamiliar with it, and can't say anything about it), but you still can check them out, alongside paid hostings, on this MediaWiki page.

If you (or your community) are brave and dedicated enough you can go with self-hosted MediaWiki instance (aka independent hosting), like JoJo Wiki (who started on Wikia and succeed at overtaking the SEO) or NIWA wikis. This option, of course, requires funding and technical knowledge, but it's still very much possible.

How to find existing alternative/independent wikis

try to use "-fandom" filter for search query in Google, or use other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo

Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension - it modifies search engine results and performs redirects based on its centralized list of independent wikis; a new indie wiki has to be requested/submitted to get added [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Redirect to wiki.gg browser extension - same as IWB but for wikis moved to wiki.gg (as I understand, works automatically without dedicated listing) [ Firefox / Chrome ]

(simple) Redirector browser extension - in case the wiki is neither on IWB or wiki.gg, and it doesn't filter out search results - only performs redirect on whatever you get; a redirect has to be set manually - see this tutorial [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Fuck FANDOM, support real people, support indie wikis

Which Hypmic character do you think is most likely to commit tax fraud? (for some reason i genuinely wanna see your answer to this question NDBWKJDHWKFLWFNBW)

When I mentioned this as an offhand comment elsewhere, I was definitely thinking Rei, but you know what? That's too easy. We can do better. Let's take a deep dive into Hypmic characters and their potential to commit tax fraud.

Ichirou - Ichirou would never knowingly commit tax fraud because he is a good boy at heart, but would he know to pay enterprise tax? Is Ichirou receiving cash under the table from the ol' grannies of Ikebukuro and not reporting it to the government? Does Yamada Odd Jobs even have a business license? This is doubtful, considering that Ichirou is breaking child labor laws by employing Saburou. (Children under the age of 15 cannot be employed for the kind of work the BBs do.) Unless Saburou is not listed as an employee, which means that Ichirou is either paying him off the record (tax fraud!) or not paying him at all (also illegal!). There's also some questionableness about him employing Jirou, as children under the age of 18 cannot be employed for anything that is dangerous or harmful, and any jobs involving rapping with the country's weapon of choice would certainly qualify as dangerous. This whole operation is a lawyer's nightmare. Like father, like son.

Jirou - Do you seriously think Jirou knows how to calculate and file taxes? Hoo baby. This is, of course, assuming that Ichirou (as his employer) doesn't do it for him and also assuming, of course, that Ichirou pays Jirou and pays taxes, both of which I'm not sure we can comfortably decide on our own.

Saburou - Saburou is one of the very few people in this list capable of filing taxes and simultaneously one of the even fewer people in this list capable of creating an offshore account in the Cayman Islands in which to hide his ill-gotten wealth.

Samatoki - Samatoki works for the Katen-gumi yakuza, an organized crime syndicate, but yet he doesn't smuggle weapons, doesn't deal drugs, doesn't extort the locals for money, doesn't act as a pimp for sex workers, doesn't own any casinos, and doesn't loanshark. In fact, he's made clear his disdain for almost all of the things on this list and beats up those who do happen to do the activities on this list. So what exactly does this gang do that's actually criminal? By process of elimination, it's probably tax fraud. They probably own a bunch of restaurants and other small businesses as fronts and just, like, pay half taxes on everything. Scandalous.

Juuto - I cannot look at Juuto and say with a straight face that he doesn't commit some kind of tax fraud.

Riou - He doesn't pay property tax on the land he camps on. I doubt he owns it, so this is less tax fraud and more being a squatter. Either way, illegal.

Ramuda - I don't think Ramuda has a legal government identity - or rather, he probably does, but it's shared with all the clones. This means that while another clone is owning his shop and business (and thus paying property tax, personal income tax, and enterprise tax), he and the other clones are still, presumably, eating food and thus all paying consumption tax. Ramuda's legal identity is therefore paying MORE taxes than anyone else. Does this count as negative fraud?

Gentarou - Assuming that Gentarou is not his legal name, Gentarou is apparently filing taxes under someone else's name which definitely counts.

Dice - Dice is a freeter, and so the matter of his income tax is left up to his various employers. I am positive that the Tobaris did not pay income tax for that smuggling operation he ran in FP/M+ chapters 1 - 4, meaning that Dice has once again unknowingly committed a crime.

Jakurai - Jakurai seems like the one person who would sincerely do all his taxes and, moreover, do them correctly.

Hifumi - Prior to the H Age, Hifumi was a good boy who filed all his taxes properly. Now that the local government office is overrun by women, Hifumi is too terrified to go file for a tax return, which can be necessary if an employee makes over 20,000,000 yen a year. I don't know how much Hifumi makes, but this isn't outside of the realm of possibility. Tax fraud! (Or he just makes Doppo do it. Or there's electronic filing. But shh.)

Doppo - I think his employers would just handle all his income tax by withholding it from his salary, as is standard. There might be some screwy-dewyness from the amount of overtime he works, but this is really on his employer, not him.

Sasara - He would do it only once, and never again, just to say "Tax fraud? More like I'm tax flawed, am I right?"

Roshou - Roshou might run into trouble as an employee of Rei, who is most certainly not filing taxes. This is kind of fraud by proxy.

Rei - Yeah.

Kuukou - As a priest, Kuukou may be exempt from paying income tax for activities that are "related to the purpose of the organization [of the Buddhist temple]" (page 167), but this necessitates that Kuukou has an income. Certainly, we've seen him buy things before, but... where does the money come from? Presumably, he has an allowance from his father or is actually paid by his father for whatever priestly duties he does (cleaning the temple...?), and so the question then becomes whether or not those activities count as religious (I'm going to hazard a guess that cleaning does not count) and whether or not his father handles the bookkeeping correctly, as I don't trust Kuukou to handle his own taxes.

Juushi - I bet he has Hitoya help him with his income taxes. He's a good kid who wouldn't mess it up on purpose.

Hitoya - Hitoya writes off both Kuukou and Juushi as dependents, which probably isn't legal as Juushi almost certainly makes more than 480,000 a year. It also isn't legal in the sense that they're not financially dependent on Hitoya, but his argument is that they're emotionally dependent on him, which should qualify him for an even larger deduction.

Final takeaway:

[Image description: Griffin McElroy holding up a sign that has been edited to read, "I don't understand taxes and at this point I'm too afraid to ask." End description.]

for those who saved their loves, and those who didn’t.

words by caitlyn siehl, ‘start here’

[images are two stylized paintings with similar compositions. the first is a portrait of wei wuxian as the yiling patriarch, backlit with an eerie red glow, one exhausted eye visible as he plays his ghost flute; in the shadows under him, wei wuxian and lan wangji sit together in an isolated patch of grass, leaning together affectionately. text overlaid reads, “when is a monster not a monster?

the second is a portrait of jin guangyao, his face featureless but for his manic, dimpled smile, backlit in an ominous dark gold; he is flexing his fingers and golden threads trail off them as would a puppeteer’s strings. in the shadows underneath him, lan xichen kneels in profile, entirely alone. text overlaid reads, “oh, when you love it.”]

which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?

he xuan’s great plan

2 gays and 8 little hecklers