Category: Commentary

OK, so it looks like the problem is not with the form itself, rather the submissions are getting caught as spam before I receive them. Unfortunately this is not on my end, or even my ISP, but at a third-party service I’m using. This leaves a few possible solutions. I’m trying to get my site’s IP address taken off the spam list, but who knows how that will go. I don’t want to rely on that. I could also ditch that 3rd party and use something else. But probably the best thing is if I can set it up so submissions don’t have to go trough email at all. And it looks like that should be possible, but I’m still too busy with the holiday (visiting family and stuff) to really dig into setting it up.

Oh, and to top it off, direct email might not be working as well as I thought. Someone just reported that attempting to send me a zip file bounced. Arrgh. Obviously I have alot to sort out. But I’ve got some ideas what to do now,  I just don’t have the time to do it at the moment. Probably this weekend.

I’ve just been talking with Tales of Nudity , who also had their Tumblr terminated, and surprisingly they actually got it back! Now when mine got terminated they did actually give me a reason, however harshly I feel they handled it, so I doubt if I could get it restored. But if anyone else got theirs shut down with no warning or explanation, like Tales apparently did, contacting support might just be worth a shot.

My damn contact and submission forms are broken again, and really hate to say it, but they probably have been for some time. I had noticed a slump in submissions, but I naively assumed that’s all it was. I still get a few through Tumblr or by e-mail so it took me longer than it should have to notice I was getting zero through this site. I only caught on when someone told me through another channel that they sent something I didn’t receive.

So the bottom line is, if you sent me anything recently at all, like the last month, and you’ve neither seen it posted nor got a reply from me, it’s almost certainly because the gremlins ate it. You are more than welcome to send it again, but you’ll have to either send it by email (address on the submit page) or hold off until I get things straightened out. At this point, I still don’t know exactly what’s going on, so it’s not likely to be a super quick fix I’m afraid.

I’m very sorry about all this. It’s the downside of managing your own site I guess.

This submission is kind of neat to think about.

At first I was gonna say, it looks more like she just got out of the shower. But maybe that’s the point. What if she’s permanently naked and just got out of the shower? Yeah that could definitely be pretty awkward. All kinds of misunderstands in the cards there.

She’s probably a little self conscious meeting her roommates wet with a towel on her head, and they’d pick up on that but not know there reason. So they’re thinking “geez lady you’ve been out here for 10 minutes, put you’re clothes on already”. But of course they’re not gonna actually say that to their new roommate. And she in turn would notice they’re uncomfortable, but probably assumes they realize she’s permanude and just aren’t used to it…

I can easily imaging that going on for an hour or two before anyone’s brave enough to directly say what they see as obvious and clear it up.

This is a recreation of a little tutorial I posted back on tumblr. The purpose is to give people a way to do nice looking captions without using tools that cost money. The problem in particular is that none of free tools seem able easily make text with outlined letters, which greatly improves the look and readability. I’ll be using Paint.NET in this tutorial, but any image editor with layers could do the same.

Step 1. Open your image and select a light color or white as the foreground color. In the layers window, click the Add New Layer button so the text you’re about to add will be separate from the background.

Step 2. Select the Text tool, click where you want the text and type your message. You can still move the text around, or change the color or font at this point, so do that now until it looks how you want it. (I recommend a simple sans serif font.) Then click Finish. Repeat this step now for any additional text blocks.

Step 3. In the Layers window, click the Duplicate Layer button. You now have three layers. Select the middle one and choose Adjustments->Brightness / Contrast from the top menu. Set it for minimum brightness and maximum contrast. (Note: For pure white text, you need set both to minimum instead, this may be a quirk of Paint.NET specifically.) You may not see anything yet because it’s still covered by the top layer, but the text on the middle layer should now be black. Now choose Effects->Blurs->Gaussian Blur. A radius 2 or 3 is usually good, but it depends on the size of your text. This smears the black text into a “shadow” behind the light text on the top layer.

Step 4. The shadow is still kind of faint, so just click the Duplicate Layer button again to double it up and make it more visible. And then do it again if it’s still too faint. And there we go! It’s not exactly an outline, but it’s significantly more readable and looks a bit nicer too.

Step 5. Save your image as jpeg. Since the text will become a permanent part of the picture, you might want to save it with a new name and keep the original.

Lastly I want to be clear that I’m not insisting captions be done this way. As long as they’re readable and don’t look horrific, it’s fine. And of course you are still welcome to send me pictures and separate text and let me do it. I use Paint Shop Pro 9 (an old but good commercial program) in case anyone is interested.

Here’s another way you can do it in GIMP, this is probably better because it makes true outlines instead of a shadow. Thanks to Megamegatron99 for finding it.

One thing I don’t like much is pictures with unnatural or “porny” poses. This last submission gave pause, but I think I came up with a pretty good justification for it. There are a few exceptions, like phenomenon of “spreadies” or the “newd etiquette” thing. I don’t think I’ve made any posts that really explain it recently, so to refresh, Newd Etiquette is “the new etiquette for nudity”. It’s not official or anything but many permanudes subscribe to it. The core idea is that when you’re permanently naked, it’s more comfortable for everybody, and thus more polite, if you don’t make any attempt at modesty. Just project the idea that you’re you’re completely comfortable naked, and other people will be comfortable around you too. Some take this a little further and say you should make some effort to remain fully exposed, especially by sitting with your legs apart. And a few people, like this guy’s boss, take it to extremes. So that’s an example of an unconventional pose that has been adopted as part of the setting. But still, in general I prefer pictures that look like people just going about their lives normally, only naked.

This was originally going to be a quick reply to a comment, but I might as well go into more detail and put it where more people will see it.

I figure there are three basic scenarios for nudity in the NWO setting, not counting oddball stuff losing your clothes while skinny dipping or registering by accident somehow. But first let me back up a step and talk about the legal framework. The main plank of it is of course so-called Permanently Naked status. You can either sign up for it, or it can be imposed as a punishment for a crime. (Then there’s Permanently Topless and Bottomless, which are an alternative voluntary status and punishment, respectively.) But also parents and schools can impose nudity on their children and students. And this is more flexible. It doesn’t last any specific length of time and they can make up whatever rules they want. Also note that this includes adult dependents and students in any type of school, so feel free to assume all characters are 18+.

OK so #1 you’ve got voluntary nudity, where someone registers on their own. This also includes some cases under parental or school authority where they ask to be naked or willingly sign up for a class that requires nudity etc. #2 is nudity as a punishment, either for a crime as above, or when parents and schools use it in lieu of the more traditional grounding or detention. In any of these cases it’s intended to be embarrassing.

Finally #3 is nudity that isn’t voluntary, but isn’t meant as a punishment either. It would include nudist parents who want the whole family to be naked, or schools that believe it’s beneficial (either in general or in specific case) for students to experience nudity. In these cases it’s not intended to be a method of humiliation or presented as a bad thing at all. Even though they don’t have a choice, that could have a big effect on how someone experiences it. Although, of course they might still be embarrassed, especially the the first few times they have to do it. The version of this I’ve referred to most often Body Comfort Week, where a school requires all students spend a week naked both in an out of school, probably once a year. As the name implies it’s meant to encourage a healthy body image. It’s probably not very widespread, but it has its proponents and it wouldn’t be shocking or anything to find a school with that policy. Schools that use nudity as a punishment are less likely to do it of course, as the two policies would be working at cross purposes.

So anyway, to directly answer the question I got, this post here is an example of something like that. Evidently they have a more flexible system where students have to spend a few days naked per year (probably one a semester or something) but they can pick the days. I’m inclined to think having everyone naked at once is a better idea if the goal is to get everybody comfortable with it. But maybe this school has a different purpose in mind, it could be intended more as a challenge to build confidence or something. So that’s the third kind of nudity, it’s probably the least common (in my captions anyway) but I’m sure it will continue to come up from time to time.

When you click a tag, either below a picture or in the tag cloud on the right, the page that comes up now has a short description at the top, in addition to listing the posts with that tag. For example “car” explains “Most pictures are tagged “indoors” or “outdoors”. I decided cars (and other vehicles) aren’t quite either one, so they get this tag instead.” Some of these also give you a little background info on how it fits into the setting like “In the Nude World Order universe, bottomless status is normally reserved for use as a punishment.”

I always like posting seasonal, holiday, or otherwise timing captions. I did OK on this last one, but you may have noticed the pictures tended more towards cosplay than typical Halloween fare. Lately I’ve been having a fairly hard time finding suitable pictures (I guess there aren’t all that many out there) so I just want to mention that any submissions of pictures related to an upcoming holiday are always welcome (with or without captions). Obviously Christmas is the next big one coming up  so please be on the lookout for naked Christmas pics! (Or Thanksgiving I suppose, but I’m not sure there’s much that can be done with that one.)

So “mixed by default” won, 3:1. For those of you who don’t want to see the commentary mixed in (or ever), all you have to do is bookmark this link. That’s the “Content” category. The side blog type stuff will be in the “Commentary” category. There are now links on the side bar for showing either one alone. Otherwise you’ll see both. Thanks to everyone who voted. At least 72 votes so far, and I’m fairly pleased with that. It’s not in the same ballpark as the number of followers I had on Tumblr, but who knows how many of those accounts were even active. Seventy real visits (by people engaged enough to vote no less) over a weekend is fine by me.

Anyway, this isn’t necessarily final, if anyone really doesn’t like this setup, I’m open to other ideas, so please let me know. But that’s the plan for now, we’ll see how it goes. I guess this is the first official “Commentary” post. I’ll have to think of something more fun to talk about next time.