#i put them under readmore specifically bc I know how long I can go on

[13thdoodle]

bunch of Phantasy AU doodles n wip from earlier this year

Basically I just found out this year that ball-jointed dolls actually have strings in them and not just... magically attached by the ball joints themselves? And 31 in this AU is a ball jointed doll that were made out of Danny's energy so here we are :3c

I've been watching a lot of doll customization since earlier this year and found out from dollightful's video that no they are all connected by elastic strings inside so that's where the idea came from

...i was looking on google to find a good example to put here and clearly I'm not exactly paying attention to how the main body strings are actually.. pinned to?

the video I've been watching the most is dollightful n moonlight jewel and they have their bjd usually only to the bottom of the doll head instead of all the way to the top on the skull pin like the diagram above

Which is why 31 has his strings all connected to the 'heart' in the middle instead of the head kasjdnkasjnd

But yeah uhhh specifics aside...

----

Those ball jointed dolls made me think of 31, and then thinking about the clones in Phantasy AU and like.. the logistic of it

for 31, the idea is that during the circus gothica arc for this AU, Danny actually got kidnapped all the whole way into another universe/plane in which he met Valeska (Enn's oc) who unalive what his face the circus leader n break Danny's hypnosis

and now that Danny is essentially stuck in a whole other plane/realm/or sth he just following Valeska hoping she'll help him find his way back.

In one such trip, Danny got kidnapped (again) by another group/cult who wanted to use his power/energy as a gate keeper to the ghost zone to make their own gate keeper so they can open portals to ghost zones and maybe other realms too

31 is part of the experiments. He's a doll made with part of Danny's energy as his core.

And then it's.. uhh.. sth sth Valeska finally found out where they kept Danny and devour everyone there safe from Danny n 31 who helped him escape so now the three of them travel together~

The last pict is me thinking about clones and kingdom hearts :tm: so dramatic about Danny being the soul separated from the main body and 31 a clone made from part of the soul too and all that Not sure where I'm going with that but it do sound cool

And there's also Danielle but I'm not exactly sure.. how she would fit in? but it would be interesting if she was made from Danny's body somehow

so 31 made from part of teh soul and Dani from part of the body sounds poetic somehow

#13thdoodle #dp phantasy au #dp fantasy au #dp 31 #if u noticed that I've been putting some read more lately #it's bc one of the school project is to document all your progresses in a doc including all ur research and fails and what not #and basically i'm trying to make it into a habit by doing it here too #like.. no harm done i think in putting up what inspired me and where ideas came from #n what rambling about things #yall follow me here so i assume ur interested a lil bit about me rambling my ideas n such #i put them under readmore specifically bc I know how long I can go on #and like the main thing about documentation is to be transparent about it #u learn from ur failures n ur successes n this is one way to track them #if u fcked up figure out where how and why and what u can learn from it n then improve from said fail so yea anyway #but yea i been trying to keep things short n clean so it look nice before #but i got a p good grade for documenting everything last tri so now I'm well actually I DO have a lot to say about things #so heree i am #am i gonna be more active tho that would be a whole different topic all together bc ha ha capstone qwq

[gibbearish]

wanted to throw my hat into the ring specifically in regards to james responding to the bigotry claims bc i havent seen anyone address the aspects i wanna talk abt in full yet, it kinda got long as fuck for a p short excerpt so putting it under a readmore

so here's the section (text from @storagebay29 's v helpful transcript):

"I never ever intended to hurt anybody. I never thought that that's what I was doing. Before I went- before I went to the hospital,¹ I read a lot of stuff from people who were really hurt, not just authors and stuff but people who watched my videos who were hurt by stuff in them. People think that I hate ace people and women and bisexual people and lesbians and that's not true. It's really- it's just- it’s not true. And I’m sorry that stuff made it into videos² that just shouldn’t have been there: misinformation and lies... But I promise you I did not write that stuff.³

I should have been a lot more exacting when Nick and I would be editing scripts but I promise you that those are not- I don't think those things.⁴ I specifically want to apologise to asexual people who feel⁵ that I just completed delegitimised you. Nick being ace, I- I know that it's kinda like you know, no two gay people are exactly the same, no two ace people are exactly the same, but I kind of, when it came to that I just kind of ran with Nick's judgement⁶ and his observations and stuff like that. And I’m not trying to throw Nick under the bus,⁷ which a bunch of people are saying that I was setting him up as doing, which is not true…"

so! let's break this down

¹ "Before I went- before I went to the hospital" - firstly i want to be clear of my position with the "did he actually attempt" question bc ive seen some people being absolutely vile already, which is that while i understand doubting his story considering his history of lying and manipulation and obviously skewed moral compass, i also feel like it is VERY much plausible enough that publically speculating abt whether it's true or not is shitty, especially telling HIM you think he's lying. best case scenario you're right, worst case scenario you're crossing a hell of a line, and he's obviously done enough stuff that the situation can be addressed pretty comprehensively without risking getting that coin flip wrong. i think we should proceed under the assumption that lying about that is one line he wouldn't cross, and if proof comes along that he was lying then obviously fuck him, but otherwise i think that aspect should be off limits. and having said all that, even under the assumption he is telling the truth, the way he brings it up in this apology is still manipulative, as many have already pointed out, and this is an excellent example. by bringing it up right before addressing his bigotry, he a) implies to the audience that these comments in particular are a notable part of what sent him there, and therefore plants the idea that if they continue to address it while knowing how badly it's already affecting him, they'd be deliberately trying to hurt him or push him to attempt again, and b) tries to distract the audience from the fact that he's addressing his bigotry and get them to go easy on him, since clearly he's already punished himself over it enough. but harming yourself does not actually make up for harm caused to others, and even if it did, unlearning the bigotry that caused the harm in the first place doesnt end at "feel really bad about it," that's actually step one. and as i'm sure you're already aware and i'll get into more in points 4 and 5, whether he's even at step one yet is doubtful!

² "And I’m sorry that stuff made it into videos" - others have covered his passive voice the whole way through so i won't dwell too long beyond pointing it out, it's mostly just highlighted here bc of how it ties into the next point

³ "But I promise you I did not write that stuff." - just, beautiful in so many ways. performance art, even. firstly, the fact that one of the closest places he comes to calling it plagiarism is in defense against a second allegation? just lmao. and secondly, this is about the most solid proof you could get that he indeed did not watch hbomberguy's video (or at least the whole thing) because hbomb very conclusively showed that if there are /any/ original thoughts of James' in his scripts, it is the bigotry, because he showed multiple examples of James /specifically/ rewording things he plagiarized to ADD IN the bigotry. so then tying back to point 2, his passive voice then becomes about ten times funnier here because he was just. blissfully unaware we all already knew exactly how it "made it into" the script and that his next statement would be a lie. just incredible

⁴ "I don't think those things." - notice the lack of specificity here, the most he can say is "people think i hate these groups" and "i don't think those things" and not "this is exactly what i said that was harmful, here's how it was harmful, here's the correct version of it, and here's how to avoid similar pitfalls in the future", yknow, like what people do when they actually accidentally say bigoted things bc they don't know any better? and again this point ties into the next one:

⁵ "I specifically want to apologise to asexual people who feel that I just completed delegitimised you." - ah yes, nothing says apology like "i'm sorry you felt like what i said was hurtful," where the message is less "i did something wrong and hurt you, i regret this and want to fix it," and more "you were too sensitive and got your feelings hurt by something i didn't intend to be hurtful, but i GUESS i'll be the bigger person and say sorry even though i didn't actually do anything wrong🙄". and see again 4, if he actually had looked into it and learned why it was wrong, he wouldn't be saying people "felt" delegitimised. he would be explaining why people reacted that way ie what it was a reaction to, why this reaction was correct, and providing actual information about asexual people. but he doesnt, because he didnt, because he doesnt care. which is all ESPECIALLY fucked because in saying it this way he's. delegitimising what they were saying. like some kind of fuckin aphobia ouroboros

⁶ "when it came to that I just kind of ran with Nick's judgement" + ⁷ "And I’m not trying to throw Nick under the bus" - here we are, the crown jewels. so obviously ppl are already talking abt the performative allyship of "but my best friend is minority and they said it was fine!!1!" which is fucked up on its own, but then the fact that he immediately jumps to "and also i'm not throwing nick under the bus" shows us that within the greater context, point 6 did indeed mean "the bigotry in the scripts that i am currently apologizing for and explaining the presence of in this section is there because i repeated the things nick told me were true, these ideas originate from him." aka blame nick, not me. but then he remembered that scapegoating nick is also something people are accusing him of so he had to backtrack over it, which if it was actually an innocent statement, it yknow. wouldn't need to be backtracked over? it's like he thinks just because he doesn't outright say "nick has bigoted ideas that i parroted so basically its his fault" that no one can pick up on the subtext? and frankly i don't know much about nick (or james beyond this whole thing tbf so obv take everything i say with the whole shaker of salt) so this very well could be the truth to a degree, but if nick does hold bigoted views too, that's TOO. not instead. for james to repeat them without question to the camera means he doesn't disagree. even if hbomb hadn't proven the bigotry did originate from him, it would still be meaningless, because if it came from nick then that would just mean james decided to stay close working friends with a shitbag and repeat all of his garbage to his fans uncritically!

so in summary, in just this one chunk he: reminds you to be extra niceys to him because hes delicate right now, immediately lies about where the bigotry came from, talks around what he actually said wrong or that he was in the drivers seat for it, then blames nick for it before hearing himself say it out loud reminds him people are picking up on that now too and has to walk it back.

to spoof the roblox oof video: when we look at the sum collective of all of his claims regarding his bigotry, and we put it in context with. the fucking everything about him. when james says the bigotry didn't come from him, this might just be me. but I don't believe him!

#james somerton #i shouldve gone to bed like an hour ago cause ive got a doctors appointment tomorrow but my sleep schedules fucked #so instead this happens #hbomberguy #tw suicide attempt #tw suicide attempt mention #also to be fair hbomb only proved the bigotry /often/ came from him and specifically misogyny #but again given the everything of it . lol. lmao even.

[spearxwind]

Hiya, I’d like to put some thoughts out there on my blog (my house) bc I need to yarf some intense feelings or I fear I will explode on a nuclear scale. This is about hollowridge (not in a negative light!! just explaining + reminiscing of old stuff and talking about new stuff. Pouring my heart out more than a little bit.)

I will put them under a readmore of course, this is PRETTY long winded, so you can read or ignore at your leisure -w- 

I was in my adri tag a while ago looking for some images and ended up going through the whole thing and seeing the evolution of him as a character and HR as a story. Additionally, I recently organized my external memory where all my art files are stored and also saw my old stuff, old concepts, old documents with info and ideas, etc etc and like other times where I have looked through my old stuff I have been WRACKED with so many emotions about it. It’s always a dangerous game to go back into my folders/tags to look because I always end up feeling this whooole spiel all at once and very intensely.

Seeing my content shifts is jarring. Very much so. It always is. I don’t think I can pinpoint causes, some of my better creative highs were at really low points in my life, and then other times my creativity and worlds were subsequently really hardly hit during similar lows. I like to think that I am on the up now though, both mentally and creatively. I’m getting back into a lot of things I love, and I am surrounded by people who I love dearly and who love me back, and things in general are really good! I feel less… I wouldn't say wrathful, but way less frustrated when looking back at my old stuff and more inspired to go back to these concepts with a healthier more open mind + knowing that I have improved nonetheless. 

Specifically for hollowridge. Hollowridge feels like a home to me, simple as that. It's something immensely dear to me and I think this is clear by how much effort I have put into it over time, not all of it well placed or with good results, but effort to make it the best that it could be (at best) and effort to keep it afloat (at worst). HR is a strange thing to look back on because it has gone through so many iterations that its hard to pinpoint just one when looking back, but there's a specific time slot (2017-2018 roughly… I’m not gonna check) that I believe is where it was at its best, and that is specifically the vibe that I am trying really hard to go back to with the newest iteration.

I’ve always struggled with it a lot, I've often voiced this publicly, or to friends who would hear my woes out (god bless them for hearing me go on and on about this like a bass boosted and emotional broken record), often because there was so many possibilities that I could run with and I had a lot of really, really conflicting ideas that I wanted to explore. I also had a lot of trouble with lore in general because for many years I was haunted by the absurd need to “make things make sense”, whatever that means. Having things grounded so that people wouldn't be able to poke holes into the watertight plot.. which I never achieved of course. It was less watertight and more of a welded together pringle shaped monstrosity (This was not only true for hollowridge, but was true for everything I have ever made. like in general. It’s been a consistent creative problem for me). 

Eventually what happened iteration after iteration was that I throttled myself too much with rules, random limitations, all in favor of making something cohesive and deleting all the fun bits off the project in the process.

For this reason I also can’t just up and go “yeah i'm gonna turboscrap everything and go back to what worked in 2017” because it also DIDN’T work then. But that vibe specifically is what I am aiming for. The “classic” vibe, if you will (if that means anything to you as it does to me.)

What didn't work for me back in the day was giving everything a reason for existing, which is something I no longer wish to do (it’s better that way) and also something that failed back then both in HR, and in extinction (earlier drafts) and just about any version of a story I ever tried to make was THE SCOPE. It always spiraled out of my hands. God entities always escape me. Magic systems always escape me. How cities and such would be regulated in these scenarios escape me. Its just things I’m not comfortable writing about in general

So that’s why I have made changes to it currently (the whole lens of technology over it) because it makes it easier to think about, and easier to handle. Post apocalypses are fun to handle, and also easy to handle (for me, in this context). Technology going awry feels like its easier to think about than just vague “magic”, even if in the end the aesthetic looks literally exactly the same. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense.

To give an example: Magic spells and circles → programs and code lines. That can be shot into machinery or meat (recodes your fucking genome in real time and gives you super brain hemorrhage idk). I guess it just gives my brain something to latch onto that isnt just vague rules of a magic system that could potentially be anything and everything? It essentially works the exact same way… its just the lens of looking at it is changed.

Mimics are their own thing now (nanotechnology, instead of vague.. shadow things). Adri is his own thing while still connected to mimics (an angel array made of the same stuff, instead of.. whatever else). Connected to the world. AND all the conflicting but dearly beloved concepts I had for him actually fit (snake, scarf, smoke, usurper of a body that is not his. Hey remember when he was made out of ashes/smoke and eventually out of goop. Well all of that is true at once now! It’s ALL canon! Bitch! The concepts have been reconciled!!)

There are also more “normal” creatures besides these, animals that have either evolved aboveground due to fit into new world niches (so I can design Whatever without being too limited) and there’s also machine/biomachine chimeras, and purposed grown organisms, and just Weird Shit made by machines in the belly of the earth (meat is just complex machinery. you know this. your heart is a piston and your blood gasoline. but I digress.) So I have the space to Get Weird if I so choose, on my own terms this time. And it will have a proper place in the world.

There used to be a lot of concepts that were cool that I missed a lot when I had to shift away from them. Like mimics infecting people and pretending to be them, and then being able to break the hosts bodies apart to make bodies for the mimic itself. That did not fly in pretty much 80% of the later versions of HR but I was able to bring it back for this one. I’ve tied mimics to the epidemic and to Adri in a way that MAKES SENSE but lets me go wild anyways

I guess… the short way of explaining is that. Instead of it being very vague supernatural stuff of dubious origin, now it's a ‘manmade horrors beyond your comprehension’ type deal (still of dubious origin). Which obviously neither the characters nor I would be able to explain to you the details of its origins but the distinction MATTERS to me (to my brain).

Something else about HR is that it’s made up of me having rounded up a bunch of ocs who’s stories were empty or were left to the void so that they could have a fitting home where they could shine. At the end of the day I just wanna do my characters justice. I don’t want to just relegate them to nice set pieces (even though they ARE cool set pieces), but each of them has years of backstory stuff that I would like to keep to not lose the essence of said character and its where I put the bulk of my writing effort into.

I want their connections to the story to be solid, but I also want their base vibes and the vibes I am familiar with for those characters to BE THERE too. So if I’m slow with revealing info, or writing in general, its literally because all the processing power in my skull is being used to think of how to best approach that and not just throw low quality spaghetti at a wall. (Sometimes the spaghetti method works very well, but often. It does not. And only makes things more complex in the long run, so I have learned to be more careful with it)

Dianne and Nirven are over 12 years old now as characters. That 's insane. And she still has the same core concept of how her magic works as I created it ages ago.

Same for Bei. He still has his same vibe back when I made him 10 years ago.

And Adam when I made him 9 years ago. Though I’m working out stuff for him still in this new edition, but I’ll get there. I promise. 

Sooo……….. What I’m really trying to say is that I’m learning to have fun again. And at the same time (re)realizing I used to have some super swag ideas that I have never fully let go of that I am VERY adamant on keeping. And my aim is to go back to that unhinged unbridled joy of creating for a world that is just So Fucked Up but it Works somehow. And yeah, if you’ve ever been frustrated at my changes don’t worry: me fuckin’ too buddy. A thousandfold. And if you’ve ever been curious as to the why of everything, then I hope this rant serves as some sort of explanation?

So yeah, if you’re an old fan and missed old stuff, I hope I am able to do it justice once more and from now on. I promise I am trying my best, I always have been. It just works better sometimes. And if you are someone new and dont know what the fuck I’m talking about, 1. thank you for reading this far and 2. I hope you enjoy the ride regardless

And who knows…. knowing me in a few years I might see this all changed again. Or maybe this will be the one, finally, that sticks. We’ll see. At the moment like I said, I am focusing on loving my characters, their world, their and my original intentions, and just having as much fun as I can with it. If I create confusion in the process then that’s something I will have to accept. I’m not a big media corporation with a team or writers, or even just one (1) accomplished author with a huge brain. I’m not tolkien. I’m just some guy having fun with made up guys in my brain

Thank you for reading this far, if you did, if there’s anything you’d like to comment or discuss (if anything, I don’t expect it) please feel free to reply or DM me, I try to respond in a timely manner when possible <3 

Thanks for sticking around too. It means the world to me that you have. Have a really good week, cheers

#thunderclap #the hollowridge disaster #i feel like i need to put it in the tag 😅 for safekeeping #drop a like if you read this if you please #it is currently two AM i should have gone to bed two hours ago but 1. i was hanging with a friend and had this mid writing #and 2. i felt like if i didnt pour my brain out I was going to toss and turn all night #anyway yeah i have a lot of baggage with this that ill never be rid of so like. i just want to do GOOD yknow? i just want to do good. #alex writes #not fiction but i do use some big boy prose I think. academic moment #errr....... im hoping this isnt a badly placed post oops. idk what i mean by that just [vague fear] idk #the mortifying ordeal of being misunderstood vs the mortifying ordeal of pouring my heart out to strangers #you know how it is

[nyaagolor]

Pride Month Headcanons

It's about time I organized these. Under the readmore bc I have a lot to say

- Salvatore and his wife are bi4bi. More accurately, his wife is bi and Salvatore isn’t putting a label on it because while he thinks he’s bisexual his only real world experiences with men are a single makeout session in a Lumiose club during a language immersion trip and lingering too long on some Instagram models’ posts about their abs. If you ask him about it he will not say he’s bisexual bc doesn't need anyone other than his wife, but he’s pretty sure he’s bi in his heart

- Hassel and Brassius have been together for almost 30 years but aren’t officially married. For a variety of reasons, mostly centering around Hassel’s family being a possible threat to Brassius’ safety, they decided to just keep it on the DL. They live together and are for all intents and purposes married, but never actually signed the paperwork. When people ask, especially strangers, they refer to each other as artistic partners or close friends, but anyone who knows them well is well aware they’re husbands. Most people assume they got officially married, and when the school finds out they beg the two to have a ceremony, even if they don’t sign the paperwork. Tbh I could prolly make a whole post on just them (and prolly will)

- Dendra is a lesbian, she‘s had a crush on Tulip for YEARS. Despite her usual extroverted and confident attitude she never confessed and has no idea if Tulip likes women, nevermind if she reciprocates Dendra's feelings. Tulip figured out Dendra is a lesbian but never realized her crush. Somehow.

- Eri and Carmen are girlfriends. The rest of Team Star admins took a LONG time to come around to this, since they think Eri forgave Carmen too fast and were worried Carmen was trying to take advantage of Eri again. They got over it though, and she’s been invited to their hangouts ever since

- Penny is trans I’ve talked about this like 26 times and have zero intention of stopping. She transitioned a lot over her suspension in Galar and has the most supportive family and friend group imaginable. Her body image is extremely fragile but that’s honestly just anxiety from general past bullying, and her new friends have helped immensely in that regard

- Sada and Turo are bi4bi this is a hill I will die on

- Iono is super tight lipped about her sexuality because of idol streaming stuff. Unlike most, she actually likes to keep people guessing, it’s like a game to her

- Every pride, Larry wears a rainbow tie. No one has ever been able to figure out if he’s LGBT or an ally or what. Rika’s running theory is that his Staraptor is gay and he’s trying to be supportive

- Geeta is a career focused person and never took the time to think about her sexuality. If you ask her about it, she won’t have a good answer and you might just make her short-circuit. I think kissing her would make her explode

- Ryme is aroace. I have nothing to say abt that specifically other than aroace people are the coolest and so is she

- Rika is Butch. She got top surgery and everyone is gay for her, myself included. However she has negative game. Pickup game pathetic. Cringefail, even

- Raifort is a lesbian but is only into really toxic women specifically. Genuinely just the worst taste imaginable. She is always complaining about how much she dislikes men as romantic partners and then is actively running towards red flags like she’s playing flag football

- Jacq is non-binary but is a little worried to ask if he can get his pronouns updated on the academy registrar. He’s sure it’ll be fine, but he’s perpetually stressed out and a liiiiil scared of Clavell. He/they enby king with enough anxiety to put anyone else in the hospital

- The academy is the most accepting place in the world. The GSA (which Hassel runs) is one of the most popular clubs, and cishet students and teachers will often sit in just to learn or support their peers. They go HARD in June, and are the official runners of the Mezagoza Pride Parade ever year

- A big part of the reason people feel so safe in the academy is bc there’s a ton of GNC people, both LGBT and not. Saguaro comes to mind, and is someone that a ton of students look up to. He’s cishet but could prolly crumble the gender binary in one hand. He would too

- [gestures vaguely at Clavell] he got smth going on. Idk what I haven’t thought abt it but something

#pokemon sv #not tagging everyone there’s a lot here #headcanons #pride month #mod vex #I don’t rlly have any sexuality hcs for the teens it’s not rlly my thing l #I’ll do short comics or requests abt it but haven’t rlly put much thought into it

[savventeen]

I JUST BINGED YOUR ENTIRE “THANKS FOR PLAYING” AND I HAD TO STOP MYSELF FROM CRYING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND GODDAMN I GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS/IDEAS so here’s a dump lmao

AND SPOILERS ‼️‼️

and be honest if you honestly don’t have any idea or want to leave it up for interpretation

dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? well what happened to that friend/person?? i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭

if mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

how come dino remembered the mc? power of love??? or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

what if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

so if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

i know you wrote this story for fun so these don’t need to have answers/comments but please provide any extra tidbits of info about this concept it’s so interesting 🙏🙏

SKLJDFLKSDJF OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING????? AND IM SO HONORED HOLY SHIT I WILL DO MY ABSOLUTE BEST TO ANSWER WHAT I CAN 😭💜

also you are not the only one with questions so I'm going to do my best to answer them all here!!!

[for anyone who hasn't read it yet and wants to know wtf we're talking about, you can read the entirety of my .|X| THANKS FOR PLAYING |X|. smau here!]

*cracks knuckles* alrighty buckle up folks time to try and answer some questions and take a deep dive into savv’s personal TFP lore here we gooooooooooooo

[putting it all under a readmore bc it got long af and also i didn't realize how hard it would be to translate the lore in my brain into words??????? i somehow didn't realize how oddly complicated it is??? like writing all of this out in any kind of semi-coherent way was SO HARD sdkjfsdlkjf]

~ Was it all a dream? (this one was asked by @junhui-recs)

Sadly, no. 😭 In the reality of this fictional universe, a tragedy very much did happen and Dino and MC are very much suffering from it 🥲 (I will not stop you from imagining that it was all a dream tho, we all have different ways of coping dklsjfsklj <3)

~ What's the main purpose of the game? Why are they doing this? (this one asked by @diamondyjh)

OKAY SO to start off you need to know that this au was heavily inspired by an episode of a podcast called "The Magnus Archives", specifically the episode “Binary” (transcript here). [If you're a fan of horror, I highly recommend giving the episode a listen/read, it's delightfully creepy — you don't need to have listened to any of the other episodes to understand it (just stop at the ending 'supplemental' part)]

The episode goes into detail about this sort of digital urban legend/creepypasta/copypasta about a guy named Sergey Ushanka who, long story short, tried to upload his brain/consciousness into a computer because he was afraid of death and wanted to try living forever virtually. There are tame versions of how he did it and other much more brutal ones, but basically "Sergey Ushanka" is a prank that various coders/programmers like to pull when making chatboxes in which you could talk with "strangers". It would start out normal and then steadily devolve into something creepy. This paragraph taken directly from the episode transcript sums it up very nicely:

"But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chatbot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped."

So the idea that I stole from the episode essentially was: but what if it was real? What would the reality of being turned into cold, unfeeling data feel like? Agony is what the episode posits. Here is a list of phrases that the Sergey in the episode uses:

cw: vague body horror, blood mention "the angles cut me when I try to think" / "it peels my mind like knives" / "it feels like thinking through cheese wire" / "there's no feeling, but the no feeling hurts" / "it's cold without blood" / "the maze is sharp on my mind"

My next thought process was: What happens after? If someone were able to survive this process and were somehow able to keep any kind of agency, how would that person try to get out of the digital hellscape that has now become their existence? After knowing what it feels like to become distinctly inhuman, wouldn't they do anything to feel human again?

And how do we feel human? How do we find connection with each other and our humanity without ever having to come in contact with another person?

Stories. Fiction and non-fiction alike, we are all connected through storytelling, by finding feeling through other people's words. The thing about stories, though, is that they aren't messy in the same way that actually feeling our feelings is. That being human is.

So what does all of this have to do with the purpose of the game?

Essentially, when it's all boiled down, in this universe the story of Sergey Ushanka is real, and in this universe he is trying to gain his humanity back by stealing that of others. He started off with stories, with whatever online libraries and resources and archives he could find across the internet. And while it wasn't even close to enough to satisfy him, to get rid of any of the pain he was constantly experiencing, it was enough for him to learn, to grow, to realize that if he wanted his humanity back, he needed to go to the source.

So he started stealing real people from the real world, with all of their messy feelings and emotions and humanness.

That is the purpose of the game, why "they" are doing this. (pls don't ask the how bc i don't have an answer for that, just -waves hands- you know, insert your supernatural/sci-fi explanation of choice sldkflksj)

~ Did all the other characters from the game also get pulled into it the same way reader did? (asked by @diamondyjh) / What if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

Short answer, yes to both! (Longer answer in the next question lol)

~ Who are those other people? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Essentially, the other characters/bots/whatever you want to call them are a kind of amalgamation of all the previous players who got sucked into the game. Once someone's been... let's call it absorbed, whatever parts of themselves are left after the process basically get shoved into whatever "character" they fit best, sometimes different pieces going to different characters.

And while the pictures could just be random ones, I like the idea that they're taken from the most recent players that got absorbed :')

~ Why was Changkyun evil? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Well, the main reason he was "evil" was because he's, y'know, a part of the game and the game is trying to steal people's souls or whatever. As for why he's mean, that's because he's trying to trigger an emotional reaction. The more messy, human feelings that are happening at the time of absorption, the better :').

~ Dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? What happened to that friend/person??

"i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭" SJKDFSKLDJ this made me snort, so thank you 😂

BUT to answer your question, in the story, Dino says that Yeonjun gave it to him and that he got it from "a friend of a friend of a roommate". Because the absorption and the consequent complete erasure is such a big process, not everyone who plays gets sucked in. In fact, most people who play don't get sucked in. Which is why Yeonjun is totally fine! (And why the friend of the friend of the roommate, aka this universe's irl Changkyun, is not 🥲)

~ If mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? Or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

This one's a little bit complicated. It's kind of a yes and no situation? Generally speaking, the game isn't looking to ensnare every single person who plays because 1) it takes A Lot Of Effort to take/erase a single person, and 2) the game needs to spread to other people somehow, thus it needs people to play it and then tell other people to play it too.

For MC specifically, though, it's hard to say. How they played the game didn't matter so much as how they reacted to the game, specifically the first phase(s) of the Mnemosyne Protocol. The whole point of the game is to get big, messy, emotional responses, so if MC hadn't had such a big reaction, the game probably would have turned out differently. That being said, if MC had played the game as blandly as possible, the game might not have ever decided to test out the Mnemosyne Protocol, so. *shrugs* Do with that what you will lol.

~ So if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

Sadly, nothing special happens if you finish the game 😭 Plenty of people finish the game and pretty much go "huh, that was cool I guess" and then move on with their lives after telling their friends about it. This can be said about all four games mentioned actually, since we only see one of them get played.

As for a sequel... almost certainly not 🥲 I'm not going to give a hard no/no forever, because who knows if I'll end up getting another idea/get suddenly struck with inspiration, but... it is Extremely unlikely. Another story in the same universe??? ...still not likely, but slightly more likely than a sequel lol.

~ Why is Dino the only one who remembers reader? (asked by @diamondyjh) / How come Dino remembered the mc? Power of love??? Or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? Or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

I almost want to make the answer "bc he has an android" because that is So Funny to me like sldkfjsldkjfslkjdf amazing 😂

But no, that's not the case lmao. And while I am a huge sucker for the Power of Love being an unstoppable force (ESPECIALLY when it's non-romantic love!!!), the reason Dino and only Dino remembers is thanks to sheer luck and a glitch.

So, in episode 28, MC drops their phone when meeting their brother and in episode 29 we see the alert ".|| MNEMOSYNE PROTOCOL COMPLETE ||." show up on a cracked screen.

The final phase of the Mnemosyne Protocol is the erasure portion, and the reason players get erased instead of just like, disappearing is because their "essence" is basically being transferred from reality into this digital realm of Sergey's existence. And reality, because it's now lacking an entire person and their history, just kinda... rewrites itself to make sense with the missing gap. Think of it as the universe doing like a sort of reverse autocorrect.

But because MC's phone got broken in the middle of that transfer, there was a slight glitch in the process. A glitch wherein Dino, because he was on the opposite side of the globe when this was happening, got accidentally missed in the autocorrection process. If he had been in Korea (or heck, anywhere within a few thousand miles) when this happened, he would have forgotten MC as well.

So long story short, Dino was just extremely (un?)lucky 🥲

~ Where is reader? (asked by @junhui-recs) / WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? Wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

Well, sad news here friends. Most of what's left of MC is now stuck inside the game. They got absorbed and are now a part of Sergey's dataset and will be used/distributed into "characters" as needed.

Notice that I said most. Because, thanks to the glitch, the part of them that was connected to Dino didn't get transferred properly, and now that part of them is kinda stuck — it no longer exists in the real world, but it also didn't get fully absorbed into the game.

Which leads me to the next question:

~ Did reader turn evil and try to pull Dino into the game or is it the game itself being evil and impersonating reader to lure Dino in? (asked by @diamondyjh)

When I wrote the original version of this, the answer was a kind of combination of both — MC had gotten absorbed and corrupted by the game, so while it was the MC reaching out, they were doing so because it was what the game wanted.

But in this version... It's actually neither! Which I think would normally be a good thing but I think in this instance actually just makes this sadder oops.

So, the epilogue isn't the game impersonating MC and it isn't an "evil" MC trying to lure Dino in, it's actually just the part of MC that got stuck during the glitchy transfer. This is why the messages show as being from "Unknown" instead of the phone number associated with the game. And the reason what's left of MC asks Dino if he wants to play a game is because that's the only way it knows how to connect with anything anymore.

Basically, this sliver of MC that's left is experiencing what the original Sergey went through when he first "uploaded" himself, but instead of reaching out to anyone through a chatbot for help, it's reaching out to the only thing it "remembers" about humanity — Dino.

...I honestly didn't mean to make this story any sadder than it already is and I'm glad that the epilogue by itself just reads as spooky/freaky as hell instead of, well, this. 🥲

~ If Dino plays the game, will he be reunited with reader? (asked by @diamondyjh)

It pains me to say that there is no longer an MC for Dino to reunite with 😭 The part of them that got absorbed by the game is, well, a part of the game now. And the piece of them that's left and trying to reach out to him? Well, like I said, it's just a piece.

There could potentially be a chance for him to find some closure here, but that's about it I'm afraid :')

And now because I want this to end on a more lighthearted note:

~ Imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

It becomes the next biggest conspiracy, that there's someone (or a group of someones) out there completing the world's next biggest scam by raking up random people's phone bills and somehow finding a way to steal the profit lmao

~ Some last thoughts from savv:

If y'all made it all the way to the end of this... holy shit I applaud you sldkfjsdlkjflksjdf LIKE!!!

thank you for taking the time to read all of this?????? it's not even fic it's just me rambling and making things Even Sadder??????

i also want to say that i'm a believer that 'canon' is whatever was posted in the story itself and that anything else is just headcannon, even if it's from me, the author. so if you don't like/don't agree with anything i've said here, feel free to ignore it!! fill in any gaps/questions you have in the way that makes your reading experience the most enjoyable!!

but yeah tHANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING AND I HOPE THESE ARE SATISFACTORY ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS AND IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE/HAVE A RENEWED DESIRE TO FIGHT ME MY INBOX IS OPEN SDKLJFSLKJFLSKFJSLKD

#savv answers #thanksforplayingsvt #SERIOUSLY I LOVE U ALL SO MUCH FOR BECOMING SO INVESTED #IT MEANS THE WORLD <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 #bibi 💎 #june 💒 #this is so LONG jfc

[artobotsrollout]

ROASTING REVIEWING KNOCKOFF TRANSFORMERS

Part 1

So it's no secret that I enjoy collecting TF figures. My collection isn't massive but I like to collect my favourite characters! Hasbro figures (at least the first series released at the start of a continuity is. I can't speak to some of the later releases) are usually p decent quality.

Decent faces. Thought out weight distribution so even characters like TfP Starscream can stand. Smooth joints. Basically an all around decent toy.

Of course with any piece of media there are the knockoffs.

Let's get into the first one

DINOSAUR Battle $4

Montoy

I saw these and thought they were cute right? "ooh a bunch of mini transformable dinosaurs"

However, the moment I look a little closer I already found things that bug me.

Review under Readmore

* Please be aware that this entire post is meant to be jokey. I'm not actually angry about any of these things. I'm exaggerating for emphasis and humour. *

The pictures of the dinosaurs to the left of each toy are not the same colours as the actual toys in the packaging. It's possible maybe the colours are random but from what I could see all the packages had the same colours??

Another issue... Maybe it's not as big of a deal to most people but as a paleo-nerd it really bugs me. So they label which dinosaurs they are right?? Well...

CRYPTOCLIOUS IS A PLESIOSAUR (Think long necked swimming dinosaur. Think Loch Ness monster) which if you look at the figure

IT HAS FREAKING FEET

A better name would be diplodocus or brachiosaurus OR Yknow what I'd even accept the outdated term Brontosaurus for this guy. At least it's the long necked land living dinosaur and not the water dwelling sea reptile.

I FEEL LIKE to have put down Cryptocleus you had to google it. So if you had to google you'd have seen that cryptoclious has FREAKING FLIPPERS.

I don't usually get upset about dinosaur mistakes bc like... I don't want to be that person who yells at people for not knowing dinosaurs / extinct creatures. Lord know I have gaps in my own knowledge. It's more just baffling to me that they picked a species that isn't even a dinosaur like the toy is. And it's such a weirdly weirdly specific and not well known species too.

I haven't even opened them yet and for some reason?? I expected every dinosaur to transform but apparently they are just meant to combine?? Into a wholeass dude? And that's it?

Anyways here they are

Despite my misgivings and the definitely cheap plastic used some of the designs are p cute.

Only the tip of the wings flap apparently 😂 the rest of the wing is permanently out oof.

Poor T-Rex. This is as high on his body as his head goes. He is doomed to forever fall flat on his face. 😔 Truly tragic

I appreciate the stegosaurus having constant finger guns 😂

The joints are not great. Some are okay while others are kinda tough to move. The pieces come off too easily as well.

Time to make it into a man.

....

........

...........

How the Frick is this a man?!?

This is so goofy looking help 😂

Amazing.

Now I'm gonna leave the joking mode and be serious for the conclusion.

These are not great quality but they have cute designs. The designs are fun if a bit odd at some parts. Cheap plastic and not super well thought out toy. Then again I didn't expect much for $4CAD

If you're someone who likes painting toys then these could be fun to use as a base.

I don't have children and haven't worked very much with children so take what I say with a grain of salt. For a child who is delicate with their toys and old enough to not eat everything it's not terrible. Could be cute in a gift bag from a birthday party. Wouldn't recommend for young children. There's a lot of easily removable small parts that could be consumed and be a choking hazard. Not to mention idk how toxic the material is. Also wouldn't recommend for children who play very roughly with their toys. Parts will go missing easily and some of the parts are thin and feel like it wouldn't take very much to break them.

The Combiner mode is kinda pathetic so if you are getting the toy, get it for the cute robot dinosaurs and not for the robot they turn into.

#Tf figures #Transformers #Transformer figures #Transformer toys #Transformers toys #Autothots reviews #knock off #Knock off transformers

[alivegirlmari]

sorry i keep bothering u BUT i have another question😭 i was wondering if you’d seen this interview of melanie (https://youtu.be/xhHDMOEnuB4 the first minute and a half) and what you think of that because i’m pretty sure shauna does NOT care but to me jeff very much went from a sympathetic guy who loves his wife to a sinister little man😭 i get making bad decisions when you’re young but man😭

you are NOT bothering me omggg you could neverrr. me when i wake up to an anticurses ask and get to chew on it at work for the next two days: ❣️ 💕 💞 💓 💗 💖 💘 💝

i've seen a few people analyze that specific interview and tbh i don't think i have anything groundbreaking to add but i wanna just ramble about shauna anyways asdjnjsdk so! putting this under a readmore bc it'll probs be long-ish and incoherent <3

ok so. shauna's relationship to motherhood has always fascinated me. when i first watched yj it was all in one night, in a haze, during a not-good-mentally period in my life. so it took me an embarrassing amount of episodes to go from 'oh she hates callie bc callie's wilderness baby and thus a reminder of everything that entails, both jackie-related and trauma-related' to 'OH callie can't be wilderness baby, timeline wise, which adds an even more insane level to shauna returning to jeff post-crash'. bc the decision to date him let alone marry him has always been sooo interesting to me!! like yeah we all knew why but like, how did it happen? how long after the crash? did he call her up once she got out of hospital? did she go back to school? was it another drunk grief hookup thing again, but one that spiraled into more? did they discuss jackie at all? iirc, when he reveals he's read the diaries, he implies they never talked about the 19 months which is why he read them. but did they ever discuss jackie, separate to what happened in the woods? or was she the eternal elephant in the room? i mean, yes it's canon that shauna marries him out of guilt and shame and obligation, but the CALLIE of it all is the wildest part to me. bc she's pregnant with his baby, and then jackie dies and the baby dies, and then she goes back and has anotherrr baby with him, in spite of everything!!!!

so melanie p much saying 'she can't keep justifying her decision to not have kids with him, so they have one'. is like. well she's right!!! i can 1000% see jeff pushing to have kids and shauna, unaware that he knows about wilderness baby and not wanting to tell him, agreeing to it bc a) she'd rather die than talk about it honestly, b) the guilt of it all, and c) well that's what normal suburban heterosexual couples do isn't it?? get married and have kids!! and to me jeff has always been that guy, which he even admits in canon! he was always gonna be the high-school boyfriend to jackie, but that's his life role, too: he stays in his home-town, he owns a business in his home-town, his only friend is his teen bestie, etc. he's the suburban straight guy who doesn't properly wash his underwear, whose wife cooks every meal (that he still complains about), who thinks flavored lube is too kinky and weird and gay for him.

and it annoys me that the show doesn't even lean into the horror of that, let alone like...the genuinely terrribleeee things he does. like if you're not gonna frame it as devastating, tragic, claustrophobic, and miserable that shauna marries jackie's very Normie boyfriend and has another baby with him, that her whole life has become a jackie altar and not what she herself wants, then at least frame it as awful that he blackmailed her and her friends using their trauma??? HELLO???and i hate that the adam thing kinda like. made them ~even~, narratively, or at least made people forget about jeff.

and if you're NOT going to make it a heterosexual horror story, AT LEAST make him the wifeguy people insist he is online!! what REAL self-respecting wifeguy would turn down strawberry lube or panic when their wife grabs the gun from the guy holding them at gunpoint!!! and i mean, his reactions (to the gun thing at least) are valid and normal, ofc he'd freak out, majority of us would too. but this IS a tv show, he's not real, and you can't have him be the freaked out, 'you're out of control' husband and the 'my wife can do no wrong' husband ykwim. (me & rose talked about that angle specifically here)

but also YES it's legitimately evil for jeff to not tell shauna he knows about wilderness baby and for him to just then. keep bringing up having another one. the most generous reading i can give him is that he also, of course, feels guilty about jackie, and his desire for marriage and children with shauna is driven by that, but again: he knew he was only ever the high-school boyfriend, so. and what melanie said in that interview IS right but it's not being said/implied/explored in canon, and i worry that if it was then again, it wouldn't be shown as the horror it is, so i'm almost glad?? bc i'm not sure the general audience would see through that and view it as evil either.

anyways, jeff n shauna to me is like. does she love him? probably, in some way, on some level. i think she enjoys his company sometimes, i'm sure they have happy memories together etc. but he will always be a reminder of #everything. and so will callie! and i think that's just a more interesting dynamic to explore!!! (though tbh. loveee the goat stuff, but shauna just kinda. saying everything so explictly to lottie did feel like a telling not showing, exposition moment. as did the fact that it was a KID like sometimes this show is so subtle and other times it's incredibly not ajdksjask.)

um anyways it's 4am. i need to go to sleep. i am probably forgetting something bc i have So many thoughts about shauna + motherhood ESPECIALLY in the teen timeline which i didn't even touch lol, and how it connects to adult timeline but i do wanna give the writers temporary benefit of doubt just bc we've still got 2 eps left. so who knows what'll happen. me personally i'm hoping jeff dies and/or goes to jail and we explore the complex web of feelings that shauna and callie have towards each other, and they change their names back to shipman. i think it's rly funny and sad and tragic that callie doesn't care that her mom's a killer (well, she does), she's just so happy her mother's being honest with her. </33 also just love women who aren't naturally maternal and aren't good mothers but they're not villainized for it, and it's also not a one-dimensional portrayal either.

(final note that i LOVE is that in the original pilot script, shauna has another kid!!! callie has an older sister!!! soo curious whether she was meant to be a surviving wilderness baby or if they had another kid post-crash...jeff im in ur walls regardless)

#also i answered ur other ask privately bc i don't wanna invite hashtag discourse abt that interpretation of that scene/character ahsjfjkka #but idk how tumblr works re: private answers so if you didn't get it i can just. send you what i wrote??? <3333 #ask #anticurses

[elijah-terry]

For that OC ask game how about 3 for Kieran and Yuuha and 9 for Stewie :]

oh man 3 is such a good one for kieran and yuuha, thank u prince !!!!

so okay. UM this got kind of long so i put it under a readmore <3 can you tell i'm back on adhd meds <3

questions are from this post!

3. What is your oc's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw?

So, first, Kieran. For full context, Kieran is originally my partner's oc, but now we both have custody of him <3 And when I mentioned this question to him he immediately said, "Oh, god, just one?" But anyway my answer for this is that Kieran's fatal flaw is love. (not romantic, he is arospec) .He would do anything for the people he cares about, at the risk of literally killing himself. He sees himself as worthless and irredeemable, and values the people he loves more than anything and definitely more than himself. If what that person wants hurts Kieran, he'll do it anyway. He'll do it to the ends of the earth. Part of this is because Kieran is a coward, and he considers that to be his fatal flaw. And to be honest the two are undeniably and inextricably connected. He doesn't want to let himself love. He feels it so much and buries it deep because he doesn't think he deserves it and he's too scared. His brother hates him and Kieran accepts that because he hates himself. He's just a big scared vulnerable feelings guy. :( but. tldr his ass is NOT aware of that flaw, he thinks it's that he's a coward. This love pertains specifically to like... platonic and familial love. His brother, the girl he considers his sister, Stewie, etc. When Kieran actually experiences romantic love he's kind of. chill with it. though that probably has to do with who the guy is tbh ( real quick i have to say now that i am talking about this story with people ((which is super exciting and fun for me!!!)) i need to say. kieran and stewie are not love interests. and in selkies it explicitly states that stewie reminds kieran of his brother evelyn for this reason specifically bc i can see it now. i can see if this ever somehow got published the biggest ship in the place would be kieran and stewie. crying emoji but im on my laptop)

3 for Yuuha:

His biggest flaw is definitely his pride. Yuuha is trans and at his old ballet studio, his instructor didn't acknowledge him as trans, and kept giving him parts that are generally for girls y'know. Often leads bc the instructor was obsessed with Yuuha (is the bad guy of that arc, has a palace, etc) and Yuuha kept taking them every time because he would rather be seen as a girl and be in the spotlight than be on the sidelines. And people used to talk shit about him because of it because he would complain about not being seen as a guy and then take like. idk clara from the nutcracker and people just saw him as a hypocrite. His pride is also what kept him from approaching Hifumi for years after they grew apart. Her success from afar made him feel bad after he quit dance and became a nobody, and he didn't know what she was going through and just assumed that she was too good for him. And he started to kind of believe it. His pride is also what almost gets him killed in the Metaverse, because he gets cocky and runs ahead without the PT. (in black mask au it's his pride that also gets him found out.) But he's extremely aware of this flaw, he just can't overcome it alone. He struggles with it constantly, and it's his Confidant route with Joker that helps him come to terms with it.

9. Do you have a specific lyric or quote you associate with your oc? For Stewie

I had to go through the songs on his playlist real quick but. look. there's a lot of things i associate with stewie but he is, before he is anything else, kindness and love and acceptance. and this is gonna sound so small and stupid and simple but "Everyone you know will lie / those you trust will make you cry / all hellos end with good bye / so who's afraid to love? Not I." it's just. the quintessential feeling at the heart of his character. he's not afraid to love. why yes he is kieran's foil how did you know? sidfjdsf i wrote so much stuff for kieran and yuuha and like. nothing for stewie but like. stewie is full of love. that's his whole him. full of love. like he's still a complex character with other emotions but the things that remind me the most of stewie are his determination to love people who are equally as determined to not be loved. to help people who insist (lying) that they don't want to be helped. to accept those who feel they'll never be accepted.

thank u for reading this long thing sfsdf thank u SO much for asking !!!! aaa!!!!!!!

#oc: stewie #oc: kieran #oc: yuuha #prince tag #ask game #oc ask game #ask #princekirijo

[frecklystars]

Im so sorry to hear what happened to you. You deserve to be happy and enjoy what you used to love. You deserve to be able to reclaim the things that became a trigger to you. Starscream would absolutely never hurt you- he cares about you and wants you to feel better. No matter how long it may take, he'll wait for you if/when you are ready to be with him again. Even if you can't, he truly wants you to be happy. He wants to see you smile and laugh and enjoy things without worry. I know it's tough to overcome something that feels like its been branded into your being, but everything heals with time. I wholeheartedly hope you can enjoy transformers again, and i sincerely believe that you will recover from this, no matter how long it takes. I'm just a random anon on tumblr, but i promise that there are more people like me who care for you. You deserve happiness.

Thank you anon. Thank you so much. I love how you worded all of this... I hope you don't mind I wanted to keep your ask in my inbox for a few days bc I wanted to go back and read it some more. I've been so heavily depressed since I've lost transformers. There's this heavy physical weight in my chest, like I've lost a part of myself ever since I lost these characters that are so deeply personal to me. It's one thing to lose a special interest when you have to depend on it to get through the day, but it's a whole new level to lose it due to trauma. This has never happened to me before, I didn't know it was possible for me to ever be afraid of Starscream. He has always felt like my soulmate, I felt like nothing could ever make me believe he'd love me any less for any reason, let alone the idea that he'd enjoy hurting me so violently. I will never be able to put into proper words how devastating this has felt for almost a year now, how horrifying it felt feeling them slip away from me one by one by one in the span of just 2 or 3 months, until finally Starscream was the last one that turned into a trigger in January. I feel like I'm trying to drag myself out of a deep dark pit and I can't find my way up to the surface. It has really been "branded into my being" as you put it, I was disrespected for so long, and having my F/Os turned into a trigger at the same time made me believe that they really would want me to be disrespected too, that they'd find me unworthy of love or kindness solely because of the person who treated me that way, and how much I had associated these characters with that person. It hurts so bad. I just want them back. I miss Starscream the most and I'd do anything to feel safe around him again, even if it is ever impossible for me to reclaim the others, Starscream means everything to me and losing him was like losing a piece of my own beating heart. I really believed we were soulmates (in self shipping terms) and I still want to believe that, despite how scared of him I feel on my worst days, and how much I cry missing him every day. Bee, Knockout, Arcee, Bulkhead, Megatron, everyone, all of them used to make me feel so comforted even when I felt like I couldn't go on anymore, now I don't have them to rely on when i need them the most and it's so fucking empty. It feels like someone ripped my heart out, now there's this whole vital piece of me that's missing.

(whoops I ended up rambling a lot so I'm putting the rest under a readmore, you don't have to read it if you don't want to. contains a bit of venting and some thank-you's for your very kind message and how your words have helped me feel comforted)

I feel so incomplete without my transformers F/Os to encourage me to keep going. Flinching and crying at so many of them feels so awful, and then there's those specific 5 or 6 characters that I can't even look at without having an anxiety attack, which feels so dumb every time I think about it. I know they're fictional, but they're so important to me, self shipping and escaping into fictional worlds has always been my coping mechanism. I never thought somebody could ruin that for me. I need to self ship, ever since I was little I have always needed a character to hold my hand through my worst times. I remember being three years old and my first self indulgent drawing was a scribbly crayon picture where Spongebob is holding my hand while we're jellyfishing and we're surrounded by heart-shaped jellyfish. And I remember I was crying while drawing it because I was so sad that my parents were always working and hardly ever talking to me. It's one of my earliest memories. It never got better. I was such a lonely kid growing up and now I am such a lonely adult and I've always needed F/O companionship. Having that torn away from me from so so so many tiny betrayals of one person, over and over again, it was hell to go through for so goddamn long and it's been hell to deal with the aftermath of it.

Thank you for the written reminder that they wouldn't hurt me. Honestly I cried a little reading that, not in a bad way or anything, I just. I need that reminder so often, probably every day. I don't know how to make it stick in my brain again. I don't know how to go back to the way I used to feel so wholly and unconditionally loved without anything holding me back. I want to believe that they wouldn't hurt me deep down, and I know that love is still in me somewhere. I know I can feel that love from him if I don't give up, I know something, anything can bring it back, I just can't figure out what. I don't know how much healing progress I'll have to do first, I don't know if I have to rewatch these shows and just push through the anxiety attacks or something, I don't know if I need to simply not rewatch these shows until the ptsd is easier to deal with, I don't know if I just need to cry and grieve when they're on the screen and let those feelings pass through me, I don't know if I need to draw myself with a transformer every day, I don't know if I have to avoid drawing them entirely. I don't know. I am so lost here. I was in such a bad predicament for almost a full year so I know it's going to take me a long time to recover from it, as much as I wish I could just heal overnight. I didn't escape my abusive situation until a month and a half ago, so now I'm really starting to process what happened to me.

She has a lot of friends/followers who are trying to attack me, which is another layer of stupidity to deal with, I hear she's writing rumors about me and tagging me, I don't know how true that is because I am not looking it up. I don't want to even know these things in general, I don't care what she posts about me, it's her blog and her way of coping I guess, but I just want her to never speak to me again. Or her followers, I want her supporters to leave me alone, none of this is even their business. Some of her friends are apparently writing posts about me where they want me to "get assaulted and killed" (???) which I obviously haven't looked up, I'm just blocking the usernames that my friends are telling me to block. I'm just trying to heal from all the shit I endured. I want to heal. I just try to remember the handful of particular messages I got from people who said "hey that person abused me too, you're not alone, she ruined transformers for me at one point too, you're not alone and you're not going crazy just because other people are excusing her actions. just because she's struggling does not mean she gets to hurt others" and I try to remember I have almost four hundred supportive messages in my inbox and dms right now, all of you telling me that i can do this, that I never lost my love from my F/Os, they are still with me even if I can't feel it *for now*. The harassment from others is like tiny crumbs, so miniscule compared to the love I am receiving. I'm trying to focus on the encouragement and love thrown my way, but on my rough days like today, everything just feels so heavy. I can't carry this grief on my own. I was isolated for so long. I have never felt this bad before. I really really really need help, I can't do this by myself anymore...

God. It feels so impossible to reclaim my love from these characters when it hurts so bad. I feel so fucking hopeless. My damage done to me was so severe I'm so scared I can't possibly be myself again. But I have no choice but to try, what else can I do?? I can't let it end this way, I just can't, I love them so much and they saved my life for three years, I can't just drop them. It's so unfair that I have to go through this at all, I didn't deserve what happened to me. I will get them back if it takes me days or weeks or months or years. It's been almost half a year since these triggers formed, I'm ready to try to reclaim a few of them now bc I hate living like this. but it's so fucking hard some days especially with the niche triggers that aren't TF related. Like today I'm fine with 1 trigger but I'm hurting at 9 others. Tomorrow I might be fine with all of them except for 2. I don't know. And transformers... that always hurts in some way, not necessarily anxiety inducing as badly as it did 6 months ago, but now I'm always crying when I see them, I'm always feeling this missing piece of myself hollow in my chest when I look at these comfort characters. I miss them so much. I miss Starscream so much. I miss Megatron. I miss Bumblebee. I miss Heatwave. I miss like 50 billion of them. I miss listening to my ship playlists, there's very few songs that don't remind me of them, so not being able to listen to music is rly harmful for me too. I miss myself. I haven't been myself in so long. I have no clue who I am right now. I haven't been inside of my body in a few days either. I am so numb.

I probably should have kept your message in my inbox a little longer, seems like I still need it ^^;; but I'll just go back and read it again when I click my anon tag.

Thank you for sending this. Everything you said is extremely comforting to me. Please know that it's because of messages like yours that I am able to gather a small bit of strength to get back up every time I am knocked down.

I am relieved you think I can recover, I am relieved to hear that you believe in me, because I am not strong enough to believe in myself just yet. You're not just "a random anon on tumblr" as you said, to me you're a sweet person somewhere in this world who sent me kind words when you knew I needed them. Thank you. ❤

#keepsake #anonymous #asks #sorry my response is so long

[semitransparent-glob]

i will ask questions on the condition that you never use the pleading meat emoji again (please). what're the motives? what's the puzzle/solution you're most proud of? do you incorporate dr traditions like a double murder in ch3 and the buff one dying in ch4? what character made you the most sad to kill off?

LMAOOO ok i promise <33

tysm for sending questions 🥰🥰🥰🥰

I think i am going to put this under a readmore bc i am going to ramble so so much

I definitely followed conventions of the 3 visual novel dr games, and studied the trials and motives to make my own motives and trials. I found as many consistencies as I could and tried to stick to them for my fangan, just to give myself a framework to work off of and I thought it would be fun :^))

For the motives: I have all of them planned out pretty well except chapter 4 and 5, which need some ironing out but i have some ideas.

Chapter 1: The motive is the idea that one among them has already killed someone, but since the person wasn't a student, there will be no trial. What actually happened was that one of the people working for the mastermind was killed by the mastermind, because that person was planning to betray the mastermind. The mastermind then staged her body in a spot where the students could find it, and claimed that one of the students had killed her in secret. But because none of the students actually killed her, they aren't able to figure out who among them did kill her, and so they just keep throwing accusations and tensions rise, leading to a killing on false suspicions.

Chapter 2: This motive is kinda specific to Shin, my Ultimate Ghost Hunter, but because the mastermind has all information on the students, she can do something like this. Basically, there's a horror movie that follows a serial killer butcher, but throughout the movie there are subliminals that activate a curse/pact Shin has with a demon that he made in the past. The deal is, he has to kill someone or else he will die horribly from the curse, and he has a time limit. So this leads to him killing someone, and then staging it like the movie to frame my ultimate Butcher character. (this follows the "revealing a serial killer" convention (even tho it's fake))

Chapter 3: The motive this time is a time limit, but its so that if they don't kill anyone, they get to go free, but they will all have their talents completely erased from their brains, and will have to live as talentless people. Junichi, who can't stand the thought of losing his talent and livelihood, ends up killing two people to keep it.

Chapter 4: for this one I have a sort of end goal in mind, where the Real goal was to create a complex murder and prolong the trial as long as possible so that one of the people working for the mastermind can work behind her back while she's distracted to slip information to the students. There needs to be something more to push for a murder, and i'm still working on that

Chapter 5: Like v3's chapter 5, the motive this time is to create an unsolvable murder in order to break the killing game. I also think that Kazuya may be getting too much info at this point, and the mastermind may cook up a motive to put a target on his head specifically, like how Junko did to Kyoko in chapter 5. I am still workshopping this one as well.

OK for puzzles, i am still working on my trial puzzles, and honestly not super confident in those, BUT i am kinda proud of some of the hints for the bigger mystery. I think the ch 3 motive is one of them, the indirect hint being that if Monokuma has the power to just. take away someone's talent, that might say something about the talents and their legitimacy. (foreshadowing for the fact that their talents are fake like in v3)

To add to that, Kazuya (my lesbian komaeda clone) starts the killing game not knowing his talent, but later finds a letter of acceptance to Hope's Peak in his room that wasn't there before, and it claims that he is the Ultimate Lucky Student. He will tell this to Emiko (main character) and say that the fact that it was clearly intentionally placed there might mean something; basically, this is information that the mastermind *wants* him to know, and he is aware of that.

In the end, it will be revealed that Kazuya was originally supposed to be the Ultimate Character Designer, and that is foreshadowed by his drawing gloves >:^) (that was an idea from a friend hehe <3)

HONESTLY i was sad to make any of em die, but i think the one that's gonna hurt me the most to write is Rokurou's death, not only because I am very attached to his character but because he's a killer and is gonna get executed </3. I wanted his death to mirror Gonta's in a way, and dear god that trial Hurted me.

but also just look at him. He's a sad cowboy who does math.

ALSO KAZUYA. like i knew the moment i made him he had to die but also like. I like him so much ...

#TY!!!!! #my ocs

[littleblondesoprano]

3, 14, 33, 36, 52, 71, 100?

Ahh, thank you!! :D!!! I'm gonna put this under a readmore for length purposes!!

3: Top 3 vacation destinations?

Rome, Italy. I know it's touristy, I know, but I gotta see the ruins. Same with Athens or Crete, Greece. I have to go to New Orleans, LA, at some point, too!

14: Top 3 romantic dates?

So, the dates I've gone on haven't been good, lol, so I'll answer with the dates I'd like to go on.

Ghost hunting. Now this works as a first date or a few dates in! It's fun, it lets you see your potential partner in a fear situation, and you get to see how open/respectful they are to the more spiritual side of life. And I just really want to go ghost hunting, I've never been yet and I really want to.

Bowling! It can be romantic if you make it, plus it's really fun, and I'm unnaturally good at the claw machine game they always have there.

Dinner and a walk. Speaks for itself, can be dressed up or dressed down, and I just like goin on walks. That's romantic!

33: Top 3 things you'd buy if you gained three million dollars?

My future Victorian home. I've had dreams that I've owned one and I just love them so much. They have so much character, and the craftsmanship is so impeccable - I would love to steward one, and preserve it, and love it.

My dad's always said that when I get famous from my books I have to buy him an Aston Martin DB9. so that.

My freedom, by paying off my student loans 😅. If not that, then...fuck, either a museum quality Megalodon tooth or a me-sized, game accurate, fully working/sharpened Areondight from Witcher 3.

36: Top 3 books from your childhood?

Cirque Du Freak by Darren Shan, The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, and The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

52: Top 3 bad habits?

I can emotionally spiral. It doesn't happen often, but if I've been going through a rough time and I have a bad day, I tend to latch onto that bad feeling and ruminate. I sit in that so long that I start picking out other bad things that have happened and it compounds that original bad feeling until I'm really upset. Like listening to a really sad song when you're already worked up, except there's no catharsis of crying. It's just anxiety and bad thoughts until I can talk myself down or logic puzzle my way out of it.

In a similar vein, I keep my anger inside. I've been trying to work on this, but sometimes I do that horrible bottling up thing, where you store emotions away in a bottle, until the bottle shatters, and you let it all out at once. That's me with anger, specifically. I'm pretty good at tempering my other emotions and letting them out when I'm alone, but anger is one that's just hard for me to figure out, besides...going silent and keeping it in.

And I think that's because I don't want to say anything to make the situation worse, or say something I'll regret (bc I can have a mouth on me when I'm pissed). I don't have it figured out yet, but I'm trying. The sweet woman who read my birth chart mentioned that I need to be like a lava flow and let it be a constant flow of emotion instead of a volcanic eruption, which makes sense.

Anyway.

I can't really think of a third one that's super pressing - but I can still sometimes overthink and let the Anxiety take over my brain for a bit. I've learned how to calm down and stop that from happening, but I do sometimes slip.

71: Top 3 songs of this month?

Bro songs change for me by the day. But the ones I've been listening to most recently are: Enjoy Your Slay by Ice Nine Kills, I Don't Want to Change the World by Ozzy, and Rock the Night by Europe.

100: Top 3 museums you've been to?

The National Gallery in London, The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in DC, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY.

#littleblondesoprano #thank you!!!

[holtbys-left-eyebrow]

hi!!! do you have any tips for someone getting into hockey for the first time. i want to follow the caps but i don't exactly know where to start especially since the season hasn't started (?) yet! thank you so much :-)

hi anon!!!! this ask genuinely made me smile, so i hope ur able to get something out of it (or at least maybe a list of what u don’t want to do lmao)

gonna put it under a readmore bc idk how to keep things short

ur right, the season hasn’t started yet! hockey season runs between october through the following april; there’s preseason games (for ✨funsies✨, no points) in september, and the stanley cup playoffs (our trophy run) happens from about mid to late april through till mid june.

the sport itself can be Really Confusing (no one knows what goaltender interference is), but luckily there’s a lot of online resources if ur interested in the rules, but you will Also just pick things up as you watch/listen. i’ve spent a lot of time (no joke) on the “hockey for dummies” webpage when i was watching minor leagues and couldn’t rely on announcers to tell me what was going on. that said: u don’t have to learn any of these things to be a fan, u can just be excited when ur team puts the puck in the net! that’s what we all want!

the two biggest tips i have are just: dive in and have fun. “dive in”: just pick a team (or a few, tho it sounds like you’ve chosen wisely hehe). “have fun”: exactly what it sounds like.

as for caps specific things:

the caps have an amazing broadcast team all around. if ur able to tune in (or pirate ;]) to televised games, u’ve got joe b and locker, some of the best announcers in the sport. if you’re like me, you’ll probably be listening to the radio broadcast with john walton! there’s no right way to enjoy the games, as long as you’re Enjoying them!! (and don’t feel like you have to tune into every game either, it’s nbd)

the caps fan community is truly great. since u sent me this ask on tumblr i’m assuming you’re active on here; the #caps lb tag is full of other fans that you can connect and chat with. and the ‘lb’ there means ‘liveblog’, we all tend to post our own reactions to the game as it’s happening (or talk about. unrelated things if the game is going poorly), that’s another great way to feel like you’re “watching with friends”.

if ur interested on “brushing up” on the team during the offseason, there’s a website called “russian machine never breaks” that’s been writing about caps and caps adjacent things (including reporting on the hershey bears’ calder cup win, our ahl affiliate!) since 2009 (which is around the same time i started following the team). they’re my go to resource for player profiles, game summaries, all that jazz. i recommend looking at some of the articles from the caps 2018 stanley cup run if you want some Feel Good Content

this is already long as hell and i’m not sure if i actually answered ur question so i’m actually gonna stop here and say if u have any other questions, i’m happy to answer them here or in my dms if you’d like! i’m always happy to make new fans feel welcome <3

#again i’m not sure if i actually gave. ANY tips in here. so PLEASE feel free to reach out like #‘girl wtf are you talking about’ i won’t be offended #asks #anon

[minhyukie]

happy saturday!! how has your weekend been going? 😊

I think you're right that they are the only group who've all been radio hosts! it does take so much charisma and being super well-spoken. they're very impressive as a group, definitely a bunch of all-rounders!

wanted is so good! I stumbled upon it randomly, it is such a shame it doesn't get much promotion. if I'm not mistaken that entire album wanted was on was about a month before one of a kind so definitely no promotion despite the music being SO so good! I tend to listen to a group's entire discography once I become a fan, so even the ones I missed I feel really attached to. helps that everything is so good :)

omg you're so right, the hair he had for fighter was SO so cute. he does look amazing with darker hair, I also love when it's kind of in the middle (like a latte color!) he just suits all hair colors <3

what are your favorite minhyuk parts of songs? (a little harder of a question I think 😭)

- monbebe secret santa #1 ☃️ <- you can use this emoji if you want to differentiate <3

hi hi!! i'm so sorry for the late reply i have been having so many issues with my laptop lately it's crazy 😭 everything's fixed right now but fingers crossed it stays fixed!! but otherwise my weekend was really fun, i went out to a party with some friends and now it's the last full week of work before the holidays :D hope you had a great weekend too!!

i think you're right abt that japanese album being released right before a korean one.. and since it was during covid times they really didn't get a chance to go to japan to promote it :'( a shame truly!! and YEA that makes sense.. i wish i could listen to so many of their songs for the first time again!!

minhyuk literally pulls off every hair color sooo well i like when it's blonde-brown too!! and it looks like he's back to black hair for now but it would be kinda fun if we got a new color for comeback promotions, i'd looove to see him with grey or something like that 👀 also comeback is coming!! i'm so excited like we kinda knew it was coming but also i'm like ?!!? comeback!!!!

favorite minhyuk parts omg. that is definitely a harder question and i know i'm gonna leave so many out but here are some ones that i vividly remember pooping myself a little the first time i heard them, gonna put them under a readmore bc this ended up rly long

this one is short but his 'come ooOOooOoooOOON' in rush hour

no reason.. any of his parts literally. wonho was so great at giving him parts that suited him and i loove how his high notes sound in this song

kiss or death there's this one bridge before the final choruses and his voice just sounds so angelic i don't know how to describe. 2:32

it aint over before the last chorus where he IT AINT OVER TIL ITS OVERRRRR i mean i know that line is in the lyrics a lot but he BELTS it out right before the last chorus and it actually stopped me in my tracks when i was listening to mx on shuffle a few weeks ago. stole the whole song

by my side minhyuk opening this song was sooo iconic

if only.. again wonho was sooo good at writing parts that suited minhyuk's higher notes (imo) the whole song he sounds rly good

honorable mention it wasn't even his part originally but that live performance of U R you know the one.. when minhyuk belts that chorus... bro

second honorable mention to his king of masked singer performances because everytime i listen to them i feel insane like how are people not banging down his door begging him to sing their ballad OSTs......

i'd love to hear if you have any specific favs too!!

#mbbss ☃️ #i'll add your emoji to the prev asks too!! thank u

[spearxwind]

not to sound weird but what was that work you put in to get where you are 🙏 i want to improve my life so bad but have no clue where to start. even a general gist of things

You dont sound weird! I think it's commendable to want to change your life for the better, and I want to help in any way I can :D

This is also my own perspective but I think a lot of it could be universally applied if you look at it through different lenses of ppls different situations. This also got rly long so I'm putting it under a readmore ^^;

So I had pretty much been isolating myself with increasing ferocity for years until recently. Even when trying to reach out to people I was extremely closed off, keeping my feelings behind many walls and chains always. A lot of my hard work has come from undoing all of that fuckup. I put all my eggs into my online friendships (and even then had a hard time with them).

My behavior was a cluster of personal garbage, learned mannerisms from keeping bad company, and hardwired reactions to specific behaviors. It's something pretty hurtful to realize when you do realize it, but that doesn't mean that you are a bad person or a failure or anything like that. It just means that you have certain bare minimum survival behaviors that worked before but now are only doing you damage, and you have to learn to undo them. (which is a great step!!)

Which brings me to what I have (painfully) learned over the past several years: the basis to any and every good relationship, romantic, platonic, family, or anything is crystal clear communication. Straight up for the love of god communication skills will save your life time and time and time again

And also like I said in earlier posts the solution to wanting to be more social is just BEING more social. This is arguably extremely hard, especially after years of "if they want me around they'll ask me" and always waiting to be invited but not wanting to bother anyone by asking if you can join NO!!!!!!!! GET THAT SHIT OUT OF YOUR BRAIN EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY!!!!! It really does NOT work that way at all. People will invite you to things if they see you express interest in them. The same way that in your head you think 'theyll invite me if they want me to go' if they dont see you express interest people will think you dont want to join. If you go someplace and just stay recluse because youre shy they likely will also think "theyre probably not comfortable or dont want to be here, so we wont force them". People are inherently kind and they are definitely NOT thinking about shunting you on purpose (and I am speaking this, genuinely, from personal experience)

While I was studying my major I got close to a group of people and thought of them as my friend group, but they always seemed cold to me, and I rarely got invited to hangouts because they seemed closer among themselves so I ended up always thinking that they didn't really want me around, and created all of these assumptions in my mind about them or what they thought of me.

Years later, recently, I found one of them again just... randomly while walking through the street and we started talking. And in my much better state of mind I asked about this whole thing because I wanted to know how the rest of the group was doing (I care very much for them still) and he revealed to me that THEY were the ones who thought I was shutting myself off of the group bc I didnt wanna be close to them. Which just blew my mind but it made a lot of sense and explained a lot. I was always on my phone too, talking with my internet friends (because it was my comfort zone), so what they'd assumed was that I already had a friend group that I was invested in and so I wasnt going to prioritize them. SO basically this whole thing ended up being resolved with clear communication and would have been solved much earlier if I had just spoken up about it and gotten braver (though my mental state did not let me at the time)

Anytime you are making up assumptions and ultimatums in your mind without communicating them to the other party you should stop and very much go and speak out loud to the other party (or parties) it will genuinely do you good cause huge as hell brain snowballs do nothing but drown you in your own mind.

Also on the being social front, if you dont have the practice in then it will be hard but a lot of it is very much "fake it till you make it" and I genuinely cannot recommend that enough. Inject yourself into conversations and places and act like yourself unapologetically because the secret isnt to craft a persona that you think people will like, its just being yourself and finding people who will love you for who you are. And like I said I just got invested in other ppls plans and asked to be able to go to places, and oftentimes just by expressing interest i got invited "oh I love this show very much!!" "well we have a plan to watch it at my pals house do you wanna come?" "we were planning on going to X place this week" "omg that sounds so cool can I come with" "of course!" Generally people will respond with "the more the merrier" so please dont be afraid to ask. And even if you get a rejection or two it's fine, don't let it discourage you. Some plans are simply not meant to be, and that's totally fine too!

Something else I worked for was reestablishing contact with old highschool friends I'd lost and I missed terribly. I went out of my way to find them again (old phone numbers, old emails, old instagram accounts that hadnt posted since 2019), and I found them!

And most of them really missed me too and were absolutely thrilled I contacted them again, we picked up right where we left off eight years prior. With a lot to catch up to but its genuinely so nice to have them in my life rather than just melancholically thinking about them and wondering if they hated me or anything. Turns out that they had also thought to contact me as well or had tried and lost my phone, or some of them even thought that it was better to leave things as they were to not "stir up shit" so we were all stuck in the same loop of insane thinking without actually confirming it until one of us (me in this case) finally broke the ice (and it took a damn long time too)

The thing is, people are just like you. We all have our own mental nonsense to fight, and we all have our assumptions and propensity to think ourselves into the grave, that's why its so so so so important to communicate things as clearly and as often as possible. Bearing your suffering alone will only make you miserable in the end, and your circle is there to help you

As a last note, I do want to say I have been incredibly lucky, because the friend group I've been adopted into I have met through that one friend from uni that I just HAPPENED to find on the street. I could have not waved him over on the street and just kept walking with my music on and ignored him. I could have said 'no' to his offer to get dinner that day if I'd wanted to be home earlier. I could have never spoken up about liking eurovision and never gotten invited to the hangout where I met my bf. And none of this would have ever happened at all. But that just strengthens my advice of "just say yes and reach out of your comfort zone" because you never know where it's going to lead you!

All this to say:

Communicate clearly with your peers to reduce misunderstandings. More likely than not they'll be in the same boat as you are. (Also extra note. Communication works BOTH WAYS. It needs to come from both parties. It is also a skill you have to nurture and hone!!)

Be kind!! and be loving!! and be yourself unapologetically!!

reach out to people the same way that you'd want to be reached out to. It sucks that sometimes (even often) you have to be the one to do it, but you eventually reap what you sow and people will learn that they can reach out to YOU

People will respond in kind to you being nice to them and a positive energy in their life. Some people will take advantage of it yes, thats just how things are, and its something you have to learn to recognize but you should never let that steel your heart. It is so so so important to remain kind and loving the world needs it so much. We're all out here trying to make our own lives and our loved ones lives a little bit brighter <3

#ask #anon #advice #this is so long and again it is from my perspective but this is what I have done so I am really hoping it helps you #im wishing u the best of luck anon i hope you are able to better your life significantly <3 #please feel free to keep me posted on your progress whenever you make any. be that in a few months or a few years

[bixxelated]

finally finished watching str*nger th*ngs s4 so im just gonna put my thoughts under a readmore bc i Have... A Lot And I Need To Get Them Out (also needless to say, dont click unless you want spoilers for the whole season)

overall i came in with low expectations and still felt that a lot of things were pretty underwhelming. most of what i like from previous seasons wasnt included in this one or was pretty badly written. this was a very plot-driven 1st half of a season and they pulled off some good things but there was so little emotional material available which frustrated me the most. JKSHFLKDJGLG i hate being such a downer bc i did have fun watching! theres just a lot of stuff specific to my tastes that i feel werent developed well

ANYWAY, to be more specific

--MAX MAYFIELD MY BELOVED

--Max was AMAZING this season and i love her so much

--all things being said, im amazed that they were make such a solid story with multiple plotlines given how LONG this whole thing was. i expected a lot of bullshit twists being pulled to keep things interesting but i didnt see much of that. do i like the direction they went in with a lot of things? not really, but i admire that they were somewhat able to keep it cohesive --hawkins plot was the best plot. i like the concept of 'teens with a haunted past' being targeted and of the town turning against the hellfire club. its an interesting change in dynamics for once to see other people get involved in the strange happenings, although i dont really like how theyre making the upside down this single hellscape entity bent on the destruction of hawkins instead of some alternate doomhorror dimension minding its own business unless you accidentally stumble into it/let it seep into your own world. idk i like the ambiguity of antagonists driven mostly by instinct, like the demogorgon in s1 and the mind flayer in s2

--on the other hand the california/russia plotlines just seemed so... pointless? like there was so little explored about the byers (not-)adapting to a new town before everything was launched into motion. which i get for pacing reasons but leaves very little for like. exploring the emotional aspects of it. hated will being absolutely completely invisible in the new town. hated seeing el being forced to team up with her literal abuser to get her powers back and it being presented as a choice. and i feel for hopp but the prison plotline was just... boring to me JFKHDLJKHFLKD idk how else to explain it. like we know that hoppers sad and angry and misses joyce and el, there just wasnt much room for much else character development in his arc, like something something he lets his anger get the best of him when hes scared and doesnt know how to cope with it in a healthy matter something something

--it would have been so nice to see El and Will being forced to interact more closely for once but somehow despite being Literal Siblings now the writers still somehow managed to get them to nope over each other like same sided magnets, save for a few single lines at the beginning of the season. i do appreciate those few little moments of will trying to watch out for el sometimes but wish that there had been some reciprocation at some point

--they really did my boy Will so dirty reducing him to a single character personality point again: Pining

--Michael Wheeler Didn't We Go Through This Same Exact Plotline Last Season. Why Are You Excluding Your Best Friend In Place Of Your Girlfriend Again

--a single verbal apology doesnt really do it for me also. it doesnt ever feel like will and mike made up bc theres no ACTIONS to make up for it! Pls just give me some kindhearted gestures, some consideration, some platonic affection...!

--ARGYLE MY BELOVED. Argyle was great tho. god knows jonathan deserves having someone to destress with

--my god why is it that the only way the writers can make relationships interesting is threatning to have them break up. max and lucas make sense but is the nancy/steve teasing really necessary? you're really gonna have her move on like that without even talking to jonathan first?

--and jonathan's plotline about feeling obligated to throw away his future to care for is so good! wish they'd explored more of it in the plot itself

--on the breakup note: really didnt enjoy the argument mike had with eleven just because so much of it felt... manipulative? not in an intentional way but i dont think that was handled well at all on either side. but i mean, i really dont blame mike for being upset about the rollerskating incident and then for everyone to try and pretend it didnt happen. and eleven being like, you're scared of me so you dont love me anymore. OOF! idk it just gave me a lot of vibes about insecure ppl in relationships who do bad things and then use their upset feelings as a justification without properly apologizing for it

--LUCAS MY BELOVED

--my poor boy lucas was just trying to have a normal life and get a better reputation for both him and his friends jdkhflkadhjfkl he didnt ask for everyone to suddenly go unhinged around him. im love him so much

--ROBIN MY BELOVED

--robin was so good this season. i love her and her motor mouth and im cackling so much because i KNEW that awful outfit was a disguise! nancy honey why the fuck do you have that monstrosity in your closet? i know you can do better

--also really adore robin slowly inching her way into nancy's heart as a friend. nancy needs more female friends. And also how dare vecna use barb's death against nancy (gleeful). im wondering how theyll handle pulling her out of the trance considering i dont think anyone knows nancy's favorite song (and even if they manage to contact mike or her parents id be surprised if any of them would know it as well)

--the running up that hill scene? iconic. amazing. outstanding. i cried, oh my god i love max mayfield so much

--i do love that even though a big part of max's grief involves guilt for billy's death, they acknowledge that he was not a nice person and and that his relationship with max was complicated, and that some part of her is even relieved at not having to deal with that anymore.

--the One/Henry Creel reveal twist at the end was neat but i still dont get what this fucker's deal is? from what i understand This Man Just Wants To Be A Murderous Bastard. sure everyone assumes hes working for the mind flayer but we never saw it outside of flashbacks this season

--Speaking Of Which, Why Are There So Many Flashbacks To Previous Seasons. i mean i know the duffer brothers love their flashbacks but i promise you we remember what happened before duffers

#tp #blogger comments #long post // #// #/// #//// #blogger watches stranger things #st4 spoilers #don/t rebl/og pls

[teruthecreator]

okay. thoughts on the grad finale

gonna slap it under a readmore bc i’m Sure i’m gonna ramble. 

uh spoiler warning for the finale of taz graduation, as well as spoilers for the season in general.

also, these are my own thoughts of how the season went, what the themes were, etc! if you don’t agree with me, that’s fine! but i don’t wanna have a convo w you in the replies about it i’ll be honest. if you want to share your opinion so badly, make your own post, alright? that good? we cool?

aight. so. finale thoughts.

to make it short: i think the finale was a satisfying end of a very good arc. 

to expand upon that, let me share what i think the themes of graduation were and why the finale satisfies those themes. 

i made a post about this a while back (here it is if you want) but my honest belief was that the theme of graduation was self-reliance: the concept that you don’t allow yourself to be governed by forces that go against your own beliefs. this concept was coined by essayist ralph waldo emerson to talk about how the american people shouldn’t allow the government to create laws that go against the will of the people. now, understandably, this feels very anti-capitalist which is what i think a lot of fans believed was reflected through the season. 

but, in reality, self-reliance has more to do with being active in your government and making sure you’re being represented the way you want to be by your representatives. that’s sort of the vibe emerson was going for in his essay, and i think. in a sense? that translates to graduation. but i took self-reliance in the more metaphorical about breaking away from those things that are controlling you. which, in graduation, was A Lot Of Things. 

the way i saw it, there were two major groups that inflicted order upon the world and the thundermen--conveniently separated as order and chaos (not the deities though, just the concepts). 

the order half of control existed mostly through the school and the HOG. the HOG created the economic reliance on the heroes and villains system, which removed all literal meaning from those terms and turned them into bureaucratic titles. society existed under these very strict checks and balances; heroes and villains supplied money to the kingdom in terms of entertainment, which then boosted that kingdom’s creditability and allowed them to contribute more to nua’s economy, which then led heroes and villains to have a higher demand, thus perpetuating the cycle. it’s important to note that this term does not represent the sort of morality we expect for heroes and villains--hell, even the term “evil” turned into an arbitrary term used to show those heroes and villains who failed the system. this is the more prominent representation of control that the thundermen break away from in achieving their own self-reliance. they don’t see the value in a system that holds no real moral code (fitzroy Especially, but i’ll get into that in a bit), and can’t help the public when there’s actually a serious situation. as we saw with althea in the beginning, the HOG had no way to help the thundermen when they were dealing with the whole Demon Prince situation (as he had already placed some of his own people in there, proving these kind of systems are easily corruptible). so this wasn’t a system meant to Actually create heroes and villains--it was just a way of boosting the economy. 

the chaos half of control existed primarily through grey and Chaos. grey represented how chaos could be controlled, through various means. he planted that tree for the centaurs to fight over because he knew it would constantly create conflict, which he enjoyed. he kept the school under a watchful eye to prevent anyone from stepping out of line with his grand ideas, and used several manipulation tactics to try and get his way (most notably, his own admittance of grooming fitzroy into joining his side, which didn’t work). grey was the perfect example of how chaos does not automatically mean a lack of control. he was very controlling in how he did things because he had an endgoal: find hieronymous and have a war. but he didn’t even realize he was contributing to a greater idea, that being Chaos’s insistence on causing general disarray. as we realize now, Chaos’s plan was both for them and Order, but i’m leaving Order out for a second because they only really rear their head in towards the end. for the most part, audiences were led to assume that Chaos was the Big Bad(TM); they were the one pulling the strings, allowing things to happen to cause general chaos and disarray. them supplying random mortals with their endless power was a way to plant chaos into the world of nua; but it was a chaos they controlled. fitzroy resisting them was not simply a refusal to bend to Chaos, but it was resisting the control put on him through his magic. 

these systems were constricting the thundermen on both sides. when they thought they’d find help in one side, they were disappointed to find that there was nothing anyone could do. the only people who could fix their problems were...them. so they forged a new path, set new ideas, and became self-reliant. that’s what i think is the most important aspect of graduation; not the anti-capitalist implications of turning over the economic and political systems in place, but the idea that if nothing that is supposed to help you is actually helping that you can just...do your own thing! 

and i think that’s what the finale really shows, at the end of the day. that these forms of control were not doing anything helpful, and were in fact ruining the fabric of space-time! that’s where i think Order comes in because Order is really...the ultimate culmination of control. they are aware that Everything being done will benefit their cause. the HOG? well, they make sure everybody’s so incompetent that they can do their work. grey? well, he’ll contribute to the plan without even realizing it. they even manipulated Chaos and enacted their own form of control over Chaos to make sure that they had no reason to believe that this plan couldn’t go wrong. but Order knew. Order always knew there was a chance for error, and that chance was very great. but they didn’t care! so long as they had control of things, they could try a hundred times to get it right. they had no care for mortals, unlike Chaos. 

the thundermen showing Chaos the truth is the final jenga piece that collapses this tower of control. which is why the finale is so great. 

travis does a phenomenal job of incorporating chaos (general chaos) into the battle mechanics. it may be stupid and slightly arbitrary, but having them change forms randomly and having to adapt to those new circumstances really does exemplify the season!!! the thundermen were constantly forced into new situations (being sidekicks/henches, fitzroy becoming a villain, being let in on the heiro dog situation, the unbroken chain trial, joining forces w grey, etc.), and in all of them they simply found a way to adapt and keep working their way. which made the finale generally interesting and also thematically interesting! 

i think my favorite part of the entire fight scene is right at the end, when argo chucks the shark’s tooth necklace at Order. and time stops. and they’re given a choice. 

the fact that they leave it to a coin toss?? oh my god...how fucking FITTING!! like, that’s disorderly. that’s going your own way. it’s new, it’s terrifying, it has DIRE UNKNOWNS ON EITHER SIDE, but it’s what they do! and...it ends up working out! i think it would’ve worked out either way, but the fact that they left it up to chance really shows how they aren’t allowing anything to control their actions. 

AND THEN WE GET TO THE EPILOGUE. MY GOD I LOVE THE EPILOGUE I’M GONNA GO OFF SO MUCH. 

first off, i loved hearing how Nua adapts to losing this very significant form of government/economic contributor and turns to more people-based work. citizens uniting together, fixing things, making amends, THAT’S SELF-RELIANCE BABEY!!! THAT’S THE WHOLE EMERSON SHIT! HAVING A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT ACTUALLY HAS THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE AT LARGE!!! YEAHHHHHHHHH THAT’S THE WHOLE SELF-RELIANCE THING!

now, i’ll break it down by characters: 

fitzroy

GOD. LOVE IT. FIRST OFF, absolutely ADORED how his character arc involved him stripping himself of these self-assigned titles because he actually has an identity that is all his own and he doesn’t NEED arbitrary titles to prove his worth because HE HAS IT IN HIMSELF. not to self-plug or anything, but that’s ssoss!fitzroy’s WHOLE SHIT. I’VE ALREADY BEEN ON THIS TRAIN, BITCH, AND TO KNOW I GOT IT SO RIGHT...GOD. FEELS GOOD. 

but also, i just really enjoy how his ending went in general. the fact that he doesn’t really know what he wants to do, so he just...does stuff he likes to do? that’s so good! because, if you remember, fitzroy had a Very set schedule of life events when the campaign started. he was going to get his wiggenstaffs degree, go back knight school, get his knight school degree, and then go to goodcastle. but all of that was based on a very limited understanding of himself. 

fitzroy’s character arc has primarily focused finding himself, specifically in terms of identity. for someone who was bullied for his past, the present formation of himself was Extremely important to fitzroy. he thought that shutting out his past and taking on this grandiose title of knighthood would make him something more than himself. he would no longer be fitzroy; the poor, country kid trying to make it in a big world. he’d be Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt; respected, honored, revered, with a title to prove it. 

he explains to fauxronymous (pre-reveal grey) that the reason he wanted to be a knight was because he wanted to assist in doing good. morally good. fitzroy has Always had a very clear sense of his morality; this comes through when he refuses Chaos on the basis of many people having to die if he agreed. but being a knight also had the added of bonus of a very respectable title that no one would want to look beyond, which fitzroy felt he needed because...i don’t think he Saw anything beyond that. in himself. he wasn’t himself for a very long time, and i don’t know if he ever thought he would be again. he’d wear this new identity, start a new life, and be happier....he hoped. 

then, things changed! and he started to realize that arbitrary titles don’t do shit because plenty of people with Big Important Titles ended up being Awful People! so he started to value himself For Himself; his wit, his humor, his strength, his magical prowess. and, i think, he started to wonder what knighthood was Really about. was it about upholding a moral good? or was it just another bureaucracy filled with people who won’t do shit when things get bad. 

i think this is why him becoming a lawyer is fitting. especially because of the reasoning he gives sylvia nite. now for A LOT OF PEOPLE, i’m sure they hear lawyer and assume some corporate hotshot who doesn’t give a shit about people. but fitzroy is Not applying to be a corporate laywer. he SPECIFICALLY telsl sylvia that he wants to help people who cannot help themselves, and he wants to do good in that way. THAT kind of lawyer is more of the pro-bono, district lawyer. the ones that don’t make crazy amounts of cash, but help those who cannot afford lawyers and represent them when the government is fucking them over. those lawyers don’t rely on title, they rely on principle. 

that’s the perfect representation of fitzroy’s growth. holding his identity within himself, while still trying to do good by those who need it. 

firbolg (aka gary) 

i think the firbolg’s ending is so unique but so...right for him. his character arc has really been focused around finding his family. he had one, in the beginning, in his clan. but that didn’t end up, y’know...working out that much. so he had to go out into the world alone--something that firbolg’s are rarely--and try and navigate these foreign spaces all by himself. 

we see very early on how he latches onto the idea of groups. he likes being considered a part of the thundermen; he very much hoists himself upon the CFO title and wears it proudly. i think, where fitzroy needed to find identity within himself, the firbolg needed to find it within other people. which is completely okay! he’s still an individual, but you can tell he finds comfort in numbers because that’s what he is used to. 

him going back to his clan was, i believe, his finally severance with his identity as “firbolg”. he would never be welcomed back to his clan, and one of the few people in his life who supported him was now dead. but his father was proud of him; his father was happy he seemed to find his own clan, even if it wasn’t with other firbolgs. from that moment on, i think the firbolg begins to try finding himself within the thundermen. within his friends.

so his epilogue is neat! it definitely captures the loneliness he feels on his own, and how he feels lost with himself without others. i think it might seem silly to some that he would become a gary, but i think it’s fitting. the garys were always present in his time at school, and they were always helpful. they didn’t mind how long it took him to talk because the gary’s are stone gargoyles--what the fuck do they care about time? it was a group that the firbolg saw as familiar to him--always willing to help, slow, stony, and attuned to a larger group. 

and i think the way gary takes this idea of unity and family and puts it into financial assistance just...it just ties everything together! we saw how attached he got to the concept of finances, thanks to his very confusing accounting class. so he had all of this new knowledge--this knowledge that represented a separation from firbolgs--and this new clan. and he used it to help other clans and families!! i think the fact that the Garys financial advice works specifically with groups is what makes this so fitting. because gary wants families to feel stable within themselves; he understands how finances can create struggle and divides, and he wants to provide relief. 

giving financial advice to communities so they rely on themselves and not the government (aka inviting them to be controlled once more) is a VERY self-reliant concept. not that i think gary’s goal is to have no social networks to exist, but he wants to give communities the ability to rely on one another and foster that feeling of togetherness. so groups aren’t fighting over things, but are trusting and loving and relying. 

just like gary’s always wanted. and just like what he has with the thundermen.

argo 

argo’s ending is probably the funniest, but also the sweetest. i think that argo’s character arc revolved around finding his place. we see how argo’s early personality and motivations revolved around his past. he very much had a revenge story since the start; he wanted to enact revenge on the commodore for murdering his mother, no matter what it took. which made him very limited!! in terms of the self. he saw himself less for what he was now, and what he was then. and what he couldn’t do then. 

we see how much he finds comfort in being a part of the thundermen, but also how he feels...out of place. i think this is because a part of him is still attached to his past and doesn’t think he can do anything beyond his set plan. the unbroken chain certainly contributes to this, by not only separating him from the trio but also reinforcing his connection to his past through his mother’s involvement in the unbroken chain. 

the commodore also being a part of the unbroken chain is, i think, what causes the shift from past to present within argo. his life’s goal is standing right in front of him--attached to the group his mother once was a part of--with his friends at his side. letting the thundermen in on his history is the start of bridging these two halves of argo. and the fact that the thundermen are so willing to helps makes argo feel more a part of the team and more a part of this reality. 

when he kills the commodore, it isn’t intense. it isn’t overly dramatic (minus the fight prior, which was BADASS), it isn’t crazily staged. it is argo, staring down the commodore who lies prone on the ground. 

he kills himself unceremoniously and completes his life-long mission. 

what becomes of him in the epilogue is the culimination of both past and present. he takes what he knows and loves (the sea, the mariah, sailing) and blends it with what he’s come to love now (his friends, this adventure, and making people happy). there are SO many instances where argo uses performance to his advantage. this man is piloted by clint mcelroy, of COURSE he’s going to have a flair for the dramatic. 

so for him to open up a themed cruiseline, based on the stories of him and his friends? SO FITTING. and it isn’t forcing himself to leave his past behind or to completely ignore his present circumstances. because he’s found a place in the now, in the merging of these two sides. and by merging them, he paints a bright future for himself. a future that is partially known, partially not. partially old, partially new.

but it’s all his. 

after that, i think their final scene is just...sweet. a nice, jovial, joking send-off to a nice season. it proves these people have grown and will continue to grow, even when we no longer see their story. it does exactly what graduation does--shows you a struggle, a triumph, and a glimpse into the future. 

i’ll miss it so much, but there’s nothing more i could’ve asked of this ending. it was exactly what it needed to be; nothing more, nothing less. 

#taz grad spoilers #taz graduation #sir fitzroy maplecourt #argo keene #firbolg #taz fitzroy #taz argo #taz firbolg #ignorance cloud on #this took a while and now my head hurts so lol! #also if there are spelling mistakes leave me alone i cant read this text anymore