#my life my adventure type of thing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr has 4 main sources of revenue.

#my life my adventure type of thing

a-spell-a-rebel-yell · 3 months

Text

December

hello everyone, i know it's already day 23 of January 2024, literal almost a month after the month ends and is already on another year, but at least i'm here yaaay (i really need to start writing the monthly post a week before said month ends 😭)

December was actually, just as thrilling cliff-hanging as November! thing is my countdown to my other coldplay show was finally down to under 50 days and it was also the end of the very first semester.

just in the true fashion of my life, my adventure this time is: going back and forth between Jakarta and Tasik in under 24 hours (22 hours to be exact!) on a back-to-back journey just for school and seeing my hometown again 😂

so, as you can tell, i have so many assignments and one of them is a practical skill's lab project where i have a typodont (a phantom model of human teeth embedded in wax) and i pretend to apply orthodontic treatment on it to correct the malocclusion. it was not easy at all. it's quite literally a simulation of what will happen and what should i do when i treat an actual patient. the project lasted for almost five months and even the class didn't stop once the semester break came around, that is why i had to go back and forth between Jakarta and Tasik: i don't want to lose my holidays while still having to attend the weekly class 😂

some will say i'm insane because it's so tiring to do so and indeed it was super exhausting. but if you know me, i'm the type to do just about anything for my loved ones (my parents were staying at Tasik to take care of things and it's been a while i visited my grandparents' last resting place) so it was no big deal at all to endure 7 hours of bus trip each and then 1 hour commute to the station/home. a total 16 hours in 48 hours timeframe spent on the road. and it's worth it, every second of it, because i got to relax and work in the middle of lush green and rice fields... it was the very definition of healing time. i was still under the pressure of stress and deadline to finish that last project, but at least i did it while being surrounded by serene nature and with my mum and dad 😂😂😂 it's such a nice drastic change to do wire bending with all my pliers and stainless steel wires and orthodontic brackets with herd of ducks quacking loudly near me and farmers ploughing soil to plant rice seeds... best part? zero pollution! no light/sound/air pollution whatsoever and i get to see amazing sceneries right out of my windows every day! rain every evening to help me and my mum water the plants (which are thriving!) Mt Galunggung in its majestic full view... woah. it's my best treasure tbh nothing else compares

the most unexpected thing was that our class for that subject/project is usually scheduled on Thursday (so for the first back-and-forth journey i made sure to go back to Jakarta on Wednesday and get back to Tasik on Thursday right after the class ended) and for the second week, my prof suddenly requested us to come to the campus on Tuesday, and guess when did he sent the message to inform us? 6 AM on said Tuesday!!!!! oh you couldn't imagine my panic, how am i supposed to be in Jakarta in less than 4 hours!? thankfully my prof is a lenient one and he let me and kak Mandy (who was in Bandung at the time) to join the class from zoom. another good news is that class is to be our closing session for the project, and that i can just send my typodont instead of coming in person to submit the assignment. yet again Allah's plan is always better than my most carefully thought of one 🥺

the rest of the break i get to spend every day at my hometown just recharging my energy and soaking every positive molecule there is, and my mum have this brilliant idea to buy a table tennis equipment!

at first, not fully knowing the impact of my mum's seemingly random decision, i opposed the buying of said table tennis because it's quite expensive. but after it arrived and i got to play against my mum and dad (who happen to be great players!) i finally understand that my mum knew fully well i don't like outdoor sports (solely because i hate the sun getting my face so red lol) so table tennis is the best option! it's so fun to play and i still get to exert my whole body to get that exercising regime my nutritionist has told me years to do so 😂

for new year's eve, the end of 2023 is the quietest one yet. with just my parents, deep in the greens, miles from the city, and just watching Pengabdi Setan 2/Satan's Slaves 2 (exactly my style hahaha getting my dad to watch it!) i moved over to 2024. just saying and sending out my prayers to welcome the new year and hope i can go through whatever i must face in the future. and again, just how i like it, not many fireworks were blasted so it wasn't that rowdy. it almost didn't feel like NYE celebration, all is calm and cool.

i love slow living, far away from the crowded areas, i could quite literally stay in my hometown at my house and just. be there 😂 it's so easy for me because as long as i have my loved ones with me and a roof above my head, enough to live and get by... that is all. to reach that tranquility and peace of mind is one of the highest priority/goal for me. hope one day after i've accomplished my dreams i get to reside and rest where my heart has always been dwelling.

here's to another journey in 2024, i hope we can together make it through. see you in the January post, that as i said in my Nov one, i'm counting down 3 days to my trip to Singapore and 4 days until i see coldplay again, historic moment as i'll be back to the stadium where i first saw the band 7 years ago!!! see you all soon 💙

#speedrunning thru life #while relaxing in the most novel times #my life my adventure type of thing #alhamdulillah #life is still as good and fun and worth living #:)

2 notes · View notes

polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

Note

you might have been asked this question before but ive been curious for a while about what would have happened when gertrude was there when jon originally gave his statement? would anything change ?

Honestly she probably would have killed him.

Like, it feels mean to say? It would have been more out of mercy than anything.

If Jon had come to her with only a Leitner, she would have taken care of the Leitner and sent him home. She doesn't normally intervene on behalf of the Statement givers, but they also aren't usually eight, and it isn't unheard of for Gertrude to intervene for the random unlucky souls who cross her path. She intervened on behalf of Jack Barnabas, and she told the monster pig dude how to handle his problem. It's selective when she intervenes, but I think if it's just a little boy scared by a book, she would help.

The thing about Gertrude is that I don’t I think she is or ever has been heartless; I just think she’s brutally practical.

One of the most interesting tidbits about her is that she looked for Eric Delano for months after he went missing, but wasn’t close enough to know that he had quit ages before he actually died. She avenged Sarah’s death by seeking out someone she had never, ever let herself meet before that moment, but she did this right after sacrificing Michael without hesitation. She seemed genuinely fond of Gerry, but she still bound him to a book.

I think that, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be that she wouldn’t want to save Jon. It would just be that she would realize that she couldn’t.

If he had just arrived with a Guest for Mr. Spider, I think Jon would have walked away remembering her fondly as the brusk but ultimately nice old lady who had her assistant make him a cup of tea and taught him how to burn a Leitner. But he didn’t just come because of A Guest for Mr. Spider. He came because of Tommy Bradstaff.

Gertrude’s shown to be more wary of the Web than pretty much any other entity. She got tricked by them way back when she defeated her first ritual, and I don’t think she forgets. I also don’t think she would have thought it was ever a good idea to voluntarily set herself in a competition with the Mother of Puppets. Jon's eight and scared and she'd want to help him, but she also would have immediately recognized that saving him comes with a very high price tag and a very low chance of success.

I do think Gertrude would have at least tried to think of a way to save him. I just think she would have ultimately come to the conclusion that there wasn’t one.

And it’s just practicality, right? That’s the big difference between her and Jon in nhthcth. It doesn’t matter how badly she wishes she could help; she’ll accept when she can’t. But when she can, she usually racks up a very big win. Jon will wildly intervene without even considering his chances. Like, there's a reason why the Eye led him to Danny Stoker that night--it's not conscious the way humans are or the spiders are, but even pavlov's dogs learned association, and the Eye seems to be capable of that kind of low-level consciousness. When Jon finds Eric Delano's statement in canon, it's because he listened to the tapes the Eye didn't want him to hear. That implies the Eye is at least partially able to make connections based on its own impulses and desires.

Jon's its special little boy who has been resolutely fucking starving himself for almost two decades. He went and joined the eldritch version of AA with Daisy in an attempt not to feed the Eye other than when absolutely strictly necessary, and the Eye's never been happy with his starvation diet. But the one sure-fire way to get Jon to forget his sense and start ripping statements out of avatars is to shove some poor schmuck being eaten in his line of sight.

It’s pretty directly stated in nhthcth that danny isn’t the first victim of another entity he’s tried to snatch, even if he’s never gotten as involved with a pair of victims as the stoker brothers. And honestly—he almost didn’t get super involved with them either. Like, when he was trying to duck out after the initial fight at the theatre, long term involvement would have only made it worse for them. Most of the time, the absolute best chances come from "hope that they've forgotten you existed and won't come back for round two. if that fails maybe just hop continents and it will be too inconvenient for them to track you down again. buy guns." There's a pretty high mortality rate with people who hang around him, and he's not exactly expecting these random male model brothers to manage this world long-term.

If Jon’s hadn’t straight up passed out, he would have called Daisy to come pick him up and bitched to her about fucked up clowns being a problem now. He’d feel vaguely mad at himself when nikola skinned both Danny and Tim, because it’d be just another case of him trying to help and just increasing the body count, which is what happens most of the time.

I think Mike described him like someone who kept putting half dead birds in boxes and feeling disappointed when he opened the lid and saw they’d croaked. It's not unheard of for the people he helps to make it, but it's also not exactly often either. And that’s not even really to say he’s any less powerful or capable than gertrude was—honestly, between him and Daisy? They’re sort of a powerhouse duo. Like, people are afraid of hunters. At one point Dekker says that he was going up against something that would require a hunter to kill, and that while he knew a few, he would never actually risk consulting one. Amateur lobotomy it is. And Daisy is the sort of hunter that can kill other hunters. Jon’s this absolute muppet of a human being rolling up to soul-rending horror like “this is Daisy :) she is my best friend :)” and then they turn around and the Avatar of Fucking Them Up is standing there breathing too heavy and blatantly fucking insane. It’s like if kermit the frog kept bringing the fucking terminator to social events.

And Jon isn’t exactly a slouch either. Like, he’s keeping himself as weak as he can, and he’s still strolling into other entities' domains, feeding on them, and just... walking away again. These are people who are extremely used to being the human equivalent of a great white shark, more powerful and deadly than anyone else in any room they're in, but they've got this extremely distressed looking twink curb stomping them when he has reached the absolute breaking point of his Victorian Fatigue. this man keeps coming into their homes and one-shotting them after weakening himself to the point of being on death's door. jon on his own makes other avatars twitchy, but the Jon and Daisy Buddy Cop is honestly kind of one that the other avatars are somewhat actively afraid of.

Like, they'll dunk on Jon (where daisy can't see), because he's jon and he's ridiculous and pathetic at all times, but people are secretly pretty careful to toe the line of shit jon will put up with. Mike will be smarmy with Jon because he knows Jon will let him get away with it, but he also knows that if he fucks around too hard jon will put him through a psychic paper shredder and daisy will bury his corpse in the woods. It's not a secret that Daisy and Jon are strolling around feeding on and blatantly fucking murdering things like them, but none of these self-serving assholes have managed to handle a pretty active threat to their longevity. that's more because they can't than because they won't.

And still, Gertrude is pretty universally regarded as a force of nature, but Jon's still getting told that a seven percent success rate is a bit generous.

Gertrude is Gertrude Robinson, and she's the baddest bitch around, and that has a huge bit to do with her success rate. But it would be a mistake to say that the number of battles she picked didn't have something to do with why she's more successful. Like--Gertrude's going for quantity over sentiment. She'll save the world, but the individual people in it? Those aren't the fights she has ever prioritized, at the end of the day.

Almost all of the statements Jon in canon recorded were from her tenure, and Jon's follow ups usually concluded with "and then they horribly died." Gertrude was casually eating a fucking sandwich in her office and watching while Jane Prentiss decided that she couldn't be saved and went off to cram her forearm in a spooky wasp nest. She didn't help Jane. She didn't explain what was happening. She didn't try to intervene. She ate her sandwich, and she let Jane leave, and I think that at least in part she would have agreed with Jane's assessment. There wasn't any saving her, and that's a judgment that always precludes Gertrude's help.

Gertrude wins as often as she does because she picks her battles carefully. She delivers maximum damage to maximum effect, and she doesn't spin her wheels on things she knows are a waste of resources. She came right on the heels of an archivist who died because he burned through his resources and his luck, and her tenure has been marked by her being smart enough to be cautious.

I think Jon would have given her his statement. I think she would have been nice to him. I think she would have allowed herself to feel sorry for him, and sorry that he was so young, and sorry that it was too late.

I think that she would have considered what the web could have planned for him, and she would have considered how painful a fate was waiting for him if he met the End the Spider probably had planned for him. And I think she would have decided it would be crueler to let him meet it.

Gertrude in nhthcth specifically has always had a weird, twisted mercy when it came to Jon. She never manipulated him, is the thing. Elias made sure that what he did to Jon had long past the point of no return by the time Gertrude ever caught wind of his existence. As far as she was ever concerned, Jon was beyond saving from the day they met, which meant there was no point in trying. She was never going to offer him the mercy of trying to help him.

But she could have played him and she didn't. And I think that's about the most merciful action that Gertrude Robinson would have been capable of.

She knows about Agnes, okay? better than anyone. she's been bodily hauling the world as they know it through a decade of apocalypse attempts. She took one look at Jon and realized that elias had made him to wear the watcher's crown, but also that she couldn't kill him without completely alienating her resources to stop much sooner apocalypses.

But she sort of knew from the day they met that she may have to one day kill him, if only to stop him from wearing the crown. It wasn't set in stone, but it was a very significant possibility.

In chapter 24, Jon reached out to gertrude for absolutely any comfort possible, and she actually could have given it to him. She could have strung him along with false hope, or just given him a shoulder to cry on. Someone other than elias to love.

And she would have done that knowing that she was actively planning how to kill him when the time came. And she's definitely not above that kind of manipulation. Jon's extremely vulnerable when he comes to her, and he already thinks of her as a source of hope. Stringing him along and being his only source of comfort and support would give her an enormous advantage over him that she normally wouldn't ignore. But if he did die by her hands one day, as she knows he probably will, he'd finally go to his end after a very painful life being murdered by the only person that he thought loved him after he lost Gerry. Gertrude sort of uncharacteristically gave up that advantage to spare him from that final betrayal. She'd never sacrifice the world for him, she could have loved him like her own son and she would still kill him without hesitation, and she won't lie to herself about that fact either. It's a weird, twisted act of mercy to have it be turning the cold shoulder to a little boy begging for help, but in her mind, it was the most merciful option open to her.

And I kind of like the idea of Jonathan Sims in nhthcth always demanding the most painful acts of mercy of Gertrude that she's ever contemplated. Because the thing is, if she had been the one to take his Statement that day, she's almost definitely would have decided that Jon couldn't be saved. Not when the thing after him was the Web. And once she decides that, she has two options: let him meet the End waiting outside of those doors, or handle it herself.

And the thing is, her MO is to go for the former. It's not like she's mercy killing everyone who shows up and tells her of the fate worse than death that's most likely to befall them--hell, to take the risk of mercy killing is borderline out of character to her. If it were anyone else, she wouldn't have done it.

But Jon was eight. He was begging her for help that she couldn't give. And the Web has never been merciful. Either it was lying about wanting him for itself and he was going to be killed in the most slow, horrifying way possible, or it wasn't and he wasn't even going to get the mercy of death. Like, if a horrible, tragic fate is inevitable for him, Gertrude has to at least contemplate if there's an option that's more merciful than the rest.

Even giving him a less painful death is dangerous for Gertrude, but I think that's more of a price she'd be willing to contemplate. Like, killing another entity's victim is another way of snatching a meal from them. She had to at least entertain the risk that the Web would have some kind of retribution for it. But she would also entertain the fact that Jon's only sitting in the Archives because the Web let him get that far, that it wanted him to give its Statement to her, and ultimately decide that the risk is one she's willing to shoulder.

I think she would have made sure it didn't hurt. I think she would have made it quick, and made sure he didn't know it was happening. but I don't think she would have ever saved Jon the way he wanted to be saved.

If I’m being extremely generous (and self indulgent) and trying to come up with a world where she would go on a crusade to save him, and probably assuming some kind of off screen character arc that’s completely made her change her entire approach to life, I think she’d bring him to Agnes Montague.

If Jon could ever have a chance way back when he was eight, I think it would have been Agnes. Agnes is the direct opposite of the Web. She's the demigod messiah of the entity of Fucking Up All Your Life Plans. In canon, she's the one that Gertrude went to when she did need to go after the Web. If she had decided to try for him and needed to come up with an option to save him, she'd go to Agnes.

That being said, getting to that decision is just still really unlikely. For all of the above reasons and because of the difficulties Agnes poses. Even if they're in like, lesbian soul love, they've never met in person, and she doesn't really know if Agnes will help. It may attract the Lightless Flame's attention, and Jon may just end up burnt to death instead of filled with spiders. A lot of ways it could go wrong and give Jon a worse fate. It's the sort of Hail Mary play Gertrude never really did.

That line is in the summary because I thought it said everything about what the reader needed to know for Jon in nhthcth. (Also, I just thought it sounded nice.)

Jon in nhthcth is sort of defined by the fact that he has never gotten past who he was in the moment that James Wright locked him in Gertrude's office. It's one of the two cornerstones of everything he became.

The other cornerstone, of course, is Gerry.

Jon has spent his entire life trying to figure out a way that he could have been anything but what he is. It's been a decade and change, but he's never, ever been able to let go of what happened to him. And that feels at least a little off.

Maybe it's the idea that time heals all wounds, maybe it's the idea that Stockholm Syndrome should have kicked in eventually, maybe it's the evil god eating parts of his personality, maybe it's the idea that it's probably exhausting to eternally be struggling against a fate that you met when you were fucking eight. Even if he never becomes okay with what happened to him, he probably should have at least accepted it and moved on to some measure. Like, this has been his reality for almost his entire life. No matter how terrible it was, people usually adapt and acclimate to what happens to him.

One of the core traits of Jon in nhthcth was always supposed to be that Jon just didn't for some reason.

Like, Jon has not even passed the threshold of accepting what happened to him. It's all these years later, and he's desperately replaying what happened and trying to come up with the version that has him going home at the end. Even if you don't accept your current situation, you probably should have stopped trying to figure out what you could have done differently when you were eight, no matter how terrible what happened is.

At the end of the day, even with all he knows, Jon just has never understood why he couldn't have been saved.

He knows there's no Light Side at the end of the day. This isn't some big battle of Good Against Evil--it's just a series of Bad inconveniencing Other Bad because what Other Bad wants is not in the interest of what Bad wants. There's no ancient secret order battling the dark--there's just a lot of people stopping each other from ending the world because they want to be the ones to do it, and also like, Gertrude Robinson and her good-time buddy That One Random Priest. If you're looking for someone to save you in the TMA world, there just isn't really anyone.

And that's part of why Jon goes in after Danny Stoker. It's part of why he keeps undertaking the world's most half-assed rescue attempts. Trying to save Danny when his entire life has indicated that's impossible and probably going to make things worse is a deeply irrational thing to do. He probably should have learned when to walk away by now.

But a part of him is still eight, and a part of him has spent his entire life going over the worst thing that ever happened to him and trying to figure out the way to make it different.

It takes a specific sort of person to keep undertaking herculean efforts in a desperate, wild attempt to save people that he knows are as good as dead. And I think that sort of person once was someone who was as good as dead. He saves Danny Stoker because a part of him is still desperately trying to find the person who could have done the same for him.

In the end, he became the thing he once needed most in the world, which was a chance. I don't think he's realized that fact. And I don't know if he'd find it comforting if he did.

The other thing about that sentence is that it's completely and utterly pointless.

Like. It's been eighteen fucking years. At a certain point, you have to decide it doesn't matter anymore, and clinging to the question of whether someone could have saved you just doesn't help anything. But one of the other core traits of Jon in nhthcth was that he was someone who just simply did not care if what he was doing was practical or had any chances of succeeding.

He's designed to be so stubborn in it that it's almost ridiculous, and more than a little comical but it's honestly borderline sad to me. Here Jon is, making it his life's fucking mission to hold the title of World's Shittiest Employee. He is going to make his hostage situation inconvenient for everyone. He's not doing fucking paperwork; he's only here because elias kidnapped him. He can't get away, but he's going to be the absolute most unmanageable nightmare alive.

It does absolutely nothing to help him.

He doesn't think anyone in the Institute is ever going to help him. He doesn't think he's going to force Elias's hand into letting him go by racking up the most HR complaints in Institute history. It doesn't actually help him in any way to do the vast majority of what he does--it actively hurts him, actually. There's no one in the Institute who wants to help him, because they see him as a nuisance. When he causes Elias too much trouble, Elias punishes him for it. It'd be better from a consequentialist perspective to have settled into some kind of facade of normalcy, but he hasn't. Because playing along, going along with the facade as an Institute employee--he'd have to at least implicitly admit that what happened to him isn't relevant anymore. Sure, Elias kidnapped him and fed him to an ancient, primordial hunger from the dawn of civilization, but by god, he has his monthly staff meeting to get to, and that's too important to make a fuss about the first thing.

It's kind of sad, because while the Institute didn't know the entire picture, nineteen-year old Martin almost immediately said "wow, that blatantly unstable child sure does act like he's being severely abused." Elias had to feed him a story about an entirely different abuser to dodge the world's most needed CPS visit, and Martin still almost turned around and reported Elias literally the same afternoon. Yeah, Elias had a story for the institute to explain jon's Everything, but they really didn't have to buy it.

Like, willful ignorance absolutely played a role in it. Part of it was Elias was their boss and nobody wanted to be the one to accuse him of child abuse. It was easier to accept his lies at face value and not stick their neck out for him. Part of it was just that Jon's never been a very likable victim for them. He wasn't some tearful damsel they could swoop in and save--he smoked too much and was angry and loud about it. And once they made that initial decision to ignore their misgivings, the chances of anyone breaking that pattern got extremely low. No one wants to admit to themselves that they ignored a little kid in an extremely abusive household just because his abuser was their boss and they didn't like the kid all that much. Martin kind of hit Jon like a grenade when he first joined up and actually gave a shit if he was okay.

Of course, this all means that Jon's spent the past decade or so being told by everyone who could see him hurting that his upset at the soul-crushing pain he was in was inconvenient to them and it's rude of him to be so loud about it, could he do that somewhere else, because it really doesn't matter. and he's still there saying "it does matter. it matters to me."

Just--doing pointless things because if he doesn't then they stop mattering and they have to matter somehow defines so much of what he does.

When he was a little boy, Gerry told him that the clothes you wore were meant to be things that make you feel like you, that were who you were or wanted to be, and Jon decided that the parts of him that he loved were made up of other people. It's been fourteen years since he told him that, and out of all the people he's tried to make himself with, Daisy is the only one he still has in his life. He wears the secondhand clothes of people who he lost without anyone else caring to preserve a self that people are actively trying to kill. The fact that he feels more like him when he wears Gerry's coat only matters to the extent that he lets it. He makes pointless interventions on behalf of people he knows he probably can't save, because if he doesn't, then he fact that they needed help to begin with didn't matter. It only mattered whether they could have been saved; needing to be saved doesn't factor in.

I basically wanted him to be the opposite of Basira. Basira was the world's most polite hostage in Season 3. Martin had to actually ask her if she was aware she was in a hostage situation. Her entire thing was that there was no point in getting upset at something you couldn't change--you either got on as best you could or you found a way to change it anyway. That's the exact opposite to nhthcth Jon's approach to life--the Web even pokes fun at him for it in chapter 9. A spider's prey thrashes itself to death trying to get out of its web. Jon's just--flailing like a fly struggling against a web. Gertrude always conserved her resources and energy for where it would matter most, but he exhausts himself on things he knows wouldn't succeed. It doesn't make any practical sense, but there's something viscerally human about it still.

And the last thing that sentence tells you about Jon is that he is someone who has to believe in the lightning strike.

The thing is? Jon knows about pretty much everything this post discussed. No one really knew Gertrude, but if there was someone who did, it was him. He's been hanging around her since he was a little kid. It's been stated that she personally tried to teach him to some degree, though, and we've seen that she's stated to his face that she would not have tried to save him if she had been the one to take his statement. She never really represented a chance at things having gone differently to begin with.

But he still thinks of her specifically when he tries to find the version of himself that isn't this. Because even if she was never really a chance, she was still the biggest chance he had.

Jon was eight. He knew jack all when this started, and he was going up against the most dangerous entity there was. He was never going to come up with a place to go to that wasn't the Magnus Institute, and he was never going to outsmart the Web on his own. Gertrude Robinson was the only one who he ever had a snowball's chance of crossing paths with who wasn't like, actively evil.

There's basically nil chance of her having had some kind of midlife crisis right before he showed up and deciding that this is the one she must save and damn the consequences. There's an even smaller chance of her actually pulling it off and saving him from the Web. But that was the biggest chance he had, and he can't help but cling to it.

Sometimes, you have to beat the odds. Sometimes, lightning strikes.

If you believe in the idea of the multiverse, and that everything that can happen will happen, there is a Jon out there in some far-off universe who walked into the Magnus Institute and met Gertrude Robinson instead of James Wright. There is a Gertrude Robinson who, against all odds, decided that Jon was worth the costs of saving him, who fought tooth and nail to save him and won. It's a fairytale he tells himself, but the idea of someone kind enough to put him in a car so they could drive all about, go on adventures, and find places with rain was also a fairytale he once heard, and it still happened. Gerry was his lightning strike.

And that's really the crux of it. In order for Jon to have loved Gerry the way he did, he had to be someone who would bank everything on odds that were a lot smaller than being struck by lightning. Jon needs to be the type of person who will believe in chances that barely exist, because if he doesn't, he could have never made he decisions he had to make to stay by Gerry's side.

Gerry Keay was not Gertrude Robinson, and he definitely was not anywhere near her caliber when he was the little boy who tried to take Jon and run. They live in a world that tears into your soul, that Marks you in a way that cannot be removed and that never, ever lets you go. It's monsters eating other monsters, and they were both very small and very damned from the get-out. The chances of Jon Sims and Gerry Keay saving each other were always so much smaller than the chances of Gertrude Robinson saving him, and he knew it. If he couldn't believe that there was at least a chance that Gertrude would have saved him, then he couldn't believe that he and Gerry ever had a chance of finding their way home.

We still don't know where Gerry is in 2013, why he isn't there, but we know that Daisy saw him with Jon in 2011, kicking each other under the table for making ill-timed jokes to a monster who wanted to kill them. They first ran in 1999. That's twelve years of betting everything on odds south of a lightning strike. It takes specific kinds of people to do that. It takes people who will take the worst odds possible because they're the only ones they have.

There's no power of love or friendship or hope in that universe, but I think Jon and Gerry wanted to believe that they could love each other to the point of survival. They were looking at a world where, in the whole span of human history, love had not made a lick of difference to the things they faced, and they were asking to be the exception. Wondering if Gertrude Robinson would have saved him... it's hardly the most improbable thing Jon's ever let himself believe.

#nhthcth #tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #gertrude robinson #gerry keay #the continuing adventures of me answering asks after my adhd meds have worn off #babygirl i will answer questions no one even asked #me answering asks when unmedicated is just me reaching the end and realizing i went off on every tangent known to man #i will forge bold new paths into terrains no one ever fucking asked about #i already typed it it's too late now here have my info dump #i want you all to know that there's a half answered ask in my drafts and i found a way to have tangents about death note the iconic anime #and plato's republic the classic of greek philosophical thought #did the ask have absolutely anything to do with either of those things #no #i'm like this in real life too you could not plot a conversation with me on a map

60 notes · View notes

slurpem · 1 month

Text

my camcorder I bought like 15 years ago with my allowance money at radioshack to record skating vids with my friends finally broke. so now in 2024 I need to somehow find another one that has the perfect balance of like looking all outdated and shitty in a good way. like bad quality enough that it feels kinda dreamy and untouchable but doesn't actually look terrible

#i was lucky to have that shit #i wanna record my day to day adventures and make like slice of life surreal indie music vid collage type things with my instrumentals

2 notes · View notes

wickedcriminal · 2 years

Note

Thinking back about the httyd books the more I remember the more I am concerned at how dark they got (the whole heart thingy with the big dragon, dying fishlegs, the VAMPIRE DRAGON WITH TRACKING TEETH THAT YOU MENTIONED IS VAGUELY FAMILIAR AND DEFINITELY ALARMING.......and i just remembered something about a sand dragon in the later half of the books that scared the crap out of me as a kid)

OH YEAH THE AMBER SLAVELANDS MONSTER??? HORRIFYING. EYES ON ITS FINGERS. HUGE TALONS. ALMOST DISSOLVED HICCUP ALIVE WITH ITS SALIVA AND TRAPPED FISHLEGS BY BURNING THE SAND AROUND HIM INTO A GLASS CASE.

WE HATE TO SEE IT.

Then the vampire spydragon????

HORRIBLE. HATE IT. DISLODGES ONE OF ITS TEETH INTO YOUR BODY THAT PARALYZES YOU AND SO IT CAN TRACK YOU LATER. NEARLY KILLED HICCUP ON THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS.

Honestly I'm really glad it got darker and darker the further you read, because this is exactly what i love to see in a book about vikings and dragons. These are some scary awesome dragons!! And Cressida got really creative with all the terrible horrible situations she could throw Hiccup and friends into. (ESPECIALLY book 11. Oh good lord, book 11.)

#httyd books #ask #you know what it kind of reminds me of?#when i was young i read deltora quest which was around the same tone as this series; still a kid's series but got very mature at points #there was a surprising amount of death and life threatening situations but the one that stuck out most to me was a moment in book 6 #where the main characters were stuck in an underground tunnel system that was the lair of a giant sluglike creature that was #actually really similar to the amber slavelands monster because it took you underground and trapped you in glass/string until it was ready #to eat you #i just remembered that beast was the scariest thing little me ever read about but it became my favorite book because of it #idk i just really love that type of horror #so its really a shame i never read httyd when i was younger because 12 year old me would have been so smitten with it #I'm smitten with it NOW though!! its STILL my cup of tea!!#putting this series fondly on the shelf next to deltora quest as part of my personal favorite adventure series #went on a tangent there sorry

54 notes · View notes

spell-cleaver · 2 years

Note

hey there! read one of your fics, checked out some of your others and marked them for later, and wanted to check out your tumblr, and then noticed that it says ‘teenager’ in your bio. not to be weird - i’m so sorry, feel free to delete this if it comes across as weird, but how do you have the time? i mean this literally - i’m also a teenager writing Star Wars fics, but, gosh, I use a lot of my free time writing them and most of them are about a thousand words long (1/2)

(2/2) and they already take up so much of my time. I also deleted my tumblr because it was taking up too much of my time, but you seem to be doing great with both platforms, and also being a teenager - so I just wanted to ask how you manage to manage your time so well/have so much time? I would love to write longer things, but between school and family and extracurriculars and community service i just don’t have the time. I’m so happy for you that you’re living the time management dream🤩💛 /gen

Hi there!! No worries, I don't find this weird at all :D And thanks for reminding me that was in my bio, it's been there for years but in a few weeks it'll no longer be true and I'll have to change it XD

I have been writing this much (if not as prolifically) since I was 14/15 though, and that's mainly because it sounds like I had an advantage compared to you. I was actually talking to my sister this morning about different types of school we have in the UK and long story (and angry rant) short, my secondary school was really, really chill. I had homework. There were a few clubs I went to. But it finished every day at 15:05 and I went home at 17:00 at the latest and I had the evenings and weekends free. Compared to a lot of my friends who went to different schools to me, that was a lot of free time.

Plus, I was lucky to be a fast writer. When I started out I could write about 1k in an hour. Now, if I'm working at average speed and writing consistently, I can do 1k in 20 minutes. Plus, I retrained myself a few years ago with online typing games so I could type faster (and properly. I used to online type with my index fingers, and that was both slow aaaand I was starting to injure them). So I just happen to have that speed advantage which meant I could take advantage of my spare time.

And finally, you mentioned school and family and extracurriculars and community service. I had one or two volunteering roles, and one or two ECs, but they took maybe 4-6 hours a week max. Writing was my main hobby. My friends mainly met up at the weekend, and I wrote in the evenings. My family knew that and didn't bother me during writing hours (and I was also lucky to be in a household that didn't need me 24/7. When my parents had illness or operations and such, my writing time was affected! They needed me around the house more). Contrast this with my time since September, which was my second year at uni but the first where stuff is actually on, post-lockdown. I was running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what I wanted to do and what time I wanted to keep for myself and was all around exhausted - and though, bc I'm a fast writer, my output didn't necessarily show it, I didn't spend much time writing! Which was frustrating, because writing is a super important way of relaxing for me. But I didn't have the time for the first time ever, and that was stuff I'd chosen for myself, let alone actual commitments.

I am a strict timekeeper - I love planning my days to the minute - and I am fairly good at self-discipline, so when I was 15 and said "my new year's resolution is to write every single day", I did it. Saying to myself that the evening from about 7pm to 9pm was my writing time was really helpful, and I defended it. But overall, I was in a lucky situation in that I was able to have that time to defend at all. (Moving away and having to cook for myself, which could take all evening, made it difficult as well.)

TL;DR: Basically, I write fast, and I was lucky. I did have the time, because there was plenty of other stuff I was lucky not to have to do, and so when I set myself a daily challenge I had the time to do it. It was circumstantial just as much as it was time management skills. Though I do pride myself on timekeeping, and it was useful, it wasn't super important. Not everyone has the time to write every day - I don't anymore, not during the semester, though thankfully I'm on holiday now - and that's alright.

#really hope this doesn't sound condescending!! i mean it #I Was Lucky #and i missed out on a lot of stuff because i was writing all the time lmao #i just personally decided that i'd rather write than do that stuff and sometimes that was the write choice (ha)#and sometimes it was the wrong one #i turn twenty in two weeks though aaaa i should update my bio #ask spell something #lovely things said to me #spell speaks #spell narrates her writing adventures #that typing game... throwback #used to listen to political podcasts while teaching myself how to type #an interesting time in my life #anon #anonymous

7 notes · View notes

badgertracksart · 9 months

Text

Portfolio advice, from a lead who hires Concept Artists

(This was originally a twitter thread I wrote before the site self imolated, hense it's strange structure.) I wrote this after a weekend of portfolio reviews - 1. Like a maths exam, please please show your working. I want to see thumbs options, mid options and of course a final design.

2. Arrange your portfolio, I don't want to bounce about between subject matter and pipeline. Your portfolio's narrative should be as strong as your work... 3. Please make worlds that excite the viewer, make them want to go in and explore them, explain to them the interesting parts of the town, or the way the character's hat unfolds. How will this draw the viewer in? 4. As I've said before the majority of your project work is explanatory not mood, make sure your portfolio contains explanatory work. Explained here -

5. A lot of beautiful post apocolyptic paintings, , but 80% of realistic games and film, we just give the environment artists photo ref, they are capable artists in their own right. Different work in stylised where you do need to create rules for how things can be translated. 6. Production art contains call out sheets, material references and flat graphics. This doesn't have to be your final image, but it should support it.

7. Design characters on a swatch(es) of the environment they will be viewed in. Not on white. I make swatch backgrounds from screenshots, it avoids assumptions that damage readability. 8. Reverse of this, put people in your environments, show me the scale.

9. It's not a deal breaker for a review, but if you intend to get a job, please show me your work on a screen larger than a smartphone (print outs probably the cheapest option with the best battery life). 10. Please have your contact details clearly visible, and by that I mean email address, I will not pass your social media contact on, I cannot input your form into my tracking system. EMAIL ADDRESS emblazoned and bake it in, sometimes recruiters do funky stuff to pdfs

11. Your portfolio will never feel done, not to you anyway. You will have learnt from your latest pieces and want to apply it to older work. But we know art is a journey. Send your portfolio anyway. I've been in the industry 10+ years and my portfolio is still not 'finished'. 12. If you are applying to an environment centric Concept Art position then please vary your times of day! Golden hour is cool but show me some happy sunny days, looming overcast days, what about at night? Vary your weather too! Sunny snowy day? Rainy Spring day? Stormy night?

13. If you are applying for a character centric Concept Art role then please ensure your portfolio shows a variety of body types and ethnicities. 14. Designing characters for games? Please show back views and feet (!) Many potfolios contain only front views. This is a problem because:

You haven't shown you are considering the design from all angles.

In many games rear view is the main view.

Stop cropping feet.

15. If you are entry / graduating and looking at Portfolios to compare content and standard of yr own work too, look at hired grad/junior artists as opposed to seniors Seniors and leads often have old or personal work in their portfolio which isnt representative of the day job. 16a. Show clearly the intended use case for your Concept Art. Mention the game type in the description. Are these player character designs for a 3rd person adventure game? Then more back views please. Bonus points for diagetic ways of showing health / equipment / role etc.

16b. Are these designs for an FPS? Then really the player view of the gun needs to sell the player style/ choices, in an FPS your weapons are almost your character. Are these world designs? What's the view distance? For an RTS your shapes need to read from above & a distance. 16c. The lack of clarification means I am judging the design in isolation, which both harms the design (you might be considering the backview of a char as the main adventure character.) Or an NPC, their waist up expressions may be important for conveying exposition and mechanics.

16d. Concept art is not separate from gameplay, great concept art serves the game team before it is a good illustration.

17. Play games. A variety of games. Think about them. IMO to be a good concept artist you need to understand the common language & references used by your peers. Also understand the principles and common language your audience are used to. FPS design rules are v.diff from RTS.

18. There are many skills that are needed in concept art, please show them. For example: Graphic design - logos, liveries, typographic use etc. VFX concepts - Abilities, Ambience, motion concepts. Architectural knowledge - How buildings are built! & more but I'm out of space :O

#gamedev #conceptart #advice #careeradvice #hiring

6K notes · View notes

ghostlyferrettarot · 2 months

Text

🖤✨️Venus in the houses✨️🖤

❗️All the observations in this post are based on personal experience and research, it's completely fine if it doesn't resonate with everyone❗️

✨️Paid Services ✨️ (Natal charts and tarot readings)Open.

🖤🖤If you like my work you can support me through Ko-fi. Thank you!🖤🖤

🖤Masterlist🖤

♥︎Venus 1st house: charming people with a flirtatious aura. They know how to get people attached to them ; love to compliment others but expect double the praise in return, they know they are a catch. This individuals are usually the life of the party, the one who unites the relationship/friendship group.

♥︎Venus 2nd house: This is the house of finances, so these people prefer to be pampered by their loved one. People with strong values and respect, they expect the same from their partners. They don't play, they want stability and seriousness in a relationship; most loyal and supporting persons ever.

♥︎Venus 3rd house: really flirtatious and persuasive. They value new experiences, they are attracted to other's personality and interests. You have to keep them entertained, they have an adventurous nature and can get bored easily when it comes to a routine.

♥︎Venus 4th house: These individuals have a really harmonious and protective nature, a fairy-like aura to them. They value comfort and openness in a relationship, they want to feel the love of their partners and create a special bond with them. These people tend to attract people with mommy and daddy issues, with an "I can fix them" vibe.

♥︎Venus 5th House: These are my luxurious people, they have high standards and don't care what anyone has to say about it. They are in love with love, their cheerful nature attracts them towards creative people and people who are in a position of fame or success. They are the muses of artists.

♥︎Venus 6th house: These individuals tend to manage many things at once, they thrive on self-improvement. Their love language tends to be acts of service, they are also attracted to truly selfless people. They can spot a lie from miles away, value trust, and expect the same from their romantic partners. They forgive but they never forget.

♥︎Venus 7th house: They have an attractive and persuasive personality, they are tolerant and charismatic. The 7th house is the house of agreement and partnership, so your luck will probably change after your marriage, your significant other may play an important role in your life. These people crave love and genuine connections.

♥︎Venus 8th house: They are very sensual and intimidating; tend to have stalkers and admirers. They value deep connections, people who truly understand and accept them. People with some type of trauma are attracted to them. You may be interested in occult sciences and have healing powers.

♥︎Venus 9th house: They have a happy aura and an adventurous character. These individuals are attracted to optimistic and adventurous people, those who value their beliefs and want to take risks with them. Venus in the 9th house attracts many foreigners as it may indicate a lot of travelling, you significant other may be from another country.

♥︎Venus 10th House: The 10th House governs public image, career aspirations, and career achievements which makes these individuals attracted to status. They are goal-oriented, always looking to improve, and expect the same from their partners. You will want to live a high-profile life and connect with influential people.

♥︎Venus 11th house: They have a calming and jovial personality. Easily attract many friends who would want to work and connect with you to grow your business. These are my "friends to lovers" trope, they value friendship over romance, which attracts them to those closer to them.

♥︎Venus 12th house: These are my artistic people, they have a lot of passion and compassion. They tend to be attracted to spiritual or helpful people. They value connections and are naturally drawn to others; They find much comfort in helping those around them. They are looking for a partner with good character and empathy.

2K notes · View notes

mozart-the-meerkitten · 7 months

Text

PSA- TAKE YOUR FLASHDRIVE OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER

If you are not using your flashdrive to actively back things up- TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER! DO IT NOW! RIGHT. NOW.

Yesterday one of my flashdrives stopped working. My mom took it to our local computer guy to find out what was wrong with it and the guy said the the ONLY way that it could POSSIBLY (not definitely, POSSIBLY) be recovered is by sending it to a FORENSICS COMPANY that charges NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS ($950) as a flat rate for this service. IF the stuff can even be recovered.

The computer guy said that he has seen all types of flashdrives, no matter the quality, fail because people don't know that they need to take them out of their computers when they're not using them. A few of the things that can happen are the flashdrive can overheat or a virus could destroy it if your computer happens to pick up a virus.

I have thousands of pictures and videos on that flashdrive, precious, precious memories of kids I've worked with that I may never see again in my life and now I might have lost them because I didn't know to take my flashdrive out of my computer when I'm not using it. The cute pictures of my three new kittens I've been posting? On that flashdrive. Memories from holidays and birthdays and camping adventures might be lost forever.

TAKE. YOUR. FLASHDRIVE. OUT. OF. YOUR. COMPUTER!!!!!!

(please for the love of all that is good share this so other people don't have it happen too)

#technology #flashdrive #flash drive #computers #computer storage #disk drive #psa #public service announcement

5K notes · View notes

cogentranting · 2 years

Text

Rating Disney Horse Designs

Cyril Proudbottom (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) 2/10 His vacant eyes and grotesque proportions disturb me

The Headless Horseman’s Horse (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) 7/10 Stunning. Very dramatic. Powerful look.

Major (Cinderella) 4/10 Cyril Proudbottom’s more distinguished cousin.

Samson (Sleeping Beauty) 3/10 There’s something not right about his face. I don’t trust him.

Captain (One Hundred and One Dalmatians- movie) 5/10 A solid design. Friend shaped.

Captain (I don’t know- some 101 Dalmatians tv show it looks like) -30/10 Kill it now before it destroys us all.

Frou-Frou (Aristocats) 7/10 A perfect genteel lady. Loses points for inconsistency in the animation.

Philippe (Beauty and the Beast) 8/10 I’d trust this horse with my life

Achilles (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) 6/10 Respectable. Handsome.

Snowball (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) 10/10 The DRAMA. The expression somewhere between “evil” and “hasn’t slept in 4 days”. The HAIR. Perfection. Exactly the type of horse I’ll ride when I turn evil.

Pegasus (Hercules) 6/10 A fun design, lot’s of personality. But kinda gives off Frat Boy energy.

Baby Pegasus (Hercules) 11/10 I’d die for him.

Khan (Mulan) 10/10 Look at those absurd proportions-- the tiny legs and the huge barrel chest- amazing.

Bullseye (Toy Story 2-4) 4/10 Is he cute? yes. But as someone who has owned many toy horses in her life, this is not a toy horse I would be pleased with.

This Bullseye Toy I found looking for a movie picture of Bullseye -100/10 This thing IS cursed and we will probably all die for having seen it. But I’m taking you all down with me.

Buck (Home on the Range) 2/10 No matter what picture, no matter what expression, you look at this horse and just KNOW he would be so unpleasant to talk to.

Blessedly, there is no horse in Chicken Little.

Destiny (Enchanted) 5/10 This is a Barbie horse and I swear I owned it.

Maximus (Tangled) 7/10 A good design but too much dogness.

Angus (Brave) 15/10 Everything that’s good in a horse.

Sitron (Frozen) 11/10 He deserves so much better than Hans. Look at his kind eyes. This is a horse that will treat you right. This horse is the anti-Hans.