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fanofthelamb · 21 days

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So I went dumpster diving in my tablet for the first lamb I ever drew and WOW... I found a lot of sketches I really don't plan on revisiting. I am jsut gonna dump them below the cut for people to see!! Some of it is lore related, some of it is shit I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HATE, but IDC!!! I will post it anyway for the tumblr users who I keep an eye on my notifs for. (yes, i see you guys. even if i dont always interact I see you and love you guys)

Anyway, here is the earliest drawin I have of me drawing the lamb!! I am going to write a comment under a lot of these to add context to them.

A cute little baby <3333 but I struggled a LOT of figuring out what the lamb was wearing, I eventually figured it out though. (I hope)

if you know, you know. (RIP VAL)

for my BTG AU. I decided I no longer wanted chemach to make the [spoiler] for the lamb, though, so I scrapped this

vaaaal,,,,,, i was still learning how to draw him, i wish i put pants on him but do those even exist in COTL? (yes)

I haven't been able to do much with them because I'm putting other stuff first, but Brear has two kids, Notre and Brejul who Narinder absolutely ADORES. he is the one who babysits.

fun fact but the lamb being touch repulsed is a projection LOL. i hate it when people touch me it feels so tickly and makes me want to bite their faces off. (but i am touch starved and i LOVE to show affection to other ppl, esp thru back rubs)

yes, they have a hoop for personal space. no, ill never use it.

drum corcl,,,, i love the little dancing guy that comes from the drums

more narinder and brear. they're not romantically interested in each other, but he is absolutely head over heels for brear, their brother, and the kids. they even call him dad sometimes.

[no context]

kallamar and leshy before their crowns. the scene i have related to this isn't happening anymore, but it was leshy begging to be taught to swim.

another "the one who baby sits" doodle. the bishops all came into the cult with a very good repuation thanks to narinder. he likes to tell the kids of the cult stories about how amazing his siblings were. at first, it was just to nobre and brejul with stories about leshy(he missed leshy a lot even though he was still mad at him, and the two reminded narinder of his time with leshy), but then it escalated into him hosting storytimes with larger groups after they started repeating some of the stories he'd tell them.

unfinsihed stuff about with the lamb and thier mom. their mom wasn't afraid of the bishops at all, but knew that they were a still a threat to her and her child's life. the lamb did NOT care for anyone thier mom didn't approve of/enthusiastically liked. they were much more afraid of the bishops than their mother.

i do not actually know if i posted this.i dont think so, but i giggle every time i scroll past it

brear and nobre <333

im still workong on BTG shit, and i post a little bit of the characters on here even tho the comics are going to be posted elsewhere. they have a "crownlike" beak, but a body part. there's different creatures who became gods through different ways; crowns are one way but their power is stuck with the crown and they are considered extremely weak compared to other gods. i wont blabber on about it tho.

so many sketches has random lines through em because i work with a tablet,,, i hate it. anyway, narinder and kallamar everybody!

sketches i made but didn't bother to finish of me and merbre,,,,,,,,, my husband #1 <3 them w/ narinder + merbre arent gonna be considered "canon" but damn it ill self-ship with them until i get a follower i can WORK with

i come back to this every few weeks and im never happy with it, i dont know if ill finish this but i think about them........ before the divorce </3

unused from an ask

heartstealer. menace. you can rip my heart out anytime, leshy <3

dreshy. he LOVES dresses and being pretty and cute and pretty. he sucks narinder into a lot and heket will sometimes join in if he demands asks her to <3

another unused drawing from an ask i'll eventually answer. (mildly offended at being called a mutton cube.)

.... aaand WOW! I think that's everything guys!! things are still kinda wild but they're calming down a little bit. idk how much longer it's gonna last like this but I have some energy so I made a way-too-long post showing off art I wasn't supposed to post! Awesome. :D

#cw gore #cotl au stuff in here #23 pics under the cut btw #cotl #cotl fanart #cult of the lamb #cotl lamb #the lamb #cotl narinder #cotl spoilers #cotl kallamar #cotl leshy #i dont think ill tag anymore #idek if i should've tagged this post at all #but well see how it plays out!!#THIS POST TOOK FOREVER TIME TO GO CLEAN

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hydrachea · 3 months

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Have you ever noticed the parallels between the nameless child Kunikuzushi took care of pre-Fatui and Nahida and get the feeling that history will repeat Although this time perhaps, bc Nahida is a god, by the time the Wanderer has found her she'd have shrunk down into a tiny leaf, easily blown away, easily crushed underfoot if one was not careful. With shaky breaths, he cups her with one trembling hand while ripping the cloth of the left side of his shirt with the other, creating a hole where the heart should be. The skin on his chest cracks, and a door swings open, revealing a compartment once built for holding the cursed remains of god. The Wanderer, now hunched over like a pilgrim in prayer, brings the leaf close to his chest and gently places it in the compartment. For the first time in his life, he was grateful for his long life, the super resilience of his body made by Irminsul. If there's nothing else he could do, he could wait. He will wait. He will make sure Nahida sees the brilliance of the sun once more. One day, they shall be reunited.

@feroluce babe, there's someone at the door for you!

This hitting every single one of my partner in crime's buttons aside, it also hits a lot of mine so I in fact had not noticed but I will now happily be noticing. I had thought of making use of his gnosis compartment before, but in a much less... Wholesome context. This one, though, I also like.

Especially the bittersweet realization that as the Wanderer finally gets what he's been craving for centuries - the power of a god, feeble as it may have become, hosted within his body - letting him fulfill the very purpose he was created for at last... He feels nothing. None of the satisfaction, of the elation he long thought would come with this moment. Instead, he's alone, and he feels more hollow than ever.

(But he's used to feeling alone, and this is something he's learned to endure. And endure it he will, because the faint thrum of divine energy in his chest beats gently like a promise - this time you know you won't be alone forever.)

#ask #answer #rainycloudmountain #consider this noticed and appreciated #very appreciated #you can do so much with scara and nahida it's fantastic #oh to have characters who save each other #there fero fresh meal delivered right to our door how do you like that #it's kind of reminiscent of that one au we talked about way back when #but sweeter #i also like sweeter #the past repeats itself but it also doesn't #this time around he gets there in time #this time around he can save them #he'll have to be patient #but nonetheless things are different this time #and that means something #genshin

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imminent-danger-came · 9 months

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I love reading your tags- especially when theres just even MORE info dumping there.

The least favorite character ask made me giggle a bit, "This character that appeared for a single episode is actually pretty cool. And this character is really awesome in this particular context. But ALSO I really like this character with very little actual screentime."

You‘re absolutely right though! Characters whose only purpose is to fill a particular role are chosen really well too! Like the Host Girl; sure, she doesn’t really have a personality or anything, but she doesn’t NEED to have one. As you said, she‘s collateral damage. She gives us more insight to Wukong, she shows us just how ruthless he can be. He‘s willing to kill the epitome of innocence: A child. A defenseless little girl with a cutesy voice, who was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

(It‘s also worth a mention that, contrary to Wukong, she revealed a softer side of Macaque. Not to the extent the fandom built it up, but in an arguably more meaningful way. He‘s worried/feels bad for a total stranger. Even if it was only a concerned look, she once again gave us a deeper insight to a member of the main cast.)

And the characters with less focus either have really genuine interactions (Yellow Tusk with Azure) that just endear you to them, or they drop a banger line (like the Jade Emperor) before their purpose is fulfilled.

Nothing wrong with being a plot device if it‘s done well!

This wasn‘t really much of an ask rather than me rambling. Sorry.

I welcome rambles in my ask box! Half of you that show up in my ask box could just write your own analysis posts.

And you're also totally right! There isn't anything wrong with characters that are there just to function as plot devices. Sometimes a child is there just to be a child, and that's all they need to be. I think I feel this way about Megapolis (a name for the city that hasn't even been mentioned in show). Like it's a city filled with innocent people, it's MK & the Gang's home, and that's all it kinda needs to be tbh. LMK has to be extremely tight with what it chooses to focus on because of time constraints, and it does that well. When it comes down to it, focusing on the characters/plot is more important than focusing on the setting (which I think debatably wouldn't contribute much anyways—like we don't need more of a reason to care about the city, you know?).

I have this same opinion when it comes to the Demon Bull Family, which may be an unpopular take, but the truth is that a lot of their development happened off-screen. After ROTSQ and until we see them again in 3x06, it's clear that there have been positive changes between Red Son and his parents. I think I've seen some folk want Red Son to cut off his parents entirely, but that kinda goes against the core of his character. Part of Red Son's appeal for me is his complete devotion to his family despite their flaws (saving them in ROTSQ and EYD, attempting to save them in 4x09). Red Son and Princess Iron Fan only ever wanted world domination because that's what DBK wanted, and after that failed—they gave up. They hit the bricks. Red Son then started a food business with his dad (jealous of MK and Pigsy's noodle shop mayhaps?), and I think it's telling that DBK would even agree to do that to begin with. DBK and PIF's disregard of Red Son may not be acknowledged in the way people want, and I get that, but it's not that it didn't happen. I'd say there's another jump in their development between the end of 3x14 and the beginning of 4x09, where the fact that DBK calls out for Red Son as he gets taken away shows a closeness between them that we hadn't seen before. It's also clear that DBK has grown past the person who only wanted to create the world in his own image, chastising Azure Lion:

Demon Bull King: "How many times must you be struck down chasing this same foolish dream?"

(4x09 Roast of the Monkie Kids)

(Plus "This pursuit of yours has warped your mind brother—it is the only reason I could imagine that you would have the nerve to assault my home and harm my family!" echoing PIF in 1x10 "Come to your senses, this power has poisoned your mind!"; Azure unreasonably considers DBK a traitor like DBK had unreasonably considered Red Son a traitor, etc.)

DBK, unlike plenty of other antagonists in LMK (Spider Queen, LBD, and Azure specifically), learned to stop and accept the world as it was. He failed as a conqueror, but he still had his family, and he could try and not fail as a father for his "half-baked son"—or that's how I interpret DBK anyhow.

((I also want to bring up the fact that DBK didn't dare use the Samadhi Fire ring he had to power himself up with Red Son's furnace in AHIB. Like, even the Mr. Bull King has some restraint—there are prices too great to pay for the world, hence why he gave up on world domination after 1x10, when he almost killed his wife and son.))

To me it makes the Demon Bull Family feel like characters that exist outside of MK & the Gang, and can grow/change even when they're not on screen with our main characters, and I think that's cool. We also legitimately didn't have time for anything else.

#So tldr on the way the DB family has been handled thus far: I get if people don't like it that's completely fair #but idk if it's objectively bad.#I know there's a Villad's interview out there where he says he thinks during s2 Red Son took a lot of time to himself #That he realized some thangs about how his parents had treated him you know #And I get if people are disappointed by that. Unfortunately they're minor characters at this point & we got a lot of other stuff to focus o #Me personally I like what we have #They are insane for paralleling the Demon Bull family's one scene in s4 with 1x10 #Like. Holy shit their writing is TIGHT #lmk #lego monkie kid #asks #lmk Red Son #lmk DBK #lmk PIF #lmk analysis #you know what I think I just realized I legitimately like DBK. Like a decent amount.#The way he looks away in shame from PIF in 3x06 before she explains the Samadhi fire's origins. Omg. Is that guilt???#''So you can see it would be impossible for fools such as yourselves to control that power—#if even the spawn of the Demon Bull King himself could not.''#OMG!!!!!!!#anyways

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victoriacbooks · 1 year

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I’m sure things to this effect have been said much more eloquently already by others but I just. A Long Long Time, man. It hit me so hard in so many ways.

And what I’ve really been thinking about since I watched it is, yeah, it’s true that Bill was surviving, not really living, before he met Frank. But I think it’s more than that. Bill cared about life. He cared about good quality food, and wine, and looking after himself. What I think the difference is, is after he met Frank, he cared about a legacy.

Think about it. Frank’s art. His insistence upon making friends, hosting them, fixing up the town even if no one but him and Bill and Joel and Tess ever saw it. Maybe no one would care, but he wanted to make things beautiful. He cared about art, about leaving something behind.

When I was watching, I was struck with the realisation that there is no way that story could’ve been the same if it were a hetero couple. Other people have already pointed out how much more powerfully the line “older means we’re still here” hits when you realise the context of Bill and Frank being older gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis. There’s also an absolutely stunning post that compared Frank’s last art work to that of Keith Haring, and I’m probably reiterating some of the writer of that post’s thoughts here, but hear me out.

Like so many have pointed out, Frank and Bill never saw gay marriage legalised; the fungus pandemic hit long before that could have occurred. They were finally able to live as their full selves after a fungus wiped out so many people. They could’ve lived quietly, made no waves, changed nothing, and died happy and together. They died happy and together, yes, but they also made a mark.

That’s what’s been affecting me so much since I watched it. Yes, the TLOU world is fictional, but there are so many parallels that can be drawn to the real world, to a world that wants queer people to be small, quiet, unassuming, fade out without a trace. In my mind, Frank is a hero for refusing to do that. He wanted to love things. He wanted to leave a mark. He saw beauty even in the apocalypse, and he wanted to make things beautiful with the flowers, the paintings, the strawberries. He left a mark. Even after he and Bill are gone, his paintings are there. Joel knew they must be gone because the flowers were wilted, but even though the flowers died, the mark Bill and Frank left on the town wasn’t erased.

I don’t know. I just think there’s a lesson there. Or maybe not a lesson, but something to live up to. A reminder not to be afraid to take up space, to leave our marks, even when the world is on fire and it seems like no one will ever notice, it matters. The beauty you see in the world, what you create, it matters. The entire story of Bill and Frank, I think, boils down to choosing to create the world you want, no matter how small of a bubble it is. There may always be horrible, scary things pressing in on you, but you can find beauty. You can create beauty. You can leave a mark, a legacy, on the things and the people you love.

And, really, what more can any of us ask for than to love and be loved and someday leave behind a message that says I was here. I was here, and I was loved, and there is nothing anyone can do to take away the fact that I matter.

#frank and bill #the last of us #tlou #the last of us episode 3 #random musings I guess #back to your regularly scheduled shitposting #Victoria tries to be philosophical

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password-door-lock · 2 months

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Unknown is full of rage. Of course, that isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Most of the time, anger is the only concrete emotion that he can name and separate from the constant pressure in his chest, the blend of feelings which converge inside his rib cage whether he wants them there or not. Rage, however, he is perfectly content with feeling. Rage, however, he will cling to, ride as far as it will take him as he chases down revenge. Rage, however, bleeds at the edges, frays like old fabric, the ends of the jeans he wore as a teenager. Rage, however, covers all of his bases in every situation but this one. Until now, it’s been good enough.

He refuses to register the something else that makes his heartbeat speed up as he watches you through the webcam. This is Unknown’s favorite sight, a close second in his fantasies to the mental image he has conjured up of the moment when he finally gets his revenge. Your hair is wet, messy, uncombed; you’re wearing a baggy old T-shirt, something from some event you went to years ago, in a color that does not flatter you, along with loose athletic shorts that leave absolutely everything to the imagination. Your posture is bad and your face is blotchy, scrubbed raw with one of the many products you use on your skin but not cared for in the slightest after that. He watches your reactions to the seemingly meaningless images on your screen, snippets of short videos or memes which require social context that he does not possess.

Unknown is the only one who gets to see you like this, the only person in the world who is party to such intimate and private moments. Sure, the RFA members get to see your selfies, highly choreographed, and in some cases even edited to make them more artful, more appealing. Your coworkers and classmates, from whom you have been absent for several days now, see you in uniform or in your best outfits, carefully curated to fit whatever image you need to portray. Unknown, however, is entitled to look at you when you think that no one’s watching, the only time that you are truly, openly yourself. He enjoys the rawness of it, the roughness, the glimpse into your innocent little heart as you giggle about inane nonsense alone in a stranger’s bedroom.

Most of all, however, he enjoys the power. The control, the fact that he can see you whenever he wants, that he’s the only one who can watch you this way. That redhead monitors the living room camera, probably thinking about how badly he wants to use and manipulate you as he watches you go about your day. And you’re well aware of that, of course; Unknown has seen you fixing your hair in the bedroom mirror, laboring for minutes on end choosing your daily outfits, presumably to ensure that they are to Luciel’s liking. You poor, stupid thing— can’t you see that you’re being taken advantage of? Can’t you see that you’re going to get in trouble, going to get hurt, going to get strung along and toyed with until that liar inevitably tires of you? But maybe you’re scared of that already. Maybe you have the wherewithal to sense that you are in danger all the time here, that Luciel is not to be trusted, that he could get rid of you with a few keystrokes, if that were really what he wanted. Either way, even Luciel has no way of looking into your bedroom, no way of seeing you in this vulnerable state. Unknown made sure when he hacked your webcam that it would be off-limits to anybody else. That’s something reserved for him, as proof that he is the only person who will ever truly possess such a useful tool.

That’s what you are to Unknown, among other things, of course: a tool, primarily. Your job is to be obedient, to follow the instructions that you’re given and see to it that the RFA hosts another party. You’re a pawn, a set of eyes that Unknown can use to gain access to the inner workings of the RFA. In how they talk to you, he learns even more about their thoughts and motivations, how best to lure them to Magenta and welcome them to the paradise. Of course, they’re all horrible people, and they’re all too willing to take advantage of your sudden arrival and your giving nature. Things might not end very well for you if you’re foolish enough to pursue a romantic relationship with any of them.

At least Unknown wants to offer you some compensation, to bring you to paradise as a reward for doing your work. Granted, your job is easy enough that a computer could complete it, but, then again, computers are neither cute nor entertaining. Unknown chose you for a reason, after all: just as he predicted, you caught the RFA members off guard. All of them were too busy drooling over you to think very hard about the implications of having their app hacked by a malicious outsider. But Unknown would be lying if he said that your looks weren’t his type, too. Well, he reminds himself as he watches you, the world has no shortage of idiots, no shortage of people who take direction well and lack the instincts for basic self preservation, but ultimately, when he picked you, Unknown was choosing somebody he’d want by his side following the completion of his task.

He likes to look at you, for what it’s worth— and he finds himself chuckling under his breath at the messages you send to those liars in the chat. You’re a fool, of course, and it’s hard to feel bad about luring you into that apartment when you crossed a city to get there and typed the code in almost entirely of your own volition. It goes without saying that Unknown has no intention of changing any of his plans on your account— no, you’re going to do your job, and then he’s going to save you, and then you’re going to thank him for delivering you from that hellhole of an on organization, and then, finally, finally, he’s going to get his revenge. His rage still guides him, still drags him around on a leash much tighter than the one that his Savior holds, still pushes his fingers to pound against the keys even when his body is screaming at him to throw in the towel and eat something or sleep— that much is never going to change. But these days, as he studies you, Unknown also feels… something else, a sentiment with no name, one that floats inside his stomach and flutters in his chest, one that makes him seriously consider abandoning his work for an hour or so to liberate you from that place prematurely.

Well, whatever, he thinks, minimizing the window that’s been showing him the CCTV feed from the Savior’s old apartment. After he brings you to Magenta, he’ll be able to watch you all he wants— for now, however, Unknown has a job to do, and he can’t put his plans on hold for anything or anyone.

#tw: stalking #and just general creepiness #I do not think that Unknown would cope very well with having a little crush on MC #mystic messenger #mystic messenger drabble #choi saeran #saeran choi #unknown mystic messenger

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gorbalsvampire · 4 months

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More Humane Than Human - Humanity as degeneration vs. Humanity as detachment

I wanted to repost the Requiem readthrough review before I got into this, because it started as one of those "Requiem vs. Masquerade which is better" conversations. In rules terms I think V5 has iterated successfully on Requiem - there's probably about the same density of actual rules there but V5 makes a better fist of hiving some of them off into advanced/optional/discretionary territory - but Requiem innovates hard in terms of ideas about how vampires and vampirism work, introducing things like the Predator's Taint and Lashing Out and, crucially, Touchstones.

Touchstones give the lie to the "V5 does rules better" claim. I have never liked how V5 does them. The notion of tying an individual vampire to a person, place or artefact is nothing new. Those of us who are Old, or retro-curious, may recall Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption, in which Brujah himbo protagonist Christof is told he needs an "anchor" for his Humanity and selects Anezka, the nun who nursed him back to health and who he's been having less than holy thoughts about ever since he woke up. Christof is told, by his mentor Wilhelm, that choosing a person as his "anchor" is a dangerous call - but his mind is made up and, not to spoil a twenty-five-year-old game, it turns out to be for the best for both of them... as long as he's kept his Humanity up, anyway.

So, Touchstones in the context of Masquerade are nothing new to me - in fact I was quite surprised when the full TTRPG didn't have rules for them. But! Touchstones in V5 are a bit different. Instead of one, there are many: instead of humanity in general, each of the vampire's Convictions has a named person attached to it.

The problem - and this isn't just me, it's something that's come up in all the V5 games I've played or hosted - is that viable characters have two or three Convictions. Coming up with two or three Touchstones at character generation, before you have a feel for who this person is and how you're going to play them and what their routine looks like, has not worked for anyone I've played the game with. One might work - most of us can ideate a relationship with one other person before we start playing - but three seems to stretch the limited sense of a starting character's identity too thin.

Rules As Written, of course, a Touchstone doesn't have to be someone significant to the story. They can just be someone your character saw every day, or sees every night, or notices every time they pass by. But... that's bullshit. That is not a "hang a key element of your personal ethic and capacity for self care on this person" relationship. I can see the story beat of "this person isn't there any more and you're morally shook by it" working once, maybe, but still, permanently altering your character's relationship with the Beast is kind of an integral function of the game. It feels like that hat should be hung on a sturdier hook - a full-on fleshed-out SPC. Like in Requiem, where you get one Touchstone.

Also, Humanity works differently, at its most fundamental level, and this exposes a key difference between the two games - one where I think Requiem is strides ahead. @awakenedsalamander touched on this talking about the differences in the concept of the Masquerade between the two games, but I want to go deeper on it.

In Masquerade, Humanity is about degeneration - it's the Downward Spiral, an almost inevitable drift from Man to Beast with exceptions being so rare they're practically mythical. It's about becoming worse, with all the moral judgment that implies, about committing acts that appear on a Hierarchy of Sins.

(At least, it is in V20. V5 abolishing that in favour of chronicle specific Tenets and character specific Convictions is really smart. I didn't grasp how it was meant to work from the corebook - it took the Player's Guide to spell it out to me - but now that I grok it, I love the tension between the Tenets that forbid and govern a character's actions and the Convictions that excuse and forgive those actions.)

In Requiem, Humanity is detachment. It's about the state of being a vampire slowly and inexorably reminding you over and over that you're not human any more, drifting further and further away from what you were and into the all-night society of predators. It's quantified in terms of Breaking Points - roughly grouped by significance and severity, these experiences hammer home that you're dead, you're dead, you're dead and out of this world. It's less "I did a bad thing" and more "I experienced something that no human ever should" like walking off a stab wound or being reminded you're a hundred years old and still act like you're twenty. When you hit a Breaking Point, you roll a number of dice - how many is a function of how serious and hard to avoid confronting the Breaking Point is - to avoid losing Humanity.

Now. In the past I've met quite a few players who don't really want to engage with the morality play aspects of Masquerade. Whether that's "we want to speedrun to Humanity 4 so we can play the game 'properly' without having to pretend we regret doing all the things RPG protagonists do" or "we think it's kinda stupid the way low Humanity says you may no longer create art or have sex without 'faking it' and let's interrogate what the developers think 'sex' is, shall we?" doesn't really matter. Maybe you want to play on the theme of post-humanity rather than be wrist-slapped for trying to do main character stuff. I don't blame you.

I think it should be possible to wholesale lift the Requiem system of detachment, rolled for at Breaking Points and mitigated by a singular Touchstone who can be a more developed character, or a place, or an object, and slot that into V5 replacing Tenets, Convictions and Stains.

That gives you a version of Humanity that's more permissive and less frontloaded, allows you to go deep on one hook instead of ideating sets of pairs before you even know who your character is. It also divorces functions of sexuality and creativity from being a good person - in the Requiem model, vampires fuck, and make art, and low Humanity expresses more in how they do it than whether or not they can.

(Although - there'd need to be some finesse around Oblivion, since I think the Discipline's theme of entropy inducing personal decay still works in the detachment model - maybe keep Stains as an additional lever, a function of Messy Criticals and dangerous Disciplines, and have Breaking Points inflict Stains instead of automatically triggering rolls...)

Important note on this idea: this does NOT exempt you from having a conversation about what's off limits in Session 0. It's easy to miss this in the V5 core book, but Chronicle Tenets aren't a safety tool. Chronicle Tenets are the moral rules that are going to come up A LOT in play, they define what your coterie collectively accepts as Doing A Bad Thing, to be excused for personal reasons (i.e. Convictions). An actual out of character trigger, an aspect of the World of Darkness with which a real live person who exists does not wish to engage, is a line or a veil - something we either don't include, or don't narrate explicitly. It's not something we build into one of the game's mechanical loops and ensure will come up. That would be... the absolute opposite of safe.

Whadda we think?

#vtm #vtr #vampire the masquerade #vampire the requiem #meta #house rules #humanity #// this took a lot longer than I expected - I either have long covid or my arthritis levelled up over this winter...

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hopeymchope · 5 months

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Having finally finished reading the DR Kirigiri light novels, here are my closing thoughts and questions.

(For background, I read these translations. Which - as I previously discussed in the first bullet of this post here - may have some small issues throughout.)

I've previously given y'all my report on how I felt / what I was thinking about this series just after passing the halfway point of the light novels, so now it's time for me to bring this whole thing home and offer some closing thoughts.

My first, dominating thought is that this would be so good to see adapted as an anime. I can easily imagine how many episodes it'd take to do each light novel and where you'd logically cut off the story... even more easy, though, would be a manga. It's definitely crying out for that kind of treatment.

Regardless of the (relatively minor) gripes I raise below? This is definitely a great series to read. You get a number of twisty, gripping mysteries, an easy-to-like lead duo, an imposingly powerful enemy force, new background on our favorite lavender-hued detective, and you even get some great new characters added to the mythos — what more do you want?

Okay, but now I'll get into the griping stuff :P For starters: Isn't it... kind of LAME to have Kirigiri repeatedly experience something so similar to the basic setup of DR1 (or any mainline Danganronpa game, really) on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS prior to DR1 ever happening??? But then she just never remotely reference any fo that experience? And YESs, of course I realize she never even obliquely references these events because these prequels weren't actually written by the time of DR1, nor even completed by DR3. But that's the kind of thing you typically want to avoid with prequels, right? ...... Even so, I guess this does take us farther into these stories deserving to be called "Danganronpa" than any other spinoff. And it's not hard to come up with excuses for why she never remotely hinted at these things; she's intentionally acting withdrawn and keeping info to herself throughout DR1 and DR3, after all. So it's not the WORST crime. It's just, like I said: kind of lame.

MORE SPECIFICALLY, let me clarify: Although the cases in DRK don't include a "mutual killing" element, you still get at least three cases where she's [1] trapped in a specific building alongside a group of people who include a killer/"mastermind," the cast subsequently being picked off one by one, and [2] said experiences are also broadcast to a viewing audience. In fact, you even get two cases where [3] the trapped participants are expected to take specific bedrooms to lock themselves in during the nighttime! And even [4] one case where there's a weird, automated "host character" overseeing the whole thing, which is being operated around a specific set of rules. That's a helluva thing, isn't it?

I've previously expressed GREAT TREPIDATION about one specific element of this series: I was told that supposedly, these light novels included evidence that Fuhito was manipulating Kyoko into hating her father, her dad was always a victim, and Kyoko never realized that she was basically molded from birth by someone who was manipulating her feelings and actions. It all made Kyoko considering Fuhito her "most imporant person" (per DR1 and UDG's captives) come off as this tragic tale where our supposed "master detective" never realized she's been a victim of gaslighting and manipulation for many years, which would change SO MUCH CONTEXT behind her life's work and her relationships with both Jin and Fuhito. HOWEVER, GUESS WHAT? None of that shit was even true! HUZZAH!!!! NOTHING in these light novels goes against what we already knew about Kyoko, Jin, Fuhito, or their relationship(s) with one another... though there is some minor new insight provided into a couple of details. We get a new look at how Jin actually cared about Kyoko from afar (via the "Jin Ex Machina" business I mentioned in the previous post), which is in line with the hints of his lingering love for her we tasted in both DR1 and DR3 without either exonerating him for his choices OR making him 100% correct. We repeatedly watch Kyoko questioning/doubting her grandfather's/family's longstanding "detective work must come above and before personal concerns" rules. And we also get a taste of Fuhito being protective of Kyoko when he learns of the kind of danger she's in — yet simultaneously having complete trust in her talent and ability to overcome said danger. Fuhito seems to even gently help Kyoko understand Samidare's actions near of the end of the final volume... although we only get a taste of his help via Kyoko's internal thoughts, so we don't know exactly what he said to her. TL/DR? My point is simply this: The DRK light novels keep the overall morality / goodness of Kyoko's family dynamics in the same place we already understood them from the games: Kyoko and Fuhito are very close and care about each other without being overtly emotional about it, there is a rift between Jin and the rest of his family over Fuhito priortizing case work above visiting his dying daughter on her deathbed, Jin clearly still concerns/cares that linger for his daughter, etc.

What's with so many scenes of "Black Challenges" or "Duel Noirs" having signs defaced to include the word "DESPAIR"? Is that just some extra branding for the main franchise's themes? Feels out of place.

I feel bad for all those orphans who adored this dude.

General thoughts on numerous new-to-DR characters: As I said in my last post about this series, Samidare is likeable but spends most of the series very thinly defined — plus she's pretty slow on the uptake. Thankfully, by Volume 4 she starts finally pulling her weight, and she gets some much-needed expansion of her background in Volume 7 (just in time for her to make some dumb decisions). Licorne is probably the second-most important new character, and he's an asshole. An interesting one, though! And he does some heroic things! .... even if he isn't really all that morally invested in helping people. He's a self-centered asshole for most of the series, frankly, and I don't care much whether he's around or not. Salvadore Yadorigi Fukuro is awesome; a straight-up superb character with a very "DR" kind of skill/talent. Yaki Hajiki is a character who's also hard to dislike, and I wish he got more "screen time," because he's very intriguing. Johnny Arp is a fascinating one, though he definitely shares some dickish behavior with Lico. Still, I'm always engaged when he's on the page. And... look, I'm fond of Meruko "Pumpkinhead" Mifune. She's fun, sure, but I also see real potential for depth that isn't explored herin.

My remaining observations/thoughts contain some spoilers for the Danganronpa Kirigiri series, so I'm putting the rest UNDER THE BELOW CUT... although I still avoid mentioning the identities of any culprits or masterminds so as to keep the primary case mysteries intact.

Yadorigi = Intelligent, quiet dude in sunglasses who looks like the answer to "What if Munakata found his chill?"

What, exactly, is the state of Yadorigi's eyesight by the end of the series? Initially, we learn that his unique eyesight is very important to his work in uncovering fraud. Later, after a blow to the head, we're told that his eyesight will never be the same as it previously was. In the final volume, he visits Kyoko while wielding a white cane. So uh... does that cane imply that SYF is now blind or very close to it? Or am I reading too much into a walking stick here?

Nothing infuriates me quite as much as when major problems in a story could be easily resolved via basic fucking communication, and a failure to communicate on a base level is absolutely CORE to why things go south in the seventh and final volume. By the time Kyoko and Yui are heading out to the case, the situation is this: Without Kyoko's knowledge, our redacted overarching mastermind (henceforth referred to as "ROM") tried to get Samidare to agree to be the culprit in this final Black Challenge. She refused. ROM then said their organization (the Crime Victim's Relief Committee) will eliminate Kyoko if Samidare doesn't play along. And then, right after saying this? ROM pretty clearly DIED right in front of Samidare, before she can ever express any intention of changing her mind or not. She is then confronted by the enigmatic Tokichiro Endo, who is basically the go-between for culprits and the organization, who demands her final answer. Based on what happens in the case immediately after this, it appears that this conversation somehow ended with Samidare refusing to be the true culprit in this case but ALSO accepting that she would be framed for the murders and take the fall. So now Samidare has a choice to make: Does she (A) trust the Crime Victims' Relief Committee to keep their promise and leave Kyoko alone so long as she keeps her mouth shut...... even though Samidare refused to meet their demands and become the case's culprit? OOOORRR does Yui (B) realize that the Committee has already broken their supposed "rules" by forcibly coercing her into being the culpri — not to mention the fact that they're routinely aiding and abetting murders — which adds up to mean that she can't trust their word and must warn Kyoko of the danger she's in now that the committee has threatened her life directly? Any thinking person should choose (B), but Samidare of course chooses (A) so the plot will happen. *FACEPALM*

The worst part of this is that EVEN when our two heroines have just barely escaped from a burning building and fled out into freezing conditions, leaving them on the razor's edge between two possible methods of death with everyone else from the case seemingly already being dead? Samidare STILL won't outright deny being the case's culprit when accused. With literally NO REASON LEFT not to come clean, she never says jack shit. And then she dies!

During the denouement, the conclusion Kyoko reaches after leaving the hospital and revisiting the scene is... murky, and I think this might be something caused by the translation methods used. It currently reads as though Kyoko reaches the correct conclusion about the case, accurately determining Samidare's innocent AND identifying the true culprit(s). However... she doesn't seem to be 100% confident in her decision? It sounds like Kiri still harbors some lingering doubts about Samidare possibly being guilty?..... Even though she sounds really confident in her (correct) conclusions immediately before that. So it's left ambiguous. Which, I suppose, is one way to maintain Kiri being the Best Detective while simultaneously leaving room for her line in DR1 about how her burns happened because she "trusted the wrong person." She almost entirely knows that she didn't actually trust the wrong person, but they have to leave some doubt so that line can exist? ...... IF this translation is even accurate on this part.

Say... why did Samidare believe she'd die on this mission? It wasn't actually any more inherently dangerous than any other mission her and Kyoko had gone on... LESS dangerous than some, I'd argue! But she prepares this whole letter for her eventual death, so she clearly thought it was a strong possibility. My only guess is that she believed Kyoko was going to be targeted for death, and she planned to fulfill her oft-promised role as Kyoko's human shield. But if that was REALLY something Samidare thought was going to happen, then she had NO REASON to not tell Kyoko the truth about everything. If they're already out to kill Kiri, then OF COURSE it's smartest to warn her about it! So: Why the "last letter"? What made you think you were fucked, Yui?

In the end, ROM's overarching mission is both a success and a failure. Do they take away Kyoko's main emotional attachment, making her withdraw even further into pure logic so she'll avoid getting hurt? Yes. Do they make her deny the value of such attachments in the first place, resulting in her staying isolated forever after? No. She 95% knows she's right about Samidare's innocence in spite of ROM's attempts to frame her; it's just the pain of the loss that makes Kyoko withdraw, not some grander conclusion about distrusting everyone. In fact? I'd argue that Kyoko's speech in DR1's Chapter 4 about accounting for emotions is a strong rebuke of ROM's entire view of the world.

....by the way, does ROM have their own copy of Junko's talent??! It sure seems like they're another "Ultimate Analyst," essentially; able to see patterns of behavior so clearly that they can essentially predict most future events.

#drk #danganronpa kirigiri #danganronpa kirigiri spoilers #drk spoilers #Salvador Yadorigi Fukurō #Kyoko Kirigiri #Yui Samidare #danganronpa light novels

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dolphin1812 · 1 year

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I love how this visitor confuses the Thénardiers so much in relation to his social class that we see the full scale of how they treat people. We know that they’re dishonest overall, but we also know that they’re trying to be hospitable here, so the distinctions in their address are all technically polite, but they’re the different levels of politeness expected for different classes. We see this in the distinction between, for instance, “good man” and “monsieur,” but we also see it in how he’s denied a room. It would be rude to cast him out (and being rude is bad for business), but saying “there’s no room” is a perfectly acceptable excuse. Charging him extra to see if that drives him away serves the same purpose; it’s immoral, but the Thénardiers’ ultimate concern is avoiding having a guest who both can’t pay them and makes their inn look less fancy because he looks poor. Of course, we know that there is space, and the comparative luxury they end up offering this guest in case he’s secretly of a higher class demonstrates their interest in flattering wealthy guests. The speech about the decorations may be made-up, but that kind of attention is part of being a good host, which is important to the job in general but is even more of a priority for someone with money. It makes the Thénardiers seem invested in their guest and as if they are more “elevated” class-wise themselves (from, for example, owning fine bonnets). The fact that they need this man’s money again emphasizes that this is normal treatment and isn’t something specific to their moral failings (even if the dramatic contrasts may stem from that). Class was just that big a factor in how people were treated, down to the address used for them.

We learn more about the contrast between Cosette and the Thénardier girls here as well. Everything about Cosette radiates “fear” and suffering; she’s visibly malnourished and abused, poorly dressed, and melancholy. The other girls are warmly clothed and cheerful, likely because they’re well-fed and loved. They’re not wealthy, either; even they don’t have a very nice doll and have to play with an old and broken one. But they do have a doll, and they also are clothed properly for the weather. It’s a quick way of indicating that yes, the Thénardiers seem wealthy because they’re in a relatively poor village and have the contrast of Cosette right there, but they still can’t afford to spend that much on luxuries like dolls. It reminds me of the difference between how Fantine and Cosette were dressed when she left her in the Thénardiers’ care. Fantine had sold all of her nice clothes and was thus dressed very plainly, but her love for Cosette led her to save all her beautiful things for her daughter. Similarly, the Thénardiers prioritize their daughters’ appearance by buying them nice “bourgeois” clothes, but they don’t actually have the money to cover all the characteristics of that lifestyle.

I love watching the children play with the dolls (and the cat). Éponine and Azelma felt realistically young (and like an older and younger sibling) in how they approached the cat (which I hope got away from them quickly!), and watching Cosette stare at Catherine was both heartbreaking and cute (although seeing her rock the toy she made and tell it that her mother died was so sad). I want to be upset about Hugo’s Thoughts on Women, but in this case, I actually find them ironic in the context of the rest of the novel? The very first woman we were introduced to was Mlle Baptistine, who never married or had children. Hugo points out that this limits the amount of respect she’s given in society, but doesn’t add much more aside from some notes on her devotion to her brother. After that, we continue to meet women who are unmarried and/or childless, and while many of the most notable ones are nuns (like Sister Simplice) and may be gendered by different standards as a consequence of that, it’s so bizarre for Hugo to now say that a woman without children is “impossible.” I think Hugo does see a difference between “womanhood” and “woman who never marries or has kids, but it’s OK because she’s holy in some way,” so perhaps the irony stems merely from the overlap in terms? The whole thing is infuriating, but it’s also just strange.

#les mis letters #lm 2.3.8 #cosette #jean valjean #thénardier #éponine #azelma

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aita-blorbos · 9 months

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AITA for putting my little brother in a violent and dangerous situation to free our family and friends?

TW: suicide, racism, violence, violence towards children, child death, referenced child abuse

To briefly summarize the situation, I (12NB) willingly sacrificed my life for his people’s freedom, as part of a plan we both agreed to beforehand, but my brother (10M) failed to follow through after I was dead (reduced to a spirit only perceptible to a single host, which is how I’m conveying this posthumously) by refusing to harm anyone, even in self-defense, which got him killed as well.

For those who wish to further understand what happened, allow me to provide some context. My family’s entire race has been forcibly confined to a small region by another race, which I shall call the Oppressors for the purposes of this post. By killing a small number of Oppressors, their people could free themselves.

My brother and I were the best of friends, perhaps each other’s only friends, even though he was the sort of sensitive person who would cry over a dead butterfly or something, and I was… decidedly not. I had been…suffering, mentally, before the fateful plan was made. Part of my distress was anger at the Oppressors, and I worked with my brother to find a way to aid his people. The crucial fact is, I was adopted - I was born as one of the Oppressors and ran away at a young age, ending up in my *true* family’s small region. By taking my own life, I could give my brother the power unleashed by the death of an Oppressor, allowing him to escape the barricade and kill the six other Oppressors required to gain freedom for his people. I had several Oppressors in mind who deserved it, such as my abusive birth parents. I killed myself by poisoning, and pretended for our parents’ sake that I suffered from an ordinary illness, as they never would have allowed my sacrifice had they known of it. It wasn’t until I had already taken a lethal dose and was on my deathbed that my brother voiced his second thoughts and told me this was a bad idea. It was too late to save my life; there was nothing either of us could do except go forward with what we agreed to. He seemed at first to follow this after I died, telling our parents that I had wished to be buried outside the place his people were confined to and making his escape with me, both hosting my spirit and carrying my lifeless body. When we ran into a group of Oppressors and they attacked him, however, instead of calling on the power I’d given him in death and defending himself, as he needed to do to free his people, he shut down and refused to hurt them, even as they were killing him and I was pleading with him to fight back. In the end he just barely managed to crawl back home before dying of his wounds, further traumatizing our grieving parents. I never meant for him to die; I intended for him to return and be hailed as a hero, and for him to finally be free, along with our parents and everyone we cared about. There would have been relatively little risk to him if he had been willing to use the power I had died to give him. I now regret what I did, however, and I especially regret the way I involved my little brother in it, placing such an awful yet crucial responsibility on such a softhearted, overly sentimental kid.

Knowing all this, would you consider me “the asshole”?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #SUICIDE #child death #child abuse mention #racisim #FANTASY RACISM

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clovermunson · 11 months

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here’s a tamer one:

gimme all your unpopular stranger things opinions, pretty please!!

sav, bestie you know i love being controversial (sometimes) and i know that some of these may get me tumblr-cancelled or cause a fandom riot because most of them will be about billy (and by extension, max), but that’s not my problem.

billy and max genuinely cared about each other. i know, some of you are gonna look at that and say “how the fuck is that true??” but trust me. it is. both of them were forced into a shitty situation, and often took things out on each other because they were both misguided and trying to navigate things on their own. neil and susan obviously favored max, often neglecting billy and making him grow up on his own and way too fast. he was handling full-fledged adult responsibilities by the time he was sixteen, and he shouldn’t have been. now while i think susan may have tried to evenly delegate her attention to both kids, neil completely prohibited that under some false pretense such as “billy needs to grow up” or “he doesn’t need a mother anymore”. any time max screwed up, billy was left to deal with it instead of neil and susan handling it themselves, like parents should, not older siblings (though i believe had it not been for neil, susan would’ve taken care of max herself— i have some very complicated opinions on susan, but that’s another story). every time billy acted out in violence, it was a defense and survival mechanism for him; and he probably did it quite often to protect max because he cared for her, and for the fact that if he didn’t, he’d face neil’s wrath for the nth time (i.e.: the fight at byers’ home with steve— which, in billy’s defense, was totally justified from his point of view). anyway, max and billy cared about each other in their own weird little way.

more on the topic of billy, he wasn’t racist and he didn’t target or dislike lucas simply because he was black. that’s just a bullshit reason that 98% of the fandom uses to justify why they hate billy because they couldn’t read context clues and use some critical thinking skills. he disliked lucas because he witnessed lucas and max arguing in the school parking lot, and lucas was upsetting max— and billy knew that it would be his ass if neil found out about it.

i think the whole “girlboss” angle they’re trying to do with nancy kinda sucks and it’s ruining her character. she was definitely a stronger character in season 2 than any other season.

the series started with will, and it should end with will. i said what i said.

max stabbing billy with a needle and syringe with no idea what was in it is not the girlboss moment y’all think it is. what was in that syringe could’ve killed him for all anyone knew.

the sauna scene was genuinely billy begging for max to help him because he didn’t know what was going on, until it wasn’t, and max knew that was billy and not the mindflayer.

speaking of the whole mindflayer thing, y’all can’t tell me that max didn’t genuinely care about billy when she said “i really hope it’s not you” in reference to the party suspecting that billy was the host.

oh and in season two when billy’s “threatening” to run over the boys?? y’all are delusional for thinking he really would lmao he’s an older brother and older brothers mess with their sisters like that. and he’s a seventeen year old with a cool, fast car. there’s no way he was gonna willingly get himself a vehicular homicide charge in a bumfuck town in indiana. y’all are dumb as shit for thinking he would. and did y’all notice when max grabbed the wheel and made the car swerve to avoid hitting them? billy could’ve easily gone against her force and kept the car on course, but he didn’t.

stancy shippers are essentially romanticizing a toxic relationship between two people who very clearly want different things for themselves and could never actually work, from a logical and realistic viewpoint.

on that note, stancy should not happen in season five. or ever again for that matter. fight me about it.

karen wheeler’s actions in season three can’t be justified. i’m not even gonna argue on this one with anyone because y’all know what happened. sure she chose her family in the end, but she was really about to go hook up with a freshly-18 year old man while being in her 40s…absolutely not, ma’am. don’t even get me started on the other pool-lurking moms.

it’s game night, send one of these!

#these are so brave yet so controversial i think #especially that first one #that first one is gonna ruffle some feathers #may even cause some heebies to be jeebied (get it?)#maybe even the second one too #me? causing fandom discourse with my strong opinions? it’s more likely than you’d think.#fandom discourse #morgan’s mailbox📬#ask games #clovermunson’s game night #savvy🧸

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coloredscribbli · 12 days

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loving a character sm that you put them through the horrors 💜 aka mentalist angst / slight projection

+ extra fic-like drabble here that offers more context, but tl:dr: mm is horrible with recognising his emotions and wrongly thinks that he can't connect w/ the other hosts at all and now he's a mess

And yet those tears crashed down nonetheless.

"...you're crying," the Mistress gasped.

"So? SO?!"

She recoiled at the almost unheard of sighting of the Mentalist's raised voice. He had also gripped tightly to his shirt with both of his hands as if it could quell the tears.

"I don't care if I'm crying right now," he snapped, "because this emotional bridge between me and you all makes me sick!"

The torn hypnotist turned away before his appearance could grow more tainted to those he almost loathed to be around.

"So I need to do SOMETHING!"

Before anybody could dare to reassure him, he had just started ranting again. As if him facing away from his troubles made talking about it easy.

"It doesn't matter what I do! I talk with you all, spend time with you... no matter how I react, feel, LIVE... I don't feel a step closer to belonging with you all! It's horrible, and..."

The Mentalist took a sharp breath in before turning to face the group once more.

"How you all still accept me sickens me."

An ominous silence floated over the air. It was impossible to tell how he truly felt in the heat of the moment: either desperate to be abandoned for his distance, or...

The fact he was crying at all. How his usually calm voice was cracking and snapping, how he had totally broken down.

Vulnerability was a thing he never dared show to untrustworthy people. And the anxiety burning up his chest blinded him to how much he truly did care for them all.

Words and thoughts simply couldn't carry that.

#colored’s doodles #jackbox

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object-show-analysis · 2 years

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I know everyone’s probably waiting on a new ONE analysis but today is my birthday so I thought I’d treat myself to a topic that was most interesting to me. I got a couple asks a while back about if there was any sign of MePhone’s past with Cobs before episode 13. And I’ve wanted to write about that for a while! So let’s get into it.

Now as we know, MePhone spent a large majority of the first two seasons with no memory of Steve, or his time with him whatsoever. But just because he couldn’t remember any of it, that doesn’t mean it didn’t still have an effect on him.

The Effect That MePhone’s Trauma Had On Him After He Erased His Memories

One of the most prevalent (and least concerning) effects of MePhone’s time living with Steve is his love of reality TV. We know from the ii crew, and the obvious context clues, that those shows that MePhone watched in his early childhood were the inspiration for his job as host of inanimate insanity. MePhone’s only reprieve in Meeple HQ were the TV shows that he loved and wanted to share with others, including Steve himself. So it makes sense that even after his memories were wiped, TV shows remained a thing of comfort for him. He puts everything into his show and clearly cares about it more than anything else. And we know now exactly why TV holds so much importance to him.

Another thing he loves, both in childhood and after his memory wipe, is eating. He loves food. Which on its own would be perfectly fine, but this is where we start to see the negative effects of his time with Steve.

See- even in ii season 1 we can tell that MePhone’s relationship with food is far from healthy. He loves eating, but actively shames himself for doing so. At first it seems like a one off joke (in very poor taste) but it becomes a constant with him, even going into season 2, and as of now, season 3.

Now when this issue was at its most prevalent, we had no way of knowing what the context behind it was. But we know now that this love of food was a part of him since creation, and this was one of the first things that MePhone was ever yelled at for. He was told that food wasn’t something he needed, and he was shamed for it. This clearly has a deep psychological impact, as even without his memories, he associates food with something to be ashamed of.

There’s a lot of minor things as well, such as MePhone’s subtle avoidance of touch, which may be attributed to the lack of positive contact that he had as a child, along with his defensive reaction to being yelled at.

We may even be able to go so far as to say there was some influence of his past in his original method of elimination in season two, which shares quite a resemblance to something Steve Cobs did in the past that effected MePhone greatly.

In fact it seems pretty likely that the fate of MePhone3GS had some influence on the fact that MePhone put the eliminated contestants in a closet, due to the visual parallels shown above, and the fact that we know steve cobs was already a planned character at this point in the show’s production, because he is referenced later in that same episode

And of course there’s the obvious point of the bad feelings that MePhone associated with Cobs himself, even before he had regained his memories. Without even knowing who Cobs was, he was able to recognize him and know that he didn’t like the way that Cobs made him feel.

All-in-all it’s very clear that MePhone’s trauma had a huge effect on him, even when all memories of his time in MeCloud were physically removed from his mind. It will be interesting to see if/how these things change as season 2 continues, now that MePhone has regained these memories.

#tags for organization:#inanimate insanity #MePhone ii #Steve Cobs ii #MePhone3gs ii

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charmac · 10 months

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And not only are Meg and Charlie in the Macdennis troops, Rob's also pro LGBT+, and there are other LGBT folks and allies in the crew? I know this isn't the only show this is the case with but I just thinks it's nice and makes you feel a part of something you know or I might be tripping. It just idk gives me hope you know maybe that's silly.

"Pro LGBT+" is certainly one way to phrase the stance of someone with lesbian moms and two gay brothers, lmfao (also trust Rob is fully in the Macdennis camp). It's great he's an ally, but I think it's even more comforting that our gay character is played by a man who was raised in an LGBT, inclusive household, and has so many people in his life he cares deeply about for context/inspiration/feedback of his portrayal. I agree the chunk of support we see and/or know from the cast and crew is awesome (especially people like MEE who continue to post pro-trans messages despite a shit flood of asshole comments) and certainly has me holding a lot of trust they know what they're doing and who they're serving.

When you think about the fact that media, especially performance, is often a huge draw to marginalized folks...I mean if you were a theatre kid or a tech theatre kid, if you knew kids in high school who made stupid silly home movies or were always performing, the majority of them were/are LGBT or at least allies...It makes a lot of sense that a tv show built from 0, ground up, pushing out the involvement of studios and representatives and third parties as much as possible, has cast and crew that are truly just film/theatre kids at heart, well grounded and incredibly supportive across the board.

Sunny really is just a silly little camp indie show made by neurodivergent and gay people that somehow tricked a major studio into hosting and funding them for 18 years and counting :)

#iasip #ask

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solarpunkpresentspodcast · 3 months

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Scrape

I want to talk about the recent news of Tumblr and Wordpress parent company Automattic being in talks to sell user content to AI companies OpenAI and Midjourney to train their models on. All that we know is currently in that sentence, by the way; the talks are still in progress and the company’s not super transparent about it, which makes sense to me.

What doesn’t make sense to me is the fact that a lot of Internet users seem to think this is outrageous, or new, or somehow strange behaviour for a large company, or that it is just starting. It seems obvious, given AI companies’ proclivities to go ahead and then ask forgiveness, not permission to do the thing, that Tumblr/Wordpress users’ public data has already been hoovered up into the gaping maw of the LLM training sets and this is a mea-culpa gesture; not so much a business proposal as a sheepish admission of guilt and monetary compensation. One wonders what would have happened had they not been called out.

When I was in publishing school back in the early twenty-teens, it was drilled into us that any blog content could be considered published and therefore disqualified from any submission to a publication unless they were specifically asking for previously published pieces. There was at that time a dawning awareness that whatever you had put on the internet (or continued to put out there) was not going to go away. Are you familiar with how Facebook saves everything that you type, even if you don’t post it? That was the big buzz, back then. Twitter was on the rise, and so was Tumblr, and in that context, it seemed a bit naïve to assume that anything written online would ever be private again (if it ever was in the first place…). It was de rigeur for me to go into my privacy settings on Facebook and adjust them in line with updates every few months.

So, for example, this little post of mine here wouldn’t really count as submittable material unless I substantially added to or changed it in some way before approaching a publisher with it. (The definition of “substantially” is up to said publisher, of course.) This might have changed with time (and depending on location), but my brain latched on to it and I find it safest to proceed from this assumption. For the record, I don’t think it’s foolish or naive for internet users to have the opposite assumption, and trust that the companies whose platforms they are using will handle their content in a respectful way and guard their privacy. That should be the baseline. It is a right and correct impulse, taken egregious advantage of by the morally bankrupt.

In any case, I at first have interpreted this whole debacle as …slightly empowering to users, in a way, as now there are opt-out procedures that Tumblr users can take to put the kibosh on a process that is already happening, and now this scraping of data will be monitored by the parent site, instead of operating according to a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. I have to wonder if the same will be extended to Reddit users, or the commenters on CNN or Fox news. And whether my first impression will bear up under any weight of scrutiny whatsoever.

On social media, I assume that everything I post will always and forever be accessible to anyone with enough skills (or money) to want to access it. Same with email, anything in “the cloud” that is not hosted on a double-encrypted server, my search engine preferences, and really any site that I have a login for. My saving grace thus far has been that I am a boring person with neither fame nor wealth nor enemies with a reason to go after me. Facebook got big when I was in my undergraduate years; given that social media was extremely nascent back then, I put a lot of stuff up that I shouldn’t have. Data that I care about. Things I would like to keep secret, keep safe. But I’ve long made my peace with the fact that the internet has known everything about everything I was willing to put up about me for my entire adult life and continues to grasp for more and more. At least on Tumblr, I can say “no”, and then get righteously indignant when that “no” is inevitably ignored and my rights violated.

I hate this state of affairs. But I also want to be able to talk to my family, connect with other solarpunks, do research, communicate with my colleagues … to live in a society, one might say. I try not to let it bother me much. However, I DO sign anything and everything that comes my way from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to legislating the shit out of these corporations that have given us free tickets to unlimited knowledge and communication for the price of our personal data, and effectively excommunicated anyone who does not agree to their TOS. The EFF is US-based, but given that most of the social media and AI giants on the internet are also US-based, I feel like it’s relevant.

In my solarpunk future, the internet does still exist, and we can access and use it as much or as little as we like. But it is tightly controlled so that the reckless appropriation and use of art, writing, content, personal data, cannot happen and is not the fee charged for participation in the world wide web. I want to live in a world where my personal data is my own but I can still reach out to my friends and family whenever I’d like, about whatever I want; isn’t that a nice thought?

#AI #internet #artificial intelligence #Automattic #Tumblr #consent #content #Facebook

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adamsvanrhijn · 7 months

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Something interesting came up in regard to the age question. Do you think Oscar believes that he is unattractive? Or atleast unattractive in comparison to John.

This is not a dig at the actor or anything just in universe of the show kind of how Downton sometimes referred to Edith.

oh what an interesting question...

i would say. i think oscar is vain and can appreciate his own appearance. & blake ritson is nice looking, and oscar is framed as handsome from the very beginning. so it isn't quite the same as the edith thing where everyone in the real world knows laura carmichael is beautiful and everyone in the show thinks edith is plain and unappealing.

so. oscar handsome = yes. oscar Attractive...

there's a different connotation there. in some ways.

because i think the context in which oscar has wanted to appear Desirable / has most cared about appearing desirable is most likely, To Other Men, to whom no doubt he is a catch (regardless of age), and for whom he is also a Type. of course he also is good looking and wants to show off in mixed company and be regarded as handsome and whatever, i'm sure all of that is true, but oscar has not been living his life, i do not think, with a legitimate air of I Hope Women Want To Have Sex With Me, until VERY recently.

and we see the glimpses of this in season 1, particularly 1.08, where john is pleasant and charming and makes gladys laugh and when he does it he has a way with young women, How Nice. oscar does not.

and then in 2.01 oscar has his attention very abruptly and violently drawn to the fact that yeah, actually he is a Type, in a way that makes him a target, and is threatening to him. and it is decidedly not a type that would aid him in finding a wife. oscar is the type of man that a violent person in a bar thinks is easily duped into going with a man alone to a place where he can be made a victim, and turns out to be right about that. which has to do with a whole host of things, not only appearances - i doubt for example that oscar would be giving off that precise vibe if he and john were together and oscar was still manifesting his own reality about how perfect his life is. (i could write at least one additional paragraph here about where oscar being john's type specifically comes in but i won't. because i love you all and nobody needs to read that) but appearances and his dress and his manner... all a factor.

so.

in the real world, when the girl oscar is hoping to marry is out, and oscar has competition... he knows what the competition is (younger-by-extension-more-attractive-to-a-young-woman or richer or both) and he knows that there are certain axes where he pales in comparison and he has just been very brutally and traumatically made aware of what that could mean for him...

of course he's going to be insecure about how he looks to others.

#oscar van rhijn tag #the gilded age spoilers

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