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astercontrol · 2 months

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If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #userworldproblems #diy punk #censorship #kosa #internet literacy #email #solutions

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angelofthepage · 2 months

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Thoughts on the "Updated" Bendy Employee Handbook

Before we go any further, let's make it very clear what kind of post this is: we're not here to hate on the book, and none of anything I'm about to say is said with ill intent. I am here for analysis, constructive criticism, and discussion. This post is a little more critical than what I would usually share, so viewer discretion is advised.

Today we're talking about the newly updated Bendy Employee Handbook, which just recently released as of this month at the time of this post. And I have a lot of questions about this entry, and really, game guides as a whole in our modern gaming world. This book appeared to advertise itself as a rerelease of the original handbook with additional content for Bendy and the Dark Revival, but upon comparing the two, I've noticed there's actually a number of changes they've made, some good, some bad, and some that I'm not sure what to make of. So come and join me under the cut, and if you have some thoughts of your own, feel free to comment or reblog and add to the discussion. Without further ado, here we go!

Part 1: The Baffling Amount of Cut Content

Our story begins where most stories do, the table of contents. So right off the bat, when comparing this book to the original, you'll notice something off.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, an entire section of the original book was cut, on top of making other sections shorter. And the weirdest part? Some of these things were exclusive to that original book, they didn't appear anywhere else in the Bendy franchise. So already we're off to a weird start. Some of these missing pages aren't so bad though. In some cases, they're just format changes to make the book flow a little better/take up less room. Sometimes they succeed in that, sometimes they end up feeling more cramped, it's pretty subjective whether or not this improved the book. But it certainly does cut down on pages. Case in point, the beginning of each chapter of BATIM.

Don't worry, Joey's letter hasn't been cut, but it has been moved to earlier in the book, so it's no longer in Chapter 1. This was a very odd change. Other things that are missing are character monologues, but it's inconsistent. Alice Angel's speech about the screaming well of voices and Joey's monologue right before the final boss were kept, but Sammy's "sheep sheep sheep" speech and Bertrum's audiolog right before his boss fight were inexplicably cut.

Here are a few cuts I found pretty significant.

These pages are all missing from the update. In the case of this newspaper article, what does that mean in regards to whether or not this is "canon" or "retconned"? Joey Drew, did you or did you not have plans to expand into a Bendy themed toothpaste? The people need to know! X''D But seriously, while some of this is inconsequential, some of it matters. The mascot costume in particular, that's the only sketch we get (that I'm assuming came from Bertrum or Joey regarding that part of the parks, no one is specifically credited for making it). It doesn't show up anywhere else in the series (to my knowledge). It's strange that it's just, gone now. The Bendyland spread is such an unfortunate loss, that's some of the closest we've ever gotten to seeing the map of the park. Yes you can see it in BATIM, but being able to get up close and personal with it without having to control Henry was really nice. It makes me wonder if they're trying to erase the past details so they can do more with Bendyland in the future, something that's different from the original vision. I don't think that's it, but it could be, though they'd also have to go back on The Illusion of Living too, given it’s discussed there with some really fun details.

Speaking of which, that's the weirdest piece of cut content: the missing section that ends the old book (that was reiterated in The Illusion of Living). It's Joey Drew's tips for making a cartoon. It's formatted differently and has no images in TIOL, but the basic information is still the same. What's not the same though, is the loss of the tutorial pages for drawing the toons. These are another thing that don’t show up anywhere else in the series, making them a much more permanent loss. And even though this section is cut, it’s still referenced on the back cover of the new book, which is a bit odd.

These were really cute and showed so much personality for not just the toons, but for Joey as he described them. Cutting this was genuinely disappointing for me. Same with the paperwork in Joey's apartment. Those were some of the highest quality images we had of what was on his desk and bulletin board, and I liked being able to see them clearer. The biggest loss of the cut content isn’t just the pages themselves, but the personality they gave to this book, and the Bendy world as a whole.

This was the very first Bendy book to be released, and therefore our first look into this world in this format. And while I don’t think it’s the greatest thing in the world in terms of being a game guide, I didn’t pick up the original for a game guide. I picked it up because I wanted to see if it provided more context for the world. And when it does that, it does a good job. The memos from characters we know, Joey’s financial records, the images from the desks of people like Joey and Bertrum, they give us insight into how things were going at the studio. Some of my favorite details from the original are Joey’s memo about how Susie was replaced by Allison, and the receipt for Joe’s Fine Dining. The fact that that memo was distributed to everyone but Susie enhanced what we already knew from BATIM, and it paints him as a much crueler character than we knew him to be. Not to mention the repeated use of “I have to say, I’m an instant fan”. Having Joey say those words makes the concept of him creating the cycle so much more interesting. Like did he script out every little action these characters take? Or is this something Susie picked up and recycled from him after potentially finding this memo in real life? Oh there are so many delicious possibilities. And the lunch date, oh my gosh. One, it started my quest to build the Joey Drew menu using all the things he eats in the books, because damn does he have good taste. And two, it was so cool to have a look into an interaction Susie told us about in that one tape. Like that was REALLY GOOD. Give me more like that! When you have other parts of the series back up things we’ve heard only one character say, it gives more credence to the idea that they actually happened that way, or gives us a clue that we need to check for character biases when they tell us their side of the story. And in a series where MOST characters are unreliable narrators, that is REALLY IMPORTANT for establishing timelines and figuring out what’s real versus what’s fabricated. That was my biggest hope for the update, for more flavortext and world building that expands on things we already know.

But um…the dark revival part of the book doesn’t do that.

Part 2: The Dark Revival’s Minimal Offerings

After an abrupt jump from Bendyland to BATDR, we get into the new stuff. The Bendy and the Dark Revival section of this book is alarmingly short and has very little substance. There is no new expansion of the worldbuilding or insight into these characters. I mean, the book describes Heidi as being a female lost one? So if you wanted a confirmation on her gender, there you go I guess? I guess that detail was never like, stated explicitly, but this is me stretching to find something new that it gives us. Actually, wait, it does give us one new thing, but I’m gonna be honest, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

The book refers to Allison having a “pet wolf” when we get her introduction in Chapter 1. It then later describes that Tom “likes being pet” when we get his introduction in Chapter 5. Which by the way, is the only image of Tom in this entire book, since his original render from the old version was cut. Now, I’ll be honest, I used to like that second detail, I thought it was cute that he doesn’t just tolerate Audrey, he actually LIKES being pet. Those are two different things, having some insights into Tom’s feelings and characterization would have been a breath of fresh air. But no, when I reread the book and saw that first detail, that made that really weird and uncomfortable actually. It would be one thing if in-universe, Tom called himself a pet, or Allison called him that with consent. Heck, if there was another character in-universe who wanted to purposely insult Allison and Tom by saying that, that would be fine too, then it’d be reiterating the narrative. But on its own? I take issue with taking Tom of all characters and calling him her pet. The Safehouse Boris never got treated that badly, hell, Buddy in the books never got dehumanized this badly when he became a Boris. But Tom, Tom gets to be the one that’s dehumanized? There is something that really rubs me the wrong way about that. Especially if he turns out to be Thomas Connor or has some connection to him. I can’t assume if he is or isn’t anymore given all the stuff BATDR pulled with Allison and Henry. But on the chance he IS Thomas Connor, do you have any idea how bad that looks, to have a character that, because of details written in Dreams Come to Life, many fans speculate to be a person of color, referring to him as Allison’s “pet”? And even if he ends up not being a person of color (I say as I groan about the inevitable discourse for the DCTL graphic novel that’s coming out), it’s still kind of awful to say that about anyone. Tom is a character that has repeatedly gotten the short end of the stick in this series. He’s relevant to BATDR for all of a couple of minutes, and he’s incredibly underutilized and lacking details or depth for most of the series. Thomas Connor, he gets a bit of depth as of The Lost Ones, that novel does great things for him. But Tom Wolf? Short end of the stick. And I’m sad to see that continue here.

The one positive thing I have to say about this section is that it’s really nice to have so many of the audiolog character transcripts here. Most of the notes and logs from BATDR are here with all their words typed out. The ones that in-game had a chiller styled font are transcribed a bit strangely, as now they’re written like the messages written on the walls in-game. But it’s not the worst. If anything, all of this gives me a great resource as a theorist. Having a record of all of these and what chapters they appear in makes my goal of constructing a timeline and cross checking information much easier.

Though from a graphic design standpoint, these pages frustrate me a little bit. They’re so cramped, and there’s several spots where the text isn’t centered properly within its text block. I get the sense on some parts, it’s because it’s placed so close to the spine of the book, so they don’t want any information getting cut off, but it still looks funky. And there are several spots where that explanation doesn’t really apply. There’s also some weird placement of fun facts. While I love that this book lets us in on some secrets, they’re not always placed in an area that makes sense? Like, there’s a note about how to get the Inkjets Concert, but the steps for how to get it are placed way after a point in the narrative where you’d be able to get it, and I’m kind of scratching my head as to why it was done that way. Is it to encourage a second playthrough? Or is it to not spoil the story? Why not split the information up? Or have a dedicated secrets page like they do with the achievements and theMeatly’s cutouts?

Though speaking of not spoiling things, this book is really odd about what it chooses to focus on. So, Henry’s model is in this book, right next to a passage about a “mysterious man” you can meet in the Cyclebreakers area. They showed his model but didn’t name him as Henry? I don’t quite get that choice. Also, despite the cyclebreakers being very important to this story, they aren’t really mentioned before this very brief section. However, Porter? The character shown for all of a few seconds? He’s got at least three images throughout this book. The balance feels off with what this book chooses to put emphasis on.

Also, this one really annoyed me: Allison. So for everyone who’s actually played BATIM, you would know that Allison Angel is never referred to as Allison within BATIM. We only know she’s called that because people dove into the game’s files and revealed her and Tom’s names upon the release of Chapter 4. And the book follows suit with this, it does not call her Allison in the original handbook whatsoever. HOWEVER, the BATDR section messes this up. When it introduces her, even though in-game she introduces herself as Alice, the book introduces her as Allison. But when we get to Chapter 5, the part where she’s actually named Allison by Audrey, it suddenly switches to calling her Nice Alice? It’s a weird choice and I don’t understand why this happened.

It leaves me wondering just how much the new author of this section and their editors know about the Bendy series before going into this project. What context were they given to write this thing? It makes the book feel unpolished to have so many mistakes in its formatting and information. I don’t know what the quality control team for this release looked like, but a part of me wonders how many editors this went through before making it to the final release. I don’t work in publishing to know what that looks like, but I’d genuinely love to learn more on this subject, it’s fascinating.

There’s also a very strong dissonance in the imagery. While I’m glad to see the renders from BATDR’s advertising so clearly and up close, the difference in their coloring looks strange when put next to the rest of Bendy’s usual color palette. It leaves me wondering what assets the book team was given for use in this release. There’s a lot I could say here about the importance of press kits and brand guidelines, especially in this day and age when so many fans are making just as high quality of content as the official releases of media. And that leads me to the most disappointing part of this book.

Part 3: Stolen Content

If you’re active in the Bendy fandom and know its many creative members, then you may already know what I’m about to dive into. MLSpence3D is an artist that enjoys 3D modeling, rigging, animating, and rendering. He can often be found engaging in all sorts of corners in the indie mascot horror community, such as playing a notable role in the production of SuperHorrorBro’s upcoming title, Glitched Out, as well as providing the renders used on the Bendy Wiki of the in-game characters. Spence has had his work mistaken for official renders before, and unfortunately, it’s not just fans making that mistake. The render of the Piper used in the BATIM portion of the original handbook is Spence’s, and it unfortunately hasn’t been removed in this update, nor has he been credited or asked for permission to have it used here. I’ll admit, his stuff looks so official that I’ve mistaken it as such too, and it speaks to a much needed conversation on assets, metadata, and protection for artists of all mediums.

Our fandom is not the only place where this happens. Back when FNAF: Help Wanted was in production, the cover art mistakenly used fan renders as a part of its photomanipulation. Developer Scott Cawthon was quick to apologize and make things right, removing the renders and replacing them with officially made FNAF models. Heck, we had something similar happen right here with Bendy back when the voice cast of BATDR started working with Streamily. The initial post that advertised their Streamily debut used renders from Spence and a few other artists that had to be tracked down, and they didn’t have the rights to use them, nor were they credited. It makes a lot of sense that this happens, when you don’t have sufficient resources and aren’t an active member of the fandom, if you’re a graphic designer trying to make a piece to advertise something, you’re going to need assets to make that. And if you’re not given sufficient assets by the people you’re designing for, you turn to other sources to get the job done. They may not know what on Google is official vs fan content. The fans are so skilled and passionate about what they do, and with the number of series that have fans steadily joining the official teams, it’s incredible what can result from being passionate. But it also makes for a much needed reminder to add metadata to your files so that they can be traced back as belonging to you. Watermark your stuff, clearly mark your work as fan content in the tags, captions, and descriptions, in an effort to protect yourself. Don’t use images you find online unless you have a very clear idea of where they came from, so you can direct people back to the source when they ask about it (or better yet, link the source in your description from the start). Give people another reason to pause and double check their work in the chain of command (they should be pausing to double check anyway, but let's be real, we don't live in a perfect world). In a world where credit and sources are more important than ever, remembering to give credit where it’s due from the start will save you all kinds of headaches in the future. Video game developers, especially those of you in the indie scene: please develop press kits to give to people your teams collaborate with. By giving them assets they can reliably use to advertise for you, you will save everyone a lot of hassle in the long run. And if this is still happening even with a press kit, it merits having some conversations to evaluate why and solve the problem. If there is no other takeaway anyone gets from this post, this is the big one I want to see some positive change on in the future.

Part 4: The Functionality as a Game Guide

This book works for your first time through BATDR, but not for any kind of sequential playthroughs. The way it directs you through the game uses the audiologs and notes as waypoints. Once you pick them up, they are removed from the environment, and so if you’re picking up the game after a long time away from it, you’re not gonna remember where those were, so it’s likely not going to be useful for navigating. It reminds me a lot of the way my parents talked about one of our old hometowns. We lived in Vermont for a little while, and there were two things about our area that we laughed about. One, never leave your car unlocked unless you want it filled with zucchini. Two, if you ask for directions, you’re not gonna have a clue unless you’re a local, because they word everything in a similar fashion to “you’re gonna drive past where the old barn used to be”. At least give me a landmark that still exists, or a map! The BATIM chapters aren’t much better, they sort of give you a layout map, but it’s not helpful. Especially in Chapter 3, the place where you arguably need a map the most, there is no kind of instruction for how to get through Alice’s fetch quests if you get lost.

In my mind, a game guide is something you turn to when you need help getting through a game. Now, mind you, I am not the target audience for a game guide. I don’t own game guides. There are a few in my household that my siblings own, for stuff like Super Mario Sunshine, and I guess technically my Pokedex for Pokemon Black and White 2 DOES double as a game guide. But like, we now live in the age of the internet. If you want to know how to get through something, there are a million articles and Let’s Plays that detail how to complete the base story, find secrets, and even suggest strategies for tackling difficult challenges. Some of these are designed to be informative, and some are more reactionary and built for entertainment, there’s lots of flavors to choose from!

And it makes me wonder, what does that mean for the medium of game guides as a whole? I think they still have their place. For one thing, different people benefit from different learning styles. Being able to read a guide may work better for someone than a video depending on their brain wiring. And for people who don’t have reliable or frankly any internet, or rely on a library for that, it’s nice to have a book so that you don’t have to wait to keep playing. I’ve never seen anyone get a game guide from a library, but I absolutely think it’s something a library could have. It’s also just really convenient to have all of that information available in one book, as opposed to having to search through multiple forums and sources and risk getting spoiled. And when they’re done well, sometimes they can have secrets not even the existing player base knew. Like I knew that there was this secret about a ghost train that appears if you set your system’s clock to 4:14, but I didn’t know if AM or PM mattered. Thanks to this book, now I know that it doesn’t matter, both work, which is really handy to know! But uh…most of the secrets that were revealed in this book were things I knew within the first month that BATDR came out. None of them were new to me as someone who’s plugged into the world of Bendy. There have been multiple videos detailing how to get these secrets, and how to play this game, by many different indie horror enthusiasts. It almost makes it feel like this book came out a bit too late, and it’s only released about a year or so after this game came out.

Which really begs the question, who was the target audience for this book? Was it for new fans who were struggling with these games? Was it for longtime fans who wanted a memento of the occasion and a record of all the stuff in these games? Was it for lore hunters hungry for new secrets and world building? Having read both versions of the employee handbook, I still can’t definitively say who the target audience is. That kind of frustrates me, that’s the first thing they taught us about back when I went to school for graphic design. It’s important to keep your audience in mind when designing something, that way it caters to their needs, appeals to them, and gets your message across effectively.

Part 5: Final Thoughts

I still can’t say for sure what I was supposed to get out of this.The parts of it that I found charming and appealing were not continued or built upon in this update. There is no new world building or lore. It doesn’t do an effective job as a game guide given its reliance on non-permanent elements of gameplay. It doesn’t give us tools to cross reference what we know from previous entries, nor does it expand upon details that lacked clarity within BATDR or BATIM. It removed some of its more charming content, and it still has stolen artwork from its previous iteration. By the time I got done reading this book, I was left feeling disappointed and kind of exhausted. No joke, I grabbed a friend, and we went through it all to compare it page by page to see what changed. It was something you could make a drinking game out of, not that I would recommend that.

I would struggle to recommend this book to any Bendy fan, unless you’re a completionist like me who wants to own every book as a physical copy. The original employee handbook was a far better read, and if you can find a copy secondhand or at your local library, you’re in for a small but tasty treat (quite literally if you decide to make the bacon soup recipe, which fun fact, originated in this book and was developed by the wife of Bookpast, one of the writers on this series!). The Dark Revival section feels tacked on and not as well thought out as the original book was. There is a very odd disconnect between the two. I’m genuinely confused as to why it was put in a rerelease of this book rather than making an entirely new book for Dark Revival. Dark Revival is a much longer and detailed game than Bendy and the Ink Machine. I would expect a book that describes how to play it and its world building to take up a lot more pages and go in depth on different details than this one did. So why was it done this way? Does this have to do with some sort of contract with Scholastic that we don’t know about? Was there a time constraint, or a page count that had to be met that they couldn’t meet with just BATDR? Did the people working on Bendy have too much on their plates to dedicate the time to a new book? What happened here? I wasn’t expecting to leave this book with more questions than answers, but here we are.

Overall, I don’t think it was worth what I paid for it, but it’s going to live on my shelf with the rest of my books. This will be handy for when I need to reference the audiologs and don’t want to look up a YouTube video to remember what was said. It’ll also be nice if I’m traveling. See, whenever I visit my grandparents, their wifi is pretty limited, so if I want to draw anything while I’m up there, I have to print out references or download images on my phone before I go so I can do that. Having some of the new renders in this book will be useful if I decide I want to draw Bendy stuff or theorize while on the road.

Now it's your turn. Tell me your thoughts on the Updated Edition of the Bendy Employee Handbook! Is this something you want to read? If you have read it, did you enjoy it? Were you left wanting more? If we ever get another book like this, what sort of things would you like to see? Let's talk about it. And remember, if you did enjoy it, that's not a bad thing, absolutely no judgement there. Just because it wasn't for me doesn't mean it's not going to be enjoyable for someone else. Every work of fiction has its audience. <3 Here's wishing you a wonderful rest of the day, and happy reading!

#bendy employee handbook spoilers #bendy employee handbook #bendy spoilers #batdr #bendy and the dark revival #batim #bendy and the ink machine #bendy books #bendy book spoilers

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tenebraevesper · 3 months

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Sonic Prime (Timeline Placement)

So, now that the finale of Sonic Prime has aired (although I still wonder whether it was really the finale because were still missing one episode), everyone is asking themselves the question of when does it take place in canon.

After all, it is general knowledge that the producers stated that it should be treated as part of the Sonic mainline series canon. But, what does that mean?

I still remember how people weren't happy about Sonic's more immature personality, especially since this just came after Sonic Frontiers, where we saw a more mature Sonic, and even TV Tropes lists the statement as Fanon Discontinuity:

As well-received as the series is, when the producers of the show stated it was being treated as canon to the mainline series, this did not go down well with certain fans, believing much of what appears in the show appears to contradict what the games state, such as Green Hill being stated to be the home of Sonic and his friends. Probably the most egregious change is a flashback that shows Sonic and Knuckles' first meeting in Hidden Palace Zone (which, while there is a boss fight with Knuckles in that stage, the two meet much earlier).

Fans then started asking Ian Flynn about when the show takes place in the game timeline, with Ian's answer being that he'll tell them after the show ends. Now, the ending of the show revealed absolutely nothing in regards to when it takes place, with Ian Flynn posting this tweet:

Yeeaaahh, from what I've heard through the grapevine, people weren't happy:

Misblamed: People blame Ian Flynn for the rather vague suggestion of the timeline of when Prime is set, even though 1) Ian Flynn was not a writer of Sonic Prime. He was a consultant. 2) The Lore team weren't the ones that decided to make Prime canon. That's a matter that's decided by Sega's higher-ups. Likewise, any inconsistencies are the result of the writing team, who likely didn't (or couldn't) research every detail of the series' characters and lore within any time constraints they had.

That should explain things and it's bad enough that people are using Ian Flynn as a scapegoat over something he had no control over.

So, what is my opinion in regards to this situation. I believe that Sonic Prime's placement in the mainline series canon can be viewed from two different points:

Point 1) The show is a standalone story, taking place in a slightly different universe at any point after Sonic Advance 3. It has all the Sonic game characters and any detail that got messed up could be chalked to writer error as said above. It is connected to the main canon in some way, but not in the way that you could insert it directly into the mainline series games.

Point 2) It is an event that takes place after Sonic Advance 3, and connected to the mainline games despite the inconsistencies, but it is supposed to be treated similarly to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) in the sense that, as Ian pointed out above, Prime wipes itself out. It happened, but it has no impact on the main canon aside from the fact that Sonic and Shadow remember the events and probably won't ever be mentioned again.

Now, these are just general conclusions to Sonic Prime's placement's in the canon, but what about my personal view?

In my personal headcanon, Sonic Prime takes place sometime between Sonic Colors and Sonic Forces. Why after Sonic Colors? Because Orbot and Cubot made their debut there. Why before Sonic Forces? Because the Sonic the Hedgehog IDW Comics detail the events that occurred after Sonic Forces.

One could argue that Sonic Prime could be placed between the Sonic IDW Comics and Sonic Frontiers, or maybe even take place after Sonic Frontiers, but I'm certain that people's argument over Sonic's lack of maturity in Prime in comparison to Frontiers nips that theory in the bud. Not to mention, we already got a game that takes place after Sonic Frontiers, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, and we saw how Sonic acts in that game.

Another thing I would like to add is that I'm treating Sonic Prime in the same manner as Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). It is a standalone story with minimal impact to the main canon, an adventure that happened and was subsequently erased, with the only ones who remember it being Sonic and Shadow.

So, these are my personal thoughts and before anyone starts an argument, I do not speak for the community. That said, what do you guys think?

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

#Ten's Thoughts #sonic prime #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #miles tails prower #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #dr eggman #rouge the bat

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kaelleid · 6 months

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S02E08 Spoilers

Anyway I hated it lol

And this isn't just a "my little guy died" kind of thing. I've thought he was going to die all season; that was not a surprise to me. This is about how tacked on the ending felt.

Izzy spends his dying breaths comforting Ed and telling Ed the crew is his family and loves him. And then Ed immediately leaves the crew to be an innkeeper. Yeah, that was a great and meaningful use of screen time.

If the crew loved Ed and considered him family, I'd really like if they would have showed that instead of just telling us. Because what I saw this season was post-Kraken Ed having one conversation with Fang and that was pretty much it for positive crew interaction. But apparently they love him and they're family, okay.

Also RE: showing and not telling, Ed referring to Izzy as his family. I think I could count the positive interactions between Ed and Izzy across all seasons on Izzy's hoof. They've hardly spoken this season post-Kraken. Where is this coming from? It felt so forced and unearned.

It's frustrating how the scene seems to brush off all of Izzy's development this season, moving away from his toxic relationship with Ed and opening up after surviving a suicide attempt, to spend his last minutes focusing on Ed and saying that he wanted to die.

Anyway forget that, it's wedding time! And now forget that, let's have Ed and Stede run an inn with no prior onscreen discussion! The end!

I got into this fandom because I loved Ed/Stede so much. The potential for cracks in their relationship was there from the start; one of their first conversations together was Ed wanting out of piracy while Stede wanted in. I was really interested to see how this would be resolved, and how they'd move forward together. I don't think the resolution on this front was satisfyingly handled at all. But Ed read a letter and they kissed, so hooray I guess. Why would you ever need to talk anything through and build a solid foundation before living together? It's not like we saw this analog literally go up in flames a few episodes ago.

There was such an odd juxtaposition of spoon-feeding the audience with flashbacks to explain what was going on for obvious things, and then also expecting the audience to do all the legwork for important relationships. What's the relationship between Jim and Oluwande? What made Stede finally decide to leave piracy behind for Ed in S2E8 vs S2E7? Why, according to an interview, is Frenchie apparently captain now instead of Zheng Yi Sao or Oluwande? We're not going to write those conversations, figure it out yourself.

Also, Blackbeard the genius, and Zheng Yi Sao who conquered China's seas, apparently can't come up with a plan better than "Wear uniforms and then walk around with a hostage, whose gun we will not be taking." It just felt so meaningless.

The thing that really gets to me the most is how much I loved S2E1-7. I had some lingering issues, but they didn't bother me because I had faith they'd be resolved (at least, resolved to some extent, given a 3 season arc). And then the last 15 minutes of this episode destroyed that notion. I thought the writing was poor and inconsistent, and it threw everything before it into a completely different light. The things that I was waiting to be built upon were never actually in the blueprints. The cracks in the foundation were covered up with bubblegum. It didn't have good bones.

#kaelleid post #ofmd spoilers #ofmd #izzy hands #spoilers

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kishimotomasashi · 4 months

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Alright, Uchiha Clan oppression longpost

This is the unavoidable, and often central, topic people tend to surround their Naruto politics takes on, and is as a result a big, ugly discourse-generator. It's also a subject I'm definitely always thinking about when it comes to Naruto as a noted Sasuke stan, and my thoughts on it have changed gradually over the years. I'm making this post to share what my current interpretation on "how and why the Uchiha Clan were oppressed" is.

Before I do that though, notice on what this post is not:

I'm not writing a "discourse ender", a take meant to be spread around with the claim of being the only correct interpretation of events. This is a post I wrote to share the exact way I rotate an aspect of the manga in my mind, and to convince people that looking at it from this angle is interesting. Basically: it's not that serious, I think about this because it's fun.

This isn't a "character-bashing" post or whatever either, so like if you agree with what you read here, I suppose I can't stop you from using those infamous "anti-[X]" tags, it's just that making a post that warrants them has never been my intention.

Along with that, I do want to address the by now very well established fact that Naruto the series is Not Very Good, and has glaring inconsistencies in its writing. The Uchiha Clan drama is definitely not exempt from this, and in its case the failures in Kishimoto's writing usually show in inconsistent power-scaling, in which we're made to accept weird leaps in logic (how does a 13 year old get rid of what we're told is one of the most powerful and feared clans internationally?) That being said, those particular inconsistencies are kind of irrelevant to this particular post, and don't much change the fact that the Uchiha Clan Massacre did happen. I'll be taking it as a given that if you're reading this, you're accepting to suspend your disbelief of those events on a technical level, and are more interested in how I make sense of it all more on the diegetic social/political level.

With that settled, we can get to the important part now:

The most popular take (as far as I've personally seen) on the events that led to the Uchiha Clan's downfall is the one that takes Madara at his word: the Senju have been oppressing the Uchiha since Konoha's conception, and Tobirama becoming the 2nd Hokage gave him the opportunity to put the Uchiha in a more socially disadvantaged position (police force), gradually earning them the villagers' ire, which was the catalyst for their eventual genocide.

This interpretation works if the end goal of your analysis is to say "Tobirama really fucking sucks". I don't think this conclusion is an unreasonable one, since Tobirama's hostility towards the Uchiha is great enough that he can callously tell a 16 year old genocide survivor that if his clan "self-destructed for the sake of the village, so be it". However, to me, the circumstances surrounding the Uchiha Clan are much wider-encompassing and more fascinating than narrowing their fate to a single man in fan meta written to convince you to hate him, so it goes without saying that I don't think "this is all Tobirama's fault" is a very interesting lens to look at this from.

I also don't buy the argument that making the Uchiha cops was (originally) to their detriment. We'll get back to that in a bit. I suppose this depends on how you look at Tobirama's character, but I think that when he said he made the police force as a sign of trust and to give the clan something useful to do in Konoha, he was being genuine. Arguing the opposite requires you to either believe that a law enforcement order could ever be in an oppressed position by default, or that Tobirama created a fundamentally useless new institution because he just hated the Uchiha that much. I think the former is a weird thing to argue if you're trying to be Leftist about all this, and the latter is a very ungenerous interpretation of Tobirama's character in which his own "racism"/pettiness overshadows his more utilitarian instincts to ensure that the village his brother built was safe and functioning. Obviously you could interpret that, but that leads us back to the "everything is Tobirama's fault" take, that I already mentioned I find lame as hell.

So then, how do I think the Uchiha Clan was oppressed? Because I think they indisputably were, or I wouldn't be making this post. Well, I think it was less "The Senju/Tobirama have always wanted to lord over them and wanted them dead", and more: they became gradually more socially disadvantaged during the era of Hidden Villages, with the consecutive world wars creating a souring global opinion on kekkei genkai clans.

(I'm gonna base my arguments primarily on what we see happen in the manga, and I'll add in some information from the fanbooks/databooks that weren't contradicted by what we see happen in Kishimoto's canon)

Let's start with what we know, definitely, that canon tells us:

Kekkei genkai clans are discriminated against to a very high extent, leading to things such as their mass slaughter (eg, the Uchiha Clan obviously, but also kekkei genkai clans like Haku's clan in the Land of Mist), and a vulnerability which puts them in positions where they're likelier to be targeted and kidnapped (eg, Hinata, but also Orochimaru having a whole criminal entreprise built on kidnapping and experimenting on people possessing kekkei genkai).

The trend for their discrimination is in being scapegoated. When Haku talks about the genocides in the Land of Mist (I refuse to call it the Land of Water sorry it sounds so stupid), this is how he describes them:

(chapter 59)

basically, it's not shinobi as a whole who are badly seen even though all sorts of them were likely participating in those wars: it's kekkei genkai clans in particular. Compare this to the Uchiha Clan being blamed for the Nine Tails attack (I mean one of them certainly was responsible, but was entirely unaffiliated with the rest of the clan) and being roped off to the edge of the village as a result.

Kekkei genkai clans are also frequently described by characters as being a bit "wilder" and more violent than usual shinobi. Tobirama calling the Uchiha "cursed", Kushina describing the Uzumaki as being "a bit savage", and Kakashi introducing us to the concept of kekkei genkai initially with these fun visuals:

(chapter 25)

The thing that's interesting about all this is the context in which it exists: the shinobi villages aren't technically "nations", but I think it would be accurate to liken their possessiveness of their secrets and paranoia regarding outside intrusion + conception of themselves as unified cultural entities + incredibly harsh treatment of dissidents (becoming a rogue is essentially a death sentence) to nationalism. There's an intentse "in-group vs out-group" feeling here.

Not to mention that canonically that shinobi have always been tools of imperialism for greater powers. While Hashirama's initial dream was to put an end to that, it eventually became corrupted; there was already discontent regarding land and resource allocations during his tenure as Hokage, and while we have no idea why the 1st War started, we know that by the time we're on the 2nd one, Konoha had become a tool for the Land of Fire's imperialist expansion (and was apparently was expanding its influence as a military village, too).

(chapter 436)

Basically, the "in-group vs out-group" conception that had once solely been clan-centric widened, and became this new concept of shinobi villages.

This is important because nationalistic sentiment inevitably rises during war; as a result, there's be a sharper eye for who'd turn traitor, who wasn't supporting the military effort, who would endanger their nation/village, etc. With this, there would be greater suspicion directed towards kekkei genkai clans, because they're more "genetically predisposed" to being unpredictable, because they would appear more loyal to their own than to the whole of the village, because they were the likeliest to turn traitor, and so on.

This would be a gradual process going on since the 1st War, but I believe that the 2nd War was where this kickstarted into becoming so much worse, because that one saw the destruction of Uzushio. It was a village composed entirely of a single clan, didn't bend to any of the big 5, and the Uzumaki were "savage" and had abilities that were greatly feared. It would be interesting to consider the idea that their associations with Konoha would have done them more harm than good here, too, given that Konoha was the Big Bad in the 2nd War and an alliance with them would not have been viewed positively.

It's thinking about all this in context, where nationalism was at its peak, where there's an idea that genetic chakra abilities impair swathes of people from being regular functioning shinobi like everyone else, is how we can imagine the Uchiha were discriminated against. They had another disadvantage to them as well, given that one of the first deadly attacks committed on Konoha was done by one of them. If we want to go back to the police force argument, it would be interesting to consider the idea that while it had been a good position for them at first, the utility and influence of the institution gradually eroded over time, and by the time the era where the massacre happened came along it became nearly meaningless since most of its original functions had been assigned elsewhere; as the kekkei genkai clan discrimination rose, the Uchiha also fell victim to it and their influence within the village significantly reduced out of fear of them.

The surveillance and the sequestering of the Uchiha Clan came after two important events; the first being the 3rd Great Shinobi War, and the second being the Nine Tails' attack on Konoha which happened barely a year post-armistice. Konoha was barely recovering from global armed conflict when half of it was destroyed in that attack; tensions are high, the Hokage is dead, and so the village saw an incredibly convenient scapegoat in the Uchiha clan.

So... yeah, that's how I see it! I find this a more fun interpretation than just pointing fingers at individual characters, because it allows me to consider the wider worldbuilding of the Naruto world, and also doesn't assume the Uchiha's position was especially unique and the end-be-all of all the problems with Naruto's politics. It's certainly important, but it's part of a greater network of problems too!

#send post #The ground is soft and I'm ready to dig #Uchiha #this is somehow both longer and shorter than I expected it to be #Anyways feel free to discuss and ask for clarification on some points if they seem confusing!

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pessimisticpigeonsworld · 2 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/crushingthebroken/741170379192745984/the-fact-ryan-condal-keeps-hitting-with-the?source=share

I think there is a lot of bias in this analysis, what is your opinion?

Yes, there's definitely a lot of bias here; op is so clearly a pissy TG stan. This analysis is rife with observation bias and just plain misinformation. I do sympathize with some of their points though. Op is doing something I've seen a lot of TG stans do: projecting the issues in HOTD onto Rhaenyra.

HOTD is a pretty bad adaptation, full of inconsistent characters and just plain fucking up the characterizations of the people. The Velaryons definitely suffer more than most other characters from this. They made Rhaenys rather antagonistic to Rhaenyra, turned Laena into basically nothing, made Laenor a deadbeat dad, and Corlys is just kinda there.

However, op's complaints about the Velaryons' representation show their bias very obviously. They don't complain about Rhaenys' characterization until she's supporting Rhaenyra. They don't talk about the issues Laenor's running away brings in, just about how it makes the Velaryons' support of the Blacks confusing. They complain about Corlys not being hated for offering Laena to Viserys, but don't acknowledge how the show purposely aged Laena down to younger than Rhaenyra to make Corlys look worse. The most damning however, is how they complain about how Corlys didn't care about Vaemond's death.

Vaemond is killed both in the book and the show, both times because he was slandering Rhaenyra and calling her sons bastards. Daemon kills him both times (with Rhaenyra's approval in the book, which was a slay tbh). Corlys doesn't care in either occurrence because Vaemond was attempting to usurp Corlys' line and his chosen successors. Op choosing to ignore the actual truth of the situation shows they just hate Rhaenyra and are bitter HOTD didn't go all the way with making the Velaryons disloyal to her.

Moving on to their complaints about Rhaenyra's portrayal, another thing I agree with to an extent. HOTD made Rhaenyra into a much more passive character than she actually was. They made her virtually inactive politically, removed her approval of Vaemond's execution, and made it so she was unwilling to go to war until Luke's murder. They showed their benevolent misogyny. However, op isn't angry about the sexism of this portrayal or how they nerfed an interesting and fun character, rather about how she does fewer morally ambiguous and questionable things. They're upset that HOTD made it harder to say Rhaenyra is an evil bitch without revealing the misogyny of TG.

Op also complains about how HOTD doesn't condemn Daemon enough while actually portraying how awful Aegon, Criston, and Vaemond are. This shows how op isn't actually using media literacy. Condal and Hess constantly condemn Daemon and went out of their way to make him worse than he is in the book. Daemon didn't murder Rhea or abuse Rhaenyra in the book, those are things they added to make him look worse. Meanwhile they actively defend Aegon raping women and go out of their way to make him more "sympathetic".

Op also sympathizes with Criston, because apparently him being held accountable for his own decisions is wrong. He chose to sleep with Rhaenyra, he chose to murder Joffrey, he chose to dedicate the rest of his life to ruining hers. Criston isn't a good person, he isn't a victim, he made all his choices and can't accept the consequences of them.

Op also reveals how they are very anti Valyrian by throwing in a spiel about how Daemon is a neo-nazi and the Valyrians are fundamentally evil for utilizing slavery. Yes, slavery is abominable, however, criticizing Daemon and Rhaenyra for wanting to hold onto their cultural traditions that have nothing to do with slavery or human exploitation isn't wrong. If every person was expected to abandon their culture just because the culture has morally wrong practices, no person could ever hold onto their culture. This applies to the other cultures of AWOIAF, including TG's precious Andals who tried to literally murder any religion other than the Faith. Daemon valuing his culture is the least condemnable thing he's ever done.

Op also complains about how Otto is portrayed as being an awful person. I have to say, a TG stan wanting to defend Otto is new to me, but not very surprising. Of course Otto is portrayed as bad and the head of the greens, they took away all of Alicent's agency and had to give it to someone. Otto is a raging misogynist and only cares about power, that's all there is to him, but apparently he's more sympathetic than Rhaenyra for some reason.

In conclusion anon, yes, this is an extremely biased "analysis". Op hates Rhaenyra and is upset that Condal and Hess didn't go out of their way to make her the primary antagonist of the show. Apparently it isn't enough that they outright defend a rapist and made the Velaryons completely nonsensical. TG stans are ridiculous and are driven purely by hatred of Rhaenyra and/or House Targaryen, op is no exception.

#anti team green #anti team green stans #anti aegon ii targaryen #anti criston cole #anti otto hightower #rhaenyra targaryen #anti rhaenyra antis #team black #anti hotd #daemon targaryen #corlys velaryon #rhaenys targaryen #laena velaryon #anti targaryen antis

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shadow-pixelle · 2 months

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Braided Fates 2

(Masterpost)

Part two of the Danny Phantom stuff for this AU! This thing just keeps getting longer and longer the more I think about it.

Updates might slow down a bit on this side of things, because I've got some events I'm doing fics for and also various real life events that're gonna give me less writing time, so it might be a bit before more gets added. We'll see.

Keeping track of days was… difficult, in the Realms.

As a whole, there wasn’t really a way to keep track of time. There wasn’t a sun or moon in the Realms as a whole, adding one to a Haunt was difficult without putting in a lot of time- hah- and focus into it, and that could still be inconsistent since a Haunt responded to the ghost in charge. At least they did in the Infinite Realms, since it was more flexible than the Living Realm. And not even clocks could help, since while they usually followed the passage of time pretty well, they sometimes skipped forwards or backwards at random, and unless you noticed it would make keeping track hard.

Even Clockwork struggled to keep entirely accurate track of time in the Realms, which really said something.

Tucker was determined to figure out a way to keep proper track of things, which Danny thought might be a lost cause, but he had no idea. It’d been a project for three years now, though, which made him think it might be pretty much impossible.

Still, all projects like that had been put to the side for the first while in the Realms. Instead, the three of them all focused on getting settled in. Because of the mess around Realms time, they hadn’t ever stayed in Danny’s Lair before. The most they’d done was visit, entering the Portal and rushing over there in order to look around, and added supplies to the house in case they hadn’t been able to get to any of the go bags in town. But aside from knowing what the place looked like, they hadn’t spent much time in the Lair, or the Haunt as a whole.

So now they were sorting it out to live in. Properly, this time.

With their families taking things so well, the trio had been able to gather all of the various go bags they’d stashed away for themselves and brought them all into the Lair with them, which would make living easier at the very least. They had fake identities and plenty of money as well, so if they needed to leave the Realms and go back to their home dimension for anything, they could, as long as they were careful of the GIW. And with Danny’s parents on their side, there was always a chance that the Anti-Ecto Acts would get removed at some point, and they could go home.

But until then, they were staying here, and had to make the most of it.

The nicest part about them living in Danny’s Lair was that he could make adjustments to things. It was a part of his Haunt, after all, and unlike having a Haunt and Lair in the Living Realm like he had before, the Infinite Realms were flexible.

He was able to make changes to the inside of his Lair, which meant that he could customise their rooms much further than they could do on their own. Sam’s was dark and gothic, Tucker’s was like his one at home but with more space for all his computer equipment, and Danny’s own was more like a planetarium, with his bed floating in the middle of the room and the walls looking like a starry sky.

They’d quickly learned they had to set up a bell to get Danny’s attention when they walked into the room, otherwise he’d be perfectly happy curling into a ball and watching the stars.

Sam and Tucker had wandered in and out of their own rooms for hours, sorting things out and asking Danny to make changes. Danny had kept out of his for the most part, after the first hour or so and the addition of the bell. He kept getting distracted by the stars, so he’d needed to change his room to not have stars on the walls before he unpacked everything he’d brought, putting it away on the floating cases and shelves that made up the room. Instead, while the other two had worked, he’d gone around the hallways to make more adjustments to the house, being careful to stay within shouting range of Sam and Tucker.

Apparently, the layout of the Lair would also respond to his subconscious, as well as his conscious desires and the requests he made.

The house was taller. The Ops Center on the top was as empty as it had always been, but there was more room now. There was an extra bedroom, right at the end of the hall, and when he peered in it was a mirror of his parents’.

They had a basement now.

The living room was currently a mirror of his Living home’s. Danny liked that, right now. It felt like he was at home, rather than hiding in the Realms because he’d half-died once and it’d put everyone in danger by opening the Portal.

That was where he settled, once he’d finished looking around everything. Curled up on the couch, listening to Sam and Tucker go in and out organising things, and sat there focusing on making a star cycle. He’d ended up making both a sun and a moon with a functioning lunar cycle, and patterned the stars to be precisely like the ones over Amity, just because he could. And by that point the other two were done as well, and had come to curl up beside him, all three of them nested together in a big pile like they were at home.

Not that they’d ever done this in that house in Amity, but that was besides the point.

Unpacking had taken up pretty much their entire first day, or what felt kind of like a day, and eventually, Danny knew they’d have to move. Get back to scouting out his Haunt, because while nothing would attack them here it was still a good idea to know what their territory looked like. They’d need to map things out, in case the subconscious changes to the Lair meant that he could also make subconscious changes to the Haunt, and if that happened they’d need to be able to compare the changes.

At some point, they’d need to map out the castle. They knew it was slowly changing to be more Danny’s, rather than Pariah’s- Clockwork had assured them of that- but Danny still wasn’t looking forward to scouting out the entire place. It was huge, after all, made for the Ghost King. It wasn’t as big as his Haunt, obviously, but it was still big and more likely to be dangerous than Danny’s Haunt. Who knew how much time and effort it would to map out the entire place, especially if it kept changing.

They really needed to figure out a communication method, too. Danny had no idea how that worked in the Realms normally, but hopefully if Tucker’s focused obsession on making a working time-keep for the Realms didn’t pan out, he might be able to use something in the system for messages instead. Or maybe Danny could do it. They had the basement lab now, which he could use for his work, depending on what it looked like down there. They could check that out sometime.

And when they’d done all that, there was still gonna be the house to deal with as well. Sure, the house was fine for right now; it being an almost-replica of the Fenton house in Amity, it was definitely functional for living in, but eventually Danny knew it was gonna get cramped. Even just disregarding the fact that the three of them had never lived together before, they were eventually going to need more rooms for things, and that was gonna require talking stuff over.

Like maybe replicating the games room from Sam’s, or the bowling alley, or the movie room. Maybe adding rooms from Tucker’s house as well, just to make things feel more comfortable. Add things outside of the Lair so Sam could have her greenhouses, assuming there was anything they could grow here. They’d done a few experiments with keeping food from getting so ecto-contaminated that it came alive, though they’d never applied it at the Fenton’s, so maybe at some point the kitchen would expand, or they’d gain a big freezer level somewhere.

But all of that was going to need them to sit down, probably with a floor plan of some kind, in order to plan out what they wanted to do. And at the end of their unpacking, all they wanted to do was sit, curled together on the couch, and pretend that they hadn’t had to run away from the only place that had ever been home.

-x-

The next few days went much the same, with them wandering around the house and making little changes, and exploring outside to see what the rest of the Haunt looked like. For the most part, it was a mirror of Amity’s parks, the main ones that the trio had used to visit most often. But none of the plants were quite right; Living Realm plants didn’t seem to like the Realms, Sam had discovered, so while they appeared much like Living plants, there was enough of an ectoplasmic tinge to them that they were warped into something not quite a Living plant.

Which was pretty neat, honestly. They didn’t really do much interesting, aside from the occasional swaying towards them when they walked past- which was really weird with the trees- they just… looked a bit spooky.

Mapping it was still a nightmare, but that’s just how the Realms were. Without the Infini-Map, mapping a place like the Realms wasn’t really possible properly. It was just a case of doing what they could to make something they could follow. Other than that, they made what adjustments they wanted; it wasn’t much, but they moved some of the parks and expanded them into a garden instead, added a greenhouse for Sam, and gave it more of a personal flare.

Then, finally, after what felt like about three days in the Realms, they went to deal with Pariah’s former Lair.

#dcxdp #danny phantom #fic writing #my writing #braided fates au #sam manson #tucker foley #danny fenton

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celaenaeiln · 7 months

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(Cracks fingers)

Okay now it’s time for a relatively big question. Between these two, who would say defined Dick’s true persona the best?

Marv Wolfman (New Teen Titans) or Chuck Dixon (Robin Year One, Nightwing solo book)?

noooooooo how can you be so cruel as to ask me 😭😭😭😭 I love them both so muchhh

Okay you might hate me for this but I'm the type of person who accepts everything written about a character unless that comic has glaring inconsistencies that completely contradict what other writers have written.

So for me these two are some of the absolute best writers and you're making me choose! 😭

Robin Year One is one of my all time favorite comics but at the same time Marv Wolfman wrote Silver Age: Teen Titans and I loved that comic.

However I'm more interested in Chuck Dixon's work because he retained Dick's psychotic quality that he was known for from his robin days. He writes Dick as a happy, intelligent child with extraordinary abilities and accomplishing daring feats. He writes Dick with all the daring and brilliance that the world's greatest acrobat and genius prodigy of Batman should have.

Dixon's portrayal of Bruce and robin Dick is heartwarming is the most accurate representation of their relationship.

Furthermore he gives Alfred's perspective on how Dick made Bruce's life so much better. Some which I talked about in my previous post.

The little things he does like juggling with batarangs

Being popular in school

Being an ace basketball player

Being so overly competent that he can kock out people and guns three at a time with pool balls-

All of this is the essence of Dick Grayson. While Marv Wolfman does a good job, he doesn't quite emulate who Dick Grayson is a person, more specifically robin.

I like Chuck Dixon's Nightwing better.

Chuck Dixon's Nightwing run IS the BEST Nightwing run ever written. For one, he makes Dick come alive as a person.

"I've only been here two minutes. And already I want to shower with clorox and sandpaper."

He's the one responsible for bringing back Dick's jokes and laughter in Nightwing that Dick's robin is iconic for.

He's made Dick the caring, lovable person that Dick was as robin but with the maturity of an adult.

He saves a woman, protects her from being raped, gives her his money and ticket, and sends her on her way to a safer place with no questions asked, just kindness in his soul.

He writes Dick to be the brilliant detective and extraordinary fighter he is.

Best of all, his craziness!!

DICK!! CRAZY ALERT?!

Chuck Dixon's Dick Grayson is funny, brilliant, wild, and loving. That's why I like him so much and this is who I believe Dick Grayson is.

But Marv Wolfman did a fantastic job writing Dick's maturity and his relationships with other people. He focuses on Dick's detective side and how Dick interacts and engages with other titans.

While not as funny, his Dick is also extremely intelligent and loving. He created Dick to love with his full heart and upright morals.

He invests in people, he's loyal, loving, and faithful. It's just another part of him.

So I can't say one person wrote him better than the other. Wolfman and Dixon combined create the whole picture of Dick Grayson. But I can say I prefer Dixon as a personal choice because I just happen to like those particular traits of Dick's he emphasized more even though all of them are equally important and make Dick who he is.

#dick grayson #nightwing #robin dick grayson #bruce wayne #batman #teen titans #thanks for the ask!

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yandere-wishes · 2 months

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Opinion on the absolute ANCIENT history of Star Wars legends? Meaning Tulak Hord, Marka Ragnos and such

Anon I am SO SO SO SORRY this took me forever to answer. I loved the ask so much that I wanted to have the perfect mood and ambiance for when I answered it. Suffice it to say that that hasn't happened for a good while now. But I sincerely hope that you are still lurking around this blog and get a chance to see my response. I cannot express how excited this ask has made me!! I harbor an extremely unhealthy obsession with ancient Sith lords and their lore

I'm going to start off by saying that, if we were in the Star Wars universe I would have already become a Sith lord. Due SOLELY to how much Darkside lore I read~🖤❤️

I swear whenever I see a new Sith lord my brain goes: "Omg he's so ugly." Then he proceeds to live in my head rent-free for three days and on the third night, I find myself dreaming of making out with him... this has happened one too many times...It might be a little bit concerning. XD

Tulak Hord gives off major samurai vibes so I feel like he does follow some sorta Sith honor code. That being said he most likely acquires his darling as either a war trophy from some rival or conquered planet. Or she's a wide-eyed Acolyte who he can twist into his perfect darling.

He's also so pretty and I want to kiss him so badly!!

I'd love to be his little darling, a war trophy won in battle. Kept locked away within his fortress. A prize none but him are worthy to see.

After each bloody campaign, he returns to you, his starlight. A dividend that keeps him fighting, keeps him tethered to the dark side of the force. He fights to provide you with an empire, to win your praises at his many accomplishments.

Little does he know of the aversion you harbor for him.

Tulak Hord the monster who took everything from you.

No, but to be fair, I'd still be MADLY in love with him. Just imagine Lord Hord coming home from the battlefield, bloodied and still high off his bloodlust.

Imagine straddling him as you lovingly peel off his bloodied armor. Kissing his flesh every time it appears from under his armor. He'd run his clawed gauntlets over your back tracing your spine. Making you shiver from the frigid steel. Your warmth feels welcoming, innocent, he longs to corrupt it.

Then obviously kissing when you get to his helmet. Deep and passionate. Filled with hate and love. Out of fear, you've learned to play your role as a doubtful lover, a devoted wife, to a fault.

"The universe is more complicated than you could ever imagine, starlight. Be thankful that I've shielded you away from all its inconsistencies."

It's getting harder and harder to remember why you resist him so much. Why push him away when his presence is so overwhelming? Consuming you wholly.

"Thank you, my lord."

NOW...

If you were his Acolyte things would play out a bit differently. He'd have trained you for so many years. Building you up to be the ultimate weapon and simultaneously his ideal darling. You're too far gone, mistaking toxins for affection. You've learned to cherish every bruise and broken bone that comes from him.

You were such a naive little girl when he first took an interest in you. Now he's morphed you into the scourge of the battlefield. The mere mention of your name sends generals running away in fear.

He finds you after every campaign. Permits you the honor of washing his armor and tending to his wounds. Basking in the way your nimble fingers apply bacta to what little scars he may have received.

Tulak is such a tremendous master. Personally seeing to your wellbeing and recovery.

He pulls you onto his lap, kissing your open wounds as he stitches them for you. Sometimes he pulls his helmet up and plunges his tongue into the trauma lapping at the blood and broken muscles as he ravishes in your delightful moans. He'll whisper sweet praises into your ears, telling you how proud he is of all you've accomplished, what a stupendous sith lord you shall make someday, ruling by his side. All while his iron-clad fingers work bruises into your soft flesh.

You are his perfect little doll.

Tulak Hord's perfect little acolyte.

Would it be wrong to say that I kinda want to be Marka Ragnos' concubine? Or just his pretty little princess who's always at his beck and call!! Look he's literally a giant hulking red alien with golden horns... what's not to love!!

Plus I'd give anything to just sit on his lap as he holds court. Tracing patterns across his chest and relishing in the feeling of his claws scraping across your flesh, leaving his mark even when he's focused on galactic domination.

Prior to that Marka would totally dress you in the most ethereal dresses!! All lavish golds and blood reds. Somedays they'd be full-blown multilayered dresses and other days (when he wants to show a bit more dominance) he'll have you wearing danity silk dresses that show more skin than you are comfortable with.

He'd also shower you with praises throughout the day. Calling you his "sweet little princess" and "pretty girl". look getting called "pretty girl" by a sith lord is free therapy and I am HERE for it😤😍😤😍.

I also have this random headcanon that Marka Ragnose is (in some ways) a father figure to Vitita/Valkorion/Tenebrae. That being said it's only logical for Marka Ragnos' darling to be (younger) Vitita's mother figure. In a twisted forceful way, they're kinda like a happy family. Also forced Yandere family is one of my fav tropes, so I had to reference it here lol.

Okay, guys seriously this ask has made me so happy since the MOMENT I got it!! If anyone wants to send in asks for any Star Wars Sith lords (well-known ones, obscure ones, hated/loved ones) my ask box is wide open.

In conclusion, I've been collecting Sith Lords to simp over like an 8-year-old collects Pokemon cards. Sith lords are unconventionally HOT and I'd totally be down to be there sweet little darling !! Like please just let me be a Sith Lord's cute little side piece, the eye candy that hangs off his arm. His pretty little bunny girl that'll do anything to please him.

(*Concerningly looks down at the pride and self-respect I just smashed.* "Whoops...that wasn't supposed to happen")

Anon I think I answered your question with these little stories. I am very much IN LOVE with the ancient Sith lords. And it doesn't just stop at Tulak and Marka. I literally NEED a harm of Sith lords. Look they may not be conventionally handsome, but there's something about "the dark forces warping their appearance" that makes me go absolutely feral!! 🤣🤣😍😍

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stargazerlily7210 · 4 months

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So, in an effort to continue my reign as Queen of Overthing Everything I Love, here's two more things I've noticed while rewatching Church on Ruby Road...again.

1) How The Doctor words his telling of the story of Ruby being found. His narration of the story goes like this:

"Once upon a time, late on Christmas Eve, a stranger came to the church on Ruby Road.

"She carried in her arms the most precious gift of all: A newborn child. A baby girl.

"Just before midnight, she left her daughter on the steps of the church.

"The child was taken in, and they named her Ruby after the place where she was found.

"As for the mother, she was never seen again. No one ever knew her name...

"Until that night a time traveler came to call. A traveler known as The Doctor."

Now, certain parts of that feel like artistic liberties for the sake of the story/fairytale vibe. (Ex. "...on the steps of the church" as we watch Ruby be placed on the ground in front of the door, no steps insight.)

I've already made a post about why I think the woman being Ruby's mother is likely one of those artistic liberties, but that's not what this is about.

This time, I'm caught up on the "No one ever knew her name UNTIL..."

The only ways to take the whole last part of his story is that when The Doctor arrives during that scene, are a) he knows her name in that moment, or b) somehow his arrival causes an unnamed but relevant someone else to know her name.

And while, that alone wouldn't be enough to warrant this post, it did feel intentional. Especially considering that by the end of the episode, as far as we can tell, there's no known reason/opportunity for The Doctor to have learned her identity yet.

Which leads me to my next point.

2) I can't help but wonder if we're intentionally being misled. Because the scene we're shown at the beginning during The Doctor's story is not the same as what we see in the end of the episode when The Doctor goes back to rescue Ruby from the goblins.

And I can prove it.

It's shot as if it's the same scene twice, and we're clearly meant to think we've just caught up to what we saw at the start of the episode.

Pardon my poor quality photos (idk how to get screen shots from either iplayer or disney+) but look:

These are from the start of the episode. Note: the tears actively running down his cheeks.

BUT!

These are from the "same" moment but at the end of the episode. Note: watery eyes, but no active tears spilling over.

Now I understand enough about the filming process to know there can absolutely be minor inconsistencies between shots as the various takes are edited together to create the final product. But why bother to edit and use different, identically framed shots that are supposed to be of the same moment, but don't line up? Especially when it's a closeup of a single person?

It just seems intentional to me. Especially when you consider my first point in tandem with it.

I think what we hear/see at the beginning isn't what we see in the episode. Maybe it happens later after Ruby and The Doctor figure out the identity of the woman/Ruby's mother.

Thoughts?

#doctor who 60th anniversary #doctor who spoilers #doctor who #15th doctor #ruby sunday #the church on ruby road

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petit-papillion · 28 days

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I can't help but play devil's advocate in my head whenever I see those Charles stats because yes, he's absolutely incredible, alongside the greats, but I imagine all the anti-Charles comments coming in going, "well front row starts aren't wins, so it's a useless stat".

And I started thinking, when has Carlos ever had a seemingly 'useless' stat that was positive about his results? Did he have a streak of consistency? Because I can't think of any.

Charles might have a lot of front row, pole positions, top 5 stats that people undermine, but it's a hell of a lot more than what the other drivers on the grid have. He's undeniably one of the most talented drivers.

Sure, I see where people are coming from when they say useless stats, points are earned in the race, etc. But if they're calling him out for being inconsistent: qualifying front row 7x in a row is a stat showing them the opposite. Unfortunately, I think he's made it look easy, and people just can't accept that he is working miracles in cars that don't necessarily have that pace over 50-60 laps.

And if Charles doesn't put it on pole/front row, he gets team orders to sit back during the race and not overtake (even if he has better race pace), and then he is called out for not being aggressive enough, and Ferrari firing the wrong driver, etc., etc. Mind you, when he did try to pass Carlos in Monza, people were also up in arms calling him too agggressive and risking both cars getting taken out, so he can't please people no matter what he does.

Here are just some of the things I've seen people spout recently:

I agree with you, Anon, Charles is incredibly talented, and despite some abysmal years at Ferrari under Binotto, he has achieved more than most of his peers on the grid. However, I think the expectations of Charles are extremely high, especially being a Ferrari driver. And unless we were able to compare each F1 driver's abilities to one another with all of them driving the same car, there will always be "but's". "But Alex cannot possibly win in a Williams." "But the McLaren is not as fast as the Ferrari." "But George could win as much as Max if he was in a Red Bull." Etc.

And despite him easily outperforming so many of the drivers he competed with before coming to F1, I think Charles is always going to be compared to Max. Who is also undeniably talented, but who also had a very driven dad who pushed him to train incredibly hard, who had connections & funds, plus F1 insider knowledge, all allowing Max to jump ahead and gain way more experience at a lot faster rate than his peers. And when Max is considered the standard Charles has to live up to, even getting P2 in WDC still gets you called "overrated" and "a mid-level driver".

#sorry anon i didn't quite answer your question in carlos useless stats #and still wrote an essay #i honestly don't know bec i am more focused on looking up charles stats #i don't think carlos is a bad driver at all #but what i have seen is that people seem to consider charles the level he has to acchieve #while they expect charles to reach the level of VER and HAM #charles leclerc #anon ask

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fondofcowboys · 9 months

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here's my very all over the place feelings on certain aspects of baldur's gate 3 as a romani immigrant. warnings for spoilers of course. mind you i have not finished the game yet!

1. i really can't believe there aren't more people talking about the very blatant racism in astarion's questline. im quite sure it's because the game already touches on it, even giving you the choice to call astarion a racist, and also because everytime we roma talk about anything that makes us uncomfortable we're immediately shunned and "well actually!"'d.

the problem is that it feels Extra icky because the man who was the inspiration for the original dracula, Vlad the Impaler, kept romani slaves. this is the ONLY part of vampire history that, no matter how different the media, will always stay relevant for some reason.

castlevania has the seekers, a nomadic group of magic users who pass their history down orally. while they are *mostly* treated well, the first arc of the show literally shows them being hunted out of town for the simple act of existing.

vampire the masquerade... well.. that's an entire other can of racism worms.

curse of strahd has the "vistani", a nomadic group of people who are treated like third class citizens everywhere they go, and are of course, most known for being tarot readers and drunkards.

the vampire diaries have the "travellers", who get called "gypsies" explicitly as a derogatory word by other vampires.

i want you to take any vampire media you enjoy and ask yourself, "is there anti-roma racism in this?". i guarantee you, if you look for it, you're going to find it. for SOME reason, the only thing that stays consistent with all these different vampire IPs, is that romani people are hated and scrutinized at every moment of their lives.

i MORE than understand that astarion's racial insensitivity is part of him. it's part of what makes him malleable by the player. you can help him understand why he's wrong, or you can lead him down a worse path.

i still reserve the right to feel some sort of way about astarion sacrificing fantasy-romani children for power, willingly. don't get me wrong, he's my favourite character, right up there with halsin. which is why i obviously have so many feelings about this.

(yes, the Gur were written inspired by romani people, if you were not aware)

2. the anti-immigrant sentiment is such an inherent part of the story that i did not think was going to stick around for SO long. i dont really have much to say about this, i think i should've expected it. as a fan of dragon age (i know, tragic) i'm quite used to unnecessary fantasy racism everywhere i go, i just hoped it wouldn't be part of the main crucial story.

3. larian studios i am so so so thankful for the halsin romance. eternally. forever and ever. he's my pookie bear and i'm so grateful some extra time was made to create a romance for him.

can i ask you why the hell does halsin want to LEAVE. At The End. i've noticed how much he contradicts himself throughout his questline and i just... I don't know. i've seen some other people complaining about how non-chalantly he talks about being a sex slave and i understand too, but i think it's part of his character to not take the horrible things that happened to him seriously like he does with others. that, or someone at larian took an unknown substance that led them to make halsin Very inconsistent.

with the poly situation, some people are strictly polyamorous! some people are strictly non-monogamous and do not feel comfortable being in a monogamous relationship. i understand the frustration everyone, but that's how halsin is. i dont know if that was the writers' intention, but that's certainly what he comes across as to me; strictly non-monogamous.

what i DONT understand is why he says he only wants you, calls you "my heart", is so fondly and lovingly attached to you, and then he just.... Dips? Whatever. I'm ignoring that part forever. it's not canon to ME!

anyways. yeah. feel free to Engage in some Friendly conversation. emphasis on friendly, for the love of g-d

#ezio.txt #the bear speaketh #bg3 halsin #halsin the druid #halsin #astarion #astarion bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #baldur's gate iii #antiziganism #sorry for rambling but also i have a mouth. i must scream #if you try to well actually me about this i'm eldritch blasting you #fantasy racism #dragon age

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ghostoffuturespast · 4 months

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Works In Progress 2023: A Cyberpunk 2077 Year In Review

I thought for a hot minute about doing one of those snazzy templates that’s been going around, but editing photos just ain’t my MO and rather than going by month I picked 12 favs that I’ve posted in 2023. Some of them were popular, some of them weren't. Overall, I think I did pretty good for just doing vanilla photomode on console.

You might be wondering why there's a picture of a sticky note. I don't remember when I started doing this, and I'm horribly inconsistent as you can see by the dates, but I'll jot down my word count for my wip chapter and then jot it down again when I remember to later.

I write slow. A lot of times I sit down to write and it feels like the wheels are spinning in place. My minutes and hours don't stretch very far, typically don't add up to much. But days, weeks, months. That's when I can at least measure the progress.

Fic: So It Goes 40/44 - 438,946 words

My V x River Ward and tinfoil hat conspiracy theory long fic. I've spent way more hours on this then I have on any of my VP.

I got tagged by @just-a-cybercroissant @therealnightcity and @wanderingaldecaldo to do some WIP Whenevers. I post my VP pretty regularly, so it’s always seemed silly to do work in progress posts for them, and I don’t know when I’ll have any new writing to share since in between work and the holidays, I haven’t had much time to sit down with anything since my last chapter update. And I've been feeling very... stingy, lately. Especially when it comes to mine and other people's writing. So take this WIP/Year In Review as my offering. Both these series, as am I, are all very much still works in progress.

I confined my reflections for this year below the cut. If you don’t want to read my long-ass essays, you can admire the pictures, maybe check out my fic, or just move along and have yourself a lovely day.

We’ll start with the easy one.

After at least a year of multiple playthroughs (I’ve played all the lifepaths, done all the endings), it only occurred to me at the beginning of this year to start taking VP. Part of the reason I never did before was because I didn’t realize it was a thing and then by the time I did, I figured I didn’t have much to offer. I play on PS5 and only have access to vanilla photomode, so seeing everyone else’s high-fidelity, ultra ray-tracing, modded, posed, full on virtual photo shoot photos, I was like there’s no way. (Not that I’m hating on PC modders, it’s just not everyone has access to mods or a PC capable of running the game, and I’m all for making art and creative endeavors accessible.) On top of that, all I’d ever heard from most other folks was how much vanilla photomode sucked. In the glamorous world of VP, I didn’t think there was any room for me.

But I started snapping pics anyway. And sure, there are a lot of limitations with vanilla photomode. But what that really translates to is opportunities to get creative. I am also a hoe for subverting people’s expectations, and very much believe when there’s a will, there’s a way.

Environmental and landscape shots were my first subjects before I started branching out into portraits and then capturing story moments. Through VP I found an entirely new way to enjoy a game that I’d already played a ridiculous number of times along with also finally being brave enough to share my V with other people too. I’d always worried about that before, if people would like her. Granted, I know Grandpa’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but whether you like her or not, I certainly think she’s made a name for herself over the past few months. Even if most people haven’t really gotten to know her the way I’d hoped.

I’ve taken hundreds of photos this past year. Most of which I’ll never share. There’s a lot of flops, a lot of weird experiments, ones that didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped, but I’ve learned something from every single one of them. I know how to spot good lighting, frame shots to create optical illusions, get a very limited toolkit to work in my favor, parkoured on all of the things, and heck, I even figured out how to make Grandpa smooch other NPCs. I’ve done atmospheric, mundane, down right goofy, as well as things that most people probably thought weren’t fucking possible.

I can’t say how long I’ll keep doing this, I’m sure I’ll move on at some point, but for now I’m still enjoying myself. There's a lot to explore in this game and I just can’t stop digging Night City.

Now, for the more complicated thing.

Writing

So It Goes… My peace, my war, my greedy and most ravenous of ghosts.

I’m operating under the assumption that most people following me here probably haven't read my fic or aren’t all that interested in reading it to begin with. It’s fine. But you need to understand this fic, my writing, is the main thing that brought me here. This is also Grandpa V’s story. Most of you have met her, but unless you've been reading, most of you do not know her.

I wrote around 185,000 words and posted 10 chapters this year. 2022 was about 253,000 words and 30 chapters, along with several unrelated one shots. However, I don’t think I’ve done a single chapter this year that was less then 10k, and my longest managed to hit 27k. As of the last update I posted, the fic is currently sitting at around 439k words, 40 chapters, and still isn’t done.

I have four more chapters to write. I have written a metric shit ton of words. This is, by far, the longest and most intense creative project I’ve ever endeavored to complete.

When I started writing, I was expecting this fic to be around 100-150k. That seemed to be the average for most long fics. I did not plan on being an outlier. I'm not sure you can ever really plan for that, but I guess I enjoy subverting my own expectations too.

For those of you who are reading my fic, it is my sincerest hope that it shatters every expectation of where you think it’s going. It’s not a joke that I tagged my fic “#an ode to my tinfoil hat”. An ode it has turned out to be. I’ve been sitting on this theory for two years. I have told no one about it. I hope it sticks the landing and hits the way I want it to. I don't know if it will. But fuck, I just want to be done with it so I can move on with my life, take a break, and give myself the opportunity to make and focus on other things before I have to get back on the damn horse.

I wrote less this past year then I did in 2022. I had a lot of life changes, most of which were good, but with times of change come times of adjustment. Along with some realizations that maybe you don’t understand as much as you thought you did. Looking back, I’ve been in a state of unsettled, kuzushi, for a really long time. Which is not a good place to be. It’s how your ass ends up on the ground with a knee knocking out all your teeth. I thought I knew better. Thought I had enough practice to get away from it. But bad habits have good memories.

I think given the circumstances, I accomplished a lot with my writing this year. I don’t know if my writing is exactly where I want it to be. I doubt it every will be, but it’s evolved, grown, and I wrote a pretty hefty stack of words considering I started working full-time again, bought a house with my partner, moved, and have been dealing with the millions of other beans that life tends to throw one’s way. That being said, and for full disclosure, I’ve also been dealing with some of the worst cases of jealousy and envy I’ve had since I was a teenager.

Frankly, it sucks. They walk with me every fucking where I go, hold my hands to whisper back all my doubts. Try to persuade me to my baser instincts, to be cruel and lash out. But that's not aikido. Luckily, I’m not 16 anymore so it’s at least been easier for me to identify the problem. Though I’m still coming up short in terms of actually being able to do anything about it, and will be for at least a few months more.

Yeah, I keep talking about it because I don’t know how many people know that I've been feeling this way. And I’m tired of not talking about it in a room full of creatives, because yeah, I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. And not talking about it just makes all that pent up resentment worse for everyone.

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But with the way I work and think, it’s a slow, tedious, and incredibly time-consuming art. With how much my fic has snowballed over the course of writing, it’s left very little room for the other hobbies in my life. And as my fellow writers probably already know, writing is an incredibly insular craft. And unlike a picture or an image, which only requires a glance, reading a bunch of words requires time and commitment.

So, when you put yourself out there and share what you wrote, it’s a lonely feeling not knowing whether or not anyone connected with what you put on the page. Especially, when the people who do read aren’t compelled to voice anything and when the people you’d hope would read don’t. And then you're stuck in the dark, not knowing, because neither of us says a goddamn thing.

I started writing this fic prior to actually joining the CP2077 fandom. And I joined the fandom because I felt alone. I’ve been here a while now, albeit in a few different places, and that feeling still hasn’t gone away. I’m still trying to find camaraderie with my fellow writers and carve out something that kinda sort of resembles a home or a sense of community. I watch my peers around me as they seem to build that with each other, except me.

I’m envious of the things that people make and jealous of the relationships those have created and fostered between said people, because for the life of me, it’s been a struggle to cultivate that since I got here. I know it’s selfish, but I also don’t know what about me makes people so hesitant. There have been a handful of strangers that have shown up for me regularly, but as far as people I call friends in this fandom that have shown up and actually stuck around, I can only name one right now. (I know we're all busy. And I acknowledge my writing's not for everyone. I know maybe some of you are quiet, or shy, or probably a thousand other things. I get it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt any less. People will never know unless you say. Never know unless you take the time to interact or engage. Be brave. And that's true for a lot of things.)

The propensity is for the negative to outweigh the positive. I've got a lot of numbers on my fic, so you would think things would be fine, but at this point they just feel empty. They don't bring me any comfort or real satisfaction. And I hate feeling like the people I know don’t care and that most of you are just talking around me. That I’m some kind of annoyance not fit to interact with. Which may or may not be the case. I don’t know. Again, most of you have never said anything. And maybe I need to accept the fact that most of you never will.

But this is me trying to start conversation.

It’s really shitty, knowing that the thing I want the most is also the thing holding me back. I know how to work on it too, not that it’s any guarantee. The problem is I’m still writing and in a needy state of greed. And because I’m slow, I don’t have the time or the energy to be generous. I can only take right now. I can’t give.

Relationships require both.

I can’t bring myself to read other people’s writing. I can’t comment, or like, or share if I haven’t read anything. I'm desperate for conversation, but I also don't have the time or assurance to facilitate it with other people right now. And for some reason people never seem to want to talk to me, especially when it comes to writing. I want to be part of conversations, talk deeply with other people. But I can’t speak right now, I'm not in a place to offer generosity without someone first giving it to me.

And generosity and grace is what we all need.

Four more chapters and I hope my ghosts will finally let me read in peace.

#cyberpunk 2077 #2023 year in review #year in review #virtual photography #writing #from the top #fic: so it goes #long post #i can't guarantee a safe space but i can guarantee a brave space #if anyone's been feeling similarly and wants to talk about it my dms are open #the door's always open

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thedudeplayinggalaga2 · 11 months

Text

See You In The Morning?

Kate Bishop x GN Reader

3K Words

Warnings: Mentions of injury, Angst, Language, Questionable punctuation, I think that's it?

A/N: This is the very first full fic I've ever written and Grammer/Punctuation has never been a strength of mine. I also have no idea if this story makes any sense but I had a good time writing.

You had forgotten to take your ADHD meds this morning, and now you were really paying for it. As you sat at your desk stopping and staring and stopping a multitude of different tasks without actually finishing any of them.

It was Kate's fault really, she had completely thrown off your routine as she had a tendency to do. It was a rather chaotic routine but it still got you out the door in enough time to grab breakfast and make sure you took your stimulant before getting to work.

But last night Kate hadn't come home, she had sent you a quick text telling you not to wait up. This happened fairly often since you'd moved in, and she would usually come home at 3 or 4am. But she hadn't made it home till this morning when you'd already been up and getting ready for work.

You grimaced to yourself thinking about the conversation you'd had with her.

"How's your other lover?" You'd asked

"Listen I know that's a joke but it's not a very funny one! I'm so sorry, I really am! But this mission I've been working for weeks finally had a big break and I needed to follow this lead! I'm so close to catching this guy!"

"It was a joke, and I'm glad you made some headway on your mission, but I did feel sad and concerned when I woke up this morning and you still weren't home." You said this to her with your back turned as you made lucky his breakfast.

You heard Kate get up and walk over to you, she put a hand on your shoulder. You turned to face her and had gotten the first good look at her face since she'd gotten home. You gasped "Kate, that's a pretty nasty cut above your eye! What the hell happened!?"

"I... Well.. you see there was a guy with a bat and.."

You didn't give her time to finish cause honestly you didn't think you wanted to know the rest. So you'd pulled her into the bathroom and started cleaning and patching up her various wounds before having to rush out the door so you would only be slightly late to work.

And now here you are, having a highly unproductive day and also worrying about Kate. She had been having way more late nights than normal recently, and pretty much always came home a little beat up. She definitely wasn't getting anywhere near enough sleep, you assumed this was probably why she had been super distant as of late. And last week she had forgotten about Lucky's vet appointment which was probably the most concerning thing of all.

You've been with Kate long enough to know and understand that this is just what dating a superhero can be like sometimes. But this time it was really starting to effect your relationship for some reason. Things where so inconsistent between the two of you, partly because you never saw each other and partly because when you did Kate didn't talk much about anything of substance.

As Kate had grown more distant you'd started to get shorter with her, finding less and less patience which you normally had a bottomless amount of for her. You'd also stopped planning dates with her, stopped waiting up for her even if she said she wasn't going to be too late, and you'd been regrettablely a little too harsh with her when she forgot Lucky's appointment and you'd hauled ass across town to take him.

Sitting at your desk, switching between the same three programs over and over again you started to tear up. You didn't like this, you didn't like feeling so disconnected from her. You hated how you two seemed to be living completely different lives. Because goddamit you loved Kate Bishop so much! You loved being her partner. Kate was absolutely wonderful! She was passionate, brave, and very caring. She used her skills and talents to help other people, something you admired very much about her. She made you feel seen in a way nobody had ever really seen you before. But most of all Kate made you feel safe, not just physically but emotionally too. She had always felt like home.

----

The subway commute home was never your favorite, it was always so busy this time of day and wildly overstimulating. But you tried to spend the ride figuring out your game plan for when you got home. You wanted to talk to Kate, if she was even home, but you didn't want to create conflict especially if she was going to be leaving again tonight.

As you walked into your apartment Lucky nearly knocked you to the ground, absolutely showering you in kisses.

"Ok! Ok! Lucky I love you too! But we talked about this buddy, you can't just jump somebody at the door!" You said pushing him off before giving him a scratch behind the ears.

You checked that Lucky had water and decided to let him outside as you assumed he'd been inside all day. Then you went to search for Kate.

You found her passed out in your bed on top of the blankets letting you know she'd falled asleep as soon as she laid down. You smiled though as you noticed she was wearing one of your hoodies and probably your sweatpants too.

You bent down the kiss the top of her head before settling down next to her in the bed. Stroking some hair out of her face you couldn't help but smile at your beautiful girlfriend and her slightly battered face.

"What time is it" Kate mumbled so quietly you could barely hear what she said.

"It's about 4:30 my love."

"You're home early."

"Yeah.... I was having a really bad brain day so my manager told me to just go home." You hoped she wouldn't press any further, but that was wishful thinking.

Kate finally opened her eyes to look at you, worry evident in them. "Must have been a real bad brain day for Stark Industries to suddenly prioritize mental health over productivity."

You let out a soft laugh, "Well I definitely wasn't being productive so more likely it just seemed like a waste of company time for me to be there."

Kate sat up against the headboard next to you, looking even more worried, she tapped your forehead softly with her finger "What's goin on up in there?"

You gave her a half hearted smile, "Well I forgot to take my meds this morning which isn't the end of the world but it definitely didn't help, there's also no way I've had enough protein today, and ...." You trailed off trying to decide if now was really the best time to tell her that you were also very worried about her and about your relationship. You decided against it because honestly you couldn't remember the last time you'd just sat in bed with her and you wanted to keep those vibes goin.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it."

"Hope you weren't trying for an Oscar with that performance, because I definitely didn't buy it!" Kate said teasingly.

You groaned looking up at the ceiling "Sorry Kate, I just feel a little overwhelmed right now." Which was entirely true, you did feel very overwhelmed and your brain was going about 200 miles an hour.

"That's okay, how about we get some food and take Lucky for a walk?" She said suppressing a yawn.

"Are you sure? I know you're probably exhausted! You can rest more before you have to go to work."

Kate put her hand on your face stroking your cheek with her thumb. "Yes I'm sure baby, you're having a bad brain day, so let's get some food in you and take a little walk. Also..... I've missed you."

You leaned your head into her hand a little. "I've really missed you to my love."

----

Kate treated you to your favorite restaurant that had some outdoor pet friendly seating so Lucky could join. And now you were walking through central parking doing your best to keep Lucky from trying to chase squirrels.

You'd been walking in silence for a few moments when you finally broke it. "Kate, I was also having a hard time at work today because I was worried about you. And well, also about us...."

Kate slowed down and turned to look at you with a frown on her face "Worried because I was hurt this morning? Because really it was nothing! I appreciate you patching me up, you do a better job than me, but really I'm okay! It looks way worse than it is!" She rambled.

"Well obviously I don't like it when you come home hurt, but it's more to do with how distant you've been. I know how important what you do is, and I would never ask you not to do it! But... You haven't been home much recently, and when you are you seem so distant...." You trailed off realizing you didn't know where this was going.

Kate was quiet for what felt like forever but than she said "This guy I'm trying to catch, he's like really really bad, like I would tell you how bad he is but I really don't want to burden you with that knowledge. It's really hard for me not to think about it when I'm home I guess." She was just staring at the ground now as you walked, and the way her demeanor changed you could tell that this was really weighing on her.

Before you could respond she continued, "But, what did you mean that you're also worried about us?" Her voice getting quieter, almost nervous.

"Well.... I guess I just feel like we are living two completely different lives, passing like ships in the night hardly ever seeing each other. And when we do it's like you're not actually there, or I'm being grumpy with you. This is the first time in weeks we've actually had dinner together. Kate I love you so so much! But I'm getting worried because I want to support you, but I can't do that if I'm always being shut out."

You sat down on a bench taking Kate's hand in yours as she sat next to you. You studied her face trying to figure out what she was thinking.

"I don't like shutting you out.... I just want you to be safe and to not have to deal with the things I do."

"And I do appreciate you leaving out the gruesome details truly, you don't have to tell me everything, but it would be nice if I could at least know what you are feeling sometimes. Because otherwise I have to just try and guess."

Kate nodded her head looking out into the park thoughtfully. "Well right now I'm feeling like I'm absolutely failing at everything! I spent all night tracking that son of a bitch for nothing! I've really dropped the ball on my relationship with you, like I caused a whole ass bad brain day for you! And last week I forgot about Lucky's vet appointment!"

You opened your mouth to something but Kate quickly cut you off "I swear the god Y/N if you say anything about the vet appointment I'm emailing Pepper Pots to tell her you steal all your really good ideas from your intern!"

You gasped dramatically clutching your chest for emphasis "Okay! Uncalled for! But Pepper would know you were lying because my intern, bless his heart, couldn't tell you the difference between a PDF and a JPEG with a gun to his head."

"Okay! So a bad threat but I hope I made my point clear."

"Yes, I swear to never speak or the vet incident again. And I also will apologize for being so harsh on you about it too." You said more soflty "I definitely could have handled that better, I made it a bigger deal than it needed to be and you didn't deserve that. What I was going to say is thank you for telling me how you're feeling, it helps me understand where you're heads at a bit better."

You were going to say more but Kate leaned her head on your shoulder and started playing with your fingers causing your brain to short circuit for a half second.

"Do you think I'm failing?" Kate asked in a whisper.

You stared at her hand intertwined with yours for a minute before responding. "No Kate, I don't think you're failing, I know this bad dude is giving you a run for your money, but he doesn't know who he's up against! Kate Bishop, the world's greatest archer! You're gonna get him, you always figure it out."

Kate sat up and gave you another small smile, she looked down at lucky who was now sitting at her feet enthralled with a stick he had found. "What about us? Am I failing at this relationship?"

"My love, the fact that we are sitting here having this conversation is proof that neither of us are failing." You truly did believe that, and also kind of said it to reassure yourself too because recently you'd been wondering the same thing. "I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to be your partner. I knew there would be nights spent without you, secrets I couldn't know, and the occasional missed vet appointment...."

"Y/N!" Kate said warningly

"Last time I swear!" You said quickly putting your hands up. "But recently you haven't been talking to me about.... Well... Pretty much anything. And I miss you Kate, it feels like you've been gone for weeks and I miss you."

Kate looked at you with tears in her eyes "God I've missed you too Y/N. I do want to talk to you about how I'm feeling and what I'm doing. I just don't want you to get caught up in all this. I don't want you to get hurt."

"Well right now it's hurting me to not know anything that's going on with you."

She nodded "Yeah, I understand, I feel like I don't know what's going on with you right now either, like I don't even know what your current hyper fixation food is and I always know that."

"Well right now it's those little babybel cheeses, but last week it was BBQ chicken pizza from that place down the street from us."

"I bet Lucky enjoyed that one." Kate leaned down to take Lucky's stick before he shredded it more than he already had.

"Oh he very much did! Everyday I come home without it he looks at me as if it's the greatest betrayal he's ever experienced."

Kate stood offering you her had so you could continue your walk. "Y/N I promise that as soon as I catch that bastard my first priority will be making sure we get some quality time together okay? And in the meantime I will be better at communicating."

"Okay, I love you Kate, and I know you're gonna get him!"

---

You had gotten back home a few minutes ago and you were getting Lucky his dinner. You expected Kate was in your room putting her suit on assuming she would probably be heading out soon. So you were surprised when she walked into the kitchen wearing her signature purple sweatshirt and your sweatpants.

"I do need to go back out tonight but I thought it'd be nice for both of us if we maybe watched a movie or something before you go to bed?" She asked hopefully.

This made light up instantly, but then you frowned at the prospect of having to try and pay attention to any entire feature length film. "I would love that, but seeing as I didn't complete even one task at work today I just don't think I'm gonna be able to watch a movie."

Kate looked thoughtful "Good point, should have thought of that. Okay.... How about we watch TikToks together with New Girl playing in the background?"

"And that Bishop is possible the best idea you've ever had!"

So you and Kate spent the rest of the evening cuddled up on the couch doing exactly that.

---

You and Lucky had just gotten into bed for the night and Kate was getting ready to head out. She came and sat on the edge of the bed leaning in to give you a kiss. "Y/N if I don't get this guy tonight I don't know what else I'm gonna do."

"Well, have you asked Clint for advice?"

"No, he's on vacation with his family and I don't want to bother him."

You nodded, being sure that while Clint loved Kate and was always helping her out, he probably wouldn't appreciate his family vacation being interrupted by whatever it was Kate was doing. "Okay, fair, well I'm here for whatever happens. I might not be a superhero but I do work for a very powerful company and Jerry from the biotech department owes me about 20 favors. And I'll be her to patch you up, just try not to break anything cause then I really will have to insist on taking you to the ER."

Kate gave you a massive grin as she said "You're my superhero though."

"Okay! That was so cheesy it was physically painful to hear! Imma need you to go now!"

Kate responded with the first genuine laugh you had heard from her in weeks before leaning in to give you another kiss.

As she left the room she turned to look at you and Lucky all tucked into bed. "I love you both, I'll see you in the morning?"

"We love you too! Ummm... If it's not too much to ask, do you think you could bring me breakfast in the morning? I have to do two days worth of work tomorrow and it would help a lot!"

#kate bishop fanfiction #kate bishop fic #kate bishop x reader #mcu fanfiction #kate bishop x y/n

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