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helliontherapscallion · 3 years

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Who? (Forlorn Tale of Dionysus Part 2)

Part 1

Warnings: Swearing

Word count: 2,843

(A/N): I’m not exactly sure if this will continue any further, this was just a fun little thing I had in my drafts for a while after some interesting convos in my discord server (which you totally should join, it’s a vibe). This is lowkey word vomit, but eh. This is all strictly platonic btw

“Michael, are you sure you saw a house out here? I really don’t think-” You were interrupted by your much shorter friend yanking on your sleeve to get your attention. You looked down at him in question and watched as he raised his hands.

‘I am sure I saw that house, (y/n)! It is here somewhere.’

You fiddled with the sleeves of your thick coat with unease, “alright, but if we don’t find it soon I wanna head back. Uncle Boo and Uncle Tubbo are probably going to start to worry.”

Michael huffed at the mention of his parents. You knew how overbearing they were, causing your friend to crave new experiences and adventures. You’d known him for a couple of years now and he was rebelling more with each passing day. You could relate slightly, Philza and Technoblade had hardly let you out of the house without another person to accompany you. You never really understood why, you were almost thirteen now so you should be able to explore what you want.

An excited squeal left your friend’s mouth before he started to pull you towards something in the distance, startling you out of your trance. You matched his pace with ease and felt nervous excitement tingle in your chest.

As you got closer, you could make out small details of the cabin. It was a simple small cabin built out of spruce planks with glass windows and a brick chimney, but you liked it. It strangely felt homey.

You pulled Michael into a nearby shrub underneath a window and peered in. The interior was also as simplistic as the outside was, looking untouched and tidy as if nobody was living there. You could see that the ceilings were taller than average, perhaps a hybrid of some sort lived here?

Michael tapped your shoulder, ‘it doesn’t look like anybody’s home right now. Let’s go in.’

You opened your mouth to object before the sight of his set jaw and his eyes dead set on something inside made you close it. You learned from experience that when he was this determined, there was no stopping him. You sighed, “fine, but the second we get caught, it was your idea.”

You both made your way to the front door. Without a second thought, Michael twisted the doorknob and swung the door open. A startled snort left his throat as he stumbled inside, making you put a hand over your mouth to stifle your laughter. He jabbed the side of your lower torso, ‘shut up, I thought it was going to be locked.’

He pulled you inside and you both explored the living room. Bookshelves and portraits lined the walls, a single large couch sat off to the side, and the fireplace mantle was lined with a few small golden hooks. Michael made a beeline towards it, admiring the metal. It seems that’s what he saw that made him so determined to get inside. You hoped that he wouldn’t steal them and explored the area further.

The portraits on the walls were a slight shock to you, they all included some people that you could recognize; in one you could make out a picture of younger versions of Ranboo, Philza, Technoblade, and Niki. Technoblade and Philza were sparring with shining golden swords while Ranboo and Niki sat in the grass on a hill watching with interest. Maybe this was just one of their old cabins?

You saw people that you didn’t recognize as well. Namely a cat hybrid with striking sapphire blue eyes, a man seemingly human (you say seemingly because your eyes caught sight of pointed ears) wearing a white bandana keeping his jet black hair out of his face, a tall man with green freckles and a creeper mask, an anthropomorphic diamond block with beady black eyes and a wide smile, and a man that looked strangely like Ghostbur except he was wearing a uniform of some sort. However, a demon quickly caught your eye and made your heart leap for joy. There was someone out there that was like you!

The man looked kind, always wearing a cheery smile and occasionally waving at the camera. He was tall and lanky, always towering over the others by a considerable amount. That made sense, Philza had told you that demons were naturally very tall when you asked him why you were growing faster than Michael when the zombie piglin was two years older than you were. Large wings and horns akin to yours sprouted from his back and head respectively. If he wasn’t constantly smiling, you would’ve thought that he was malevolent.

You heard the rapid footsteps of Michael’s boots behind you as you turned around. You bounced on the balls of your feet excitedly, “Michael look, another demon! Do you think he lives here?”

You watched as he shrugged and pulled you towards the kitchen. ‘I don’t know, but look! There’s another demon that looks exactly like you!’

On the kitchen table surrounded by various trinkets (bottles of wine, gold bricks, stale bread, and the decomposed remains of flower crowns and bouquets being the majority of the items) laid a framed picture of said demon lazily smiling and looking off to the side. Michael was right, they looked exactly like you except at least a decade older. Everything matched your physical features to a tee; from the red accents on their black wings to the way they smiled, it was like they were your clone. The only thing of yours that they were missing was the three circular birthmarks on your forehead. It was eerily uncanny.

Your eyes widened before you snatched the picture off from the table, studying them further. If you squinted, you could see that there was someone barely in frame. You flipped the frame around and took out the picture, unfolding it. In the picture was your adopted father and adopted uncles and aunt. What was going on? If they knew the demon, why didn’t they ever tell you about them?

‘Woah, that was smart. Do you think you might be related to them or something?’ He tilted his head before he perked up, ‘could they be one of your biological parents?’

“Maybe, but if they were, why didn’t my dad tell me about them? I… have a right to know about them, right?”

He nodded firmly, ‘you definitely do. It’s kind of fucked up they haven’t told you anything about them.’

“Yeah, it is. Do you think something bad happened to them?... Oh shit, is this a memorial?” You hurriedly refolded the picture and put it back into its frame.

Michael’s eyes widened and flickered around the table at the trinkets before he fished out two gold bars from his pocket and placed them onto the table. You crossed your arms, “what the fuck man?”

‘I thought they wouldn’t miss a few pieces of gold! You would’ve done the same thing if you were a piglin,’ he defended himself before he paused and shuddered, ‘we’re in a dead person’s house, that’s creepy… What if their ghost is right behind us?’

You spun around and put yourself slightly in front of Michael, your heart beating in your throat. Nothing was there. Michael snorted, making you slap his arm, “not cool, man.”

You were about to stomp off until a piece of paper caught your eye. It was a drawing of this person done in messy purple crayon, probably done by a very young child. It was signed by a Michael.

You turned to the wheezing zombie piglin and patiently waited for him to stop laughing. When he did, you showed him the picture, “did you draw this? Did you know them?”

He scrunched up his brow in concentration, squinting at the paper. Eventually he shook his head slowly, ‘I don’t think so. At least I don’t remember drawing it… This is getting weird.’

You nodded in agreement, putting the drawing back onto the counter. You walked towards the stairs and climbed them. They creaked under your foot loudly, a part of you was scared that you would fall through them. It was clear they haven��t been used in some time.

They led to a small loft, the ceiling coming to a point far overhead. A part of you was glad that this stranger (relative? Parent?) was a demon, it wasn’t often that you found lofts that fit all six and a half feet of you.

Like the rest of the house, it was very simplistic. A gigantic bed laid in the center of the furthest wall, made neatly with multiple fluffy blankets, part you was tempted to catapult yourself onto it. On the nightstand next to it sat a redstone lamp and a frosted glass of water, cracks spider webbing up the sides presumably from the cold.

You opened the lone drawer and discovered a book. Upon further inspection, you discovered that it was a journal with the name (y/n) written inside the cover. So this person had your name as well as your looks? This merely raised more questions than answers, so you slid the book into a pocket in your coat to read later. Under the book laid another picture of them posing with the strange group of people from the portraits downstairs. The de- (y/n) looked younger there. On the back, the word family was written and it was dated to be about twenty years old. You also pocketed the picture.

Michael walked over to the window and looked out at the vast tundra only to squeal in alarm. He ran over to you and pulled you downstairs. You looked out the window only to yelp when you saw a few crows standing on the window sill staring at you with their beady eyes.

You and Michael ran out of the house as fast as the both of you could, the snow being slightly tough to run through for the five and a half foot tall zombie piglin. You could hear the crows following you overhead. After a while of running, you both finally got back to Snowchester and raced past Ranboo and Tubbo. You hid in Michael’s room with the curtains tightly drawn.

You sat on his bed with your legs crossed and your back pressed up against the headboard. You let your head bang against the wall and you ran your hand down your face. “We’re fucked, dude. We’re literally so fucked.”

‘Uncle Phil’s still out of town so it’ll probably be a few days until they find out.’ Michael plopped next to you, panting and trying to regain his breath. “Still, we’re gonna be in so

much trouble for going that far out. I didn’t think my dad’s crows were still here.”

‘Might as well read the journal you found before we get grounded.’

You nodded and took out the journal, flipping it open to the first page. You both read the journal until it was dark outside and Michael was passed out on your shoulder. Subconsciously, you wrapped your wing around him as you read the journal.

The other (y/n) acted like you did for the most part, the only differences between you two was the lack of swearing and the fact that they felt alone even when they were surrounded by people. Your family’s names were dropped several times, especially when they were talking about ‘The Syndicate’. The code names they used were after various Greek myths, leading you to believe that Technoblade was one of the founders of the anarchist group.

You had learned that their family (potentially your family?) was strangely possessed by an egg and that they were previously possessed by said egg. They had a brother named Sapnap (your potential uncle?) that helped them escape to the tundra. It was there that they found the Syndicate, reminding you of the found family tropes you would read in books. The last journal entry detailed their last mission, how they were going to destroy the Eggpire from within and get their family back. That entry in particular gave you chills, even someone with half a brain could tell what happened to them after that.

By the time you had closed the book, it was dawn and the sun was peeking out from behind the closed curtains. You shook Michael awake and stretched out your aching body. Your neck muscles protested movement, sending a wave of pain across the area.

‘Damn, did you stay up all night reading that?’

“Of course I did, why wouldn’t I? I needed to find out about my biological parent somehow. I just- nothing makes sense, Michael.” You growled out, your voice deepening and distorting slightly as your frustration rose.

‘Chill! You’ll figure it out soon, let’s just focus on staying under the radar.’

“Too late for that.”

You both jumped and fell off the bed as you heard Philza’s voice. In the doorway, Philza stood with Ranboo, Tubbo, and Technoblade by his side, all looking equally angry and disappointed. Next to you, Michael shrunk in on himself and smiled sheepishly. He was about to raise his hands to sign, but a pointed look from Tubbo next to him told him that there was no getting out of this one.

Behind the anger, you could tell that something changed about the way the four were looking at you. You couldn’t tell what emotion they were hiding, whether it be wariness, longing, sadness, or just more unleashed anger, but you could tell that they knew something you didn’t. If the frustration that overcame you when you were reading the journal at the lack of questions answered burned inside of you, then what you felt now was a blazing inferno.

“We’re going home, grab your stuff (y/n).”

After a short staredown with the older man, you huffed in anger and gathered your things into your bag. The entire time, tense silence filled the room. Your hands were shaking with the rage you felt searing every inch of you. You could hear the sharp flicking of your pointed tail cutting through the air and occasionally hitting objects near you.

When you were done you stomped over to your adopted family and shouldered between Philza and Technoblade, speed walking down the hallway. They quickly caught up with you after saying a quick apology and a goodbye, Technoblade grabbing your arm and holding it in a vice grip.

They led you out of the mansion and into the harsh winds of the tundra. It wasn’t until Snowchester was far off in the distance that Technoblade shook your arm, “what the hell were you thinking, going into someone else’s house like that! You don’t know who lived there, you could’ve gotten yourself and Michael killed!”

“You really thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’t you?” You ripped your arm out of his hold and spoke in a low voice, struggling to contain your full rage. “I have a goddamned right to know about them.”

“...I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Philza muttered out and resumed walking back towards your house. “You’re grounded when we get back, no flying or dueling lessons for two weeks.”

“Of course you know what I’m talking about, Dad! Why are you hiding them from me? I have a right to know about my biological parent even if they’re dead!”

They both halted in their tracks and glanced at each other in slight confusion. “What-”

“You know damn well who I’m talking about. Gods, I can’t believe you thought I’d never find out,” you laughed sardonically as your hand subconsciously gripped your growing horn. “(Y/n)! You know, the demon that lived in that house? The one that looks exactly like me?! Does that ring a bell or do I have to show you this?”

You rummaged in your pocket and ripped out the picture, shoving it into Philza’s hands. Technoblade looked over his shoulder at what you gave him. You watched as their expressions turned blank when they saw the demon in the picture.

Minutes passed with them continuing to stare down at the picture and you were slowly getting impatient. “Why did you never tell me about them? Why are you keeping me from them?!”

Without looking up at you, Philza mumbled, “you weren’t supposed to find out about them. You were never supposed to find out.”

“Do you have any idea how ambiguous that is? Just tell me who they are!” You could feel your eye twitch as your frustration grew.

You could see the internal conflict on Philza’s face growing by the second before he dipped his head downwards and stalked off in the opposite direction of the house. You spread your wings to chase him in the air, but Technoblade’s hand on your upper arm stopped you from lifting off.

When you looked up at him, the look of regret and sorrow etched into his features caught you by surprise. “Let him go, he needs to do some thinking… (y/n), do you know what reincarnation is?”

General taglist (comment if you want to be added):

@crybabyjabby @izzybobizzy13 @goldenstarofthunderclan @bunnyz-pxstel @averytiredfanfictionwriter @dcml04 @sparkling-gayyyy @bbigbbrainn @thaticecreambish @kiinokochii @satansphatass @bxkubitch @bxmentchildxx @roxy3457 @montygator17 @feverish-dove @the-fictionwriters-hairdo @jichuuchaeng @404rynnotfound @luluwinchester @laura--444 @the-cult-classic-bitch @youngstarfishdinosaur @nottheotheruser @ohworm-writes @localwolfanon @realitycanbeajerk @v10dw4lk3r @esylwen @seraphsema @boiled-onionrings @smolgreenybeany @louistommosnesquickmilk @hyacinthrosearsha @ryxjxnnx @autumnpleaves @ravennightingaleandavatempus @0ton1n @self-righteous-dumbass @a-simp-for-block-people @fortunatelylazystranger @m1lkmandan @mirios-sunflower @ahmya-4 @shinipii @noyasblush @auroraskyfall @cryptocry @hee-hee-haw @blackstar-gazer

Gender neutral reader taglist (comment if you want to be added):

@totem-awooga @parkeepingparker @whatislifebutlemons

#michael_beloved x reader #technoblade x reader #philza x reader #dream smp x reader #mcyt x reader #tw: swearing

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willowistic22 · 3 years

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Famous!newsies

Ok so here are my famous!newsies headcanons from an a modern au i thought of if newsies were celebrities/famous yknow bcs I couldn’t get this idea out of my head and idk what to do with it other than making a headcanon list nabsnzbsvsnsbz anyways hope yall validate me after not posting any original content for like…. awhile now hehe

btw it got longer than expected. And I mean r e a l l y long. So if yall wanna read this better sit down and buckle up!

Jack

He’s an artist on youtube

Like a modern day bob ross ig??

If yall know zhc on youtube just imagine that but not so rich (I don’t watch zhc btw but i do know that he does custom art on iphones and stuff and that is definitely not jack kelly)

Anyways Jack simply goes by Jack Kelly.

So jack does art challenges. Like does the weirdest requests from his fans left in his comment section and stuff

Or maybe challenging himself to make art from a specific theme or a specific media

Sometimes he vlogs too but his art videos are what his fans like the most

His merch is amazing because he designed the pattern/drawing/whatever yknow. It’s printed/sewed/whatever on the clothing and it’s good quality. It’s pretty lowkey for a youtuber’s merch bcs jack doesn’t like those merch that just smacks his logo on a hoodie

Davey

He’s a fantasy, YA, romance writer (he mixes it wisely ok?)

And goes by David Jacobs

Listen he’s a hopeless romantic and i’m pretty sure yall agree too

He wanted to stick to YA romance. The classic high school lovers yknow

But he wanted to challenge himself since he’s been writing about high school lovers since he was in high school

Thus the fantasy genre came in mind

So yeah he likes creating love in his own universe

Whether it’d be different worlds, universe, species, time periods, whatever.

He wanted to direct the movies based on his books, but he’s actually lowkey terrible at leading on his own. But he did stick to being the script writer and co-director (look idk how it works in the film industry i’m just making shit up)

Crutchie

He’s a solo jazz singer

Crutchie gives off Michael Buble and Jason Mraz vibes tho

And maybe a bit of frank sinatra? Yknow ‘cause he sings jazz

Also he riffs thank you very much :)

He goes by Crutchie Morris to everyone

He usually plays the acoustic guitar or piano on stage

Ok but he’s like really good with the piano

Makes the best jokes on stage too. Some are just sarcastic comments.

Crutchie asking through the microphone : “Oh, straight?”

A fan he’s talking to from the crowd : “Uhh… no, gay”

Crutchie : “no not you, the vodka”

Everyone at the concert : *laughs*

Crutchie, jokingly : “Oh, you’re drinking vodka! Straight? No gay”

(yes that was indeed inspired by that one video of Harry Styles and a fan in one of his concerts yall can’t stop me)

Kathrine

She’s a crime mystery writer

Think like the modern day Agatha Christie

Okok but she goes by Kathrine Plumber on her books :D

She chooses that genre bcs she’s a huge fan of Agatha Christie

Her favorite book from Agatha is Murder on the Orient Express

Oh and her books are sometime very gruesome alkjsfhakjsfb

Nobody check her browsing history, she’ll look like a murderer

Ok but I feel like she also has a youtube channel about books and stuff and sometimes like to vlog

She also has a writing tips series on her channel where she shares tips on some of the frequently asked questions about writing or her fans leave a specific question in the comment section and thought she could expand more to it in a full length video

Also she likes to vlog while she’s in a book convention

Her books are also turned into movies and she has done a great job directing it

Race

Yall would be lying to me if you don’t think this kid would end up being a twitch streamer and youtuber (like vlogging yknow. I feel like his gaming stuff would strictly be on twitch)

And ik it’s widely agreed by everyone in the fandom that he’s a dancer of some sort so yeah he’s also simultaneously a dancer

I don’t think I need to explain any further bcs it’s just so in character

He goes by Racetrack Higgins

Ok so he likes to vlog on his youtube channel

Sometimes does stupid challenges

Maybe he’d drag Albert to do a challenge which he always says no

“I’ll just be your cameraman dude, dw”

Race : *angery*

Since Al and Smalls are the skateboard peeps™ race is the rollerblade dude™ bcs I say so

He has three cats named Racecat Higgins, Spot Clawlon, and Romeow (i’ve mentioned it before and I will mention it again hehe) and his fans loves them endlessly

Albert

You don’t think this kid would also end up being a twitch streamer and youtuber like his bestie up there?? Lmao you thought wrong (again, gaming is strictly on his twitch)

He just goes by Albert DaSilva on the internet

And yes he’s also a dancer because I say so

On his Youtube channel he also vlogs

Half of his vlogs starts with him riding his skateboard

“Hey, guys! Welcome back to another vlog-” *falls off his skateboard for not paying attention to a curb*

It happens way more often than he’d like to admit let’s be real. His fans make a compilation of it and memes on reddit

Always wear a snapback

Snapbacks are an important element to him so his merch store is really boosting his snapbacks

And just for the wormsie discord server he has one with the word ranga on it after it being born from a stupid inside joke he, race, and both of their fanbases combined share (@ my wormsie fam thank me later)

Oh yeah, his youtube besties are Race and Smalls just so we’re clear here :) (I’ll get to Smalls in a bit)

So I always headcanon Albert having two big dobermans. So his fans always want to see a doggy update because Zara and Zoey are everything to them.

Doggo vlogs are fun. It’s usually Albert taking the two good girls to Central Park for playtime or teaching them new tricks

Spot

He’s a solo rock singer

Is an amazing singer like wow none of the newsies expected him to have that sort of pipes to reach high notes

And he does it amazingly with no sweat

Also his instrument is the electric guitar to go with his amazing singing ajsfhasjfhajhf

Anyways he goes by Spot Conlon still

And his songs are very lyrical. Like very.

A lot of metaphors. No one knows what most of his songs means.

So basically Taylor Swift songs if it switched genres to rock. And not even like songs from speak now or red. But like if evermore and folklore songs were to turn into rock songs with a little bit of reputation vibes sprinkled on top. And his concerts has the reputation era vibes but make it spot conlon (hey non swiftie fans reading this i’m so sorry i’m pretty sure yall don’t understand wtf i’m talking abt)

That is also the only way i know to describe his vibe i’m sorry but i don’t really listen to a lot of rock alkjhfasjk

Anyways it’s a known fact that he wears tank tops daily that it becomes his signature look. And also an inside joke among his fanbase

Now just picture the merch booth from one of his shows and there’s like endless tank top designs for his fans to pick and choose

He’s also crowned to be the King of Brooklyn bcs of obvious reasons

But the joke is he’s a pretty tough hardcore guy that’s a cat person

Sarah

She’s a badass female solo singer

Mostly does pop but the badass type of pop

Yes, she does go by Sarah Jacobs

Fans were really surprised Davey and Sarah are related

Because one is a hopeless romantic while the other is a total badass

Anyways she gives off Little mix, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and Selena Gomez vibes

That is literally the only way I can describe it

She’s very lyrical, with a lot of metaphors

When she dances on stage, she d a n c e s

All while holding a mic to sing. And she hits all those high notes like it’s no ones business (a literal queen i tell you)

She and Spot are besties and has been known to have done a few collabs together

Their fans were hesitant about their collabs since their genre is pretty different from the other but they make it work and it slAPS

And among all her boppy songs with full choreography and backup singers, she always have a few songs she sings while only being accompanied by piano or guitar (Either electric or acoustic) which she plays on her own

Finch

He’s an indie pop artist with his trusted acoustic guitar by his side

Just think of music by Wallows and Lewis Capaldi were to be blended in together and Conan Gray for the cherry on top

But it has a little bit of Ed sheeran, Lorde, and Lauv vibes to it too

His concerts are simple but his songs are mostly very boppy so his fans still have fun either way

And it’s usually in small venues but there are times where he had a concert in a huge stadium

He goes by FINCH (yeah all caps btw)

Finches are a very on brand thing for him obviously

Has been known to collab with Crutchie and they actually make a very good team

Somehow was able to combined both genres to produce a few boppy songs

Ok ok but Finch and Crutchie have made a collaborative album (and maybe they went on tour????)

Specs

He’s a history fiction writer

Yes this is inspired by the fact that he’s 100% a history nerd (no one change my mind i love this headcanon aight)

And he explores a lot of different histories from different parts of the world

He actually helps a lot of students understand history even further for school through his novels

Anyways he goes by Specs because I say so

No one knows why that’s his pseudonym and Specs isn’t interested in explaining either. No one other than the newsies need to know it was born from a stupid nickname the newsies gave him :)

His research mostly comes from history books because of his genre which wouldn’t be a problem since he has loads and will voluntarily buy more if needed

Also yeah he makes a great director for the movies taken from his books

Mush

He’s a chef on youtube

Goes by Mush Meyers

So think if Gordon Ramsey and his youtube channel but make it mush

Yeah that’s it really

Ok but Mush is a jolly and friendly person

Other than just food vlogging he does cooking challenges and cooking tips too

Sometimes he does the cooking challenges with a friend (mostly henry but i’ll get to him later on in the list)

But he also vlogs his life

Which isn’t really often but he likes to sometimes

He’s that big of a foodie he has a food blog too

And also a seafood restaurant so that’s cool :D

Henry

Like Mush, he’s a chef on youtube

Goes by Henry on the internet and in general

Ajkfhajfjska I’m thinking about how ppl would address him as Chef Henry kajhfkjlashfjklasfjklsf

He mostly does the same thing like Mush actually

Food vlogging and cooking challenges (they do it together so) sometimes cooking tips

But Henry vlogs his life a lot

And instead of a food instagram he has a food blog

He has a sandwich restaurant

Yeah it is inspired by his pastrami on rye with a sour pickle line from KONY get mad about it why don’t ya (well if i’m not mistaken henry was the one that said it but idk i have horrible memory)

Blink

He’s a youtuber

Ok so I have a specific headcanon that Blink majored in psychology but didn’t end up being a psychologist

So instead he becomes a psychologist on youtube

Who often vlogs jhgasjlfhs

The guy looks like he could cut you but his sense of humor once you get him talking is just *chef’s kiss* amazing

Which is why he also has a podcast because he’s also secretly great at talking

He just thinks mental health is very important, okay?

Romeo

He’s an actor

Mostly on Broadway but has worked with Hollywood before

He’s usually a supporting character but has been known to understudy for main characters

Ok ik these bullet points are getting shorter and shorter but these are mostly bcs some of these stuff are pretty self explanatory since it’s very in character

Like are you telling me a kid named Romeo isn’t gonna be in some way very dramatic and end up turning that personality trait into his career?? Plus he’s very good at that?

Yeah you’re lying to me

Also he’s a pretty frequent vlogger on youtube

Look he’s a fun guy, what did you expect?

Just goes by Romeo on youtube

Elmer

He’s an actor

Has done his fair share in Broadway and Hollywood but started in Broadway

He can dance but thinks he’s pretty average in it yknow

Which his fans has no idea what he’s talking about because on stage he can do flips and turns like it’s no ones business yknow

But he can sing really good and takes pride in it

Elmer would play characters that is really far off from his own personality that fans couldn’t believe that Elmer played that character

He has done his fair share in main characters and supporting characters on Broadway

In Hollywood he usually does indie and rom-com movies

Buttons

He’s a fashion youtuber and basically an influencer

Let’s be real this boy is a fashion icon

He’s not really a model but more like a fashion influencer and also kind of a fashion designer

His clothing line is very *chefs kiss* amazing

He designed it all and sometimes likes to design for his friends as well

He also does fashion tips on his youtube channel

His instagram game is god tier level (along with Tommy Boy and Sniper I’ll get to them in a bit)

But yeah he also vlogs

And goes by Buttons Davenport

Jojo

He’s an actor

Mostly on Broadway but has done a few movies in Hollywood

He radiates main character energy and he does become the main character most of the time (on hollywood at least)

On Broadway he mostly enjoys being apart of the ensemble because this boy loves dancing

But he does play a few supporting characters

He has released one or two albums too because his singing is top tier

But isn’t interested in doing a lot of live concerts with his albums

Since no one has the time to say Josephino Jorgelino De La Guerra he turned it into Jojo De La Guerra (so much for ‘a special nickname only for friends and family’)

Mike and Ike

They’re a pop boy band and bcs of my lack of creativity it’s called Mike and Ike

At the start of their career :

“My name goes first because I’m older than you!” - Mike

“You’re only older than me by 13 minutes, holy shit!” - Ike

But Ike slowly accepts the fact that it’ll be like this yknow

Anyways they’re pretty great singers

They have one direction and new hope club vibes

Tho unlike one direction they can dance (i love the boys alright but i really think it’s funny that they can’t dancelkhjjlh)

They like to switch from the guitar (electric and/or acoustic) to the piano

The amount of times their name is confused by the candy is too many

But they like it like that lol

Anyways i’ve mentioned a headcanon where Mike has tattoos (not like from head to toe but it’s fairly noticeable to everyone) and Ike has piercings

So the only way their fans tell them apart is by that

But there are times where Mike has his tattoos covered or Ike took his piercings off in public alone. A fan mistakens them for the other twin but they still respond to the other name because they don’t feel like there’s a need to correct them since they’re mostly known by Mike and Ike anyways. When the fan posts it on instagram and tags the twin they thought it was the twin that was tagged would comment “wrong twin but nice pic you two”

Happens wayyyyy too many times. Their fans are officially scared to approach one of the two in public alone without their differentiating indicators on which is which

And yes it is widely known that they argue a lot when it comes to writing songs

Nothing out of the ordinary sibling squabble yknow but it’s a lot

But they do end up finding a solution to the topic of their argument and make a good team at the end of the day

Hotshot

He’s an actor

On Broadway, he’s one of those actor’s that is mostly good in just the acting and singing

He can’t dance to save his life sjdfghaf

So Jeremy Jordan yknow asj;oghajshf

No not really. He can dance a little bit

So he’s mostly the main character

But he’s widely known for his works in Hollywood

He does a lot of drama. Think stuff like Elite and Designated Survivor. Yeah those kinds of heavy drama (well idk i think those two are pretty heavy)

He wants to release his own music because he’s a pretty good singer but he can’t write songs to save his life either jgnjafjasf

And all the demo songs he was suggested by producers isn’t his cup of tea

So he’s no singer ladies and gents ://

The name Hotshot is used to name his social media platforms. He always adds a description in his bio’s that Hotshot is a nickname his friends and family use so his fans and the media refer to him with his name

I headcanon Hotshot’s real name is Tyler or some sort. No don’t ask me what’s his last name is because idk either lol

Sniper

She’s a model, beauty and fashion youtuber (I’m pretty sure those are two different things tho idk i don’t watch youtube religiously anymore), and just an influencer in general

Instagram game on p o i n t

I know most beauty youtubers go by their names but uhh… i don’t think i’ve ever thought of a first name for Sniper but I really think she really would just go by Sniper Wah on the internet (Idk she seems like an Ashley in my head but feel free to recommend headcanon names to me)

Anyways she’s very fashionable

Tommy Boy (i’ll get to him just wait aight?) and Buttons are her fashion besties

The three of them pretty much appear in each other’s Youtube video not Tommy’s tho bcs he doesn’t have one lol

Sniper’s brand are huge sun hats

I have no idea how or why but that girl has sun hats vibes I can’t explain any further I’m sorry

Doesn’t have a clothing line but does have a make up brand of her own. She calls it Sniper. Yeah that’s it akjfhjf

Smalls

She’s a twitch streamer and youtuber like race and albert

They’re a youtube trio everyone loves it

And yes she does go by Smalls

Oh and she also dances like her two stupid besties thanks for asking

Bubblegum is her brand (idk how to explain she just has the vibe)

She is skateboard chick

I’m imagining a video collab of her and Al on a skatepark doing stupid challenges

It’s her most viewed video

Tommy Boy

Ok ok he’s a model, influencer, and dancer

So think a male version of Gigi Hadid that dances

No he doesn’t have a youtube channel but frequently has made an appearance on Buttons’ and Sniper’s videos

Yes his instagram feed is also very amazing

He goes by Tommy Boy

People genuinely thinking ‘Boy’ is actually his last name and kinda think it’s strange but doesn’t complain

Tommy literally didn’t think people would think it was his last name. But they did anyways

Les

Let’s just get straight to the point : he’s a famous tiktoker

And yes, ppl are surprised at the fact that him, Davey, and Sarah are related to each other

To the people that made it through this entire list. Congratulations and thank you for your validation. Have a wonderful evening and stay hydrated

i will write at least one oneshot out of this au i promise!!

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the-space-lady · 3 years

Text

I think it is time to say Goodbye.

Hello! Mod here, Tataia. I’ve come to make an announcement about the-space-lady and edgy-frenchman.

From this day on, I will not be updating these blogs anymore. I will be closing the inbox and delete all unanswered asks.

Don’t worry! They will still be up, you can come back to look through everything as many times as you’d like, but don’t expect any new posts in either blogs.

Now, we all know already that these blogs have been on an never ending hiatus, and it showed no signs of updating regularly like back in the day. So, let’s have a little (okay, kind of long) chat, about how this blog came to life, and how I am happy and thankful with everything that came from it.

Feel free to not read this at all, because it is kind of a long read.

If you have any questions, please send an ask to my main blog, @tataiafurquim, and follow my twitter where I’m the most active, also going by the same username.

Three years ago, 2017, for the first time in the Brawlhalla history, there was a new legend leak! It was a picture taken with a phone of a monitor screen which showed the character selection screen in Brawlhalla, of the next legend in the default pose (the one that every legend has before getting their signature poses once they’re released); that was the first time everyone saw Artemis. BMG didn’t even announce her on dev streams by that point. The picture was shared in the r/Brawlhalla discord server, and, Calamari-Pop herself had tagged me to see it in one of the text channels, saying, ‘look! female Orion!’. Since I started playing the game, I’ve always been an Orion main, and once I saw Artemis for the first time, I felt like it was love at first sight.

I was instantly hyped for the character, while most people were complaining that ‘BMG had run out of ideas for new legends’, I couldn’t wait for her release, she was so beautiful, I never felt so hyped for something like I did for Artemis. I was probably the first person to make fanart for her and post it on r/Brawlhalla. People’s opinions on Artemis were very 50/50. People didn’t like her because ‘it’s just female Orion’, others genuinely liked her, and were excited to play with the next scythe legend.

I didn’t have many friends at the time who were into Brawlhalla, so for me the hype was kept mainly to myself, and of course, through my art. The picture we had of Artemis was very poor quality, so a lot of early art was missing a lot of details, but I didn’t care; I just kept drawing the only thing that was bringing me happiness.

I was a 14 year old when all of this happened, school was being very rough on me, back in the day I used to struggle so much to study, it was a pain to focus and learn, I’d always give up and go back to video games and art. My grades were horrible, I felt like my personal friendships were kind of faling apart, and so with my family. The only light at the end of the tunnel I had at the time, was the idea of making an ask blog for Artemis.

At first, I was skeptical. What if it flops? The Brawlhalla community wasn’t very active in other social medias, it was small, but everyone was close and if something big was announced, the word would spread fast. I mean, it was worth a short. Worse comes to worse, I delete the blog and move on. Ask blogs weren’t as popular as they were either.

I had claimed the URL even before Artemis was announced in a dev stream, so the blog was ready to go. I remember waiting a little more than a month when the patch of her release was finally online, and I did my move of announcing the blog in every social media I could, and so I waited for the community to show up.

And they didn’t stop coming! It was ask after ask, I was so happy, this little blog was my escape from the real world. Answering people as Artemis was honestly the most fun I was having during that year. And I could also draw her as much as I’d like! The blog was growing, and so was my audience of people who was genuinely following me for my regular art. Even when I was grounded because I did bad on a test, I still answered people with drawings made on paper.

Needless to say, this blog was definitely, a start for me in the Brawlhalla community. “Are you the person who draws a lot of Artemis?” “Yep! That’s me!” It was great, I felt like I was finally becoming someone somewhat important in a community like I always wished to, drawing what I loved, and people loved it. I even met my soon-to-be boyfriend through it!

But of course, that didn’t stop what was happening outside of the computer screen. Things were going even more downhill the more I focused on the internet and forgot about real life. It was helpless; there was no way I was passing that school year, I’d have to repeat it. My parents had decided that maybe one of the issues was that, my old school, was one of those schools that go really hard on the students, and that was not my place. So, the next year, 2018, I changed schools for the first time.

I’ve always had really bad anxiety. On the first day in the new school, you know what I did? I drew Artemis. What a surprise to nobody, but for me, this was my moment of realization, that this space lady from a fighting game, was my comfort character. This possibly canonically evil woman who wants to kill my main because of some fucked up shit he did in the past, was my comfort character. I was depressed? I drew Artemis. I was happy? I drew Artemis. I was extremely pissed off?? You guessed it! I drew Artemis! It is likely that a lot of pieces I made of her that I’ve posted online, were created from strong emotions I had while I drew it. There’s a lot that I didn’t even post either.

In 2018 I was still updating the blog, but I was also focusing a lot more on school. I was managing to get good grades, I made new friends, had new experiences, and my relationship with my family was getting better. Of course every year has its ups and downs, but overall, the important part, was finally being taken care of; I passed the school year, and then I passed again, and I passed again! I have just one more year to go, and hopefully, in 2021 I’ll be done.

Setting that aside, as the blog grew, my audience online did so too. My art improved, I’ve become, for the lack of a better word, an important member in the community. A lot of people have seen my art, and some of them probably don’t even follow me!

Today, I am a Brawlhalla Partner, I have a wonderful boyfriend, incredible friends, an amazing relationship with my family, and I am now hoping for a bright future of work ahead of me, and it was all thanks to this ask blog of a fictional character who I deeply loved. I would have never made it where I am today without Artemis, without Brawlhalla, without all of you. I could ever be thankful, and all I can give you all is more fanart of this amazing game that has completely changed my life, and with how Brawlhalla has been growing? Keep an eye on this one, it’s gonna get big.

Thank you so much everyone who has supported me over the years, and followed me more than just Artemis content. The updates on the blog have stopped because I’ve been focusing on other things. trying out new stuff and focusing on myself to become a better person and artist, creating my own stories with original characters, which I’m excited to share with all of you.

Anyway, take care, whoever read this far <3 Hopefully 2021 will be a better year for everyone.

#mod speaks

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moscarific · 4 years

Text

Some of you might have noticed that I have a new fandom. As often happens, the fandom itself isn’t new: Roswell, New Mexico, has aired for two full seasons on the CW, and a lot of the fans jumped on board at or near the beginning. I, on the other hand, sauntered in late, martini in hand, and binged the whole thing on Netflix in a week to get my mind off the fact that my HVAC had died in the middle of a heat wave and nobody could figure out how to fix it. The stubborn appliance is now fixed, and my condo is now a placid 74 degrees Fahrenheit throughout, but in the time it took, I not only watched all of RNM but wrote and posted my first fic in the fandom. It is a classic case of new fandom glow, and all it took was an aggressively mediocre TV show about attractive queer aliens and two weeks of sustained negotiation with the heating-cooling repair company.

Since I have friends in the fandom and they seem happy that I’ve shown up - especially since I brought martinis for everyone - I’m now on a Discord server where a lot of the RNM fandom stalwarts hang out. (Discord: yet another fandom platform that reminds me that the days of Livejournal were terrible but also makes me feel ancient.) Here I am, two days after joining the server, giddily chatting with my fellow nerds and plugging away at fic #2, when someone starts fretting that everyone is leaving RNM fandom and there will soon be nobody left.

In my mind, this fandom is vibrant. My Tumblr dash is full of new gifs, fanart, and stories. The Discord is not overwhelming, but there is plenty of action, most of it on topic. AO3 listings indicate a steady stream of new material. It’s possible that things have slowed down since the initial boom, but this fandom is still moving at a healthy clip - especially since, as someone else on Discord pointed out, we’re in the middle of a long show hiatus (made longer by the pandemic and by some behind-the-scenes tsuris) after a season that mostly separated the fandom’s consensus OTP.

My reaction to this concern is that RNM is the kind of fandom that has legs. At first, that was an inkling, fueled by the desire for more Malex fic to be injected directly into my bloodstream, but the more I thought about it while folding laundry (You know what else got fixed last week? My dryer. I am so happy. Never get old, kids.) the more I saw myself responding to a pattern. The upside to being old - and by old, I mean that the Star Trek fans I used to hang out with on a Yahoo Group dubbed me a Brassy Old Fandom Queen in approximately 2002 - is that you have perspective.

At this point, I have written upwards of 200 stories in something like 50 fandoms. (Not all of these stories are on AO3; some of them are buried on Dreamwidth where they belong.) You know what still gets read? Stories in fandoms with a large amount of canon that is readily available on a major streaming platform. I haven’t watched a Gilmore Girl since there was a Bush in office, but I still get kudos almost daily on Rory/Paris fics that are older than the characters were in the first season of that show. Sometime around 2011, I wrote Mass Effect femslash because I was modding a fic exchange and took a difficult sign-up for the team, and that thing still gets read all the time. Not only are my own Star Trek: DS9, Teen Wolf, and Firefly fics still being discovered by new readers, but I continue to find new fanworks for all of those fandoms on my Tumblr dash and on AO3, mostly created by people who just now took a deep dive on Netflix and fell in love for the first time. Some of these canons have become dated, and several were not great in the first place, but they’re easy to become obsessed with and to say fresh things about. They’re also easy to maintain interest in. I’m not really creating new works in any of these fandoms anymore, but I eagerly pick up new fanworks by others when they come my way. One of the best fics I’ve read in the past year is a sparkling Garashir AU that you should read if you have any DS9 feelings at all. I’ve been disillusioned with the central Avengers storyline of the MCU for years now, but I’ll be damned if I ever stop reblogging Stucky gifsets.

You know what doesn’t get new fans or fanworks? Short, time-dependent fandoms that everyone consumes at once and then gets tired of quickly. I got a bajillion kudos in the first 48 hours when I wrote my one and only Venom fic, and I don’t think anyone has touched that thing since. It’s a pretty good fic, but nobody cares anymore. A decade ago, everyone was wild for Kradam, but I suspect that if I ask the dewy-eyed college students on my dash what a Kris Allen is, they will blink at me with sweet incomprehension. Last year, when Good Omens was the place to be, I followed a bunch of fandom-specific side blogs, all of which are now either abandoned or so slow they’re effectively defunct. I have dim memories of lingering on endless LJ photosets of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson at some point in 2008, but I think we have erased this from our collective memory. In all of these cases, people got all their ideas and excitement out in one explosion of fannish energy, and then they moved on - usually drifting back to the large-canon fandoms they’d come from.

The flavor of this month is The Old Guard. Everyone is making gifs and writing fluffy backstory for Nicky and Joe. Almost everyone will be bored with this by Halloween. By then, there will be some other movie or RPF ship or live musical extravaganza that we are all either obsessed with or incepted into via fannish osmosis. Fandom needs these large, centralizing events to remind ourselves that we can all feel something in unison. But they don’t last.

That’s not to say that one kind of fandom source is better than another. Gilmore Girls is not a purer or more admirable source text than Lost Girl simply because you have forgotten that one of these shows exists. It’s just that some canons are better equipped than others to draw in and retain new fans, while others can’t sustain themselves without collective fannish energy to prop them up. And the best way to sustain any fandom is to lure your friends and neighbors into it, whether by talking up the merits of the canon or linking everyone to That One Fic or reblogging pretty gifsets until they give in. If everyone’s leaving the party, make a fresh batch of martinis. Chances are, a lot of people wanted to keep hanging around anyway, and a bunch of others were lurking by the door, wondering whether it was safe to come in.

#fandom #this might be a roswell blog soon #roswell new mexico #ds9 #enjoy your martini

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egdocument · 5 years

Text

About the EvaGeeks wiki and why you shouldn't trust it, concerning mainly one user.

On the subject of EvaGeeks: Let’s talk about the manipulation of information on the wiki, and perpetuated “nastiness” on the forums that has persisted for several years now. THIS IS A MIRROR OF THIS GOOGLE DOCS FILE. (My twitter post.) You can share this post or the original document freely, use parts of it, etc. I want this document to simply serve as a warning to new Eva fans and those less familiar with EvaGeeks and their history - as well as an update for people who haven’t seen the current state of it.

NOTE: If you can’t read any of these images, these are Imgur albums containing all of the notable ones: https://imgur.com/a/z2mGvvX https://imgur.com/a/oAgufc3

The intent of this document is not to “take down” the wiki or forum, obviously. The intent is simply to inform people of the dangers of trusting this site with their Eva info. It might be the best we have but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve it. I would actually love to see a more community cultivated version of the site with less biased information, but I fear that will never happen. The anxieties of any one (or many) individual(s), which have prevented consistent change until now are well justified, and it is not within reason to blame the outsiders for never bothering to correct the myriad of issues with the wiki. Please extend kindness to other Eva fans and approach sites like EvaGeeks with the appropriate scrutiny, if you aren’t already. We’re divided enough as it is.

Before I begin, I must state: All of the information presented is publicly available, either through main pages, chat logs or history. And yes, the link to join the Discord server and verify the information given in this is publicly available too. I will not link it myself, as I want to avoid any possible harassment of the users I speak about here. Harassment is NEVER the answer in any kind of conflict. This behaviour I don’t believe can go unchecked, but that doesn’t mean the consequences of it should be any kind of conflict towards any user. I will be naming them here so you are aware, but I really do have to advise you, as a reminder, DO NOT HARASS OR ENGAGE WITH THEM. The rule of thumb is that these issues are more systematic than you might think, and blaming or taking it out on a singular person or even a whole group is never justified. Targeted harassment, even with reason, especially never helps to remedy an issue, because it forces the person to double down on their behaviour and beliefs. Causing unnecessary pain to a person is never okay, and the ‘offences’ committed here aren’t deserving of it in the first place. Please also consider the feelings of the people who use the server and EvaGeeks site; not everyone is your "enemy" or your "target" (and frankly, no-one should be) and despite the feelings echoed in this document, EG is not a monolith of a singular opinion or belief.

The purpose of this document is to inform people of the ways EvaGeeks fails objectivity and has existed to push narratives and exclude outsiders for far too long. With new people coming into the Eva fandom (and there of course being others who have been around for quite a while but just aren't aware) I feel like now is the best time I could write this.

As for what prompted this, an anonymous member of the Discord server contacted me regarding the behaviour of one particular user they were concerned about. Said user had expressed considerable bias in the past and was admitting to making large edits to pages on the wiki very recently, and the person who contacted me felt unequipped to bring the issue to light themselves.

A decent amount of this document will be dedicated to presenting said user's contributions - while I feel someone always had to address the EvaGeeks Problem at large, it doesn't help that this user has essentially incriminated himself here to expose the problem in its entirety.

There is quite a bit of pretense I must discuss before I get into the subject of the wiki pages themselves. I suggest you read all of it; the start of the wiki section will be in heading text if you’d like to skip to it. I’m sure information on the biased editing of wiki pages is privy to anyone who has used the server or the site itself, but at the server’s current status of 60 entire members, I know not everyone has, or is aware of what the problem actually is. Please note that the person who contacted me has requested anonymity and I will be complying. I will not include screenshots of their conversation with me, and anything I quote from them will be paraphrased so nobody can go full Sherlock and analyse their typing patterns. It sounds silly and it’s probably just paranoia, but they shared my concern here. Any conflict we can prevent is for the best. EvaGeeks, of course, has a culture very much promoting the idea that it’s the “number 1 source for all things Eva”, and for English speaking fans it definitely is - you’d be surprised the amount of people who still, after all these years, think this site is consistently reputable. For the sake of context, I’m going to assume that you are not all that familiar with the site’s history or nature, so I’m going to provide a little bit of information about it for those without any first-hand experience. The forums in particular cultivate a very join-us-or-get-out type community, where those who dare to go against the grain get incentivised to leave the site; they’ll claim this isn’t the case if asked and obviously the site is NOT a hivemind but that doesn’t mean it’s not insular. I can vouch for myself and many others who refuse to go in more than a few threads for fear of discussion turning particularly nasty. Even the server member who came to me about this has stated they feel it “might not be a hivemind but it sure feels that way.” Silencing dissent, even when officially-backed, is part of their culture. You don’t have to personally harass everyone who has an opposing thought to you for it to not feel acceptable, you just need to have a history of mocking those who do. If you want some previous, notable cases of “discussion turning nasty”, here’s some off the top of my head: 1. The AWL Incident - In which ADV VA of Rei and director of EoE dub, Amanda Winn-Lee, joined the forums for discussion and was promptly harassed by a user. Most of these messages have been deleted but you can view what remains of her post history here. 2. Recently brought to my attention: upon beginning translation of the Episode 24 drafts, EG forum user LiLi was subjected to incentive to leave, mostly in the form of homophobic disgust in replies to her thread or others they were mentioned in. Any information that goes against the cultivated narrative, even when it is literally officially licensed content, is only ever considered with a degree of reluctance. The fact these drafts co-exist with other pages concerned with this episode is almost a miracle. You can find plenty of repeat instances of the above if you want to (more to do with homophobia and misogyny than outward hostility, but honestly it’s the same thing.) A look at basically any EvaGeeks thread concerning pairings or the female characters will unearth a variety of awful comments from many other users, not that that would be surprising to anyone who has spent more than two minutes in the fandom. Now, of course, that’s very relevant to the topic at hand even if it doesn’t seem to be. The EG wiki and forum have quite a bit of overlap and circular influence on each other as you’ll see later if you aren’t already aware of it. For a short summary before we jump into things and analyse our subject of the day, this essentially means that anyone with an opinion or information the majority doesn’t like will never get in a position good enough to edit the wiki and keep the edits there. This has resulted in many articles filled with conjecture and fan speculation that serve to shut down other viewpoints, whether it’s intentional or not.

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ON THE TOPIC OF THE EVAGEEKS WIKI

The issue surrounding homophobia and downplaying of references to LGB content in Eva, through proxy of fan-dictated content control and translation is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination. I'm sure you're all very well aware. It’s far from the only issue present in the fandom but it will be our subject of conversation today. Any ‘one instance’ of this persistent behaviour from Eva fans is never going to be enough to summarise how insurmountable it really is, though, so today I instead draw your attention to one user of the wiki who goes by the name of FelipeFritschF and his recent, frequent updates to pages concerning Nagisa Kaworu.

[TOPIC: FELIPEFRITSCHF]

I must reiterate here: although this document is mostly concerned with this user and will contain a number of receipts from various places, it is NOT supposed to function as a hit piece or inspire any kind of mob. Leave this guy the hell alone, just be aware that he’s the one making most of these changes and isn’t a particularly impartial party, to put things lightly.

Now, before we really get into things, it should be stated that the EvaGeeks wiki requires approval to get your edits there, as stated at the bottom of the homepage, here:

This means that anyone making consistent edits to the wiki has in fact been approved, and this isn’t the result of lack of maintenance.

What you’ll find is that it is consistently Felipe making edits to the pages in question. Kaworu’s bio page, for example, is almost entirely edited by Felipe, which we can see from the “History” tab of the article.

This is barely half of his edits made in the last few days. Take a scroll through it yourself if you’re so inclined. This hilarious bit of waffle was added by Felipe a few days ago and since revised since by him, as shown here.

(As an added bit of comedy, the man who decided to add in the Japanese in the first place apparently didn’t know the difference between 好意 (kindness, what Kaworu actually says) and 行為 (action). It’s been fixed since but I still think it’s quite funny.) Now, as anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese knows, 好き is not actually a very ambiguous word at all. I think it goes without saying, though, and I’m not here to have an argument about translations with you all (for the record, Kanemitsu’s now scarily infamous translation of this scene is perfectly fine with me in a vacuum, it’s just literally everything else surrounding it that’s the problem. Also, regretfully, I will have to speak about this nonsense later when it becomes relevant.) I’m using this as an example instead, to show how utterly ridiculous this guy’s additions to these pages are. He’s not even making a point here. It keeps going past this excerpt, and I suggest you read the whole thing (Kaworu’s page is linked above.) The point of bringing this up - and when I eventually discuss the Netflix translation when it’s necessary - is not to complain about semantics, although I’d argue that’s what’s happening in these articles, honestly. It’s just helpful when proving the actual point of the editor being incredibly unreliable and biased in how he phrases and omits things.

On the page dedicated solely to Shinji and Kaworu’s relationship (which is basically identical to their section on Kaworu’s page as far as I can tell), we can see that Felipe has also edited this several times, and even credits himself with expanding the version on the Evangelion Fandom Wiki now copy and pasted back to EvaGeeks.

The kind of “discussion” (very much not discussion when added to a wiki page supposedly presented as factual information, is it, frankly?) would be fine if it was happening in the EvaGeeks forum itself (and happen does it ever, but that doesn’t change the inappropriateness of this particular behaviour.) What I find disturbing is that in the past few days, this user has gone out of his way to make some already worrying articles even worse, presumably in an attempt to silence discourse, or add more fuel to the flames, surrounding the new Netflix translation. He has a whole page on that one, too, one which is very up-to-date in some regards and not at all in others, despite only being added a few days before me compiling this information. Frankly, going through this whole page on its own is a huge waste of my time considering how BLATANT it is in its biases, but I’ll do it anyway. It IS only a Theory and Analysis page (which is essentially an EvaGeeks free-for-all), but I think it’s quite bothering that the site even allows Theory and Analysis pages that consider only one viewpoint and are written by one person. The forum, presumably, is connected to the site for a reason.

I’m just going to link it here, for the sake of brevity. https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Kaworu%27s_lines_in_Episode_24 I suggest you read this before continuing. For a slight departure, the original theatrical Funimation dub of 3.0 is partially available for viewing online, although the audio is in cam quality so you may want headphones if you have plans to watch what’s there. The home media dub’s major changes are to issues with lore and localisation of jargon. While not directly mentioned in this article, it is implied from the subject that this is what it’s about; it’s been speculated that the very literal translation of Episode 24 in particular has come about due to Khara’s embarrassment with how Funimation’s theatrical dub of 3.0 handled Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship rather loosely. Despite these claims, every instance of the two sharing (honestly pretty awkward and unnecessary) flirtatious back-and-forths are still present in the home media version, barring an instance in the stargazing scene where Kaworu’s dialogue was translated even worse than it is in the final dub. If you don’t believe me, do the comparisons yourself. It may not be conclusive, but I think it puts mostly to death the rumour that “a Khara employee was there and saw how people laughed at the Kaworu and Shinji scenes and demanded it needed to be changed for the final release and now that’s being reflected on the new translation”, which is what it tends to boil down to.

It also goes without saying that NO ONE PERSON is “the most qualified” (holy shit, is this entry not even bothering to hide how biased it is) to translate an entire TV show, let alone something like Evangelion. Let us not forget that Kanemitsu’s claims that he respects “ambiguity” are not even true to begin with. EvaGeeks itself is a shining example of Eva fans, of which Kanemitsu is one and this is even discussed in the article, not being impartial enough to be tasked with discussing Evangelion! (There is obviously issue with citing the ADV translation as a source of all truth; if you read further into the thread on my tweet [the kitchen scene in EoE], I provide extra context for those interested, which I am aware has been spread around Discord and other places without that context included. Of course, I’m not an unbiased source either as you can probably tell from my tweets nor am I claiming to be, so please feel free to discuss these things in other places if you want. I’ve just got the tweets I have on hand here. Sorry about that.) Next, the repeat claim that this is “Khara’s licensed translation and thus the most accurate version” is pretty obviously nonsense; I’m sure I don’t need to point out to the audience that Japanese companies meddling in localisation has ended poorly in the past, or that Khara uses questionable translations from the dubs of the Rebuild films on licensed merch from time-to-time, or that the translation was fairly obviously not overseen or even QA’d by anyone following Kanemitsu’s translation work judging from the myriad of grammatical errors, missing subtitles and overly literal, poor sounding phrasing present in the final work. (Do I need to source this? Just watch the damn thing.) It’s not even like the ways it was translated have been consistent through different versions on Netflix; some were translated from Kanemitsu’s English to other languages judging from the obvious mistakes being present in multiple tracks, and some were barely even translated at all - the Italian version, the dub of which is mysteriously now missing, was so bad people were commenting that it sounded like Shakespeare or that it was translated word for word from Japanese. I dunno about you, the reader, but something about “Khara only bothered to check very rigorously the English version for their specific requests with the translation” doesn’t sound like what really happened to me. It’s more like they’ve just sent a translator they have worked with before to work on a project of theirs. Apologies for engaging in speculation, but that’s all this whole article is anyway. It’s just something I noticed from skimming through the page, but I find it quite interesting that Felipe makes a blanket statement about the excerpts from Schizo and Prano “being wrongly attributed to Anno” and then the source he provides for that is just someone on the EvaGeeks forums saying the same thing with little proper sourcing, when that was never really the intent of their post anyway. An interview summary exists where Anno has stated he wrote both books himself, and if you haven’t seen it, here it is. It’s obviously flimsy at best, but Tokyo Otaku Mode is an officially licensed Evangelion distributor. If Felipe is going to parade around his love for the Very Official Khara Subtitles Of NGE he can at least extend the same gratitude to other forms of official information; I mean, frankly, this article is about as reputable as anything in the Netflix subtitles are. Lastly, another thing I found quite interesting is his strange love for the ADV VHS subtitles. I really, really think this is obvious, but subtitles changed in later versions of the ADV release were changed because they were deemed incorrect. I don’t have sources for this so take it with an absolute grain of salt but I believe there’s even a commentary track on the Platinum release where the translator talks in depth about why she translated episode 24 as she did. It’s not exactly a better word than Kanemitsu’s, but if we’re considering translator’s word as law for whatever reason like Felipe is here, we might as well consider hers, too, right? Oh, and actually, have a look at the sources used on that article. Most of the sweeping statements he makes have absolutely no backing beyond what he’s piecing together from old and irrelevant interviews (when discussing the Netflix translation) as well as...linking Kanemitsu’s job history...I mean, sure, the guy is qualified, but do I really need to go over this again?

INTERMISSION: Speaking of sources, you might have noticed from perusing these articles yourself that EvaGeeks has a very low standard for sourcing to begin with, which is likely partially to blame for how things like these articles can even exist in their current forms in the first place. A site that doesn’t have such a lenient policy on sourcing, though, is Wikipedia. Felipe, of course, cannot stay within the confines of the fandom and has decided to have a go at providing some information to Kaworu’s actual Wikipedia page as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaworu_Nagisa&action=history Felipe is far less to blame for the state of Kaworu’s Wikipedia article, which is honestly pretty bad to begin with. There have been plenty of other people editing this one and the rather homophobic “Relationship with Shinji” part of the article has been present for a while before he started editing it. (The fact this article literally uses someone being explicitly homophobic as a source is not surprising for Eva fandom, but holy shit, am I disgusted every time I reopen this page. I'm not even going to bother figuring out who added that one.) I do wonder if his reasons for not desecrating this page the same way he has on EvaGeeks is because he knows it wouldn’t stay up for particularly long. Reminder that he is also the main editor of the same pages on the Evangelion Fandom Wiki, which is essentially a copy and paste of EvaGeeks. Of note is this little tidbit I found:

This is what Felipe then deleted, as this is apparently not relevant, despite literally being about Kaworu’s relationship with Shinji. I mean, I’m sure this could have been put in somewhere else and perhaps phrased a bit better, but why the hell would you outright delete that kind of information? It’s supposed to be a wiki, not your own personal opinion chamber. BTW, this is the thread post he links as a rebuttal to that person adding it, and it’s probably for the best it’s presented here with context: https://forum.evageeks.org/post/886380/NGE-Ep24-Script-First-and-Second-Drafts/#886380

He clearly thinks he has a point here, but I’m not sure what exactly he’s going for. Basically everything he’s saying is conjecture, and while I can kinda see where he’s coming from it sure does completely fail to address the intent as explained in this interview. “Read the whole interview” is very dismissive, especially when the interview in full doesn’t exactly contradict the initial point. It does say quite a bit, how he will disregard official information when his wiki articles themselves are full of nothing but rambling.

Here’s another relevant and quite funny Discord screenshot:

Felipe is making a pretty hypocritical statement here. I’m sure he does have a point - there’s probably been quite a bit of vandalism happening to these pages which isn’t exactly surprising (again, Eva fans are not often rational people, please be honest with ourselves). That being said, I think there’s a particular irony to the man who has written many very, very long paragraphs on the wiki pages he has control over trying to stop people from thinking there might be anything but “ambiguity” between a pair he doesn’t like.

In the case anyone reading has forgotten: the purpose of a wiki should be to provide unbiased information on the material it discusses. Obviously the repeating of “innocuous” statements about how “ambiguous” it all is, in the vain of EG’s now made fun of ‘we don’t know what he really meant by that’ and ‘why Kaworu is so intent for Shinji alone to have happiness remains a mystery’ are pretty obviously intended to downplay the very, very obvious “subtext” and leagues of official information provided.

It kinda goes without saying that WE CAN INFER THESE THINGS FROM THE ACTUAL INFORMATION ON THE WIKI, you don’t need to add a disclaimer to everything going “well we just don’t know what it means!” (even in instances when we do know what it means, but that’s almost besides the point). You don’t need to add in these statements, unless you’re trying to sway people into ignoring what's presented by the show. If you want people to draw their own conclusions, you are in fact capable of presenting information without commentary - in fact, that's kind of the whole point of a wiki. Yes, Eva is ambiguous at times, but talking down to people like they need this reminded to them constantly is an absolute waste of time and energy. It’s almost as if the editor has been trying to cultivate a narrative and has been getting away with it because you can’t really prove these statements are biased unless you do the research. (I mean, you can from context, but it certainly hasn’t done much to get them removed, has it?)

You can view the editing history of any given EvaGeeks article on their own pages if you want to see just how many times these things have been added in by Felipe. And obviously, no, it isn’t just his fault - there are other users, several, in fact, credited with the editing of these pages, many of the edits serving the same point as Felipe’s paragraphs on “ambiguity”. He’s just the most concrete example of a biased editor. Also, yes, I do recognise this has all happened within the few days post the release of Eva on Netflix and that it was likely prompted by that. But we know at least one of the mods is aware of it given how Felipe talks about it in the EvaGeeks Discord server. It’s also quite funny I’ve seen people linking these pages like they're some kind of "gotcha" in response to tweets discussing the new translation, as if they haven’t been invented out of thin air in the past few days.

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Now, frankly I’m sick of staring at EvaGeeks, and if you want any more information on these articles and others with instances of the same thing happening, you can have a look at it yourself.

Originally, this document contained far more screenshots from Felipe. My desire for this to not turn into a hit piece has lead me to remove a great deal of these messages. I do suggest, if you want to, you join the server and make your own conclusions. Even beyond what the member told me about I found myself agreeing with him fairly frequently when he was being reasonable - this doesn't change my concerns regarding the presentation of information on the wiki, though. The anonymous member was mostly concerned about this user having basically all the control over Kaworu's wiki articles, seeing as he has far too high of a stake in everything. Not all of these messages are inflammatory or even necessarily bad or wrong, but I find that to anyone privy to the “revelations” about the EvaGeeks Wiki here, they paint an interesting story, to say the least.

It’s starting to sound like he perhaps has just had some bad experiences. The following few messages are part of the same conversation.

I find it interesting how he flipflops from not understanding anything about the whole Eva Parallelism Theory Thing to suddenly being all for it when it concerns things not about the gay stuff.

Comments on how ‘manipulative’ Kaworu is

Because Kaworu is very pro instrumentality, and this definitely isn’t just a theory, I mean, it’s even talked about on the wiki, guys! (And I’m not even touching on the yes-men in this server.) Oh.

Oh no.

For the record, this page is clearly still under construction, and to point out any one thing about how bad it is would be essentially just poking a stick at a beehive. At least this one is so absolutely poorly phrased it’s doubtful anyone could mistake it for any kind of proper information. I also find it incredibly funny whenever pages on the wiki use the forum as a source. Relevant: Qmisato’s post on his defending of Shinji sexually assaulting Asuka: https://qmisato.tumblr.com/post/183082754484/yesterday-i-was-invited-to-evageeks-official

In response much later. I really can’t see it as being framed as “fun teenage romance”, also why is the word romance suddenly being used to talk about Asuka and Shinji after the whole debacle with Kaworu? He’s said before he doesn’t see Asuka and Shinji’s relationship as romantic, either (and GOOD! It’s not!)

(Also - it’s not sexual assault when Shinji tries to kiss Asuka in her sleep, but it IS when Kaworu does the exact same thing to Shinji? Make up your mind, dude.) Turning this sort of thing into Shipping Discourse is frankly not the right way to go about it, but it is perhaps notable that despite what Felipe says, he is in fact an Asushin shipper. (I don’t feel the need to post all these images in the document as its cluttered enough as it is.) At this point it’s rather adhom and I feel irrelevant but I do think it’s relevant that through all of Eva fandom, those who have the most issue “understanding” (more like accepting, I suppose) LGB subtext, are those who also are really attached to a fairly morally grey het pairing themselves. Again, seriously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this and assuming the worst of someone because of the pairings they like isn’t my intent here, it’s more that I find this pattern has always been prevalent and it’s bothering me I’m seeing it STILL in 2019. ESPECIALLY from a wiki editor who inserts so much of that into his work on the site.

You’re probably sick of reading all of this (and I’m getting sick of writing it), so I’ll wrap up the part on Felipe quickly: Yes, I just dedicated several pages to screenshots of mostly innocuous (when considered out of context) stuff one guy had to say. I feel more obsessive than I’d like to admit, and frankly I have no business with this person. We’ve spoken twice on EvaGeeks threads if you can even call it speaking. This task was given to me by a member of the community who was concerned about his behaviour but didn’t want to publicise it themself and I feel a little out of my depth here. I at least hope we can come to the conclusion I wanted to here, that I fear may have been lost in this whole great mess of language - no one person should have THIS much sway over the state of a wiki that’s supposed to be impartial, especially when they have not been quiet with their biases in the first place, and it is the failure of everyone involved in the maintaining of the wiki itself that this sort of behaviour has been allowed in the first place.

The guy can have whatever opinions and theories he wants, obviously. I don't give a shit; he's not even that bad compared to the grand majority of Eva fans to begin with. Don't think this document exists to "cancel" him or thoughtpolice, I truly, genuinely, do not care what is said inside this server anymore. It doesn't concern me. I mean, it's a fucking cartoon, for god's sake. This only becomes an issue when opinions are expressed on a wiki, for reasons I have reiterated many times now. EvaGeeks lacks the objectivity required to function as a wiki and I'm trying to make that clear.

[ON THE TOPIC OF THE EVAGEEKS WIKI AND COMMUNITY IN GENERAL] As for who can edit the wiki and what they’re allowed to say: As you can see from the nature of people’s posts in this thread, you’re given access to do very specific things, and although I haven’t bothered going through the process myself (as I find it would be quite redundant, trying to fix such an inherently broken system), I’m guessing it’s very easy to get your edits reversed if you post anything they don’t like. Take that as conjecture of my own.

I have it in decent faith that the approval process involves whoever of the mod team is there at the time coming to an agreement based on people’s applications. Obviously this is a decent idea for a system, and I’m sure there are legitimate reasons as to why EG has to be locked down as much as it is; judging from the state of other fanon wikis I’ve seen there’s likely to be a decent amount of vandalism, especially in a fandom as passionate as Eva’s is. However, I think it’s fair to say that the complete restriction of updating these pages to those approved by a mod team who, while I’m sure are very reasonable people overall, certain individuals of which have displayed concerning behaviour and biases of their own in the server during my brief look around. I won’t be naming anyone in particular from the mod team as I don’t feel like I need to add any more targets of shame to this already horrifically negative document, but I have gotten the general impression (in case it needed confirmation, following the remaining of these specific changes on the wiki) that some mods, not all, aren’t the most nonpartisan individuals themselves. I do happen to be decent acquaintances with at least one of them so, again, please don’t consider this a personal attack.

My concern here plainly is that I don’t think a group of mods who have routinely failed to prevent events like the ones mentioned earlier, nor seem to have much of an issue with the myriad of examples of people being openly homophobic and misogynistic on their own forum are really in the position to be choosing who of the Privelleged Few get to control the Eva meta-narrative here. As I was writing this, I was alerted to the state of the primary Japanese Evangelion wiki as a source of cross referencing for what these things can look like if done right. If you take a moment to browse it, even if you don’t speak any Japanese and have to use an automatic translator it should be very obvious how something like this differs greatly from EvaGeeks. Kaworu’s page, for a relevant example, doesn’t have present any of the nonsense statements about ambiguity or overwritten descriptions of everything. The wiki respects the reader’s intelligence enough to know that it is, in fact, a wiki, and thus tries its best to be factual. His page is fairly decent in size and states things we know are fact rather than theory. There’s no attempt made to influence or confuse.

Oh, and just in case you think the mods aren’t actually active or present enough to know what Felipe is doing, his particularly awful page on Kaworu in episode 24 got a shoutout from the official Twitter account two days ago.

If you are going to join the Discord server to verify things yourself* or do further digging, again, please be cautious of other users inside and do your best not to start anything. I am an occasional contributor to the forums and I’d prefer not to get my account flagged or to experience harassment myself, if any EvaGeeks members are still reading this document and disagree with my conclusions. I may not have posted much since I joined earlier this year, but despite everything I find the forums to be valuable for connecting with other fans and have enjoyed the positive feedback to my SIRP translation! Those who have spoken to me there have been very kind (including Felipe himself), and I must reiterate that this is not targeted at the whole site, or even at just Felipe. I simply believe there is more than enough evidence to suggest there have been consistent, systematic failures to recognise and correct the utter lack of objectivity present. I seriously don’t have any personal issues or beef with this guy, either. I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t someone else who came to me about it.

*It should be noted that the person who spoke to me has pointed out certain members have been concerned about outsiders joining and screenshotting the chat. They may remove the public link to join if this document were to cause a huge issue. I will leave the server following the publication of this document and I have no plans to join again. I can’t speak for those who may join of their own accord but I do hope people have heeded the disclaimer I made initially.

Thankyou to all the people who have extended their own kindness and support during the creation of this document, to the anonymous person who tipped me off and the lovely Eva analysts I know for offering their own experiences with EvaGeeks and further supplementary information. If this whole document reads like the product of a bad mental health day, I guess it is. Also yes I know how hilarious it is that I’ve spent all this time creating what essentially amounts to an EVAGEEKS CALLOUT POST but I mean. Someone had to say it. Why not make an utter buffoon of myself in the process?

#Mirroring this for the sake of people concerned with their privacy when accessing google docs #reading this back theres a lot of bad wording but whatever. itll do

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tragedy-machine · 6 years

Note

Hey Alice I hope you answer this because I am too shy to approach you off anon. I love art and have loved it since I was three. I am thinking of starting an art blog on tumblr where I would post both originals and fan arts. Do you have any suggestions? How can I reach more audience and make friends? What about time management?

Hi baby! First of all I’m so flattered you consider me qualified enough to answer any of these lol

Second of all, these are all my suggestions

My general advice for starting an art blog:

- don’t be so hard on yourself! No matter what, remember that you’re doing it for fun and whether you don’t get a lot of feedback or think you’re not good enough or are stressing out about posting regularly, you just gotta take a second to relax and remember that everything just takes time. You will improve, you will get more feedback, you will get better at keeping a schedule, you just have to be able to give yourself time

- you won’t always be in a mood for creating art and that’s okay. Sure, draw as often as you can but sometimes you have to take a break. On the other hand, I found that when my slump continues for more than a week and it’s not because I’ve been busy but rather just unmotivated, I try to find an easy idea and push myself a little to start drawing even if I’m feeling lazy. That usually does the trick and then I get into it again. It’s also always easier to come back to a wip or a sketch rather than start from nothing so just doing a simple layout one day will make coming back to it the next day so much easier

- if you’re serious about improving, you have to prioritize art in your schedule. I’m personally still struggling with time management and adjusting to my new work. What helps me is putting on a tv show on netflix on my phone or a youtube video/podcast/audiobook in the background while you draw, so you still can keep yourself entertained and feel like you’re just chilling instead of working

- finding a community and people who support you will always be the biggest motivation to draw, at least for me. It’s really satisfying to see people enjoy your stuff or to exchange ideas with other creators, so if you can do that, I’d suggest you start off like that (that’s why fanart is great)

- and lastly, there’s no need to be afraid to start an art blog! Judgement of strangers on the internet means absolutely nothing to you irl and if someone you know personally wants to follow you while you don’t feel comfortable with that, you can always just refuse/don’t tell them you’ve started an art blog. I have flat out told someone I don’t know them well enough to show them my art blog yet and they’ve been very understanding and chill about it

About reaching a bigger audience:

- use relevant hashtags (but don’t crosstag), that’s the easiest way to a bigger audience. If you consider starting an instagram page as well, participate in as many drawing events as you can! Many artist do features event when they reach a certain number of followers, or recently the #drawitinyourstyle was popular, and you can always find something in the #drawingchallenge or #featurefriday

- draw fanarts for other people’s aus or fanfics, but don’t force yourself to do it. If a fic inspires you and you genuinely love it and don’t only want to gain followers, draw smth for it, let it happen naturally because people can usually tell when it isn’t

- be prepared that, especially on tumblr, original art will get way fewer notes than fanarts, but you said you wanna do them as well, so you’re all good! That’s the best way to find a community and grow from there

- if you wanna make friends with other people in the fandom you can start by commenting on their work, leaving feedback, asking questions. After a while there’s a chance they’ll notice your engagement. Another great way is to just dm someone about a post they’ve made if you have more thoughts about it and then just carry the convo from there. I guarantee you nobody’s gonna turn you down if you just randomly message them, it’s usually super nice for the creator and the worst thing that can happen is that they’ll respond late, or with more popular blogs there’s a chance they won’t respond at all, but that’s okay! You weren’t being annoying, they just get a lot of other messages all the time. You can always try next time. Ofc you can also participate in any fan events that interest you or join the discord server if that’s your cup of tea

I think that’s all from me for now, I hope it helped you a little and if there’s anything more I can do, please don’t be afraid to hit me up again!

#ur gonna do great anon!#answers #art #mine #art advice #personal

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aweirdlisa · 6 years

Text

The Overnight Watch

I’ve written a first part to a fanfic I’ve been wanting to write ever since the Overnight Watch stream. I haven’t written much as I focus more on drawing, but I felt like posting anyways as some of you out there might enjoy this. This is just a first chapter and the next ones will probably be shorter and more eerie, but for now I hope you enjoy! Reading in a dark room is recommended!

I included images to add to the experience.. <3

The Overnight Watch | Chapter 1

“You have been invited to participate in an interactive event organised by Jacksepticeye, will you be there?”

The mail had been sent to everyone’s inbox, but nobody within the fandom had any idea of what was going on. There had been no video, no explanation, no posts about this mysterious event, yet there it was. The biggest problem was: that was it. Just the one sentence without further details, an address or even a date, but it was sent to over 17 million people.

It didn’t take more than ten minutes for someone within the community to post on tumblr about an anomaly in the mail:

“I assume we’re all past the point of freaking out, so let’s do what we’re best at and dismantle this thing. Has anyone else noticed something off about the mail?

Look at the corner where the time is displayed of when the mail was sent. It’s not a timestamp, the numbers don’t make sense. Does anyone have any idea what it might be?

Other than that the sender’s address is fully missing and the mail was marked important without my doing. Anyone?”

The community was set on fire as per usual, but this time an unsettling feeling spread throughout the fandom. Sure, everyone was immediately thinking “Antisepticeye appearance!”, but this just seemed impossible to pull off and way too diverging from the usual pattern. Even though many dismissed it as a prank and moved on, a few individuals kept looking and replied to the thread.

“That’s strange, my mail is different, look:

The number isn’t the same. Does anyone else have a different one?”

But as the replies came in it was made clear that about half of them had received the same mail with the positive number as the other half had received the negative number.

“Anyone who’s up for solving this, join this discord, I think it’s clear that there’s more to find here.”

People from different time zones started to join the server as the noise grew with each person connecting. Theorists like these were used to the cryptic messages, the hidden codes and the zalgo text. It was almost a hobby to figure out what hints Jack had left to indicate an Anti appearance. In situations like these they would convene on a discord server, or multiple discord servers to scan through every little hint they can find.

Almost a year ago Jack had surprised them with a special stream lasting the entire time between the two charity streams they had set up. There was even a hashtag set up, so people could post their findings, this was #overnightwatch.

Everyone who participated in the stream had started calling themselves the Overnight Watch and loved it, despite the mental torture that had deprived many from their sleep. The hashtag stuck around and so did the name.

So it’s been almost a year and Anti hadn’t made an appearance yet. There have been the occasional subtle hints, but not everyone would notice them. Jack was just poking fun. The theorists believed this was part of Jack’s plan of letting the character settle for a while to come back with something bigger and better. Was this that something? A majority of the community had almost forgotten Anti was a thing at this point, so it would be ideal.

“Hello everyone, thank you for coming” a voice said as the ongoing chaos broke apart and everyone became quiet. “As you all know we received a rather strange mail today. So far we have collected the following information:

There are two different numbers where there should be a time stamp, these numbers are 51.509865 and -0.118092. Other than that the sender’s address is completely missing and the text has a few letters that seem to be marked. What are your discoveries so far?”

Not a second of silence went by as a latecomer stumbled into the channel and screamed out two words repeatedly:

“The letters! The letters! The-“

“CALM DOWN.” Two or three people yelled at once, surprised by the overwhelming excitement of the newest addition to the group. The person who acted as moderator of the whole conversation scraped her throat and gave the latecomer a chance to explain themselves.

“Alright so, the letters that are different, they are all in italic and in a very dark green colour. When you assemble the letters you have ‘v t e w l e’ which when put in order reads “twelve”. We are looking for the key elements of an event right? I think this might be the time. I’m not sure if it’s twelve AM or twelve PM though and neither do I have a time zone.”

“Interesting theory,” a different voice spoke up. “I think we can work with that as a start. We’re with 53 people here and I’m sure some of you are in connection with other theorists on different servers as well. Let’s try to figure out what these numbers might mean.”

As everyone started to work through their research, the discord server went quiet. You could almost feel the focus everyone had as they attempted to solve the puzzle. Some left the server as they had to either go to school or sleep. A mere 20 people remained, all working in silence, but the silence didn’t last long.

“Guys..?” A nervous theorists stumbled over their words.

“Yes?” the moderator replied.

“The time stamps? They’re.. they’re coordinates.”

An image was shared, it took a while to load, but when it did different sounds of shock and frustration were heard.

“It’s London..”

“Right”, the moderator collected her thoughts. “So, this thing is taking place at either midnight or lunchtime in London, presumably the local time, but that doesn’t really help us does it?”

“We still need a day and a specific location,” added another theorist. “But I think we’ve gone over everything in the mail. Not even the missing avatar has anything hidden.”

“Hold up, has anyone tried to actually respond to the mail?”

Voices started rambling through each other, which made everyone come to the conclusion nobody had come to that point yet. After furiously debating over what they should do, they decided that everyone should send a mail of their own to see what happens. But no matter what they sent, there just wouldn’t be a response, until one theorist loudly exclaimed victory.

“I did it! I just mailed ‘London’ and then the hour, kind of like I’m replying to the riddle and I got a response!”

The moderator shifted nervously on her seat, her throat felt like sandpaper: “What does it say?”

“It was an image. Let me show you. Here you go.”

Everyone went silent once more. They all knew what this was. The footage from that damned stream.

“It’s been a year, hasn’t it?” The moderator softly whispered into her microphone. “This weekend the night from Friday to Saturday. I think we’re celebrating the overnight watch.” Her eyes closely studied the picture as she recognized the cursed font they had all been screaming about each time they saw it on one of Jack’s video’s or posts.

“Time is broken”, the latecomer read out loud. “It’s all negative aswell. Are we actually going there? Like, there?”

The question lingered. Would they actually go there? Would something happen? Maybe they were taking it too far, maybe it was all a joke. Doubt made another share of the theorists leave the discord, some because they just couldn’t continue at this point, others because they didn’t believe it was a serious matter.

“I guess that makes six of us. Do you want to go through with this?” The moderator asked the remaining few. “Are we going? This Friday?”

The other five agreed, one of them lived relatively close to London, whilst the others were prepared to even fly over for this event. All of them were old enough to travel alone so if it turned out to be nothing they could always turn it into a meetup to hang out. They had been talking for over a year with all the Anti stuff going on, so they weren’t exactly strangers anymore.

“Let’s go for it.”

Friday – 5 minutes before midnight

It had been relatively quiet the days after the mail had been sent, Jack had been his usual self, posting video’s according to his schedule and nobody had mentioned the mail again.

The six theorists met up around lunchtime to spend some time together before they had to go to what they expected to be an event. It all felt surreal, but here they were, no turning back.

They were stood in front of the building and pressed the button of the intercom near the door. Instantly static began to break through the little box, followed by an almost deafening high pitched noise. As quick as it started, it stopped. The door unlocked and opened up on its own.

Hesitantly, one by one, they went inside.

“H-hello?” the moderator stepped into the front desk and looked around, but nobody was present.

Everything went dark.

The door slammed shut and nine monitors lit up in the corner.

The six theorists walked up to the monitors, displaying the same screens they had stared at all night exactly one year ago.

Except this time, they could see themselves, standing in the front desk.

Then something moved in the loading dock.

#jacksepticeye #overnightwatch #overnight watch #fanfic #my fanfic #my writing

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treasure-mimic · 5 years

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Meta Used As Tension In Games

So, uh,

Discord is giving me free games now, since I’m paying a completely reasonable price to use my gigantic collection of emojis in any server I want. And the first game that caught my eye enough for me to play it is a game called Kathy Rain.

Spoilers incoming by the way.

Kathy Rain is, uh, I’d say it’s pretty average throughout though it definitely feels like maybe the creator ran out of time or money because the ending kind of, comes out of nowhere. Like on a purely technical level it is a good game but it’s a hard game to recommend to people because it’s a mystery game, where the mystery isn’t really solved.

There’s one moment though that really stuck out to me, and I think it’s going to stick with me for a while.

Kathy Rain is part crime mystery visual novel part old school point and click adventure game. Like a cross between Hotel Dusk and King’s Quest. Throughout the game Kathy keeps a running tally of all the unanswered questions she has in her notebook and this mechanic drives the game’s pretty basic dialogue option system between inventory-based puzzles, just here instead of the conversation with each character having its own context-specific questions, you can ask any character any question from a global list.

With, ya know, a couple of generic responses if you ask somebody something that they wouldn’t by any right know.

As the game goes along it transitions slowly from a grounded, personal mystery story to more of an occult thriller. It never fully commits to whether or not the supernatural elements are genuine mysticism or smoke and mirrors influenced by a hallucinogenic plant. Like I said, a mystery where the mystery is never solved. But at the start of things, you definitely get the feeling of this being some kind of Scooby Doo mystery, albeit a very heavy one, you know, a seemingly supernatural occurrence that actually has a somewhat reasonable explanation, or at least a plausible one.

There is, however, a definite turning point where the game settles into its ambiguity and rides it out for the rest of the story.

Around halfway through the game, maybe leaning more towards the 2/3 mark, Kathy meets with a person who had been previously impacted by the supernatural element and has now been institutionalized into a mental hospital. When you first arrive he claims that he’s had this conversation with her, or some vision of her from the future, many times before.

He then goes on to lead you through your dialogue options.

As with most of the game, it’s not concrete. There’s nothing in there that he reasonably shouldn’t know about, outside of seeming to recognize Kathy herself but mistaking the identity of others isn’t an uncommon symptom of senility, at least in popular media, but it is rather direct isn’t it? It feels as if he isn’t talking to Kathy he’s talking to you. He knows your methods and is calling them out.

But he doesn’t. Or at least, that’s the closest he comes to acknowledging it. There’s no moment of peeling back the curtain, of throwing away the cursor or digging through your menus, by all accounts your method might also be Kathy’s method and it’s eerie that he seems to know this.

The point I’m getting at I guess is that it’s subtle enough to not break immersion, but it’s pointed enough to put me on edge. It’s a very small thing that never really comes up again, but it is at this point that the idea of an actual supernatural occurrence becomes a possibility, and like I said, it’s the single moment of the game that struck me the most.

I say a lot among friends that I hate meta in stories. This isn’t entirely true, I hate meta used as a serious plot. As a joke it’s fine of course, when used for comedy it allows a character to become relatable on the most immediate level possible, they have the same thoughts about fiction and media as you are having right now, it’s great. But the drawback of meta comedy is that it, on some level, robs the viewer of immersion, it’s built on the idea that what you’re watching is not actually happening but a story orchestrated by a writer for the sake of entertainment. I know people who disagree so to avoid generalizing too much, I have trouble maintaining a feeling of tension when the fact of the situation’s fiction is made apparent. When the conflict is based around the fact that these characters don’t exist, I don’t feel for them as characters.

It’s always my kneejerk reaction to dismiss meta plotlines as lazy. They’re the purest form of writing what you know. You know writing fictional situations, so write about how the situation is fictional. But honestly, I don’t think that’s true, I think that people do put genuine thought and effort and passion into creating these stories, and audiences respond very strongly towards them. Meta narratives are especially popular in video games, which makes sense. In the medium where the person experiencing the work can directly affect the work itself, it makes sense that creators would want to toy with that thin line separating the player and the world, to great affect apparently, simply by looking at the reception to games like The Stanley Parable, Undertale, and Doki Doki Literature Club.

And I got to be honest, I kind of hate their approach.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I have a lot of problems with Undertale, but I think my problems start with how blatantly it exists as a video game that’s about being a video game. It’s blatant to the point that at the points of the most crucial plot important pieces of backstory, I’m completely disconnected from the work as a piece of fiction. I have trouble engaging with these characters and this world when it goes out of it’s way to remind me that it does not actually matter.

I think the moment in Kathy Rain is way more impactful because the characters come right up to the fourth wall instead of charging right through it. Because the illusion of the situation’s reality hasn’t been shattered but a force that knows more than it should has still been introduced. And I’m not saying that Kathy Rain is, in any way really, better than Undertale, Undertale has way more and way better emotional character-driven moments and definitely has more closure with its ending, this is just a comparison of some similar elements.

There’s another game, 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, which is absolutely fantastic, an amazing, genuinely thought provoking game that messes with ideas of gameplay only elements existing within the narrative of the game and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling any of it here, just saying that much is probably saying too much please play it, I would actually say that it’s a better game than Undertale.

BUT, it and Kathy Rain both hit on similar notions of how meta elements can be incorporated into a narrative without breaking its immersion. Namely: that the player’s mentality are more important than their existence. Characters in Undertale ponder the existence of a being that replays its situations over and over, trapping them in a seemingly infinite loop of resets, and asks why a being would ever do such a thing? How could you bring to existence a series of events wherein you kill all the inhabitants of the underground? What kind of cruel, uncaring person would do such a thing?

Well, we know why. Nobody is playing a merciless playthrough of Undertale because they hate the characters and genuinely want to kill all of them. It’s not a mystery, it’s a guilt trip, and it’s exacerbated by the game’s assertion that, yes, these characters are in fact just spritesheets and lines of code. Kathy Rain doesn’t acknowledge the player’s existence directly, but it does take notice of their habits. It understands its own design well enough to know how people are going to approach dialogue options. The man is speaking to Kathy when he tells her about how she’s not going to just run down her list of questions, but it was the player’s decision to approach the game in this way through Kathy. Instead of picking at a decision that the player was invited to make by the game, it picks at a decision the player probably didn’t think of at all, because why would it matter? And when the game decides it matters, when the game is able to out think the player, it makes the player question the reality of the game, as opposed to dismissing the game’s reality outright.

I guess the point I’m inevitably drawing at here is, uh,

Psycho Mantis got this on lock?

#I talk for a long time about game design and also shit on Undertale because I just cannot stop shitting on Undertale

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bitingmascot-blog · 6 years

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So you want to market your game

What I’m about to talk about concerns mostly Finnish game developers I’ve met. We are too humble in our work and our skills. I believe this might also apply for most introverted game developers. I have limited info and skills, so please make your own interpretations on your own experiences, read up on marketing articles on Gamasutra or look for other indies’ articles (I’ll link some at the end). I’m also studying game development, not marketing, so my ideas on marketing aren’t based on “traditional” marketing techniques, just what I’ve learned on a few courses and on the internet.

Something that seems to be difficult for starting game developers is how to actually sell their game. They can sell the idea to their team, the vision to other game developers, but not the product to customers. Some are great at the “show and tell” of gaming events, others at the magic of a social media hit. These come from skills of speech, showmanship, art. But they don’t know how to sell the feeling, the package, the price; the product. I’ve seen people immerse themselves into making their game, intending on making it a product. But then nobody hears anything until it’s done. And then it gets buried.

So why don’t people take time to sell their game? I’ve heard a few reasons, like

“game developers are artists who create for the joy of creating”: that would be great if their livelihoods weren’t dependant on the products selling

“it takes too much time to do”: if you are making a jam game or learning with a game developing hobby, that’s fine, but otherwise it’s just as important as the game you are making to get people to see it

“I don’t know how”: this is actually the most reasonable reason to not do marketing, but not good enough to not learn. Granted, there aren’t schools for specifically selling and marketing games (if you know of one, tweet at me @BeanieDev, I would be interested), but there are so many online resources to learn from.

I think everyone has heard the line “Marketing starts when development/preproduction/designing starts” in one form or the other if you’ve listened to any talk about video game marketing. I think that a more honest line is “marketing starts when the decision is made that the product is going to be a product”. Names need to be decided for social media, concepts drawn up for getting people’s attention. Then the three biggest decisions: who handles the marketing, what kind of marketing is used and how serious is the product. Let’s quickly go through these:

Who handles the marketing: A team nowadays can consist of a random assortment of the following; artists, programmers, designers, producers and audio guys. There may be other roles in your team, but these are the “main jobs” in smaller teams, so I’m gonna talk about them. In addition, we can think about getting an external marketing person (that’s me!). So who would be best to do the marketing on top of their other work? This is also figuring you are a small team, indies without a marketing team. I actually think that marketing can be best handled as a team. Let’s look what every team member can provide for marketing and what weaknesses they provide if they are put into a marketing position on their own.

Artists have a lot of skills that social media marketing can utilize. But their other work is very important and can take a lot of time. So, this is a case-by-case decision for the team. If there’s a social media –savvy artist who can create small, clean stuff quickly, then an artist can get the product a lot of attention. But marketing also includes writing copy (text), contacting people, going to events and taking time to figure out what things are working and what aren’t. That’s a lot of time taken away from drawing, modeling, texturing or any actual game development.

Programmers or designers can usually make the quickest “funny in-game clips” in the editor. The great #gamedev/indiedev posts (glitches, gameplay/feature displays) are easily made with some simple screen recording software. They only need to write a funny explanation of what’s happened and that’s a great post! But again, there’s so much more to marketing that would take that time away from the game development.

Producers are commonly put into the part of the marketer. They handle events, they see what’s going on with every part of the project. But they might have enough to juggle with their actual work too. If the project is serious enough, producers are constantly keeping track of the project, handling emails, meeting with investors or publishers. So not the worst pick for a marketer, but they can be reliant on others for the materials or too busy for it.

Sound guys are the sound guys. With that kind of creative talent, they often know a thing or two about video editing too. They have great possibilities for making trailers. But, in that way, they are completely reliant on the others in the team.

So then we get to the external marketing person. They have the time set for writing, contacting and keeping an eye on things. However, they are dependent on the rest of the team to provide visual materials, barring they don’t have skills in art or game development in general.

So who’s the best pick here? The guys who can’t produce the content or the ones who don’t have time for everything else? I say combine the manpower. The whole team produces content. The easiest way to do it is to have people share what they see while creating it. Share it on the team’s Slack or Discord and then have someone in charge of posting put it up. This fixes another problem as well, we’ll get to that soon.

What kind of marketing: So there are many forms of marketing. There’s social media, news sites, YouTube, influencers and reviewers. Your own website, discord server, the social media handle, Reddit and Imgur. How do you pick what you want to use? Which social media? What influencers? When who what -Argh! So much to choose from. So what do you do? Do them all at the beginning? No. Choose a couple of social media tools and Reddit/Imgur. Look up on how to use those social media online (I’ll link some I’ve used in the end). For Reddit, look for relevant subreddits, check the sidebar for instructions, when unsure ask and remember the Reddiquette. Imgur is tricky. They dislike the hard sell, you need to interest them with short videos, gifs, and images. Instead of selling the game to them, show them some funny clip and say “this is a funny bug/cute scene from the game I’m making, had to share it”. Hang out in the comments and chat. Give more info when they want it. Great line from Mark Rosewater’s GDC talk: “People are more invested in things they initiated”. You give them a chance to ask in the comments. Those who are interested ask questions. Answer them and they get more interested. Once you get some following, make a discord channel. Give people more chances to get close to your product. Make a devblog on Tumblr or IndieDB. Find new social medias that I don’t even know about. Mastodon, Vero, Social-media-number-251, you never know what might be the next big thing for indie developers to make big waves.

So then you got to pick the most important thing for this part: what does the marketing sound like? Are you selling as the developer? Are you selling as a character? How do you talk? Cute-sy? Cool-like? What’s the tone? No matter where you market your game, people see the tone. If you haven’t heard of the Nintendo Power Earthbound “This game stinks” line, you should google that to see how not to sound when selling your game. So pick out a tone. Stick to it. This is where having one person post helps. No disconnect from the main idea. There should be some discussion with the group first, but then one person can do the posting when the tone is set.

How serious is the product: Are you making a small jam game with your friends? Or a 3-year endeavor that will break the way we think about games? And should it sell? Everything depends on you. For a jam game, as the creation should be a fun weekend with your friends, maybe the people who see it and the purpose should be the same: your friends, having fun. So a couple tweets with images, maybe an Imgur post with a link to the download. For the 3-year endeavor, a team of marketers, outside help, professionals to make the hard sell on big publications. But those won’t come before you make something polished. Those projects take time. And while some say the hype lives on, it’s actually hard to keep it alive. Great article on playing the long game by Tanya Short from Kitfox Games on Gamasutra.

When you start to get further with the development, you can pick out more tools, check out more avenues that fit the posts you make. When someone hollers at you, holler back. Build a community if it fits your game. Look for Youtubers, from lists online and if your team enjoy someone’s content, shoot them a message. Be respectful!

So that’s a lot of info on how to start things off. And that’s not half the battle. Then the real work begins. I’ll leave you off with a few select articles and talks I’ve found on the subject. Again, if you got something to comment on or want to talk about the subject, shoot me a message on Twitter @BeanieDev. Happy marketing!

Juho The marketing trainee

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TanyaXShort/20180928/327255/Years_in_the_Making_The_Long_Game_of_Boyfriend_Dungeon.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisDenby/20180425/316986/Kotaku_is_not_the_answer_strategic_thinking_for_indie_game_PR.php

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2695/the_basic_marketing_plan_for_indie_.ph

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/316705/How_to_market_a_game_with_minimal_budget.php

https://www.patreon.com/posts/18946926

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6afxr5/marketing_your_game_is_hard_marketing_your_game/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5tyX_IBTXA&feature=youtu.be&a=

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsFgXXjoLi8&feature=youtu.be&a=

#gamedev #indie #marketing #tips #video games #Finland #kajaani

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