#learning. learning makes failures into something worthwhile

[faggotisaacfloofs]

Okayyyy so. I will try. All your first thoughts are correct. Here are some of the things key to success. Some things you did touch on. But i'm including them again as they are indeed huge factors.

1. Are the devices out, charged, within reach and available 100% of the time?

2. How much modeling is happening? I'm gonna guess that it sounds like zero / minimal modeling. People can't really learn a new language if it is never modeled or used by others. The teacher and aides in the classrooms should be modeling AAC every single day, frequently and often. They should also model communicating to other adults through AAC. AAC needs to be modeled as a legitimate way of communication.

3. Are the students' other communication attempts being taken seriously? You mentioned this but i'm also gonna. I'm gonna go ahead and say no because that basically never happens for children. If their general communication about being uncomfortable and not wanting to do something is being ignored, there is no reason for them to try to use AAC, as experience says that will just be ignored too. (And it often is). Sometimes you can give the kid power with aac by modeling the No or other boundary buttons and then RESPECTING THEM. Kids have got to see there is a point to communicating!! Which means adults have to make it worthwhile for them to communicate!

4. Is AAC being modeled for *meaningful* communication (commenting, expressing feelings, expressing boundaries, making suggestions - aka not just requests)?

5. Is AAC being used a communication aid or as a part of lessons and school work? Are/have kids been drilled on aac? Been forced to use it for other lessons or academic purposes?

6. Is the voice on the device chosen by the kid? Do they have access to their favorite stuff on their device? Have they had the connection made yet that the device corresponds to actions that can happen or nouns that they can have? Have they been given AAC as a tool of agency or out of compliance (so they can answer questions adults ask them)?

7. Have considerations like need for a key guard been considered for easier use? Different colors?

8. Are other people taking the device, modeling on the individual's device, or other things that don't reinforce the device being the kid's voice and under their agency? Modeling should happen on a separate device. Adults should always ask before touching, moving, or using a kid's device. It sounds like there has been no agency or ownership over device established so I would focus a lot on that. Adults have to actually respect the agency of the children and autonomy for this to work.

9. What has happened when they have used the device before? Are students punished for stimming on the device or "playing" around on it? Have they been before? Have they been shown the device in the context outside of answering questions only?

10. Has AAC been used in play scenarios or only "work" scenarios (class/speech therapy etc)?

11. How many hours of exposure to modeling have these students had? Children who speak spend hundreds of thousands of hours having spoken language modeled at them before they speak. Have these kids had even 100 hours of modeling AAC? How about even 10 solid hours of modeling outside speech therapy? I doubt it.

12. Is the device out, available, charged, at home? Are parents modeling? Usually they're not...but bringing them on board is essential too.

13. Learning AAC takes tons of time. How long have they had? How long does it compare to the length we give speaking children to babble and learn and develop the motor skills? It can take several years of consistent modeling before some people show interest in AAC. Just like speech...

If students arent using their devices, that's the failure of the adults around them, especially if it's *all* the students. Like. Wow. How dare they blame the kids.

Anyway generally I would say it sounds like demands for using the device should be *reduced* if they are trying to prompt and get the kids to use them. I would suggest focusing heavily on Modeling Without Expectation, keeping their devices available but not asking or prompting the kid to use it, instead encouraging play and modeling with play (even just jokes or small amusing sentences here and there, or funny words). Make it fun, and reduce the pressure, and don't involve it directly in lessons.

Some links that may help, highly encourage them be shared with the school too if possible

https://anotherqueerautistic.wordpress.com/2020/06/12/top-5-signs-youre-modeling-wrong/

https://montgomerycal.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/the-first-tendrils-of-communication/

favor to request from any mutuals who are AAC users!

my mom is currently trying to advocate for several students at the public school where she works who are AAC users. She keeps dealing with IEPs that state the student is refusing to use their device and asked if I could reach out to any AAC users I know to see what sort of things might be barriers to using AAC in elementary school, things people wish their teachers would have known, what kinds of support would be helpful for using AAC in elementary school. Most students have high tech AAC systems like touchchat or prologue2go.

my first thoughts were that she should absolutely double check to make sure that the students actually always have access to their devices, that they are programmed with words that are relevant and include the students interests, and to make sure that the teachers at the school aren’t just refusing to support and then documenting it like it’s the students fault. I also know that AAC devices can be overwhelming and exhausting to use, that students might be communicating in other ways that teachers are ignoring, and that many of these students are really young and might not have ever been offered support or modeling for how use their AAC device.

if any mutuals or followers have any thoughts they could share that I could pass on to my mom it would be SO appreciated 💜

[deoidesign]

I'll either succeed or I'll learn trying

[atariakana-art]

{ Style Study } - Jayden Revri in the style of Alphonse Mucha

Time elapsed: ~14 h Date completed: January 1st, 2025 Ref: Jayden Revri for Wonderland Magazine Done in Procreate

Style study No. 2 is done! Lineart, Ref, and yapping under the cut:

This one had a lot of ups and downs. The pose was so fun and although the lineart still took up a good chunk of time, I actually had a lot of fun doing it--I like Mucha's style of a thick outline and then limited lines in the rest of the drawing. I thought my usual pencil brush would be the best fit for it, especially since most lineart brushes drive me nuts and I don't know why. The disadvantage of the pencil though is that it's a little textured and not 100% opaque, making selections difficult (this was especially a problem on the pants).

As for the rendering, I was trying to imitate a watercolor style with a mixture of hard edges and gradients and not a lot of fine detail. I think I over-rendered parts of this one again, like the shoes for example, which breaks the style a bit, but yk. Using Procreate's watercolor brushes was a struggle because I've never really used them before, and I'm not even good with actual watercolors, so I sort of felt like I was floundering the whole time. I actually half repainted the face before I decided that the first version was better and then went back to it. Also I tried to do something with the hair that did not pan out at all, but since these are supposed to be quick studies (hah) I decided to leave it. Overall I'm really happy with it though, I like the look of it and I think I captured the elements of Mucha's style that I was wanting to try out. I also did more painting with the selection tool and that's starting to feel more natural and was really helpful for this one, so yay :)

I've been enjoying pushing myself out of my comfort zone and doing things I didn't think I could manage with these studies. I've sort of been feeling like my art is stagnating/not good enough or contributing anything worthwhile etc., and this has been really refreshing and a reminder that I can, in fact, draw :) Most of all, I feel like I'm learning stuff I can apply to other projects, which is a really good feeling.

The next study I'm doing is Lyendecker, which is smth I've been wanting to do for a while but kept putting off bc I was afraid of failure, but I was looking for references yesterday and actually? I think I can manage this. Excited to start working on it! ✨

If you read this far first of all I admire your perseverance second of all I am giving you a cookie in thanks <3 🍪

[etirabys]

just did 90m of painting work over 3 hours that was (1) mentally demanding (2) that did not pay off. I have nothing concrete to show for it.

today's work was prefaced by 90m of prep last night: looking my long and short term goals, identifying bottlenecks, and designing exercises to widen those bottlenecks (which I executed on today). so if you count that it's 3h of work

interestingly: after today's work, my mind was unusually, legibly split on whether that was a waste of time (prediction: feel bad) or a good use of time (prediction: feel good). and the fact that it felt like a choice – or at least indeterminate in a way I could somewhat influence – suggested to me that finding experimentation (regardless of outcome) worthwhile is a skill?

(in 2021 I stumbled into enjoying the mild-moderate fear of social risk-taking, which led to running a lot of events, which had noticeably positive effects on my social life and popularity. seems like a similar type of meta-skill – something that leads you to find skill development more attractive)

if I may be corny and quote this book review on The Education of Cyrus [the Great]:

Of all Cyrus’s many qualities: willpower, strength, charisma, glibness, intelligence, handsomeness; Xenophon makes a point of emphasizing one in particular, and his choice might strike some readers as strange. It is this: “He did not run from being defeated into the refuge of not doing that in which he had been defeated.” Cyrus learned to love the feeling of failure, because failure means you’re facing a worthy challenge, failure means you haven’t set your sights too low, … He doesn’t flee failure, he seeks it out, hungers for it, rushes towards it again and again, becoming a little scarier every time. He’s found a cognitive meta-tool, one of those secrets of the universe which, if you can actually internalize them, make you better at everything. Failure feels good to him rather than bad

fine, okay, let's lean into feeling good about today's failure and hope it updates my personality 0.01%:

that was cool! it wasn't cool to get frustrated and have to stop at one of the stages, but I have concrete ideas on how to tweak the instructions for tomorrow's run. Even if I abandon conscious directed improvement for a year, writing down what did and didn't work will help future me design better experiments / workflows. I have, in fact, built something that'll last

also, I have a spreadsheet where I log three variables and a generated column that uses those variables to spit out a "score for the day". how much I did and how hard it was have a multiplicative effect on that score, and that was pretty hard, so I'm going to get a Gold Star from My Google Sheets Function for having done this

also also, I have the slightest kernel of the desire to paint ("just not like that dear god I'm not doing that again") which I don't think was there before I forced myself to do a hard and unpleasant painting run

■ Yay

[study-diaries]

Hi thanks for your informative posts! I am struggling with my studies and I really don't understand what the goal of studying should be. How do you actually study? And what usually is the aim to achieve? This is not about motivation btw.

Hey Anon!

First of all, i'm glad you like my posts, really appreciate it :)

What Is The Goal Of Studying?

It literally depends on you.

Entirely on your perception.

If you think studying is useless, then it will be useless. I personally would advise you to study for yourself. To be better. And to sharpen your skills. Don't study just because you have to, don't study because you need to. Study because you actually want to.

It may not be a problem related to motivation but it definitely can be a problem about purpose. You have no idea why you study and that may be the main problem. You haven't tied the act of studying to an actual emotion.

For me, the only way I pushed forward through high school was to remember some main purposes of mine.

Get into a good college (that has the lowest fees)

Get into a degree i love

Actually explore things without the hindrance of getting good grades

Purposes will differ from one person to another. Literally.

Goals are achieved by purposes. Have a strong purpose. Make it worthwhile.

So, How Do We Actually Study?

This also differs from person to person. You're asking a subjective question. I'll be honest. Studying is actually easy. Really easy. You just have to stick to the act long enough.

Let me break it down. You want to start getting your grades up, but you don't know how to because you just don't know the purpose of it. So,

1. Replace "Study" with "Learn"

You don't have to study. Studying is a repetitive job. Stuck in memorization and practice. You learn things that literally won't benefit you in real life (especially maths). But that is the whole negative aspect of it, you know how i see it? Like, i'm learning something new. It always excites me. I don't study for an exam, i learn for myself because i just love the prospect of knowing things.

Approach learning with curiosity and not obligation.

2. Chase Deep Understanding

Many students learn. They get good grades. But. If you ask them to show how one thing links to the other? Nope, they can't connect even simple concepts together as if whatever they've learned is completely unrelated when it's actually not. They can't apply the things they learn about. So, learn to apply.

The goal is not to recite but to internalize. Turn your curiosity into something really powerful.

3. Progress > Perfection

I always believe in this. I believe that a step in a particular direction consistently with a purpose is better than running miles in different directions with absolutely no idea where you're going.

I don't think there's anything wrong with perfection. It wastes time and energy. Give it your best and pray for the rest.

What Is The Aim Of Studying?

Not good grades

Not perfection

Not to be smart

But to be better than what we were yesterday.

Let's be honest, if you learn something, how can you not be curious about so many things you're learning about.

There's a difference in learning for grades and learning for the sake of learning. A very minute difference.

Your perception.

You learn for grades; it makes you entirely dependent on it. You seek validation.

When you learn to better yourself, be curious and love the process of the grind? That's a different feeling. You'll love what you do.

And let's be honest. You wouldn't want to be a complete clueless person here, would you? Read more. Harness your curiosity. Be open to failure.

Getting good grades won't mean you'll succeed in life, but it might increase your chances in some cases. If not, most cases.

Your Steps

Take a day off. Don't do anything. Don't pick up textbooks. Nothing.

Take a piece of paper and just write what feel about studying. Get all your frustration out.

Then take another paper and write what studying has thought you. Your accomplishments, not just in studying but for anything.

You learnt something new? Won in a competition? Anything. You will be more aware that maybe, just maybe that you are doing good but you aren't aware of that fact. Writing down the things you've achieved gives you an idea and a direction.

Now take another paper and write:

Why Do I Feel This Way?

Do I Actually Don't Like To Study Or I Just Don't Like The Perception Of Studying?

What Actually Pisses Me Off?

Since When Am I Feeling This Way?

And Most Importantly, Is There Someone Specific That Gives Me Such Ideas/Influences My Thoughts?

------------------------

I hope this helps you, even if small. Keep trying and trust the process <33

[daflangstlairde-art]

"A Noble Occupation" Chapter 2, 7936 words

Summary:

The shame burned. Dream felt as though everyone knew. Knew that he was a failure, that he needed something additional to work (and he was already worse at his work than he'd like). Knew that he wasn't the beacon of happiness and hope that they believed in, that they needed, that they loved. That he was something flawed, which felt sorrow and exhaustion and shame. — Dream acquires a new coping mechanism. It's not a very good one.

Credits, warnings and additional info on ao3.

—

It… became a habit, as shameful as that was.

On lighter days, when his emotions weren't exhausted enough and therefore reached him, Dream would… well, first he would busy himself. When there was nothing obvious that needed him (uncommon occurrence), he sought out how to be helpful, how to be of use. When there was little of that (very rare occurrence), he trained with his teammates, or made preparations.

When that ended and he was home, Dream still looked for ways to make his time worthwhile. Even cleaning was better.

But when he was at a loss on how to do that, and he was thinking and feeling things the Guardian of Positivity shouldn't be… he drank.

The experience didn't get more pleasant, but he grew accustomed to it. The same way he'd learned to bear wounds. The same way he'd learned to bear his own bad emotions.

Go to the store. Internally writhe in shame as he got a bottle of alcohol (wine, since he was most familiar with it). Sometimes he lied that it was for a friend or a gift. Go back home.

Drink it all as fast as possible.

Get hit with the effects all too suddenly.

Feel miserable. Throw up. Go to bed. Sleep like a log.

He learned to keep a glass of water at his night stand. He learned to set an alarm so he wouldn't sleep until noon. He learned to take headache meds in the morning so his functionality wasn't impaired.

It wasn't a big deal, really. It rarely happened, once every several weeks at most.

It helped him sleep, when he did it. It helped him, well, drown his sorrow — make it dull and fuzzy, allowing him to wake up the next day and pretend like none of it existed in the first place, because it shouldn't have existed in the first place.

He was a Protector of the entire Multiverse. If this made him better at his job, at giving the people what they needed in a way that didn't affect them negatively at all, what's the harm in it?

—

Dream should get a mat or something. For his bathroom. The floor tiles were cold.

At some point, he figured it was easier to just drink in his bathroom, since he was inevitably going to end up throwing it up.

The floor… wasn't particularly comfortable, but that's fine. Dream just had to sit here for a bit. Knees pulled to his chest, breathing steadily. Waiting for the alcohol to kick in properly, for the nausea to really rear up. Everything was already fuzzy and tilting, so it was on its way.

And then his phone rang.

Dream winced. He felt his metaphorical heartrate pick up, because it was late, and today had been easier, so this had to be an emergency, and he was a useless mess–

"Hey Dream!" Blue's voice came through.

"Blue?" Dream swallowed. Oh, he hadn't yet… experienced talking to anyone in this state. And he knew alcohol changed the way people spoke. Stars, he really hoped Blue wouldn't pick up on it. He really, really hoped that.

Blue was one of his best friends. One of his teammates. He was… so nice. He genuinely… cared about Dream, not just– about what Dream could do for him, not just about Dream's role. Blue was a good person.

What would he think of Dream? Would he be disappointed?

Dream would not be able to handle that.

He couldn't let Blue know.

"–always for some emergency or another, soo I thought I'd just… you know… call to chat! Just as friends," Blue spoke. His voice was… calm and cheerful. No emergency.

His words caught up to Dream. He wanted to… chat. As friends. That was important. Dream… didn't want Blue to feel like they're just co-workers. They were friends. Blue mattered a lot to Dream.

He was right. Dream had to make more time to spend with his friends. As friends. The last thing he wanted was for them to feel like… like he didn't care about them because he spent all his time helping other people instead.

(He had to have learned from his mistakes. He had to.)

Dream exhaled through his nose, trying to string together a coherent reply. Come on, he wasn't that drunk. Liven up!

"Yeah," he agreed, nodding even if Blue couldn't see. "I– I also… I'd enjoy spending time with you too. As friends,"

"Yay mweheheh!" Blue exclaimed, and Dream huffed in mirth at his endearing laughter. "Unless you're tired, that is– oh no, did I wake you up? I should've asked if you were available to talk first, gah, please prioritize your rest–!" he rushed out.

Dream shook his head. "No, no, I'm available," he spoke slower than the other. It's like the words were fuzzy in his mouth. It was weird. But it didn't sound weird, at least not to him.

"Oh! Okay then, great! Anyway. I'm making dinner!"

Dream hummed. "What're you making?"

"Vegetable cream soup!!!" Blue exclaimed.

That simultaneously sounded really tasty and made Dream remember the upcoming nausea.

"Sounds lovely," he focused on.

"Uh-huh! I hope so. You can try it tomorrow! It's a bit pot. I'm making it with the usual ingredients — you know, carrots and onions and potatoes, but I also decided to add cauliflower because I quite enjoy cauliflower–"Blue started rambling. He enjoyed cooking, as was characteristic of many versions of Papyrus. Funnily enough, Dream had caught him and Horror discussing food prep in the middle of a fight once or twice. It was bizarre. Dream wasn't against it though.

He didn't… think hating Nightmare's gang would solve anyone's issues. He wished he could help them instead. They… hngh. People hated them for ruining and destroying, which was understandable. Dream also, well, highly disapproved of their actions. But they were people, too. And, occasionally, he could feel their hurt. And there's no way being with Nightmare helped.

He exhaled. Maybe someday, he'd figure out a way to help them too. If he tried harder. If he was better.

…Ah, he wasn't listening to Blue. What a friend he was. How could he help Nightmare's gang if he couldn't even be enough for one of his best friends?

"–with an egg, and then it's going to be all done. What about you, what are you up to??" Blue asked curiously, because he was a good friend.

Agh. Dream would have to lie again. He felt… ashamed and guilty. What should he answer?

"I was… cleaning earlier," he answered. He did clean just a little.

"Cleaning? Tsk tsk tsk Dream, I told you to go home and rest," Blue said, light-hearted, more teasing than anything. Though there was soft, disguised concern in his words.

Dream winced. He swallowed. He almost reached for the bottle again before he remembered it was already empty. It was really getting to him. As always, it left him feeling odd. Fuzzy at the face. Nauseated.

"Sorry," he said, sort of by reflex.

"N– it's alright," Blue was quick to assure, and then he paused for a moment. "Are… you alright, Dream?"

Oh no.

Good going, Dream, you couldn't even compose yourself enough for one phone call. Blue just wanted to spend time with you, and now you're making it all about yourself and your problems which you shouldn't be having in the first place. Selfish.

Ugh, and the wine wasn't helping him at all. Dream felt… messy, when he should be the pinnacle of put-togetherness. He couldn't cry now. He couldn't.

"I'm okayy," Dream tried to put a sincere inflection to it. He'd mastered that long ago, except now, it fell oddly, drawing out the end of the word just a bit. Dammit.

Blue was quiet for another moment. Dream had to fix this.

"…Dream, you can ta–"

"I'm just a bit distracted, sorry," Dream lied, "Planning. You know how it is. …Sorry for interrupting you," he winced.

"…Right," that didn't sound like Blue believed him. Dream hunched in on himself. He felt sick. "Just–" Blue took a breath, "–don't stay up all night planning, okay? …Take care of yourself. Please. You don't have to– …You… you'll need the strength, so we can, uh, help people the best we can!"

Right. He was right. Dream was so selfish to be doing this.

"…You're right," he agreed softly. "Thanks for the chat, Blue. I really enjoyed it. Can we… I… I really appreciate you as a friend, you know?" he swallowed. "We should… hang out more. I'm sorry we don't hang out more. I'm s– I… I think I'm gonna go to bed now," he finished on a bit of a lame note.

"I'd love to hang out another time," Blue said all warm, and Dream knew he meant it. "But right now, you going to bed will make me even happier! Good night, Dream! See you tomorrow!"

"Good night," Dream returned quietly. After a beat, the call ended.

Dream let his hand down, blinking bleary at the wall. The silence lingered. He was alone.

He shuffled over to the toilet to throw up so he could go to bed.

—

He was growing too accustomed to the alcohol. One bottle wasn't making him as sick. He had to get two.

The shame burned. Dream felt as though everyone knew. Knew that he was a failure, that he needed something additional to work (and he was already worse at his work than he'd like). Knew that he wasn't the beacon of happiness and hope that they believed in, that they needed, that they loved. That he was something flawed, which felt sorrow and exhaustion and shame.

…He was finding more varied places to get the alcohol from.

—

Several days later,

"Dream!" Ink grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Ink?" Dream was immediately aware, "What is it, why did you call me, are you alright?" did Error go too far again, did Dream need to heal him? Was an AU being destroyed?

"Oh I'm great," Ink waved a hand, and then once again grabbed Dream, "But I really really really need your help!"

"Yes? Of course!" Dream would always help his friends.

"I need you," Ink said gravely, "to have a beach day with me."

Dream stared back at Ink's intense stare.

He resisted the urge to sigh. That'd be rude. And he wasn't really irritated with Ink anyway. Both because he didn't feel irritation, and also because it was Ink, Ink was like this.

"Come on pleeasee! It's really important!" Ink shook him a little. "It's for one of my stories! It has to be realistic. I stayed up all night thinking of plot points to put to the test,"

It still often baffled Dream how Ink could use up his time and energy for fictional stories like this. Then again, he'd… learned Ink perceived real people as fictional too. And besides, he wasn't Dream. Other people needed breaks and hobbies to function and to feel alright, so it was justifiably important. Even if Dream, personally, wouldn't dare.

"…Right," he replied carefully. "How long is this going to take…?"

"Uhhhmmm about a day, less even, so it's basically nothing," Ink shrugged. "We'll leave if there's an emergency, too, I promise,"

Okay, that eased some of Dream's worry. And it's not like this was the first time Ink hauled them away to do stuff relating to his stories. Last time was a few months ago, a camping trip in the mountains. Blue enjoyed that one. Dream did too. He held the memory fondly.

"Okay," he relented with a sigh and a smile. He'd rather be used by his friends.

"YES!" Ink threw his hands up.

And so here they were. Having a beach day.

It wasn't some private beach — there were a bunch of monsters around, but it was very far from crowded. It made Dream feel less like everyone would be looking at him and disapproving of this unearned leisure.

They'd already gone into the water, which wasn't awfully cold. And either way, the sun was high up and hot, seeping warmth into Dream's bones. The air held a gentle breeze that smelled of salt and sand and seaweed.

"Ink, pass it!" Dream hollered, grinning.

"Incomiiing!" Ink laughed, turning so he could pass the ball to Dream. With a running start, Dream jumped to dunk it past the net.

Blue laughed loudly at that, whistling. Error couldn't be assed to rush to catch the ball, even if he was literally a few paces away from it.

Blue had the idea that they play beach volleyball, but they'd needed a fourth person. Ink ended up nagging the Destroyer until he finally agreed, though he wasn't exactly passionate about it. Still, it was really fun. Error made up for his lack of involvement by cheating. This was the third ball Ink had drawn, haha.

And honestly?

Dream was having fun. Even with just the four of them, he was having a great time. All those fighting skills turned out to be useful — agility and precision and team coordination. Both teams were about evenly matched, making the game just engaging enough. Though weirdly, Dream didn't feel drained by all the movement and emotions.

The other monsters around the beach were relaxing, wafting off pleasant contentedness. Blue and Ink were as cheerful as ever. Even Error, as much as he complained about the sand, didn't seem to loathe it too much (likely because he was sort of friends with Blue and was familiar Ink).

It all left Dream collapsing onto his towel with a grin that was so big it ached against his face and a pleasant buzzing in his bones. This was yet another memory he'd hold near and dear.

("Thank you," Dream said to Ink quietly, but from the heart, as they all were sat to eat lunch during a brief break.

Ink chuckled, sharing a brief glance with Blue. "Anytime," he nudged Dream with an elbow.)

.

.

.

…Unfortunately, Dream remained a mess.

He was trying to sleep, he really was. He'd gone to bed over half an hour ago and he'd stayed there. Feeling lighter after a fantastic day. Calmer. More put together. Hopeful, the positivity inside him fresh and sincere, braced to live.

But he just… couldn't sleep. Which, to be fair, was far from new. Actually, he struggled to sleep most of the time. Which wasn't ideal since he got to bed, hm, maybe once every three days, but he was still fully functional so it must be all he needed.

Dream sighed, rolling on his side. Purple teddy bear held to his chest as always.

He wanted to sleep. Bad dreams or not, selfish or not, he was tired and he needed energy to bring his best for the Multiverse. Simply laying around certainly wasn't better.

He didn't understand why he couldn't sleep. He felt so cozy and comforted after the day at the beach. Filled with an unmarred warmth.

…Maybe…

…Hm. Did he need to drink an entire bottle every time? Maybe… drinking only a little would be fine. Just enough to dull his hyperawareness. What's so different to using melatonin pills?

Carefully, still a little ashamed, Dream got out of bed.

His head didn't even hurt in the morning, so it must've been fine.

—

It's really not that bad. Dream remained Dream, the Guardian of Positivity, member of the Star Squad, Protectors of the Multiverse. He was just as reliable, endlessly and gladly inspiring hope in everyone around him. Everyone knew how Dream was. Dream helped and asked for nothing in return. Dream always saw the best in people. Dream determinedly kept his stance in the face of terror and destruction. Dream embodied goodness, in everything he did, everything he was. Always smiling sincerely, reaching out his hands. Dream and all that he was belonged to the people. He served his role dutifully, humble and dedicated, glad and proud.

After years, he'd eventually settled into this balance. Always outputting as much productivity as he could, and always looking to do it more. A worn routine.

This was just… another… tiny part of said routine. He never dared to overdo it — he never drank around people, the same way he never cried around people. He never did it two days in a row, never even did it twice in the same week. He was always very careful that he wasn't needed when he was… uhm, in that state. He didn't… always drink himself to sickness, some nights it was just to help him sleep.

No one was noticing. So it was fine. Dream was ensuring he was highly functional and stable. He could get out all these unwanted emotions and thoughts, flush them down the toilet, and then continue as if it wasn't needed in the first place.

Until he was taken off-guard.

His phone was ringing.

Dream picked up immediately, desperately hoping this was just Blue or Ink wanting to chat. Because here he was once again. Dressed in pajamas, on his bathroom floor. Staring at the swirling and swimming tiles with over one bottle of alcohol in his system. Waiting for the sickness to come and pass, as usual.

"Yeah–?"

"Dream, emergency," Blue's alarm was audible over the line. Dream's rolling stomach sank. "Nightmare and his gang attacked–"

"On m' way, give me– minute," Dream hauled himself to his feet, and promptly regretted it as sharp reflux burned his throat. He pushed it down.

To his credit, his awareness sharpened a bit, as he listened to Blue give him the details of where to go and what state they were in. Ink was already there, and he heard Blue go through one of his portals. At that point Blue had to hang up to engage in combat as well.

In the meanwhile, Dream tried to gather himself into something semi-functional. He knew he looked terrible when drinking, and he was far from dressed for fighting, he had to hurriedly put on more combat-appropriate clothes so he wouldn't earn himself unnecessary wounds or impede his movements. He also took barely a few short seconds to splash his face with cold water.

As always, his mind kicked into habit as soon as he heard 'emergency'. Settling into familiarity. Forcefully jammed into strategy and pragmatism, away from sorrow and pain and all those distractions.

In about a dozen minutes, he arrived at the described location, more specifically in a version of Waterfall. The teleportation made his stomach do uncoordinated flips but Dream barely even noticed it, because he spotted Killer and Dust both engaging Blue in combat and jumped in to deal with at least one of them.

"Dream!" Blue exclaimed in relief.

"Here," Dream called back, parrying the swing of Killer's knife with his staff. Sometimes Killer preferred regular ranged attack bullets, but it seems today (or, tonight, according to the Omega Timeline's cycle) he was more for close-ranged combat. Which was fine because Dream was experienced in both.

"Well look who deigned to join!" Killer spat laughter in Dream's face, gladly engaging him in a fight. He was as vicious as ever, relentless and dirty with his attacks. Dream was used to him and knew to keep his guard up at all times, responding with fast, precise blocks and attacks of his own so as to not allow him openings to abuse.

Or… he was used to Killer.

But as they fought, and Killer kept taunting him as he usually did, Dream was… having a harder time than he should be.

It felt like he was reacting on time, except again and again, Killer managed to steal hits from him that Dream should've been perfectly capable of handling. His reflexes were… fuzzier than he'd like. In a normal fight, they would still hold up, but again, this was Killer. Nightmare had picked out the members of his gang for clear reasons.

Everything was just a little uncoordinated. Just a little unstable, like they were fighting in shallow water even though they were still on dry land, like Dream couldn't manage his footwork. Each hit that landed jarred Dream, even though the pain was muffled as well. Dream was lacking.

…And Killer was catching onto it.

"Heheheee did we catch you off-guard, dreamboy?" he jeered as he slammed his blade against Dream's staff once more, undistracted by his own words. "Are you losing your spark?"

Dream didn't reply, focused on matching him beat for beat as much as he could. Though that wasn't uncommon. He wasn't much for mid-fight banter. That was more Ink's thing. It's why Killer liked fighting Dream specifically. He wanted to crack his composure.

"You're sloppy," Killer hissed, grinning, dodging and slashing in the same movement, "Not usually your style, Mr. Perfect!" he mocked.

And he was right. Dream excused the rushing of his metaphorical heart on the adrenaline.

"This is who our enemies are? Pathetic," Killer successfully managed to slam the hilt of his blade against Dream's wrist, which weakened the grip on his staff, allowing Killer a wide swipe that landed despite Dream's attempt at dodging. Dream registered absentmindedly that, thankfully, it wasn't a lethal wound.

"What is up with you?" Killer crooned. "Am I scaring you, sunshine? Was this a bad time? Or…" he paused, in a dangerously considering way.

Dream's gut wrenched. His eyes widened, just the tiniest bit that people usually would not notice.

But this was Killer. Killer, when he wasn't drunk on violence and pain, could be terrifyingly observant. He was like a shark sensing a single droplet of blood in the water.

Killer barked out a hysterical laugh.

"Are you drunk?!" he loudly marveled.

Dream was too late to catch the wince he made at that. It was just the confirmation Killer needed.

"Oooohohoho oh this is incredible!" Killer laughed, fiercely back to attacking. "Your Guardian, everybody! A drunkard! I knew I could smell something familiar!" he declared it all loudly, even if there was nobody here to hear except the two opposing groups. And the echo flowers.

But even though there were no civilians here to hear, Dream was violently cringing inside. Please, no, he begged, please just let me handle this and go back home.

"What, got sick of living the life anyone else would kill for?!" Killer mocked, abusing his new knowledge to gain the upper hand in their fight. Dream was even sloppier, struggling to keep up with him, backing up as Killer pushed onwards. "I'm embarrassed to even fight you, Dream! Tsk tsk tsk!"

Usually, Dream mentally shielded himself from Killer's and Nightmare's and everyone's negative remarks as much as he could. Usually he knew the point of their words was to get to him, him specifically. To weaken his resolve, to hurt.

So why was it getting to him now?

Horrifyingly, Dream realized he wanted to cry.

All Killer needed was for him to stumble for a moment, and then Dream cried out as a knife was plunged directly into his chest. Killer seized the opportunity, shoving him towards the wall with it so he could push the blade in up to the hilt.

As soon as he accomplished it, he twisted the knife, Dream letting out another highly pained sound, and then ripped his knife out to let him bleed.

Dream, uncoordinated, sloppy, hurting, overwhelmed, slid down to the ground, trying to at least breathe. Everything was spinning, and the back of his throat stung sharply and discontentedly.

Dream didn't even process Killer lifting his knife and summoning four blasters with the same gesture, laughing hysterically above him. He flinched and cowered pathetically as a second shape jumped between them, and it was the final push as he leaned forwards and retched on the ground. Or… he aimed for the ground but didn't quite make it. The humiliation burned as he saw he caught the bottom of his pants and his shoes and it was gross and he wanted to cry. He was shaking.

"–eam are you okay?!" Blue's worried voice floated in from beside him, and Dream squeezed his eyes shut, pulling his knees closer in, hiding his face in them.

He was collapsing in the middle of a fight. His friends needed him. He was letting them down. He was letting everyone see his composure break. He was broadcasting his weaknesses, his wrongness to their enemies. What was wrong with him? Why was he like this? Why couldn't he just work?

Adrenaline and shame and sheer overstimulation wracked him inwardly and he felt sick, he felt so sick, he was going to throw up again.

"Dream, hey, hey, listen to me, it's okay, focus on my voice," Blue spoke. He was– he was kneeling next to Dream, blocking his view of the rest of the fight. If both of them were dealing with Dream's mess, then Ink had to be handling the rest on his own. And Ink was strong and incredibly capable, he was creative and didn't let things get to him, but Dream was letting him down.

They were both going to be disappointed in him. The thought felt like getting stabbed in the chest again.

Dream– Dream couldn't do this. He was a disappointment. He was a useless. A mess. He was a failure.

In barely a flash, he was back in his bathroom, bending forward to throw up into the toilet. Everything was spinning, and he clutched the bowl to stop the shaking of his hands. His face felt hot with shame and the blubbery tears breaking out of their prison.

Dream was struggling to breathe. It felt like his rib cage was made of stone, and he couldn't breathe in right. He was– he was trying to gasp in air but every inhale got cut off sharply, he couldn't breathe, everything was vibrating like pins and needles.

Dream let his forehead thunk down on the toilet seat, the cutting breaths starting to sound more like hiccups, like sobs. He couldn't get himself under control, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't even think. It was all just a barrage of emotions he shouldn't be capable of even having, uselessness and panic and sorrow and self-hatred and guilt and disappointment and shame shame shame. He was a ruin. He felt so damn sorry the Multiverse depended on this thing.

Suck it up. Pull yourself together. Handle this. Be better. Be better!

But he couldn't. He couldn't. Every desperate attempt to pull himself together only made him more overwhelmed, only made him feel more incapable. He wanted to claw out the emotions. He wanted it out.

It hurt as he retched into the toilet again, acidic magic trailing down his chin. It was gross, it was so gross, he hated it. He hated the way his uncontrolled sobs echoed in the bathroom. He hated the way he couldn't even get up, trembling and weak and aching all over. He hated hating, he shouldn't even be capable of it.

How was he going to sleep like this? How was he going to look his friends in the eyes like this tomorrow? How was he going to look at anyone? Maybe they wouldn't know how much of a useless disappointment he was, if Nightmare didn't broadcast it to the whole Multiverse, but Dream would know. It would be in the background of all his actions, following him, never allowing him to forget because he had to remember his mistakes, he had to learn from them, he had to be better.

Who would need– who would want a Guardian of Positivity who wasn't even positive?

He tried to reign in the sobbing, he tried, he swore he tried. He always tried so, so hard but it was never enough. He was never enough. People always needed more, there was always more to do, he always had to be more. He couldn't even stop crying, when he shouldn't be crying in the first place.

Dream raised his hands, slamming them into the sides of his head. Just stop it. Just stop it. You're the one that messed up, you're the one who always messes up! It's your fault! It's always been your fault! Why are you crying? How dare you feel sorry for yourself you useless thing? People suffer constantly, and here you are, sniveling!

"I'm sorry, 'm sorry," Dream blubbered incoherently, not even sure to who. It was just– instinct, deep inside him. Sorry that he was wrong, sorry that he wasn't enough, sorry sorry sorry.

The tears didn't stop coming. It's like every tear he'd ever repressed was coming back for him with vengeance. He just kept crying and crying and crying, like he was trying to hold back the tears with his own hands but they just kept slipping through. How was he supposed to calm anyone else's tears when he couldn't even deal with his own?

He was made to help people, it was the definition of his existence to exist through others and for others. If he couldn't be theirs then he was nothing, he was as good as de–

"–shh, shh, it's okay,"

Dream jumped as a hand was placed on his shoulder, no, no, what? There wasn't supposed to be anyone here, he was alone, he–

"Dream, it's okay, it's alright," Blue was kneeling next to him, keeping up a stream of reassurances, and the sudden shame Dream felt, like someone had grabbed his nonexistent intestines and squeezed.

"Blue– you– n– m– I–" he stammered, words slurred in a way he hated.

"It's okay," Blue insisted, "Look, look at me, hey," his hands came to cup Dream's face, and Dream felt borderline scared as he looked at Blue's gaze. It was gentle, but sure. "You're okay. Everything is okay. Stop thinking, just– breathe with me, please?" he said.

More tears bubbled into Dream's eye sockets because he couldn't, he couldn't–

"I need you to remind me how we did it, please? Please? How did we do it? How do we breathe deep?" Blue tried desperately.

He needed Dream. He needed Dream's help, and that's all Dream's shattered thoughts could focus on. His friend needed him.

Dream forced himself to gasp in air even as it burned, his chest and his throat.

"There we go, that's right," Blue encouraged, still holding his face, keeping Dream's eyes on him. "I think I'm remembering, keep showing me, okay?"

Dream gasped for air again, and Blue followed, inhaling deeply. Much more steadily than him. Dream tried to hold the breath but it burned and escaped him, and Blue held and exhaled with him, although slower.

Dream was still shaking with sobs but he pushed through, hands clutching tightly onto nothing, forcing himself to breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold, repeat. Blue following him beat for beat.

They barely spent a few minutes that way before another presence joined them and Dream flinched, his already unsteady rhythm knocked off again.

"It's just Ink, it's okay," Blue reassured quickly. "He's got some medical supplies–"

Dream's eye lights snapped back to Blue in alarm, "Who's hurt?" he asked immediately, still struggling with cohesion.

Blue's face saddened, and that only panicked Dream more. There was someone injured who needed his help and he was sitting here freaking out–

"You are," Ink said next to them and flicked Dream's head with two fingers. Dream startled at it. He saw Blue send Ink a look at that, but he sensed no regret from Ink.

His mind grappled to process the words.

He was? He was what? Hurt?

…Oh wait. Yes. He was hurt. Killer stabbed him in the chest, he was still bleeding from it.

And then– then he'd–

More tears and shame pricked at his face. He shook his head insistently, though he wasn't sure what he was trying to convey.

"Dream, please let Ink help," Blue pleaded, worry lacing every word.

Dream hated to make him worry, especially over him, so in guilt, he relented.

With shaking hands, he removed his capelet and his shirt so it would be easier for Ink. Looking at it now, the wound was bad. It wouldn't kill him, it would take a lot to kill him, but it was bad. His blood dripping down from his severed ribs. It'd soaked into his clothes. It explained the burning of his breathing only partially.

"It's going to be okay," Blue lifted his face up again. "Just let Ink heal it, it's going to be okay Dream,"

He shouldn't be the one reassuring Dream. Ink shouldn't be the one cleaning his wound carefully to heal him. Dream should be the one taking care of them, not the other way around.

"I'm sorry," he whispered through hiccups, not even flinching as Ink gently cleaned his wound out with rubbing alcohol.

However the smell reached up to Dream's nose and nausea rolled in his stomach.

He shoved himself away from Blue to gag, pressing a hand to his mouth because he'd hate himself even more if he threw up on his friend.

"Whoops, sorry about that," Ink said casually, assuming he'd done something wrong.

"Not– not your fault," Dream reassured him, struggling to breathe through the nausea.

"Oh, I thought that's what we're doing? Apologizing for things that aren't our fault?" Ink said with a mischievously innocent smile.

Blue whacked his shoulder. Ink showed no regret, chuckling.

Dream was trying not to throw up again. He didn't usually vomit this much, but he usually stayed in his bathroom with little physical strain too.

He really, really wished they didn't see him like this.

"Oh, you still feel sick?" Ink spoke again, pushing himself to his feet, "I'll be back in a mo, keep an eye on him," he told Blue and then disappeared through a swipe of inky magic.

"Okay–" Blue exhaled through his nose, picking up the cotton and the rubbing alcohol, "I'll treat your wounds for now then, is that okay?"

Dream stared at the plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol. Just the thought of the smell made him feel sick and ashamed and guilty, like he wanted to hide under his blanket.

"Oh–" Blue looked down at the bottle and then put it down.

"No, no, it's fine–" Dream was quick to reassure. His words were slightly clearer even though everything still felt like pins and needles. He was still intermittently hiccuping and sobbing, breathing shakily. And bleeding.

"No, we'll think of something else," Blue insisted, and Dream cringed. He couldn't even give it to them to not be a difficult patient. Way to burden your friends with what shouldn't even be their job, Dream.

He reached for the plastic bottle. He could patch his wound up himself, it was far from the first time.

Blue grabbed his wrist.

"Dream." he said sternly, and Dream couldn't help but hunch in on himself at the tone.

"Sorry,"

Blue breathed in and out in a measured manner.

"It's okay, I'm not mad at you," he said gently, and Dream could feel he wasn't. Mostly, he felt– frustration, worry and care, and sadness.

"Are– are you okay?" Dream asked. He didn't want Blue to feel frustrated and sad and all.

The frustration reared up at that, and then Dream felt it get intentionally shoved down.

"'S okay to be frustrated," he reassured, hand reaching up to Blue's shoulder in sloppy comfort.

"I'm–" Blue exhaled, "I'm not frustrated because you've done something wrong," he explained, "I just– I want to help you but I don't know how, and I'm... frustrated you're not letting us,"

Oh.

"Sorry," Dream mumbled, "I'm– I'm alright,"

"You're not," Ink reappeared, and Dream saw Blue wince at the bluntness. "Maybe this will help though?" Ink crouched down next to them, holding out a blister pack to Dream.

Dream let go of the rubbing alcohol, so Blue let go of his wrist. He accepted the blister pack, reading the name on the back.

'DETOX' and underneath, in smaller letters, 'active charcoal'.

"Charcoal?" he frowned.

"Yup!" Ink exclaimed. "It helps draw out, uh, bad things from your digestive system! Like food poisoning. Or alcohol,"

Dream stiffened, deeply uncomfortable and ashamed. Maybe they'd just heard Killer. Maybe they'd connected the dots. The two bottles still remained in the bathroom, after all, which is where they were sitting right now.

"I, I–" he scrambled.

"You don't have to explain yourself," Ink cut him off with a raised hand. "If you think that'll help, take it. You can even take two, it's not dangerous," he pointed at the active charcoal pack Dream held.

He hesitated.

"...Okay," Dream accepted, popping two out and swallowing them dry. It didn't taste like anything. He was thirsty. He felt completely drained, which didn't help the shaking and the wooziness.

"Wanna know what would help right now?" Blue spoke, and Dream looked at him hopefully.

"What?"

"Telling me how this upsets you so I can think of something else?" Blue pointed at the bottle of rubbing alcohol tentatively.

Dream cringed again. He should just tough it out. He was making things needlessly complicated, when he should be the person that makes things easier.

...But... Blue said it would help.

Dream took a wobbling breath in, then let it out. He was still blinking tears out of his eyes. Even though they weren't wracking through him anymore, he couldn't stop them.

"It's– the smell," he admitted quickly.

"Oh! Psh, well that's not a problem," Ink said easily, for some reason unraveling his (very long and thick) brown scarf that he loved. And then, bizzarely, he started wrapping it around Dream's neck, pulling it up so it rested over the lower half of his face too.

When Dream breathed in through his nose, all he could smell was Ink's natural scent, ink and paint and cloth.

"I– but what if I throw up again?" he looked up at Ink, voice small, eyes wet.

Ink stood with his arms crossed, smiling.

"You realize I throw up when I get overwhelmed, like, half the time, right?"

...Oh.

They were being… so nice. Showing him so much care, even though they shouldn't. But because they… wanted to?

It made him want to cry all over again, expression wobbling. They were so nice, and warm. He could feel their care.

"Thank you," he said softly to both of them.

"Anytime!" Ink beamed. "So is it gonna work?"

"I– yeah, I think so," Dream nodded, raising a hand to press the scarf to his face.

When Blue brought a cotton swab soaked in rubbing alcohol to try cleaning his stab wound again, the smell didn't hit Dream's nasal cavity, it didn't make him want to bend over and retch.

They spent some time in the quiet like that. Blue and Ink cleaning up his wound, healing it, and dressing it in a practiced manner. There were still tears half-heartedly streaming down from Dream's eyes, no matter how much he wiped them away with his hands and tried to hold them back.

He could feel the ache of the wound settling in, sharper now that it wasn't covered up by alcohol and adrenaline, but it wasn't more than what he could handle. His metaphysical stomach felt desolate, and he was so thirsty, but he worried he'd just throw it up again. Exhaustion tugged at his limbs and his eye lids, from the amount of energy he'd wasted in throwing up and freaking out.

And in the middle of a fight, too. And his teammates had rushed after him to help him, oh stars.

"What about Nightmare's gang?" Dream suddenly piped up in alarm.

"Oh don't worry," Ink waved a hand, "I ditched them at Error's," he cackled. Blue snorted.

Oh. Okay then.

"Good job," Dream praised them both. He really couldn't ask for better, more capable, more reliable teammates. Friends. "And… thank you. And– I'm–" his mouth wobbled more, and he tried to breathe the uprising tears away. "I'm sorry, I... I just– this–" how could he explain this? How could he justify himself?

He didn't want to lie to them. He hated lying. Especially to his friends.

"I thought it would help," his voice broke against his will. He stared at the floor, starting on the damned crying again. Get a hold of yourself, Dream. "I was trying to– I thought it would–"

Wordlessly, Blue reached over and dragged him into a hug. A second later Ink flopped into the embrace too, both of them sandwiching him like endearing annoyances.

Dream was… a bit stupefied. Here he was, drunk (post-drunk?), having botched a fight. Vomited magic dried on the bottom of his pants (he'd kicked his shoes off). Sitting with his best friends on his bathroom floor, an undignified mess in all ways.

And they just… hugged him.

Blue's arms around him were solid and strong, an unflinching aura of care. Ink had a steady calm presence, for all his hyperactivity, never overwhelming Dream with emotions due to their artificial nature.

They were… so warm.

Dream pressed his face to Blue's shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut painfully. Blue rubbed his back, as much as he could with Ink there at least.

"It's okay," Blue comforted him gently. "You're okay. Everything is alright. You didn't do anything wrong, alright? You can let it out,"

Dream shook his head.

"Heeyy! There's room for only one emotionless Protector!" Ink whined, "Don't infringe on my copyright!"

Dream laughed wetly at that.

"I'm– but it's wrong," he argued, daring to voice his inner turmoil. Uncertain how exactly to describe the way he felt about it to someone else. "I– I wasn't made to cry," he tried.

"I mean, you can cry though, right?" Ink pointed out. "Sounds to me like you were made to do it, then,"

And… and Dream couldn't really argue with that. He was left speechless.

"Come on, what do you always tell other people?" Blue guided. "What do you say when someone's crying?"

Many things. But among those things,

"That it's... normal, and... healthy," Dream replied, quiet, uneasy. "But I'm not– it's not the same,"

"Why not?" Blue exclaimed. "Didn't it feel nice just now? Letting it out? Everything that was built up?"

…Miserably, Dream had to admit it did. Like there had been a dam accumulating inside of him, turbulent and heavy, metric tons of tears built up. And finally, he'd let some of it out. He was exhausted, and ashamed, but he did feel… eased, in a way.

"You're allowed to cry, Dream," Blue insisted softly. "Heck, you of all people should get to cry!"

"Don't worry, we won't tell anyone," Ink said in a jokey tone, "It's going to be a Star Secret,"

"Yeah, Ink will probably forget in a day," Blue teased.

"Heeyy!" Ink complained with no upset behind it, instead amused. "Maybe you should forget it too, did you consider that?"

"Nope! I'm a magnificent keeper of secrets, mweheheh!"

Dream giggled wetly. They were so nice. He sobbed again, muffling it into Ink's scarf. He loved his friends so, so much.

"There we go," Blue encouraged, amused but sincere. Patting his back gently. "Do you still feel sick? Do you think we can move to your room–?"

"Yeah, it's alright," Dream swallowed.

"Dream,"

"No– it is, it really is, I– I want to change my clothes," he insisted, it was the truth.

"Alright, Ink, move a little please,"

Ink complained and there was a bit of shuffling. Dream also got ready to disengage from the hug, but instead he was taken off guard as Blue lifted upwards, still holding him. Easily picking Dream up, making him yelp. Jeez, he sometimes forgot how much sheer physical strength Blue had.

Blue cackled, having definitely done that on purpose.

Dream sighed in feigned annoyance, but considering how tired he was, he honestly appreciated the lift to his bed where Blue deposited him. Ink happily trailed after, and flopped down right beside him.

"Do you need anything else? Where are your clothes?" Blue hovered, still on his feet.

"I can get it," Dream pushed himself up.

"Noooooo," Ink complained, wrapping around him like a squid.

"Guys,"

"Dream,"

"Just–" Dream sighed, "please? I swear I'm better," either from the DETOX or he'd thrown it all up, or both. And from the sheer comfort and positivity of his friends. He was just… tired. So tired.

But… not in a hopeless way. Rather in a really sleepy way.

Blue was visibly unsure, but relented, sitting at the bed. Dream smiled at him. Ink unlatched from him, letting him get up. He got into pajamas, brushed his teeth because yuck, and also went to get himself a glass of cold water from the kitchen. He drank it slowly and crossed his fingers, hoping he wouldn't throw up again.

He lingered in his kitchen for a moment, just… breathing. His body was tired. Heavy and dragging. It was so much more than simple lack of sleep. It felt like he'd bled out. Not just literally. A part of him dreaded how this would all crash down on him tomorrow.

And he was still highly in danger of crying.

…But…

…Maybe, he was made for it. Maybe, it was good and healthy for him. That's what Ink and Blue thought. And Dream both trusted them and trusted their view. They were some of the most truly kind, capable, honest, caring, dedicated– ah, he could go on. Point was: he appreciated them. Maybe... maybe he should take them as a guide instead.

It was a bit terrifying? Because what if he was wrong? What if Dream was daring to go against everything that'd kept the multiversal balance intact this far?

…But he hadn't been enough, this far. So... clearly something wasn't working. It was time he tried to change things up Just a little. For the sake of goodness.

(And maybe, just a little, for his own sake.)

Dream refilled the glass, taking it with him. Pattering back to his bedroom.

Ink and Blue were still laying there, their collective aura easy and light and warm, though with mix-ins. They were chatting about something. Ink was holding up the purple teddy bear, making it move as though it was acting out their conversation.

Dream passed by and primly snatched it out of his hands.

"Heeyy!" Ink protested, and then his mental track switched as he grinned, "Oh I'm so happy you kept him!"

"Of course I kept him," Dream rolled his eye lights. "He's a gift from you doofuses,"

"Mweheheh!"

"I like his ribbon," Ink pointed out. "Purple and yellow, complementary colors,"

…Yeah.

"Dream. Bed. Sleep. Don't make me make you," Blue threatened.

"I dare you to try," Dream grinned.

"Oh Dreamy Mr. Guardian," Ink clasped his hands together theatrically, making his eyes big and sparkling, "I need aid remembering how to get into bed, can you please show me–!"

Blue mercilessly whacked him over the head, making Ink kick his feet and laugh loudly.

Blue sent Dream a glance, but Dream was laughing too. He wasn't particularly offended. Partially because it was Ink, but mostly because Ink was... pretty accurate with it, haha. Oh stars.

Oh so benevolently, he flopped into bed, laughing quietly as he got dragged in for cuddles. Holding the plushie close.

Tomorrow, the shame and guilt would crawl up his spine. Tomorrow, he was probably in for… difficult conversations.

Tonight, instead of alone, Dream was held by his teammates, his friends, listening to them chat and breathe, and he felt... alright. Tonight, instead of lying, Dream had cried and it was alright. Tonight, Dream slept alright.

[merbear25]

Could I request prompt 18 with Vash? Maybe something sweet and sappy and a little angsty <3

Hello, hello! I understand that this didn't make it on the 200 followers list, but I couldn't resist writing it for Vash! He needs to be shown so much more love. I hope you like it 💜💜

Collections of a lovesick man

CW: SFW, gn!reader, a tad angsty, fluff

There was barely anything worthwhile in your town; each day was relatively bleak and was refected in the people. So when a charismatic laugh echoed down the alley, you stopped in your tracks. Curiosity got the best of you as you went to locate such a memorable display of joy.

Laying eyes on him, the man you'd later learn to be Vash was exchanging laughs with the formly gloomy residents. Going up to him, you were eager to get to know the man who unabashedly welcomed others―such warmth was what separated him from anyone else you'd met before.

He seemed friendly enough, but the following day you saw the whole town turning on him, accusing him of being a devil. Based on the brief interactions you had, he came across as a genuine person. Doubts of whether or not you should go to him were ignored as you went against your better judgement to offer a place for this gentle stranger to reside in.

After some convincing, you eventually wore him down. The time spent together was short, yet he still managed to leave a significant impression on you. When it came to him leaving, every fiber of your being was calling out to you to go with him. You knew the risks, but you couldn't help wanting to keep his vision of peace afloat. You wanted to keep that hope alive.

Allowing you to go with him was something he couldn't even wrap his head around. That being said, seeing his passion for love and peace mirrored back in you gave him the sense of home.

The more time you spent together, the closer you became: sharing dreams for the future and stories from the past. He was quickly earning a special place in your heart, and unbeknownst to you, you in his. Despite his habit of keeping people at arms length, he still craved connection just like everyone else. When you began journaling, noting down each and every detail the two of you encountered, he became curious. Not wanting to invade your privacy, he left you to it, writing your little heart away.

There was a time when you tossed one of your notes out, though. Unable to fight off his inquisitiveness, he took it out of the waste basket and read it. You jotted down your thoughts on what you'd set out to do with him: your hopes for success and fears of failure. Being able to have more insight into your innermost personal views felt wrong, yet he thought they should be cherished, not thrown away.

Whenever you threw out one of your notes, it was rescued by him, each one giving him a better understanding of where your head was. Spending time with you after reading these notes filled him with conflicting emotions: guilt and regret mixed with endearment and affection. With each passing day, the draw towards you had more of a pull, making it harder to hold off his rising interest in you.

Looking for something specific, you had a hunch it would be in Vash's room. Once opening a drawer, you saw a bunch of carefully folded paper that appeared to have once been wadded up. Thinking it strange to fold crinkled paper, you picked it up―then the others followed suit.

When you didn't return, Vash went to look for you, stumbling in on you discovering his little secret.

His apology for keeping such private thoughts of yours was caught in his throat, making you break the silence.

"You mean to tell me you've kept every single note?" Your tone showed no ill feelings, simply painting you in a light of bewilderment.

His heart was pounding, while he remained incapable of coming up with a proper excuse. "I did."

"Why?"

"I know you wanted to throw them away, but they seemed important. They are your feelings, after all." Looking down at the floor, shame crept in.

"Your hopes and dreams are just as important as your fears and woes." Still unable to meet your gaze, he assumed your eyes held betrayl and disgust. "I'm sorry."

Closing the gap between you, you placed a tender hand on his arm. Unsure what you could say to this, you motioned to embrace him, giving him space to refuse if he so wished.

When he finally brought his eyes to yours, the gentleness they held made him melt. In spite of his ever present fear of growing close to others, it wouldn't hurt to let you in, would it?

Opening his arms to welcome your solace lifted his spirits, set his busy mind to rest, and helped to bandage his lingering wounds.

Tightening your arms around him, you opened yourselves up to one another, allowing your vulnerabilities to be on full display. However frightening it felt, you were sure you were placing your heart in trustworthy hands.

[ichxgo]

vi. the lovers does your muse practice self love? what is something they do to be kind to themselves?

xx. judgement is your muse over critical of themselves?

@coldheartedflame || major arcana asks || accepting

vi. the lovers

Ichigo doesn’t consciously practice self love — at least, not in the way people usually talk about it. He’s not one for affirmations, long baths, or calling it “self care.” In fact, if you asked him if he loved himself, he’d probably deflect with a judgmental look and something like, “What kind of question is that?”

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it.

✮ He gets back up

Even when he’s shattered. Even when he thinks he’s not enough. Even when he’s lost everything. Ichigo dragging himself to his feet is a deep, quiet refusal to give up on himself. That is a kind of self love.

✮ He listens to himself more than he thinks

Ichigo doesn’t talk about his emotions, but he honors them in action. When he feels something's wrong, he trusts his gut. When he needs distance, he gets it. When something hurts, he doesn’t pretend it doesn’t. He might not name those needs out loud, but he responds to them, and that’s a subtle yet powerful kindness to the self.

✮ He protects others to protect who he is

It looks like sacrifice, but there's something self serving in his protectiveness. Standing up for others affirms his identity. Makes him feel needed. Make him feel worthwhile. It’s how he remembers what kind of person he wants to be.

✮ And once in a while he lets himself rest

It's rare. But when he trusts someone enough to let down his guard—that’s self love too. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that says I deserve to be safe.

If Ichigo were to ever consciously learn to love himself, it would probably start not with words, but with doing something small and simple just because he wants to — not because anyone needs him to.

xx. judgement

Yes. Ichigo is deeply overcritical of himself, though he rarely names it that way. His self judgment is quiet and constant, but often masked behind responsibility, protectiveness, or sheer stubbornness. It doesn’t come out as self loathing so much as "I should’ve done more," or "If I were stronger..."

Most, if not all of this issue, stems from the fact that he spent so long believing his mistake killed his mother. He says plainly that he stole the heart of his family. This belief contributed to a pattern of toxic guilt, hyper responsibility, and self blame, which became central to his cognitive framework. Even after learning the truth and experiencing some emotional relief, such deeply ingrained maladaptive thought patterns do not disappear easily. 

✮ He holds himself to impossible standards

Ichigo doesn’t expect perfection from anyone else, but he unconsciously demands it of himself. Especially when it comes to protecting others. If someone gets hurt, even when it’s clearly out of his control, his first instinct is to blame himself. Every failure becomes a personal flaw.

What he demands of himself doesn’t fade even as he grows stronger. If anything, it deepens. The more power he gains, the more responsibility he feels to never let anyone down and when he does, even by human standards, the guilt eats at him. Though even that, he tries not to share.

✮ He struggles to accept his own limits

This is almost the same as above, but not quite. Ichigo’s world is full of noise—internal battles, conflicting identities, unresolved trauma. But outwardly, he often presents like someone who should just be able to handle it. If he can keep going, he should. Rest, doubt, even asking for help? Those feel like weaknesses, even if he wouldn’t say so out loud.

He never wants to burden others, but that means he ends up carrying too much, and then criticizing himself for buckling under the weight. It causes a great deal of stress. There's a reason he's always snapping.

✮  He rarely gives himself credit

Ichigo’s saved entire worlds. And yet? He barely admits his own part. He rarely feels like it’s enough. Victory doesn’t bring peace for him, it brings reflection. What he could’ve done differently. What it cost. Who it didn’t save. He doesn't seek praise, and when he gets it, he often brushes it off. Because in his eyes, he was just doing what had to be done. And if he’s honest, maybe he thinks he could’ve done it better.

[keyishacolecat]

i don’t know how to stop comparing myself to other women. my ex was obsessed with only fans girls, their bodies look nothing like mine, a lot of them have bleached intimate areas, labiaplasty, big butts and boobs. pretty makeup, pretty hair. i can’t get those images out of my head and i look at myself in the mirror and want to puke. were broken up now but it doesn’t matter, i feel gross for not looking like those girls. i don’t think there are any men that aren’t obsessively watching them and saving their pictures. i’m worried i will never be content with myself.

im sorry it took me so long to get back to you love

but i just want to say, it's totally understandable that you feel this way. we only have our life experiences to navigate with as we grow and move forward.

with that being said, i want to encourage you to stay open and receptive to new experiences. ones that will be different from this one, painful, experience.

you are still on course to experience love and trust and acceptance from people that will completely counter this one. you may have already experienced this in small ways already.

i know that it's hard to imagine a life beyond something so painful. it's hard to imagine a version of yourself outside of these extremely limited and ill-informed conceptions of beauty and womanhood and sex and love but i can assure you, they are out there.

ive felt like you have at one point and on certain days, i still feel this way! feeling discontent or as you put it, "gross" with myself does not necessarily make it true though. it will take time to heal this wound but it'll be a lesson worth staying curious about as your life goes on. i wish some lessons didn't have to be so painful.

your ex has an idea about women that is completely fabricated. it's made up. it's mickey mouse. it was made with the sole purpose to drive revenue on two counts: people like him who will pay for their fantasies and people like you and me who pay for beauty and diet treatments to fulfill the fantasy. none of us are truly immune but we can become resilient to these ideas when we learn to value ourselves outside of patriarchal, white supremacist, and capitalist structures.

think about who it truly benefits when you're comparing yourself to these women. these women who are in sales, who have one motive, to make money. these guys may obsess but they are obsessed with an illusion. a mirage. someone that doesn't exist.

but you are real and living and breathing and it's incredible! you don't need to change anything about yourself to be worthy of love, you are here and that's enough. and any person worth keeping around will never ever. ever. make you feel less than that. a person who loves you will love you as you are and vice versa.

and you can afford yourself that love, with a little practice and a little self compassion. it is not easy but it's so so worth it. because the next time someone tries to make you feel like you aren't beautiful enough, like your body isn't good enough, you can say: "well no. that's not true. i already accepted my body, im thankful every day for it taking me through all of my celebrations and all of my failures." treating yourself like a really good friend is awkward and weird and feels super unnatural when you're used to bullying yourself or hating yourself.

but the most worthwhile love and acceptance you will ever get in this life will be from yourself. and you don't have to wait around for anyone else to start. when i learned to love and accept myself i learned how to teach others how to do it too. and it's opened me up to new types of love all together. and you can have that too. you deserve that. we all do. and it's waiting for you.

im wishing you all the best love. i believe in you! and im so sorry you're hurting. but something better is out there for you and all you need to do is grab onto it, claim it.

[transgamerthoughts]

Abandon All Delusions Of Control

this is another cross-post. which is funny because I've paid for a domain name redirect to my tumblr since like 2016.. i never know what site is gonna explode these days. less people follow me here than anywhere but this write ups been passed around so...

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma 2 and while I'd love to talk about gameplay or interesting moments, the game's found itself something of a cultural lightning rod. It is a game with many friction points arising in a cultural moment where gamers are, perhaps more than ever, convinced that "consumers" are kings.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is not readily "solvable" and you can't min-max it. You will make mistakes. You will be scraped and bruised and scarred. Pain is sometimes the only bridge that can take us wher ewe need to go. And gaming culture, fed the lie of mastery and player importance, does not understand that scars can be beautiful. I love this game. I think it's a miracle it came out at all.

I also think in spite of the success it's found… that 2024 might be the worst possible year for it to have released.

Let's ramble about it..

It's easy to feel like Hideaki Itsuno and his team miscalculated the amount of friction that players are willing to endure and while I don't think that's true (he didn't miscalculate moreso stick to his particular vision) it certainly appears that we've reached a point in gaming where players, glutted on convenience, don't really know what to do when robbed of it. I've heard folks complain that they can't sprint everywhere or else balk learning that ferrystones required for fast travel cost 10,000 gold as if these shatter DD2 into pieces. I'm vaguely sympathetic to these concerns but at the same time they seem to spring entirely from a lack of understanding of the game's design goals. Much like how folks demanding a traditionally structured RPG narrative from an Octopath game misunderstand what that team is trying to do, players asking to sprint through the world or teleport with ease fundamentally misunderstand what Dragon's Dogma wants. The world is not a wrapper for a story. It is the story. Dragon's Dogma is a story factory whose various textures create unprecedented triumphs and memorable failure.

It is crucial to the experience to allow both of those to occur and live with whatever follows.

I'm always cautious of talking like this because it can come off as smug or superior but I think ultimately that's the truth of the matter here. This was not a well-played franchise before now and even if it's a AAA title, there's a way in which this game is meant to elide most AAA open world trends. You are expected to traverse. If you want relatively cheap and faster travel, you're meant to find an oxcart and pay the (quite modest) fee to move between trade hubs much like you would pay for a silt strider in Morrowind. Even if you do this, you could be ambushed on the road and in the worst case the ox pulling the cart can be killed. Something being "possible" in a game doesn't always mean it is intentional but Dragon's Dogma continually undercuts the player's ability to avoid long treks. Portcrystals, which act as fast travel destinations, are limited and ferry stones (while not prohibitively expensive compared to weapons and armor) are juuust expensive enough that you need to consider if the expense is worthwhile. Once is happenstance. Multiple times is a pattern. And the pattern in Dragon's Dogma is to disincentivize easy travel. It screams of intent.

Something I could not have imagined playing games growing up is the ways in which even a decade (or two) could lead to radically different attitudes on what games should provide. That's an audience issue to an extent but it's also something games have brought upon themselves. The "language" of an open world game has been solidified through years climbable towers, mini-map marked caves, and options to zip around worlds. When a game deviates from that language, the change is more noticeable than ever.

Hell, even Elden Ring (perhaps the closest modern relative to Dragon's Dogma) allows you to warp between bonfires and gives you a steed to ride. But that's also a much larger game! DD2 is not a large game and the story is not long. Yes, you can spend untold hours wandering about into nooks and crannies but a trek from one end of the world to another is still significantly shorter than bounding through most open worlds and a run through the critical path reveals a speedy game. Not as speedy as the first but brisk by genre standards.

exploration is the glue that binds the combat and progression system in place. Upgrading armor and weapons requires seeking out specific materials and fighting certain monsters. Gathering the funds for big purchases in shops mostly comes from selling your excess monster parts. The entire game hinges on the idea of long expeditions where you accrue materials and supplies on the road and then invest that horde one way or another once you return to town. It's not simply a matter of mood and tone for you to trek throughout the world without ease. The gameplay loop is built around it.

There's another complicating factor that I'm less interested in diving into and it's the presence of certain microtransactions at launch. Principally I'm against MTX in single players games, particularly conveniences of which most of DD2's microtransactions are. But I also think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what many of these are. Among the biggest things I've heard (repeatedly!) is that you can pay real life money for fast travel but that's not true. You can buy a single portcrystal offering you one more potential location to warp to. It's a one-time purchase and the only travel convenience offered. This has transformed, partly because of people's lack of familiarity with Dragon's Dogma's mechanics, into a claim that you can pay over and over to teleport around. I think that assumption reveals more about the general audience than anything else.

I think it is worth entertaining a question: does the existence of this extra port crystal signify a compromising of the game's goals regarding travel? That's not a discussion that folks seem to be interested in having—instead opting for more emotional and reactionary panicking—but it is the most interesting question. On face the answer is yes and that raises the follow up question of whether or not the developers had knowledge this convenience (though one-off) would be offered to players. If so, did that knowledge affect how they designed the game? Even slightly? It seems rather clear to me that these purchases are a publisher decision; there's nothing in the game's design that suggest the dev team wants players to have access to an extra portcrystal. As we've established it's quite the opposite!

They want you to haul your fucking ass around and get jumped by goblins, buddy.

Which is many words to say that as much as I care about microtransactions from a consumer standpoint, the way in which they undermine Dragon's Dogma 2's goals is a fair reminder of the ways in which they hurt developers. Ultimately, I do think that these purchases are ignorable and in that sense (combined with the misinformation surrounding them) I'm a little burned by the consumer-minded discussion. Doubly so because of the way it feels, at least in part, tied into a certain kind of rhetoric that's been on the rise lately. Instead, I find myself drawn to the question of the damage they do the devs and if more onerous plans actually would force their hands into undercutting portions of their own designs. The shift of many series into live-service chasing suggest so but even as I entertain these thoughts I don't get the sense that Itsuno and his team were forced to reshape their game world to encourage these microtransactions. The world is as they want.

If it wasn't, they wouldn't make it so failing to act quickly in a quest to find a missing kid stolen by wolves could end with you being too late. They wouldn't make it so buying goods from an Elven shop without an interpreter was a hassle. It's present in Every Damn Thing!

More interesting to consider is why this particular game became such a lightning rod of passion when I'm going to assume that most people caught up in the discussion have no particular fealty to the series. The answer is a combination of factors but there's something about the genre that ignites the panic we're seeing as much as the culture moment we're in. When people try to explain that these MTX purchases are not needed, it's confused for approval of their inclusion but that's not something we need to grant. I don't think anyone wants these things here and when they say "you don't need them" they are referring to the more complex thought that the game is better played without them. But this is not heard because the idea that you'd want to opt into friction and discomfort is not something that the general audience is likely to understand. They're wired against it. They crave ease.

not everyone, mind you. DD2's enjoyed a lot of excited reactions (there's tons of folks who like this game as it is and are happily playing it) but it has faced plenty of folks railing against "bad" design choices but the fact remains that those "bad" choices were intentional.

I'm writing about this stuff instead of, say, the wild journey I took solving one of the Sphinx's riddles because the immediately interesting thing about Dragon's Dogma 2 has been what it's become as a cultural object. It is a game suffering from success. Never designed for a general audience or modern standards but thrust into their hands due to Capcom's ongoing renaissance. Dragon's Dogma is a fine game whose cult status is well earned but the reason DD2 garnered this attention (and therefore becomes a hot-topic game) has as much to do with Capcom's ongoing success rate as anything else. In some ways, it actually IS a good time to release a game like Dragon's Dogma 2. There's certainly a curiousity in place. Partly borne of goodwill and also from folks' genuine desire to try something new.

and yet, we're in a odd moment in games. consumer rights lanaguge, having been fundamentally misunderstood and reconfigured by gamers as a rhetoric for justifying their purchase habits (I'm paying the money! why can't the game do exactly as I demand!?) has stifled many people's ability to have imaginative interpretations of gameplay mechanics. they don't ask "what is this thing doing as a storytelling device" (which mechanics are!) and rather default to "what is this thing doing to me and my FUN and my TIME". which are not bad questions but they also misunderstand the possibility space games have to offer. While we can attribute some of the objections that has arisen to players' thoughts about genre itself and the way in which Dragon's Dogma positions friction as a key gameplay pillar, the fact of the matter is that we would not be having such spirited discussion about these things in, say, 2017. not that things were great back then, but I think the audience is worse now in many, many ways. sarcastically? I blame Game Design YouTube.

Even if there were no microtransactions, we'd still be having a degree of Discourse thanks to a key game mechanic: Dragonplague. It is a disease that can afflict your Pawn companions which initially causes them to get mouthy and start to disobey orders. If you notice these signs (alongside ominous glowing eyes) then your Pawn has been infected and you're expected to dismiss them back to the Rift where that infection can spread to another player. The game gives a pop up to the player explaining this the first time they encounter the disease. However, some players have ignored that warning and found a dire consequence: an untreated Pawn can, when the player rests at an inn, go on an overnight rampage that kills the majority of NPCs in whatever settlement they are in. This includes plot-important characters. The reaction's been intense. Reddit always sucks but man… just look…

I understand some of the ire. It's a drastic shift from your pawn being a bit ornery to instantly killing an entire city. On the other hand, the game does warn of potentially dire consequences if a Pawn's sickness is ignored. Players have simply underestimated the scale of that consequence. Surely no major RPG would mass murder important characters and break questlines! We're in post Oblivion/Skyrim world. Important NPCs are essential and cannot be killed, right? Well, wrong and this is another way in which Dragon's Dogma chases after the legacy of a game like Morrowind more than than it adapts current open world trends. This is a world where things can break and the developers have decided that they are okay with it breaking in a very drastic way. It's hard to think of anything comparable in a contemporary game. We don't really do this kind of thing anymore.

The result has been panic and a spread of information both helpful and hopelessly speculative. Is your game ruined? Well, maybe. There is an item you can find which allows for mass resurrection but that's gonna require some questing. But some players also say that you can wait a while and the game will eventually reset back to the pre-murder status quo. What's true? Hard to know. Dragon's Dogma doesn't show all of its cards and won't always explain itself. We know entire cities can be killed. We know that individual characters can be revived in the city morgue or else the settlement restored (mostly) with a special item. Dragonplague is detectable and the worst case scenario is, to some extent or another, something that the player can ameliorate. Those are facts but they don't really matter.

That's because players issue (panick? hysteria?) with dragonplague is as much to do with what it represents as what it does. Players are used to the notion of game worlds being spaces where they get to determine every state of affair. They are, as I've suggested before, eager to play the tyrant. Eager to enact whatever violences or charities that might strike their fancy. They do this with the expectation that they will be rewarded for the latter but face no consequences for the former. Dragonplague argues otherwise. No, it says, this world is also one that belongs to the developers and they are more than fine with heaping dire consequences on players. Before the dragonplague's consequences were known, players were running around the world killing NPCs in cities because it would stabilize the framerate. They're fine with mass murder on their own terms. they love it!

This is made more clear when we look at how Dragon's Dogma handles saving the game. While there are autosaves between battles, players are expected to rest at inns to save their game. This costs some gold, which is a hassle, but the bigger "issue" is that they only have one save slot. Which means that save scumming is not entirely feasible though not impossible with a bit of planning. What it does mean, however, is that the game is saved when a dragonplague attack happens. you have to rest at an inn for this to trigger. which saves the game. They cannot roll back the clock. The tragedy becomes a fact. It's not the only time Dragon's Dogma does this. For instance, players can come into possession of a special arrow that can slay anything. When used, the game saves. Much like how players are given a warning about dragonplague, they're warned before using this arrow: don't miss.

If you do? that's a real shame. The depth of this consequence is uncommon in today's gaming landscape. Games are mostly frivolous and save data is the amber from which players suck crystallized potentialities. Don't like what happened? No worries. Slide into your files and find the frozen world which suits your proclivities. You are God. In Dragon's Dogma, you are not god. The threads of prophecy can be severed and you must persist in the doomed world that's been created. The mere suggestion is an affront. The fact that Dragon's Dogma has the stones to commit to the bit in 2024 is essentially a miracle.

It's easy to boil everything I'm saying down to "Dragon's Dogma is not afraid to be rude to the player" but that doesn't capture the spirit of the design. It invites players to go on a hike. It makes no attempt to hide that the hike is difficult. But that's the extent of it. It offers little guidance on the path, doesn't check if you're a skilled enough hiker. Your decision to go on the hike is taken as proof of your acceptance of the fact that you might fall down.

This is not unique to Dragon's Dogma. In fact, this is part of the appeal (philosophically) of a game like Elden Ring. The difference being that even FromSofts much-lauded gamer gauntlets (excepting perhaps Sekiro, conincidentally their best work) offer more ways to adjust and fix the world state to the player's liking. Even the darling of difficulty will offering you a hand when you fall. Dragon's Dogma is not so eager to do so. In a decade where convenience is king for video games, that represents both a keen understanding of its lineages and a shocking affront to accepted norms and expectations.

The core of Dragon's Dogma, the very defining characteristics that earned it cult status, are the same things that have caused these modern tensions. It is both a franchise utterly consistent in its design priorities and entirely out of touch with the modern audience. Dragon's Dogma 2 has come into prominence during a time where imaginative interpretation of mechanics is at an all time low and calls for "consumer" gratification are taken as truisms. It is a game entirely at odds with the YouTube ecosystem and the very things that give it allure are the tools that have turned it into a debated object.

This flashpoint of discussion is proof of Dragon Dogma 2's design potency. It's also a sign of the damage that modern design trends have done to games as whole and the ongoing fallout that's come from gamers learning design concepts without really understanding what designing a game entails. And, uh… I dunno respond to that or how to end this. That's both very cool but it also bums me out. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a remarkably confident game but games are long beyond the point of admiring a thing for being honest.

[sybaritick]

I care and think a lot about effectiveness and outcomes in teaching. Did the student get a good understanding of the material? Are they ready for the next course? Do they have the skills to improve their understanding, know what resources are available to them to help, and feel comfortable using them? Do they like doing math? Are they good at handling frustration and "failure" and bouncing back without feeling like it makes them a bad person or unworthy?

Because of this, I sometimes read about pedagogy or education because I care about doing a good job and there are evidence-based ways to do a better job. Also, unlike many of my coworkers, I have no formal training in education (though tbf I basically have no formal training in anything) so I think it's all the more important that I think about how to be a good teacher.

And I think there is sometimes this unspoken casual belief that effectiveness means harshness or coldness. That if you treat something as an optimization problem and you care about nothing but outcomes, you will treat students like robots. (And this attitude obviously doesn't exist only in teaching, people think "effective == cold" about many things!)

And I think this is is a huge mistake! Both because:

people aiming at optimization without really understanding it will try to cargo-cult optimization based on the practices that we think of as "harsh but effective" that aren't actually effective-- just harsh! also in this category is the trap of caring more about what looks effective than what is effective.

people who care a lot about students don't want to pursue optimization because they think it's about being cold and mean and refusing any "fun" activities as a "waste of time."

Because here's the thing... first of all, being excessively strict doesn't result in better educational outcomes. It just doesn't. Second of all, even if it did by some metric, you have to think about the broader outcome. The outcome is not only a test score, it's also the rest of that student's education and their life afterwards. If the student learns math or programming basics with me, but also ends up feeling more comfortable, even slightly more comfortable, with learning how to take criticism of their work effectively and self-evaluate, and even better if they liked it and they enjoy math, that is a HUGE, huge win that goes beyond the test scores alone. I'm not saying the numbers don't matter-- they do. But if you focus only on today's numbers and not on what is gonna happen for the rest of time you are fixating on winning a battle that isn't gonna win you the war.

Actual effectiveness requires taking a really broad view of what your goals are. When you take that broad view you will realize that the time you "waste" on fun is sometimes totally worthwhile. I think a lot of failures of teaching come from excessive focus on the narrow goal (I need to get this student to finish this worksheet). Which is understandable because there is a lot to do and not enough time to do it in. But it is worth stepping back sometimes and thinking about the broad goal. A perfect optimizer would not be harsh-- they would be patient! And I'm not by any means a perfect optimizer. But I try.

Lastly, while I wrote this about teaching, I think it applies everywhere else too, in almost any job where you're regularly interacting with people. I am not saying to be a doormat or that harshness is never necessary. (I would argue I probably grade more harshly than the average teacher where I work for example!) Just that you should not forget about the big goals in pursuit of the little goals, and that when you think about the big goals, the value of kindness and being thoughtful about why other people are doing what they're doing come to light a lot more.

[pagesiwontburn]

Day 2: I feel like everybody is doing well, except me.

Recently, I've been carrying this quiet weight. It's that kind of feeling you don't always talk about, but it stays with you—particularly when you're scrolling through your feed and everyone appears to be doing well. I glance around and it feels like everyone else is making progress in life. They're buying cars, getting married, booking trips, starting businesses, settling down. Meanwhile, I'm here—still in school, still trying to figure things out, still attempting to make my many dreams something tangible.

And to be honest, it gnaws at me at times. That voice in my head continues to ask: "When will it be my turn? " I say that a lot. Perhaps too much. It's not that I'm not pleased for others—because I am. I really am. I've learned that sometimes, you have to clap for others, not because you're supposed to, but because it teaches you humility. It reminds you that life is not a race, and that good things take time.

But still… Some days are just more difficult than others. It's hard to watch the people around me get ahead when I feel like I'm still at the starting line. And I know that everyone's timeframe is going to be different, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating. Especially when social media only shows you the highlight reels—the wins, the glow-ups, the perfect moments. Nobody really posts about the nights they cried themselves to sleep or the mornings they woke up lost.

So here I am, basking in the pressure, the fear of failure, and the burden of expectations that I hadn't even requested.

I've considered giving up social media countless times. But it's not as easy as that. Most of my contact, my relationships—all of that's in that realm. Severing it means severing the world, and that just compounds the isolation. I used to dream big. Truly big. But now I feel like the older I get, the lesser my dreams become—not because I want them to, but because life makes you question yourself. I'm scared of ruining it all. I'm scared of letting people down, letting myself down. But even amidst that fear, there's still part of me that would want to believe. A part of me that desires to flourish, to make my existence worthwhile.

To be me in totality, unapologetically and authentically.

One day, I will make a difference. I don't know when, or how, or what it'll be... but I will. And until then, I'll keep trying. I'll keep clapping for others. I'll keep dreaming. Because even if I feel behind right now, I know my story is still being written. And if you've ever felt this way too... just know, I see you. You're not alone.

[whileiamdying]

David Lynch, Twin Peaks Creator and Mulholland Drive Director, Dies at 78: 'There's a Big Hole in the World'

The director was a four-time Oscar nominee By Victoria Edel Published on January 16, 2025 @ 01:28PM EST

David Lynch in 1984. PHOTO: DE LAURENTIIS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP/RGR COLLECTION/ALAMY

David Lynch has died at the age of 78, his family announced on Thursday, Jan. 16.

"It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch.  We would appreciate some privacy at this time," read a message on Facebook. "There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, 'Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.' "

"It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way," they added.

Lynch, who would have turned 79 this Monday, Jan. 20, was best known for creating the 1990 TV series Twin Peaks. The show spawned a 1992 feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and a 2017 revival season. A four-time Oscar nominee, he also directed films including The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. He was known for his distinctive style that became described as “Lynchian.”

Lynch was born in Missoula, Mont., in 1946 and grew up in Spokane, Wash., and Boise, Idaho. His father was a forest research scientist, and Lynch spent much of his childhood outside, exploring. Those same mysterious Pacific Northwest woods would eventually inspire Twin Peaks.

When he was a teenager, the family moved to Alexandria, Va. He had "a kind of happy persona” there, he told PEOPLE in 1990, but soon learned “all the thrilling things happened just after school or between classes. It added up to some sort of pitiful joke — so constricting it would drive you nuts. It inspired me to try to break rules. Behind it all, I was getting it together to be a painter.”

David Lynch in 1984. KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Lynch went to Philadelphia to study art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and there he began experimenting with film and animation. "I loved Philadelphia," he said in 1990. "The most corrupt, fear-ridden city I've ever seen. It's one of my major film influences."

In 1975, he released The Grandmother, a 35-minute blent of live-action and animation about a lonely boy whose dead grandmother comes back to life. It earned him a spot in the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies in L.A. He spent the next five years working on his feature debut, 1977’s Eraserhead. To support himself, he held a series of odd jobs, including a paper route.

"$9.80 a night was not a thrilling rate, so I was pretty depressed," he said in 1990. "But I worked it to where I was shooting the route in one hour, almost to the second — a totally efficient hour. You learn to fold, bag and drive at the same time."

"I got an awful lot of pressure to abandon Eraserhead and do something worthwhile," he added. "I just couldn't. It was frustrating, but also beautiful." Eraserhead had a small opening, but gained interest as a midnight movie and ultimately became a cult favorite. One fan was Mel Brooks, who hired Lynch to create a film about Joseph Merrick. That movie, 1980’s The Elephant Man was a hit and garnered eight Oscar nominations, including best director and best adapted screenplay for Lynch.

David Lynch (right) directing Dean Stockwell and Francesca Annis on the set of 'Dune'. NANCY MORAN/SYGMA VIA GETTY 

Next he directed an adaptation of Dune, released in 1984. It received mostly negative reviews upon it release, though it went on to be a cult favorite. “It was a heartache for me. It was a failure, and I didn’t have final cut,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020. “I’ve told this story a billion times. It’s not the film I wanted to make. I like certain parts of it very much — but it was a total failure for me."

He released Blue Velvet, starring Isabella Rossellini, in 1986. The erotic thriller was criticized by some for being too violent, but he received a second Oscar nomination for best director. "When people first meet David, they expect him to be neurotic and crazy and sick, but he's not," Rossellini, who was romantically involved with Lynch at the time, told PEOPLE in 1990. “It's just that he looks at life in a different way.” He said of his creative inclinations, “I'm in love with ideas, and I'm out there trying to catch them.”

His next major film was 1990's Wild at Heart, starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, who had also appeared in Blue Velvet. She told PEOPLE in 1990, “David's greatest gift is that he sees making a movie like a trip to Disneyland." Lynch described Wild at Heart as a “violent comedy, a love story in a twisted world.” He explained, “Wild at Heart goes to extremes — it's not a film for everybody. But as shocking as some things in it are, they're based on the truth of human nature, and there's a lot of humor and love wrapped up in that.”

Kyle MacLachlan (left) and David Lynch on the set of 'Blue Velvet' in 1986. EVERETT/SHUTTERSTOCK

Twin Peaks also premiered that same year. "Working at this speed is unusually intense, but I really like it," the director told PEOPLE. “It gets kind of crazy.” The mystery TV series reunited him with Dune and Blue Velvet star Kyle MacLachlan. 

Set in the titular, fictional Washington town, Twin Peaks explored the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), though the surreal series came to mean so much more to fans. Not that Lynch was forthcoming about any of the ideas he intentionally incorporated into his work. "I never talk about themes," he said in 1990. "No way. A film should stand on its own. People talk way too much about a film up front, and that diminishes it."

MacLachlan praised Lynch as “a sound, mood and rhythm director. David hasn't forgotten the images, fears and desires you have when you're 10 or 18 or 25. They're so pure, these images, that they have a lot of impact.”

David Lynch in 1986. BONNIE SCHIFFMAN/GETTY

"I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing," Lynch said. "In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth." The combination of violence, surrealism, mysticism and blue-collar life would come to define the “Lynchian” aesthetic.

Twin Peaks aired for two seasons on ABC. It was an instant success when it premiered; PEOPLE included Laura Palmer on it annual list of most interesting people at the end of 1990. But the second season was derailed when ABC executive Bob Iger made Lynch reveal in the premiere who had killed Palmer, a mystery the director had wanted to save for the end of the series. Ratings declined, Lynch was unhappy, and the show was canceled.

In 1992, Lynch visited the story again in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. And he returned for a third season of the series, which aired on Showtime, in 2017. “I called all the regulars — or most everyone — and I had a chat,” Lynch told Deadline in 2018 about bringing the cast back together. “These people are like family, so it was so beautiful calling them and talking to them again and getting together like for a family reunion.” He guessed that 99 percent of the surviving cast was happy to return. Dern also joined the show for the third season. 

Lynch felt season three was more comparable in quality to the first than the second, which he did not like. He received nine Emmy nominations for his work on Twin Peaks.

David Lynch in 2015. GLENN HUNT/GETTY

Lynch directed four more films: 1997’s Lost Highway, 1999’s The Straight Story, 2001’s Mulholland Drive and 2006’s Inland Empire. He received his third Oscar nomination for best director (and fourth overall) for helming Mulholland Drive, which followed an aspiring actress in Los Angeles played by Naomi Watts. It was originally conceived as a TV show.

“It was a closed-ended pilot, and then the ideas came to make it into a feature,” he told Interview in 2012. “I was meditating, and all these ideas just flowed in, in one meditation — all the ideas to finish that into a feature.” In 2019, Lynch received an honorary Oscar for his contributions to film.

Lynch never gave up his early love of painting and continued to create visual art throughout his life. In 1994, he published Images, a book that featured painting, photographs and images from his films. He was also involved in several music projects, including working on the scores of several of his films.

In 2006, he published a book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, about transcendental meditation, and in 2018, he published Room to Dream, which was a hybrid of memoir and biography. He directed music videos for artists like Moby, Nine Inch Nails and Donovan, as well as many commercials. He also portrayed director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's 2022 film The Fabelmans.

David Lynch receiving his honorary Oscar in 2019. MICHAEL BUCKNER/VARIETY/PENSKE MEDIA VIA GETTY

Lynch was married to first wife Peggy from 1967 to 1974. They shared daughter Jennifer, who also became a director. Jennifer told PEOPLE in 1990, “He was not your normal dad, but he's been the best dad he could be, and we've had a blast.”

From 1977 to 1987, he was married to Mary Fisk. They shared son Austin. From 2006 to 2007, he was married to Mary Sweeney, with whom he shared son Riley. In 2009, he married Emily Stofle, who appeared in Inland Empire and the third season of Twin Peaks. They shared daughter Lula Boginia. Stofle filed for divorce in 2023.

Looking back on his one-of-a-kind career, Lynch was mostly content. “Well, I'm sort of proud of everything except Dune,” he said in a 2020 YouTube video. "I’ve liked so much working in different mediums. It’s not a thing about pride, it’s more like the enjoyment of the doing, enjoyment of the work."

He added, "I’ve just enjoyed working in all these different mediums, and I feel, again, really lucky to have been able to enjoy those things and be able to live."

[b8rack]

I have struggled recently with my relationship to the past. Songs, movies, and thoughts from days gone by have been hitting harder when they resurface, and I've been getting stuck, and stuck with a lot of ghosts, while thinking about earlier times in my life.

There are, of course, things in my life that I regret: mistakes, unkindnesses, opportunities missed... But, for the most part, those don't really bother me: nothing I did was really that bad, and I can also look back at a lot of growth, and someone who was hurting and didn't really know what they were doing. Hopefully, most of you can look back at yourself at 18- or, god help us all, 15- and see the same things.

What I've struggled with is the past's incoherency, its seeming rebellion against the imposition of any lasting order. I feel like I'm looking at a massive pile of beads I want to sort into necklaces, that simply aren't coming together. The piles keep getting bigger and bigger, and the patterns aren't emerging any faster. What I recognize instead are a lot of loose ends: so many things that didn't work out, that didn't make any sense, or still hurt too much to do anything constructive with. What I have are a lot of things I need to let go of.

The real problem, I know, is less in the past than that I am not very happy in the present; my rearward fixation is my looking for a key that sorts everything out, which I'm never going to find. I have a fabulous job that pays me more money than I thought I'd ever make, and passionate, enriching hobbies. And I even know, in the broadest way, what I'm missing. Three years ago, when I decided to move from Cincinnati to Boston, I hung a sign up on the interior front-door of my apartment that said "a walk-on part in the war," to remind me of what I really wanted, badly enough that it inspired me to pack up my belongings and move far away: a full life, where I have enough friends and relationships and good experiences to make the rest worthwhile.

The sign stayed there for a year, until the day a moving truck hauled 3,000 records and I up to Boston. Since then, one of my two closest friendships of the past decade, which I moved here hoping to support, has needed to become something much more distant. My dad divorced for a second time, unleashing a string of painful revelations about him, not the least of which is that he's never going to become a healthy person. I've learned a lot, sorted through a lot, burned through a lot, yelled a lot, and in doing so grew up a lot, and finally reached a point where I think I am able to build something new (maybe... on a lot, if that doesn't carry things to far). But, even as I feel that threshold practically beneath my feet, I still don't really know what to do.

Partly through the challenge of choosing to live 1,000 miles from where I grew up, and partly through being the only child of divorced parents who both suffer from mental illness, and partly in recognizing my failure to build enough friendships or develop the necessary set of skills to do so, I have also found vast quantities of loneliness. The loneliness is both a negative and a positive quantity, an absence and a presence: there is the loneliness that is the lack of people and certain supports in my life, which is a space to be filled, and there is loneliness that is the pressure of life and the feedback of my own mental illness, which is something to chip away at.

I think what really keeps me sifting through the past is that there are, therefore, two conversations, that have an unpleasant and confusing way of bleeding into each other, and keeping resolutions both farther away and more obfuscated. One of them, the chipping away, has become a much clearer process to me, though the main net result isn't fun: I need help. I need, at the very least, to start seeing a therapist, someone who can hopefully help me handle the pressure better than how I have so far. I always thought that coping mechanisms were a bad things, but, it turns out, I need at least a couple of them. I am open to your recommendations.

The second part, of how to fill my life, is trickier. A big step is making the most of the friends I do have: staying in closer touch with people, pushing myself to invest a bit more energy into friendships and therefore get a bit more back in return. This is where the conversation between the two arms of loneliness comes into play, as that also means ignoring the voice that says those friends aren't important or as caring as I think. But I also need to get better at making new friends, and finding relationships of, hopefully, all shapes and sizes. I'm trying to be more outgoing, more conscious of attending events where I can talk with other people who share my interests, be more thoughtful in how I talk to people, and have even joined OK Cupid. I've also been trying to talk more with people on here, not just for the sake of finding friends but practicing the necessary skills; I hope you all accept that in the spirit in which it is offered.

One thing, though, that I think is exactly right is where I am. I now live in a place where I can take a bus to mountains, a subway to the beach, and that is filled to the brim with humanity. It would be hard to walk away from that and return to a cage, a leading role notwithstanding. And, the last thing I need is another chapter in my life to look back on that was left unfinished, or that I suspect didn't get 100% of my effort.

[micalpixel]

May Flowers Game - May 2024 Progress Report

The first version of May's front-walking sprite. And 9 revisions.

So, it’s been a month since I decided to seriously start making a video game. To help keep myself accountable, here’s a progress report.

I’ve posted five things since then, all done towards that end.

Game Concept Art – Set the art direction and basic plot.

Walking Animations – Set the main character’s design. I’ve done some touch-ups since then, and will probably do more.

Kicking a Ball – Use Godot 4 and the images created above to make an actual tech demo “game” and export it to the web. This was a big leap for me. I’m ecstatic some people were able to play it and apparently enjoyed it too.

Eastward Animated Scene – Made a cutscene scripting engine and used it to create a small cutscene, in an art style similar to what I’m going for.

A Hat in Time Animated Scene – Modified the scripting engine above with better handling of concurrent actions. And physics.

Additionally:

I joined the community for the Godot game engine and have been participating in several discussions, learning things along the way.

I joined a local Indie GameDev group in my area and have been participating in meetings and chats.

Overall, I’m thrilled with how May has gone. I’ve struggled so much with procrastination and fear of failure in the past, but this month things have somehow finally clicked.

So, what next?

Well, I haven’t done much on the actual game’s design. I initially wanted this May Flowers game to be just SOMETHING. To get SOMETHING done. But unfortunately, May has grown on me and somehow graduated from “throwaway OC” into “character who deserves a good game.” Maybe spending hours animating a character will actually make you want to make things worthwhile. Who knew? I want this game to be fun. I want it to be, like, good. Maybe only 15 minutes of good. But still, good.

May’s game is meant to be a game about exploration and village life. But no combat. I don't want to add that level of complexity to my first game. Keep things simple. A walking simulator. And, uh, I don’t have too much experience with those kinds of games. :/ How do you make a 2D overhead game (that isn’t a farming simulator) without combat fun? Fun usually means Flow. Keeping a balance between too-difficult and too-boring. In a game with combat, that means carefully increasing the difficulty level and mechanics the user must learn to progress. But in a game without combat…what do you do? Puzzles? Probably puzzles. Do I just cram this game with puzzles, then? That can’t be right. This needs more thought.

Basically, this means it’s time to do research. I just replayed To The Moon, which is the closest game I could think of in this genre. I heard One Shot also fits the bill, and others, and so I’ll likely be playing that soon (been on my radar for months now).

So, that's it so far. The game's basic outline is still intact. But I want to think more about what the player will do to win, and how to make it fun. That will have a huge impact on the rest of the game - especially the map and sidequests. So, it's a high priority.

Major missing piece #2 is: music and sfx. No progress to report on those fronts.

Thank you for reading. Without people to play games, there would be little reason to make them. I hope you have a great rest of your day!

[psychologicalwhorefare]

WILT 1/8/2024

spotify//youtube

Limp Bizkit - Leech: trying to get some of my friends into lb and this is the song that sold it for at least one of them

Nirvana - Been A Son: may well be my favorite nirvana track. every single lyric is like. owwww

Daniel Johnston - Walking the Cow: i have been on my bullshit about this whole album for like a full month. trying to learn this one on the piano

Daniel Johnston - Keep Punching Joe: i like the slightly more upbeat, almost kind of bluesy feel he put into this one. it feels very character-driven and humorous while still being a... unique exploration of victimhood

Breaking Benjamin - Polyamorous: this seems like it would be soooo fun to sing live. i just love all of ben's little enunciations and syllables here, his unique voice is so dear to me bc of how long i've been listening to bb. also god forbid poly bitches do anything

Suicidal Tendencies - Suicidal Failure: have also been on my bullshit with this album. i don't really want to talk about this track though, i don't feel like getting too personal

Nirvana - Rape Me: this one also feels weird to talk about publicly. but i've been listening to a lot of in utero tracks, not necessarily the album front to back but just my favs and this is definitely up there. an infamously raw and real record at perhaps its rawest and realest

Gene Wilder - Pure Imagination: i saw the new wonka movie in theaters and was surprised to find i actually enjoyed it a good bit. that nice warm feeling led me to listen to some of the soundtrack of the original and remind myself of how much i love it. i could have easily put the scary boat song on here too

Suicidal Tendencies - Subliminal: i don't really care that much about the actual message of the song pertaining to subliminal messaging in media, i think there are other takes on that subject that have done it a lot better than mike's clumsy rambling. but i do identify immensely with just the feeling of sickening paranoia that the song captures. maybe it's not coming through the television but SOMEBODY is fucking with me. subliminally...

Daniel Johnston - I Am a Baby (In My Universe): okay i won't lie this one is kind of funny. like openly funny and ridiculous rather than the more layered playfulness of the rest of the album. oOoOoOoh i'm only 22........ i'll live forever ^_^ idk. it's still real as fuck though, i feel like a dipshit baby all the time

Kurt Cobain - Rehash: when you listen to home tapes like this, i feel like it really gives such greater dimensions to who kurt cobain was as an artist. in a way, it feels not dissimilar to something like the scrappy brilliant work of an indie pioneer like daniel johnston, which makes sense considering kurt was a fan of the guy's work. at the same time, this particular track is kind of silly and has him doing that voice that i hardly even recognize as his. i've been wanting to watch montage of heck, and this one is here as a marker of my love for the sounds of these home recordings more generally

Korn - Faget: there's a lot of discussion to be had around when it's okay for artists to use this word, but in general i tend to find that alternative artists who use it in a way that identifies with it is something i can't really be mad at. korn, and more specifically jonathan davis, is a freak show of alternative music that appealed to other freak shows. the fact that jd chose to identify himself with the word "faggot" in this song due to his experiences as an outcast and victim of bullying is at worst misguided, and i bet it made a lot of other outcasts and victims in 1994 feel seen, feel less alone. i think that's worthwhile. however it is also funny that a few years later korn would release "all in the family" which is like if someone decided to drag out the meager concept of a homophobic slur into a full album track

The Romantics - What I Like About You: was rewatching pat finnerty videos and got this stuck in my head from the bit where he talks about this song in the dani california video. not much to say except it's a tune! also goes in the file of songs that seem very fun to sing live

Metallica - Wherever I May Roam: oh yeah now we get into the rock adn roll babey 🎸🎵 i mentioned in an audio ask that i've been really indulging in the dumb rock music and 90s metallica is like the prototype for all meathead rock that followed. it's solid though, there's a reason why it got so popular. this is a good track, i really like the prechorus

Puddle Of Mudd - Blurry: possibly the dirtbaggiest of all the dirtbag rock. that's not true actually there's still shit like theory of a deadman and fuckin buckcherry and whatever, stuff that even i don't touch. but idk puddle of mudd just hits now and then with the scratchy yucky vocals and stupidass riffs and this is hands-down one of the best songs off the album. it's at least kind of about something. and ngl everything is pretty blurry nowadays

Tom Petty - Love Is A Long Road: shoutout tom. was listening to full moon fever again and realized how much of a tune this was. big chorus with the good good blend of new wave and americana rock that he always brought

Muscadine Bloodline - Me On You: with country being as big as it is right now and me trying to connect with that sort of honest and grounded feeling that rock and roll gives people, it seemed natural that i would make another attempt to properly get into country. i came across this one on a country rock playlist i was exploring and took to it because of the nice growl in the singer's voice and the rapidfire delivery of lines with some tasty internal rhymes. nothing special but it rips. i am a little wary of the "bloodline" part of these guys' band name but i looked them up and couldn't find anything that immediately sent me running? idk i hope they aren't shitheads

The Offspring - D.U.I.: the drunk driving fandom is dying, can't imagine why. discovered on the soundtrack for "i know what you did last summer" which i picked up on cd at a thrift store

3 Doors Down - Kryptonite: okay these guys actually do suck major shit. and so does this song actually. but it's on here bc i've heard it a million jillion times and have been listening to it a lot again, after watching the pat finnerty video about this. man i feel like i'm cheating on todd this month or something wtf. anyway i discovered not long ago that i've been mishearing the lyrics to this song my entire life in a pretty major way. honestly it's overdue for its own installment in my little series where i explain my misheard lyrics and the much better implications i derived from them. basically i always heard the chorus as "i'll keep you by my side, you're my superhero man/my aching kryptonite" which is WAY more words than are actually in the chorus. the singer just chews on the syllables so much that i always heard them as separate words. but i always thought it was a song about a kind of shitty guy who was trying to be better and act like a superhero for his partner who he viewed as his own super savior, as well as his weakness (kryptonite) because of how much he loved them. i thought it was a really sweet song. but it's just about a douchebag guy who acts like a douchebag to his partner who he doesn't seem to actually like very much. it's not a good song. but again, butt rock. sorry