#// my formatting has changed because I have no clue what I was doing before

[chaoscriess]

hi, i've getting into euphoria recently and i was wondering if you could write some poly!maddie and cassie with a fem!reader? it could be some time after season 2 with them liking the same girl, because y'know we love a trainwreck. reader is pretty normal, sort of like a background character but she's pretty charming and playful and just has no idea about any drama at school. she only knows these 2 as those girls who fought each other in lexi's play, poor girl has no idea what's going on. in truth, i just wanna see a trainwreck with maddie and cassie with a completely oblivious reader. sorry if it's a little long ;-;

I absolutely love this idea it literally temporarily got rid of my writers block tysm.

poly!maddie and cassie x reader

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒! none

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒! swearing, might not be exactly what was requested, I was feeling a bit too fluffy.. oops..

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒! on mobile, format might be weird. lowercase intended, unedited, double periods intended

two months ago, you didn't have a clue what was going on between maddy perez and cassie howard. as far as you were concerned, they were just two ex best friends who both happened to like you. however, it was much more than that. you knew about nate jacobs, and the fact that he has been on-and-off with maddy, but you had no clue that cassie had been with him too.

you had your own little circle, consisting of stoners who never payed any attention to anything, and people who genuinely didn't care about their education, who hardly ever went to class. so when you asked your friends what had happened, they were clueless as well.

you'd never truly tried to find out what had happened between the girls though, or why they fought, even though you were friends with lexi. in all honesty, you thought it would be better if you stayed oblivious. why? because you knew that finding out could change the way you viewed them, and you weren't ready for that.

lexi had told you about a week ago that they liked you, and you had been thinking about what to do ever since. neither of the girls had ever been in a poly relationship, and you were certain that they never would be. you hadn't been in one either, the closest you had gotten was being in a open relationship.

however, when you got word from lexi that she had talked to cassie for you, your view on the situation changed.

"wait.. so, you like y/n, right?" cassie looked over at lexi, panicking and trying to figure out how she knew. "um, what? no, why would you even think that? that's like, so gross.. like who even is she?!" lexi laughed at her sisters behavior and rolled her eyes. "yeah, okay. you know maddy likes her too, right?" cassie sighed and looked away, now upset. "yes obviously I know, lexi." lexi muttered an 'ookay..' and thought about what to say next. she wanted to get cassie to be open to at least the idea of being in a relationship with y/n and maddy, she thought that maybe it would help it actually happen. of course, she didn't think this was the greatest idea, but she would do anything for y/n, even if it meant getting her sister into a potentially toxic relationship.

"so... would you ever like, be in a relationship with her and maddy? like if you were both dating y/n... separately? I don't know if that makes sense so.." cassie cut her off by yelling 'no!' and she turned to face the wall. "well.. I guess maybe, but I'm tired of sharing everyone with maddy. I guess if y/n really wanted it then yeah.." lexi smiled and got up, mumbling a quick thanks before leaving cassies room, leaving her to yell after her in a panicked voice. "wait you're not going to tell her, are you?... lexi?!"

yeah, she told you. you were really happy, you pretty much just got cassie to agree to a poly relationship with you and maddy. both of the girls would be dating you but not eachother, you didn't see a problem. you didn't know about their past with nate, so you didn't worry about them getting jealous of one another. all you had to do now was get someone to ask maddy if she would, and then ask them both yourself.

it wasn't as easy as it sounded.

you spent days asking around, trying to get someone who talked to maddy to talk to you. finally, you had settled on rue. even though you and rue didn't know eachother very much, she found your situation amusing, and wanted to help. so, she did the same thing lexi did, and asked her if she would ever date you while cassie did as well.

maddy was more adamant about not wanting to do it, but a few days later, you had got a message from her in the middle of the night, asking to meet up at a local 24-hour diner.

when you arrived, you found maddy sitting at a booth in the back. she stood up when she saw you walking towards her, and motioned for you to follow her back outside, behind the diner, where you found cassie waiting. it was cold and raining, but the three of you stood far apart from eachother in silence until cassie spoke up. "maddy, why the fuck are we here?" maddy sighed and stomped lightly, mud splashing onto her legs. she tried to speak a few times, but only ended up blubbering like a fish. she felt pathetic. "I just.. well I wanted to.. um.. well.. y/n can I talk to you alone?" you nodded and walked around the side of the building, until you were just out of earshot of cassie. or so you thought. cassie heard everything the two of you said.

"okay, fuck. I like you. kind of, like a lot.. and I want to be with you. and I know that cassie likes you too so I just want you to pick one of us and move on. please." you stared at her for a moment, but in your head you were bouncing off the walls and running in circles. maddy just told you that she likes you. holy shit on a stick. that was not something you were expecting to hear.

you opened your mouth to speak, but stopped when cassie came around the corner with her arms crossed and a baffled look on her face. "are you fucking kidding me? you brought her here to make her choose between us?" maddy sighed as cassie walked towards the two of you. "listen, its not going to work out if we do it any other way, I just figured we could get it over with." you stood there in silence as the two went back and forth, praying to god they wouldn't break out into a fight.

you backed up a few feet as the girls started to get closer to each other, and they noticed immediately. the two of them turned to you and stopped with their argument, before stepping away from eachother. cassie licked her lips and took a deep breath before gathering her courage to speak. "can't we just.. both date her?" maddy looked at her with wide eyes and her mind immediately went to rue. "wait, did rue talk to you too?!" cassie looked at her with a confused frown on her face. "..what? no, lexi di- nevermind."

you tried to hide the smile that was forming on your face. cassie actually just suggested that you be in a poly relationship. maddy sighed and looked around for a minute, before crossing her arms and speaking. "well.. I guess we could.."

and so, after a few weeks, you all got comfortable. it took maddy and cassie a bit more time than you, but you eventually made it work, even if you still have your ups and downs. now, you couldn't be happier.

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme Post #10

(For reference: The Sideburns Scheme)

Crowley, Good Omens 2, Episode 1, The Arrival, storming out

This post was last updated 08/07/2024.

Due to how this part of the episode is structured, this post requires a different format than usual to start.

I am going to start with a specific sequence but cover several things after that sequence in the rest of the post.

This sequence is very important and very special. It is going to demonstrate several game mechanics to the audience in a tutorial.

I strongly believe in my guesses that there are 2 fake Crowleys in this sequence.

Crowley is going to walk from the threshold of his private meeting room with Aziraphale, into the main bookshop first floor area, through the bookshop's overall threshold, and into the street, stopping specifically at the center of the street.

Let's begin.

When leaving the room, Crowley's sideburns have become longer than being in the room but not as long as when he encountered Gabriel. I strongly suspect this fake is Gabriel.

Then there is a cut.

This fake Crowley—who is probably Aziraphale—stiffly walks his way past a cardboard box with visibly long sideburns that are likely to be the same length as when Presumably Actual Crowley encountered Gabriel as shown earlier in the episode.

Then there is another cut.

Now we have a blurry Crowley. This version does not show us enough to guess the sideburn length. Instead, the sequence focuses on an avoided plate of Eccles cakes while a right hand picks up Crowley's sunglasses. This draft previously noted him as a possible fake, but by this point, I do think it is Crowley. I will explain that in further detail later.

Then there is another cut.

A human walks past Now Presumably Actual Crowley. His sideburns are shorter than the Aziraphale-Crowley but not as short as when he initially entered the bookshop. He has passed the bookshop's threshold.

Then there is another cut.

Now Crowley's left profile view almost looks like it matches his left profile view before he entered the bookshop with the left sideburn. It seems to be a little longer still.

If the sideburns had not fully shortened in the preceding cut, they have here when Crowley is going to tighten his face in anger. I'll go over this part in more detail in the Earthly Objects section, along with the complex window scene that follows it.

...

Sideburns Check

Okay, so this storming out sequence told us the story was blatantly lying to us but not because the sideburns changed in length. It's other things detailed in the Earthly Objects section.

When first trying to figure out the sideburns, I saw this sequence, made a post about it, thought it over, and grew exasperated. How else am I supposed to figure out how the sideburns work if I know the story is so blatantly lying on things that are not the sideburns? That's the trick to it right there. The answer is in the question. There is no other way to know. If I want to keep playing the sideburns game—because I sincerely think someone or something in the story wants me to find their meaning, I have to believe there was a hidden message within the lie that was true. This sequence just told me some important things about how the sideburns work. It was a sideburns tutorial.

Proximity to Gabriel will make the sideburns longer. Proximity to humans, or a private space with Aziraphale, will make the sideburns shorter. There can be a length in between the two types with distance involving the thresholds of the bookshop.

Playing the game without that assumption makes the game much, much harder.

Reaching that conclusion took several days of just plain thinking, trying to make more posts, and otherwise living my life. I had to go back and thoroughly update my initial post.

The longer sideburns in the lie are also a clue that Gabriel was there after all, in whatever really happened.

Here is what it takes playing the whole game of season 2 to understand even more. There is an invisible supernatural border between Aziraphale's bookshop and Crowley's car when the car is parked across the street. The bookshop is Aziraphale's home. The car is Crowley's home.

Because this border exists as a human-dominant space, Crowley's sideburns will shorten to the length they usually are around humans once he has reached the proper distance—currently the center of the street—between these two special, supernatural places.

This border will disappear—or expand as a radius—at the end of episode 4 when Crowley visibly crosses the bookshop threshold and walks with Aziraphale all the way to his car while they both hold cardboard boxes of Crowley's plants. As noted in my main sideburns post, I think that's from the shared loan of the homes to form a special connection. After all I have been through with my limited progress in the Rainbow Connection for The Pocket Trick, I am all the more convinced. At my best guesses going over my archive here on Tumblr, I came up with the word "connection" in my main sideburns post a little over a month before I found The Pocket Trick, then took another few weeks to find the Rainbow Connection in The Pocket Trick's Pocket Chain existed.

After the border expands, Crowley has to drive far enough away and give the sideburns enough time to shorten to the desired length for being read as human in the street again.

The story demonstrates such an action with episode 5 showing him arriving back from a drive. A player has to give into the admittedly questionable chronology of the story for that conclusion as well.

...

Brighter Red Streak Check

For Gabriel-Crowley starting off the sequence, I cannot find the brighter red streak of hair.

For Aziraphale-Crowley, there is something lighter in shade compared to the rest of the hair above the center of his left eye, but that's not the same thing as being more saturated in red.

For Crowley exiting the bookshop, it is mostly gone. It is only when he is about to stop in the street that I can finally see something that looks like more saturated red in the same general area I found it before he entered the bookshop. That is the only thing that might be the streak, and it is small. The above image is not brightened. When I tried to brighten an image to check, that part looked even less plausible to be the streak.

After that, I cannot find it.

...

Hairstyle Changes

The hair changes quite a bit during the whole thing.

For Gabriel-Crowley, the middle area of the front goes up and to his right some. There's something like a curl behind it on the top of the head.

For Aziraphale-Crowley, the style is more tidy. The front top swoops up and back.

For Actual Crowley, the style looks similar to before he entered but darker and with the tendrils on top positioned a little differently. I like this one too. It is very distracting in trying to make this post because I like it so much.

When Crowley's face tightens in anger, the cut ensures not being able to see if the brighter red streak is there.

After that, his hair looks to be losing its stronger red saturation before the lightning itself is actually released. It looks more relaxed too.

From what can be seen, the hair is getting darker.

...

Earthly Objects

(For reference: Earthly Objects | Earthly Objects Study - Windows Part 1 | Earthly Objects Study - Crowley's Sunglasses)

Whoa, there is a lot happening with Earthly Objects here.

So, the way I interpret the storming out sequence to right before a human passes by Crowley past the bookshop's threshold is that is basic rule-breaking in Earthly Objects on purpose.

It might not be, but that's how I like to think of it in the way I play the game as an audience member. Plus, I can name a place where I think the rule-breaking ends and the rule-following starts.

Aziraphale—or Crowley as Aziraphale—is in the chair. Gabriel-Crowley touches the door on the push plate, and somebody picks up those sunglasses. So, there are touches.

However, the main earthly objects meant to be noticed are the cardboard box and the plate of Eccles cakes because they were both left untouched with the box also being unquestioned. Dialogue is lacking when the fakes are on screen.

As I said in my main first post about Crowley and Muriel, Actual Crowley is a top tier player in Earthly Objects who is incredibly deliberate in what he touches, especially with his hands. He's also someone who tends to ask questions.

This part is not the Metatron editing the Book of Life. This part is Crowley, Aziraphale, and Gabriel collectively working together for their edit in the story through breaking the rules of the game, Earthly Objects. That rule-breaking then informs the audience of the lie.

When Crowley is leaving the bookshop, two fingers are touching the sunglasses. That is not enough to earn credit for touching them as an accessory yet. That is the end of the rule-breaking.

A human passes by, and then he is touching the sunglasses with at least three fingers. So, rule-following has started. The rule-breaking edit ended, and we have entered the main draft of the story.

By hiding the thumb, that helped put the sunglasses into Accessory Mode too and earning a point for that touch.

Crowley angrily mutters, "Just breathe, that's what humans do...then they count to ten before they do anything stupid!" The number "ten" is a dialogue point. That is Crowley's second point in this solo set.

Now here's where things get even more weird and tricky, but thanks to the annoying, difficult pocket mechanics that are so silly and emphasize a human presence in The Pocket Trick, I have a stronger belief in this ridiculous theory.

Crowley is creating a very specific context to allow him to earn a point by touching the sunglasses with his face.

Once he reaches the center of the street and stopped, the sideburns are shortened to the desired length for human spaces. He is being read as human. Humans use sunglasses as accessories. While pockets are what tend to use lighting as clues, in the cut where he is stopping, there is extra light on his left sunglasses lens that could very well be a clue about the sideburns, this incoming touch, and a couple of pockets of hair shown by toward the end of the cut. There is a lightning imprint visible on the forehead yet again.

Crowley tightens his face in anger. The cut itself focuses on the act, and the subtitles note he grunts. The eyebrows lower for an active touch on the top of the rims of his sunglasses and the cheeks rise for an active touch on the bottom of the rims of his sunglasses.

When Nina sees Crowley, she refers to him as "that bloke," so there is even further confirmation that yes, here is a human looking at Crowley and seeing him as human after he has done that particular touch.

So, a benefit to the short sideburns is that it allows him a face touch on the sunglasses in this special context. That doesn't seem like much, but it's valuable to Crowley because, if this theory is right, he does it two more times during Good Omens 2. That would make 3 face touches in a game with a Rule of Three.

He plays this game like it is a competition. He is likely the top tier player because he makes choices like this one: short sideburns for a slight advantage in earning 3 special accessory points across the game during the entire season.

...

Moving on, it is time for the story's first complex window scene!

These scenes have three steps, and this part is the game's initial tutorial on those steps.

The steps are:

Step 1: The looker looks.

Step 2: The window sees.

Step 3: The looker is seen clearly behind the window pane with at least some of the window frame visible.

When Nina gets Maggie to look, there is a shared blur between the two. That blur is the main one that made me think they mean pass or share in the game. When Maggie looks, she is known to have been attending to her tea, but if she is touching an earthly object, the touch itself is not on screen. She is at the threshold of the window touch with this particular look.

There will be more complex window scenes that will do the same thing to help further confirm this threshold component. For instance, in the next one, Maggie is doing a self-touch with her hand in her mouth and then actually removes the touch during the look. This threshold component is important because of figuring out the steps Crowley is following in The Window Trick without knowing whatever further advanced pocket mechanics might be involved.

For the window seeing, that would be the cut with Maggie and Nina shown from the back while Crowley is seen through the window. Generally, these parts make sure a window frame is somewhere in the cut.

Maggie is seen behind the window pane when the lightning shoots out. While it is a little blurry because of the lightning, that blur is not the same type as what the game uses for the passes and shares, so I think she is still considered to be seen clearly enough to earn the point for looking. The reflection of Crowley's lower body is in the window pane with his lightning.

While Maggie and Nina are looking, Crowley is still busy earning his own solo points, which the game focuses on when not focusing on Maggie and Nina.

I think it goes that one set is the hopping on the ground is point #1 as a touch. Shouting the number "Ten!" is point #2 through dialogue. The lightning actually hitting the coffee shop twice is point #3 as a touch.

The lightning earns its own 3 points with 3 different touches on the door. I eventually took that sequence as a clue about the Rule of Three in Earthly Objects.

For Crowley's next set, his lightning is channeling out of his own neck and striking him. There are actually three specific points on his body where the lightning is channeling out from him, like little nodes. I'm hoping I'm not supposed to count how many are doing what where because I won't do that, and it's mainly communicating the lightning is striking him for a point here.

Maggie will remind the audience in the dialogue that lightning striking someone or something is what lightning does on Earth. Hence, that is how Crowley earns that point.

With Maggie finally forced to see Crowley, the surrounding Soho people react oddly, almost in tune with her. They were moving when she first saw Crowley, but in the next cut, almost everyone is stopped and looking at Crowley. They see him release the lightning. Maggie says she thinks he was struck by lightning—which technically he was because of his own lightning striking him. As if in response, everyone in the street moves on as if nothing happened.

Another theoretical point for Crowley is bringing his teeth together in a chomp. The rules for supernatural beings and self-touches are very confusing because they look like they don't exist for various reasons, but Crowley's play especially suggests there is something like requiring an earthly object touch in several instances for him. This chomp would be one such time. Crowley can do it because of the lightning striking him. The chomp is so fast, I can only ever see it going frame by frame, but I don't think he gets a second point any other way, even with whatever he is doing with pockets.

The third point would then be Crowley letting the smoke hit him as he grunts.

UPDATE START (for this part):

For the Tied Hands, while I have not fully figured out retying mechanics, I have found an assortment of patterns that suggest retying actually happens every time a threshold is crossed. A clasp at a lapel edge is the easiest clue to find that retying is possibly happening, but it's not actually required every time. The clasps can align with other edges, as can actual thumb joints, especially Crowley's already significant left thumb CMC joint for the touches in The Pocket Trick.

Among those patterns were some I noted in a previous draft of this post. This tutorial has a findable word puzzle of "smoke and mirrors" to conclude an instance of retying. Reflections were involved as part of it.

These patterns also suggest that both Gabriel-Crowley and Aziraphale-Crowley still had to manage both the Tied Hands and the Belt Head.

Gabriel-Crowley shows the face of Crowley's watch. As the cut progresses, multiple lights can be found to his right and above his right ear, suiting an angel. I can't see a tassel clearly touching the Belt Head, but I can tell that such a thing is plausible given the position and movement of this character. A clasp actually does strike a lapel edge.

Aziraphale-Crowley also receives right-side Overhead Lights. He aligns his actual right thumb CMC joint along a jacket edge near a lapel. That's another theoretical sign of retying.

UPDATE END (for this part).

Regarding whatever else is going on with pockets, Gabriel-Crowley has pockets existing while visually in the door frame before leaving. After he closes the door and starts walking, the tie strands switch though as they switch, only one of the clasps is visible. As he keeps moving and does another two switches, both clasps are not visible.

Aziraphale-Crowley makes a few pockets with his arms as he walks.

Now onto the blurry Crowley who I finally think is Crowley. Crowley makes a pocket with the left arm, then more pockets with the legs, waist, and dark horse statue holding the sunglasses. The left hand does end up in a pocket between the body and dark horse statue as the sunglasses are grabbed, creating even more pockets within. In this pocket itself, the left thumb CMC joint lines up with an edge of the rug in the background.

The camera work is giving heavy focus to the dark horse statue with the sunglasses on it and to the plate of Eccles cakes. At the start of the cut, the strongest light behind Crowley is to his left and above his left ear. Lights can be found on the sunglasses themselves. Pocket trickery uses lighting as clues. All of these factors combined are why I finally think this blurry Crowley is Crowley.

When Crowley is exiting the bookshop, the tie strands are visibly off his chest before pulling back in as his arm obscures them. They looked about to switch, but he hides confirmation of if that happened with his right hand and blurred movement.

After that, the pocket mechanics finally let up a little bit to give the face touch on the sunglasses and the complex window scene the focus they deserve for what they are. The scene does show at least one human pocket-user glance in his direction during that face touch.

Crowley creates a pocket with his legs after he is done hopping and the lightning is shooting out from him. In his angered grunt of letting the smoke hit him, his right hand aligns with the jacket, so that an actual thumb joint is at an edge before re-tying of the Tied Hands is done.

Usually, when I refer to a thumb joint, I am specifically referring to the carpometacarpal joint (CMC joint)—but in this case, the thumb joint would actually be the metacarpophalangeal joint. The MCP joint is within the thumb itself whereas the CMC joint is what connects the thumb to the rest of the hand. I had to look up this thumb stuff. I don't magically know these things.

Further into the movement, the left thumb is visually over the assumed lapel area and avoiding a visual touch on the actual tie strands.

The pocket made with his legs opens to reveal little bit of reflected red light from the road. The CMC joint of the thumb is visually touching a different reflection of red light.

The Belt Head is partly visible between the smoke and likely has a tassel tip near it.

Yet another pocket is formed in the process with the left arm and torso of the jacket. As Crowley's position changes, that pocket opens. The left thumb tip is carefully managed to visually touch the edge of the jacket torso while a pocket is created using the left thumb, left arm, and torso. This pocket includes a red light that is not a reflection found on the road.

There is another red light by the right arm. So, this one is not reflected from the road, but these two red lights by the arms exist as a visual mirror to the camera. A human helps separate the red lights of the car by the right arm by being pocketed between those red lights and having their foot visually touch behind part of Crowley's arm.

I'm assuming these are all factors that help get the job done for retying: "smoke and mirrors".

So, given how much pocket care is being done, yes, I do believe the Tied Hands needed retying after all and required considerable effort to get it done.

I'll go over Muriel later where the phrase "earthly object" is at last uttered in the story after these tutorials the game is giving.

...

Story Commentary

For the record, I am going to use the phrase "appearance swap" and not "body swap" because I actually do believe Neil Gaiman on saying so here.

Unfortunately, I did not save a lot of valuable posts I skimmed or just read when I was first trying to understand what was happening in Good Omens 2 and not knowing I would eventually be making posts of my own. I'm not the first person to think that Crowley was Gabriel leaving the room, but I have long since lost the link and took a long time to come around to that idea.

Likewise, I didn't have another link where someone speculated Aziraphale is later trying to grab Gabriel's hand as if about to do an appearance swap when about to do the little miracle to hide Gabriel. I found the post in a reblogged form, but its original post has been deleted. Still, I at least had those things in the back of my mind when eventually figuring this sequence must indeed include some fake Crowleys involving appearance swaps.

The main reason I eventually accepted the idea of the fake Aziraphale was comparing the stiff walk he does in this episode compared to the stiff walk he does at the end of season 1:

They were close enough for me because the shoulders don't move as much compared to Crowley's usual walk. Gabriel-Crowley emphasized the shoulder movement for contrast in the preceding cut. This particular Tumblr post and a couple of comments for it helped point out the stiffness in season 1: Crowley's signature swagger walk.

I suspect that cardboard box was touched and questioned. Somebody might have even eaten some Eccles cakes. Crowley was willing to help Gabriel sooner with understanding the situation better through whatever he learned about the box. I don't know if Muriel was literally on Earth, but they seem to have had a big role in whatever happened because I sincerely believe Crowley has a deep trust in Muriel. I assume Muriel earned it. Beelzebub may have a had a role in things as well.

As I have said in another post, I theorize the original draft had a Big Miracle where the Book of Life was put in the matchbox. It might be more elaborate than that because of so many other things that happened after, but I suspect at least that much.

Still, such things are not in this draft of the story. Whatever really happened has been hidden from the audience for now and replaced with this obvious lie.

Recognizing the fake Crowleys—especially Aziraphale—is crucial because it is extremely important to understand that Aziraphale knows about the sideburns even if Aziraphale never explicitly comments on their changing length. Without believing Aziraphale knows, the sideburns game is, again, much harder.

The lightning itself might be a cover for whatever really happened or part of an elaborate set up for what is going to happen.

It shot out multiple times. Generally, it went upward, spread somewhat in the back and to Crowley's left to do its thing to the coffee shop. It most assuredly did not strike toward the bookshop.

Regardless of its intention, this type of thing is what I love to see in fiction with my favorite characters. I love the anger and the release of actual lightning power. I live for that stuff.

When Maggie and Nina are starting to realize they are locked in, there is a figure that looks meant to be Crowley that can be seen as blurry near the car through the window. The figure has reddish hair and dark clothing. A previous draft of this post remarked that this figure could be another fake. I don't think it is.

The red is questionable since Crowley's hair looked darkened through the smoke with the camera in front of him in the street. The hair will be dark in the next scene later, which admittedly takes place at night. A hopeful clue I have is that the darkened hair was most notable on Crowley's right. The hair on his left tends to be lighter and more saturated in general during Good Omens 2, so that might be the same intent here. All other clues, in my opinion, suggest that this Crowley is indeed Crowley.

A past draft of this post remarked more on the color of the car, but I realize the car itself has different parts of it with different colors and shades. It seems more black when the lightning shot out and more blue through the window in this segment. If such colors mean anything in particular, it's beyond me to figure it out.

I used to think it was related to the fake Crowleys shown earlier, such as also being fake, but given everything else, I don't think that anymore.

...

Muriel

(For reference: Bookend Buddies - Crowley and Muriel (Part 2))

Well, now that we've had tutorials, it's time to learn the name of the game—the Big One that is. I don't think the word "sideburns" is ever said in Good Omens 2. I just made up "Sideburns Scheme" after awhile, but given the word play for pocket mechanics, it might be a name I was supposed to find too. Back to the one I initially meant, Uriel will eventually say "earthly object".

After Nina and Maggie realize their phones are dead, the story cuts to Heaven. The scene starts with Michael and Uriel, leading to the arrival of Saraqael and Muriel.

As noted in other posts, thumb tips are relevant to Door Mode. It is my guess that given how the game works—especially with Crowley's sunglasses in The Sunglasses Trick and pockets in The Pocket Trick, a thumb tip could be like a password to activate whatever is in the matchbox.

Saraqael is even giving a clue to an audience member playing Earthly Objects that's possible by actively adjusting their hands to hide their own right thumb before Muriel reveals the matchbox. Thanks Saraqael!

Muriel brings out the matchbox from behind a folder. A thumb tip is visible, but there is a little shadow added to it, I assume to help cast doubt given how the rest of the scene goes. Muriel seems to be a hidden pocket expert and is making a pocket with their legs, among other things happening in the framing, so that likely contributes too.

At first, Uriel uses the phrase "material object" to describe the matchbox Muriel shows to all of them. Well, I assume it's Uriel. The subtitles technically say "Saraqael", but it sounds more like Uriel to me.

Muriel is holding the matchbox with their index, middle, and ring fingers. The touch is avoiding the palm and the pinky. The thumb is nearby and keeping the thumb tip off the matchbox.

Michael had their legs crossed early in the scene, but the legs are uncrossed by the time Muriel steps forward to place the matchbox on the desk.

When the matchbox is set down, Muriel's right thumb is touching a corner, ensuring the thumb tip is not actually touching the matchbox. Meanwhile, the pinky tip is touching the side with the quote from the Book of Job. The subtitles do not inform the audience of the following. In my opinion, the sound that object makes is that of a disguised magical book, possibly a heavy one at that.

Another interesting thing I'm noticing as I type this post is that Muriel avoids having their digits touch their reflections. By this point in the story, Crowley has actually shown his index finger touch its reflection on his phone and a thumb tip touching its reflection during The Perfect Entrance Trick.

Still, the sound effect is part of why I think the Book of Life is in that matchbox. I also suspect Muriel's methodical touch is why that sound is heard with Muriel's touch but not what will happen with Michael's various touches.

Someone or something turns that matchbox around without us seeing it because the Job quote side was facing away from Michael when Muriel set the matchbox down. It is facing toward Michael when Michael touches it. By this point of my play in the game with my latest update on this post, I think the matchbox turned itself around due to how it wanted to be seen by Michael.

Michael touches the matchbox at the top with their index finger. The object does not react.

Michael nervously uses both index fingers, so that the left one holds the object from the top and the right shoves the inner box to Michael's left. Michael's thumb tip is actually visible and even touched by Michael's hand at one point within a pocket formed between the matchbox and Michael's hands. That's still not enough. The object does not react.

Michael nervously does another touch looking similar in reverse but not quite the same. The right index finger holds the matchbox from the top as the left index finger pushes the inner box to Michael's right. The pocket formed between hands and matchbox have the left thumb tip notably away from the touch and the right thumb generally hidden with maybe a right thumb joint visible. The object does not react.

With another last nervous effort, both index fingers work together to shove the inner box back into the outer box. The thumb is shown to be clearly aligned off the matchbox and by the bottom of the index finger in a cut. In the next cut, the right thumb might be visually over the matchbox, but it is understood to be not touching the matchbox because of its previously shown position. The object does not react.

As the whole affair concludes, we at last hear Uriel say, "That's definitely an earthly object." That is our key phrase, merely missing its plural form. The name of the game we've been watching at play in this story is Earthly Objects. All of that touching was a clue that Earthly Objects is a game based on touching. The matchbox was touched properly to remain an "earthly object" and theoretically not touched properly for Door Mode to fully activate and reveal whatever supernatural object it is actually hiding.

The scene in Heaven ends shortly thereafter with Uriel remarking they think "he" went to Earth. One would guess Uriel means Gabriel, but it is Crowley shown on Earth in the next cut.

That transition allows this Muriel scene to act as a front bookend to another Crowley scene. In fact, the next Crowley will scene will have the next touch of The Sunglasses Trick. This incoming touch will be the first of the Triple that eventually becomes a Single. As such, this scene is yet another bookend connection to the Threshold Tricks overall.

...

That's it for this post. Sometimes I edit my posts, FYI.

...

Main post:

The Sideburns Scheme

...

Past version of this post:

Post #10 (angry lightning)

[cboffshore]

how to give yourself pointless homework and enjoy it: a guide to worksheet style analysis and an incomplete Skybound character study

Or: this is me making good on what I said in this post. Under the cut we go!

Step one: find something that SEEMS sort of inconsequential, but probably isn't. It's best if you don't consciously choose this something. For me, that was a single line from the mop prank scene that occurs just before the end of "My Dinner With Nadakhan", which popped into my head COMPLETELY unbidden and made me go, hey, I could make an analysis of this:

(Note: I forgot about the "well" when I hinted this was an eight word line. To keep my numbers and reputation tidy, let's all pretend "well" is just an utterance like "uh" that's not exactly a word for my purposes.)

Step two: open up your note-taking device of choice and start thinking about the surrounding context of your chosen something. For this one, that's most of the episode, plus my constant, underlying quest to kick the Jay Angst Hand Hook Eye Gouge and Unfair, Disgusting, Reductive Nadakhan Characterization genres in the metaphorical kneecaps. Which means my central loose question became:

What can this say about both Jay and Nadakhan?

Step three: attempt to sift through those thoughts to find a few cohesive mini meanings. Or just one. For instance: my chosen line implies that there was a prior discussion of this prank's outcome amongst the crew. Prior planning is a given, but the fact that they seem to have laid bets opens up a new, more reckless angle. It also raises questions about Nadakhan's honesty, specifically when in the series he's ever fully honest or when there starts to be a noticeable change in his honesty. (And I do believe he has moments of it, self-serving as they are, but that's a whole other deal. Just needed to mention that real quick.)

Step four: convert those mini meanings into questions. Ultimately, I stopped at four, although two of them sort of blur together and I likely could have kept going, but unfortunately I did this over a single lunch hour and ran out of time. This gave me the following worksheet lineup:

How can we trust that this is a genuine comment on Nadakhan's part?

What might it mean (for either character) that Nadakhan thought Jay would run?

Why would Nadakhan risk this prank if one possible outcome is Jay leaving?

Based on the implied discussion and the structure of the prank itself, especially the aftermath, where might Nadakhan be at on the trusting-his-crew scale? Conversely, do they trust him?

Step five: answer the questions, essay style or even just as fragments or a stream of consciousness freewrite. Go one at a time. Cite other context clues, if you'd like; you can go as detailed or vague as you want. I ended up taking comprehensive notes that didn't properly cite things but did mention existing concepts, which I might post later. I also kind of blurred 3 and 4 together into a single answer, because the answer I had for 3 transitioned nicely into an exploration of 4. I just forgot to draw that dividing line.

There's no formal step six, but it might look something like turning your chosen answers into something more cohesive! Maybe there's another similar thing you can examine using those same questions (adjusted as needed) and cross reference with this first set. If I wanted to do that, maybe I'd look for a scene where Jay expresses an expectation of Nadakhan (or, since I don't know if that even exists, just a general expectation).

And.... that's pretty much it! I'm still not sure why I did this, but I've been buzzing to do some proper character analysis lately, and this format was a nice way to ease back in.

[natlacentral]

Secret Auditions Where The Actors Had No Clue What They Were Auditioning For, And 22 Other Behind-The-Scenes Facts I Learned About "Avatar: The Last Airbender"

Albert Kim, executive producer and showrunner of Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender, has a massive task on his hands. After M. Night Shyamalan's live-action film left viewers disheartened, fans have been craving an adaptation that truly captures the heart of one of the most popular animated series in history. I was honored to speak with Albert, who was warm and welcoming, yet protective and passionate about his live-action adaptation. We spoke in depth about the differences between the animated series and his Netflix show, the motives behind those changes, and what was important to leave the same. 🚨 There are spoilers ahead for ATLA Season 1 🚨

1. Albert wanted to strike a balance between the episodic format of the animated show and his more serialized motives for the live-action adaptation.

"We always used the original as our guide for everything. It wasn't like we were creating a whole new story out of whole cloth, we were looking at all the stories of the the first season of the original, regardless of whether they were episodic, or led to a more serialized narrative. And then we kind of laid them out in front of us at the beginning of the season, and said, 'Which ones help us in getting from the beginning to the end of the season.' Because we knew we were trying to create a narrative thread that took us on a journey from the Southern Water Tribe to the Northern Water Tribe. And so once we had that framework in place, certain elements just started clicking into place. We could see something like Jet. Jet is a great character, who has all the right intentions, but has been driven into a bad place by the extremes of war. And then we could see a character like The Mechanist; same thing. Good character, good heart, but doing some bad things because of the war. And you know what? He would be in direct conflict with Jet. So let's bring them together. That meant taking them out of their original locations and then putting them somewhere like Omashu. It was a little bit of putting a puzzle together in that way. And as we did that we realized we could preserve the feeling of the original in those adventures. It was a challenge, and we had to walk a tightrope to do it. But that's the case with pretty much everything in the show."

2. Albert has been a fan of the original show for years, because his daughter would watch the animated series when she was a kid.

"I was a huge fan of the original ever since my daughter started watching it when she was a kid."

3. Albert used references from the animated series to change how the Avatar State would work in live-action.

"There's an episode in the second season, "Avatar Day," when Kyoshi inhabits [Aang's] body. It's a very short sequence in the original series, and slightly more for comedic effect. But we thought we could use that, and combine that with what we saw on the Roku episode. Roku also manifests through Aang, and we used that early on, because we needed the audience to understand what the Avatar State was and how powerful it was. In the second episode, we were traveling to Kyoshi Island, so we said, 'Why not use Kyoshi to do that?' We can't wait until we get to Roku's Temple to do that, so let's use Kyoshi. There's precedent for it in the original series, and we can adapt our rules for the Avatar State. There are little tweaks we made to the canon here and there to help us understand a little more of why this was important for [Aang]."

4. Albert spoke with Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko (the creators of the animated series) before embarking on his showrunner journey and was "bummed" when they exited the Netflix series. 

"When I got the call [to work on the series], I was really excited just for nothing else [other] than the opportunity to talk to Bryan and Mike, and kind of indulge my inner nerd about the show. Our first conversations, were me just asking a lot of Aang questions, and stuff like that. And, that was great. And then we got into the process of talking about what the show could be and the visions they had for it. And what I thought I could bring to the table as someone who hadn't been so intimately involved with the original, or the development process they had been involved with. I really enjoyed that process. I enjoyed collaborating with them and working with them. At around the time I had written the pilot episode, they had decided, for personal reasons, to leave the project. And I can't really speak to those reasons. They had been involved, obviously, for some time before I joined the project. And I was bummed about it, because I genuinely enjoyed working with them, talking to them, all of that. And I had hoped we could continue. But again, that was their personal decision."

5. Albert has never seen The Last Airbender film by M. Night Shyamalan 

"I haven't seen it and it just sort of fell through the cracks for me beforehand. And then when I started working on this project, I deliberately avoided it, because I didn't really want to have those images or the creative choices they made in my head. I wanted to be independent."

6. However, Albert was aware of the criticisms of Shyamalan's film.

"That's not to say I wasn't aware of the criticisms of [Shyamalan's film]. I knew what people didn't like about it. And I don't think we were reacting specifically to those criticisms, but a lot of the choices we were already organically making corrected a lot of that. For instance, I always knew that we were going to be casting all Asian and Indigenous for this. It wasn't in reaction to what Shyamalan did in this feature. That would have happened if the feature didn't even exist. I know how it appears in certain cases, it looks like we may have been doing something in reaction to what happened in [his] film, but I never saw it."

7. Michael Goi, who directed the first two episodes of Netflix's adaptation, is still trying to get Albert to watch Shyamalan's film.

"Michael, our director of the first two episodes, he keeps teasing me trying to get me to watch this movie. Now that we're all done, he keeps inviting me over to his house. He's going to put up a screening room so we can all watch together. I said, 'I've gone this long. I'm not gonna break the record now.'"

8. Although the animated series does not show the decimation of the Air Nomads, Albert felt it was "important" for him to include it in the Netflix show to set the stakes for the series.

"I felt it was important to see that event, which is discussed often in the original, but never seen because, for me, it sets the stakes for the world. It shows you what it is that Aang is trying to stop. And without actually understanding that viscerally, for new viewers as much as for the diehard fans, it was a little hard to go on the emotional journey with him. You have to know what he's facing. And what he's facing is this incredible attack. And when you watch it, you see both the power of the Fire Benders, as well as the struggle that the Air Nomads faced, as well as their destruction and the death. And when Aang gets to ask himself, 'How am I as a 12-year-old kid able to stop that,' you understand it a lot more. It'd feel a lot more abstract as a burden and responsibility for him if we hadn't witnessed that."

9. Albert also felt that starting the series with the Fire Nation attack on the Air Nomads narratively helped viewers understand that he wanted to expand and differentiate the feeling from the animated series.

"Narratively kicking off the show with [the Fire Nation attack] helped, in my mind, send the signal that this was not going to be a note for note translation of the original. We weren't going to tell the story in the exact same way, with the exact same scenes and the exact same dialogue. We were starting off in a different direction. And signaling that this is our version of Avatar: The Last Airbender."

10. Albert felt that including the Agni Kai between Zuko and Firelord Ozai, which was also not shown in the animated series, was needed to flesh out who Zuko is as a character.

"The Agni Kai is so important to Zuko's character, it really forms who he is. And that's the same in the animated series as well. They just didn't show it. And I can understand why, because it's very intense and emotional. And possibly a little too intense for say, a Nickelodeon audience. But for a Netflix serialized drama, which is intended to be for all ages of viewers from 10 to 80, it felt like it was appropriate to show that scene. To show exactly what it is that made Zuko into the person he is. That was something I always knew we were going to do. And I don't think anyone would argue that it isn't the linchpin to Zuko's character. Not showing it felt to me, a little bit irresponsible."

11. Tying Zuko's ship crew, and his intention of saving their lives, into the Agni Kai storyline was Albert's way of expanding on the original in a way that felt organic.

"That was a great example of our entire philosophy for this series, which is that we were drawing upon familiar elements from the original, but then pushing certain things a little bit further. Fans are gonna recognize a lot of the events and scenes in that episode from the original. But then we also extrapolated a little bit, and added elements that felt true to the spirit of the original, but hopefully adds a slightly new dimension. Making his crew the ones that he saved, it felt like it was right for the moment."

12. Changing the gender of Shu, and making the Omashu love story a tale of forbidden queer love felt "apt" to Albert.

"I remember even in the original when I was watching the tale of two lovers, I don't know why maybe I wasn't paying attention, I actually thought they were [both] women. And someone in the writers' room corrected me. So I said, 'Oh, well, it feels a little more right if they are women because it's supposed to be a forbidden romance.' Even in the original, there was a reason they couldn't be together. And they had to hide their love. Which ends tragically, but then leads to a piece of understanding. And for those reasons, it felt like making them both women actually was apt for this story."

13. When it came to casting, Albert wanted to make sure the actors were "ethnically and age-accurate."

"Our casting process was thorough. We saw a lot of great actors and great performers. We always knew it was going to be a challenge. Because we were all committed to making sure we were ethnically and age-accurate. We knew that we didn't want to cast a 20-year-old playing a 12-year-old, and we wanted to cast someone who was Asian. We always knew it was going to be tough."

14. The casting was done secretly, meaning none of the actors knew what they were auditioning for.

"It was even more challenging for them, because the casting process was conducted in top secret. They did not know they were auditioning for Avatar. And I had to write fake scenes for all of them. I think [the fake scenes] were about some math wiz applying to a private academy. Gordon, when he was auditioning, didn't know he was auditioning for anything."

15. There was never a doubt that Gordon Cormier should be cast as Aang, even after Albert auditioned several other actors for the role.

"When we saw people like Gordon, there was something about him that just captured the essence of the character. And we kept coming back to him even after we kept seeing other actors who were great. A lot of them were incredibly talented. But after every discussion I would have with the producers, we would always say something like, 'But what about Gordon.' And then we would come back to him, and we kept coming back to him. What we were looking for was a certain spark, a certain essence that said, 'This is who [Aang] is.' And that's what we kept seeing. It didn't matter what the scene was, it was just his personality, his overall character that was shining through. And I think you see that when you see the show. A lot of people I know are a little weary about our version of Aang. But when you watch it, and you see Gordon in his performance, I don't think there's any doubt. He doesn't even have to say a line of dialogue for him to be Aang. He could just give you a look, or a smile. And he's that way in person. He was like that on set every single day. I can't count the number of times crew members would come up to me and say, 'This kid is Aang.' Even when he's not on camera, he is Aang. Whether he was hopping on the back of a camera car, or running around with the other kids. We were incredibly happy that we found him, and all the others."

16. Although Sokka is less sexist at the beginning of the journey than his animated counterpart, Albert felt that they "preserved" his character growth in other ways.

"It wasn't a matter of, say, removing anything from his character. He still has a complex and nuanced journey. But in the process of going from an animated series, to a live-action, we knew that we wanted to portray his journey with a little more groundedness and subtlety. He starts out with attitudes that are the result of living in an isolated life and community. And yes, some of them are rooted in sexism. But he's not out there saying, 'Girls sew and guys hunt.' People have been reacting to comments without having seen the show. When you do watch it, I think it'll become clear that we've preserved Sokka's character, flaws and all. And he has a journey that's as complex as the one you saw in the original. It's just not a one-to-one."

17. Albert also felt that he had more room to build Sokka's character than his sister, Katara.

"Sokka was a character that there was a little more room to add to his character. Katara had trauma over her mother's death, and it's well told in the original. Sokka, we had to fill in the gaps a little bit more, especially for this first season. It was one of the things that struck us immediately. The question of imagining, if you're Sokka, and you're left alone by your father, to take care of your entire community at that young of an age. That's got to be a great burden. And what does that do to him, because his character is naturally lighthearted and funny, and a little bit goofy. But he's got this incredible responsibility to bear. And what does that do to someone? We play with that all season long until you get to the episode [with Koh]."

18. Bringing Azula into the first season as a main character, although that doesn't happen until the second season in the animated series, helped "dimensionalize" Zuko and his family.

"We had the benefit of hindsight, and we knew where the original series was going. And we knew what a great character both Ozai and Zula were going to be. And we wanted to pull a little of that into the first season just to balance out the storytelling a little bit. Creatively speaking, we wanted to use the characters of Azula and Ozai to help dimensionalize Zuko a little more, and then help us understand exactly how he became who he became outside of just the Agni Kai, and that traumatic event. Even though physically, Zuko and Azula are never together in the first season, it doesn't matter. You can still see how the dynamics of this family made him who he was, just like it made Azula who she was. In a way, the first season is a little bit of a prequel story for Azula because when she arrives in the cartoon in the second season, she's kind of fully formed as a character. Here we see a little more of her journey as to how she gets there."

19. Albert feels like the Zuko/Azula/Ozai relationship is representative of an Asian family dynamic. 

"And to me, it's very much an Asian story, not that it's limited only to Asian families. But that pressure to exceed the parental expectations. The sibling rivalry all feel, from my personal point of view, like an Asian story."

20. The actors went through an intense six-week boot camp to train for their fighting scenes

"We're incredibly fortunate in that both Dallas [Liu, Zuko] and Ian [Ousley, Sokka] came to us as incredibly accomplished martial artists. Both of them are world-class in their fields. They already knew what they were doing. And even with that, we put all four of them through a pretty intense boot camp before we even started shooting. It was about six weeks, where they trained with the stunt team every day, in order to learn all of the bending techniques."

21. Kiawentiio, who plays Katara, was more "tentative" at first about her action scenes but acclimated beautifully, which helped her character's progression on screen.

"For someone like Kiawentiio, who didn't have a background in martial arts, she started out a little more tentative, in terms of physical movements. But that worked for her character because Katara is not supposed to be an accomplished water bender at the beginning, and as the season progressed, and as Kiawentiio got better and better, Katara got better and better. It worked really well in terms of the progression of her character."

22. The massive action sequences were hard to pull off, and took a lot of set building and choreography.

"Some of the epic action sequences were challenging to do. Whether it's the escape from Pohuai, where we built an entire wall of that prison, and then also had bamboo ladders, and an army of stunt people going through all of that. It was tough. Also, the fights in the finale; the giant battle sequences between the Northern Water Tribe. For those we built a huge section of Agna Qel'a, with the bridge and the wall and scores of extras running through it, and fighting, that was incredibly challenging, as well. The Southern Air Temple fight in the very first episode was another epic undertaking. Those were all really challenging. We relied on the skills of the stunt teams and everyone involved to pull that off."

23. And lastly, Aang's first meeting and conversation with Zuko was the hardest scene to capture on an emotional scale for Albert.

"Emotionally speaking, certain scenes where I felt it was crucial to the season, and would be challenging for the performance [was filming] the scene between Zuko and Aang. The scene between Zuko and Aang, after the "Blue Spirit" episode, when they're hiding out together, away from the Fire Nation soldiers. The first bonding of them. I'll be honest, I was a little nervous going into that scene because I thought it was so important. It's the first time the two of them get to really talk. But once Gordon and Dallas started getting into it, all my weariness melted away because they were so good at it. They did the whole scene all the way through, and it was incredible to watch. But for me, if we didn't get that scene right, a lot of things wouldn't have worked for the season. Or, frankly, for the entire series. We needed to understand who these characters were, how they go from being enemies to having certain bonds, and how that sets the stage for everything else to come."

[horneybeach1]

hii, i saw you’re taking requests so… okay i have an idea 💡 rhea ripley x reader where they are dating and is halloween and reader has this bad bad bad phobia of clowns (like i do) and her friends always pranks her but on halloween they go to far and r has like a panic attack and rhea tries to comfort her but r is too scared to even talk and then rhea goes into protective mode and threatens her friends

warnings- shitty friends, panic attacks, clown phobia (i didnt go into detail but it’s mentioned so you should be fine but i’ll put this anyway) and lots of fluff

referring to rhea as demi because it’s outside of her character in the ring, but just message or comment if you’d like me to change this!

rhea ripley x reader- no specific gender (but not re read to check)

this is my formal apology for format :)

———————————————————————

You’d decided that once again, your friends were dicks. It’s halloween, and you love it, but you’re scared to death of clowns, like to the point you might throw up out of fright.

You had dragged Demi to a halloween party with your friends and a load of other people you don’t know, but will probably see get drunk (and get drunk with). You parted ways at the start, her going to socialise with other people and get drinks, whereas you went to see your friends and have fun with them. But before you could have any fun, your friends had decided to scare you. I don’t mean a little jump scare, they literally hired a scare actor. So, here you were now, screaming and running away from the person who was petrifying you.

Locking yourself in the bathroom, you sat down and you felt as though you couldn’t breathe. Chest tightening as you panted, trying to get air into your lungs, but failing.

You heard knocking on the door.

“Babe… you in there?”

“mhmm” was all you could get out. Your chest was heavy and your heart was pounding.

“I need you to unlock the door for me princess”

You couldn’t move. Your mouth felt like sandpaper as you sobbed silently.

“Baby breathe…” “Babe?”

Trying to calm yourself down, you managed to unlock the door. Demi came in, locked the door and hugged you. She held you for a while, stroking your hair and just breathing so you could sync your breathing to her.

“Babe?”

She sat down on the toilet seat (closed obvs) and put you on her lap whilst holding you close.

“Tell me 5 things you can see”

“erm… you, the toilet… the sink… the…erm…the mirror and the hand wash?” The words hurt your throat.

“Well done baby, now 4 things you can feel”

“Your hands, your hair, my clothes and… erm… oh! your breath”

“Keep breathing baby, and 3 things you can hear”

“Your heartbeat, your breath and the music” it was faint but you could still hear the music, but it was easier to breathe and talk.

“Good job baby, what 2 things can you smell”

“I can smell… your perfume and… the incense i think?”

“And one thing you can taste”

“The mint i had before we came here”. By the time you got to one, you felt so much better. You could breathe and talk and felt calmer, but that’s just what Demi does to you. She’s your rock (no pun intended for the wrestler- okay maybe a pun intended) and you loved her for that.

“How do you feel?”

“Much better, thanks babe”

“Don’t say thank you, what happend?”

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter”

Needless to say, she found out what happened, and when she did, your ‘friends’ had hell to pay.

———————————————————————

I hope you enjoyed it! I’m sorry if it wasn’t what you wanted with the friends part but i had no clue how to write them. Also, the panic attack is written on my experience with them, and what can calm me down the quickest!

[transathenacykes]

TOP TEN GAMES I BEAT THIS YEAR

In 2023, I completed 34 games, from Final Fantasy VII to Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion to PaRappa the Rapper. These are my ten favorite, in order, and a little writeup of each I had a LOT of fun doing. Enjoy!

10. DARK SOULS

It’s a game I had to want to like, and maybe more than any of the others on the list, I had to meet it halfway. I’m a fan of challenging games, and - stop me if you’ve heard this one before - Dark Souls is pretty hard. But it’s not bullshit. Mostly. I ran into some hard walls here and there, but those walls turned into my favorite fights in the game once I finally mastered them. The reason it’s so low on the list is because the back half is… Well, it’s not very good, folks. Of the four bosses you need to defeat to open the door to the final area, I could call two of them good fights, and I could only do one of those without hesitating. 

9. THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL

I love a detective game, and what makes Golden Idol really stand out is its incredible format and mechanics. Given a series of still* images, and the contents of a bunch of random people’s pockets, can you determine what happened? It feels cheap to compare games and not just speak about what I enjoyed of a game of its own merits, but I can’t talk about this game without talking about Return of the Obra Dinn, which had a similar sort of ‘fill in the blank’ approach to its mysteries. Golden Idol’s supernatural elements, twists and reveals, and charmingly off-putting art style lend themselves well to one of the most unique games I played this year.

8. SIFU

This is the best rhythm game I played this year. Finding the flow of Sifu’s combat felt like a dance, going from a steady beat to a frenetic scramble in the span of a single missed step. I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a massive sucker for good movement in games, and Sifu’s jives extraordinarily well with its combat and environments. Really, the only problem I had with Sifu was that it felt a bit short - well, and it didn’t quite deliver the challenge I was looking for, but that’s the fault of whoever described it to me as a Soulslike first just because it has, like… a revival mechanic? Also, the first time it transitioned to a side view for a hallway fight, it basically secured a spot on this list.

7. GHOST TRICK

I tried to play through this game in high school, but got stalled out on some puzzle or another. I honestly don’t remember which, but I’m SO glad I came back to it. I’ve always loved Shu Takumi’s writing and character work in the Ace Attorney series; Ghost Trick is just as good, if not better than any individual AA game in that regard. Really, the characters feel like the ones in the AA spinoffs like Investigations, Great Ace Attorney, or the Layton crossover, which are some of the best characters in the series - but with none of the self-defeating energy of having to be largely unimportant to the mainline games. Also, Missile might be the greatest character in video games ever.

6. PARADISE KILLER

Some games make you fervently pitch their merits to friends, hoping that they’ll play it so you can chat with someone who gets it. This is the fate of many detective games, which live and die in the territory of spoilers. There are detective games that try to get around this by having procedurally generated cases or multiple endings with multiple ‘real’ culprits, which can often be antithetical to what makes a detective game truly sing. Paradise Killer’s answer is that not only is it never going to tell you what the truth is, but that ambiguity is the point. The clues never change, and the only objective is to find a truth that satisfies you. All that is made even better by the premise being steeped in synths and neon, with a vibrantly occult cast who are all just the absolute fucking worst.

5. TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

I mean, come on. It’s Tears of the Kingdom. While I’d really hoped for playable Zelda, what we did get of the character was far more moving than whatever her deal usually is. The chasm was an incredible surprise, and since Skyward Sword is one of my favorite Zelda games, I had a ton of fun with the skydive mechanics. There’s also the building system, which managed the near impossible feat of having things control basically how you’d expect them to once you slapped a steering wheel on them. It felt like there was just so much love for the previous games in the series, without being overly reliant on them. If I had to pick a favorite moment in the game, it would have to be during the Wind Temple’s boss fight, when the Dragon Roost Island theme from Wind Waker cut through the track and made me feel like I could have taken on Ganondorf with a tree branch in that moment.

4. PERSONA 5 ROYAL/PERSONA 5 STRIKERS/PERSONA Q2

Is this cheating? Yes. But hear me out. I knew Royal was going to be on the list, and then it turned out that I liked Strikers and Q2 as much, if not more than Royal. While Royal has higher highs, it also has much lower lows - Strikers and Q2 don’t engage in nearly as much of the weak parts of Royal. But they also don’t function even a little bit without it. Strikers dragged in the gameplay department a little bit, but I loved being able to play as every Phantom Thief - and Q2 was such a vast improvement over Q1 in pretty much every department. So my number four spot on my top ten games of the year is ‘every game I played this year that has Akira Kurusu in it.’ So, since I started Tactica, maybe that counts too… and if you want to be technical, I think I played a few rounds of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in June, so I guess that has the number four spot too.

3. ARMORED CORE 6

In 2023, I really and truly entered my mech era. I built Gunpla this year, I started playing in a really fun new Lancer campaign, and I played the shit out of Armored Core 6. I’d never played one before, but I was hooked from the tutorial boss alone. I beat the game once and, at the advice of a few friends, started a new game plus run - and before I knew it, I’d already beaten it again. I’ll do a third run too, at some point. Once I learned the all-consuming power of the pile bunker, I was out there decimating the arena foes like nothing else - and, once I figured out how to time out my missile strikes, I managed to slam through 75% of the final boss’ health in a single blow. That was the single most satisfying hit of this year across any game. Oh, and - keep an eye out, because I have a hankering to write some Maeterlinck-focused fic at some point. Because I sure do love me my one-off characters.

2. SCARLET NEXUS

Up until the final entry swung through and claimed the top spot, Scarlet Nexus seemed like a complete and total shoo-in for number one. Very few games have ever motivated me to complete them to the degree I did this one, including getting all Steam achievements and a ton of the optional content in game you don’t need for that. Kasane and Yuito are endearing protagonists with cool powers, genuine flaws, and vastly different outlooks. There were some plot threads from chapter one I thought had been dropped, but as it turns out they were only really dropped in Kasane’s story, and were far more focused on in Yuito’s, while he didn’t engage with most of her whole deal until the endgame. She spends most of her story dealing with causality and time travel, and he doesn’t even know time travel is a thing at all until there’s maybe 25% of the game left. And at the end, it still manages to feel complete coming from either side. The supporting cast is extremely strong, too, and the way powers flow together make the fights feel dynamic, fun, and tie to the themes of combining disparate people to make things better for everyone - to stop holding onto the past and strive for a better future, no matter how much work it takes.

1. 13 SENTINELS: AEGIS RIM

You should play this game. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a severely underrated title with incredible art, writing, gameplay, voice acting - 13 Sentinels fires on all cylinders. It’s half visual novel walkarounds with the occasional puzzle, exploring the individual stories of the thirteen protagonists across a variety of genres. One character is doing 80s high school movie hijinks with his exposition-loving best friend, while another is trying to solve the disappearance of her best friend. Said best friend is engaging in escapades with a small alien just like her favorite UFO movies, and a fourth guy entirely is doing Blade Runner shit. At one point, there’s a character who has appeared fairly infrequently and finally becomes available to play, and when he appears on the select screen, he’s standing in front of a sea of flames while the other characters typically appear in front of schoolrooms, city streets, their own homes. The emotional beat when you click through and hear him start talking about how he’s proud to be enlisting as a Japanese soldier in 1944 is one of the strongest in the game. Each story weaves around another and provides further depth to events you’ve already seen, while the entire chronological story is combined into a single timeline of events you’re free to look at whenever. But then, on the other side of the game from the character stories, you have the fights - or, rather, the fight. Because the combat side of things all takes place within  pretty much a single day - a grueling, nonstop battle where the characters must drive away wave after wave after wave of invaders without letting even a single one through. Each has their own mechs and certain special abilities that gear them for different scenarios, and if you want to experience everything, you have to bounce back and forth between the stories and the fighting, constantly unlocking aspects of the other. The biggest problem with the game is just choice paralysis - there’s so much to do, it’s hard to know where to start. But once you’re able to bite into it, chipping away at the Gordian plot rewards you with a deeply moving story about the plight of a generation thrust into a ceaseless strife, burdened by the heavy expectations of their predecessors to finally solve it and the even heavier feeling that there just are no answers to find in the first place. And also, there are sick as fuck giant mechs. I told you I was in my mech era this year.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Im rewatching season 1 how crazy it is that liv could have- probably not, but it would have definitely changed things- stopped blaines brain business by supplying him with brains herself. It would have been nice to have another zombie during those early days to talk to, esp if liv still believed blaine was making a change in his life or whatever he said. Kinda like what lowell was to her but less british

(I actually have this very similar AU-idea that I like to explore at the bottom of my hindbrain 'what if Liv hadn't seen Blaine in that alleyway and had been willing to buy into his 'repentant drug dealer' persona and they had been on semi-friendly terms for the first season)(though I kind of like the angle that he still does the brain business thing. And Ravi and Liv (and Major, separately) catch on to the fact that a brain business exists and try to find out who is running it - and even clue Blaine in case he can help and perhaps he delivers them wrong information or otherwise manipulates them) so it's a bigger personal betrayal when they find out that it was Blaine all along)

The thing is, I think it's a bit of a veeeery soft retcon they did at the beginning of season 2 (or perhaps just a clarification) because when the cast talks about Blaine's original return in the second episode, they talk about how it was supposed to be very ambiguous where he's standing.

But at the start of season 2, Blaine mentions that Angus was his 'first customer' - and since the first person we see him infect for his business is Jackie (we don't really know when he infected the Meat Cute gang or when he stored Julien and the others in his freezer), season 1 leaves the option that Jackie was the start of his business and that he used her money to expand OR that she was just one of many in a row. Saying Angus was the first means he would already definitely have been at it for a while when he found out about Liv. (On the other hand, it could be argued that infecting and 'owning' Angus is so personal that it doesn't really count as part of the bigger brain business scheme. That maybe he just infected him to keep himself afloat AND to get back at his father and then only later decided 'hey, actually I can do this to everyone I want!' (or perhaps he just told Angus that he was the first, but personally, I like the theory that he went straight to Angus the moment he had a shot at revenge. Plus, I don't think he would tell Angus that he was the first if he wasn't - because that would be admitting how much power Angus still has over him.)

Though, I also think that the way in which Blaine infects Jackie...seems pretty routined and pre-meditated. And when he did that, it was before the alleyway scene so at that point, Blaine still thought Liv was going to give him brains. So to me that certainly always felt like the plan was to x two birds with 1 stone:

a) check out the people who are looking for me online and who are working at a morgue and stay in touch to keep an eye on them (and the cops by extension)(after all, he even does a similar thing in season 2, when he wants Liv to keep an eye on Dale for him)

b) do hapless remorseful drug dealer and fellow zombie act, secure brain, secure customer, play grateful that Liv is giving you brains but sell them off behind her back. Profit! >:)

(that's my personal interpretation though)

But I also definitely would have enjoyed if there had been a longer period of just...uncertainty about what Blaine's deal is and more time in which to perhaps explore Liv's feelings about Blaine's part in her infection and everything that happened at the boat party at large and also perhaps the way her feelings on the matter conflicted with Ravi's, who was a lot more willing to give Blaine the benefit of the doubt. (and you know who could have given us that??? the old 24-episode format!! ...but that's another passion topic of mine)

(On the other hand, it's also a topic that I feel a bit conflicted on because I've seen some people (cough reddit! cough) literally blame Liv for the bullshit Blaine does à la "ohh, surely Blaine wouldn't have gone and built a giant business on the back of murdered orphans if Liv had just shared that brain with him in ep. 2" ...which. nah. I think that is an obstacle that could be overcome without going full Mrs. Lovett.)

[ashadowcalledkei]

So ... QSMP Purgatory huh ...

I had too many thoughts last night to fit in the tags of other people's posts, so I just chucked it all into a draft and polished it up today. Who knows how it'll go from here, everything could change in an instant, but as it stood at the end of yesterday, well ...

It was interesting, because the challenge they were given can be overcome in a way that doesn't follow the eye's wishes. 'Can', being the key word. They've clearly been set up to turn on each other with intent to break the bonds that made them strong. Especially with couples and close friends being split apart like that. They've made it hard for teams to cooperate. However, compromises, workarounds, and cooperation could ensure that the chance of ultimate failure and losing the eggs is minimized. Sharing information, making unified plans, trying to find the cursed team, or find the exit, or find the eggs.

The team I thought most likely to think that way and try new things to get around the system was team red. After all, they did think outside the box with how to get resources and overcome their built in limitations. Why not take that further and think their way out of the situation as a whole? But being hunted for sport while your competition mostly leaves each other alone doesn't exactly allow for that kind of lateral thinking.

So they broke. Understandable.

It was actually so demoralizing watching that happen before it spiraled so far that it twisted around on itself and became utterly hilarious instead. Screaming and singing and dancing around the death pit and the ashes of their own bodies? Fascinating. The surprise lore drops around the 'house' which is only a floor? Fantastic. Funny and oddly touching as they started spilling secrets, no judgements just shocked laughs and a numbed acceptance, to each other in the ruin of what they once tried to build. They 1000% deserve to just go crazy. Do it kings, build that village, become npcs.

(Quick side-bar ... guys, don't you find it odd that our three confirmed avians, Baghera, Jaiden, and Phil, are all on this one team? And two of the three 'odd' tickets, with the only other one being Q himself? It's just strange, it seems significant in a way I can't put my finger on.)

But also. The admin team has done a great job placing clues that all point to blue being the cursed team which Must Not Lose. Great job there, it's a fun little puzzle and just because it looks like people have solved it already doesn't take away from that. We might even be wrong about it, but I hope not, because a good puzzle should be solvable. So ... it's probably team blue. And with certain members of team blue going murder mode and terrorizing team red till they shattered, giving up on points or standings or winning ... that potentially locks it in for them for the rest of the event.

If team red isn't playing by those rules anymore they aren't a threat. And team blue only needs to not be last for the eggs to be saved. Right? Well, done deal. Blue and green can go at it for clout unbothered by red and the threat of true failure. The event might has well have been 1 day. The rest of these two weeks won't matter beyond the lingering effects of personal actions if we truly are going with this format being the majority of the event (and if red truly has been beaten into a pulp).

And honestly ... I'm glad. I'm glad they locked it in. I'm glad team red was so crushed and demoralized that they broke down into madness. Because this is more fun.

Now it's possible that after some sleep red will decide to actually try again .... out-skilled and out-gunned with half their team perma-mia ... or that they'll end up getting member shifted over to make them an actual threat ... but I hope not!

I watch this roleplay server for the stories and drama and comedy. And for the truly beautiful way it has woven together people from different countries and cultures into a close knit group of friends. For the bond forged through joy and terror and loss that made some of these strangers into family. I don't want two whole weeks of sweaty pvp and grinding! Sounds boring. (To say nothing of the jarring tone shift and how it'll change character dynamics after as the memories and guilt and knowledge of how quickly and brutally some of them turned on each other linger.) But you'd best believe I'll tune in to see what these already traumatized people who cracked to pieces do next!

So don't re-balance it admins. Let it ride and let team red do whatever the fuck they want. They earned it. They put in their time being tryhards and it didn't work so fuck it all let's just have fun. Let's go npc madness village! Or whatever new chaos comes next, I'm sure they'll come up with something sufficiently scuffed. Few things are as intriguing and mildly-terrifying as Charlie Slimecicle with 'a plan'.

Go team blue to win the event. Go team red to keep the server fun.

And just as a quick addition ... Charlie summed it all up best. "We were put here to tear each other and ourselves apart ... " "When you guys finally come to your senses ... maybe it'll take a day, maybe it'll take two, but it won't take two weeks. And when you realize what this place is taking from you, you come find us."

[aibidil]

as someone who was a freshman in college in 2003-4, i don’t think i could ever explain to people what it was like to be on the internet when we had flash videos (because regular vid formats were too big) and ebaumsworld and weebl's stuff (but no YouTube!! not until 2005!, a decade before Vine) as the modern meme era began. it's hard to remember how much work we had to put into finding and sharing memes, the exact opposite of now when good content from every platform is reliably shared around and reposted on every other platform. but I'm going to try to explain it for posterity, so gather round, children, for some tales from an elder millennial

imagine this:

you're in your dorm room hiking up your low-rise jeans and a friend sticks their head in and calls you to their room (everyone still had PCs with enormous towers, no portability, this had changed by 2006 when people bought laptops for college) and you gather behind their desk while they open ebaumsworld and pull up a gloriously terribly edited, completely chaotic, short-form video. "Hokay, so, here is the earth, chilling," it says in an inscrutable accent. "What IS this?" you ask and your friend goes, "SHHHH!" "Damn, that is a sweet earth you might say. WRONG!" You watch the video forty times on repeat, laughing harder each time

A few days later you're the one calling your hallmates in because you've discovered a video (please note YouTube DID NOT EXIST, this was on Newgrounds.com, which I somehow do not even remember) of a kid your age from New Jersey dancing to a... Moldovan pop song no one has ever heard before? You watch it five hundred times until you know all his dance moves and still have no idea what the song is or who sings it, but you will die for this boy from NJ as he is now your favorite person on the planet and you can sing every word as best you can without knowing the language

you go home and your brother is like, "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN MAGICAL TREVOR?!?!?!" and your friend from another university is like "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BADGER BADGER SNAAAAAAKE?!?!" and thus meme biodiversity is ensured

a few years later it looks like this: you log on Facebook, which you need a .edu email address from a select list of elite colleges to register for, and there's no news feed...the only thing that exists is your friend list and you can post things on your own or someone else's wall. There are no parents or businesses or celebrities or organizations on Facebook. People complain about their parents and professors with impunity and no worry of it ever getting back to them. Half your friends have a fake Facebook account masquerading as a professor or a fictional character or a statue on campus. On a friend's wall they've posted that they can't stop laughing at an early YouTube video of toddlers and before you know it, you've added "that reeeallly hurt Charlie, and it's still hurting" to your vernacular (this video was, at one point, the most watched yt video of all time and was sold recently as a fucking NFT, I wish I could watch my 2007 self learn and try to process this information)

and because this specific type of virality was still new but reliably shared in these ways, you could be pretty sure that everyone in your physical and digital orbits would know the same memes—but that no one in an older generation would have any clue, because of the way things were shared and structured. which is different from now, because our digital spaces are more siloed, because there's so much, so many memes, that my partner and I constantly reference memes that the other hasnt even heard of because meme uptake has to be limited just for functionality within different online spaces. To the point where we both had a gif for "Why not both?/both is good" but his was the taco commercial and mine was the road to el dorado and we literally live in the same house and have all the same irl experiences.

it's both similar to and completely different from the way we share and reference memes now

And now you're in your late thirties and you try to share these classics with your kids and they just look at them like that's the shittiest video I ever saw and you don't know how to explain to them that their admittedly much better quality memes literally wouldn't exist without these precursors but they just think you're lame forever

and you're like, "I'm going to go hang with Hawaii"

[fraternum-momentum]

Okay, so let me ramble abt making the last comic, cause that was an absolute behemoth to work on, and I have a lot of thoughts in my head. Man, I don't know how those webtoon artists do it every week. They scare me now.

This is super long btw, so get cozy if you want to read :]

Starting off, I actually got this idea from my lil 'ol diary I keep by my tableside :] I like writing down what I feel so I can see it in a more concrete(?) manner, helps me cope i think. One time, I really did cry for someone because I guess I just really liked them a lot. Having crushes is fun, but catching feelings isn't.

I always get this giddy feeling of being head over heels for someone. Every interaction is so exciting. Intoxicating even. And I couldn't get enough of it, but after that few seconds of bliss I immediately think to myself that all these scenarios in my head will never happen, not in a million fucking years. I just preemptively reject myself without ever telling the person what I feel. I know what the outcome will be anyway, and I'm afraid of what will happen if I did say anything. It's just too risky.

The second half is completely made up tho, I will never ever kidnap someone... unless? (For legal reasons, I will have to clarify that this is a joke, Thank you.)

Now onto the comic itself!

The composition is probably the easiest and the most fun part. I love, love, love, how versatile you can be in the webtoon format. Figuring out how to transition the panels is super fun, and it sucks that most of the webcomics I see on tapas or webtoon, etc. are just sticking to those boring box formulas over and over again when it has so much potential, although there are exceptions like, for example, Lore Olympus. While it has it's fair share of flaws when in comes to other aspects, you can't deny the artist's talent esp when it comes to knowing how to place the character in an illustration, (again) the compositioning etc etc. (ep. 8 is p good. They stick to the box stuff during dialogue but gets more experimental in some parts. I haven't been keeping up with it, so idk any other good eps)

One of my only big regrets is that I wish I had made the space between the '...but I love it." and "And soon..." parts longer. I think it changed scenarios way too fast and your eye immediately moves onto the next piece of text,, but eh, it is what it is, and I can't be bothered to edit it so ig I gotta learn to live with it.

It's still messy in,, a lot of parts actually, and I still can't do lineart to save my life, but i kinda tried just cleaning up the sketches instead???? I mean, it kinda works, but it isn't really smooth so,, And there are small mistakes here and there that I could've fixed or colored stuff in properly or whatever. But at that point, I'm just done with it. No more. Am tired and want to draw other shit now. Maybe boobs n dicks n pussy-

Oh actually i have another comic in my wip folder that I started before the sad Kylar crying one. Here's some of the thumbnails for it:

the fucking lisa simpson looking ass face just cracks me up every time I see it LMAOQJSJQJ I just wanted to show it to u but stay tuned for that ig

I eventually want to make little comics like this for other characters as well! Like Sydney, who is also one of my favorites cause of the whole religion aspect to them, and I would like to tackle that topic with yet another super personal experience of mine that for some reason I'm comfortable with sharing with a bunch of ppl lmao

I also really want to make a full on nsfw one, like gut rearranging, carnal fucking, hardcore banging,, ok ill stop. But I do need to do more,, uh, "research" on that,, i swear it's research, i have no clue how im gonna draw it. Hell, I already struggle with drawing people fucking and imagine adding cool transitions to that. Guess even my masochistic tendencies extend to this shit too.

And I think that's pretty much it? I'll probably just stick to b and w or monotone with a few accent colors because i just know that it would break me if i did a fully colored one.

Okay, thank you for reading this ramble, I'll go ahead and answer some asks now,, Here's your prize though!

[tathrin]

🎲+🐚

Writer Truth Or Dare asks.

🎲 ⇢ what stops you from writing more in your free time? 

tumblr XD

That's a joke, but also not. Distractions is the biggest issue, for me. Which includes tumblr, video games, discord, chores, etc. Everything that can involve sitting down to write, and then not doing that. (Including re-reading fic, both other people's and my own shit.)

Also, tiredness. Fuck capitalism, and fuck this trashfire of a country. We should all have more free time, and thus more energy both physical and mental. But everything is so exhausting sometimes, that it's easier to just start scrolling through tumblr or meandering through Tamriel or Taris or Henford-on-Bagley than it is to do anything, even the things you really want to do.

Blah.

🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises?

I like them, in the sense of I'm someone who prefers not to be "spoiled" on a story ahead of time, so that I can have the experience of discovering its contents and emotions for myself; and I like them, in the sense of I don't tend to scour around for clues and hints, because I enjoy discovering the story as it happens to me more than I do the potential "smugness" of knowing it all ahead of time, and so I deliberately don't look for stuff that might give-away things ahead of time. I'd rather be surprised...but on the other hand:

I loathe them, in the sense of the "hide all spoilers at all costs! shock value, shock value! never let the audience guess what's coming! if the audience can guess something ahead of time, the story is ruined! if the audience guesses something ahead of time, you change it!" nonsense that has pervaded so much of the media landscape of late.

I'm pretty good at picking-up on little clues and I'm familiar enough with stories as a "thing" that I tend to be able to tell where a story is going faster than most people I know (especially movies, which are by nature more limited in scope than a novel) due to both experience with narrative as a concept and a good memory for details, so I'm quite used to not being shocked by the bulk of the things I read/watch; but I've never found this a bad thing, like so many of the big corporate media entities these days seem to have made it into.

That's just called noticing what's happening, and extrapolating. I mostly tend to figure out something shortly before it happens, which adds a delightful flavor of "omg will it...?" anticipation to the story, without detracting from the experience of having the story unfold, even when it unfolds as I thus expect it to. That doesn't mean the story is bad; it means that narrative often follows a cause-effect format, and stories echo, and foreshadowing is a thing, and you should have a plot that makes fucking sense, etc etc. And because a good story should be entertaining even after you know the twist, it's not a big deal either way!

How many times have I watched The Empire Strikes Back? Far more than I can keep count of! And it remains my favorite Star Wars movie to this day...even though I've known the "twist reveal" since I was six. (I do wish I could remember my reaction from the first time I watched it, though! Just for fun!) But the emotional weight of the reveal to Luke remains just as potent now, even when the audience's shock is gone. Because the story doesn't hinge upon the twist.

I think everybody should have the opportunity to experience things like that for themselves unspoiled, so they can have the emotional impact hit the to its full extent (hence I will never ever tell anyone what The Thing in Mastiff is ahead of time, no matter how many times my roommate begs me to; because as we suffered, so shall ye!) but I don't think that knowing those things ahead of time ruins a story, either.

If a "spoiler" can ruin your story, your story isn't actually much of a story; it's just a gimmick. And I'm interested above all in stories. Whether they surprise me or not.

(Sorry, that one turned into more of a Rant About Modern Media than an actual answer, whoops!)

But to try and get a little more back on track for a summarizing conclusion here: I like being able to shock my audience, but I like even more than that having them catch-on to what's probably going to happen beforehand so that they can start to go oh no oh fuck is it...? before it does. That's my favorite kind of surprise to experience in fiction, and my favorite kind of one to write too: the anticipated one. Not known; but guessed.

And that works for both excited anticipation, and dreaded!

[claire-starsword]

The Guardiana Magic School Run - Part 12

We begin Chapter 4 with more cryptid sightings.

And now some more promotion whining. Khris is up for promotion now, however, like Lowe, I can delay her until level 16 to get Heal 3 faster, at the expense of delaying Heal 4 until level 21 promoted. I already said I prefer doing that.

But Khris has another thing to consider, which is Aura. She learns Aura 1 at level 20, which means I could get it earlier by delaying her promotion even more, however that super delays both the aforementioned Heal 4 and Aura 2, which is all the way at level 28. I'm okay with that because I doubt I'd be getting to that level anyway

My actual worry is that she doesn't get to that level quickly enough and misses promotion only weapons. So while the initial plan is to promote her at 20, I might change my mind if I decide I need her attack more.

Whining done, let's explore my favorite town of Pao. We find a Long Sword, which Max still can equip despite being unpromoted, so I'll just carry on with him like this I guess. I could buy the Mermanbuster from the deals now and promote Max, but he's being super busted for now so let's maybe save money, I don't remember what things we might want to buy later on.

There are no new deals. The regular Weapon Shop offers us the Power Lance, which is stronger than the Power Spear, but weaker than the Elf Slayer so it doesn't matter for us. And then there's the Paralyzer… which is already a Vicar-only weapon. Uh oh. I forgot about this. Maybe this means the healers are already behind in attack but, I again don't think I want to risk them attacking in the next battle. Actually I'm very afraid of the next battle, I'm expecting it to end to current deathless streak.

To put some more pressure in, this shop will leave before the battle, so I have to make a decision now. I'm sticking to my plan of delaying the priests' promotion then, but I might reevaluate depending on how things go.

And that's it. The Pao train has moved on and so must we. We get to say hi to Kokichi and Vankar but can't even sell their weapons for profit right now.

The Raging Drum is an anti-artillery axe. We don't have axe users in this playthrough so that means nothing to us.

Anri is right. Look at all those enemies. They don't advance at once, they come in waves, but still gather faster than you'd expect, especially with us having only eight characters to attack. The terrain is also completely plain and wide, so it's hard to protect the squishy characters. If you don't recall, six out of my eight characters are squishy. There's a reason I expect to die.

We're also at a ridiculous distance from then so there's not much to do for now. I do wonder if I can try sticking a bit to the north or south and approach one side of his army first. I never tried before because I don't really think when playing Shining Force casually.

Okay so I goofed up and picked to go north, but there's barely any space to move around them here, there's more space to the south but i don't think i have the time to correct course when the wave of knights is coming behind them. I'm also unsure if these guys can be baited at all, since they're lining up in a pretty formation.

More importantly, remember when I said it sucks to not be able to see enemy stats before attacking them once? This battle is why. One of the lizardmen, the middle one i think, has the heat axe equipped, and deals way more damage. I would love to wipe that one first, but that means throwing myself in the very middle of their formation.

This battle sucks man I have no clue what to do here.

The lizardmen indeed do not advance easily, and the pegasus knights are basically already here. I wonder if they advance easily due to their movement, or if they'll stop somewhere as well. I'm honestly so clueless as to how to approach them that i might as well observe a little.

hell

The Silver Knights are also already coming and I have definitely messed up at this point.

Somehow I've managed to bait only a few enemies, but the lizardmen are dealing 2 damage each (without the heat axe!!), and baby, I'm deeply missing when that number was always 1.

and this is just horrifying

But if I'm horrified, Max is PISSED OFF about it. Please keep this energy man.

Tao gets in the range of enemies doing this but Gong will be able to cover her before any of them move. Will he survive? That's the question.

All I can say is that no one will survive her. Sadly this thing is 8 MP so she has like, three uses of it. Definitely won't be able to save them for Elliot, I have no clue how I'm gonna deal with Elliot actually, I don't trust anyone escept Max to approach him, I'm starting to think I REALLY should have bought the mermanbuster.

Okay it does seem like I hit a sweet spot in this field by accident. Max and Gong defeat the remaining lizardman, and only a Silver Knight advances, and they're weaker than everything else here. A Dark Priest also comes to heal Max's counterattack on the knight, and I sure would love to wipe these guys out before they heal something stronger. I'll also save Tao's MP for stronger enemies.

Max defeats the priest, Gong attacks the Silver Knight, but I'm too scared to advance anyone else! And I was right, because the Heat Axe guy finally comes:

If they did a second attack, we would have been toast.

There has to be a smarter way to do this fight but man, I don't know it.

At least Tao gets to solve the problem.

As seen by another patented Arthur Level Up, everyone gathers to defeat the previous wave of enemies, even though Anri is at reach of enemies now and I hate it, thankfully they are obsessed with Max as usual.

Now that the Super Heat Lizard is gone, the pegasus knights are by far the bigger threat (28 attack against 22 and 20 from the lizardmen and silver knights). Unfortunately there's two of them while Tao only has one more Blaze 3, but I'll use anyway, I suspect Elliot is resistant to magic. Most bosses are.

I legit don't know what I'm gonna do about Elliot :')

Next turn. We're alive! Somehow! Even though I risked Anri in front of the Silver Knight and Arthur did The Exact amount of damage to finish them off, nothing more, nothing less. The final enemies refuse to advance, so I finally have some attempt at positioning.

And by that I mean let's just send Max as usual.

After two turns in which Max and the knights decide to be the spiciest lads and trade a bunch of counters and double attacks, we wipe out everyone at the center. Hurray. Now I cannot avoid dealing with Elliot any longer.

I'm hoping to bait the enemies without Elliot, bosses don't move much.

I cannot complain, enemies are obedient in this game.

Also, check out this sweet attack boost from Gong!

Will he advance if I do this? I considered doing it with Max before the classic issue of "oh no what if I lose the whole battle" popped up, so yeah, sorry Gong as usual.

He survives with more than half HP!

He counters!

Alright this should mean Max also survives, so screw strategy, throw everything in this man.

I'm worried about counters though, bosses do A LOT of that in this game, so let's start with Supernova.

It might also be doing more damage.

So yeah, it turns out he only has 10% magic res, so saving Tao could have been useful, but things still work out despite Arthur missing a hit. Anri even gets the kill, which is exp she needs.

And then we get something even better. Narsha. Who you don't get to see because I hit image limit, my bad.

And I just realized our team members don't end there. There's Domingo!

We're ridiculously close to have a full team, we're at 9/12 characters.

My power is also dangerously close to going out rn, so I'm saving for today.

___

Note: the above was played a few weeks ago. The power indeed went out in the next minutes due to a storm, but thankfully it was all fine on our side.

I do need to add something now that the threat of power outage isn't dangling over me, though. This has been a way easier challenge than i initially expected, which is kinda nice as it means i've learned to play the game better, but also kinda boring for a challenge run. And I don't see this changing for now, the next battles in Chapter 4 and 5 tend to be easy for me even on casual play, with a difficulty spike only in Chapter 6.

I've even been feeling a bit unmotivated to continue because of that, so I might make simpler posts for those battles compared to how I've done things so far. Obviously that'll change if something exciting does happen, but I figured I'd give a heads up for this possibility.

Losses: 0 Deaths: 2. Somehow.

[itsatechreel]

Corrupt Clues (A Sanders Sides x Blue’s Clues AU)

Last night I, inspired by a friend, decided to do something random I never have before and invent an AU (alternate universe) mixing two of my favorite series, Sanders Sides & Blue’s Clues 🐾

---

Brief Summary: With stress reaching an all time high, Thomas gets Roman’s help in order to transform his daily life and the Sides themselves to fit the format of a comfort show from his childhood: Blue’s Clues. Is this a good idea? Is every side on board and comfortable with these changes? Will Thomas ever allow this to stop?

---

It’s a silly AU, but I’m weirdly very happy with it, and if nothing else it was a very fun writing excercise 😅 And if you read through it and decide you want to make something based on it, then go for it! Whether it’s fanart or a short story/full fanfic or any other piece of media based on this AU, I’d love to see it! All I ask is to be credited and also tagged so I could see any creations 💙

---

👇 Click through to read more specific details about this AU 👇

---

Lately, the stress has been hitting Thomas more so than ever. Days are long, motivation is low, anxiety is high, etc. One day Thomas decided he’s had enough and something needs to change. He goes to Roman, begging him to provide some fun and fantastical change to his routine, something that can distract him from the darkness of the world. Roman thinks about this and devises a plan, and the next day Thomas’ life is transformed to fit that of a show he once found great comfort in: Blue’s Clues. All the sides awake that morning to find that their forms (with one exception) have been changed to fit this new vision.

🌈 Thomas takes on the role of Steve/Joe/Josh. He can now spend his days doing little else but singing and dancing, drawing, playing games, eating snacks, and helping his friends with very simple tasks. And of course now he can enjoy the stress-free activity of playing Blue’s Clues with his own version of Blue. He’s absolutely ecstatic about the changes that Roman brought on, ready to fully indulge in a seemingly ideal yet childish life of acting out his days as extended episodes of the show.

💙 Patton finds himself as Blue, and is very happy about it. He’s still able to talk as normal despite the new puppy form, but Thomas tends to prefer he barks like Blue to keep up the illusion (which Patton often forgets and is corrected on regularly). Games of Blue’s Clues are started up a few times a day, at least one time each day dedicated to wanting some form of cookie. There’s never a doubt in his mind that this is the best thing for Thomas, although that could just be because he’s having too good a time to see any potential issues.

👓 Logan is forced into the role of the child audience of the show, mainly due to Roman expecting that he wouldn’t participate at all if he was made to look silly. He decides to participate as, even though he knows Thomas hiding from his issues may prove to be worse for his mental health, he figures he won’t be listened to if he protests. Hoping in time that Thomas will realize the errors of this decision, he reluctantly follows Thomas in his adventures. He consistently questions the illogical nature of Thomas asking such simple questions he would normally know the answers to, or where clues are that he should plainly see, and even the notion that Patton leaves clues at all when he could simply tell Thomas what he wants. It’s all very confusing and very patronizing to Logan, but he does his best to indulge Thomas, for now.

🛡️ Roman decides to make himself the fabulous Rainbow Puppy, as he feels it’s the only character that could truly embody all that he is. A character that constantly sings and performs is a perfect fit for him and he fully plays the part (which truly isn’t much different from how he existed before this change). He occasionally finds himself jealous and wishing to switch roles with Patton, as Blue is a more important character to this new daily narrative by far, but he does his best to let Patton keep his well-fitting role. He, like both Thomas and Patton, see absolutely no issue with this new way of existing. Roman is plenty content to keep it going as long as Thomas desires.

🌩️ Virgil has been cast as Tickety, given that Roman felt that someone who experiences a great deal of alarm should be the alarm clock. He’s definitely one of the least interested in this new way of life, less regarding how it avoids the real issues and more because he doesn’t fit the kids show vibe. He hates being a small silly clock, the constant sound of ticking coming from his own face, and the fact that he can’t get too anxious without setting off his loud bells that manage to scare himself every time. On the other hand though, he recognizes that life was very stressful and while being a clock is obnoxious it is a bit easier. There's a lot of bouncing back and forth between whether this is worth it to avoid the stresses of reality, or if Thomas and the others are slowly losing their sanity as they continue to pretend like this life can be the new normal. Virgil’s anxiety is everywhere as he reluctantly plays along, which is rough for him but definitely provides Thomas’ morning alarm bells quite well.

🗑️ When it came to the Dark Sides, Roman decided they needed to be as harmless and out of the way as possible, starting with Remus being nothing more than a snail (the classic pink snail seen 3 times in every episode). But to Roman’s dismay, Remus doesn’t mind this one bit, he’d much rather be a slimy slithery creature than any cute animal or appliance. True Remus can’t be as effective as normal, but once in a while he’ll cross paths with Thomas and others as they engage in their various activities, always ready to mess with them quickly before they go about their business.

🐍 Last, but certainly not least, Janus was sentenced to the Felt Frame as a Felt Friend. Though he may be stuck in there for the time being, he manages to make images to fill out the frame in order to grab Thomas’ attention and remind him of what he’s avoiding. Janus knows that Thomas is lying to himself, pretending that he can live forever in this childish charade, like the world around him doesn’t matter and his problems will just disappear. He’s limited in what he can do, but he does his best to try to get through to Thomas.

And this is how life is for Thomas now. Days fueled by Roman’s powers of creativity, the Dark Sides shoved out of view as much as possible, Virgil constantly between wanting it to continue and wanting it to end, songs and games of Blue’s Clues with Patton as Blue, and Logan being treated as a captive audience who grows ever closer to joining forces with Janus to get through to Thomas. This can’t go on forever, but will Thomas allow it to stop? Can anyone get through to him? 👀

[riftwalker-limbro]

well apparently angst is in the air today and it bit me too so

i've always examined vince vs jay from his own perspective but what do pule and verica even think.

edit post-writing this: oh this is a hot pile of half-formatted brain vomit. click the read more at your own risk. my goal was to get my thoughts straight, and i did, and now this is a mess and i'm not fucking fixing it

pule did his grieving while he was still human, i think. he never did expect to see jay again, but once he remembers the worst period of his fucking life while sitting next to the two (well, 1.9) people who notable weren't there for it, it's... well, a shock is putting it lightly, i imagine. they know his name, they have the right vibes that, despite the fact he'd never felt them as human like he could now as a warframe with transference, just fit - mostly. not all of it is correct, but enough is, and the second he manages to ask if it's jay, he gets swiftly but gently corrected, that, well, yes, but also it's vince now.

once he finds out Why it's vince now, pule struggles hard with being confronted with the walking, breathing truth of accidentally getting his best friend actually killed for a while still. part of the grieving process gets reset entirely, and as friend fashion show has pointed out so excellently, it does do pule a lot of good to hang out a lot with others (bruiser, notably) that he doesn't have a painful shared past with. the threads he dropped with jay are easy to pick back up with vince, though: sharing old jokes and making new ones referencing stuff only they know, ways of thinking that are still almost identical after years of close friendship, etc. they grew together for a significant formative period of their lives, and that still affects just how suited to be each other's friend they are.

verica has a more complex headspace around this. she actively searched for him, knowing that he hadn't died but instead had become a warframe, even though he stopped pinging on the orokin radars even before she got apprehended and warframe'd herself. there's such a huge chance that he's dead, but dammit, if anyone can do the impossible, it should be the mathematician who'd managed to put a pencil into a pocket dimension between solid reality & the poisonous void. and she's... partially right.

when she wakes up on kelth's orbiter, she's going to think the idiot before her is jay. he'd done it, he'd managed to come back from the dead, and found her scattered clues. and, well, we know it isn't really jay anymore. he doesn't even confess the whole thing, at first - he just says, well, i go by vince now. and she rolls with it completely because why wouldn't she. it's only when the cracks start to show, both in his behaviour and in one certain scene between the three of them that i'm sure i'll die two and a half times while writing before i'll get it just right, that she actually realises that Nope, Not Jay. Not Like That Anymore.

she struggles with even just accepting it in her head, at first - he's so much like jay, pinging Correct in so many little ways, but he's Not, calling him by that name hurts him, and thinking of him as jay is wrong for the person vince is now. she goes through the period of grief she hadn't allowed herself even before everything.

and now, all three of them are in the same space, grieving the shit that happened to them, that one of them had to die, but at least they now have each other again. for reasons mentioned before, bonds with vince are built up extremely fast, and they quickly get to the same level of friendship they were at with jay. they go beyond, even - vince needs them more than jay did, even if he might not want to phrase it like that to not force them into anything, but they respond to it in kind. one of the consequences of the way warframes are fundamentally changed, made more rigid and less flexible, from humans in my lore makes it so that they will seek out familiarity at ridiculous costs. removing the memories from fresh frames was a fix for that by the orokin, but you can't just make something Rigid/Inflexible, apply a Change, and expect it to not eventually pop back into its original shape like memory foam.

pule & verica is also an interesting initial dynamic, i think. pule feels guilty for, well, everything - he's still under the impression that he'd gotten ghosted for life, and the fact that the warframe he'd been glaring at from the corner of his eyes, the one that had looked way too much like the recently-vanished artist octavia to be anything like a respectful tribute, had actually been her all along and he hadn't even bothered to look into it- he does struggle with it. of her own part, verica's shocked to see him at all, didn't realise that he'd whole ass up and volunteer for the program if she also disappeared, didn't realise that sitting down and letting herself grieve with him had also been an option. i imagine she does also initially carry some guilt over this, though she gets over hers significantly faster than pule does, both because it's just Less Significant Levels of Guilt & because she's just way more prone to Alright Oops Let's Move On than he is (hi. musician who's been in public about it here. making mistakes & moving on like nothing happened is a Necessary & Learned Skill. show must go on & all that)

i think pule would initially expect her to be hostile towards him, after he gets over the shock of "holy shit you're a warframe too? holy shit you're That Warframe? i was never ghosted on purpose??". but 1. even if she did have the right to get hostile, which she knows she doesn't, it wouldn't do anything, and 2. buddy friend we're still here after everything why would i be mad about getting this second chance at life. i've already lost my other friends and family and everything from that life, just let me hang on to you and this other idiot with all the strength left in me.

anyway, that's how the three of them become inseparable on an almost-physical level. a true triad. they get a shared bedroom and sleep together in a pile and everything. you'll find out

[jcmarchi]

Tracking Seismic Clues in One of Driest Places on Earth - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/tracking-seismic-clues-in-one-of-driest-places-on-earth-technology-org/

Tracking Seismic Clues in One of Driest Places on Earth - Technology Org

Unlike the Pacific Northwest, the Atacama Desert in Chile experiences very little rain. But the two regions are both seismically active. Faults in the Atacama Desert are slowly sliding past each other, similar to the Seattle Fault in Puget Sound and the San Andreas Fault in California. The Atacama Desert’s lack of rain makes it easier to see how those gradual movements shape the landscape over time.

UW doctoral student Tamara Aránguiz-Rago collects rock samples on the hills next to a fault in Chile’s Atacama Desert for a pilot study in September 2022. This month she will collect more data to try to reconstruct the history of the formation of these mountains. Image credit: Emma Heitmann/University of Washington

Alison Duvall, a University of Washington associate professor of Earth and space sciences, and doctoral student Tamara Aránguiz-Rago will travel to Chile this month to study landscapes developed along these types of seismic faults. Duvall has previously studied historic landslides at the site of the rainfall-triggered Oso mudslide and how rainfall, earthquake and landslide risks combine in Oregon.

UW News asked the two geophysicists about their upcoming trip as part of a new series, “In the Field,” highlighting UW field research.

Where are you going, and when?

Tamara Aránguiz-Rago: We will visit the Salar Grande, in the hyper-arid, or dry, core of the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. The Salar is a dry lakebed that contains economic resources, in the form of salt, that is extracted from the basin and then exported around the world. We’ll be there Nov. 19-25.

We’re interested in this area because it’s extremely dry and has active faults slicing through it. Only a few places on Earth register such low precipitation rates, offering a landscape that stores climate and tectonic variations from the past 50 million years. At our field site, some places haven’t seen a drop of rain in 500 years!

As a result, this is one of the best places on Earth to study how landscapes respond to earthquakes and plate tectonics under hyper-arid conditions. Dry conditions slow down erosion and help preserve landscape form and enable us to observe processes, like seismic tectonic processes, that modify the surface from deeper down.

The Atacama Desert in September 2022. The flat strip of land in the middle is not a human-built road but a strike-slip fault, where two blocks slowly slide past each other. Researchers will travel to the site again this month to learn more about these types of faults. Image credit: Tamara Aránguiz-Rago/University of Washington

Have you visited this field site before?

TA: I visited this site last fall with Emma Heitmann, another doctoral student in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences.

Alison Duvall: This will be my first time to this site, to Chile and to South America.

What do you hope to learn there?

AD: We want to learn more about the dynamics of slow faults that move laterally — strike-slip faults, similar to the San Andreas Fault in California — and how these dynamics control the shape of the landscape. In wet places, it’s hard to isolate faults’ effects on the landscape since water is the main agent driving erosion. What we observe on the surface in other places is a combination of tectonics and surface processes. However, thanks to the aridity of this place, it is easier to be confident about what is changing the landscape.

We’re also interested in how this landscape has shifted with a changing climate. This place was wetter in the past, and there is evidence of climate change happening to make the region hyper-arid. So we are also studying how the landscape has adapted to that change. 

What’s something that you enjoy about this field work — especially something that might not occur to most people?

TA: There is a really special feeling when you’re in the driest place on Earth. It almost feels like you’re on a different planet. You don’t see any signs of life — no water, no animals, no plants — but it’s just amazing to feel that nothingness.

Changes in the landscape are so slow that when you visit the site, you know that each step you make, or any perturbation we make to collect our samples, can be one of the biggest modifications to the landscape in hundreds of years.

The Atacama Desert in September 2022. The flat strip of land in the middle is not a human-built road but a strike-slip fault, where two blocks slowly slide past each other. Researchers will travel to the site again this month to learn more about these types of faults. Image credit: Tamara Aránguiz-Rago/University of Washington

Anything you’d like to add?

AD: I’m super excited to get to this incredible field site and spend time with Tamara studying it. We have done field work together in New Zealand, and I have done decades’ worth of field work in many different geomorphic settings, but never in a hyper-arid landscape like this one. I can’t wait to see what we find!

Source: University of Washington

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[jacquelinemerritt]

Another Confessional Essay

Originally posted June 21st, 2017

If you’ve ever read my writing before, you can probably tell that I’m not that not a fan of the “confessional essay” style that’s become immensely popular on the internet in the last few years. To be perfectly honest, except for a few rare instances where this style of essay is brilliantly crafted and fits the subject matter incredibly well, I tend to find these essays boring and lacking any real substance.

The exceptions that I love are generally essays that relate deeply personal experiences and tie them back effectively to a main point, as in people of color writing about their personal experience with racism, trans people describing their experiences growing up and how they discovered the truth about who they are, or abuse victims describing their experience with abuse and its effects on their lives.

The topic I need to write about fits the second of those three, and so despite not being a fan of the format, and despite preferring to keep my essays and my journaling eternally separate, I need to use the format. Because right now, I am stuck with a burning realization that I don’t know any other way to process: I don’t know how to be a woman.

Now, I’m going to follow that statement by making clear everything that I’m not saying by that. I am not saying that I’m not a woman, I am one and have always been one. I also do on a certain level know “how” to be a person who is accepted as a woman, and I know of many models for womanhood that I could embrace and follow if I desired.

But I don’t want to be any of those women.

The problem here isn’t that I don’t know of ways to be a woman, the problem is that I genuinely don’t know how I am supposed to be both myself and a woman, both in the sense of feeling that my own self is fully womanly and being able to be accepted as a woman without changing who I fundamentally am.

What’s ironic about this is that I have no such confusion about what kind of girl that I am. I know exactly who 6-year-old Jacqueline is, who 13-year-old Jacqueline is, who 16-year-old Jacqueline is. I can envision who I would’ve been growing up a girl at each of those ages, and when I need to feel more feminine, regressing my mind into one of those younger ages and embracing my girlish immaturity makes me feel more secure in my gender identity than anything else possibly can.

But I have no such retreat within my present. I genuinely don’t have a feminine adult headspace that I can turn to when I need to both feel like my adult self and a woman at the same time. Perhaps this is the dysphoric effect of living in a house for over half a year where no one will openly acknowledge your gender identity, and I’ve even arguably come close to creating such a headspace through the persona I’ve crafted for my work as an online tech support advisor, but that persona, as convincingly feminine as it usually is, breaks down whenever​ I need to analyze something critically, take charge of a situation, or even just feel any emotion that isn’t overwhelmingly positive.

More than that though, even in the space where I feel the most creatively free, writing criticism, I don’t feel like I’m able to convincingly write in my own voice and simultaneously write in a voice that makes me clearly appear to be a woman. Now, I’m not saying that all women writers sound a specific way, nor should they, all I am saying is that there are certain styles of writing that project femininity significantly better than others, and that those styles clash inherently with my own style of writing.

Take this essay, for instance. I’m attempting to write in as close to the style of the confessional essay as I can muster, but even with a topic as personal as this my tone has been rigid and commanding, and it only shows the frustration that I’m feeling, not the sadness, insecurity, or hopelessness that I’m feeling in genuinely not having a clue what I should do about it. A good confessional essay would’ve shown all those emotions through with its writing style, but my default writing style is taking over my ability to write here, and I sound nothing like the confessional essay I’m drawing inspiration from.

It’d be one thing if I just couldn’t adapt my writing style to another format though. I know my writing style is rigid, but in general I like the way it makes me come across. What upsets me though is that me not being able to adapt my style to function as a confessional essay means that I cannot adapt my writing style to a more “feminine” style of writing, even as I try to do so now.

If you don’t believe that, just ask yourself, each time I’ve mentioned confessional essays, who have you pictures as the authors?

I know that I’ve only been picturing women, or people close to women on the spectrum of gender.

Now think about everything I’ve written here, the writing style I’ve used, and the way I’ve presented my information​.

What voice have you been hearing in your head as you’ve read through it?

You don’t need to answer that.

It’s been a man’s voice.

And I don’t know how to change that.

Critical Eye Criticism is the work of Jacqueline Merritt, a trans woman, filmmaker, and critic. You can support her continued film criticism addiction on Patreon.