#[he does not give a shit about my personal preference nor any perspective on anything other than his own]

[lynxgirlpaws]

>dad gets home >immediately shits on me neat

[captnjacksparrow]

So does Kishi officially hate NH and SS? Because I can't help but think like that when I see them in Boruto. Like no way he wants them to be seen as happy or content. Also, it seems like he still hates Sakura because just just look at her, she hasn't really changed. Her dynamic with Sasuke hasn't really changed. She gives chase, Sasuke ignores. Except Sasuke looks more depressed.

Hey, after fifteen years of us chasing after the story and characters we invested in so much, at least give us some indication that they are least happy after sooo many sacrifices, like they deserve that happiness.

But no, if anything, they seem totally miserable. What made Kishi do that? Yes, he can't show them ooc, but Sasuke marrying Sakura is already ooc. Naruto being a bad father is already ooc. Like why go to the extent of showing Sasuke trying not to touch Sakura and pointedly showing that they never kissed? That's just like a determined effort on Kishi's part to show that their marriage is not working. Naruto works way more than any of his predecessors and sleeps in the office or couch so as not to disturb Hinata, when Hinata is specifically designed to accommodate anything that Naruto might require.

Don't get me wrong, I think Boruto is trash. But I am still in interested in SNS in Boruto because that's still canon. Just makes me wonder how Kishi will finally conclude SNS, because their bond still shows clearly in Boruto. Do you think he will kill them any time soon?

Good ask, Anon☺️☺️❤️❤️

Before answering this, I am going to tell you that I don’t watch Boruto. But I know what happened so far, vaguely. Like, Gaiden arc, Karma seal, Kawaki adoption, Kurama’s death, loss of Rinnegan, Time travel arc. Anyways, I might have missed many interactions between Sasuke & Sakura in the filler episodes or other canonical episodes. I would be happy If you send me an episode list or timestamps in where they interact, so that it saves my time instead of me, watching that entire shit show. 

So does Kishi officially hate NH and SS?

In this post, I dissected SS from a non-SNS perspective. It seems Kishi went all out of his way to make their interactions too insincere, blunt and toxic. I mean Sasuke’s absolute lack of interest in her was very evident even until chapter 693. That is right before, their final VoTE fight. And even after Sakura comes to heal their injuries, he just said ‘Ummmm..... I guess Sorry’... 

Kishi could have made Sasuke say some corny shit to Sakura like how he felt bad inside for hurting her, how he missed her, wiping her tears or whatever (Puke!!!! 🤮🤮🤮). Because in the previous chapter, Sasuke basically confessed to Naruto internally about how he felt about Naruto when he was a child. Kishi could have done the same for Sakura in just 4, 5 panels. But anyways, my point is, Kishi’s moment to salvage that ship is chapter 699. 

But he didn’t.

Did Kishi tried to build their bond after marriage?

He definitely could’ve. But he didn’t. 

This shows his clear distaste in SS.

As for NH, Kishi is indifferent. He neither hates them nor loves them. Kishi created Hinata as a pairing fodder and she still is. 

Also, it seems like he still hates Sakura because just just look at her, she hasn't really changed. Her dynamic with Sasuke hasn't really changed. She gives chase, Sasuke ignores. Except Sasuke looks more depressed.

Hmmm, I don’t know whether Sasuke hates her, anon. Again, maybe I’ve missed those parts. But when he looks at her, it’s always filled with regrets and an urge to avoid her (like Itachi avoided Sasuke, but for totally sad and genuine reasons). 

But this again begs the question, ‘Why feeling regret or hesitant even after 12 years?’. 

Believe me anon, Love/Bonds/Understanding can happen at anytime of your life. From where I come from, not everyone marries out of love. Arranged marriages are common. But still, many couples make effort and work out their difference, and find love. Kishi could’ve done the same for SS too. 

Is Sasuke that heartless? No.

He was once a boy who bear hugged his brother every time Itachi comes back from the Academy. Itachi’s presence itself made Sasuke so happy. 

Did he become heartless after the massacre? Also no.

Even after the trauma, Sasuke just became aloof and cold. But he always becomes a child who can pout, be silly, becomes animated, bicker around Naruto. So, he can be lovely, but only around the people he choose by himself. 

Still, Sakura is not that person. So, he looks like he is depressed and wants to escape from her at any given chance because of a certain guilt. 

What made Kishi do that? Yes, he can't show them ooc, but Sasuke marrying Sakura is already ooc. Naruto being a bad father is already ooc. Like why go to the extent of showing Sasuke trying not to touch Sakura and pointedly showing that they never kissed? That's just like a determined effort on Kishi's part to show that their marriage is not working.

To answer, this goes way back, anon. 

Kishi is a person who prefers to write love through intense friendship, sensei-student dynamics and brotherhood. He can occasionally write cute and sweet romance but it can only be short like 2 or 3 pages... or a chapter, max. He can’t go on doing it for 70 chapters for romance. Which was evident from Minato & Kushina, Dan & Tsunade, Obito & Rin. 

But the real deal of Naruto manga is the bond between Naruto and Sasuke. The bond between Itachi and Sasuke also played a huge role in this series. And then comes Hashirama and Madara, Jiraiya and Naruto, Kakshi and Obito, Kakashi and Naruto and many more. So, Kishi pretty much gave an ending he wanted for a long time in chapter 699. He successively pulled off a great manga without corny and shitty romance but with just friendship and brotherhood alone. He didn’t give two shits about NH or SS before chapter 700.

Naruto series’ another success lies on it’s characters tragic backstories. I simply loved them all and most of them made me cry. 

Kishi wanted to move on from Naruto.

But then Money played a big part. Naruto series can be milked in a lot of ways. Editors wanted all the characters to become some baby making dolls. So you have to create pairings. Based on the popularity polls, they decided NH and SS.

In my opinion, Sasuke is a goal-oriented person. He is a wanderer who works on his own accords. Ever since he left Konoha when he was 13, that was his path, so you can’t make him stay in one place. At every stage of his life, he had different goals.

At age 8-15, he had one goal. To kill Itachi. Can he have a romance here? Nope.

At age 16, his goal is to destroy Konoha. No chance of romance in that dark path.

At age 17, he wanted to Revolutionize the shinobi system. Since he wanted to be alone for that goal, no possibility of romance.

At age 18, he adopted Naruto’s dream as his own. To make all shinobi cooperate and look out for Kaguya remains. Romance cannot happen here as he was constantly wandering around and he prefers to work alone.

This is how Kishi designed Sasuke’s character throughout.

Now all of a sudden, if you ask Kishi to go OOC by asking him to write corny romance for his favorite character Sasuke just for the sake of making him relevant to Boruto series, what will he do? 

Since Boruto is a series which is a sequel to Naruto, you pretty much know everyone’s backstory. Those 12 year old New Gen kids possibly can’t have tragic stories like Naruto or Sasuke. 

Kishi being a troller, used this opportunity to create a piss poor sob story for Sarada by making Sasuke as an absentee father and an unloving husband.

He created a sad story for Sarada and he gets to shit on SS ship. Two birds, One stone!!!! 

Now, Sasuke being an unloving husband is OOC ? Nope. He was never a marriage material in the first place. So he is perfectly in-character.

Sasuke being an absentee father is OOC? No and Yes. No, because it’s the effect of the cause I mentioned above. Yes, because unlike Naruto, Sasuke once had a father. He can try to reach her out now and often. but he prefers not to do instead he cares more about Boruto. LOL.

Sasuke being not family oriented is OOC? Nope. He is a goal oriented person. His goal is same as Naruto’s dream. He will go to any extent to fulfill it, even at the expense of his family’s happiness. Because that’s what he learnt from Itachi. What Itachi taught him was, even at the expense of his own happiness and Sasuke’s trauma, he preferred Konoha and Shinobi World’s peace. That’s what Sasuke is doing now. 

Naruto works way more than any of his predecessors and sleeps in the office or couch so as not to disturb Hinata, when Hinata is specifically designed to accommodate anything that Naruto might require.

As for Naruto, 

I think it’s very funny. And I guess, I know why.

Just like Sasuke, Naruto is also a goal oriented person. 

Remember, in that Boruto movie, Sasuke knocks Naruto’s door at the midnight?

Imagine if Naruto opened the door. 

Sasuke will be like, ‘Alright mothafucka!!! I wanted to die in the VoTE itself. You wanted me in your dream world. Am working my ass off for your stupid dreams and trying to reach you without even meeting my own family. And yet here you are, sleeping well and sound. Am just gonna Chidori you!!!’ LOL.

I think you get my point. 

If you make Sasuke to be an hardworker, then Naruto must work even hard to fulfill his dream. So you possibly can’t have Naruto playing duet with Himata or whatever trash. 

So kishi pulled his Two birds, One Stone for NH here!!!

In short, Kishi gets to make his New generation shine through this pathetic sob stories and at the same time, kept his favorite characters without going OOC. 

So, it’s a polite way of Kishi showing middlefinger to SS and NH for making him do this. He is saying, ‘Alright folks, you wanted this all along. But this is what you will get!!!’.

Just makes me wonder how Kishi will finally conclude SNS, because their bond still shows clearly in Boruto. Do you think he will kill them any time soon?

I think about this all the time. How will they end?? How will they die??

Now, don’t think I am some sadist for wanting them to die. I am just being practical and honest here. This is a new generation series. Of course, at some point, Naruto and Sasuke has to die for the sake of character development. And I will be happy if they die because I don’t like their miserable portrayal in Boruto at all. 

Naruto series has a pattern when it comes to death portrayal. Meaningful characters (except Neji) always die protecting someone/something they cherish. Jiraiya died for Naruto, Yahiko died for Konan & Nagato, Itachi died for Sasuke & Konoha, Haku died for Zabuza, Obito (younger) died for Kakashi & Rin and so on.

Ever since Naruto became Hokage, his death is pretty much plastered on his head. He will die protecting Konoha just like all the Hokages from First to Fourth who sacrificed their life for Konoha. 

But Sasuke??? 

I am going to say he will die protecting Naruto or the village. But for Naruto mostly. Either way, Sasuke will die first. 

Dying for Naruto, the reasons are crystal clear. He already died protecting Naruto once in the Zabuza arc. He will never hesitate to do it again. Which was evident from the way he told Naruto in the Boruto movie while giving his Susanoo, ‘If they capture the real you, then everything is gone’. Somewhere in Boruto Manga chapter 38 (I don’t remember properly), Sasuke was yelling at Naruto, ‘If you are gone, it’s pretty hopeless’ and was praying ‘Naruto, don’t you die’. 

So it’s pretty much Sasuke saying to Naruto, ‘I’ll protect you, You protect everyone’

But why the village?? Why will Sasuke die for Konoha which caused him so much pain?? I know anti-konoha stans wont like this, but that’s the reality.

It seems many Sasuke fans never paid attention to his character. After hearing the story from all the Hokages, Sasuke said, ‘I will not let Itachi’s life and this village into nothing’. He really meant it. Because for Sasuke, Itachi was more precious. Itachi died saying, ‘I’ll have protected my village as Uchiha Itachi of Konoha once again. I have no more regrets’. Sasuke wanted to respect his brother’s wish finally and that’s why he openly claimed in the battlefield, ‘I am going to protect Konoha and become it’s Hokage’. Sasuke’s another precious person is Naruto. He is the Hokage now. 

Don’t you think Sasuke will die protecting something Itachi and Naruto values so much??

He even claimed it openly in Boruto Manga. ‘I would die anytime for Konoha, as has your dad (Naruto)’

Sasuke even said to Boruto, “I will stop you even if I have to kill you”. And do you think Sasuke is just pouring out some empty words??? Sasuke will not let Boruto to turn into an Otsutsuki monster and destroy the village.

Like I said, Sasuke will go out first. And eventually Naruto will follow him. Or they both die protecting the village together. I don’t see them dying for their wives or children. Because, their relationship with their family is not too strong and their ambitions are far beyond their own families.

Maybe for this reason, Kishi is trolling NH and SS in Boruto. LOL.

Naruto’s bond with Sasuke was formed even before his birth, when Kushina asked the 3 month old Baby Sasuke to be friends with Naruto.

However, One thing is for sure. One will not live very long without the Other or Both will die together. That’s how their bond should end. 

[opbackgrounds]

so I was doing some research after watching movie 6...

...and apparently it was originally written as a comedy

Yeah, I was surprised, too

Baron Omatsuri is not my favorite One Piece movie—Film Z has too many of my favorite tropes to be usurped from that position—but I do think it is the most daring. Of all the supplemental material I’ve seen and read, it feels the least...One Piece-ish. 

Yes, that includes the noodle commercials. 

If you haven’t seen the movie and can stomach a little spookiness, do yourself a favor and give it a watch. Unlike movies like Strong World or Z that have the look and feel of a manga arc, Movie 6 transplants the Straw Hat Pirates into a world that doesn’t feel like a One Piece story, taking risks and exploring themes that would never fit in the manga proper. 

In addition to the obvious changes in art and animation style, there are supernatural elements that don’t make sense within the One Piece world. None of the Straw Hats win a fight—Luffy included, although he is heavily implied to have killed the big bad at the end. The moral of the movie, if it can be said to have a moral, is if you lose the people closest to you, the answer is to forget about them and make new friends. The story ends with many questions left unanswered and the main drama between the crew unresolved.

And, if you allow me to get philosophical for a moment, I wish there were more movies like it. As I wrote in my review of Novel A, I don’t go to supplemental material or side stories looking for a repeat of what’s in the manga. Oda has written 1000 chapters of One Piece—why not spice things up a little and try something different for a change?

I know the answer isn’t that simple, and by their very nature not all risks will pan out. There will be people who don’t like this movie because it’s different, both in look and tone. But there’s something to be said about a creator putting their heart and soul into a work and having it show in the final product. 

Which brings us back to the original premise. How does a movie go from a light-hearted comedy based on a variety show theme to...this

Baron Omatsuri was directed by Mamoru Hosoda and came out in 2005. To put that into perspective, the movie was in production when the Luffy vs Usopp fight was first seen in the manga. Manga!Luffy had not yet faced the challenge of an inter-crew disputes when the story was being written and boarded, nor did the creative team have the events of Sabaody and Marineford to see how Luffy would react to the loss of his loved ones. They were working without a full understanding of Luffy’s character, and to a lessor extent the character of the Straw Hat Pirates, and it seems like Oda was much less involved In production than has been in movies since Strong World and beyond. 

Likewise, Hosoda had just left a tumultuous situation at Studio Ghibli while working on Howl’s Moving Castle, and if this interview is anything to go by (https://instrangeaeonsblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/mamoru-hosoda-on-omatsuri-danshaku-animestyle-interview-part-1/) was going through a lot of personal shit when he was brought on as director. The script he was given was originally written like a variety show—something that was carried over into the various trials seen in the final movie—and meant to be a lighthearted affair after the relatively serious Movie 5 (which I have not seen am thus unable to compare tone). 

With that backstory in mind, it’s easy to see how the bickering and backbiting between the Straw Hats early in the movie is a metaphor for Hosoda’s time at Ghibli, which is something he admits to in the interview. Movie 6 feels different than any other One Piece movie because it’s the project of a man who has had to endure the loss of those who he was close with, at least in a professional capacity. 

There are moments in Movie 6 where Luffy doesn’t feel like Luffy. More than once a member of the Straw Hats ask him to intervene during arguments, moments Luffy either ignores or doesn’t notice. It’s a version of Water 7 where instead of fighting Usopp, Luffy ignores the underlying differences within his crew, and as a result loses everybody. 

The structure of the three trials follows a clear path of deterioration within the crew, the initial goldfish scooping game showing the Straw Hats at their best and inciting the jealousy of the Baron, the ring toss sowing discord among the crew even as they snatch a narrow victory, only for them to be utterly crushed in the third and final challenge as they’re unable help one another survive. 

It is somewhat implied that the Breaking of the Fellowship(TM) is magical in nature—that like the One Ring, the Lily Carnation was able to influence the Straw Hat’s thoughts and actions, but this is never stated outright and I prefer the more mundane interpretation: That without strong leadership the Straw Hats fell victim to the manipulative machinations of the Baron, and simply self-destructed as a result.  In the end, it’s up to the interpretation of the viewer. 

And speaking of things up to interpretation, I love how the Lily Carnation isn’t explained in the slightest. The plant that initially absorbs the Straw Hats looks more like the stem of a devil fruit than a flower, it for some reason rings like a gong when hit, and somehow is able to turn pieces of itself into facsimile of the Baron’s old crew who can somehow move around despite being plans. It’s weird, it’s wonderful, and the element of the unknown works so well in the horror-lite setting. 

My personal theory is the island somehow managed to eat a devil fruit which manifests itself as the Lily Carnation (which due to the L/R conflation in Japanese, is pronounced ‘reincarnation’, which I think is a nice touch of foreshadowing that may or may not have been intentional).

(Also, I can’t decide if little chewing animation it makes when it’s eating people or the weird bullseyes it makes when shit gets real are the most terrifying thing in the movie.)

Hmmm, tasty.

Anyway, this is getting long, so here are some final thoughts:

1) This movie has some low key fantastic outfits. The Straw Hats all look very cool without being over designed like a lot of recent movies. Big hat Robin is of course a fave, and makes me really want to see her in a Carmen Sandiego getup.

2) Screenshots do not do the animation of the movie justice. It’s very fluid and has a lot of excellent expressions/poses, although I admit the 3D is jarring at times. Do not let the art put you off if you haven’t seen it 

3) Also, I don’t think there’s any shading? Like at all? The movie does a lot of cool stuff with color instead. For example, the scene where Luffy initially loses to the Baron his skin goes all grey, and I thought it was because he was fighting at night, but it stays grey even in the better lighting of the underground tunnels and stays that way until he finds out the Straw Hats are still alive, where it returns to his normal color

4) There’s an extended Benny Hill-type gag when Luffy first chases after the little mustache pirate that’s perfectly timed to the music, and ends when Luffy just uses his power to grab him. The comedic timing is amazing and it’s probably my favorite funny moment in the movie, of which there are several despite the overall darker tone

5) The extended jungle shot from Nami’s POV? Very cool

6) I love how from the earliest scenes nothing is as it seems. The opening text is Robin reading the map, but the storm that’s seen on screen is the one that sank the Baron’s crew. Likewise the whole fancy city is shown to be fake panels early on, the goldfish catching game is a trap, etc., etc. It does a good job clueing the viewer in early that’s something’s very wrong on the island, even if they don’t realize it at first

7) I don’t think this type of movie would work in modern One Piece without somehow nerfing Luffy. Horror works best when the protagonist is weak and vulnerable, and that fits best with a pre-Gear 2/3 Luffy (same with the rest of the crew, tbh. I was waiting for Nami to use her lightning stick during the games, forgetting it hadn’t been boosted yet). 

8) I like how there are four captains on the island representing different levels of loss—the Baron has lost his crew and wants to destroy all others because of it, mustache pirate lost his crew and is willing to put it behind him to make new friends, Luffy has freshly lost his crew and hasn’t decided what path he will go, and coward dad hasn’t lost his crew yet but is at risk if he doesn’t change his cowardly ways

9) I think the reason why Chopper was the first Straw Hat to disappear is he’s the most likely to play the part of peacemaker. He’s also the only crew member needing rescuing at the end of the goldfish scoop game, when Luffy foolishly puts his life at risk trying to save him from drowning, just like he recklessly charges the Baron at the end of the movie. Except that time there was no Sanji to save him, leaving Luffy to get his ass thoroughly kicked

10) This is a very good Halloween movie, and I’m glad I watched it in October

[benevolent-savage]

this is what happens when u enable me lets go

(spoilers ahoy)

Firstly, here’s some somewhat miscellaneous reasons that don’t contribute to any sort of narrative analysis but are still parts of the character I like.

His boss fight is my favorite in the game thus far. It’s not super hard, but it isn’t super easy either, and I even managed to solo it on my Balance after a few practice rounds. Sufficiently challenging without feeling unfair.

His boss fight music. It is a bop and a half, go give it a listen, my soul ascends from my body a few centimeters every time I hear it start up.

His voice. I’m sure it’s processed at least a little but gotdamn his voice is so deep and spooky it startled me when I first heard it. Very curious who his actor is; I think he and Inyanga Whitestripes share the same one. Either way, very well voiced and acted.

His design is very good. It’s the perfect mix of innocuous but also spooky sorcerer fella who knows some shit. And I was afraid that the designers would try and make him like. Handsome? Under the hood? To try and make him more sympathetic? But they didn’t and I’m glad for it.

With those out of the way, the next thing to establish, I guess: I don’t interpret Old Cob to be the main villain of arc 3, nor do I interpret Raven as such. They’re definitely antagonists, but they’re not the ultimate problem; the ultimate problem is their divorce, and how they keep dragging people into their bs. It’s established the Aethyr is a physical manifestation of their anger towards each other, and as it thins, communication between them becomes possible, as Sparck puts it in this thinly veiled metaphor toward the start of Empyrea part 2.

But Cob’s still an antagonist and I love him so I’m gonna talk about that. Most of this is going to be talking about his motivations for doing what he does, since I don’t see him quite as the ‘likes to watch the world burn for the hell of it’ archetype that others might.

One of the reasons that drew me to his character is how legit his gripe is, when put in perspective. Old Cob- or Grandfather Spider, if you prefer- is not a mortal like the other antagonists of previous arcs, which establishes he has a different thought process right off the bat. This new universe was built on his suffering and he has a grudge against the ex wife who made it, so as a god, it makes some sense he’d try to destroy it and build one he would like better. He’s fully aware that what he is doing will hurt people but decidedly doesn’t care, and I appreciate that so much. He’s chaotic as fuck and he owns it, along with his superiority complex that’s as wide as the day is long.

Yet his reasoning is like. Weirdly understandable? Like, if my ex-whatever put me in jail for a lifetime sentence and stole my kidney to pay for a new house or something, I too would go apeshit and want my fuckin kidney back. That’s mostly how I interpret his situation. He’s not doing this for hell of it, he’s doing it because he wants to get back at his ex because he’s bitter and petty and for the most part he knows this but he feels justified in doing do because she ripped out his goddamn kidney- I mean heart, and he wants that back.

And then, even after all that, he and his magic are treated as if they’re inherently evil. While, sure, Shadow is a ‘dark magic’, its actual properties aren’t anything malicious by itself. It is described as “a magic that changes reality,” and that’s it. Incredibly exploitable and you should practice caution while handling it, but used correctly it is powerful and helpful; this is likely alluding to the backlash mechanic, where likes decrease the percent of damage you take, dislikes increase the percent, and I imagine the person meant to be the literal embodiment of the magic in question to be similar in nature: not inherently harmful and lashes out if he feels he’s been mistreated.

Going off that, I’m not sure he ever wanted the FirstWorld to be destroyed, and therefore believes his incarceration to be entirely unjust; he doesn’t deny that he instigated the fight between the Titans, but when it comes to being accused of its actual destruction, he gets angry.

...Okay the written text doesn’t really display how mad he got here, but he was like. Big Angy. Super offended. Honestly, a big part of why I love and analyze the hell out of his character comes from how his VA delivers his lines and his voice in general. If you haven’t heard it for some reason, I recommend looking it up. Anyway, here he’s basically saying he didn’t destroy the First World, and even if he did, he’s suffered enough punishment because of it, to my interpretation. The only one I remember blaming him for it is Raven; Bartleby was there, and I don’t recall him blaming anything other than the Titans for it. This is of course not accounting for the various changes made to the lore since he was introduced, but they could have easily thrown in a line like ‘And now Spider plans to destroy the Spiral the way he destroyed the FirstWorld!’ or something to make it clear it was done intentionally.

And this may very well be straying into headcanon territory here, but I think he holds positive relationships very closely to him, even if things went sour in the end; he clearly still has some remaining affection for the Titans, calling them ‘the children’ and being incredibly angry at Raven for forcing one of them to destroy his Heart.

When Rat loses in Polaris he shows up to praises his efforts and even comfort him, in his own weird way. He reprimanded Scorpion in Mirage, but it’s because Scorpion wasn’t doing what his dad asked him to and got his ass kicked as a result. As for Bat, every time they’re in the same room together he pays him some sort of compliment.

Bat claims that he and his brothers are meant to be his tools, and to some extent that’s true, but he also genuinely cares about them, and it’s really interesting to see a villain defect from the usual ‘not caring about anyone other than themselves’ and openly show affection for his kids while still managing to be an incredible asshole.

In line with this is his relationship with the Wizard. There is, of course, a foundation of manipulation to their dynamic, at least to some degree. I thoroughly believe that Spider was overshadowing Coleridge, at least partly, so our character could bust him out of prison.

And while this is happening, he regains some of his spent power and removes threats to it as well, namely Morganthe, using the Wizard’s help. In fact, I have very little doubt that he was at least partially responsible for her fall; his timing on that two-liner was too on the nose.

But even with that, I think he genuinely treasures the Wizard’s help and company, which is why he attempts on four different occasions to either sway them to his side, or warn them away from what he’s doing.

Boy, I want that vacation, but it’s your fault I’m here.

And then, of course, his relationship with Raven, something that is basically a summation of his character arc. Laden with baggage and tragic in concept, it is my belief that most of what he’s doing isn’t because he genuinely hates the Spiral or he wants to get back at her, but because he loved her and treasured their relationship; so upon her mistreating him, he lashed out at everything she’d made and detested it as a result. But only because he felt betrayed and hurt so he has to inflict that on other people because he is, as aforementioned, a petty and bitter old fuck.

Moving off that line of thinking, an admirable quality he possesses is how smart he is. This guy has so many wrinkles in his brain it must look like a raisin. Well, perhaps not ‘smart’ exactly, but how good he is at manipulating certain situations to his advantage. Like in Mirage; you just know that he was fully expecting Mellori to be there and fully planned to use her as a back up plan, or you could even argue that the whole debacle in Mirage was a ploy to get his hands on her, while having the added possible benefit of things actually working out.

Actually his scheme in Mirage was really interesting now that I think about it. His aim was to turn back time to when the FirstWorld was whole, further implying that he never wanted its destruction in the first place. It would also, of course, be a time where he had his Heart and would have the ability to avoid having it ripped out again. This would involve not having the Titans fight each other again, or at least not starting it and suffering the consequences. It would be everything he wanted to achieve knocked out in one go with minimal muss or fuss, compared to other methods. It’s probably a part of why he shows up personally to bargain with Eerkala and the Cabal, and why he directly intervenes in our Wizard’s efforts to stop him; it was too important to trust to any of his kids, so knowing Scorpion probably wouldn’t have been able to execute it anyway, he used his kid as a distraction for the most part.

I also like looking into the fact that his element, besides Shadow, is Storm, as opposed to pure Shadow or Death, as most major antagonists are. Storm is a school based on invention, experimentation and improvement. This is something that interests me for two reasons: one, the magic of major antagonists is always a part of their character, Malistaire the most blatantly, and two, because of this line he says in Mirage.

To my interpretation, this would imply that he sees the Spiral as something that could be improved. And as a god, he would of course find it his obligation to try and fix this flaw. When he made the barter with the Cabal, I don’t doubt he was being at least partially honest about restoring the FirstWorld; it would certainly fix the flaw it has in the context of stealing his internal organs, but he would also probably seek to improve it, make it more suited to Shadow or something.

Something else I find intriguing is how weirdly honest he is; I don’t recall him ever lying to us once, unless you count omitting certain facts as lying. But that’s absolutely something I can see him using against people, like “I didn’t lie to you, I just didn’t tell you, your fault for not asking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .” As said before, he;s really good at manipulating people and he weaponizes whatever he can; @that-wizard-oki​ made a really great post about how he uses conflicts- his fault or not- to his advantage, and does his own thing in the background without interruption, Mirage and Neumia probably being the best example of this, with Scorpion and the Cabal serving as distractions while he either carries out things himself or gives instructions.

To pull all of this together narratively, I think it’s important to consider this line from Mellori during one of their confrontations:

He feels powerless, so he puffs up his god status. He has little power to fight with, compared to before, so he mostly manipulates and creates back-up plans while causing conflicts to serve as distractions. His love hurt him, so he lashes out at others and drags them into his problems.

You may ask, “But Sam, these are all bad qualities, why should we like him because of this?” And I would respond “Because it makes him a complex and interesting antagonist.” The kind of character that executes his shitty actions in such a way that you can’t help but respect- even just for the level of dramatics put in to it- while also having a motive that makes you stop and consider that maybe he has a point but is very much handling the situation the wrong way.

Like, c’mon, he ticks so many villain boxes. Tragic backstory? Check. Blatant thespian who owns it? Check. Gets his hands dirty before the climax of the story? Check. Smart/ manipulative/ has back-up plans? Check. Understandable, strong motives? Check.

He’s got layers. Like onion. I felt like there was always something new to discover about him, and for that I can assert my opinion that he’s one of the best characters in Wizard101.

lmao if you read this far into my simp-for-shithead post congrats. feel free to shoot me more asks on the subject bc i cant write persuasive-essay-esque format anymore my brain is rotting. if you will excuse me, im off to listen to the chronoverge combat track for the 82937487734th time

[findingmypeace]

I am only telling you to realise how important politics is and why some people can’t just be nice to people who have awful political views lHow can you not understand that? because just saying let’s forget about it just be nice isn’t going to change anything and if that is ur answer to anything political then look at how privileged you have it because kindness is not the answer to racists right now or any right wing Donal trump lover . Because they are awful people they don’t deserve kindness

I’ve thought long and hard about how I would respond to this. I could stoop down to your level and be a bitch to you but I truly do believe kindness matters. So here goes:

You say, “How can I not understand that?” You were rude and nasty. If you want to get your point across you actually have to be nice to someone. If you’re nasty to the other person they will get defensive first and completely miss your point. Thus my point, kindness matters.

Second, You say I am privileged. I don’t owe you any explanation but I won’t deny that I do have certain privileges. However, you clearly A)don’t follow my blog or B)know anything about me because when it comes to the so-called privilege of kindness I am clearly not. I have been bullied for the majority of my child and adult life to the point where on two different occasions against two different people I considered getting a restraining order. I have developed severe depression, anxiety, CPTSD, and bulimia as result of everything I have been through in my life.

Third, you are full of righteous indignation. You refuse to see outside your own lens. I don’t buy into extreme left-wing ideology or extreme right-wing ideology. I find most of it to be bullshit and propaganda. Therefore I am neither a Trump supporter nor non-supporter. It is clear that you jumped right to “She’s a Trump supporter” and doesn’t deserve respect when I NEVER SAID I WAS A TRUMP SUPPORTER. Clearly, you make assumptions and then judge based off of those assumptions.

Fourth, quite frankly, you’re just as bad as the people who you say don’t deserve respect. Why? Because if you think they are racist and full of hatred well so are you! You refuse to be kind to people who view things from a different perspective. One thing I disagree with Trump on is how he talks to people on twitter. You’re just as bad. You stooped to his level. You want to prove to me that you’re different-than actually BE KIND!!!!

Fifth, your rudeness and disrespect is not making me think anymore highly of extreme left wing ideology. If anything, it makes me want to have nothing to do with it because if people of that opinion are that mean than, frankly, I would prefer not to be a part of it.

Now here is what I will concede:

*You are completely allowed to have your own opinion. Just like I am allowed to have my own opinion.

*We are allowed to disagree. Which is clearly something you don’t believe.

*Having an opinion different than mine or someone else’s does not give me or anyone else the right to be disrespectful of you. Just as it doesn’t give you the right to be rude and disrespectful of me.

Finally, please don’t message me again. I don’t need or want this kind of negativity on my blog. This is not a case of my trying to shut down a dialogue between two opposing sides. If you were respectful I would welcome a dialogue. This is a case of my not wanting to be treated like shit by someone who is clearly a bully and actually thinks that behavior is appropriate. Tumblr has a function where you can block anonymous asks. So if you send me another ask you will be blocked!

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of GONERIL with an FC change to Vika Boronova. Admin Jen: Wow, Julie. Just WOW. Your app was absolutely stunning. There’s this poignancy to your portrayal that breathes life into Grace so beautifully. From the over-arching theme of carelessness that you’ve explored, to the touch of vulnerability you hinted at when it comes to Grace’s bond with her sisters, to my personal favorite aspect -- which was the way you cleanly outlined her perspective and potential future while leaving enough room for Grace’s volatility and unpredictable nature to run its course. We absolutely cannot wait to see more of her! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Julie

Age | 20

Preferred Pronouns | She/her/hers

Activity Level | Hit and miss! But I’m usually able to hop on at some point during the week and get replies done. If not, I’m always lurking on Discord to plot.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the rp?  | Through the tumblr tags all the way back in 2018, if I remember right! Crazy to think we’ve hit 2020 and I’m still here, lurking. Wild.

Current/Past RP Accounts | Santino, Loretta

IN CHARACTER

Character | Goneril / Grace Daly. I’d like a faceclaim change to Vika Bronova, if possible!

What drew you to this character? | Grace isn’t like a character I’ve ever written before – she’s completely new territory for me, and I think she’s a fascinating representation of, like, what if you just REALLY fucked everything up and didn’t give a shit? Because I don’t think Grace… cares, necessarily, about what sort of havoc she wreaks so long as it gets her something. And I can only ever desire to be that selfish. It’s this sort of reckless abandon of the morals most people cling to that’s super interesting to me, something I’d love to explore. Hundreds of thousands of people do the exact opposite of what they want to be doing every single day, in the name of responsibility and a certain code of ethics they hold dear. Or because they know doing what they want would have consequences. Grace looks at the consequences and bites her thumb at them, because while she’s not immune to them, there are certain advantages to being free of those sort of chains.

Santino was compelled by his moral backbone to do the same thing, and even Loretta had similar constraints, but Grace is going to run herself ragged with carelessness until she simply can’t run anymore. It shouldn’t be that easy, and for most people it isn’t, but to Grace, it comes naturally.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

ASK ME NOT WHAT I KNOW. There’s a difference between coming to the Montagues and begging for refuge and walking to their doorstep with a dead bird in hand, and Grace unfortunately chose to do the latter. It’s clear now that Damiano saw something in her – if he saw anything in her beyond another soldier – but she’s going to have to do more than most than to stay in those good graces, and God help her, she does. Everything Grace does has propelled her to this status of terror, the sort of person that it’s uncomfortable to share a room with. She knows how she got where she is and knows she actively chose to betray her own blood and her blood’s blood to do it. I’m interested in exploring how this impacts her relationships with other characters as well as her own personal monologue as it develops over time.

I LOVE YOU MORE THAN WORDS CAN WIELD THE MATTER. Grace denies that her sisters are of any meaningful worth to her but I think a piece of her knows deep down that it isn’t necessarily true. We all have little lies we tell ourselves, and even if she is angry at Regina and Catherine for stealing away attention that she genuinely believes should have been hers as a child, there are moments in quiet spaces where she sits and wonders just how far she could extend her ill graces. She’s not quite sure they consider her blood, and she doesn’t know she’d consider them kin, but exploring that relationship could be integral to the expansion of Grace’s character, morals, and own personal motivations – she can fully abandon them, even abandon the name Daly, if she so chose, but she hasn’t yet. A piece of her is still hanging on. I want to see why.

IN HIS OWN GRACE HE DOTH EXALT HIMSELF. At this point in time Grace has found herself comfortable in her position in the Montagues – and if there’s anything more than prominent about Grace, it’s that she hates being comfortable. If it doesn’t get her blood pumping, her thoughts racing, her heart beating at five hundred horsepower a minute with no end in sight, well, she doesn’t want it. And I think to a degree her comfort and her prior connections to the Capulets have her wondering just what would happen if she proposed she switch sides again. It’s not the most ludicrous idea in the world, as the Montagues seem a bit more talk than action, but there would need to be serious incentive and assurance they wouldn’t string her up, which means the weight of information. If switching sides isn’t a possibility, she’d prefer to advance. Climb the ranks, situate herself somewhere she can oversee her not-so-newfound compatriots and watch them. There’s something enthralling about the concept of that particular power, having control because other people think she can handle it, because she’s proven herself. Even if she doesn’t want to put the work in.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes!

IN DEPTH

When she was a child she was loud. Bratty, clamoring for all eyes to be on her, tugging at every possible sleeve and holding a hand out for offered gifts in the same motion. Never stopped talking, her mother professed, although Grace can’t say now that she believes it to have been a flaw. She talks, people listen. The input-output exchange works for her, that way. She doesn’t need to lend an ear to others — they only need to look at her to see what they should be paying attention to.

When Regina was born, quiet and dull and as boring as one of the countless dolls collecting dust in their playroom – their, not hers, not anymore – Grace had been appalled for so long. Not one for conversation, Regina. Nor Catherine, if she recalled now. Too afraid to converse with the sister who clawed out chunks of hair and laughed when she fell because she’d thought it was funny. It’s not that silence bothered her. It was just boring.

When she holds court with Damiano Montague and offers her services she finds that it is very suddenly not boring, the life that she’s leading, running petty errands for the Capulets and looking pretty in the corner. Their conversation isn’t loud, either, but he speaks with a timbre in his voice that is enough to quell any crowd. If she were anyone else, maybe she’d be intimidated by it. But she’s not anyone else. She’s Grace Daly, and that’s enough for her to coast on alone. They shake hands at the end of the conversation, and she laughs at herself in her car on the drive back home, at the familiarity of business. It had felt natural. Like any other day of the week. Like she hadn’t just sold everything out for the sake of the spotlight.

When she leaves her family home for the final time she is, at last, quiet. Her silence is deafening. Her father is so loud and uproarious in his protest that he is brought to tears by his own madness. How many years had she confessed love and adoration to him to get what she’d wanted? Petty, meaningless trinkets – a new car, a necklace, a dress, an education. In turn she’d sworn love, adoration, fealty to the Capulets. So much for that. She doesn’t say goodbye to Catherine or Regina; chances are they’d never have noticed she’d left in the first place. Her father tugs at her sleeve, like she had his so long ago, and she can only summon up the motivation to press a kiss to the center of his forehead. He falls to his knees and she closes the double doors behind her so loudly it shakes the foundation of the house.

In the car to her new apartment there is no conversation to be had. No personal contemplation of revelry, no laughter, no jig to follow the steps to at freedom for the first time from whatever obligations they’d stacked upon her. Instead she turns the music up so loud she’s sure that all of Verona hears it, and that’s enough for her. Good, she thinks, rolling the windows down. They should be listening.

EXTRAS

I got quotes!

…people who stand alone + burn. I’m attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same. — Susan Sontag

You have to want to go to hell. Deserve’s / got nothing to do with it. — Michael Robbins

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. — Gillian Flynn

My wants are simple, and I do not want to be forced to make them complicated. — Edith Sitwell

Also, a playlist.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Curious, who's your favorite Persona MC?

(sorry for taking so long with this too ;w;) Including spinoffs, manga, and anime (not dramaCDs cause I haven’t listened to all of them tho I should note I do like the P3P one, both male and female side, nor novels cause....they haven’t been translated....tho that’d really only apply to P1MC’s novel form aka “Jihei”). I also don’t know where to put Anime!Ren, probably after P1MC if “Ren is kind of just their” fan’s testament is anything to go by.

Hamuko/P4MC/Souji/Maya>Naoya/Tatsuya/Moive!Makoto>Spinoff!Yu/Spinoff!Makoto>P3MC/Minato/Akira>Raito!Ren/Daybreakers!P5MC>P1MC>>>>Anime Golden!Yu>>>>>>Anime!Yu>>>>>>>>P5MC

Under the cut for explanation

I should note main games (P1-5), I like all MCs except for P5MC. And Hamuko includes P3P and PQ2 tbh. Btw I think Maya and Tatsuya are equally great, at that point it’s just preference I like playing as Maya more, but I still love Tatsuya.

For the first quadrant (P2 I’ll just say Maya/Tatsuya are both well written with clear character as both silent MCs and side characters, but their MC form allows a bit of choice....not a whole lot cause they are pretty solidified characters, but their characters are great regardless): The reason I like Hamuko and P4MC is....because....they have a lot of personality and a lot of choice. Like....you can really form them any which way you want, make them consistent or contradictory, a good person or an asshole. Each dialogue voice is clear, they are also the two MCs that can effect their story the most (at least with their SLs). It’s a joy playing as them. As for Souji, I just really like the manga a lot, like he starts off pretty there but slowly he opens up and we see his past and he uses it to relate to people around him (and what little establishing perspective in the early chapters show something similar to an Adachi mindset and it’s just really nice to see that his character really DOES show how Adachi’s life could’ve turned out if he had a support system, it really does a good job just.....establishing just that parallel). Is the P4 manga perfect? Nah, nothing is, but I think it’s the better of the two Sogabe works.

For the 2nd quadrant (already talked about P2 above):  Naoya? Great, really good character, really gave him a lot of personality! P1 manga feels like it lacks in developing/completing arcs outside of Naoya and Maki, but Naoya and Maki? Great! Makoto Yuki? I really liked his character, while the movies can be a bit shaky in the middle (and I wish he was still a little more stoic in the 2nd one), I really like how he went from emotionless asshole to actually caring about his friends and his own well being!

3rd Quadrant: Spinoff Yu and Makoto, I think they are pretty solid, not super amazing (might put Makoto above Yu tbh but ehhhh I’m pretty even), but they are consistent. And when I mean spinoffs I mean where they talk not their silent forms in PQ1 (cause man they have two gears, nice and asshole....but then again PQ1 everyone is kind of an asshole for some reason 8U at least it’s consistent). Yu’s a bit of an airhead, but he feels like a capable leader and tbh feels very similar to Souji (not 100% Souji, but much closer to Souji than Anime!Yu is to Game!Yu, plus tbh Souji has some silly moments too so I can’t say he got it only from Anime!Yu).

4th Quadrant: So like I like Minato’s name more, but his manga is a bit all over the place. His personality is....hmmmm kinda just their? I mean I still believe him to be a capable leader, but he feels more just their (possibly commentary that...like....plot’s happening all around the P3MC off screen? which I’ll give some points for). That being said he does have some funny moments, and I do get a sense of “not really caring to caring about friends and his surroundings” journey from him (it’s not as apparent or drastic or interesting as Makoto Yuki but it’s there). As for Akira.....at least for the first two dungeons, I actually really like him? Like it took a bit to look past the.....expression....struggle art (it’s not great with facial expressions ok? I dunno what to call it), but after looking past it I saw something. He’s really a 100% just a giant freaking n00b. They all are! And.....I LOVE IT! I hate how P5 it feels like “oh yeah we’re so freaking cool! look at how freaking cool they are! gawd we just instantly get cool!” And like, P5 manga has it’s cool moments of course, but after the initial summoning it’s like “oh shit they actually are just winging it and they are owning the fact they don’t know what they are doing and aren’t really trying to act like they are hot shit” (cause PT aren’t hot shit but act like they are in every interpretation except for this one, and it’s endearing because of it). I mean I don’t like his name, I prefer Ren’s name, but I prefer Akira’s interpretation the most. As for P3MC, I do like him, and in all honesty I dunno if I should be putting Minato/Akira on the same level, nor P3MC/Minato on the same level. While I value P3MC, he is a bit boring to play as, mostly in part due to his SLs. He does have some funny moments, and I think while he might not be a total jokester, he def is a lot more fluid in interpretation than I feel a lot of people will allow him to be. I think he can be fairly open, maybe not as bombastic as FeMC might take it, or as extroverted as P4MC, but I don’t think he’s 100% grim dark emo boi everyone makes him out to be. But compared to FeMC/P4MC, he doesn’t have as much variety as them, on top of his lines being pretty generic (I mean he has a voice tho, but the dialogue isn’t all that crazy a lot of the times......well unless you went 100% asshole route, but you don’t want to go that route, you will screw yourself if you go that route cause of how his SLs work 8U)

5th Quadrant: Raito does a good job with Ren in both Mementos Missions and his anthology chapter in the first anthology book (tho he wasn’t called Ren or anything in that chapter I don’t think). Raito  gives him character, gives us some background regarding his issues with adults (not canon, and mostly in the anthology comic, but it’s something), and tbh it’s just all around better than the game. That being said.....he’s.....I like Raito, and I’m having fun, and I like their art, but I still just don’t.....really care about Raito!Ren.....I’m just not super into him. As for Daybreakers!P5MC, he has a bit of a different personality, a bit more of a “I don’t really care” personality....which I’d probably wouldn’t like considering how I feel about P5MC proper, but his “I don’t care” is more of a “Rip to me, cross that burning bridge when I get to it I guess. XP” than “I’m confessing to you but I’m like super checked out and don’t really look like I care” feel the P5MC game gives me. We don’t really spend a whole lot of time with him sadly, but what we do see is fun (in a similar vein to Mementos’ Missions). Him and his team are.....weird in personality tho, I mean I can’t say I hate it, but it’s not like the game or any other adaptation, and I wish we could see more of it expanded on. It’s just a weird dynamic and personality that I can’t just outright say I dislike cause it’s not really developed enough.....

6th/7th Quadrant: P1MC.....nothing really bad about him tbh, but from what I’ve played and remember from P1.....he is the most true and 100% blank slate MC out there. I think that’s the point of him tho (cause even the ending is “you come up with what happens to him”). And I can’t/don’t hate on it, but it’s not exactly super duper fun to play as him cause he doesn’t have a variety of options like FeMC/P4MC (or even P3/5MC), but he also doesn’t have a super duper defined personality like Maya/Tatsuya. I don’t hate him tho! Just.....eh I’ll stick to the manga or any other adaptation. Golden Anime!Yu.....From what I remember and seen of the anime, he was generally a good guy, uber goofy but nice. That’s....all..... I mean I can’t hate on him too much, his anime doesn’t allow him to do a lot of things cause it’s just a string of OVAs tbh.

8th/9th Quadrant: Sigh......oh.......Geez.....I really hate first anime!Yu....a lot, I mean the anime and Anime!Yu have....their good moments, they have some REALLY GOOD moments.....but they also have some REALLY BAD “this wasn’t in the game, this is totally conflicting with the game what are you doing????” Moments. The biggest is his personality, he’s an asshole. They have him choose a lot of asshole comments but instead of.....being treated as an asshole for saying it, everyone is like “Oh ok :P Lol you da best dude!” and moves on (and this is reflected in how they mishandle A LOT of the what should be serious moments in the anime, and I say should because they were serious in the game, sure characters might’ve been uncomfortable but they didn’t risk the lives of people to make jokes and such). I think he’s an asshole, I do not like him, I really hate this adaptation a lot. As for P5MC? I ranked him lower but tbh they could just be tied for all I care, the issue is I have to spend more time with this jerk than Anime!Yu (and at least Anime!Yu has a freaking voice and has some good moments). But I’ve already gone over my issues with P5MC.

I basically prioritize either freedom of a silent MC, or the quality of their personality if their personality is more solidified (both points are more aimed at the games, specifically silent MCs). And then how I like the character as a character in adaptations (aka if I think they are an asshole, and the context of that universe allows them to get away with it or they’re just really unlikeable.....then yeah I won’t like them....I bring up the extra explanation on this cause I DO like some asshole characters, but that’s usually cause they are 1) acknowledged as an asshole, and 2) there’s some other world building factor at play, maybe everyone in that world is an asshole ala MPGIS/Panty and thus equal and Stocking, or they get their just deserts for being an asshole ala Victoria in Life is Strange, still can’t explain why I’m fascinated with this jerk but I am, but Yu and P5MC don’t fit under those two exceptions and thus I do not like them), there can be other reasons I don’t like a character, it’s a case by case basis tbh. 8U

So there’s my essay, maybe it’ll change when I re-read the mangas or re-watch the animes.

Oh wait...I forgot Shin and Kazumi (PTS and P2 manga MCs)....uhhhh put them with Spinoff!Yu/Makoto, they’re solid from what I remember. Might move them later.

[goodvibesatpeace]

Death, Rebirth and Love: The Ayahuasca Experience

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Schopenhauer

The Ayahuasca experience was the most intense, spiritual, emotional, mind-blowing, frightening and loving experience I have ever had. Nothing could have prepared me for the inner journey I am about to describe. Because I believe I died. It was if my awareness that seems normally tied to this body shot loose and entered a world before unknown.

Ayahuasca, the ‘spirit vine’ or the ‘vine of death’, is a brew containing the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana leaves. The vine contains harmine and harmaline which are MAO-A inhibitors, and tetrahydroharmine which is a weak serotonin uptake inhibitor.

The leaves contain dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the strongest hallucinogenic known to man. Ingested, the combination of these plants lead to the uptake of DMT by your brain where it will alter your perceptions of reality. Many claim these are visions where the Ayahuasca spirit will talk to you, giving you knowledge about the, normally, hidden (collective?) unconscious psyche. Or so I was told.

With drugs like these it’s hard to extrapolate the meaning of your experience and use it for the benefit of your daily life, and so I was skeptical about what the insights could bring to me. Taking drugs can be a fun thing in itself, but I believe there’s a strong possibility that such an approach will lead to the devaluation of that same experience and the essential meaning will be lost.

If drugs change the frequency by which we perceive reality, we still need to have the right radio to understand the broadcast, and in this way ‘set and setting’ is, as ever, extremely important. The taking of Ayahuasca will inevitably lead, for most people, to vomiting and diarrhea, which is called ‘la purga’, meaning the cleansing of one’s body and mind. This is why the shamans don’t use the label of drugs.

For them, it’s been a medicine for thousands of years. Despite the latter fact of ‘la purga,’ my curiosity was raised to a point where I would say yes to undergo the journey if it ever crossed my path. Who would say no to some ancient, magic, spiritual, drug induced, puke and shit-fest that is also a medicine?

It all started with my interest in the link between psychedelics and spirituality, partly fueled by the book ‘DMT: The Spirit Molecule’ by Rick Strassman. For me, spirituality  is the experiencing of the spirit, the essence of which I call ‘I’. Different experiments in physics lead to a broader understanding of the objective outer world we inhabit and in exactly the same way different experiments in our own psyche lead to a broader understanding of the subjective world we also inhabit.

This has been my main drive to experiment with consciousness on a very personal level. It has led me to meditation, yoga, qi gong, floating, fasting, drugs, polyphasic sleep, lucid dreaming, astral projection and the most important of all, my daily live. Because in the end this is the reality you have to face, and finding your life in alternative states of consciousness can be just another easy escape to keep you from facing your true self.

I found out that two Peruvian shamans were visiting my country to give workshops on Ayahuasca healing. I asked two of my best friends to join me on this journey because I thought they would find it interesting and inspiring… and I was perhaps a bit afraid to go on my own.The workshop was a three-day gathering where we had an Ayahuasca session on Friday and Saturday. Sunday would be a day of reflection and relaxing.

When we arrived we met the shamans. Their faces, powerful, radiant, wise but most of all loving and kind. In our culture the role of the shaman has been long forgotten and it reminded me that we need them dearly. Elder shamans know the inner workings of the mind and the influence society has upon it. This knowledge of ‘what has been’ seems increasingly important in a world that is changing ever so rapidly. This is why I believe that it is important to reflect once  in a while on your role in the greater perspective of things.

Before we did the Ayahuasca we had to follow a strict diet and to avoid the following:

– sugar and sweeteners;

– chocolate;

– soft drinks and energy drinks;

– coffee;

– dairy products;

– salt, pepper, sharp spices and chilis;

– red meat (avoid pork 2 weeks before and after);

– fats;

– olive or coconut oil;

– alcohol and drugs (no alcohol-free beer either), 1 week before and after;

– ginger;

– ice cream, ice cubes or ice-cold drinks;

– bruised or overripe fruit, dried fruit and/or raisins;

– no sex, including masturbation;

– no perfumed or synthetic soap, body lotion or other toiletries, insect repellent lotions like DEET and others;

– preferably no medication, especially antibiotics and antidepressants, even St. John’s wort;

The intention of this diet was to make sure we got pleasure from within, not from without.

The Ceremony

Everybody in our group, eight total, except for the two shamans and the organizer, were Ayahuasca virgins. So on friday, the first ceremonial night, we all took a small dose of amazonian magic. It’s hard for me to remember much of the first night because the second one swept away most memories. But this is what I do remember. A little bit of nausea in the beginning followed by intense, bright visualizations.

Geometrical patterns that were swirling, changing, inter-twining and flowing. They were beautiful. After a while the philosophical/spiritual part started where it seems I got a hint of the essence of awareness.The best description would be that while I looked around everything looked back. I thought I understood it then but I quickly lost it, as it happens with most ‘insights’ on psychedelics. I had some personal ‘openings’. Situations where I agreed with myself to take more responsibility and stop being lazy.

Situations where I should show more empathy and less judgement. My sense of time was completely gone and it felt I just had a glimpse of a dream world that is inter-connected to our normal world. The biggest insight that night was at the end when several people were going for a second dose and a single brave hearted went for a third double dose. I immediately felt the urge to join them. To experience more and more.

There was some healthy fear and I took the time to think about what to do. I asked one of my friends of what he thought we should do and it seemed clear to me that what he thought wouldn’t matter and I would definitely do it anyway.

Why do I always need more?

Why is now not enough?

What is missing in this moment?

I couldn’t answer these deep personal questions and with the struggle for answers I felt the huge relief of ‘not-wanting’.

Death: Ayahuasca will turn every skeptic into a believer

The next day I was in a very good mood. I was really looking forward to what the plant spirit would reveal to me next. We started the second ceremony at nightfall. Just as the first night I went first. I stood up and walked to the shamans to get my, now double, dose of Ayahuasca.

It was thick green-black-ish and tasted a little sweet and sour. It reminded us most of the taste of liquorice, just not nearly as good. I went back to my mattress and tried to meditate and observe the other participants when they went to get their medicine.

Waiting, exciting, fearing, fantasizing…

After about 25 minutes it hit in. Much earlier than the day before or than any of the other participants. The visualizations were overwhelming. My stomach was screaming and my body erupted in cold sweat. I felt feverish and my thought was ‘oh what have I done now…’ Then the vomiting began. I was puking out my greasy, slimy ego. I was throwing up and screaming with such force that the best description would be a nuclear blast that ripped apart the fabric of everything that I ever thought was real.

Intense visualisation bombarding me from every direction with such speed; I couldn’t make sense of anything. Emotions erupting like a volcano. I could only grasp for air, thoughts were non-existent. My awareness wasn’t anymore connected to my body, the room nor to this dimension. Was it even mine to begin with? I was consumed by fear and loneliness. I can only describe this experience as pure hell, and even that seems a big understatement. My first thought after what seemed an eternity was how to get out of there.

Or to get there out of me. (Ayahuasca does that with you). Once I realized the complete horror I was in I couldn’t imagine an experience this cruel. I was telling myself I could handle it, which implies I wasn’t convinced. “I am strong enough to stay calm and to just observe without identifying with the pure evil I am experiencing”. Oh boy, what was I, the ego, wrong. It felt as if something was playing, no, toying with me. A puppet for their sick pleasure. It took me a while to find out I was not as strong as I believe myself to be. I was scared, lonely and lost.

Rebirth: It’s a shock

Slowly I started making sense of what I was experiencing. I took a drug, and as with any experience, this too shall pass. But I couldn’t shed the doubt: but what if it the experience didn’t pass? I still had no clue where my awareness was or how to get out but I was relieved by some moments of clarity where I had thoughts that contained some meaning. Total acceptance is to give up the infinite urge to control. So I did. And then, for the first time, I opened my eyes and saw the ceremony room, which gave me hope that I could fight my way out of it. I? No, we!

I desperately needed help to find my way back to common ground. The whole time I had my back turned from the whole group and was hanging over the puke bucket, which I immediately threw a couple of feet away from me when I realised that. I turned around only to find out the shaman had been singing a personal song for me since the purging started.

This little silent guy in daylight seemed so powerful and huge in the dark. I finally gave in and asked him for help. The biggest lesson I learned that night is that I can’t do everything by myself and one is only just as powerful as the support of the people behind him. I feel like I had to experience this to understand that it doesn’t matter how strong you believe yourself to be, opening your heart and asking for help is in many situations is the best thing you can do. The only thing that holds you back is your own ego, and fear and shame.

I once saw an interview with psychiatrist and psychonaut Stan Grof where he said he experienced being many animals and once even a plant! Utter bullcrap if you asked me pre-ayah. But when I let go of the me that was trying to control inner instincts took over. I felt like a hunted animal, a zebra if I must guess, that used all his energy to fight for his last breath. This feeling was very vivid and distinct and it was amazing. I’ve never felt anything like it.

Love: The greatest sin is not feeling love for your existence. To actually feel it and not to dabble in nonsense of what it means.

I stood up and walked, or more like crawled, to the organizer. She hugged me with a blanket and the warmth instantly made me relax and calm. I suddenly realised I was so cold. She said some soothing words and I felt a glimpse of love breaking through the madness. A small opening up, the relaxing of a grip. I was transported back to my youth and felt the love of my mother.

Then to the love of the organizer and the people around me. Then to just love, where human beings are an instrument to express it if they can open themselves up for it, trust it, have faith in it, love themselves for it. Love is the glue that makes us stick together.

There was a deep-rooted empathy for the natural world. I saw the interconnectedness of the world, I saw the air we breathe in and the food we eat becoming us. A child knows these facts, but when the magic is banned from our perception when we grow up and become ‘individual persons’, we tend to forget. We tend to forget that the trees are our extended lungs and the rivers our extended veins. This is not the right time to delve into the depths of consciousness, but as never before I felt connected to the earth that is our birthplace.

That there was something of me in all, and something of all in me. I felt the love for which nature sacrifices itself, offering their own lives for our benefit. And I felt the sadness and the disappointment by the ongoing abuse of natural resources. Where we don’t see the spirit in the forests and the mountains but see them as wood and ore, waiting to be mined and plundered for profit.

As of now, the earth is not yet swallowed up by hatred and greed. Humankind must transform to fit itself, once again, in the bed of Procrustes. I hope, this time, we have a generation that has no need for a war or a great depression to change. That this once, the force is not oppression from the outside but a liberation from the inside.

A generation that changes because we want to, because we finally listen to our own heart and the hearts of others. Where we finally understand it is our moral responsibility to care about our inner but also our outer environment. And I hope us HEthens will lead the way.

Since all this I’ve been living lighter and happier, the world has become dream-like with endless possibilities. The philosophical implications of experiencing an awareness not fixated on these forms are mind breaking and I am slowly opening up to what the sages, shamans and mystics of all ages have been saying since the dawn of language.

Will I do it again? I don’t know.

Much love to all... go in peace my friends

[itsediadmlove]

JONSA; the instrumentality of R+L=J

I must admit, as a jonsa shipper that I really like most of your metas on the subject. First of all, I would like to apologize for my use of english; I am not a native speaker and I know my use of such language to be far from perfect so please, if you finally take the time to read the post I am about to write and the reasons to write it, feel free to make any reference to any mistake you can find, it will be in my personal interest.

As I implied before, this is a jonsa post, but i believe it to be kinda different from the rest because I won’t be using foreshadowing from the books ( I don’t even know how to do it properly) nor the show. Anyone can find that on other amazing posts there are around which were made by people able to do them far better than myself. What is really important here is the structure of the story and how I’ve come to understand ASOIAF (books and show). The second reason why I will do it this way is because I agree with a full lot of people out there that at the end, every ship, from Jonsa to Jonerys it is nothing else than a whish, and when we hope something strongly enough we begin to project it under every light, for any excuses, seeing any quote or any passage as foreshadowing something. Please don’t get me wrong, I’ve learn from a full lot of metas; some of them are amazing and have brought light to some events. But the point for me is that no one at this point (except the obvious ones) know how this amazing story will end, that doesn’t mean that they’re not right: I’ve found around there people posting about R+L=J in the books for years, and then asking jonsa meta creators to find a quote that proves their theory to be true. My answer for such arguments is that nowadays, as long as the books go, there is not a single solid proof that R+L=J, just foreshadowing, and as the TV show confirmed, that never meant they were wrong.

At the end of season 6 I was quite hyped about Jonerys options. Dany was finally moving to westeros with her army, dragons, Dorne and High Garden at her back and Jon had just be named King in the North with the Vale bonded to him to some extent. Dany had left Naharis behind in order to be able to forge an alliance through marriage, but there were just 3 bachelors politically worthy of her hand: Euron, Sweet Robin and Jon Snow. Euron was out of question since she choosed to support Asha’s claim, and Sweet Robin... Well... Jon Snow was the remaining and perfect match allowing her to become Queen in the North by marriage, and tie The Vale to her claim along Dorne and The Reach; leaving Cersei with the ravaged Riverlands which are not really loyal to her nor the Freys, Casterly Rock and its bannermen who had fought several battles and lost a huge amount of men since the war begun, the Iron Islands (which are poor and divided) and some support from the Stormlands. It seemed good, yet Dany suddenly forgot why she let her lover behind and started to make demands as a stupid and spoiled teenager. I never got to understand why the idea never came to her or Tyrion’s  (who should be smart enough and keen to Jon Snow) minds, it was stupid at best.

When season seven came to an end I was extremely dissapointed with the season and needing more I started to read the books, and I’ve come to read them all 4 times since then. Then I started to wonder about the endgame, coming to a vague yet huge realasation: it’s all about R+L=J. Some would say it is obvious yet most of  people don’t come to fully understand such a statement. It is not about Jon becoming King because he is the true heir of Aerys Targaryen, ASOIAF is not this kind of story (Stannis was right about his claim from the beginning yet no one gave a shit) in fact your best buddy and your crippled ‘’prophet’’ brother saying you are and then your father’s best friend (Howland Reed) confirming it doesn’t make it a claim, but a rumour: it is people accepting it which makes it a claim (like Renlie’s, who never really had one). The point of George foreshadowing R+L=J it’s not just poetical, it must be instrumental for his story; useful for the endgame, and what makes me feel that way is the fact that GRR Martin has been spending time on this plot from the very Ned’s first chapter (I mean Robert’s quote about kings hiding under the snow  in the crypts of winterfell). We all know how long George takes to write a book and it would be useless to develop such a plot for no reason and spending years trying to show and hide the truth at the same time, chosing the right words, where to put them... R+L=J is essential to his story and that feeling is what made us aware that Jon would come back from death.

If Dany and Jon were about to rule together it wouldn’t matter whose claim is better; she holds the true power and not even the claim would matter if it isn’t his it whould be hers, so, if this was the outcome of all, why has GRRMartin spent his time in R+L=J’s plot; just to add drama to this couple? Just to add a little problem that they will eventually solve and live happily ever after? Sounds shitty and a waste to make it just a detail because if with this outcome you took R+L=J out of ASOIAF, there would be almost no difference but preventing an incestous romance.  

After realising this I started wondering how would it play out with Jon’s claim  being accepted. There are two possibilities: everyone respect him enough after the long night not to give a shit, or people would prefer him rather than the alternative. Right now, in the show Jon Snow is King in the North, but he is weak, He does not hold men of his own, nor a castle (Sansa is lady of Winterfell not him) he is king by deference, not by power but the wildlings and they were few enough before the battle of the bastards, he is a weak king and a king under the pretension that he is Ned’s Stark son, who he is not. R+L=J can do nothing but jeopardize his authority and once this happens he will be useless to Daenerys (even if she loves him). Then we have the southern lords, whose rights will be at stake if a military strong ruler would end at the Iron Throne (after all feudalism meant the power struggle of the local noblemen against the crown for their own rights and privileges). For them, someone like Dany is not a dream but a threat (she even admitted she wants to break the wheel). R+L=J gives them the chance to deny her claim in exchange for a king who holds nothing but respect instead of a foreigner who doesn’t respect anything but her own power and entitlement. You may think what you want but for me R+L=J being actually important makes Jonerys impossible, or better, making Jonerys the endgame makes R+L=J nothing but such a pairing creepy as hell.

In the other hand; King Jon could marry a lot of women (at least in the books); Margeary, Val, Cersei (I know it’s almost impossible but I am just listing), Myranda Royce, Arianne Martell... But King Jon being a weak king will need a strong political engagement in order to get support and strength, and those kind of fiances are not  common: Myranda Royce is from a minor branch of Royce family and doesn’t exist in the show, Val is not even a princess just a free woman who doesn’t exist in the show, Margeary Tyrell would make a great option as long as she lives and is unmarried (not in the show anymore) as Arianne (a crybaby more concerned for her own rights than for Dorne itself who doesn’t exist in the show). As far as the show goes there are just 2 women that are not Daenerys that fit the role: Cersei and Sansa (Lyanna Mormont is not a valid option since her house is to little and unimportant and she is a child).  Just those 2... 

Lot of people would say Sansa is his sister (to some extent), but the truth being said she is not, they’re cousins: why? Because R+L=J. If Jonsa would be endgame, a possibility no one can confirm nor deny, R+L=J would have a double instrumentality and this is why Jonsa is my ship instead of Jonerys, because it makes the most important hide plot of ASOIAF essential for 2 reasons instead of completely useless. Some can say that it is unlikely GRRMartin to write such a farytailed story, but from my perspective, no matter how cruel, cynical and unfair the world of ice and fire is, his story is still a song.

[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

Lotor’s end (?) in s6

i gave in to my terrible impulses and wrote a three-part essay about lotor. it's literally >9k and i ignored all of my other projects for this for over a week. rip.

in these three posts, i talk a lot about lotor from a sympathetic pov. so if that's something that makes your fandom experience uncomfortable, go ahead and ignore this post because it's not for you. stay healthy, and i can only promise you that i hold lotor accountable for every shitty thing he's done (especially when it comes to withholding info from allura because seriously, what bullshit). on the other hand, if you are a person who hates lotor as a piece of evil garbage because ???? fandom and purity culture thought it would be a great idea to hate him without looking very hard at the work the writers put in to make him more complex than the actual pure evil bastard zarkon himself that we already have... i challenge you to read on. do it. i dare you. (at the very least so you might hate him with a better understanding of why.)

so tl;dr: this is the "in this essay i will" meme followed through, if i started talking about how lotor's not a pure evil bastard and is instead the perfect example of a protagonist gone sour through 10,000 years of poor coping choices, oppression, and a lot of actual resentment, as well as a neat talk at the end where i break down lotor's breakdown.

toc 1: i shake out some salt and talk about the altean colony | 2: i question why people keep insisting lotor was "evil all along" | 3: i talk about my favorite parts of lotor’s breakdown

i take a lot of my knowledge and inspiration from @radioactivesupersonic, who writes some awesome meta. (seriously, thank you clockie. you are amazing.) so while i might specifically cite posts of his throughout these three posts, expect his ideas to be everywhere lol. please check him out if you have the time, he's much better at this meta thing than me. (for safety purposes, i'm gonna disclaim: i did not consult with him on anything. so while i synthesize with a lot of his stuff, my thoughts are not necessarily his and i take full responsibility for that shit.)

anyway, i don't make meta posts a lot nor have any good idea of what a good structure for one would be. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"even after season 6, you still like lotor?"

fuck yeah my pal.

"but why? he's clearly terrible and evil! he killed thousands of alteans and said he was going to conquer the universe, destroy voltron forever, etc.!"

i mean, yeah. but i'm gonna soapbox for a second.

number one: nothing precludes me or anyone else from loving the shit out of an evil character. we're not personally invested in the story in the sense that we have real stakes involved. they're fictional characters, and we are the audience. nothing they've done has any bearing on our reality (barring general patterns that can be established by media as a whole) and therefore it's not our moral responsibility to throw down terrible judgment on a person who isn't real, even if they've done horrible shit.

i'm not saying one can't acknowledge or dislike a character who's a bad person. lotor himself has done terrible things, and if you could not give less of a fuck about him, that's highkey your prerogative and i champion your freedom to have your personal preferences.

but we're not the characters who live in that world. we're spectators to a fictional story, and one thing that means is that we have no obligation to anyone to personally hate a villain, no matter what they've done because put simply, nothing they've done is real. no one has ever been harmed by a singular fictional villain.

the purpose of the villain and their actions is not to be hated by the audience, but to help tell a story. hopefully, they're also helping to paint a picture of the variety of people, perspective, and experience in a respectful manner.

there's a strong trend in fandom now toward purity culture, where we're expected to hate anything that isn't perfect, and that's such a goddamn lie. nothing is perfect. nothing ever will be. we can't reasonably expect that level of performance from content creators.

and what does "perfect" even mean? social justice is an extremely nuanced topic, colored by individual perspective on what's right or good. there's never going to be an ideal piece of media that hits every spot perfectly because there are an infinite number of spots, and what they are changes in importance with every person.

so when it comes to storytelling, we need to focus more on what's practically possible. what's practically admirable. for me, ideally, that's "what have they accomplished? is this story illustrating the richness of human (or alien) experience? and how?"

this includes villains.

number two: i don't believe lotor is a villain in the sense that he's Evil or even necessarily irredeemable. from a personal perspective, i'll direct you to this post (link), which basically sums up my view on forgiving people who've done bad things. but from the third-party perspective as well, lotor isn't someone to find reprehensible or evil—at least, not to the level a lot of other people seem to be compelled to. let's break this down into more questions.

"lotor has killed people for his own personal gain! abused countless alteans, who already experienced a genocide!"

(allura is right there with you guys.)

yes, he did. i don't deny his crimes a single bit. the personal gain point may be arguable, but it still doesn't really make it better.

firstly: this is also addressed to those people who are stalwartly defending lotor's goodness by saying that romelle must have been lying. i haven't read any of the posts myself and only heard some of the points secondhand, and that is because the theory sounds like a load of bollocks (link).

this isn't something out of character for lotor, as much as i might want to believe so. it's really, really not, and i fully acknowledge that. we already know that lotor will do anything to survive if he finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place. that was what happened to narti.

lotor does have good morals. he has an absolute shit ton of them that, honestly, i don't know how to explain in detail without making this post twice as long as it's already going to be. he cares about individual life. he campaigns for conservation. he values people's cultures and would much rather work alongside them than dominate them. he's not cruel or sadistic like many of his peers in the galra empire, and he favors those who are discriminated against. and no, i don't believe any of these were an act. i can point to word of god for the most supportive proof—that "part of Lotor, a portion of Lotor, maybe all of Lotor, is coming from a very genuine place" (link).

(if you want deeper explanations about why these conclusions are accurate, please check out my #voltron meta tag and @radioactivesupersonic. especially him.)

but as it's been established, lotor is willing to break his morals if he feels he's faced with an ultimatum: survive, or die. victory or death.

"but that's a galra chant! he said it during the trials at oriande, and he was unworthy because of it. doesn't that prove he's really selfish at heart and will destroy anything if it means he gets what he wants?"

no. and also another no.

those two links go to really good arguments against that line of thinking. but let me sum it up: lotor has lived 10,000 years with an abusive father in an empire that considers his half-galra status lesser and despises his altean blood especially, and spent much of that in disgraced exile.

"victory or death," to him, doesn't mean that it would be better to die than to accept a loss, as when it's used by his galra peers; it means that he has to win, or else he is left to the mercies of his foes. and none of his foes have ever been merciful. he can never trust that one will ever be.

survival is lotor's most important victory in an empire that has been either apathetic to his existence or outright antagonistic. it represents his entire struggle of living—that he has to stay alive in order to win, and to a lesser extent, that staying alive in his universe is winning.

of course, lotor has larger motivations than merely surviving that he will protect just as ruthlessly. from a general perspective, one can hardly blame him for that. surviving isn't exactly living and being happy, especially in a universe that oppresses people like him, and he wants an escape from the corner he always seems to find himself boxed in. to a slightly lesser extent, he wants to create an escape for the countless societies oppressed under the empire as well. that's where his desire for infinite quintessence comes from.

"so you're telling me that he felt trapped in a corner and forced to break his supposed morals to use countless numbers of his own people as a fuel source. how the hell does that make sense? what trapped him? didn't he have other options? and how does this justify what he did?"

i'm not claiming that lotor was justified in any way. that is a fair grievance for people to have, and frankly, what he did was horrible and ugly and made victims of an already fragile colony, including romelle and her family. understanding the 'why' of what someone did is, shockingly, not the same as justifying them. (and i don't believe people look for the 'why' enough, when understanding the 'why' is an important step toward preventing the 'what'.)

maybe lotor had other options. there's not a lot of exposition that happens in this show, in-story or in interviews or otherwise. there isn't enough information about the canonical process of quintessence collection, or about quintessence in general, to say for certain if lotor could have done something less egregious in his treatment of the altean colony.

either way, he had to harvest quintessence. the likely possibility as to why? the galra empire was limiting his resources, both because he was an exile and because he knew they (particularly haggar) might be watching, and he couldn't let them piece together his plans to usurp power. he needed quintessence in which he controlled every part of the creation process, and he needed to hide as much of how he was using it as possible. the easiest way to do that was for him to get his own source.

contrary to that assertion, i don't believe lotor first created the altean colony with the intention to use them as a quintessence farm. i believe he genuinely cared about preserving what was left of altea, similar to how he cares about preserving culture in general. this would be consistent with his previous characterization as well as lm and jds's assurances that he was coming from a genuine place. most importantly, even according to romelle's story, the second colony is never depicted as an idea lotor conceived from the start. it came much later, after the first colony was well-established.

it's likely that lotor originally had other sources of quintessence, since throk mentioned his possession of multiple colonies in s3e1, or that he hadn't yet come up with his plans in their entirety. maybe haggar or zarkon caught wind of certain plots and thwarted them, destroying his sources in the process. (we certainly get the impression in s3 and s4 that lotor coming up with rebellious plots isn't a new thing to either of them.) maybe his ambitions and travels gradually revealed themselves to need more quintessence than he'd expected. purchasing quintessence from any suppliers would have required an income, a relatively time-consuming and unreliable endeavor that might not have gotten him much in exchange. any quintessence supplies he might have acquired using his identity, if he could acquire any, would almost certainly have been monitored—how much he took, where he received them—to the point where use of them would be incredibly risky. he might have also morally disliked using empire-produced quintessence, since they would've been harvested using empire methods (i.e. "caring about colonies whomst?"). at least with his methods, he would know he wasn't destroying them without regard. either way, whatever previous sources of quintessence he had became too limited an amount for his operations. he needed more.

i get a strong impression that people don't understand what he could be using quintessence for. but we see it everywhere in the empire, in voltron, and in the castle of lions—it's the primary energy source of vld's world that powers machines, fuels ships, assists in experimentation, heals injuries, even prolongs life. nothing else compares. lotor wouldn't have needed it personally for the latter purpose, but one can't exactly travel the universe on an empty tank. without quintessence, he would've essentially been dead in the water. additionally, considering that the quintessence shows up in places not explicitly related to lotor, the fact that we see galra soldiers accompanying lotor on the altean colony when we know he was in exile, and the amount of resources he must have been supplying to the colony in secret, it's also possible he was using it to bribe people into doing things for him and staying silent. it probably would've been effective; it's described as an especially powerful form of quintessence, and he was the only source.

anyway, lotor needed quintessence he could control entirely without having to fear discovery and subsequent destruction. the altean colony was his only colony that he could be reasonably certain the empire would never find. and in true lotor fashion, the first defense he asserted was that he saved what was left of altea from the empire, despite the horrendous crimes he was committing, and could now stop his quintessence farming with his access to the quintessence field. technically, we don't even know whether all of the alteans taken to the second colony are dead (link). the man romelle saw there was still in the tank, as many others must have been.

lotor might have been planning to eventually heal them by using the quintessence field. of course, even if that's true, lotor still took away years of their lives, lied to them and their families, and drained them to near-death. the experience must have been traumatizing. and who knows how well they would be able to recover, if at all. it's little comfort.

(editing, i feel compelled to plug this analysis by @radioactivesupersonic of lotor's arc and relationship with allura as a vampire story because it's interesting as hell, pounds out what i've just said further, and is something i read prior to writing this up so i may have unconsciously stolen from it. (i can only promise that i completely forgot about it until i went looking for all my links rip.))

nevertheless, lotor's first priority for the altean colony was always to preserve them—even if he eventually, essentially started treating them as a renewable resource with his farming's effects on the survival of his people and culture as environmental impacts. make of that what you will.

"if lotor is such a decent person who loves altea and wants to end the galra empire, why didn't he team up with voltron from the beginning? he was around before season 3! why didn't he show up earlier?"

that, my friend, is a good question i've puzzled over too. i have an answer.

number one: lotor has been in the habit of effectively working on his lonesome for about the past 10,000 years and canonically displays a wealth of paranoia and trust issues. teamwork isn't usually the first idea that comes to mind to someone like lotor.

number two: we get a very dramatic hint toward this in the climax of s6 (can't wait until we reach that part!), as well as during his invasion of puig in s3, but i believe lotor didn't have much confidence in voltron's capabilities during the period of s1 and s2 or for some time afterwards. he's a very cautious and careful player, learned from millennia of working against the interests and conventions of an extremely powerful empire.

and if we all remember correctly, voltron lost 10,000 years ago. granted, alfor sent the lions away rather than risk zarkon gaining control of the black lion, but it was still him and the other paladins against zarkon. victory should've been within reach, and yet they lost. so 10,000 years later, voltron appears to have returned, and none of those fears have been assuaged. who are these random newcomers to pilot the lions, and how could they possibly succeed where the original paladins didn't, when they don't even have the might of armies behind them? zarkon could still retake control of the black lion. additionally, lotor's own feelings towards voltron (and symbolically, king alfor) as a savior are extremely complicated. (you cannot believe how excited i am to talk about that. just wait.) he's not going to risk everything he's worked for on a wild card he's incredibly unsure will manage to make a dent. it would even make zarkon stronger if they lost, and therefore his father, one of the people he most wants to avoid the attention of, would be coming after them in a frenzy.

even after the s2 finale where voltron critically injured zarkon, he finds them insufficient. they create the coalition, yet he can essentially retake puig in the span of an hour with a team of five attackers.

clearly, they still weren’t well-equipped enough to stand against the galra empire. it would be in lotor's best interests to avoid voltron like the plague unless he was certain they wouldn't be crushed. so he did just that.

i suspect that before the voltron coalition grew into its own, lotor was planning to independently start a coup of some kind. it would've been pretty easy with unlimited quintessence. but after he was declared an enemy of the empire to be killed on sight, when voltron had gained significant strength and organized rebellion against the empire alongside liberated planets became a genuine and effective possibility, he joins them—right after their surprise attack liberates a full third of the empire and shocks the galra off his trail. the coalition was finally a basket he felt secure putting some of his eggs into.

(part 2)

[lolcakes91]

Anti Hiatus and Why It’s Okay.

What’s this? Another thesis? Why yes. Yes it is. As always, you’re a wonderful person if you manage to make it through this massive block of text.

I wont lie. I’m a bit disappointed. I’m not necessarily only disappointed about the possible (inevitable) hiatus for Anti but more so with the things that have been going on when it comes to this. I’m not angry or upset. I’m concerned. It’s like... Everyone pisses in the pool but as soon as someone shits in it? Everyone’s day at the pool is ruined. However, I’ll get to that. Basically, I was really looking forward to Merry Antipocalypse. I know a lot of us were. I’m fine with it not happening anymore and I’m okay with the hiatus. It may even be one of the most important steps we take with Anti. What I’m not okay with is the abuse and the defensiveness that is hurting others that is coming to light. Sometimes we have to take responsibility for our own actions and sometimes we have to forgive to grow. Distance makes the heart fonder. I’ve seen many great post that put how I feel into words so I had planned on not writing anything about it but...

As a big fan of Jack, Anti, Theorizing, Horror in general and as well as being a part of this community... I felt it would be better to just write a post on how I feel about the recent turn of events and why it’s important to me. I want to comfort those that may be in pain or are confused. I’m going to warn you... Shit is going to get real and a bit personal. So... here is why I take this Anti stuff seriously.

How Anti helped me cope and succeed

It sounds silly but hear me out. I’ve had this tumblr account for awhile now. It’s been inactive for the most part and I was more of a lurker. I’d check out this, that and the other. Enjoy everyone’s theories, art, and contributions to the community from afar. I’s sit back and just enjoy the love that this community creates. However, I never really felt like I was a part of this community even though I REALLY wanted to be. I just didn’t know how. I felt like one little unimportant soul in the sea of people that watches Jack’s channel. I felt like anything I did would be pointless and it wouldn’t contribute to anything. I was wrong... VERY wrong. The thing that got me to open up and throw myself into all of this was Anti Theories. I would spend hours combing through everyone’s hard work and beg myself to contribute my own ideas. So I finally did... 

I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it but I have gained soooo much since I surrounded myself with you guys. Not only did you guys respect and enjoy my theories... you made me feel welcome. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. I can’t describe what it feels like to be included and a part of such a loving and intelligent community. I have made so many friends since throwing myself into all of this and I have gotten a chance to contribute to the community in many ways. That’s something I’ve wanted to do since I started watching Jack’s channel years ago. Now it’s happening. It’s like being a part of something bigger... being a part of a big family. It made me look at myself and change my mentality about feelings of being worthless or not important. It changed my outlook that I couldn’t make an impact on anyone or anything. You guys and Jack helped me see that I am important, that even the smallest of contributions can impact someone’s life and impact them positively. I feel loved and I have you guys to thank for that. I also have Anti to thank for that.

I’m a huge fan of theories. You all know that. However, I’m also a huuuuuuuuggeeee fan of horror. I’ve worked/volunteered at a haunted house every Halloween for 11 years now. I’ve become a veteran there and now I’m mentoring kids that were my age when I started working there. It’s a lovely experience. At the haunted house we give out acting awards. Things like best actor, best actress, best supporting, and many more. It’s a neat way for the haunt to show appreciation to the actors hard work. (We do it for free.) Well, I’ve had my eye on that best actress award ever since I started... which is more than a decade. For years I pushed myself, trying my best to get it but it was never the right time or someone, understandably, deserved it more than me. Well I’m happy to announce that I actually won it this year. Why did I win it? Why am I telling you all this? Why is this so important when it comes to the Anti Hiatus?

It’s important because this community and Jack helped make it happen for me. I’ve already mentioned that you guys have helped me mentally. However, I’d like to go into detail further and explain how I won best actress. This community and Jack gave me more confidence. You guys also taught me not to do something for recognition. Do it for me and to it because I love it. So this year, I didn’t worry about the awards. I worried about having a good time and making sure that others, especially the younger and newer actors had a good time as well. I used Anti as a big influence on the character I played this year. I used your theories to build an interesting character that was beyond creepy and effective. Anytime I thought it was embarrassing I would think of how Jack felt when he does the Anti stuff. Fuck the embarrassment, this is fun. Fuck the cringe, this is quality acting and it’s a badass and terrifying character. To my surprise and because of you guys, Jack, Robin and the character Anti... I was taken seriously and I won an award that means a lot to me. Thank you for that.

Disrespect

That’s one of the reasons why I’m a bit concerned. The whole Anti not being taken seriously and is a joke thing personally hurt me at first and I’m sure it hurts Jack and a lot of you too. Obviously from what you just read, you guys and Jack turned a lot of negativity in my life into positivity. I wouldn’t of put myself in a  position to be influenced in such a way if it wasn’t for my love for horror, theory and as a bi-product, Anti. I take all this seriously. How could I not? What would be the point in devaluing something so kick-ass? I understand it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I understand everyone is going to have their own interpretation of it or use for Anti. Some use humor or or devaluation as a means to cope. Sometimes it does border a bit too over sexualized or some want to force their interpretations of Anti down Jack and the rest of our throats. It can even sometimes be on the fence of being disrespectful or just blatantly disrespectful. That includes making fun of Anti or turning him into a meme. I don’t know how Jack feels about all of it, probably not good... hence the hiatus, but I know I don’t mind it because I don’t focus on the people or the things that can be detrimental to this whole thing. I focus on the people and things that are positive, fun, and constructive to not just my own wants for Anti, but to everyone, especially Jack and Robin’s. I don’t blame nor do I want to call out or hurt anyone who does contribute to the negativity or borderline disrespect. People can do whatever they want, as long as it isn’t hurting anyone.

That’s what I can’t stand for. People bringing each other down purposefully. Whether that is us being defensive and lashing out, the community in general being negative, or the people who aren’t that into it making us feel unwanted and like a joke. It isn’t okay to hurt others because we have different opinions, preferences, or interest and it isn’t okay to attack or call Jack an ass because he is doing what he feels is best for himself and the community as a whole. It isn’t okay to force things onto one another, especially when it makes the other uncomfortable. We all need to respect what is happening here, respect each other, and Jack. 

I’d say I can’t imagine what that must feel like to Jack and Robin. Two people who took an idea and turned it into something badass and horrific in a good/cool way just to have your hard work mocked and not taken seriously. However, I do know how that feels for many things that I do in life. I’m sure some of you know that feeling too. All of us that are on this bandwagon and do take it seriously know how it feels right now in this very moment. It isn’t a good feeling and it’s sad to have our integrity questioned, especially for Jack and Robin who have to cater to not only us, but to the other people that watch the channel that might not be that into it. It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do you cut your arm off and get a badass prosthetic? Or do nothing and let it wither and fester until it eventually falls off, the damaged beyond repair? It isn’t a fun place to be in for any of us and that’s what this whole Anti thing is suppose to be about. To have fun. When it isn’t fun, especially for Jack and Robin who work really hard on all of this, we need to take a step back and let them do the same. We shouldn’t be so defensive about it and if we are, we shouldn’t be malicious. Some people aren’t going to take Anti seriously, why would they when they aren’t enjoying it the way we do? It’s when our own community/Anti bandwagon doesn’t take it seriously that it becomes a problem. It’s when people, from whatever perspective, use it as a weapon that it becomes a problem.

Try to remember that not everyone has to take Anti seriously and some never will.That’s fine as long as it isn’t to purposefully hurt others. You can’t make someone like something and you can’t make everyone understand why something like this is important to you. Obviously there are some people that aren’t into it and don’t want to see it every time they turn around. It’s a balancing act that WE ALL have to manage.

Personally, I thought Jack and Robin were doing a great job at doing that. Not so much us because most of us want everyone to bathe in the great Anti flames and so they can share our joy. It sucks that it has been called into question and yes this is the part that I’m a bit defensive about. However, I am not going to be malicious. Anyway... Maybe I’m bias but I didn’t feel like Anti was being shoved down our throats or anyone throats. I think it’s unreasonable to claim that every horror game has Anti in it. I can name several horror games he has played this year that doesn’t have even the slightest hint of Anti in it. RE7, Outlast 2, and even Observer and Everything Will Be Okay, two games that would be perfect for Anti, didn’t have him in it. Regardless of this opinion of mine. I get it. Some people aren’t going to like this type of content, and that’s okay. Jack has more viewers than just the Anti bandwagon and I understand his want in taking a hiatus to cater to those who aren’t into Anti, as well as to make it something even more special for those that are.

Apology

I personally want to apologize to all of you that may be hurting or are disappointed. My intentions were grand and I enjoy a good laugh but I feel like I may have contributed to this even in the tiniest bit myself. I never thought of some of the memes, insults, or mocking as hurtful... even though the words “insult and mocking” mean exactly that. Hurtful. I always thought of it as provoking Anti to see how he would react. How would he respond to it? Would he call us out? I realize the error in my ways as it can be hurtful to the people who work very hard to make all the Anti stuff happen. I never meant for it to be truly insulting to the hard work that has been put in and I never wanted to make a joke out of all of it. I simply wanted to see that fourth wall get broken down and have a laugh. However, that isn’t an excuse and I am so sorry for that.

Appreciation

I know I’ve already expressed some appreciation to you guys and to the two geniuses named Jack and Robin but... Seriously thank you all for your hard work and making this a thing. I always have fun with it and it’s helped me out in ways I didn’t think a weird character could. I love you all. <3

Acceptance, Love and Community

I know there are SOOOO MANY people of all age groups that do take this seriously, don’t want to make a joke of it and do find Anti as terrifying as he is entertaining. Horror movies usually don’t disturb me, but having Anti pop up to stare at me like he is watching me is deeply unsettling and awesome. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’m sure it’s the same for some of you, maybe not. Regardless of what Anti does for you or what you do for the community that pertains to Anti or just the community in general... I know in some way, some of you may be suffering right now because of what’s been going on and particularly Jack’s post. I know some of you might even feel let down because you aren’t the ones that wasn’t taking this seriously or were not the ones that were in some way being disrespectful. Maybe you weren’t even the ones screaming for more Anti. Some of you have even contributed as much as you can to make it more creative, fun, and overall an amazing experience. Some of you were really looking forward to Anti’s return. But darlings...  It’s okay. You may feel disappointed and defensive but it’s because you love it. I’ll say it like I said in my Anti Theorist post, you defend it because you feel threatened and because you care. You want to be heard over the ones that shit in the pool. With that said, it isn’t an excuse to lash out but what you can do is acknowledge it, accept it, change it in a positive manner and in return you will cope and feel better about all of this. I’m here to tell you that this is only the beginning of a new chapter for Anti. For those of you that think this is the end of the Anti era, I can guarantee you it isn’t precious beans. We are simply making room for improvement for the bigger, better, more creative and crazier things we can do with Anti. I promise you it will be worth the wait. Stick together loves because we need each other to stay warm now that the fires are burning down to embers. The wait will be worth it... and...

T̴̡͍͕̣̹͈̝͚̩͕̕ḩ̵͉̭̭́i̵̻̮̜̯͙̠̹͓s̰̖͔͇̰̗̜͘ͅ ͈̥̯͎̘̰ͅi̵҉̣s̨̫̠̘͉͚n̷̡̰̯̮̞͍’̵̟̤̣͔͓̜͢͞t̵̜ͅ ̷̟̱͈ţ̳̫̙̰̖̩̳́ḩ̴̻̩̤̱̫̰ͅe͡͏̵̲̜̬ ̥͢e̴̢̗͚̱̰̬͎̰̱͢n̯d̶̡̙̺̼͢.̸̡͙̼

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[tf2headshotcanons]

How would the mercs show their love and affection to their male s/o. Like dates they would take their s/o on, do they like kisses, etc

I want to clear a few things before I answer, if that's alright? Firstly, I personally don't ship any of them as gay (if you look at my sexuality blog, you'll see that only... 2? I ship as straight and the rest bi or pan. Those two are Sniper and Scout), so I apologise. It's because I don't see them as gay is why I'm running my own blog, because everyone else seems to make them gay so a lot of blogs are similar. I wanted to do something different with my different perspective (and no, I ain't asking for credit or praise doing that either!). So strictly gay (but not bi and stuff) asks are probably better left to the other blogs. Mainly because they fucking know their shit. I'm not gay, heck I've never been in a relationship, so actual loving shit is harder for me to do. does that make sense? O.oTo make it clear to that one cunt that sent me hate, || I do NOT hate gays || I just don't see the TF2 blokes as strictly gay (but many with the potential!) That's it! That's literally it!NOW I want to make it clear, If ya love someone. REALLY love someone. It doesn't matter if they have a dick or vagina. So this will sorta answer for both male and female, because if you love someone, their privates don't matter and that shouldn't differ how you love them. But for you, mate (a fellow Sniper fan), I'll try to gay it up for ya ;) Just... Forgive me if I'm not good at it. I'm not gay so I don't know how it differs. To me, love's love ain't it?HEADCANONMANNON TIME:Scout: Aww crap! He... He didn't expect to be... Ya know? He's honestly not comfortable with it, at first. Why? Because he always (forgive my lack of eloquentcy) wanks off to the most sexy and curvy women. But it never felt... Right. He's worried his mother won't accept him (little does he realise his father told her, and they both accept and love him, but it won't stop her teasing him). Scout... Well, Scout does like to see himself as confident and attractive, and to people he hits on - he can be! But when he actually loves someone? Bloody hell, is he kinda shy! Especially now that he's gay! So... He's timid, awkward, and sweaty. He's nervous and makes a lot of error, but ultimately he scores! He tries to be the "man" of the pair - you know, the protective and dominant one? But he's the lass, and we know it ;) Uhhh places, places... You know, fuck it. He's an amusement park kinda guy! Or a sporty guy (obviously) so places that get you out their! Scout... In the amusement park, would be out of his shell and just Scout. But if they did sports together, it'd be like a scene from Ghost, ya know, behind them and teaching them howta swing? That jobbie. Uhh what else do people do romantically? Um movies? Eat- Does he like kisses? Does he fuck! Though kissing Scout is like kissing a damn dog XP Any how, he'd overall be very competitive (but playful!) and try to protect them. He'd try to be the guy his dad wasn't to his mom. Basically, he'd see his partner as the "mom", but really that's him. Soldier: Ehh now, personally, this doesn't need too much of an answer. Because he has Zhanna, we basically know how he'd be in a relationship, and I'd personally see that he'd be the same with a bloke. Protective but knows he can fight, loveable and complimentary. Involving him in dumb shite and neck snaps. That sorta jobbie. And we already know he loves kisses, but the small and quick ones (preferably multiple times!). Honestly, it won't be much different if Zhanna had a dick... Well, she wouldn't have tits but still- My point still stands! He'd take him to the Raccoon Santuary, Training, Ball Games (ref: Demo), Merasmus' home. It's hard to say whether he'd be "alpha" because he'd most likely pick another strong character too. Chances are, they'd both be the "Dad" figure. I'm not sure whether he'd be a movie bloke. He ain't the brains, but he is the heart and spirit!Pyro: We... We don't even know what the fuck Py is. I'm going to use "they" as we don't know what they are, that would be the same for the same sex partner. Off topic, but If Pyro WAS a woman, I think she'd be good for Pauling. But you didn't hear that prediction from me ;) Anyhow, Pyro loves kisses! The same type as soldier, except loves them all day, errryday. If you give them one less kiss from the day before, they may get sad. Pyro loves watching movies, or colouring, or playing with toys, splashing in a pool, burning things or listening to a story. That's what they'd invite their partner to do. Pyro wouldn't be dominant, but they'd be the emotional crutch, they cuddler and emotive one. Basically, the "Mom" archetype. He's mostly passive BUT hurt their love and they WILL torture you! They're bossy and demanding, but full of love. Pyro just loves to be cuddled. Can we just assume for all of this that Pyro's a female and with Pauling?Demo: He's fucking cuddle central, ain't he? He's open to being gay. Suspected it. Doesn't mind it. Though I do think his Mum wouldn't accept - at first. In the end, she'd settle that he's happy and can adopt (And isn't lazy! That's probably her biggest peeve). Demo is the relaxed and chill lover. Doesn't stress, and although a hardworker can slip into bouts of laze. His man would have to be able to party but strict enough to snap him into place. Like Soldier, they may have gone out to the big ball game, or partying or drinking. You know what? Just suggest that it's Soldier he's dating! And yes, he loves kissing, but the sloppy passionate kind. He likes to take a date home to just cuddle and watch that shitty ghost drama. Oh, but his sword may be teasing you both. FYI. Overall, he's very easy going and outgoing. He'll need someone fun to keep up but somewhat strict to stop him relapsing.Heavy: He quietly mulls things over, but it's nothing new nor strange. Like Sniper, he's quiet and reclusive, though he's physically imposing. Though the quiet type, he's very protective and loving. Can even have a laugh. His ideal dates are quiet, reading, moving, or even deep discussions. Anything intimate and meaningful is a worthy date to him. Like Sniper, he probably needs someone a little more forward to approach him, but otherwise is the more protective one. He's very brotherly too and nurturing like a bear. He just loves time with his man, after all time is the most expensive currency. He's more reserved on kissing. You should know he loves you.Engi: He's another that may be mortified of being gay, mainly because the Southern stereotype of it being "unnatural". But he hasn't seen his old man in a VERY long time, so fuck his approval! Engi is another shy boy... At first. His not reserved, but he is nervous at first. He is what's known as a people pleaser and is worried to get it wrong. Where he's an adventurous inventor, he lacks in forward personality. His partner would have to be really smart and ambitious, though not afraid to try new things. He's romantic and kinky like the Medic. A bit freaky too~ So his bloke would have to be ready for anything INCLUDING surprise dominance. As far as dates go, he loves a traditional homemade dinner with a side order of philosophy and smart talk. He's also up for going to a pub but not much of a clubber, unlike Demo. He SEEMS shy at kissing, but he ain't.Sniper: He's honestly mortified at first. His already a pariah to his parents, God what if this disowns him?! God, it keeps him up at night and makes him sick. When the truth does come out, he doesn't make the first contact to his parents. In his mind, he's now an orphan. To his luck, his parents are just delighted that he's found someone to love. That's honestly their biggest wish for him. Like the Scout, he's withdrawn and reclusive. Not necessarily shy though. Just a loner, think the Wolf Children. It takes awhile to get in his heart, but when you do, he's the protective type. Awkward with intimacy and a little oblivious, which probably annoys his bloke but hey it's kinda cute! He's about the little things, holding hands and lying under the stars. He's probably the first to really settle too. He prefers natural dates, like camping or archery. Heck, maybe a bit of reading, knitting and crafting too! Or kayaking. He needs a slightly more dominant man, a friendly and approachable one, one who gives loners like him time and space, and understanding. Somewhere between social and anti. But he's a good lover, just a misplaced one. And traditional, just like his pa. He's more of a hand holder than a kisser, but his kisses mean a lot to his lover.Medic: The actual gay. He's eccentric and creepy, grumpy and funky, boisterous and ambitious. He'd actually be good for someone like Engi or Hoover. Dominant and frisky, yet around others he can be cold and withdrawn. Not in the shy way, but he's not always one to give out love. He loves to experiment and do some freaky things on the first date. Things that border illegal (like smuggling exotic animal pieces). Risk taker. He doesn't like kisses much, but in the mood he will fuck you silly. He seems prissy and cowardly, but he would be the Queen and dominantor of his man.Spy: Like his son, he's taken a back. Mainly because he's used to charming women but surprisingly, he doesn't mind the change. It's actually a turn on. He's a traditional charmer, dinner by candlelight and a movie. Though he's up to some freakier stuff if his lover allows it. He's the mysterious charmer, though he's drawn to sass and mystery himself. And though he can be quite feminine about his clothes, he still makes a good lover for a man. He's just VERY high maintenance. Sometimes, the mysterious men he likes probably can't cope with his high demands, but he calls them standards. He'll need someone who can cope with his high needs and mask. He appears self sufficient, demeaning and cold, but in reality, he loves to feel loved. He gives tough love but means it. And he loves heated passion, making out and hard sex.

[fifidunks]

hi fifi. i'm so incredibly lonely. and 3 days ago I got my heart broken so bad. what should I do to ease this pain? i see no perspectives in my life and ive been feeling this way for the last 5 years or so. thank you

you’ve funny timing angel. under the force of Saturn, relegated to my bedroom for lack of FUNds, I just started writing personal stuff again. waking up with words on my fingertips… their goal seems to be to cast a s-p-e-l-l that’ll set me & all my girls free. so we can stop taking things so personally. this morning:

All my life, or since puberty at least, it’s been easy for me to see that others were alive and hard for me to feel it except in extremes. I’ve sought to exist with regards to others by feeling seen, by getting hurt, and by loving like it’s a service. This lead to crisis.Most of the women in my life seem to be afflicted with something similar. We’ve anxiety disorders. Suffer depressions. Bipolar swings. And furies. We’ve anger and overcompensatory vanity and intellection. High-achievers, my girls are public successes, even famed. But I’ve seen them in their living rooms, gauntly yellow, telling me if they didn’t perform as they do, they’d kill themselves, and that anyway, they’re convinced they’re dying or will soon, which is probably true, if they think it. Becoming real friends with real women changed my life. It was maybe the first step to becoming real which I hope to soon. I want to take their pain away. I will eat it like I do my feelings, slathered in nut butter. And I will shit it in the form of writing. Everything I write is shit; why do I think this? 

That was something like a riff on this diary entry, from dec 23/16 (sorry sleepy you’re getting copy/pastes):

from ~puberty until recently (i’m 29), i experienced Life like gravity that is under low to high tenor anxiety with bouts of low to deep depression, blue moons of depersonalization, and breathtaking reprieves of manic joy, lust, hunger, anger, inspiration, illusion, freedom, n fun, usually facilitated by drugs, especially that most potent one - love. i thought this was “normal” not that i wanted to be normal - in fact, my wanting to be + have more more ______ is largely responsible it seems for the anxiety depression mania etc. only now do i get - oh wait - u can live day in n out in blissful simple stable renewable energy generous blessed okay so so so okay with being OK just dust laughing awestruck responsible plus bigger orgasms. never too late to remember how to be. love, fifips this was here all along ofcpps respect we may lose it again truthfully it’s very likelyppps bliss has a lot to do w/ accepting lack it seems, while anxiety/depression/addiction - addiction - is filling that void which can’t be

So after that day, as if to check my hubris, Life brought me Drama & I “lost” It again. he he.

Then last night my something like a boyfriend who I avoid when I’m not Real cause how could he love something that’s not Real? called me “not to judge but…” (I’ve been unreal more than less since Dec 24.) he ended up reading me this letter by Rilke, which his dad had shared with him, and which he prefaced with “it’s common—maybe you’ve heard it.” I hadn’t. I’ll share it with you now, as for some reason I’m assuming you’re a woman, and those lines made me cry, and even if woman’s not how you identify, it’s all good, and this is really what I want to get to, that loneliness is so good dude, first step to solitude (read it out loud): 

…you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it. It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is—; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent—?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough. But this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment… : And what can happen then?  What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle, prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come; nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, and the escape into one of the many conventions that have been put up in great numbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are live-preservers of the most varied invention, boats and water wings; society has been able to create refuges of very sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are. It is true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that — ), feel oppressed by their failure and want to make the situation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way —. For their nature tells them that the questions of love, even more than everything else that is important, cannot be resolved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case require a new, special, wholly personal answer —. But how can they, who have already flung themselves together and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose, who thus no longer possess anything of their own, how can they find a way out of themselves, out of the depths of their already buried solitude? They act out of mutual helplessness, and then if, with the best of intentions, they try to escape the conventions that is approaching them (marriage, for example), they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then everything around them is — convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action is conventional: every relation that such confusion leads to has its own convention, however unusual (i.e., in the ordinary sense immoral) it may be; even separating would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit. Whoever looks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path been perceived; and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, there is not general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered. But in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy. The claims that the difficult work of love makes upon our development are greater than life, and we, as beginners, are not equal to them. But if we nevertheless endure and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which people have hidden from the solemnity of their being, — then a small advance and a lightening will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. That would be much. We are only just now beginning to consider the relation of one individual to a second individual objectively and without prejudice, and our attempts to live such relationships have no model before them. And yet in the changes that time has brought about there are already many things that can help our timid novitiate. [This was where I started to bawl.] The girl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being. This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man to woman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: the two solitudes protect and border and greet each other. And one more thing: Don’t think that the great love which was once granted to you, when you were a boy, has been lost; how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn’t ripen in you at that time, and purposes by which you are still living today? I believe that that love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life. — All good wished to you, dear Mr. Kappus! Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke

MoreYou can always email. fad.duncan@gmail.com. I’d prefer it. I fear publicity aka the Internet lately. Words Are Not Safe Here. 

[fxgacious-blog]

really  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.   RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  ! good  luck  !   TAGGED.  @vrepit-sa   TAGGING. @viridisleonis, @techspecialistofvoltron, @lothcir (won’t let me tag you but whatever, idgaf), and anyone else who wants to

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :   tixxis zharor NICKNAME :   tix AGE :  two hundred and sixty three BIRTHDAY :   never celebrated it and does not remember, was never raised to consider birthdays significant ETHNIC  GROUP :  kariian (go look at @vrepit-sa‘s kariio posts, they’re rad af and the source of this headcanon) NATIONALITY :   empire-galran, subrace-kariian LANGUAGE / S : primarily central galran & kariian, but has a familiar and more than working knowledge of many alien languages on a first-hand basis (without need for a translator and does not have one) for the sake of more accurate cryptography and encryption SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  pansexual ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION :  grey aromantic RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :   single and wholly uninterested HOME  TOWN / AREA :  – CURRENT  HOME :   qewreka high-security apartments, aoria t-42 PROFESSION :  arms dealer

PHYSICAL.

FUR: varying between violet and lavender, kit markings still noticeably prevalent (varied in color; mauve, plum, lilac, byzantium) EYES :   canary yellow FACE :  high cheekbones, facial symmetry, generally narrow, strong jaw LIPS :   full, cracked, and scarred in two places from being deeply split COMPLEXION :  heavily freckled under fur BLEMISHES :  n/a SCARS :  extensive scarring on right cheek in the form of claw marks, earned from continuous insubordination; deep and uneven keloid scarring along her throat, inflicted by another fighter in the arena as a result of lack of focus; many scars from various lacerations earned in the arena, training, and missions; several small facial scars as well as a crooked nose as a result of a break that did not heal properly TATTOOS :  n/a. HEIGHT :   6′0″ WEIGHT :   142lbs (has considerable muscle for her size, but is technically underweight and relatively small) BUILD :   athletic, lithe, lean FEATURES :   noticeably smaller than average, large ears ALLERGIES :   n/a. USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  just a mess of poorly managed mane hair, kept relatively short as a result of scarring on left side preventing proper hair/fur growth USUAL  FACE  LOOK :   pissed keeps fur around face properly trimmed for the sake of personal comfort – letting it grow without care generally leaves it long enough to get in her way and make her uncomfortable USUAL  CLOTHING :   when out of her normal attire (pre-aoria, armor – aoria verse, bodysuit and eighty layers of jackets), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 are examples

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEARS :   being touched, small spaces, insignificance, irrelevance, being forgotten ASPIRATIONS :   to give herself a purpose, to be remembered (whether it be fondly or with anger), to better herself, to earn her own pride POSITIVE  TRAITS :   ambitious, innovative, confident, adaptable, methodical, analytical, cerebral, intelligent, imaginative, self-assured, exploratory, thorough, resilient, adventurous, athletic, brave, careful, charming, determined NEGATIVE  TRAITS :   aggressive, bossy, cynical, envious, greedy, impatient, manipulative, cruel, impulsive, insecure, possessive, sarcastic, selfish, unstable, lustful, vengeful, deceitful, suspicious, vindictive, callous, obstinate, fickle, hateful, egotistical, corrupt MBTI :   istj -- the examiner ZODIAC :   unknown TEMPERAMENT :   choleric SOUL  TYPES :    warrior, strategist, engineer ANIMALS :   snake VICE  HABITS :    drinking, lip biting, growling, foot tapping, cracking knuckles, jaw clenching, eye-rolling, head tilting, humming, promiscuity FAITH :  n/a GHOSTS ? :   n/a AFTERLIFE ? :   n/a REINCARNATION ? :   n/a ALIENS ? :   definitely not POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  aligns with jack shit, does not care EDUCATION  LEVEL :    extensive

FAMILY.

FATHER :    kolir zharor (deceased) MOTHER :    aravra zharor (unknown) SIBLINGS :   n/a EXTENDED  FAMILY :   n/a NAME  MEANING / S :    n/a HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? :   n/a

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  tixxis has read every book she has ever found, no exaggeration. as such, it’s hard to narrow down favorites; they generally include topics like psychology, sociology, tactical analysis, engineering, mathematics, history (mostly military), cryptography studies, criminal case studies (preferably unsolved), foreign languages, and technical/mechanical diagrams. while it’s seemingly unlike her, however, she also has a fondness for poetry -- especially in foreign languages, as she finds the cultural differences interesting. MOVIE :   n/a 5  SONGS :  n/a DEITY :   n/a HOLIDAY :   isn’t particularly interested in galra holidays, but likes researching the significance of foreign holidays MONTH :   n/a SEASON :   n/a PLACE :    her drawer-bed and ‘balcony’ (if you could call it that) on aoria t-42 WEATHER :    cold, not humid, still, quiet, calm SOUND :   welding torches, footsteps in snow, liquor poured over ice, clatter of coins and jewelry, beeping (in the ‘nothing is wrong and this is the noise my tech is supposed to make’ way, not the ‘help me everything is going wrong and these are your last warnings’ way) SCENTS :    hard liquor, blood TASTES :    see above FEELINGS :   silk, smooth metal, precious stones ANIMALS :    tixxis pretty much enjoys any animal, generally from a scientific and analytical perspective, but likes fish both for taste and hunting and appreciates the challenge of hunting larger prey (and the company of animals with similar temperaments to her own) NUMBER :  n/a. COLORS :   purple, black, red, navy blue, gold, silver

EXTRA.

TALENTS :  mechanics, engineering, cryptography, programming, scientific research and development, invention, long-range combat/sniping, infiltration, manipulation, tactical analysis, martial arts BAD  AT :  close combat, subordination/accepting authority, physically overpowering another with strength alone, handling anger TURN  ONS :   domination, submission (occ.) begging, biting, bloodplay, electrostim, humiliation, exhibitionism, choking, dirty talk, gagging, forced nudity, hair pulling, iceplay, bondage, titles (master, sir, etc.), knifeplay, marking, praise (receiving), scratching, spanking, teasing, stripping/putting on a show, whipping, blindfolds, collars, degradation, rape play, slapping, servitude, leather, lingerie, lace, orders, orgasm/pleasure control, punishment/reward, competition, fireplay, beating, objectification, someone stop her TURN  OFFS :   weakness, inexperience (although taking innocence is fun for her -- she just gets bored of it quickly), lack of confidence HOBBIES :    sparring, programming, engineering, crpytography and creating her own codes, learning languages, binge drinking, weapons development, sex, target practice, hunting TROPES :   arms dealer (former reds with rockets for sale/gangland gun runner), bad samaritan, the baroness, beta test baddie, black cloak, the chessmaster, chronic backstabbing disorder, combat sadomasochist, complete monster, the corrupter, even evil has standards, the gadfly, asshole victim, hope crusher, magnificent bastard, manipulative bastard, smug snake, you have outlived your usefulness QUOTES :     “ you know how wives, no matter how cleverly their unfaithful husbands lie, almost always see through them? why do you think that is? it’s because they make excuses, that’s why. humans are creatures that are extremely sensitive to artificiality. so if a husband who never talks about work suddenly starts complaining about staying late... that unnatural-ness makes the wife think there’s something more to it, and so on. it’s the out of place words uttered to hide the truth that actually expose the lies even more. so do you know how one can make someone think the truth is a lie? by boldly, unreservedly offering up the truth.  ” ---  “ sometimes, if he possessed the right information, he neither had to do the job himself nor pay to have it done. a lot of people lived with secrets that could destroy them, and if you knew their secrets, you could manipulate them to do things for you that reduced them to the condition of puppets. ” ---  “ please, don’t torture me with cliches. if you’re going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors. ” ---  “ most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind. ” --  “ stop what? cheering you up? or is life supposed to stop because you did something horrible? i’ll tell you the real, horrible truth. no matter what you do or how bad you feel about it, life just goes on. life doesn’t give a fuck that you’re sorry or upset or deranged or tormented. life just goes on, and you gotta go with it, or sit in the middle of the road and feel sorry for yourself -- and i don’t see you doing that. ” --  “ when it comes down to it, i let them think what they want. if they care enough to bother with what i do, then i’m already better than them. ” ---  “ if loving someone is putting them in a strait jacket and kicking them down a flight of stairs, then yes, i have loved a few people. ” ---  “ if you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything without the fear of losing something. ”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own  movie,   what  would  it  be  called,  what  style  would  it  be  filmed  in,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 :   it would be space alien catch me if you can.  Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 :   anger and unrepressed sexual tension. Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 :   because i can’t watch something with aliens without making an alien.   Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 :   alien, asshole alien, pretty and strong asshole alien. nah, but developing her with the freedom to use the vastness of the vld universe was pretty much what attracted me the most.  Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 :   i would fucking hate tixxis in person. Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 :   lack of morals, sarcasm, we’re both fucking tired Q7 :   how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 :    she’d probably both relate to me and want to kick my nose into my skull Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 :    sendak and pidge are my faves so far. Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 :    music, quotes (as you can see from the eighty seen above), my own emotions, (re) watching vld, etc. Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?           A10 :    toof cuking long

[doom-ocean]

One of them blog surveys

Haven't done one of these in a while. Instead of having people ask me from a list of questions, I'm gonna do it old school and just answer all the questions listed. 1: How tall or short do you wish you were? I am fine with being 6 foot even 2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not) Do infinite wish granting genies count? 3: Do you have a favorite clothing style? plain ol jeans n tshirt 4: What was your favorite video game growing up? Star Ocean 2. 88 different fuckin endings! 5: What three things/people do you think of most each day: not being sober, hating life, aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I dunno, food. 6: If you had a warning label, what would yours say? WARNING: MONSTROUS ASSHOLE 7: What is your opinion on [insert person/thing here]? n/a 8: What is your Greek personality type? [Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, or Melancholic]: Unsurprisingly, melancholic. 9: Are you ticklish? Yes. 10: Are you allergic to anything? Stupidity! lololololololol. But actually, kind of allergic to the tree fluff in the spring, and possibly sunlight. I get lil hives in the summer time. 11: What’s your sexuality? Het'roseksuel 12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa? Neither 13: Are you a cat or dog person? Cats over dogs. 14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson? Vampire, I guess. 15: Do you have a favorite Youtuber? No. 16: How tall are you? 6ft 17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to? Farty McCrablice 18: How much do you weigh? been hovering in the 170s for a little while. Heaviest I've ever been. It's a big achievement for someone who has been disgustingly skinny his whol life. 19: Do you believe in ghosts/spirits? Tricky question. I'm like 90% sure I lived in a haunted house for a year, but haven't experienced much since then. 20: Do you like space or the ocean more? Both are equally terrifying, but space is cooler than the ocean, for sure. 21: Are you religious? Not at all. 22: Pet peeves? lol just about everything. So fuckin sick of it all. 23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal: Yes. 24: Favorite constellation? All are fine. Stars are neat to look at regardless of their formation from our perspective. 25: Favorite star? Betelgeuse. Only because every time I go outside at night I look up to see if it has exploded yet. 26: Do you like ball-jointed dolls? uhhh... what? 27: Any phobias or fears? Drowning, falling, flying stinging insects. butterflies and moths. 28: Do you think global warming is real? It is, though I don't think it is as bad as hippies are trying to get us to believe. I grew up in a time where smoking indoors [including malls] was normal, so I know that a lot of smoke that can't leave combined with heat = more heat. On that note, China and India need to get their shit together. Carbon taxes are fucking stupid. 29: Do you believe in reincarnation? No, but it'd be cool to get another chance at life since I fucked this one up. 30: Favorite movie? None at the moment. Used to be Goonies. 31: Do you get scared easily? Not really. 32: How many pets have you owned in your lifetime? 3 kitties. 33: Blog rate? n/a 34: What is a color that calms you? smoked cannabis green. 35: Where would you like to travel and/or live? Meh, the way the world is going, nowhere is worth visiting. 36: Where were you born? Canada. 37: What is your eye color? Blue. 38: Introvert or extrovert? intro. 39: Do you believe in horoscopes and zodiacs? Lol no. The position of the stars millions/billions of lightyears away ha no affect on a persons personality. 40: Hugs or kisses? I've gone many a year without either, and have grown accustomed to the lack of physical contact. The idea of either of those weirds me out, now. 41: Who is someone you would like to see/visit right now? My best friend. 42: Who is someone you love deeply? n/a 43: Any piercings you want? had both my ears and my dingdong pierced at one point. Not any more. 44: Do you like tattoos and piercings? 10 years ago. 45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so? I smoked cigarettes for 13 years, switched to a vaporizer a year ago. 46: Talk about your crush, if you have one! n/a 47: What is a sound you really hate? metal scraping on metal/stone/ceramic. Harley Davidson motorcycles. 48: A sound you really love? Fart sounds. I will never not laugh at them. 49: Can you do a backflip? No. 50: Can you do the splits? Lol no. 51: Favorite actor and/or actress? n/a 52: Favorite movie? already asked. 53: How are you feeling right now? Sober and gassy. 54: What color would you like your hair to be right now? The way it is. 55: When did you feel happiest? Happiness is incidental and temporary. 56: Something that calms you down? the tweeds. 57: Have any mental disorders? some form of depression. Not going to find out as therapists are by and large feminist and I'd rather not be told I'm depressed because of my masculinity. Could you imagine if a therapist told a gay dude he'd be happier if he stopped acting so gay? Yeah. 58: What does your URL mean? I like doom metal, and the ocean is a common theme within the genre. 59: What three words describe you the most? Unpleasant. 60: Do you believe in evolution? It's not a belief. 61: What makes you unfollow a blog? Generally overt dogmatic beliefs of both religious and non religious varieties. 62: What makes you follow a blog? Something that makes me laugh, or in the case of this site, someone who seems to be level headed. 63: Favorite kind of person: someone that is smart enough to stay away from me. 64: Favorite animal(s): Cats of all kinds except the hairless ones. 65: Name three of your favorite blogs. matt ruins your shit, SYABM, (insert your name here). 66: Favorite emoticon: n/a (although you can tell how old this is as it is called an emoticon and not an emoji) 67: Favorite meme: hate me all you want, but 'poo in loo' made me laugh like a hyena when I first encountered it. Also the " I Do not associate with..." one because the kid's accent made it funny. 68: What is your MBTI personality type? no idea, not gonna bother with it 69: What is your star sign? the ram 70: Can your dog roll over on command, if you have a dog? n/a 71: What outfit out of all your clothes do you like to wear the most? I only rock jeans and a t shirt 72: Post a selfie or two? Easiest way to see what I look like is to go to your preferred search engine, go to the 'images' section and then type in "disgusting pile of shit" 73: Do you have platform shoes? I'm not short, nor am I a girl in the 70s or mid to late 90s. 74: What is one random but interesting fact about yourself? I am left handed. 75: Can you do a front flip? no. 76: Do you like birds? I. fucking. hate. birds. 77: Do you like to swim? No. Whenever I would go swimming, I'd always come close to drowning. I don't swim anymore. 78: Is swimming or ice skating more fun to you? Skating probably, though I haven't done it since I was 12. 79: Something you wish didn’t exist: Winter. 80: Some thing you wish did exist: Matter transporters or replicators. Star Trek style. 81: Piercings you have? lready asked. 82: Something you really enjoy doing: Not much these days. The last Aalbum I wrote was titled Anhedonia.... kinda says it all. 83: Favorite person to talk to: My one and only friend. 84: What was your first impression of Tumblr? "Amateur porn that isn't terribly staged? Yes please! And then of course like a week after I join they got rid of all of it. Pff. Ams dildos. 85: How many followers do you have? one, I think. 86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes? I don't run for anyone. 87: Do your socks always match? Yes. It bothers me immensely otherwise. 88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely? I've never been able to do that. Need my hammies massaged and stretched. 89: What are your birthstones? Diamond I think. 90: If you were an animal, which one would you be? One that doesn't exist. 91: If a flower could aesthetically represent you, what kind would it be? Either a crapweed or stenchblossom. 92: A store you hate? WalMart. I used to work there. 93: How many cups of coffee can you drink in one day? I don't drink coffee. Smells nice, but tastes awful. 94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds? Read minds. 95: Do you like to wear camo? I am not a hick that listens to Five Finger Death Punch, so no. 96: Winter or summer? Summer always. Fuck winter. 97: How long can you hold your breath for? no idea. 98: Least favorite person? Most people, really. 99: Someone you look up to: people that are taller than me. Badumtsss. 100: A store you love? Guitar stores. 101: Favorite type of shoes: shoes that't don't wear out after 6 months. 102: Where do you live? Canada. 103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why? No. 104: What is your favorite mineral or gem? Dunno.... emerald? 105: Do you drink milk? Occasionally. 106: Do you like bugs? Spiders and dragonflies are cool because they eat the shittier bugs, but generally, no. 107: Do you like spiders? See above. 108: Something you get paranoid about? People talking shit about me. Getting fired. Any time a boss type calls to me I get scared thinking I'm gonna get fired for being a piece of shit. 109: Can you draw: Sometimes I draw something awesome, but mostly I draw very poorly. 110: Nosiest question you have ever been asked? "Are you single?" 111: A question you hate being asked? "Why don't you want a girlfriend?" 112: Ever been bitten by a spider? Not that I know of. 113: Do you like the sound of waves at the beach? Dunno. I've been at a lake with a sandy beach, but lakes don't really have waves like oceans do. I've never been to the ocean before. 114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days? Either or. As long as it's not snowing. 115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now: I'd like to give Christina Aguilera the ol in out, still. 116: Favorite cloud type: The big'ns. Cumulonimbus or whatever it is. 117: What color do you wish the sky was? Clear. Seeing the stars 24 hours a day would be sweet. 118: Do you have freckles? no. 119: Favorite thing about a person: rather non specific quesiton. I like a feminine figure. 120: Fruits or vegetables? Either or. 121: Something you want to do right now: Get hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. 122: Is the ocean or sky prettier? probably the sky. 123: Sweet or sour foods? sweet. Sour gives me heartburn these days :( 124: Bright or dim lights? in between 125: Do you believe in a certain magical creature? No. 126: Something you hate about Tumblr: The same thing everyone else hates lol. Feminists and SJWs 127: Something you love about Tumblr: USED TO BE THE PORN. Pff 128: What do you think about the least? most things. 129: What would you want written on your tombstone? I don't intend to be buried. 130: Who would you like to punch in the face right now? Many people.Bullies I had in school, former friends, etc. 131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself? Being left handed. You have no fucking idea how much it sucks to play guitar as a lefty. Eithe guitars are cheap pieces of shit, or mad pricey 132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures? No. I hate being picturelated 133: Computer or TV? Comp. 134: Do you like roller coasters? No. 135: Do you get motion sickness or seasickness? Never been on the sea. 136: Are your ears lobed or attached? My ears have lobes and are attached to my head. 137: Do you believe in karma? No. 138: On a scale of 1-10, how attractive would you say you are? Cleaned up and on a good day from the right angle I could probably pass for a soft 5. 139: What nicknames do you have/have had? Fag was one of them. 140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends? No. 141: Have you ever seen a therapist/shrink? No. 142: Would you say you are a good or bad influence to others? I'm not sure, but with the way things have gone for me probably bad. 143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help? Meh. 144: What makes you angry. Most things. I am easily annoyed. 145: How many languages do you speak fluently? English. 146: Do you prefer boys, girls, and/or non-binaries? there are only males and females. 147: Are you androgynous? No. 148: Favorite physical thing about yourself: Occasionally i'm like "Snap I got a big one" but then reality kicks in. 149: Favorite thing about your personality: it keeps people away from me. 150: Name three people you would like to talk to right now in person. I only know one person that isn't family. 151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose? I'd go back to being 18 and do it all over again, hopefully with fewer mistakes. 152: Do you like BuzzFeed? Lol no. 153: How did you meet your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner? [If you have one.] n/a 154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons? No. I'm not keen on physical contact. 155: Do you like to play with others’ hair? No. Gross. 156: What embarrasses you? Being alive. 157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious: Being alive. 158: Biggest lie you have ever told: "I'm good" when asked "how are you?" 159: How many people are you following? like 6. 160: How many posts do you have on your blog(s)? more than one. 161: How many drafts do you have on your blog(s)? none. 162: How many likes do you have on your blog(s)? none? 163: Last time you cried and why: My first cat had to be put down because of intestinal cancer. 164: Do you have long or short hair? Short. 165: Longest your hair has ever been: Past my shoulders. 166: Why do you like, dislike, or have neutral feelings about religeon? While you could say that the big bang, and the idea of an all powerful being being equally ridiculous, the fact that one involves magic is what makes me stay away from it. So roughly 2000 years ago magic existed and people lived up to and well over 200 years old? Nah. 167: Do you really care how the universe and world was created? Not really. It'd be a cool thing to know, but aside from that I don't think it has much to do with anything going on in our lives, or any future person's life. 168: Do you like to wear makeup? I do not. I didn't even like kissing girlfriends when they had lipstick on. I didn't like the feeling of shumutz on my lips. Also the waxy taste was weird. 169: Can you stand on your hands or head for more than thirty seconds? Back when I was a wee one I could do both.... while leaned up against a wall. 170: Did you answer the questions you were asked truthfully? Yes. OR DID I?

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Another Set of Choices

by Dan H

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Dan displays unusual loyalty for a Ferretbrain reviewer~

We have a bit of a tradition here at Ferretbrain. We like to encounter things, squee like crazy over them, then come back to them a little while later and decry the fact that they went shit.

A little while ago I reviewed the debut outing(s) of Choice of Games, an indie game company which manages to be completely unpretentious. I'm seriously not sure how they manage it, I suspect it involves corrective surgery. They've released two more new games since my last review, and have published several more fan-creations.

Having been burned by Popcorn, Soda … Murder? I decided to give the fan creations a miss and go straight to the official games.

These games were Choice of Romance (a multiple choice court intrigue game) and Choice of the Vampire (a multiple choice vampire game, duh).

I played through both with Kyra, and we both thought Choice of Romance was brilliant, while we found Choice of the Vampire to be rather less so.

As ever, spoilers abound!

Choice of Romance

Choice of Romance is a game of courtly intrigue set in a fantasy kingdom with a vaguely Italian feel. You play a member of a noble family, heir to some small land, some small income, and some small magical power (it's one of those “all the nobility are mages” settings).

Like most Choice of... games, it's pleasingly non gender- and non hetero- normative. You get to pick whether you play a male or female character, and whether your character is homosexual or heterosexual and much as with choice of broadsides, the norms of the setting flip to match your character's gender and orientation. Even more interestingly, unlike Choice of Broadsides, which regendered its setting to allow a female protagonist to play in the masculine-defaulting sphere of swashbuckling adventure, Choice of Romance regenders its setting to allow male protagonists to engage in the female-defaulting sphere of securing social and political advancement by making an advantageous marriage.

This last point is one of the most striking things about Choice of Romance. One of the largest but least visible manifestations of sexisim in the games industry is the way in which video games focus on the fields of endeavour traditionally dominated by men (war, sport, more war) and ignore those traditionally dominated by women. Of course this is in large part because gamers of both sexes like to blow things the hell up, but it's also because narratives focusing on women and the spheres associated with women are considered boring, so it's remarkably interesting to see a game which not only focuses on court intrigue from a feminine perspective, but gives you the option to do it with a male protagonist.

What really sold me and Kyra on this game was a scene about ten percent of the way in. We had started off fairly so-so. Okay, we're a noblewoman. Okay, we're going to court. Okay, we've defined our sexual oritentation (we were a lesbian by mutual acclamation). Then we got asked to take part in a masque. It turned out that somebody had dropped out, and we were to play the part of Virtue in a masquerade representing the triumph of Perseverence and our job was to be rescued from a tower by the hero (or rather heroine, since we had chosen the non-heteronormative setting). Hang on, we thought. This sounds a bit familiar.

Then we were told that on the night of the actual performance, the role of Perseverence would not be taken by the young lady we had rehearsed with, but by the Queen herself.

Hang on, we said, this sounds

very familiar

.

It was at that point we realised that we were playing a lesbian wizard Anne Boelyn.

Suddenly we realised how clever the game had been. Without telling you anything more than that you were a noblewoman (or nobleman) going to court to find an advantageous marriage, the game had put you into the shoes of one of the most famous women in English history without even realising what you were doing (and again, remember that the game gives you complete control of your gender and orientation so it's entirely possible that you could be playing Anne Boelyn as a man which feels strangely subversive). Suddenly everything started to slot into place, the brash combative queen whose sole heir was illegitimate, our ambitious uncle who kept encouraging us to cultivate the queen's affections, the poor but ardant young suitor who kept writing us poetry.

You didn't need to understand anything about the history to play the game, but if you did everything fell together into this fantastic “aha” moment which was genuinely delightful. I was even more pleased when we managed to discredit the King-Consort by playing on the queen's frustrations at his inability to provide her with an heir.

We got the crown, by the way.

Mechanically, Choice of Romance returns to the simpler style of Choice of the Dragon. You have six stats, Booksmart, Charm, Subtle, Magic, Wealth and Reputation, which are easy to track and relatively straightforward to work with. We were big on Subtlety but weak on magic, and our reputation tanked early on because we were rather above ourselves. The stripped down system made it easy to see where you were going and what you were doing, and we always felt very in control of the game.

The only real downside to Choice of Romance is that it's a “part one”. Perhaps I'm not giving the Choice of... crew enough credit, but since the company is not (last time I checked) a full time job for any of them I don't really expect them to keep to anything like a release schedule, and on a more practical note I don't quite see how they expect you to import your old game information into the sequel.

Basically what you get in the game is the first season of the Tudors. Once we'd worked out who we were (or who we were based on) we stuck to the script, as it were, fairly closely, and we had the crown by the end. Presumably the challenge from here is to avoid getting beheaded, but the game finishes before you get that far. The ending feels a little abrupt, but abrupt endings seem something of an occupational hazard with these sorts of games (I found that Broadsides had the most satisfying denoument) and I still thought that Romance was their best outing yet.

Choice of the Vampire

Interestingly I got an invitation to the beta for this one (didn't get one for Cataclysm, but I got one for this) and so I actually played it through a couple of days before release. I wasn't entirely sold, although I did go back and try a couple of different pathways, and there are some interesting differences early on.

I then asked Kyra to play through it with me. She … umm … hated it so much she made us stop halfway.

As you might remember from our Edinburgh podcasts, Kyra and I have something of a mantra for things we don't like but don't consider to be irredeemable piles of putrified bat intestines, which is “Well at least it wasn't as bad as Shafted.” Choice of the Vampire is not as bad as Popcorn, Soda … Murder, and I am willing to accept that a lot of what I thought was iffy and Kyra thought was unplayably terrible about it comes down to questions of personal preference, but here at Ferretbrain we generally like to lay out in great deatil why we think our personal preferences are right goddamn it.

Let's start with the writing. The writing in the previous three games has been simple, clear and to the point. It hasn't been remarkable prose of mind expanding beauty, but it's been sharp, witty, and got the job done. The writing in Choice of the Vampire is … well … to say it is more ambitious would be euphemistic. It's laboured, it's overwritten. It never chooses to express itself in a manner which could be considered precise, direct or succinct if it can instead employ some florid, flowery, or redundant turn of phrase which uses nine, ten or even eleven words where one or two would be entirely sufficient.

For example, when you start the game you are given a choice of potential “Makers” (or “dominuses” as they are later called). Here is how your memories of that first meeting are described:

You remember his gaze--bypassing your skin and your sex as being irrelevant--eating its way through to your soul. You know that in the world, these things are not irrelevant, and yet he judged you on some criteria which you could neither perceive nor understand... and when he was done, he spit you out again, altogether lessened by the experience.

Now again I should say that this is a question of personal preference, and some people have actually praised the writing for “creating a sense of alienation” - so perhaps the writer is doing something I just don't get, but to me that whole thing just looks clunky and inarticulate. It mixes its metaphors (“eating through” does not sit naturally alongside “spitting out” despite their shared oral component) it repeats itself, it's heavy handed. Gah.

I think Kyra gave up at about that point.

It then gets you to pick your gender, whether your dominus chose you for teh sexxorz or for some other function, and then gets to the “character creation” questions, where you explain what was unique about you that attracted the vampire's attention. You get a large number of different background options here, the exact choice varying depending on your choice of gender, dominus, and whether they wanted you for sex or assistance which is an admirable flexibility but comes at the expense of both clarity and – paradoxically – of player choice. Why, after all, should your choice to play a particular type of character be contingent on your having chosen a particular dominus? It creates the impression that the designer is more concerned with the consistency of his creation (apparently there are only three possible tasks which he feels “West” could want a woman for, for example) than with giving the player the freedom to create their own story.

One of the biggest flaws of Choice of the Vampire is what seems to be an unwillingness to let the player experience the game for themselves. The text is constantly telling you how you feel and what you think about things. When you are given a choice those choices often either feel, or turn out to be, purely cosmetic.

Worse, it puts words into your mouth, and does so with such frequency that there is always a sense of the game being played for you. For example, your behaviour towards your maker is consistently polite and subservient, there are long, non interactive scenes in which you interact with your maker in a subdued, subservient manner, acquiescing to all of his demands and calling him by his full title as he requests, with no option to challenge his authority or show him disrespect. This goes on for long enough that by the time you finally get the option to choose your own reply (“I am ever your servant” or “I have better things to do”) the defiant option simply feels inconsistent with the character that has been presented to you.

The whole thing has the difficult feel of a not-very-well-run Vampire: the Masquerade campaign. There is always a sense that player agency is limited to defining things about their character, and even then those things are treated much like character background in the stereotypical roleplaying campaign, stored on a sheet somewhere and forgotten about.

A particularly egregious example of the way the game asks you to define things about yourself, then ignores them comes when one of the other vampires asks you to describe your preferred prey (which you get to pick from a very large list, some of the options on which will be greyed out if the game deems them to be “out of character” for you) and having said “I like to feed on children because I am a sick bastard” or “I exclusively feed on animals because I am all tortured” the other vampire tells you to go and try the blood of some random french dude because it apparently has a “unique terroir”. And then you do. Despite the fact that you have just directly and explicitly described your character's feeding habits, you immediately head off to chow down on M. Hebert. Your character's preferred prey is occasionally referenced in passing and is of course dutifully recorded on your stats screen and repeated to you at the end of the game, but there are no scenes in which you actively hunt, in which you demonstrate your choice of prey through in-game actions.

While you are feeding on Monsieur Hebert, you encounter a young voodoo priestess named Clotho. The text immediately tells you that you are attracted to her. And your options for the next three choices are essentially “pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” or “do not pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” (you do not get the option to pursue a relationship with Herbert, any more than you got the option to stay away from him in the first place). If you do pursue a relationship with her, events seem always to pan out the same way (there is a particularly annoying sequence where you uncover a threat on her life, but if you try to rescue her it turns out that she had everything under control all along – which is all very empowering I'm sure, but I'd much rather you found a way to show me this character was strong and independent without railroading me.)

As part of your very linear introductory conversation with Clotho, she idly threatens you. At this point you get precisely two options, one being a line of typically overwritten dialogue (“You could no more harm me than a lamb could harm a lion”) and the other being to physically attack her. Not only do you get no other choice, no option to let the threat slide, no option to apologize, no option to do anything but be a dickbag or a slightly different sort of dickbag (again it feels like the writer had a very clear idea of how he wanted your relationship with Clotho to play out, and the only options he bothered to write in were options to break it off early) – not only that but if you do choose the option to physically attack her she actually takes you down. Because apparently her clothing is lighter than yours (I am not making this up), and that makes all the difference. I don't think I've ever felt less like an immortal bloodsucking fiend in my entire life. That time I couldn't open a jar of salsa, and then it exploded in my face and I got covered in chunky tomato pieces? Still made me feel more like a vampire than that part of the game.

And that was my biggest problem of all with Choice of the Vampire: It just doesn't make me feel like a vampire. Now again, this might be deliberate, the writer said in a recent post on the Choice of Games blog that:

I’m not writing this story so we can imagine ourselves as fabulously beautiful, wealthy and emotionally tortured teenagers. Rather, I’m interested in what it means to be immortal, what it means to watch the world pass you by, and what are the compromises we make to get what we want in our lives. Just as you make choices in life, so too must you make choices in the game.

(Clearly he missed the surgery)

This, once again, reminds me of nothing so much as the stuff you'd get in the GM advice section of White Wolf games. Being a vampire isn't cool. Being a vampire isn't about being powerful. Being a vampire is about serious issues to do with the torment in the human soul. Being a vampire is a curse and you shouldn't enjoy it.

By the way, here's our NPC list of awesome sexy rich fantastic people.

Playing Choice of the Vampire doesn't feel like being a vampire, it feels like reading somebody's unpublished novel about vampires. I've made three full plays-through of the game, and several incomplete plays-through to check options and I can honestly say that there is nothing in the game which allows me to explore what it means to be immortal, there is nothing that allows me to explore what compromises we must make to get on in our lives. There are, however quite a lot of fabulously beautiful, wealthy emotionally tortured teenagers (there's even a scene where your broodmate humiliates a rival by making her think he fancies her, then dissing her about it), but I'm not allowed to live in their world, because I'm just the player.

It doesn't help that the game is incredibly overambitious. It bills itself as telling a story covering two hundred years, but the actual game as released starts with the Battle of New Orleans (1815) and ends with the Siege of New Orleans (1862) meaning it only actually covers forty-seven years (about as much as Choice of Broadsides), at which rate it's going to take four full instalments just to bring it up to the modern day. And whereas Choice of Romance at least feels like a complete story (it ends with your marriage more or less) Choice of the Vampire just stops after the Civil War.

Similarly, the vast number of character backgrounds you get to choose from at the start of the game seem to lead to very little. Aside from shuffling around some of your (enormous number of) statistics, your background is rarely referenced in the game. Kyra and I tried to play as a priest, I played as a Scots-Irish washerwoman, a slave of both sexes, a free person of colour, a Germanic lady of warrior ancestry, and a French aristocrat. The game dutifully wrote down all of the details I gave it, but I always felt very much like I was playing a generic video game protagonist. The game makes quite a big deal out of race and gender but I found it made very little difference in practice. Ironically this might be because unlike the regendering in Courtesan or Broadsides, where social norms shift to fit your character which results in some genuine and observable differences in gameplay Choice of the Vampire is set in a world where perceptions of gender and race are concrete, which means whenever your character's sex and ethnicity are ignored, instead of feeling like the game has subverted your expectations, it feels like the game has just forgotten that you aren't a white man.

The romance options in particular feel strangely normative. Your relationship with Clotho consists entirely of you running around trying to save her from things and being invited to meet her family (who don't seem to care if you're a woman) while your relationship with Silas the Soldier consists of you sending him delicately perfumed letters and waiting for him to return from the war. Both relationships contain references to the fact that a homosexual relationship is unusual in the setting, but I still felt that my character was “the man” in my relationship with Clotho and “the woman” in my relationship with Silas. Similarly regardless of my character's ethnic origin, I very much felt that my attraction to Clotho (an attraction I could not choose not to have, only to act on or not act on) seemed to be based on the fact that she was mysterious and exotic, even if I had chosen to play somebody from the exact same culture.

A lot of the flaws of the game can be traced back to the necessary restraints of this overambition. Race and gender were big freaking issues in nineteenth century New Orleans, and while I respect the writer's attempt to engage with those issues, the only way to do it properly would be to write a completely different game for every character background you chose, because in that kind of setting people are going to treat a Choktaw Native completely differently to a Catholic Priest. The backgrounds are sufficiently specific, and sufficiently diverse, that they create an expectation on which the game can not deliver. If I am playing a Catholic Priest, seduced away from the church by my sadistic master then I expect faith, the church, and my struggles with my religion to be the central focus of the game. If I am playing an interpreter of the Choktaw people, I expect to interact with the Choktaw people at some point.

The game tries to do too much, and as a result winds up doing nothing. It keeps telling me that I have the option of pursuing all kinds of interesting things: seeking the truth about the origin of vampires, searching for a love that will transcend death, acquiring wealth or power, and so on and so on, but you get no option to pursue any of these goals in the game. Instead you get taken on a whistle-stop tour of forty-seven years of New Orleans history, with the primary focus being not your character's personal journey into undeath, but real historical events in nineteenth-century America, more Choice of the Civil War than Choice of the Vampire. Indeed most of the vampire segments involve no choice at all, and the game glosses over the business of hunting and feeding almost entirely. Instead it focuses the majority of its attention on questions like “does your character support the Union or the Confederacy”.

The thing is, it might get better in later instalments. The elements of the story which are sold to you as important (finding out the origin of vampires, achieving redemption, attaining wealth and power, experiencing the cruelty of an immortal existence) might be explored more fully in part two or three but the game as it currently exists is incomplete and unsatisfying. It has ambition, but lacks execution.

Conclusions

Having played all of the Choice of... crew's games thus far, my current ranking is Romance, Dragon, Broadsides, Vampire.

I can only speak personally, but I think that the games which work best are the ones which focus on telling a simple, clear story without trying to over-define or over-mechanise things. Broadsides suffers a little from having more statistics than you can easily keep track of, and Vampire suffers even worse from the same issue. There simply isn't enough space in a short multiple choice piece of IF to adequately explore all of the themes that a more ambitious game might want to explore.

So yeah, Choice of Games, still going strong. Not a big fan of their latest.Themes:

Computer Games

~

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~Comments (

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Arthur B

at 09:37 on 2010-08-31ROCKIN' ARTICLE NUMBER, DUDE! /makes sign of the Horns.

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Wardog

at 09:46 on 2010-08-31AMG!

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Wardog

at 09:54 on 2010-08-31Just to expand, as Dan says I really hated Choice of the Vampire. I've played about to the halfway point three times now before giving up in frustration. It reminds me of a badly GMed Vampire: The Masquerade game. It offers you about million ways to determine the minutae of your character and then no way whatsoever for these to impact the game - other than to arbitrarily close off options.

Also you can't get any sweet sweet manlove if you're not compassionate enough - whut?!

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:19 on 2010-08-31Is there some way that The Choice of Romance addresses the whole lack of legitimate heir thing, or do they pass it by? Not criticize the scenario in the game, I just wondered if how they resolved it, through magic, legitimizing the illegitimate one or something?

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Wardog

at 11:40 on 2010-08-31Hehe, you should play it and see - it only takes about half an hour.

It's actually rather clever - they use light/dark magic to subsitute for gender and inheritence issues (a light mage has to inherit the throne after a dark mage), and apparently light magic makes it possible for same sex couples to have children.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:48 on 2010-08-31Oh yeah, I noticed the link just now. Very quick of me. It seems awesome, although I guess I won't findout until later, after I've played it through with a character that's so blatantly a dream image of myself it almost hurts. By the way, I got more of a spanish feel from the names, but I don't know.

I don't know whether I'll try the Vampire thing, I haven't really bothered with the glamour vampires after reading Anne Rice and I always preferred the more monstrous take on that, but I guess I'll try.

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Dan H

at 13:16 on 2010-08-31If you take the designer's comments at face value, he shares your preference for "monstrous" vampires.

I feel a little bit bad for laying into CotV as badly as I did, because the folks at CoG are generally very sweet and responsive. For example, they seem to have changed the way your initial meeting with Clotho is presented in response to a couple of comments on the blog from people saying they felt pushed into it. I don't think it makes a huge difference, but I think it makes *some* difference.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 13:31 on 2010-08-31I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

But the game itself pulls the player very deep into the plot and even if it is rather short, you get very involved with the character. Are there more games of this kind around. As good as this one is, one starts to wonder how a game with a larger scale with even more plot affecting choices would be like. Of course it would take huge amounts of effort to create something like that, but one can dreram, I guess.

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Dan H

at 13:47 on 2010-08-31I'm not sure if there's anybody else doing exactly this choose-your-own-adventure style of game (although there's always old-fashioned gamebooks) but there's a ton of text-based games out there (Kyra knows more about IF communities than I do).

It's worth pointing out that Choice of the Vampire *is* much larger and more complex than their other games, and I think a lot of its issues come from exactly that. Check it out for yourself if you're interested, I know Kyra and I hated it, but a lot of people have responded very positively.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 14:07 on 2010-08-31I'll do that next. And judging from your review, I can guessthat the problems are the inflexibility of the plot and that the choices you make don't influence it enough. This would require a considerable amount of effort to correct, I guess.

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Dan H

at 15:00 on 2010-08-31The plot is actually more flexible than it seems, if you tack /scenes/ onto the end of the URL you can look at the source code and there's a lot of different paths you can go down.

It's just that unfortunately a lot of them are either locked off unless you manage to max out your stats or else or else require you to make decisions that the game strongly hints are bad ones.

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Jamie Johnston

at 08:34 on 2010-09-01Just finished

Choice of romance

(as far as it currently goes) and found it jolly enjoyable.

I tried it before reading on to the substance of the review, so I was taken by surprise by the way the flexibility of gender and sexuality worked itself out. Having glimpsed the big bold reference to Anne Boleyn I assumed from the outset that I was a woman, so when I was asked to choose I confirmed that, and set up a reasonably Boleynish character but with a bit more of an interest in actual romance. But when I got to the choice of sexual orientation I was a little flummoxed.

I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that the way you're asked to choose is that you're at a party and you're flirting, and the game asks you to say whether you're flirting with the girls or the boys. Well, I say to myself, I'm a woman who's aiming to work every angle to get myself advantage and if possible a bit of romance too. But, you see, I'm at this point assuming that the game-world (though not the game) would be approximately as sexist and heteronormative as the Renaissance Spain that it clearly nods at. So I felt I pretty well had to pursue the men, didn't I? And the game had carefully asked me who I was flirting with, not who I was actually interested in, so my choice was based on my character's strategy rather than her inclination.

It isn't a complaint, really, because it's such a short game that I can just play it again with a different set of choices. But if I could give it a couple of little tweaks based on that experience I might make the social mechanics of the world clearer before those choices need to be made, and also make it clearer that the flirting choice determines your actual preference and not just what you happen to be doing at the time. In fact it would be nice to be able to pursue both women and men with the same character. But in any case I'm quite intrigued to find out how the game differs if you play as a man, so I might try that next.

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Dan H

at 12:31 on 2010-09-01I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

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Furare

at 14:20 on 2010-09-01

I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

I'm pretty sure I got a reference to part 2 when I completed the game by marrying the rich merchant and becoming the queen's lover on the side. It's possible that you have to be involved with the monarch to progress to part 2, which I guess makes sense.

I actually played the "traditional" Boleyn story with a heterosexual guy, which amused me - it was fun to play at being a scheming "kept man". I think that, even if you're straight, there are a couple of references in the text to the fact that not everyone else is, which I thought was nice.

Oh, and the "run away with your impoverished lover" storyline is fun, too. I want to find out if it differs if your Booksmart skill is low; maybe you can't work out that s/he is not as smart as s/he thinks s/he is if you're not all that bright. Game basically begs to be replayed, doesn't it?

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Jamie Johnston

at 13:52 on 2010-09-02

I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

Yes, and that's kind of what I thought was happening, except that in the end I think it's fairly clear that the game doesn't accommodate any divergence between your tactical flirting targets and your personal inclinations. Once I'd told it I was flirting with the boys, my romantic options were the king, the rich boring guy, and the fun but not desperately charming libertine guy. And the libertine guy's the give-away, surely. Because he's positioned as the guy you hook up with if you want to turn your back on both power-seeking and conventional security and just have a good time. There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

That's quite possible, and quite possibly not a good thing if they want these games to spread beyond a core of loyal fans. But if they're only doing it for fun then I guess there's no particular reason they should mind if that doesn't happen.

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Dan H

at 14:36 on 2010-09-03

There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I don't think it's so much that. I think the game takes your statement that you're flirting with the boys as evidence that within the context of the game, you are interested in pursuing heterosexual relationships.

Essentially, from what I can tell, you read the "who do you flirt with" question as asking "are you flirting with the boys, implying that you are either heterosexual or homosexual and pursuing men for social advancement, or with the girls, implying that you are an overt homosexual in a patriarchal, heteronormative society."

What the game doesn't implement is the option to be gay in a heteronormative society, and I'm actually okay with that. It means that you get the option to play a gay character without it being your character's one defining feature.

I can see that the heteronormativity selection could have been more clearly flagged (again they did this better in Broadsides where they make it quite clear that if you choose to play a woman, you're not cross-dressing and running away to sea, you're living in a world where gender roles are reversed).

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Craverguy

at 11:30 on 2015-10-04I love Choice of Games. It's like it was tailor-made for people who love gaming and are broke and/or massive cheapskates. You know, people like me.

In particular, I unequivocally and enthusiastically recommend that everyone who likes choice of adventure games or sci-fi even a little bit play Choice of Robots. It is, hands down, the greatest entertainment-enjoyed-per-dollar-spent value I've gotten this year.

The plot is incredibly branching for a text-based game, and covers everything between building a multi-billion-dollar, war-winning defense contractor, to being a peace-loving bohemian who writes robot novels and dreams of building a robot capable of love, to becoming a cackling mad scientist who has a gun for an arm and leads a robot army in its conquest of Alaska. I spent hours on that sucker.