#I thought it was only the main characters but then I went to the wiki and it's actually ALL of them???

[bonefall]

longtime dc fan and i think a lot of people are angry because alex is obviously one of the most culturally relevant instances of misogyny in media. that being said being more culturally relevant doesn’t mean it’s the worst instance of misogyny and i think bumble definitely experiences more profound misogyny in the way the actual content is presented, if that makes sense

I get you, and that's a charitable way of looking at it.

I think what's rustling my jimmies is that like, there was a couple of WC fans being mildly dismissive of Alex in that note minefield, after dozens of comments of "fuck you how could you let the fridge woman lose" and "Bumble didn't deserve to win ANY rounds" and "how could A CAT experience misogyny." But then WE get blamed for the toxicity because THEY were butthurt that the Funny Cat People have the 'audacity' to win something they feel entitled to.

Like, we've gotta be endlessly charitable as we get openly insulted because they're upset about Alex losing, a very well-known and culturally relevant character with a legacy so massive we have a whole term named after her. But condemnations of "She's just a cat, letting WC into this poll was a mistake, Bumble can't even be a victim of misogyny" only started coming around once I started talking about it.

as if it's OUR fault people got passive-aggressive or even OPENLY aggressive towards us, and that we're "just as bad" for retaliating

But like you said, it's not a "Most Culturally Relevant Misogyny" tournament, it's a "Canon Misogyny Victims" tournament. And you're not even supposed to give a shit that Bumble died. The fat, woman abuse victim is beaten to death by a dictator, and your takeaway is meant to be, "It's so sad that Clear Sky is being blamed for murdering her, now they're all preparing for self-defense against a homicidal maniac, oh nooo :("

And I think that DOES make her deserve the win here! Alex is a MARTYR. Everyone with a brain agrees what happens to her is bad. It happened in her canon because it was bad. We talk about her and keep her memory alive. Bumble gets dismissed entirely out of hand because she's "just a cat in a kid's book" as if that doesn't make it worse, and as if the kid's book didn't treat a domestic abuse survivor like a moron for even asking for help.

Anyway, just to reiterate, I love DC fans. It's not all of you guys. Alex was done dirty and deserves justice-- and it's even kind of a shame that all she became is "The Fridge Woman." I haven't even heard people talk about how she was a wary, responsible person who was still ready to rock with Kyle's new weird glowstick powers, or that she was a journalist, or that she just got brought back in another edition as a Green Lantern only to be revealed as an illusion and re-absorbed back into Kyle's mind. Nope. Even her fans just remember her as The Fridge Woman.

[letmerambleplease]

I really wanna watch Frieren because it looks really cool, but all of the character names are so goofy. 😭

[discord-lurking]

Dungeons and Daddies Wiki Drama: A Greek Tragedy Told through the Medium of Forum Posts (Part 1)

Prologue

Greek tragedies are typically formatted in three or more acts interspersed with choral interludes, beginning with a prologue, and ending with an exodus. In these, protagonists often meet their downfall due to their fatal flaw, or hamartia: the ways in which the protagonists are their own undoing. Our own human failings are the things that bring us the most pain.

When considering a three-act Greek tragedy structure for this, my first thought was to use the Oresteia as a framing device, a trilogy of plays written by Aeschylus about Agamemnon's family in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Upon reflection, though, the themes of the Oresteia (revenge vs. justice, perpetuating a cycle of violence, honor and punishment) didn't quite fit the story I was trying to tell.

No, this is a classic tale of hubris: excessive pride and its ultimate downfall.

After all, what position could come with more power than that of wiki moderator for a Dungeons and Dragons podcast series?

Act One: The Beginning of the End

The D&Dads wiki has historically been... unhelpful, at best. (Source: Myself.) Trouble had been brewing for a long time.

Forum posts from spring 2022 began noting issues cropping up around the wiki. First, it was a complaint about anonymous users "disrupting" the wiki (specifically on Jodie-related pages) while also fixing mistakes in articles.

I'm unsure what specific "disruptions" were meant, but the proposal to ban anonymous users didn't garner much traction.

March 21st, 2022:

After little activity for months (only one forum post, related to infoboxes), wiki user TwoRatner had a radical proposition: wiki migration.

December 17th, 2022:

TwoRatner suggested an alternate platform that would have different editing options, then made a potentially-prophetic statement: the wiki might be cursed.

This warning went unheeded.

December 27th, 2022:

Ten days after the migration suggestion, TwoRatner came back to ask if there were any recent changes. This went unanswered for months until new user Penguinwithafancytophat reported adding art to character pages (including Glenn, a main season 1 character since the start of the podcast in 2019, who incredibly might not have had any official art on his wiki page before March of 2023).

Spring of 2023 seemed to bring along a revival of the wiki, with new editors coming in, engaging with the forum, and attempting to make suggestions on how to improve wiki organization.

March 31st, 2023:

May 27th, 2023:

July 17th, 2023:

October 2nd, 2023:

Interestingly, the only administrator seen to be interacting with these enthusiastic new editors? Gaycowboyrats. Let's put a pin in that.

Enter: the drama.

It started out simple enough- a forum posts for administrators to discuss changes that needed to be made.

November 3rd, 2023:

76 replies.

Seventy. Six. Replies. Each deeply interesting in its own way.

However, this is a Tumblr post, not an Hbomberguy video essay, so I'll keep it brief.

The discussion started out as one might expect a wiki admin discussion to start:

Mods discussed blocks, deleting stub pages, spam, etc. Standard wiki business.

The first reply to ping my interest:

Removing cast pages from a wiki about their work seemed like an odd decision, in my non-wiki-editor opinion, but the last line is what really stuck out: "Besides, I hate the idea of someone vandalizing the pages to defame them."

Several questions arose for me:

Was this a known problem? Were people constantly vandalizing cast pages?

Would a vandalized fandom wiki page really defame somebody?

Isn't the point of wiki editing to remove vandalization on articles?

The administrators began to stand out to me as deeply invested in a very specific sense of wiki justice.

Users TwoRatner, Brazil86, and TheOneTrueGod41 agreed with Honic's take.

Another thing to ping my interest: these users seemed to share a similar odd, slightly stilted, writing style. Almost Tommy Wiseau-esque.

Brazil86 expressed optimism about users engaging with wiki pages, something that would begin to set them apart from other administrators.

As I read, themes began to emerge: wiki justice, and incongruous one-liners.

Quoth Honic Washington: "I just found a wave of nonsense fish. My backyard is full of them. Hey, TOTG41, do you like jazz? I like jazz."

Truly, modern poetry.

Administrator Marth8204 suggested giving people more time. More time for what? Unclear. It seems a plan was afoot.

TwoRatner came in with a hot take: "I feel like we need a community more right now, than adding links that people can search for in the search bar."

Brazil86 agreed: Changing the navigation was less important than getting people editing and making friends.

Another theme began to emerge: wiki community as more important than wiki functionality.

Gaycowboyrats had some (incredibly reasonable) objections to this, pointing out that the wiki was a resource for many visitors who might not participate- something that is generally true of wikis as a form of content.

Honic Washington responded to this, the signs of wiki-related stress beginning to show.

Honic posts a long rant about the thankless task of moderating a wiki, which goes largely unacknowledged.

Notable TwoRatner quotes:

"You can't crack open a few omelets without punching a few egg-rolls."

"Now Freddie will get more money. What do you all say? I think I helped quite a bit."

Another theme emerges: discontent in the wiki moderator ranks.

Honic reaches full Joker mode. Again, this goes largely unacknowledged.

Honic: "I am leader. I am a painter! Keep your rules. Keep your status. Keep your friends."

"Keep your status"- words that will reverberate throughout the rest of this tale.

The final theme? Wiki moderator status, and the maintenance of it.

After Honic's bomb drop, conversation about regular wiki moderation continued, with mods considering the addition of a bot to make edits.

Admin Discussion Zone, first started by Honic Washington, ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Over nearly a year of forum posts, patterns emerged.

Firstly- users attempting to engage in the wiki, wiki administrators not engaging with these new users, then wiki administrators bemoaning the lack of user engagement.

The notable exception was Gaycowboyrats, the only wiki administrator to engage with new users in the forums. Gaycowboyrats, the administrator whose (incredibly reasonable) suggestions ended with Honic Washington's villain-esque monologues and denouement as a moderator.

Secondly- administrators putting forth large-scale, drastic solutions to real or perceived wiki problems. This includes Cheesoid4 wanting to ban anonymous users, TwoRatner suggesting site migration, Honic deleting cast pages to prevent vandalism, and more to come.

Thirdly- wiki administrators seeming to share similar styles of speech and occasional non-sequiturs. Interestingly, this mainly seems to include the wiki administrators who agree with each other.

Funny how that happens.

Chorus

Stay tuned for Part 2, where the forum drama really starts to heat up.

[kerink]

heres your friendly reminder that you very much should listen to every liveshow if you're able. if you can't afford it (or find someone willing to lend it to you) then at least asking someone what happened or going to @cecilspeaks or the wtnv wiki and reading the available transcripts is strongly advised.

from my recollection, here are some of the main important things from the current liveshows:

The Debate: more info on hiram and the FOW's political platforms, marcus vanston becomes an angel, kevin can see the FOW's face

Condos: the in-canon reason why carlos' voice changed, carlos and cecil moving in together, what carlos thinks a perfect life would be, cecil saving carlos for once

The Librarian: i don't recall this one having anything with long-term relevance except for giving us a better understanding of the librarians, but carlos and cecil are horny at each other in it and that's always fun

The Thrilling Adventure Hour: this one i'm a hypocrite about and didn't listen to sorry

The Investigators: carlos is really cute in it but also very cringe and it hurt bulk a lot to listen to. cecil's desk is made entirely out of knives and he has a nest of owls in his office, pamela winchell is part falcon, cecil almost gets murdered. kevins in this one too if that sweetens the pot for anyone

Ghost Stories: get a lot of character insight for a lot of reoccurring characters and also learn a ton about cecil's childhood and relationship with abby. i consider this one to be the most important wtnv liveshow and if you can only get one, this is it

All Hail: info on the glow cloud's personality and motivations, info on deb's family, tamika flynn is immune to the glow cloud's mind control, pamela winchell is into deb, cecil describes his engagement ring, cecil admits he's aware that all his interns always die

A Spy in the Desert: deb knows every secret in town, cecil was stuck at 19, cecil cries every morning because he's getting older, this is where we first learn about esteban

The Haunting of Night Vale: this one doesn't have a transcript up for me to reference to so what i remember is that we get cecil's musings on how his childhood trauma is creating insecurity in himself as a husband and father, also we get to see cecil be a little sugar baby and carlos sweating over how much he's spending

The Attic: i wont spoil this one because it's on going

if anyone else has things they thought were important from the liveshows please feel free to add. i just went off my memory and a skim of the transcripts, which don't always transcribe all the bonus content

[quillsinkwell]

FNAF SECURITY BREACH RUIN SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

1: I really like Cassie, more than I expected to. One of my issues with FNAF was that the human characters don't really feel like characters in the games, more like prop pieces. But Cassie genuinely feels like a character that I want to see get a happy ending.

2: I went in expecting that if I saw Eclipse, he'd be a bastard, and instead was pleasantly surprised. He's my scrunkly :].

3: I really love the Roxy redemption we got!! She was genuinely kind and gentle with Cassie and I loved it.

4: I kept expecting the V.A.N.N.I mask to turn Cassie evil at some point, tho I did enjoy the return of Helpy.

5: At first I was soul crushed when I saw what had become of Freddy, but I saw online that he was a prototype and not good ol' Freddy, so :]

6: Pour one out for Monty I guess. Dude forgot he wasn't a real alligator.

7: Bonnie enjoyers got fed at what cost

8: Yeah no, I refuse to believe Gregory left Cassie to die.

Why would he guide her to the elevator in the first place if he was just gonna kill her off? He went through hell to make sure Freddy was ok, and he knew that guy for less than a day, he wouldn't leave his best friend to rot.

(maybe this is the inner Gregory fan talking, SO WHAT)

The Mimic wasn't shown to be destroyed, just escaped from, and we don't know how much control it had over the Pizzaplex, especially after Cassie freed it. Maybe it was what sent her crashing down.

Or that freaky rabbit (which I'm pretty sure is Afton) hacked the elevator to keep her down below (will elaborate on)

9: I believe the shot in game featuring Vanessa and Gregory confirms that the Princess Quest ending is the canon ending, and y'know what? I'm ok with that, I like the ending, it's got three stars, and the Encyclopedia said that was Gregory's good ending, so I had a feeling it was gonna go that way.

BUT! In that ending, it isn't made clear if by playing the game we killed Afton, or we simply freed Vanessa.

So, what if that glitchy rabbit is Afton, but his vessel wasn't complete, so he got stuck in the system, and the whole 'Vanny Network' thing he set up to try to replace her.

(we don't know how long it's been since the events of SB, and if the three stars ending is the canon ending, then we also don't know what destroyed the Pizzaplex)

Maybe Afton was in control of the elevator, and used Gregory's voice to trick Cassie (like some people were theorizing before the dlc came out) into believing Gregory betrayed her so he could turn her into his replacement Vanny and get her to make him real again.

Are points 8 & 9 a desperate ploy to not have Gregory be an asshole? Probably

Will that deter me? Absolutely not

Also if there is an answer as to how the Pizzaplex got destroyed in the TFTP books, don't spoil please, I've only read Lally's Game, the main reason I know what the Mimic is that SuperHorrorBro kept mentioning it during his playthrough so I checked the wiki.

Also if there are more endings to the DLC, please be cool about spoilers! I've only seen what SHB posted.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on Ruin.

[csphire]

Sad because you need more Dammon?

Here is a guide on how to make him into your player character or guardian. ->New Guide here that includes mod suggestions!

To start with I made sure that all his stats were at least 10 in everything like his original. According to the Wiki Dammon is an Asmodeus Tiefling.

For the extra points left over, I put them into upping his Dexterity (as it helps with dodging damage), the main stat for his class (in this case Wisdom for a Druid), and a bit in Charisma just to make conversation rolls a bit easier. For background, I went with Guild Artisan to further help him with persuasion, give him some insight, and for roleplaying purposes since he was a blacksmith. For cantrips, I would highly recommend picking Guidance to further aid all conversation rolls.

For Class, I went with Druid because it lets him wield a scimitar right at the start. On the Nautolid you can usually find two of these weapons. The second reason is maybe being at the grove rubbed off on him a little. He did after all pick up a few skills while in Avernus why not at the Druid Grove too? The third reason, your doppelganger gets a discount from Arron the other merchant to be found there. But of course, you can make him any other class you wish or multi-class him. I did so myself by adding dragon sorcerer and bard to him later on. (I am tempted to try and get the Jack-of-all-Trades achievement with him.)

When it comes to his eyes there is a slight hiccup. They are currently only unique to Dammon. The closest we can get to them is Blue 3. I vaguely recalled that if one was a tiefling in Early Access even if one were to pick the more human/elven eye colors they would still have a slight glow to them. This is currently not the case as of launch and I'm not aware if there are any mods out that can give us the proper eyes. :

Actually, after some thought, another color might be better than Blue 3 called Sapphire 4 as it's a little more intense.

For make-up, I don't think Dammon wears any but I did add a subtle amount to try to make his eyes stand out a little more and added the tinest amount of color and gloss to his lips. So the following is optional. Personally, I find that particular eyeshadow comes in handy for guys overall at a 10 or 20 intensity level to make their eyes look a little deeper set and um... more broody?

For the hair, you may want to experiment with the red highlight. I don't think I got the color spot on. Below, I outlined other possibilities. On a darker red you may want to go higher in intensity than just 60.

The horns I also worry I made a touch lighter than Dammon's but if you go with a Dusty 6 or 7 that might correct the minor difference.

Below is a final side-by-side comparison in the same lighting. Again, you might wish to experiment and go with a slightly darker red for the red hair highlight and the same with the horns. Also, the dyes I end up using for his gear are Swamp Green or Green to complement his original outfit colors.

Enjoy!

And Special thanks to @deir-emmett for coming up with the guide for the Dammon Dream Visitor available here.

[generic-anime-boy-bracket]

Round 3, Group A: Matchup 2

Hiroshi Satou vs Tracey Sketchit

Reasons for being generic + Propaganda below

Hiroshi Satou

Reasons:

His whole thing in the series is being the most average, normal guy ever. His grades, height, weight, and bathroom time are all canonically 100% average.

The whole point of his character is that he is exactly average in everything. Looks, personality, even his friend group is exactly average.

not only does he look like that but the show is a comedy anime that uses a lot of stereotypes and his is "normal guy." he influences some plot events with the power of his average luck

quite literally the most average guy ever. every single thing about him is perfectly average 

literally everything about him is average. like literally everything. his grades, his appearance. even the amount of time he uses the bathroom. its his entire character

His whole bit is that he’s Perfectly Average. Down to his weight and height. On his wiki page his only listed ability is “normalcy.” His name is derived from the Japanese equivalent of John Doe. The main character is obsessed with him/has a crush on him because he is so so normal and that’s what Saiki wants most

The main character of this show, who stands out against his will, admires Satou Hiroshi for being perfectly average in every way, and "blandness personified." "He is completely average in everything he does. His grades, height, and weight are exactly average. Down to the millisecond, Hiroshi is timed to have the exact average times for the PE evaluation. He is also noted to go to the bathroom for the average amount of time and use the average amount of toilet paper." Basically, he is written to be the most generic guy possible.

From the wiki: "He is the epitome of an ultimate normal guy... Someone who has boring name, common appearance, average in brains and body and has no single quality to stand out. He blends into the background, so the other characters tend to lose sight of him"

Propaganda:

The main character likes him because of how normal and average he is. Also he is just a nice guy

He is the most average man in existence. He even poops for the exact average amount of time. This is the most generic background character to ever exist.

it’s literally a plot point in the show that he’s completely generic guys. he’s perfect for this

Being normal is literally his bit, c’mon guys

The whole point of his character is how boringly normal he is. The main character is super jealous because he doesn't want to stand out

Tracey Sketchit

Reasons:

He has a very "just some guy" vibe, spending most of his time as a background character quietly observing after his 30ish episodes as a main character. Former head writer Takeshi Shudo himself once said on his blog that he thought Tracey didn't have a strong enough personality. Appearance-wise, Tracey has dark hair and brown eyes and doesn't stand out all that much.

He is literally *just* a guy. The best guy, but just a guy. A little dude, little fella. The guy ever.

Tracey is an incredibly sweet respectful king who got sidelined by the anime. It’s so sad because he loves drawing and research and pokemon, but he barely got any screentime 😔 I think he’s a wholesome fun character and he deserves more love!! 

Propaganda:

Despite the fact that large swathes of the fandom either give him flak for being "boring" or completely forget about his existence, to the point that people also meme about his forgotten-ness, he has persisted. He went 17 years without a single line of dialogue due to his expensive seiyuu and then finally got to speak again in the final episode of Ash's story. He has 12 fans but we are dedicated and we are proud and we adore this sweet boy.

Tracey is king. Respects women, stays in his lane, draws pokemon. What’s not to love???

[jack-pseudonym]

A Love Letter to Herobrine

So, fun fact: that screenshot that I'm using as the thumbnail is not the origin of Herobrine as a piece of Minecraft mythology. This image was first posted on 4chan around August 31st, 2010, and the character had been floating around the Minecraft forum for a while before that.

The earliest description of a character resembling Herobrine was posted around July on a general creepypasta thread. The Minecraft wiki calls this story "White Eyes." It was posted by a user named Flaky and you can read it here. The post doesn't feature the iconic Herobrine design, but it's the origin of a lot of the beats that keep coming up in Minecraft horror stories.

To summarize real quick: a Minecraft Alpha player is so creeped out by the weird noises and phenomena in a cave under their base that they seal it up and move elsewhere. Eventually they discover a dungeon with a single broken music disc inside, which causes the cave noises to return louder than before. To play the disc, they need resources from their old storage room built directly above the cursed cave. When they return to their base, the player has an encounter with a pair of glowing white eyes. Eventually they go creepypasta-insane from listening to the music disc and (I think) die.

The contents of this post are not as important as the fact that the author provides us with a screenshot of the cave, which should be right next to the famous Herobrine image in the history books.

(If you're not seeing it, check the bottom left.)

The next Herobrine sighting is the famous one. It's pretty much a compilation of all the ideas about the character that were floating around the Minecraft forum at the time. The main thing it introduces to the canon is the idea that the "Herobrine" account was owned by the deceased brother of famous Minecraft dev Hatsune Miku. The obvious implication is that Herobrine is his ghost. It also gives us the classic "fog hill" image, of course.

The third "canon" sighting was concocted by an early Minecraft streamer named Copeland. This is the highest effort of the three and probably the first Herobrine Sighting Video ever recorded. The first thing Copeland did was edit Herobrine into a few wide screenshots of his base to create hype for the stream. This resulted in the third member of the triumvirate of famous Herobrine screenshots, and honestly maybe the creepiest.

In order to get Herobrine on video, Copeland changed the texture of a painting. He went live shortly after, playing like normal for a while before “encountering Herobrine” in a dimly-lit room, screaming, running out of the room, and turning the game off. He continued to stream for a bit after that before declaring he would delete the world.

Why is Minecraft scary?

It's important to keep in mind that Minecraft at this point had exactly one full-time developer and no marketing department. The only reason a given thing was added to this version of Minecraft was that the developer thought it sounded interesting. This had two major effects on the state of the game that enhanced its creepypasta factor substantially.

One: the game is very bare-bones. Minecraft Alpha's infinite replayability comes from its core concept rather than a depth of additional features. Even some basic quality-of life fixes like the ability to stack most food items are absent from this version of the game. This resulted in the features that were present being scrutinously analyzed and theorized about by hundreds of people at a time on the forums, because once you had diamond armor and a big house there wasn't much else to do except dig into mechanics.

Two: many of those mechanics and features that did exist in Alpha were bizarre, and several of them seem like the developer was going out of their way to create a creepy atmosphere. Let's take a look at the mechanics I'm talking about and examine how each of them contributed to the Herobrine mythology.

Fog and light

One thing the White Eyes story and the famous Herobrine post have in common is a focus on low view distance. The second post even specifically mentions that they were playing with their render distance set very low since their computer didn’t have the specs to run anything higher, which most people in the 2010 indie gaming community could probably relate to.

This is relevant because Minecraft cuts off your view distance really sharply. If your render distance is set close to you, everything beyond the cutoff disappears into a thick bank of fog. This is probably best illustrated by looking at the same hill from the famous screenshot with a higher render distance.

In the Herobrine screenshot, this entire back half of the hill is completely cut off. Literally anything could be inside the fog and it would be totally invisible until you got within a few dozen blocks.

On top of that, this hard cutoff of visibility happens the same way with darkness. Walking just a few blocks into a cave leaves you completely unable to see anything until you place a torch. And, of course, if that torch were to be somehow removed, you would be instantly plunged into pitch blackness. Just look at the White Eyes screenshot up above.

The simplistic lighting engine of Minecraft Alpha is obviously not intended to make the game scarier. That said, as someone who’s become totally accustomed to modern Minecraft’s smooth lighting mechanics, it’s really remarkable how much more eerie the game is when you’re consistently forced to walk into total darkness and thick fog to get anything done. Without smooth lighting, when night starts to fall it looks like an enormous shadow passing over the whole world.

If you've heard of the classic Internet creepypasta Ted the Caver, there's a bit where Ted is stuck inside a similarly cursed cave with no light. Earlier in the story, the writer points out that darkness in caves is different from darkness above ground - there is straight-up no light to see with. Your eyes never adjust. Something could be literally inches from from his face and he would never see it. These older versions of Minecraft feel like that.

(If you want to experience the horrors yourself in the modern day, turn smooth lighting off, brightness down to Moody, and crank your render distance down. I seriously recommend it.)

Dungeons

Dungeons are the only place in this version of Minecraft where you can find naturally generated cobblestone. The normal way to get cobblestone is to mine stone and place it back down, and it was the go-to strong building block for quite a while. This gives dungeons the distinct feeling of having been built by someone.

But this is contrasted with the monster spawner, which is one of the most alien blocks in the game. It’s not obtainable in survival mode in any way, it’s destroyed if you try to pick it up, and the floating image of a monster inside the cage is still probably the least blocky thing in the game.

Dungeons are also extremely rare for some reason. You could easily spend weeks in the same survival world and never find one, especially if you didn't enjoy caving for the sake of it once you had all the diamonds you needed.

All this is to say that if you were a Minecraft player in 2010 who’d never encountered one, someone on the forum describing finding a dungeon would sound exactly like the intro to any other creepypasta you'd read recently, right up until it happened to you. It's hard to convince your subconscious that an eerie forum story is completely fictional when things like dungeons are real.

Music discs

Okay, I've been writing about the eerie side of Minecraft for like a thousand words, and I somehow haven't brought this up yet. We need to talk about Discs 11 and 13.

The vast majority of music discs in Minecraft are electronic music tracks composed by German musician C418. They’re basically lo-fi beats to relax / play Minecraft to. There are two considerable exceptions to this genre. Let’s talk about 11 first.

The first thing you’ll notice about it is that the colored portion is black and the outside of the disc is cracked and broken, which is one of the most creepypasta things to ever be in a real game. And then, when you pop it into the jukebox and turn it on, instead of lo-fi electronic beats, you get this.

The track opens with heavy breathing and footsteps on stone, as the recorder of the disc runs through what is pretty clearly a cave. They sound terrified of something, but after a few seconds they stop and catch their breath. Soon, though, there’s a sound like faraway music and the recorder breaks into a run, faster this time, terrified again. The speed of the footsteps increases until the sound changes from stone to dirt, a sign that they’re almost at the surface, until there’s something that sounds like a growl and the sound abruptly cuts off. The last few seconds of the recording are static.

This is probably the most overtly horror-themed Minecraft ever gets, and this disc features heavily in a lot of Minecraft creepypasta. It makes sense. In the middle of an album of chill, electronic music, there’s one disc that’s a found footage horror short film, complete with the person holding the recorder meeting with some fate at the end. Imagine you’re going through your friend’s old VHS collection and there’s a copy of The Poughkeepsie Tapes in the middle of it with no explanation.

Also, this is the only time there’s any real physical evidence of another person existing in this world. Villages weren’t added until the release of Beta months later, and even then, this doesn’t sound like a villager. It sounds like us.

Disc 13 is less infamous by comparison, but it’s still jarring compared to the rest of the soundtrack. 13 consists mostly of slow, reverberating ringing sounds, and at this point I’m going to bring in the last weird Minecraft feature, because they sound like cave noises.

Cave noises are maybe even more infamous among the community than disc 11 as “the thing that makes Minecraft scary.” The most common of these noises are either relatively realistic, like wind or something, or eerie but obviously musical, like part of the soundtrack. Every so often, though, you’ll get one that sounds like footsteps, or the sound of a minecart traveling down a distant track. There’s obviously nothing actually there, but it’s another piece of evidence that even if you’re the only person in this world, there are things here that you didn’t make. This is not helped by the fact that the criteria for a cave noise occurring include darkness.

Conclusion 1

If you take all of these things together - the fog, the darkness, the weird signs that you’re not necessarily alone in this world - it’s easy to see where the sheer amount of creepypasta about this game comes from. It would not be unbelievable in 2010 that something like Herobrine could actually be in the game, and even if you were an adult and didn’t buy that he literally existed, Minecraft Alpha is still a nearly perfect game for scaring the shit out of yourself after just having read a bunch of horror stories.

(I know this because I scared the shit out of myself several times while revisiting Minecraft Alpha for this essay.)

Why Herobrine?

Surprise! There's more.

So we know where the Herobrine story comes from: a bunch of people playing an old, weird sandbox game that - intentionally or by accident - also functions surprisingly well as a survival horror game, and scaring themselves because it’s fun.

Now I want to talk about why the Herobrine story specifically resonated so hard with people that it still exists while hundreds of others have been basically forgotten. Keep in mind, the White Eyes story originated on a thread for a completely different creepypasta that no one has ever heard of. So what’s special about Herobrine?

To start with, we need to take a look at the specifics of Herobrine that set it apart from other creepypasta characters. The Minecraft wiki has a definition of “canonical” Herobrine that includes the first forum posts and images, like the famous 4chan post, as well as the Copeland streams. These are, quote, “fundamental to the creation and popularization of the character.” So let’s look at the commonalities between them.

Herobrine apologism

The most interesting thing these stories have in common, especially compared to more modern Herobrine, is a complete lack of aggression from Herobrine in game. The narrator of White Eyes does go crazy and maybe die, but that happens due to influence from Disc 11. The actual entity with the white eyes only appears once, and it never personally acts on the player.

In the original 4chan post, Herobrine is explicitly stated to run away and disappear if the player tries to approach and get a clearer look at him. The Copeland saga begins with Herobrine watching him in the corner of a screenshot, and even during the close encounter Herobrine doesn’t chase him out of the house or even follow him. He just stands there.

Just looking at the original Herobrine canon, there’s almost no reason to even conclude he’s malevolent at all.

So if Herobrine isn’t out to get you in the original canon, what does he do? Aside from watching you from the edge of your vision, there are a few consistent things to watch out for in the oldest videos. The most famous Herobrine signs are pyramids made of sand, trees with the leaves removed, and tunnels to nowhere, almost always lit with redstone torches.

The thing that strikes me about these signs is that they’re almost player-like, except with no internal logic to them. Building structures, cutting down trees, and digging tunnels are core to the gameplay loop of Minecraft, except in the Herobrine versions there’s no productivity. The pyramids are uninhabitable and the tunnels are never deep enough to find ore. It’s like what someone would do if they knew what you were supposed to do in Minecraft, but couldn’t understand why.

By far the most common explanation for the origin of Herobrine is that he’s a ghost. The most famous herobrine story says that he’s the dead brother of Hatsune Miku, and that part of the mythos is considered basically canon now. Even if you don’t like that element (can you tell I don’t?), a lot of posts from this time period describe him as the ghost of a miner. This is probably because the game literally has inexplicable mining sounds programmed into its caves. Either way, it’s hard to avoid the idea that Herobrine used to be a normal guy. Someone who lived in this empty world before you did.

"REAL HEROBRINE SIGHTING 100% PROOF"

There’s a Youtube playlist that I come back to a lot. It’s called “The Oldest Herobrine Sightings Ever (In Order!)” Most of the videos are either clearly faked, made by a 9-year-old, or clearly faked by a 9-year-old, but they still have a vibe to them that totally captivated me when I was younger and half buying into it.

They still give me a similar feeling years later, which is obviously partially due to nostalgia, but I don’t think the feeling is actually the exact same. It’s not quite nostalgia, and it’s not the the fear-slash-fascination I felt in 2012, glued to these videos while ready to run out of the room at any time in case something too scary happened. It’s closer to a good kind of melancholy.

And if you go back to The Oldest Herobrine Sightings Ever with the idea of feeling some empathy for him, it makes them hit a lot harder than if you just assume he's a murder ghost who’s coming to get you. I know I’m pretty far into Death of the Author territory at this point; I’m projecting an amount of emotional complexity onto fake cryptid sightings made by internet babies that almost definitely wasn’t there to begin with, but that doesn’t make this reading of the story any less impactful to me.

In order to make this point of view more believable, I’ve cherrypicked a video from the playlist for us to look at. The video is, naturally, called “REAL HEROBRINE SIGHTING 100% PROOF” by CreeperAssassin87. It's only five minutes long and I recommend watching it so you can determine for yourself if I'm making shit up.

In the video, CreeperAssassin heads out of their (pretty impressive) base only to find themselves face-to-face with the man himself. What happens next is probably the best example of my point in the whole playlist, but if you watch the other videos closely you can notice this pattern.

CreeperAssassin says very confidently that Herobrine started “chasing” them, but look at what he’s actually doing. He’s not running at the player or even really looking at the screen, and he’s not armed with anything more dangerous than a pickaxe. Remember, at this point in history, Herobrine wasn’t believed to have any magic powers to attack you with either. There’s nothing actually threatening going on here.

After that jumpscare, CreeperAssassin naturally spends the rest of the video running away and hiding, with Herobrine following close behind. My favorite part comes after the player has sealed themselves inside the wall of the castle. Herobrine breaks in, and once he has CreeperAssassin completely cornered...

...he doesn’t do anything. He just stands there and stares. The narration claims to have “luckly escaped” [sic], but I genuinely find it hard to see any malice in his behavior here.

One of the last appearances of Herobrine in the video is him watching CreeperAssassin through the window of their base after they block off the door. At this point, the video has firmly established that he's able to break blocks, and CreeperAssassin is completely cornered again. If he wanted to harm the player, he could do it easily. But once he's shut out, he just resigns himself to it.

Again, this video is probably the strongest example, but this observation holds pretty well for the vast majority of Herobrine sightings from this time period. If you shift your perspective a little bit, his behavior is not far off from what a normal person might do if they encountered another player for the first time.

Oh, hello. Who are you? It's nice to finally meet someone else. I thought I was alone out here.

Of course, nearly everyone he meets runs away and shuts him out. Eventually most of them either abandon their haunted worlds or delete them entirely.

Conclusion 2

For a lot of people on the Minecraft forums in 2010, Herobrine may have been an introduction to stories like this. I obviously doubt that a tragedy about a ghost doomed to wander alone forever was what any of the people involved here intended to make. That said, those emotions are still present, and strongly enough that they inspired me to write this entire thing.

I believe this contrast between the fear created by reading a scary story about an eerie game and the inherent sadness of the Herobrine figure is what made this story stand the test of time. Compare Herobrine with his more one-dimensionally hostile imitators, and then compare him with other creepypasta hall-of-famers like Ben Drowned. All the greatest urban legends make you feel something more complex than "afraid."

One last thing that I thought made a really good anecdote to conclude this vibes-based essay.

One of the most successful post-canon additions to the Herobrine lore is the idea of a Herobrine spawner, a structure you can build that will let him in to your world. The materials needed to do this are pretty consistent between stories, involving a base made of gold, redstone torches, sometimes some mossy cobblestone, and a netherrack pillar on top. Lighting the netherrack on fire is what activates the structure.

(There are some pretty obvious parallels here with real-life rituals meant to summon ghosts or spirits, especially the lighting of a fire.)

The origin of this structure, as far as I can tell, dates back to one of the first ever mods meant to add Herobrine to the game, a server plugin released in 2010. This plugin not only introduced the spawner, but Herobrine’s behavior in it is really interesting. He’s much more docile in this plugin than in the substantially more famous Herobrine Mod released the following year, where he directly attacks the player and summons zombies and whatnot.

The keystone here is the name of the plugin, the file you have to download to let him into your world. It’s not called “Him,” or “WakeUp,” or “WhiteEyes.”

It’s called “iLoveYou.”

[house-of-mirrors]

hey, I hope this isn't weird to say, but reading about your Fallen London OCs inspired me to start hashing out my own OC's background/personality/etc. If you don't mind - do you have any tips for balancing roleplay/the story of Fallen London with its grind if that makes sense? ty in advance!

Hey there! Yes, I can speak to that.

In summary:

find a friend to exchange letters with in game

have activities to do in between action refreshes that will allow you to be creative and think about your character/the story

design a picrew/draw something/moodboard for your character

write about your character: it doesn't have to be a whole fic, just something to get excited about them with!

use the ambition as an opportunity to explore their fears, why they want what they want, and what lines they won't cross for their goals

do historical reading on the side, if you're so inclined

think about your character's reactions to doing the grind and their emotional investment

don't stress. don't feel like you need to know or finish everything right away. this is a game that takes years to finish, not months. go at your own pace. don't worry about what endgame players are talking about or what a guide says you should be doing. do what you want to do. if you're having a good time, that's all that matters. 8 1/2: the official subreddit is a tense and argumentative place focused on efficiency more than story, go there at your own risk

the game has hundreds of hidden gems. the most impactful stories aren't always the ones that come at the end of long grinds, but little card based things, or something you read in "airs of London," or a niche activity in a certain location. find the ones you love and make them a part of your character's story.

I tried to limit as many spoilers as I could, at least in the early game until my ambition was over, because I found it enhanced the story/roleplay if I reacted in real time with my character.

More detailed answer:

When I first started the game, I went into it totally blind, no wiki and no context except my good friend who got me to start playing. Do what feels right for you in terms of how much outside info to seek, but please, take the game at your own pace and don't overthink the amount of content. There's no rush. The game is grind-y, but there's no need to stress about big things you haven't gotten to yet. One step at a time.

When I ran out of actions on a grind, I wrote letters in game to my friends' character(s). I drew/designed outfits for my oc, and I started writing slice of life fics with them that led to deeper thoughts about character backstory, development, and trials. Since I went in without any outside information about the lore, I felt as if I was discovering stuff alongside my character and was doing my own historical reading on the side to get ideas. The book How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a good book about the day to day life of England in the era, though it doesn't touch on super diverse experiences.

The ambition quest gave me lots of thoughts about roleplaying, but the main stories aren't the only opportunity to develop your character's story. There are hundreds of hidden gems in the game! Since this is a horror game, thinking about what my character is afraid of and what lines they won't cross helped me to roleplay.

Giving your character an emotional reaction to the grind can help too. What methods are they using to get what they need, and why do they want it so much? How tired are they. How desperate are they.

Without spoilers, there are a few parts of ambition: nemesis that I got stuck on for weeks at a time because I needed to unlock a certain area or get a certain amount of resources. My character Orsinio had an increasing sense of dread as he grew closer in his preparations to traveling to the new location for the first time, knowing it would be a test of character and his life would not be the same after going there and doing what he meant to do. As the story grew more challenging with grinds, he was forced to wonder how far he'd go for his goals. Later, when a large amount of resources are required to progress the ambition, I gathered them through means Orsinio would have used as a character (ye olde wilmot's end/newspaper carousel). He felt a closer connection to his lost brother by meddling in the great game and doing investigative journalism.

I hope this all helps. Send me a calling card if you want to send letters :) Enjoy the journey, my friend!

[buttercup-bollz]

HAZBIN HOTEL CRITIQUE/REWRITE. TW: OPINIONS!!! HEAVY TOPICS obvi bc this is hh pt. 1.5

VAGGIE

critiques

so... vaggie.

definitely also one of my faves YET the LEAST thought-out character out of the ENTIRE main six cast, asides from niffty, of course.

honestly, i'm not surprised- given that this is a very frequent phenomenon in media, where one of the people in a sapphic couple end up being watered down to nothing but as an accessory for their partner (uwu gay bean!!! wow vaggie so gay for charlie !!!!!). i mean. I SUPPOSE i can see the direction they were trying to aim her character towards but ... its just so... MEEH? literally, that's the BEST word i'd have to use for her character as a whole. a pretty interesting idea/take yet lacking proper execution & diligence in making consequent storylines.

the wiki page states:

Vaggie is an angel and former Exorcist. She is the deuteragonist of Hazbin Hotel and serves as the manager of the Hazbin Hotel.

Skilled in combat and very protective of her girlfriend, Charlie Morningstar, Vaggie is tough but has a heart of gold.

... pretty dry aint it

there's EIGHT episodes. EIGHT EPISODES where they'd managed to flesh out VOX better than HER who is literally supposed to become a major threat only in SECOND season. don't get me wrong, im a vox kinnie and i love him so much, but it sickens me how there's so much we can say about vox but VAGGIE???? vaggie's ENTIRE personality just basically spins around charlie.

and hey, that's fine, too! it can make up for an interesting arc- and there's clearly implications of how she struggles to separate herself from charlie, example:

episode three, scrambled eggs:

"I took charge today and it all went sideways. I'm supposed to make your dreams a reality. I'm supposed to protect you.  I'm supposed to never fail you."

"If I can't help you, what's the point of me?"

like. I REALLY do recognize what they were planning out- i only feel like there wasn't enough.... flavour? emotion? screen-time devoted towards her struggles? or maybe this also could be the result of hazbin hotel's recurring problem: "show, don't tell." and honestly i kinda presume the last one to be more suitable in this case.

the thing is, a lot of stuff that viv says doesn't really make it into the show. she keeps mentioning how husk LOVES magician tricks, grew up in a casino, but... if i didnt know any better i'd NEVER have even the slightest thought that he, in fact, enjoys magic tricks??? the closest to that is him using cards as weapons but it can be easily alluded to his gambling addiction instead. or how angel dust was from the mafia. look at this pink twink and say to my face that he has an inkling of mafiosa blood in him?

im really on edge about this scene because on one hand, i can praise the team for at least making a scarce attempt at establishing her issues- on the other... jesus fucking christ, it was so out of place. i mean, if you didn't SCRUPULOUSLY inspect and examine it time and time again just like i did, and watched it for the first time, you'd be just left dumbfounded and utterly lost on "where tf did that just come from????"

this is only ONE sentence, too. we NEVER get it brought up again. NEVER. we just... then continuously ignore it up until the end. of course, charlie & vaggie talk it out eventually. it was very sweet and an example of healthy communication between the two, however quite iffy:

vaggie: " I'm sorry I got so crazy today."

charlie: " No, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I put pressure on you. We work as a team. I guess I just thought all this would be easier, but, we'll figure it out, together. I mean, look what your exercise did for them."

very good apologies! i loved how apologetic both of them were and how they were instantly willing to talk it out, and that charlie respected vaggie's need for personal space & left her alone, but...

... what. in the holy. was that?

i thought the ENTIRE point was that she was UNSURE of what she was without charlie??? what do you mean "we work as a team"???? the FUCK? didn't you say some time ago "Vaggie, don't say that! You do so much! It's-" YOU INSISTED THAT SHE DOES SO MUCH OUTSIDE OF HELPING YOU BUT THEN LATER YOU QUITE LITERALLY TURN IT ON IT'S HEAD? okay. maybe you mean that this isn't ALL for charlie, and that vaggie is a distinct part of it, too. but the phrasing is so hard to decipher and in the end i can't even make sure claims because it's just so vague. was it a mistake from the writers or was it on purpose? its unclear. and im sure people wouldn't want to waste all of their brain-cells trying to make sense of what the FART this was translating and leading up to. like- simultaneously, there's this "show don't tell" problem AND vague turns of phrases, too? it's just a big mess.

"guys LOOK she's so totally dependent on charlie!!"

"so... does that mean she's basically based off charlie and is an addition to her?"

"no!!!!! she's just charlie's gf!"

honestly that's how i see it. they are trying to desperately shove something down our throat and we can't even know for sure what it is- is that chocolate or some frozen flavoured poop? okay eccentric comparison i know but i think a lot of people will agree with me when i say that vaggie deserves a MUCH more clearer storyline, without the writers having to SPELL IT OUT and assure us that this is REAL, yet provide little evidence to back up their claims.

and gosh i fucking DESPISE her name with my whole heart. the meaning/reasoning behind it makes me even more distasteful and disturbed- like there's NO fucking way sera would allow this??? she's adam's manager isn't she, so HOW DID SHE LET HIM DO THAT?? she's supposed to be in charge of this whole fucking thing and take "load" of responsibility on herself? but to me it just seems like sera fucking dumped everything onto adam and then goes whining about how "gawd guys im so stressed!!!! *wipes sweat* tis so hard sitting on my ass all day and telling adam to handle everything on a daily basis!!! *sighs* man am i tired" girl don't take ALL credit from adam away aye? considering everything, he's an amazing commander that supports his soldiers (and don't you fucking DARE tell me that he's a "misogynist", i WILL sneak into your house at night) and does all he can trying to lead an army of THOUSANDS???

vaggie's distrust for men is also unjustified... he PRAISED her and said that she was "one of his top girls", he didn't say anything along the lines of hateful, GENUINELY congratulated her for getting a gf... so where's the distrust coming from? he attacked her? it was literally lute, and all he did was take away her halo. he didn't beat her up on a daily basis or anything, at least as far as we can see? did he act-up stuck up? yeah sure, but so is lute saying that "angels don't make mistakes". and even then it's NOT a good reason to be distrustful towards men... he's just a narcissistic person that's proud of the fact he's the first man that's it. his gender literally doesn't matter in the long-run. and he's... only lowkey sexist at some points? again, it just shows more of how much of a dickbag he is rather than some predatory rapist that sees women as objects and thinks that the entire reason the exorcist army is so good is only because of him. (quote: "lute, how many demons did you kill this year?" "about two seventy five, sir" "woah, badass! pound it danger tits." he doesn't go: "man I trained you so well! gosh im such an amazing big man!" ) or wtv the fuck people think of him. and trust me, i do have the rights to argue about this as a woman who has been sexually harassed by men repeatedly. i wouldn't be creeped out by adam, i'd just think he's a sexist weird dumbass but that's it.

its just.. okay, maybe im getting a little overboard here. let's change the subject and talk about the whole ordeal with "out for love".

what the HELL was the point of that song? WHY did vaggie need to hear it? ALL she did up until that point was SOLELY because of charlie... she doesn't need to be taught to remember to protect her because THAT'S ALL SHE FUCKING DOES THROUGHOUT THE SHOW? she tells charlie not to trust angels not because of a personal vendetta/prejudice but because she's worried for charlie and her ending up disappointed by the fact that heaven isn't as carefree as she thinks? and she literally has every right to do so, her fucking lieutenant severely injured her to a point she became disabled? at least that's how they demonstrate it.

onto her backstory.

why did she spare the sinner child?

i mean... it may be a silly question but in the end it has A LOT of weight to it. she was taught that demons are HORRIBLE, eldritch creatures that deserved nothing but eternal punishment, and then suddenly she sees a kid and then refuses to kill him? i really don't believe that's how it works. what would be the difference if it was an adult crying and being scared? what was the thing that spurred her on to give mercy to a demon at that moment, "the embodiement of pure evil"? she was one of the exorcists' army's "top girls", meaning she had a very high body count, and this was another Extermination like any other, so what in the WORLD stopped her? i really don't fucking believe the delusion that she DIDN'T kill a demon child at some point before that or witnessed someone doing it instead. it's just... god i'm fuming so bad because so many things are thrown into our faces but they don't end up getting properly explained.

and don't even get me started onto the wings thing. HOW DID SHE REGROW HER WINGS GODDAMIT? IS THAT ALL SHE HAD TO DO? SING AND PRANCE AROUND TO A LATINA BEAT WITH A GIGANTIC SWORD WOMAN? WHY ISN'T IT QUESTIONED BY ANYBODY IN THE SHOW... YOU GOT TECHNICALLY AN ENTIRE LIMB RIPPED OUT AND SUDDENLY IT GROWS BACK LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED? that is so fucking strange and I'm willing to bet all my organs painful as hell.

"im not used to fighting with long hair" BITCH WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE LONG HAIR THEN??? DON'T YOU WANT TO PROTECT CHARLIE? HUH???? YOU WANT TO PROTECT HER BUT MAKE IT HARDER TO DO SO BY YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY HYPOTHETICALLY ENDANGERING HER SAFETY???

and guys, please explain to me how the fallen angel thing works? like... the process of becoming fallen? why does lucifer get funky horns + a tail and vaggie doesn't? is it because he's a seraphim and she's an exorcist? why has no one noticed that she's vastly different from the rest of sinners? literally carmilla makes a jab at that in the show itself and breaks the fourth wall, which is icky icl. HOW NO ONE FIGURED OUT SHE WAS AN EXORCIST AND WHY CHARLIE NEVER QUESTIONED THE FACT THAT SHE WIELDED A RANDOM ANGELIC SPEAR? how did she NEVER see vaggie's golden blood when she first found her? so confusing.

why the hell does she wants to help charlie? like, okay yes, she saved her and she's her girlfriend and she wants to support her and everything, but how did vaggie came to terms with the fact that hey, maybe redemption is possible? and even then the wiki says that it's " unclear whether Vaggie fully buys into Charlie's concept for redemption". and it makes her flat as a character. she doesn't have her own goals besides helping charlie.

hello rosie!:

"Perhaps this girl, was trying to redeem herself too."

SHOW ME??? SHOW ME THEN???? SHOW ME HOW SHE'S TRYING TO REDEEM HERSELF TOO? I LITERALLY DON'T GIVE TWO FUCKS ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME I WANT TO SEE THIS DIRECTLY COMING FROM VAGGIE.

*HAS A KEYBOARD RAGE*

sighs.

since this is taking long enough and im worn out, i'll be separating this into two parts; the first is this, the critique, and the second half will be about the rewrite.

let me know if you'd enjoy me making a fanfic out of this and be sure to check out my charlie morningstar post!

[these-detestable-hands]

Slightly long post about parents in octopath 1 and 2. Or, the lack of parents for certain characters. I'm sick and tired and didn't double check any wiki pages for this so idk if any of it is incorrect

For most of the travelers, we know the deal with their parents. The only ones who we don't really hear about are Cyrus, Olberic, Therion, Castti and Osvald.

With Olberic and Therion, you can make an educated guess as to what happened to their parents (Olberic's died during the fall of Hornburg and Therion's are likely also dead)

And then I'm left wondering about the other three.

With Cyrus, we know almost nothing about his life pre story. He worked with Odette 10 years ago but that raises more questions because he was 20???? But just with the main story, you're left wondering if he has family and how they reacted to the pedo rumors. Did they think they were true? Did they see him off when he left Atlasdam?

I think Cyrus should be studied more cause. Man. His story is also very impersonal. Everyone deals with old friends/enemies or has something else deeply personal at stake and then there's Cyrus who did all that basically because he was bored. His story honestly would've worked a little better if he was maybe 10-15 years older but that's another discussion entirely.

Anyway, enough pretending like this post was supposed to be centered around Cyrus, I only mentioned him cause I needed to double check in my head if any ot1 travelers didn't really mention their parents in their stories. Realistically, he just doesn't talk to them very much and the pedo rumors put a strain on their relationship so he decided to just not think about it.

CASTTI AND OSVALD TIME.

Did Castti's parents know any of what was going on? Did they know she traveled Solistia and helped people?? Did they live in Healeaks? Were they apothecaries as well??? But more importantly, did Castti ever even remember them? One interpretation of her story is that because she only went to places she visited with Eir's apothecaries, she only remembers stuff related to them and her brain just never really went "oh crap I had a life outside of my work and buddies".

I think the most realistic answer is probably that she doesn't talk to them :c

Osvald.

Ok listen I don't really have a lot of complex thoughts on this one, mostly just copy pasted from Cyrus but with bigger stuff like "did they believe he killed Rita and Elena?"

LISTEN I need Elena to have grandparents. It's unlikely Rita's parents are alive because sheesh we all saw what happened to Alpates but Osvald is literally just some guy.

How did they react when he went to prison? Would they want to talk to him again after his story? If they disliked him, would they at least still love their granddaughter?? Please just give Elena grandparents who will spoil and take care of her, she deserves to have living family other than Osvald.

[lucabyte]

what would your ocs be as pokemon? or if you've already done that what would they be as bugsnax??

Oh I have never been asked this publicly before (for I have not been asked... anything publicly before this week LOL) but I don't know if you're prepared for how much I have thought about my ocs as pokemon or how much effort I am currently putting in to... Well. You'll see.

So. I have Thoughts.

Here are my thoughts (names quickly added for this to be understandable by anyone but me. But I've had this image made for quite some time)

(I love that regular wingull appears on here twice. It was kind of the only choice for both of them LOL.)

(also I like how this shows you who my brain considers In A Group with each other... hee hee)

So this is like.. The whole cast of MYMK lmao. Even down to background characters. These are like... PMD style pokemon assignments. I tried to balance "literally looks like them" with "has the right vibes, thematically". So you can see a couple thematic pairs of pokemon like the cherrims, meowstics and such. Then other fun picks like Charizard for Hainu, since he's a, well, hypebeast more than he is a person. Then, Markus and MacGuffin get Silvally and Type: Null for (wink) reasons.... And Miao is Marowak because don't even worry about it. Lupus is Lycanroc-Dusk because funny doggy shounen protagonist :)

Also there are ABSOLUTELY pokemon that fit Tabitha better than Persian does but I've been saying hes one of those since 2015 and I'm attatched to it now.....

The reason I went ahead and planned these out and finalised these recently though.... Is because I also assigned them all ideal ribbons/marks/pokeballs and am going to hunt them all! Right now I'm prioritising getting ones where the ribbons/balls necessitate getting them from gens 4-7, but they're all nearly done and are sitting in ultramoon while I grab the royal master ribbon for a few!

(Obviously I've named pokemon after OCs before but these will be The Definitive Guys... Until next gen inevitably introduces the perfect guy for someone lol. C'est la vie!)

I've got a couple more already in swsh and scvi (recently I caught Lazulite in swsh! Go Raid RNG!) but this is the big first step. As for how many other steps there are....

Don't.

Don't even worry about it.

Anyway! Most of the main characters have fully assigned "if they were a pokemon trainer" Rosters too with some lore. (Chrome does contests, All of Tabitha's pokemon have been gifted to him, Lupus has insane shiny luck, Ali Will Summon Giratina....)

Also! The Alighieri triplets map perfectly onto the shiny meowths! They were the first three I went out of my way to hunt back when I saw shiny G-Meowth and realised!!! Pink Yellow Blue!!! My little guys!!

And lastly the thing you almost certainly weren't asking was "what would your OCs look like if they were fakemon, but I also have that for, you guessed it, Chrome, Tabitha and Ali.

Now... As for bugsnax. I have not played bugsnax but I DO have a resident bugsnax fan... So I asked him out of curiosity and they Extremely Delivered. So, Courtesy of @thebrightesteyes....

(me, going on the wiki for the first time: WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE 112 BUGSNAX I THOUGHT THERE WERE LIKE. 20)

these things are cute i should play this game. i hear there's divorce.

Anyway I've been trying to rotate a PMD AU in my brain for some time now (purrgatorio lends itself well to it, obviously...) I wonder what I'd make the antagonist...

Also, of note. Ali (and their siblings) does actually have a canon favourite pokemon and opinion on pokemon because they're from a real-world setting. Thing is they are like, not a gamer. So...

Ali likes Dusknoir and Seviper because they saw them on trading cards as a kid and likes Hoopa Unbound because Ari showed them on pokemon go knowing they'd like the design. If they gamed though they'd LOVE Giratina but Hoopa would probably stay top spot.

Ari likes Raichu, Lurantis and Toucannon. (Gamer)

Avi likes Clefairy, Meloetta and Brionne. (The kind of person to seek out fanart and gifsets online to reblog)

[king-magppi]

PLEASE tell us more about the camper parents/guardians, they have so much personality already but I'm curious as to your thoughts on them!!!

OK SO. Here's a little info on some of the pairs! I based some of their backstories and "parenting" on how their children behave in Psychonauts 1 and on what little insight into the campers' home-lives we are given by their Campster pages if any at all (there's a web archive link to it on the Ps wiki when you look for "Campster" if you ever wanna check them out! Lots of interesting stuff on there! I've also tried to add it here!). They don't all have names yet, but soon enough they will!

⚠️ALSO! Before we start: a quick content warning for mentions of child abuse, alcoholism, and neglect. Not all of these kids live happy lives.⚠️

The Canolas: Don Canola and his wife homeschool Maloof and get him private tutoring in the subjects he needs help in. They're actually one of the more stable families of the bunch despite being a crime family.

Ms. Foote: Her and her Ex-husband share custody of Clem. Their relationship is extremely rocky and the only reason he even gets to see his son is because of the intense fear she has of him. She finds it hard to have a relationship with her son because of his unwillingness to show interest in anything at home. She tries her best to indulge in anything Clem seems to enjoy, but she feels like she barely knows him.

The Phages: Ms Phage is a widow and now single mother to Milka Phage. Her husband was an alcoholic that stormed off after an argument over his addiction one day and just never came home. The police found his body with several stab wounds under a bridge somewhere days later. After this death, Ms Phage went into a severe depression. During this time, she would become irritable when she saw her daughter and told her to "dissappear" because she couldn't stand to look at her (she looks a lot like her dad). Milka became so good at disappearing on command that sometimes her mom just straight up forgot she was there. During these times, Milka would help herself to whatever was in the fridge and hang around for however long she'd like. Well, at least her cat could see her.

Ms. Snagrash: The single mother to Crystal (never married). She hasn't gotten the memo that she can't go out drinking and partying all day anymore if she's a mom. Because of this mindset, she sees Crystal as a burden and make sure she knows that. She's never had Crystal in a stable environment and is always with some new guy she more than likely wants to leech money from.

The Bulgakovs: Mr. and Mrs. Bulgakov are Mikhail's parents! They live in Kazan, Russia, but sent little Misha over just so he can make some friends over in The States! Mr Bulgakov looks stern and serious, but enjoys a good bear fight. Mrs Bulgakov wishes the boys would get some different, more productive interests like carpentry or archery or something...

The Tripes: Mr and Mrs Tripe love to tell Vernon stories! They encourage him to make his own and think he'll make a great author one day (with A LOT of practice, of course). Sometimes, they'll tell Vernon a story, and he'll try to tell the same one to kids at his school but with HIM as the main character. They have an old little dog named "Lady" that Vernon likes to take on walks.

Ms. Fir: She is the single mother of Elton who works at a brothel by the seaside (this is also where she met his father). While she isn't with her son 24/7, she still makes an effort to provide what she can for him in their situation. Elton spends most of his time down by the docks talking to the marine life in the sea.

The Hedgemice: Mr and Mrs Hedgemouse are the parents to Quentin Hedgemouse! They are probably one of the most loving and supportive pairs in this bunch! Mr Hedgemouse used to be in a band himself in highschool (it wasn't very good or well known, but he had fun!) and thinks it's great Quentin's got one too! He often jokes about trying to join "The Levitators". Nowadays he works as a simple book shop clerk. Mrs Hedgemouse is a stay at home mom who enjoys baking and making treats! She dreams of one day opening her own bakery!

The Loves: Mr and Mrs Love are still new to learning about their psychic powers. They only recently got into it after finding out that Phoebe shared this gift and was having problems controlling it.

(P.S. I'm really glad a lot of you seem to enjoy them so far!!!!! Like I'm seeing a bunch of positive feedback for them and it makes me 😭😭😭/pos)

[demonsfate]

I've already went over why TK8's story didn't work for Jin, despite the fact it was clearly meant to "fix" him. But since I am in a ranty / analytical mood today, I will go over it to add to the other post lol.

Jin's characterization is actually pretty damn good in TK8. It's the first time, since TK5, that Jin felt like the Jin I love. However... the characterization is where the good ends. The story still messes him up tremendously, if not WORSE... which? How tf can they even ACHIEVE making a bigger mess of the current mess? Especially with proper characterization?

It's what I've been saying since the start of this blog, they should've just retconned it. Like, it's even easier than most would think to retcon it. But they didn't. Dunno why, but they didn't. And it'd be one thing if they didn't retcon it and just had Jin say "I gotta redeem myself!" once, but... the problem is, they keep DOUBLING DOWN on TK6's story. They persistently remind the player about it... except only reminding the player about it on a surface level. Like if you didn't play TK6, or you've forgotten a lot about it - TK8 will literally just make you believe Jin killed all these people for no actual reason other than he was once a Bad Guy kinda like Kazuya. Who, btw, are both irredeemable in this context.

Every time TK6 is brought up in TK8, it's either to tell Jin that he's killed COUNTLESS people and only for Jin to essentially say "shut up!" or "but I'm learning to move on..." as responses. It... uh... doesn't put our main hero in a very good light when he can't even defend himself for these actions. And whenever Jin thinks back to it, he's like "wow I was bad but now I must atone myself!" again, NOTHING actually tells you what he did in TK6 beyond the war, and WHY he did it... you just have no clue about this character's motivations and why he's suddenly good again. And honestly? If you're a longtime player, you're probably still confused about it!

To this day, most people still believe Jin started the war to purely get rid of the devil gene. That is a very incorrect misconception. Getting rid of the devil gene was merely a bonus for Jin. Jin's main goal was to save the world from Azazel, since Azazel suddenly came to him and said "yup I'm destroying the world someday". Then there were just two other goals Jin figured he could do along this main one. The second one being that he theorized there's a possibility that killing Azazel would get rid of the devil gene, considering that Azazel's the origins. (Very flawed logic when you think about it but that's TK6 writing for you). The third reason was that uhhh... he thought he could end corrupt governments????? That was thrown in at the end of TK6, likely something to force his goals to seem Slightly Better.

If TK8 really wanted to present Jin in a better light, they could've... REMINDED US IN THE STORY OF THE GOOD REASONS WHY JIN STARTED THE WAR?? That, according to TK6's writing, it's something he HAD to do, had no other choice?? Or at the very least, they could've mentioned his goals to topple corrupt governments was a success??? But no.

And that's another problem. All of Jin's reasons for stopping the war had failed. Killing Azazel: Failed (at least during the war, he supposedly successfully did it when fighting Kazuya) Destroying the devil gene: Failed. Overthrowing corrupt governments: ????

So that fact that Jin failed every reason he started the war over, it makes him feel very incompetent, and also makes the war feel completely pointless in the first place. That all those people died for no reason at all.

The Tek wiki even does a better job at this by mentioning that Devil did indeed have an influence over Jin.

Which again, also would've helped if Jin wasn't in his right mind. So say, why didn't they.... oh right.

Because the Devil Gene is now no longer a "bad" or "good" thing. It all depends on what the host uses it for, and how they accept it. Devil [Jin] was never bad. In fact, he was only trying to protect Jin the entire time. 🙄 Which means Devil couldn't have influenced Jin to do something Fucked Up lmao. Jin was the idiot boy for not listening to and giving into his devil! Sure, at first glance, this seems sappy and a decent "accept yourself!" story, but it also falls apart when you remember the previous stories. Again, if the devil gene was never that bad to begin with - then it also makes a part of Jin's war pointless (even if, as I said, that wasn't actually a priority of his).

It also goes back to what I was saying about why fans dislike Jin. One of the reasons is because they believe he's "whiny". Which I always disagreed with that. Jin had every reason to hate the devil gene and most of his family. Except... oh wait, these changes do make Jin's haters' take valid. Because if the devil gene really could've been a beneficial factor for Jin, then Jin really was loathing himself, ready to kill himself, hiding from his friends & family... for absolutely nothing. The devil gene wasn't a problem and Jin was absolutely crying over nothing. Again, this makes him feel like a protagonist that just constantly fucks up. And not even an intriguing line of mistakes, but just frustrating. It makes Jin out to be a very bad protagonist, and an even worse "hero" for our story.

So uh... yeah! Even if on surface, TK8 looks like it portrayed Jin well... once you start looking at it critically, really looking into all the changes and choices, you realize it actually made things worse for Jin. Which is just absolutely wild how they managed to pull that off...

[kozachenko]

A compilation of questions and thoughts I have about Touhou's Hell, and the Hell adjacent places in Touhou (mainly just new hell and the animal realm)

This is very long so I'll put a little keep reading link down here

Maybe I just need to catch myself up on the lore, but I've been thinking about the whole "Former Hell-New Hell" thing because like, how did the selection for Gensokyo's Hell work? Was Former Hell still the main Hell before Gensokyo was made? Or did it change before Gensokyo was made and Zanmu was just looking for a new place for Hell to be located in, saw what Hecatia made and just went "ah yes, this is the spot" and just picked that specific place. Like, even the wiki states that the exact time of Hell's location change is unknown. Also, it's stated in Zanmu's profile that she rules over Hell, but then that brings Hecatia's importance in Hell into question. How important is Hecatia to Gensokyo's Hell really? It also says on the Touhou wiki page for Hell that before Touhou 17 there was some internal conflict going on there and that that's what the Animal spirits used to cause a distraction so they could accomplish their plans?

Also, how long have the animal spirits been dealing with Keiki for? Because for a god that is relatively obscure and who was (supposedly) only just summoned, she seems pretty powerful, almost completely taking over the Animal realm (had it not been for our protagonists). Also, with the way Yachie refers to Keiki as an "old enemy" (which I am STILL thinking about), how long have the two known each other? They're familiar enough to talk to each other while fighting, and the beast spirits know her name. Which would be another weird detail if she was very recently summoned? Keiki isn't really the type to show off that she's a god (heck, she even tries to convince the protagonists that she's a human), and Keiki herself is familiar with how the beast spirits operate, with her lines on how "beasts will be beasts" and her comments on the different beast gangs in the Animal realm showing that dealing with beast spirits clearly isn't a new thing to her. Overall, there seems to be this sense of vitriolic familiarity (for lack of a better term) between everyone in the Animal realm. Also, with the technological state of the Animal realm in Touhou 17, there are clearly a lot of modern buildings approaching the Primate Garden. So either A) The beasts built those themselves and it was always like that or B) Keiki built those when she was summoned. Now I don't know about you, but I don't think anyone, god or not, would be able to complete an entire city in just a day or two. Especially one like the one in Touhou 17. I feel like with all of this information, it's safe to say that Keiki has been a problem for a while.

Also, how did the Animal Realm even get created in the first place? Like, was it always there when Hecatia made Hell, or did Zanmu just kind of make the realm it's own thing, because from what I've gathered, it's implied that Yachie, Yuuma, and Saki all came from Old Hell to the New Hell when Zanmu changed locations (also, a bit unrelated, but I have the headcanon that Yachie started using, or developed her ability to be more like Zanmu's since she looks up to her a lot).

A thing that's kind of unrelated, but makes me laugh whenever I think about is how Zanmu is basically just what would happen if a DnD player rolled a Nat 20 on every single charisma check and ended up becoming the King of Hell. Like, if you were to make her a DnD character you'd have to make her a neutral evil Monk who has a really high charisma bonus stat lmao

I've also kind of developed this little story idea for a Touhou fic, where the events of Touhou 15 inadvertently set up Touhou 17, where Hecatia's involvement in Junko's revenge plans end up being a sort of "last straw" for the rest of Hell. People are beginning to question why Hecatia is getting so involved with this one vengeful spirit and why she's so Hell bent (get it?) on picking a fight with one of the most powerful, and technologically advanced civilizations in the world (The Lunar Capital) when doing so would do nothing for Hell? Of course, I have a feeling that Zanmu would probably be manipulating Hell's population against Hecatia, since a part of this idea is that Zanmu wants Hecatia out of Hell so she can take complete control of it herself (since I really like the idea of the two of them having this sort of power struggle where they both want the other one gone). Then as the political strife in Hell gets more and more intense, the beast spirits see this distraction as an opportunity to set their plan to get rid of Keiki in motion. They discover Gensokyo, find our protagonists, yadda yadda yadda Touhou 17 happens, you know the rest.

Also, as my own way of connecting Touhou 17 to Touhou 18, during the incident of 17.5, the Tengu probably got involved in the selling of oil, and once it was over, Megumu was looking for new buisness opportunities and came across Chimata, Touhou 18 happens, this leads into Touhou 19 (I really really really want a new fighting game for 19.5 that expands on whatever happened to Keiki because, oh yeah, WHERE IS SHE ZUN, IS SHE WITH MIMA OR SOMETHING, PLEASE, I NEED ANSWERS-).

So yeah those are my ramblings about Touhou's Hell, like, it's such an interesting location and I really want more Touhou media to take place there since there's so much you could do with the setting.

[doctorofmagic]

Relating to the other post about Clea's current character changes (Tumblr wouldn't allow me to put all this in one comment, so I thought this was a better format): I've been constantly thinking about Clea and how having her memories wiped of Stephen may have effected her ever since we saw her re-appear in TDODS. Nothing I say here is a fact based on info Marvel gave us. As far as I've been able to tell, unless I've missed some non-main title run appearance or mention, no comic has covered what exactly happened to Clea like where she went or what she went to do. Her wiki only mentions her getting her memories back "shortly after" she loses them. If I missed something that gives context, please do correct me so I can fill myself in! As for why I think she is the way she is now in the current run, my brains just been connecting it to her lost memories. That could be that due to the lost memories she went somewhere or did something that made her darker overall, maybe being manipulated without memories of being taught and guided by Stephen (I know that she wasn't kind and caring because of him, but due to how her family is and the state of the Dark Dimension at the time, he definitely kept her on track to a degree). If we think of it this way, depending on how the whole memory erasing thing worked, would she have gotten to keep memories that involved him, such as the Defenders, or would those be gone too because he was there? In this route, could she have felt her attempts at being kinder and more caring than her later-discovered family may have been futile? Without acquaintances like her friends she met from meeting Stephen, she may feel as though no one was there to encourage her to continue trying things this way. She doesn't remain on the throne once getting it, so maybe she feels she has to turn in a new direction to protect herself and/or her people? Does the memory erasing mean he's just kind of a blur or a stranger in memories he is in? Or does it mean that her life took on a different path maybe in the Dark Dimension, as it clearly effected her in the past too. (This way would assume Clea at all points in time forgot Stephen, which could lead her down a different road. If this is the case, her memories of one lifetime could be clashing with the memories of her new lifetime so to say. I don't know if any of that made sense, I struggle to put it in words sometimes). It could also be that she's never fully recovered from losing those memories emotionally. We know she's been pretty upset since getting them back, first in a grieving/saddened manner, then in a more anger based way because she regained them only to lose the man they were about. She's gotten him back now, but that's not going to make it like things never happened, so she could still be on that anger based stage and she doesn't even realize she's becoming the way she is (I know this was referred to as "Blaming" grief in the last post, but depending on how truly "short" that timeframe between losing her memories and regaining them was there could be a lot more we really don't know. This could also be her struggling with grief, as we quickly see her go to the anger stage of it. She likely often dealt with grief in a war setting during the rebellion, which could make it harder for her to process?) Overall not knowing what happened to her and not having that covered has generally been a nitpick of mine since we got partway into this story, as I can see why it hasn't yet been tackled but the upcoming books don't make it sound like we'd be getting that information anytime soon either. (Again this is if I didn't miss something previously). Sorry again for things not making sense potentially, and for the wall of text. Again I'm not saying this is for sure whats happening, just how my mind tries to explain what we haven't yet had explained.

Nauuur, you're absolutely right!

Little is known to Clea's time in the Dark Dimension, even before her memories were wiped out. In fact, there's a HUGE gap between their "breakup" and her appearance in v5, when she helps Stephen with the whole Galactus situation.

There's this book (Sisters of Sorcery) that follows the Defenders/The Order storyline and highlights Clea as the protagonist, but you can't quite consider it canon in comics. Besides, it wouldn't explain her characterization in Strange v3 and DS v6.

The thing about erasing Clea's memories is that, as you pointed out, we do not know if it's just *Stephen's figure* or every other connection she did outside the Dark Dimension. We tend to forget that Clea often felt lonely in the Sanctum, and escaped this loneliness through her bonds with the Defenders (Patsy and Valkyrie being her closest friends). I know we hate *that* Defenders run, but it happened as well. She connected to other heroes in that meantime.

I do have the impression that Stephen was indeed her first contact with kindness, since she grew up under both Umar's and Dormammu's influences. Also his father SUCKS. In a cold world, she found warm in Stephen. So is this feeling still there when her memories of him were taken? We don't know, and this is why we need a flashback of her moments in the Dark Dimension. We don't know how she became the Sorceress Supreme, we don't know how the rebellion went, we don't know how she survived the Empirikul on her own. All we know is that she looked for Stephen the moment The Peregrine Child threatened her dimension. And here's my only reservation about this theory.

Clea's characterization in DODS. She appears to be vulnerable and sweet, especially in Lee's art.

What I *think* it could trigger her fierce side and justifies her angrier characterization is the fact that she lost Stephen twice in front of her very own eyes, and three times in the span of a week. Maybe something broke in her heart, and the fact that she had to keep proving to everyone that she was capable of carrying the mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme could have shifted the balance of her heart. Let's not forget that few heroes were kind and empathetic enought to her grief (which explains why she befriended Moon Knight so quickly). Only Wong and Bats were facing the same levels of grief and they were all dealing with it in their own ways.

With that being said, we don't know if it's Jed's choice to portray her in such aggressive manner as to oppose her melancholic self in DODS or it's all part of a larger scenario where he'll exploit her characterization in order for her to find her balance once more. We don't have answers for that and it's very frustrating, especially for Clea fans, but I still have hope that we'll see something about it soon enough. I often trust Jed so I'm patiently waiting haha As the saying goes, "it is what it is".

Also, no worries!! I appreciate your long text and your sharing your thoughts and theories with us!! Thank you so much for passing by, I hope our concerns are addressed soon enough!