#actually. I solved my own problem I'm just going to do that second option!

[slumbergoblin]

Repostober Day 16!

I'm not entirely sure what this was supposed to be, other than just some place in the Nether Realm.. (2019)

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

I want you to know I respect your opinion and at the end of the day you can do whatever you want on your own page, which I love all the art you do. Your White Diamond AU is so remarkable I've added it to my own headcanon idea of Steven meeting his alternate selves.

With that said, why are you responding to posts or asks that talk about blatant shattering of other gems? Real SU fans don't immediately go "death to the enemy." Real SU fans understand that SU is about love, acceptance, second chances, and pacifism. I'll admit, there have been more idiots in the fandom since the show's end, but in my humble opinion, it's best to not give any of them attention, even if they are annoying.

Sorry if I sound rude, I just didn't get responding to that one ANONYMOUS comment.

It's not rude at all! And it's a great question! One I understand the reasoning of.

But I have my own reasoning for doing the things I do.

Mainly, I think that while ignoring SOME behaviors is definitely good.... talking about OTHER behaviors actively is the fastest and healthiest way to immunize the greater community against them.

Let me explain.

I've been in this fandom a long time now, and I agree with you - there's a solid possibility, a real chance that whoever sent that message is just a passing non-fan who decided to be weirdly edgy in my inbox. No big deal. It happens.

But in my experience, the SU fandom is.... wide and varied. There are people of all ages, and many opinions. It would be easier, of course, if the only 'true fans' were those who perfectly understood the show's themes. But to me, that veers dangerously close to a No True Scotsman type of thinking. The reality is that many different people watch SU. And while many of them do inherently agree with the message and understand the nuance, many more just watch the show because... they like the surface level graphics and cool fights and interesting worldbuilding. In fact, many of the show's fans are edgy teens (sorry edgy teens) who are in a life-stage where violence and being strong and cool and decisive in a morally black and white manner is the only way they can possibly imagine solving any problem. And... that's kinda the opposite of what SU teaches! But that's also the point. SU teaches those things on purpose.

And yeah, I can absolutely just ignore this part of the population. But ignoring a behavior does not actually make it go away 100% of the time. If a child in a supermarket comes up to you and starts smacking you with a wooden spoon from Aisle 4, then... sure... you can ignore them and see if their parent comes to get them, or they go away, especially if it's a very small child and they're not hurting you a lot.

But that's not the only option. You can ALSO opt to teach them - and any other spoon-wielding children watching - what COULD happen if they are crude or cruel to a stranger in public. Namely, you can snap 'stop it' and at the very least glare at that child. This is a lesson that will arguably teach them more about the interaction than a complete lack of reaction would.

Now, I'm not saying people who send me asks are all children and I'm doling out some moral lessons here. This is just a metaphor.

I'm simply a person in a social space (tumblr) who is driving my own blog. And while I DO ignore a very large part of cruel/rude asks I get (trust me, I do ignore many!) I sometimes also just post a reply to show what ELSE could happen if you say a borderline silly and arguably tonally inappropriate ask to a person. You could get replied to! In a sarcastic or snappy manner!

And maybe - just maybe - the other people reading my blog can learn something from the experience, and think 'ah, so doing it like THAT will maybe make people kinda annoyed, now I know and will not do that'.

I cannot deny that overall I agree with you, though. I don't think that these types of messages deserve attention on the regular. But I'd hope that my replies to these things are not really... regular. I ignore probably... 80% of these sort of things? I guess maybe it just feels like a lot less, since, well. The public ones are 100% of the ones you get to see!

[crescentmoonlupin]

If you need help, I'm here to listen..

There are days that are easier than others. When you have depression, you tend to feel like the world is against you and it just feels like a constant battle that no matter how hard you fight, how much experience you have with it, it just never seems to be enough to throw at the problem. And of course, giving up is never ever an option cause once you do, the monster you are battling just gets bigger. Bigger to the point you just must live with the drooling, foaming beast.

I’ve had depression for a number of years, as of 2024, it’s been about 14 years since I was originally diagnosed, but about 17 since it first manifested itself within my mind. It's never been an easy beast to live with. I’ve tried destroying it by destroying myself. I held it down, but the bubbles never stopped coming up. I tried to drown it in sex, making it seem like the reason I was upset so much was because I was alone and needed the company to get me through, I cut myself so I could hold some sort of “control” over it but, of course that never works. Eventually it becomes an addiction that you don't realize you started, and it takes everything in you to stop. Years even.

To this day, I am still self-destructive. Some days, I wish I could still continue hurting myself, but I know its counterproductive, it’ll never solve anything. It just hurts everyone else who happens to catch it when the wounds are fresh. Cutting myself didn’t make me feel better in the sense I thought it would, it just gave me a false sense of control over something I didn’t have control over. The chemicals in my brain didn’t do what they were supposed to when they were supposed to, and I suffered the consequences.

I wanted to blame everyone else for my problems. My mother, my father, my stepparents. Sisters. Everyone who wasn’t me. “You made me do this!” I’d say, when really, I was the one who put the razor or knife to my skin and pulled. I made it count, I counted every mark, and it’s not a pretty number. Not only did I cut but I carved words into my skin, so I would remember why I did it in the first place. So many initials. Failure. Perfect. HIT ME! I’M NOTHING! Sorry :] Smile. And the list goes on from there. Now it’s just a bunch of scars.

I’m not ashamed of them, and I don’t really regret them, they’re part of me and it was what I thought I needed at the time, ultimately, I was wrong in the end, but teenagers never listen, do they?

I do wish I could go back though, and just talk to myself. Tell myself it does, eventually, gets better. That things do start going right, years down the road. That it’s not worth it to be so angry all the time, and to learn to love myself sooner so I didn’t have t struggle as badly as I am now at almost 30, because yes, we do make it past the age of 18, as surprising as that is for me to even believe to this day. Eventually we meet a man who loves us in his own special way, and we have the most beautiful son to raise together. And he loves that little boy as if he was made from his own blood. He reads him bedtime stories and helps him learn to walk. He teaches him to ride a bike and plays in his sandbox with him, the one he made him for his second birthday.

Things do get better, but you have to fall down so you can get back up, so you can grow up the way you need to, because it is necessary. Because as soon as you heard that little boy’s heartbeat for the first time, you know, you just knew, that everything was going to change and you knew that you would do anything for him, even if it meant changing everything so he could grow up better than you did. So, he can go farther than you ever got. So, you can make sure he is actually stable and doesn’t have to recover from his childhood. Make sure he is okay and knows he is heard.

I just hope I’m doing the right things when it comes to that little boy because I don’t know where I’d be or who I would be without him. There’re days where I struggle and all I want to do is to curl up into a ball and cry till I fall asleep. But I have this little boy watching me every day and I just have to keep going to make sure he has everything he needs to grow into a respectable human and a caring man. Fight for what’s right but know when to step back as well.

[taddymason]

So I have yet to read Lightning Pin. (I have so many fics and books on my TBR. I'll get to it eventually. I really will!) But I've seen bits and pieces from your posts.

Do you think you'll wait to keep writing as new episodes come out? Or will you just write your own ending before we get answers from the show?

In your version will Jay re-gain his memories?

And most importantly, will Jay, Nya, and Kaida have a happy ending?

Hii thanks for the ask!!

1-It's hard to explain, but since I have already planned the entire arc that Jay, Nya and Kaida have to go through, it's really not difficult to adjust the plot to the episodes. For now, the second arc of LP covers the first part of DRS2 events, and the final arc will most likely cover the rest of the season's events. I'm lucky that with how long it took me to write the first parts of the fic I didn't have to wait long to update as the episodes come out. I also have, like, the biggest story planned in advance mostly because of the leaks (like the wolf warrior Jay one) , so it's very easy to plan each chapter and not deviate "so much" from the canon.

The fic already has an ending kinda planned, and the way things are going, if everything ends well this season, I don't think I'll change it and it would be a good way to close this fic.

2- I've been thinking about this a lot since I started the AU because maybe this will change, but the answer is no. And yes, because there are going to be a few little things that Jay will remember but it will be very at the end of the fic. There is a theme that I like to play with a lot when writing Amnesiac Jay, and that is that the ninjas hope that eventually when he regains his memories he will go back to being the "old Jay". They just have to wait, right? And everything will be the same as before. As if his "amnesiac personality" was just a temporary version that they have to deal with, because they have always been able to solve problems like this that have arisen (like with Nya, or the two times it happened with Zane).

So I like that they actually have to face the possibility that that may never happen. They have to stop expecting Jay to behave towards them like before and magically recover his memories, and instead try to start over with him and show him that they can trust them. And Jay has to accept that it doesn't matter if he regains his memories or not, it doesn't stop him from choosing to be better and stop thinking of himself as if he had been a completely different person before. Like, yeah, he obv has changed but he's still the same person, and he has to stop the denial of not wanting to look at his past identity with the idea that that "person is dead". No idea if they'll go down a similar route in canon, but I like the idea of ​​giving him an arc where he has a bit of an identity crisis where he tries to alienate himself from this older version of him and constantly justify his actions by believing he doesn't have another option than allowing himself to forget.

3-THEY WILL!! t's going to suck, yes, but they will get through it and have a happy ending. No spoilers, even if there are a lot of chapters left to get there, but the final chapter is called "The Dog Days are Over" :)

[canmom]

to (specific person) - I can't reblog yr post about game accessibility and you won't see any replies since I'm shadowbanned, so I'm posting on main, hope you see this on your dash ^^'

re: this post

so.... I think AAA studios actually care a lot more than you might think about tutorialisation and getting non-gamers up to speed on the conventions of games. they're targeting a much broader audience than most indies after all, and they have more resources to dedicate to playtesting and writing tutorials, as well as implementing accessibility options in general (look at the examples of 'best practices' for many categories). over the last decade, games have gotten much much better at creating tutorials that feel less intrusive, and teach how to play more effectively.

of course, whether they do, and how they go about it, depends a lot on the genre of game and the company in question. but if anything, a very common complaint among gamers is that modern AAA games are 'too handholdy' and don't give you space to work out how to play on your own. that isn't necessarily the same as being accessible without existing 'game literacy', but I think it is a big concern for at least certain types of AAA game.

anyway, the real question - at this point the indie dev scene is so big and diverse that it's hard to generalise. a boomer shooter and a narrative Bitsy game are both 'indie games' but they're targeting completely different people and trying to communicate completely different things.

I think Jackie's comment is right that many genres of indie games tend to be aimed at a self-selecting target audience of people who are already fans of that genre, and therefore often dispense with trying to explain it. that said, there are some indie games that really do put a priority on getting a player up to speed with a genre.

fighting games are notoriously opaque to beginners, but Them's Fighting Herds has a really good interactive tutorial on relatively advanced fighting game concepts such as frame advantage, way better than a lot of big-studio fighting games with minimal tutorials. I have yet to play it, but Neon White is widely praised as a game that gradually eases you into speedrunning.

for me as a game dev at a small VR studio, we end up talking a lot about how to make the basic interactions understandable, because interacting with VR games is a lot less standardised than interacting with flat screen games. it's also a medium where a lot of players are kids or don't play a lot of games. this is something you really gotta keep in mind when making games, because game devs tend to get into the business because they're very passionate about games, which means we have no idea what is unintuitive to most people.

an experience that was quite eye-opening to me was watching my dad try to play Portal many years ago.

on the face of it, you might think Portal would be a great first game. Portal is a game that is around 50% tutorial described as puzzles - it gradually eases you into the mechanics of how portals work and how to use them. the first few levels teach you to carry boxes, walk through portals, then they give you the ability to place just one portal, they teach you how to fling, how to redirect energy balls, etc. after you solve a puzzle, GLaDOS will usually say something funny, and this may be used to reinforce the 'lesson' of the level. the first half of the game teaches you the palette of mechanics, then the second half of the game assembles them into challenges.

but what Portal doesn't teach you is how to navigate a 3D environment using an FPS character controller. it assumes you know that, and briefly flashing the controls on the screen is enough. and for many players who are used to FPSes, this is second nature. but for my dad, the puzzle mechanics weren't the problem - simply moving around was confusing to him. he never got very far with Portal for this reason. my dad is someone who's played a lot of strategy games and adventure games back in the day, but almost no 3D games.

the tricky thing is always working out how much to assume your audience knows, what should be explained outright, and what should be set up as a puzzle to solve. people tend to find 'unnecessary' tutorials patronising, unless they're wrapped in enough humour. the game design side of youtube definitely talks about tutorials and teaching game concepts now and again, for example Adam Millard attempting to categorise the different ways games can communicate information and their relative advantages. I think it's definitely something we could stand to talk more about though, and a lot of that depends on listening to people who want to get into games but run into barriers that are invisible from this side ^^

oddly, difficult games like Dark Souls can actually be... better than you'd expect for non-gamers, because the reason they're 'difficult' is that everyone had to learn how to play them. Dark Souls is a very obtuse game which explicitly explains very little and expects you to learn to play through trial and error. however, that means someone who has played very few action games can learn Dark Souls with a comparable amount of difficulty to someone who's played other games, but not necessarily Soulslike games.

you may be interested in youtuber Razbuten's 'gaming for a non-gamer' series in which he observes his wife play through various games and what she finds unintuitive. naturally she does learn quite a lot about how games work over the course of the series.

the comments about Dark Souls in the previous paragraph are inspired by the video where she plays Elden Ring (a later game by the same developer) and ends up getting a pretty solid handle on how Soulslike games work. although I'm sure 'male gamer gets his wife to play games for a Youtube video' probably sounds pretty... ehhh, he genuinely brings a pretty thoughtful analytic perspective on the 'language' of games and how it's communicated, and I could imagine that would be interesting to hear about ^^

for my own part, I used to be pretty hopeless at action games. and I got better by playing a bunch of action games of broadly increasing difficulty. the first time I played Dark Souls, I really struggled - the hard bosses would take me hours to beat. but I liked the genre so I played lots of others like Demon's Souls, DS2, Bloodborne, DS3, Sekiro, Elden Ring alongside its cousins like Hollow Knight, and without really noticing it, I got way better at this type of game. When I came back to Dark Souls again a few years later I could breeze through challenges that were overwhelming struggles the first time.

humans are very plastic and very good at adapting to things. the constantly advancing skill frontier is a complicated problem for games. there's a fascinating video by Folding Ideas on how the way people play World of Warcraft has evolved, with an interesting anecdote how when they released WoW Classic, bosses that had been brutally difficult were blasted through in days because the way people played the game had become so hyper-optimised in the intervening years...

one problem resulting from this is that this leaves new players in the dust, and makes the game increasingly inaccessible. this is particularly acute in PVP multiplayer games - try to play a modern competitive FPS and you'll have a miserable time where you constantly die without really knowing why.

even in single player - a game aimed at satisfying experienced players in a genre is going to be a brick wall to people who haven't climbed that ladder already. a game that's still accessible to new players could end up being trivial to experienced players, who will then trash the game. but by trying to challenge the experienced players, you can increasingly paint yourself into a corner. (see a lot of complaints about the design of Elden Ring bosses from experienced Soulslike players.)

some games do manage to thread the needle though! Final Fantasy XIV very gradually (almost painfully slowly) introduces its core mechanics over the course of the very long game, and its 'roulette' system provides decent incentives for experienced players to regularly return to old content, so it's possible to find groups for almost anything. endgame FFXIV raids are fascinatingly intricate dances requiring all sorts of esoteric knowledge, but there are many gradations on the way up to that which will get you comfortable and are satisfying to play on their own. there's no obligation to play at the highest level to experience the story, but the option is there for the people who want it.

as far as CrossCode - I'd be curious about what your experience has been, what's been a sticking point, maybe I can think of some games that are an easier introduction to that type of mechanic!

if I wanted to position it relative to other games, I'd probably call CrossCode a 'Zelda-like isometric action/puzzle game'. it's leaning on the aesthetic of the last generation of 2D isometric games, like Chrono Trigger or Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, but it plays a lot faster like a modern action game (I think it has an iframe dodge, but it's been a while). CrossCode as I recall has a reasonable tutorial on its controls (shooting discs and stuff like that) but I could imagine going from that to stringing up long combos and quickly moving between groups of enemies, or navigating the large multi-screen areas, could be quite a jump.

but yeah I wanna help haha. I do genuinely love games, and I want to make games that don't necessarily assume you're intimately familiar with the last 10+ years of the medium lol.

[chibitantei]

Oh, this rank has... checks script ...the line.

Rank 6, or a crumb of Naoto background is spared.

In my rank 2 post, I mentioned I had some personal beef with the Shirogane estate being in Inaba, and this is one of the moments.

Naoto makes a big deal about finding the card in her mailbox, but the estate was robbed. If the estate was located in Inaba, it wouldn't make much sense for Naoto to be so surprised that the phantom thief who robbed her house knew where she is currently. That's like a negative IQ level move.

Of course, there are moments in the main game script that contradict this, such as Naoto stating she promised her grandfather she'd go home right away when you first see her at Yasogami, and at the culture festival's conclusion where she, rather excitedly, says that if she's staying at the inn, she should call her grandfather and let him know. Both of these could suggest the estate is in Inaba, but since this is about her Social Link, we're not going to debate this.

As she notes, the mysterious man must have a reason for giving Yu the card. The choices are the same again. Picking "Because I look reliable." or "Because I looked useless." prompts Naoto to laugh heartily.

The second one... well.

With that out of the way, we see the next riddle of the phantom thief has to offer, which reads:

When the banks close, the fruit tree grows. By the large seven at the third is the spot I chose.

It sounds like complete gibberish, but luckily, the game doesn't require Yu to actually solve it because that's Naoto's problem. Regardless of what you pick, Naoto finds the answer; however, the third option ("The numbers are important.") is the best one.

As Naoto so eloquently says:

When you find the item, the watch, Naoto has a whole speech ready.

The item in the previous rank, the detective badge, didn't do anything besides show the great dedication and desire Naoto had to step into a detective's shoes. This watch feels more like spy gear than it does detective, but Naoto is a private investigator, her dungeon looks like a secret agent base and.... she probably watched too much Conan as a kid. Regardless of what influenced her to make this, Naoto is pretty talented at fiddling around with machines and creating her own things.

Her liking robots and having a secret base in the trees had influences on her dungeon, with berserk form of Shadow Naoto being a robot and well, the Secret Base.

Besides the fascinating character dump, we get Naoto wishing she were a guy. And this is one of the lines that gets people to throw a fit and you know what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to analyze this while keeping in mind what Atlus intended for her character.

Naoto says this after Yu and friends beat her Shadow: "What I should yearn for...No, what I must strive for isn't to become a man. It's to accept myself for who I really am..."

From this admission, Naoto knew she never wanted to be a man. However, a lack of women in the detective world and strict gender roles, just to name two, made it hard for her to stand up and ignore what society sad. When you look at Naoto disguising herself as a man, she is conforming to what society expects.

Not everyone plays the silly PQ game, but in one of the strolls, Naoto has this to say:

Although she knew that trying to fit into expectations was silly, she ended up forcing herself into a box.

But what about Naoto's mom? She was a cool detective lady, right? Doesn't she count as a role model?

Yes, obviously, but she's also fucking dead and while you can find inspiration from someone's memory, nothing's better than being able to talk to your role model and lean on them for support. If Naoto wanted advice from her mom, she can't ask that because she's fucking dead. That, and we aren't given any info on Naoto's parents. Was Naoto's mom respected on her own, or was she just seen as an accessory to Naoto's dad? Naoto can look up to her grandfather as a role model (and it's obvious she does), but he can't exactly give her the same kind of advice her mom could have.

I know I must have linked this video a bajillion times by now, but I still think it's relevant, even though it was made in 2018. Since I don't live in Japan, things may have improved since this video was made, but if the game originally came out in 2008 and the year this was set in was 2011, I think the video is telling that the problems happening in 2008 were happening in 2018. Watching this is great, but ain't nobody got time for that. So I'll just say that imagine achieving so much, only to have people downplay it just because you're a woman. While Naoto's arc focused more on sexism in the workplace, it's sort of hard to just focus on that, when it's..... everywhere.

When Naoto wishes she were born a man, she doesn't really wish to be a man. Like she says in literally the next line, being a guy would allow her to pursue what she wanted (a detective) without hearing any remarks or critiques or but find a job more suited for women. It doesn't indicate that she genuinely wanted to be a guy.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not done with the worm can because there's one more thing to talk about, and that's the romance flag.

You see, Naoto is special and you need a certain phrase to trigger her romance route. Failing to select this option means you don't get to romance her, even if you do the second romance flag.

Right after Naoto says that, Yu has three choices. Can you guess which one triggers a romance flag?

If you said the second one, you're fucking WRONG BABY IT'S THE FIRST ONE!

Atlus has a track record of high highs and low lows, this line is probably garbage and doesn't make sense. However, perhaps, maybe???, somehow????, there was a reason for "I'm glad you're a girl." to be the romance flag.

It could just be typical Atlus putting that option there to waifu-ify Naoto. However, for this next bit of analysis, I am being generous and assuming that Atlus had a reason that WASN'T waifu-ifying Naoto just because.

When you pick 2 or 3, Naoto reacts accordingly:

The third option has an 'it is what it is' vibe, and it doesn't do shit to make her feel better.

However, even if you choose the second one, Naoto still smiles sadly, much like the third option. Perhaps Naoto is sad because of society had the attitude Yu displayed in that option, she wouldn't be so miserable and is reflecting on a more optimistic world.

However, this line doesn't really solve her problem. She's known for a while that her gender doesn't matter when it comes to anything. It's just what society has a problem with it.

However, it's not what she wants to hear.

She knows Yu thinks it's silly, but to her, this is easy for him to say. He hasn't been in her shoes, doesn't know her struggles and hasn't experienced any hardships because of his gender. He can say that gender doesn't matter, but if he wanted to be a detective, nobody would complain because he's a man.

It's not as if nobody understands her and the effect gender roles have, it's just that in this particular context, this isn’t what she wanted to hear.

In the first one, it's uh.....

Yeah, there's nothing deep in here.

But if I'm being very, very generous, this is a clunky way of saying "I'm glad you're you". What makes Naoto who she is... is herself and nothing can change that. With this, Yu is able to say that there is good in being who she is, even though she can't see it yet. More importantly, he appreciates her as she is. And seeing someone other than her grandfather or Yakushiji, even her dead parents, say that to her, makes something in her mind click, that she's worth something, even though she doesn't correctly hit all the "acceptable" boxes society has laid out

okay fuck I can't anymore but tl;dr it might have be an awkward "i'm glad you're you" thing.

Anyway, Naoto realizes she was being an embarrassment again and changes the subject to asking about Yu. IIRC, she's the only IT social link who asks about Yu.

Considering how it's very obvious she had no friends growing up, this can be seen as an effort on her part to reach out and form bonds. It's difficult with the rest of the team, but with Yu, something just clicks.

[yandere-monoma]

WHOOO KYM 2 COMMENTARY while i stall on working on kym 7

lots to discuss about a chapter literally called 'the exposition' hjgkfsg. if you didnt know, the way ao3 multichap updates works is that you dont necessarily have to title a oneshot chapter but the second you update it, you really get shown the option to title your chapters. so it didnt actually occur to me that i needed names for each one until chapter 2. i believe originally i was going to use a similar system as kyd where every chapter title was a command a la homestuck. however, i wasn't really utilizing the commands in the same way, i didn't really end the previous chapter with one and the plan for the next chapter... technically involves a command but not one i wanted to spoil via the chapter title.

the current naming system came into existence probably 3/4s of the way or more into writing this chapter, once i made the realization that the fic was, in fact, going to be at least five chapters. at this point in time, the plan was the following: the introduction, the exposition, the climax, the ending, the epilogue. this changed even more as time went on and more chapter ideas rudely crammed themselves into my brain, though it helped the structure a lot, because giving me time to fill out the space between exposition and climax made my brain happy HJSKFG

so, moving on, the fun part about chap 2 is that it really establishes the 'narration' as its own living function, something that is vaguely independent of the story rather than just a tool to present the story with, that both voices the author's and the character's thoughts depending on who is grabbing for control. this isn't an aspect i planned when outlining the fic but it's definitely influenced by 1) how much fun i had reading the epilogues and subsequent epilogue flavored fics 2) my desire to find some way to one-up the first chapter despite the topic matter not being nearly as extreme 3) the impulse to add in another experimental element to the story, especially now that the more abstract and poetic style of the first chapter was being removed

it's also incredibly fun to play with, because every time i struggled with describing something or wondered how i could transition from one point to the other, i realized - oh! i can just make the narrator state that very thing. don't know how i'm gonna build up from the end of chap 1 to the narrative goal of chap 2 (rose's mkultra moment)??? let's just get that all out in the open, then! problem SOLVED

it ended up being a hugely fun choice that allowed me to inject some humor into what's otherwise just a big ole pile o' unrelenting angst. it also helped me take myself less seriously, which lent me even more creative freedom than usual, like. GOD. it really helped turn this piece into something so rewarding, it overwhelms me. goddamnit homestuck why do you have to be so good

i just rewatched butterfly effect recently, god. back to the future i've never seen though. time references haha get it cuz his aspect is still time-

speaking of time, this chapter was the first attempt to really try and describe a zeta kid's classpect without coming out and stating it. there's a few interpretations of different phenomena's in homestuck that point out the implication of classpect powers being active before reaching god tier, or even before entering the game (though, usually in a way that is incredibly weak, premature and subtle enough to be missed by the user). one of the strongest examples that i based this chapter on was something the epilogues described: the idea that rose's obsessive writing as a child was based on her light powers feeding her vague visions of her future character arcs and plotlines. i really loved that and wanted a similar sort of plight for dave. i'll go off about what his specific title is at the end of this chapter but it's really fun poking at it now and then

the multiple narrators? seriously??? bit was me realizing i had to add a Multiple Narrators tag on ao3 after this. at this point of writing, i had no idea if i would be visiting anyone else's pov besides dave's, though.

attempt at homestuckian humor GO

™️ jokes are so funny to me for no reason

wink wink hint hint this is one of dave's powers at work, actually!! so, dave egbert actually has a perfect memory. like, there is not a single thing he's ever forgotten in his life, if he's experienced it, he can recollect that knowledge. this power also extends to the imaginary, the subconscious, and the supernatural, ie: in the event that dave experiences any visions of the future, he will retain that information. likewise, he has memories of every dream and nightmare he's ever had. which is fun because considering he's a dersite and also a time player and also dave, he has a lot of them HAHA. more on that later

The two of you had hit it off instantly despite this, like you had known each other your entire lives, like any and every other relationship that had come before it had merely been a warm-up for the monumental connection that would spark instantly between you both. ... You’re pretty convinced she’s your soulmate. If not that, you’re at least assured by the fact that you’re absolutely head over heels in love with her.

sentences i had so much fun writing knowing how badly it's going to mess dave up to learn that they're actually related HA HA

Especially at the start, Rose was mysterious and she was hilarious and she was overwhelming, the brightest thing you’ve ever had the fortune of witnessing. 

get it because she's a hero of light get it she's the light of his life because shes a hero of light get it get it she's mysterious because her class mimics its opposite at the beginning of the story so everything about her pre-canon arc clings to void but she!! is bright! like light haha get i- 💥

see, reading sentences like this means i HAVE to at least write enough of their session to let dave both die and kill for his rose, like

also i need to write her killing and dying for him. well. killing for him. well.

killing.

perhaps just killing him. HAHAHA.

it is very fun to think about this because rose honestly just. does not talk about her relationship with dave much outside of mentioning that they're together. her narrative is so focused on the things that she wants the audience to focus on, so this was such a fun chapter to reveal the things she decided isn't important enough to ever let us in on.

like, she is so adamant that bro is the only important person in her life and the only person she loves, but she deeply cares about dave. she feels the same way, that they're connected in this way she can't pinpoint or name. and claiming him is exactly the right way to put it, because i don't think she knows how to acknowledge those emotions in herself, but she knows that she needs him with her always and wants him entrapped in a way where he can't get away from her.

i think rose is just incredibly attracted to what dave represents: safety, normalcy, the mundane, a reprieve from pain, but there are things about him that she just inherently gets. he's an outsider despite how much he attempts to fit in and i think there's something about that she relates to but also wants so badly to destroy and keep for herself.

also, this is a thing that belongs more in hcs than in kym specifically, especially because i imagine this taking place way earlier in their relationship, but bro absolutely knows about her relationship with dave. it isn't a secret. it's a thing that amuses him greatly. i actually imagine she shares a lot of details about him to bro, like allowing him this voyeuristic entertainment because dave isn't a threat to him, not really, and she shares every single one of her belongings with him.

in a perfectly pornographic world the two of them would spitroast the fuck out of him but this is a partially pornographic world that involves a meaningful plotline or whatever 🙄 smh

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

this part was incredibly hard to write. not because it was difficult or emotionally taxing but because i reached this unfortunate impasse i find myself at every now and then while writing a lot of darkfic where i struggle with... it's not exactly the impulse to project, necessarily, more just.... feeling forced through into inevitability of it? or maybe it's the reluctance to use personal experiences vs the knowledge that doing it can benefit your writing (but also can hamper it).

like, very hard to write about a self-destructive teenager with violent tendencies without being reminded of the time when you were a self-destructive teenager with violent tendencies.

that reluctance is born from a rant i'm definitely not gonna get into unprompted but i'll just say that it definitely complicated things HAHAHA. i've definitely gone through a 'i'm going through a psychotic break and i'm going to ramble out 7835963463 crazy things into this dm window because the person on the other side said i could' phase. i've definitely just. been insane and vomited so many words out and ngl for a second there in the final draft when i was feeling too lazy to get into Stream Of Consciousness mode i was very tempted to dig up an old vent post and copypaste those thoughts in for rose but ultimately i thought that was disingenuous and a betrayal of her character SO

a fun but unexpected surprise was rose sounding far more like herself during her drugged moments of honesty. it's especially fun because even in the future when she doesn't have access to any sort of drugs or contact with bro anymore, i don't think she'll sound this much like rose lalonde either. it's like in her desperate search to find more of her brother, she's really just found a core part of herself that she doesn't have access to in this universe

'Is there a mechanical soul within me?' there is and his name is hal hi hal

it is actually incredibly fun playing with typing quirk punctuation. it's actually a style i utilized a lot in chatroom roleplay groups yeaaaaaaaaaars after homestuck ended, very much inspired by tumblr ventblogging typing styles, crytyping and all that. the idea that someone's mental state can and should be reflected in their typing style, which is something you really only see in canon in a character like gamzee (i cant remember if other trolls drop the quirk in times of duress in canon??? i think karkat drops his as a joke about volume sometimes but that's it). i don't even know if it even really comes across as blatantly as it feels when i write it, but it's so fun to see the consistencies in a way a character types slowly but surely fall apart as they grow unstable

so the way this is designed, it's as if rose had a moment of finally being in touch with the core of herself, with what ultimately makes her rose (complete with proper punctuation), before slowly but surely lapsing back into ro-stri as she loses her punctuation piece by piece, and then ultimately devolving even more as she abandons her capitalization to type in a way that's reminiscent of dave but, more importantly, bro's typing quirk

'I think there are lives inside me/the life inside me is his' is so funny to look at in hindsight. this chapter was halfway finished before the pregnancy plot had even come into being, and this was only ever supposed to be a reference to the identity blurring she's experiencing, and this half-truth, half-delusion about being able to sense everything lil cal has injected into her and her brother. it is so STRANGE to reread it now knowing that it's become foreshadowing to her pregnancy, especially with that next sentiment following it:

'Sometimes I wish it was yours'. again, that idea of being soulmates, being connected with someone permanently. and, again, that idea of codependency, and rose being unable to express or understand love without that need to merge herself with the object of her affection. and again this was befORE the pregnancy plot was a thing so now every time i read this line i sit here hoping people dont interpret it as rose wanting dave's baby HGJFKGSGSG i swear im not into breeding i sWEAR

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭😭😭

DAVE IS SO CUTE I ALWAYS DIE REREADING THAT PART HE'S SO CUUUTE

also i struggle so SO much writing comfort scenes especially dialogue meant to comfort someone but this came out so easily. perhaps because it's a futile attempt and i didn't have to worry about the recipient of that comfort actually feeling soothed...? hmmm!

i have nothing to add to the romantic cannibalism confession besides :3c

i don't actually reread this chapter all that often anymore so finding this paragraph was lovely damn shoutout to this sentence that made me choke on my water as i was reading it cuz i was so distracted by how much i didnt remember writing this that i forgot to swallow and my drink just slid down into my lugnshjskdfg

then it is a series of letters in a language you wonder if she’s made up, that is somehow so cohesive in its chaos that you start to doubt even that. 

more horrorterror references as if the literal last paragraph wasn't enough HAHA

a very fun part of designing and outlining the killswitch au is deciding who gets what plotline. for example, does rose strider get to go grimdark because she's rose? or does jade lalonde get to go grimdark because she's the lalonde with library access to the grimoire? unlike the characterization formula, there isn't an easy answer to this one. i'm mostly just going with what's more fun narratively and what makes a better and more cohesive storyline for the verse.

either way, though, ro-stri still has a connection with the horrorterrors, simply because she's a dersite and because i love a character that is so utterly doomed that every evil force on the face of the planet wants to take a turn on them. what's better than this... getting psychologically gangbanged by every demon in existence...

DID YOU KNOW I AM SO VERY FOND OF DAVE EGBERT AND HIS LOVELY PAPA WHO LOVES HIM SO MUCH

i am also so very fond of a dave egbert who cries alone in front of his computer cuz his girlfriend makes him so very sad every night like poor baby does Not Sleep and its so cute gjkgs

'its just prose' annoys the shit out of me to see because i wrote a similar line in a published piece of writing a couple of years ago so i can't reread this without being reminded of That hgjfkg

i will never write a strider rap i have the highest respect for any author who can but it'll never be me

their dynamic kills me HJKGFGKGS peak toxic romance right here god i wish i could write even more of it... i need to write more daverose so fucking bad....

a fun line because 1) i rly enjoy dave's half-forced half-genuine emotional voyeurism it's just a rly interesting aspect of his personality to write and 2) it's fun to have a moment with dave e's specific brand of humor since it's not as long-winded as a strider's would be

i rly forgot so much of this chapter HGFKGSGS oh dave... i love you... i love writing you so much...

stream-of-consciousness style writing is really fun like you get taken to so many unexpected places in the process. generally when i go SoC style i tend to have a few goals i want to land and this image, dave watching over rose in derse, was one of the big ones

ALSO THE IRONY OF DAVE CALLING HIMSELF HER PRINCE WHEN SHE IS ACTUALLY THE PRINCE OF THE SESSION HEHEHEHEHE

the lil cal staring contest is also another big one. it's just such a fun image to allude to like goddamnit i wish i could draw. it feels like an image that i can't even really describe properly what i want it to mean because it explains itself and there's not much minutia to pry free, it's just. them. rose inexplicably and perpetually being drowned in this cancerous evil at a rate that not even dave strider got to experience.

lmfao shout out to me explaining his memory power earlier forgetting that i explain it in the chapter HJSKFG

oh well NOW I GET TO ACTUALLY DISCUSS HIS CLASSPECT

so dave egbert issssss....

🥁 [drumroll] 🥁

the MAGE OF TIME!!!!

and changing classpects actually did something incredibly interesting to the story. killswitch never would have worked as a simple homestuck rewrite, because i dont think swapping the guardians is something that can ever be simple. so it didnt make sense to keep their classpects exactly the same, because they wouldn't have the same personalities or the same backgrounds to craft those personalities, or the same issues that were born of their uniquely shitty backgrounds. it also didnt feel as easy as making rose a knight of light and dave an heir of time, etc etc. like, while rose is not insecure in the classic way that knights should be (it can be argued that the 'i am my brother' facade can count towards knighthood... but her role in the story and what it will turn into once she joins the game definitely brands her a prince through and through)

through researching for killswitch i ended up coming to this conclusion about sburb and how i approach classpect and hs narratives in general:

and because of that, it was super easy to reassign everyone based on what they've been turned into through the switch in their roles.

it also made for another easy characterization formula: their aspect represents their 'nature' while their class represents their 'nurture'. so all the zeta kids still belong to the same aspect while their class changes rapidly, though how close or how far it is from their original class really depends on their character

anyway, mage of time is an incredibly fun role that actually breaks the rewrite narrative almost more than rose's classpect does. as the mage of time, dave actually steals the cryptic psychic role from jade and john harley (though, i do have thoughts on that matter, because there is still going to be a benefit for them from having access to prospit, and that plotline will still be involved in some capacity... probably).

and it's a very fun, partially accidental discovery within the au that the zeta kids are all... just a tad more prepared to enter sburb than their predecessors. rose is completely aware of the fact that she's training for something specific and dave... dave knows that the game is coming. he doesn't know the specifics, he doesn't know that it's sburb specifically that will bring them all together, but he knows there's an it, he knows the day he'll meet all his friends in person will be a day for the history books, and he knows that rose is in danger and that he'll be able to help her in a way no one else can.

some mage of time thoughts, many of which inspired and/or describe dave egbert's storyline:

source

source

source

the above was probably one of the first interpretations i read and really what solidified him as a mage, my initial thoughts to his classpect and how it interacts with rose's was the following:

and it's just so fun GOD rly hope i get to write in his perspective more in the future

haha yeah if we ever get to it yEAH if i ever get off my ass and actually finish writing this wholeass au which i nEVER WILL CUZ I DONT WANNA WRITE 500K WORDS GODDDD IM NEVER WRITING A HOMESTUCK AU AGAAAAIINNNN

[thelastspeecher]

Part 2

Should I try to come up with a title for this, since it's actually the first part of a two-parter (and the second part will be posted tomorrow)? Perhaps. But I'm sick so I'm not gonna expend the effort to think of a title. And also, no summary. See: I am sick. So here. Shining Armor AU thing. Enjoy.

Oh, and Happy New Year's.

——————————————————————————————

              There was a knock on Stan’s bedroom door.

              “Your Highness?” a familiar voice called.  Stan grinned.

              “Come in!” he called back.  The door opened.  Stan’s personal knight and secret wife, Angie, slipped inside and closed the door behind her.  Stan got up from where he’d been sitting at his desk, going over maps of potential new trade routes.  He walked over to Angie and embraced her tightly.  “What brings my knight here on a day she’s supposed to be training the new squires?” he whispered in her ear.

              “Grave news,” Angie said in a shaking voice.  Stan stepped back, suddenly worried.

              “What is it?” he asked.  His eyes widened.  “Your family?  My family?”

              “Um…”  Angie anxiously played with the wedding ring Stan had collected from a magical creature for her.  As her marriage to Stan was not to be known to other than a select few, she kept it on a chain around her neck, tucked under her tunic.  “Both, I s’ppose.”

              “Huh?”

              “Stan, I…”  Angie took a deep breath.  “I’m with child.”  She met Stan’s eyes.  “Your child.”

              “I- I would assume,” Stan sputtered, trying to overcome the dread that had promptly filled his every inch.  He dragged his hands down his face.  “Son of a- we only did it one time!  How did this happen?”

              “I apologize,” Angie mumbled.  “I followed the instructions I knew of to prevent pregnancy.  But even those failed in the face of my fam’ly’s fertility.  I should have known better.  Pa says we were blessed by a fae to have many children see adulthood.”

              “We’re gonna talk about that fae thing later,” Stan said.  “Right now, we- we’ve got to figure out what to do.”

              “Agreed.”  Angie shuddered.  “My Ma, she’s told me of methods that can be used to halt a pregnancy.  I can go to the apothecary to get what I need.  Of course, Sir Banjo purchasin’ those herbs would raise questions and perhaps rumors.”

              “You want to get rid of the baby?” Stan asked in an undertone.

              “I don’t know what other options we have, Stanley!  I can’t exactly bear a child without bein’ found out!”

              “What if you go back home?”

              “And return to my post once I give birth?”

              “…Yes?”

              “That causes more problems than it solves.  Fer one thing, you’d never be able to see yer child!  Is that what you want?” Angie demanded.  Stan shook his head.  “I- I don’t want to lose this child.  But I don’t see other options.”

              “I mean, I could always fake my own death,” Stan said with a shrug.  Angie’s eyes boggled.  “Ford’s the heir anyways.  You’ll say you want to stop being a knight ‘cause you’re so broken-hearted by my death.  We leave and settle down somewhere no one will know who I am.”

              “The whole reason I dressed as a man to become a knight was to avoid that sort of life,” Angie said.  “I didn’t want to be stuck in a tiny village, keepin’ house and makin’ children.”  She covered her face with her hands.  “I still don’t want that.”

              “Fine, then what are we gonna do?”

              “I- I don’t know!”  Angie rubbed her eyes.  “I wish there were more options than just those few.  But those are the only ones we can think of.”  She paused.  “Though perhaps someone else could help us think of more.”

              “Whom?  Our brothers?” Stan asked.  “They wouldn’t have a clue.”

              “No.”

              “Well, we definitely can’t tell my parents.  You’d be allowed to live long enough to give birth, but beheaded right after.  And I’d be banished from the kingdom.”

              “I was thinkin’ we could talk to my parents, but thanks fer that lovely prediction,” Angie said.  Stan shrugged again.

              “I’m just being realistic.”

              “Hopefully it ain’t our reality,” Angie said quietly.  “My parents, they’re much smarter than you’d expect from commonfolk.  My ma, she was actually the one who taught us all how to read.  She even taught my pa.”

              “Huh.  Weird.”

              “We’ll need to come up with an excuse to visit my fam’ly.”

              “No problem.”  Stan went back to his desk and picked up one of the maps, which showed the kingdom’s southern border.  The town Angie grew up in was so close to the border, it was practically in the neighboring kingdom of Lirone.  “Father’s been wanting to establish trade routes with Lirone for ages.  I’ll say we wanna do a scouting expedition, just the two of us, to check out the border.”  He looked back at Angie.  “Is there a time limit on the herbs?”

              “They can be used before the quickening.”

              “And how long does that take?”

              “About five months.”

              “Good.  That’s plenty of time.”  Stan set the map down and went back to his knight.  “I’ll start working on the trip plans right away.”  He wrapped his arms around Angie.  As he squeezed her, he imagined hugging not just his wife, but his unborn child, too.  He kissed the top of Angie’s head.  “We’ll figure it out.”

              “If you say so.”

              “I’m a prince, remember?  What I say goes.”

-----

              Stan looked at Angie, who was riding her horse Daisy sidesaddle as they entered the small hamlet Angie had grown up in, Gumption.  She didn’t often ride sidesaddle, given that she wasn’t often dressed like a woman.  But once they had put some distance between themselves and the castle, she and Stan had changed their clothes to ride without attracting attention.  For Angie, that meant wearing one of the dresses she kept at the castle in case she needed to drop her disguise of Sir Banjo.  For Stan, that meant wearing clothes from one of Angie’s brothers.  Stan asked if he should wear a hooded cloak to cover his face; after all, it was almost identical to Ford’s face, which was on currency.  Angie, however, said that it would just attract more attention.

              She didn’t seem worried about someone realizing I’m related to the royal family.  Kinda weird, since she worries about literally everything else.  But at least it means she’s wearing the cloak.  It was a cold, early morning, and they had already been traveling in poor weather for two days.

              “Angie?” said a young woman sweeping the front step of a bakery.  Angie forced a weak smile.

              “Hello, Leighanne.”

              “What brings ya back to Gumption?” asked Leighanne.  Her eyes landed on Stan.  “Is he yer betrothed?”

              “No,” Stan interjected.  “I’m her husband.”  Leighanne’s jaw dropped.  Angie groaned softly.  Stan bowed his head.  “Sir Stan.”

              “Angie!” Leighanne gasped.  “I overheard your ma and mine discussin’ that a knight had begun to court you, but I didn’t realize you were already wed!”

              “Yes, well, that’s why we’re visitin’,” Angie said in a tremulous voice.

              “Please stop by once you’ve talked to yer parents.  I’d love to catch up.  Maybe hear some stories ‘bout castle life.”  Leighanne smiled at Stan.  “And meet yer husband, too.”

              “Of course, Leighanne,” Angie mumbled.  Leighanne went back inside the bakery.  Once the door closed, Angie glared at Stan.

              “What?” Stan asked.  “You said you’ve been sending letters about a knight courting you, so that your parents would stop trying to set you up.  I just went with that.”

              “No, you didn’t!  You didn’t say we were courtin’ or even betrothed!  You said we were wed!”  Angie groaned again, louder this time.  “Word moves fast in small towns.  We need to pick up the pace if we want to avoid any confrontations.”

-----

              They managed to get to their destination without any further interruptions from curious townsfolk.  Stan hurriedly dismounted his horse, Shanklin, then went to help Angie down from Daisy.

              “I’m more experienced at horseback than you,” Angie snapped.

              “You’ve also been dizzy the entire time we’ve been traveling,” Stan retorted.  “Last night, you almost fell on your face dismounting.”  Angie glared at him.  “I’m not gonna let my pregnant wife get hurt.”

              “Ugh.  Fine.”  Angie took the offered hand.  Stan noted silently that she did seem to be a bit off-balance as she set foot on the ground.

              But since she’s already pissed at me, it’s probably not a good idea to say “I told you so.”  Stan mentally thanked the hard work his tutors had put into teaching him how to keep his mouth shut instead of putting his foot in it.

              “Have you quickened yet?” Stan asked softly.  He placed a hand on Angie’s stomach, which had a slight swell to it.  Thankfully, her armor covered any hint of the pregnancy so far.  According to Angie’s estimations, she was a little over four months along; it had taken Stan longer than he wanted to set up the trip and get approval for it.  He’d been tempted to just take the trip without getting permission or even letting anyone know.  But the whole point of the trip was to avoid being noticed.  A prince and his knight disappearing would cause chaos throughout the entire kingdom.

              “No,” Angie replied, just as quietly.  “But any day now, it should happen.”  They had stopped at an apothecary a few towns over, so that Angie could get the herbs in case they decided to end the pregnancy.  Stan swallowed nervously. 

              “Then we better get this over with.”  They walked up to the door.  Angie knocked.  While they waited, Stan took ahold of Angie’s hand.  He squeezed comfortingly.  Angie squeezed back.  The door opened, revealing a middle-aged man with Angie’s nose and warm smile.

              “Banjey!” the man exclaimed.  “It’s such a delight to see my lil girl!”  Stan let go of Angie’s hand so she could embrace her father.  “Oh, have ya put on some weight?”

              “Pa!” Angie protested.

              “I ain’t opposed to that.  You’ve always been so thin!  Ya get it from yer ma’s side, y’know.”

              “Yes, you’ve told me ‘fore,” Angie said, rolling her eyes.  Mr. McGucket turned his attention to Stan.

              “This must be the young man you’ve wed without my blessin’,” he said, his voice still cheerful, but his eyes threatening.

              “Wh- how’d you know?” Stan asked.

              “I warned you,” Angie said.  “Word travels fast in a small town.”

              “We told one person.”

              “And she was the worst possible person to tell, if’n ya wanted to keep it a secret fer a bit longer,” Mr. McGucket said.  “Leighanne’s a nice young lady, but she tells her ma everything, and her ma can’t keep a single word to herself.”

              “Great,” Stan muttered.

              “Please, come in from the cold,” Mr. McGucket said, gesturing for the two to enter.  “Banjey, yer ma is in the kitchen.  We can discuss whatever ya wanted to discuss there.”  Stan followed Angie into the cozy but cramped house.  She led him into a kitchen, where a middle-aged woman was putting a kettle on the stove.  The woman turned to see who had entered.  It was immediately obvious that she was Angie’s mother.

              Angie might have gotten her nose from her father, but she got everything else from her mother, holy shit.  They look almost identical.

              “Sweetie, what a delightful surprise!” Mrs. McGucket cooed, wrapping her daughter in a warm hug.

              “It was a surprise until Leighanne’s ma told ya, at least,” Angie muttered.

              “Yes, I think we need to teach yer husband how these things work in small towns.”  Mrs. McGucket frowned.  “Banjolina, yer not with child, are ya?” she asked pointedly.  Stan broke into a cold sweat.  Angie, however, didn’t bat an eye.

              “Ma!” she exclaimed, sounding scandalized.

              “Sorry, my intuition’s just soundin’ off, sweetheart.  And I can count the number of times my intuition’s been wrong on one hand.”  Mrs. McGucket looked at Stan.  “…My intuition’s tellin’ me somethin’ else, too.”

              “Can we at least sit down?” Angie asked.

              “Oh, of course!”  Mrs. McGucket kissed Angie on the cheek.  The kettle began to whistle.  “I’ll pour some tea.”

              “Thank you,” Angie said.  She and Stan sat down at the kitchen table.  It was sturdy, if visibly old and used.  Stan ran his fingers along a name scratched into the wood.  “My brother Harper did that.”

              “I wish I was allowed to write my name on the table,” Stan muttered.  Mrs. McGucket placed a cup of tea in front of him and another in front of Angie.

              “Oh, he weren’t allowed.  He got in big trouble when we caught him,” she said firmly.  She placed two more cups of tea down across from Stan and Angie.  She sat down.  A few moments later, Mr. McGucket came into the kitchen and sat down next to his wife.  “If’n ya don’t mind, darlin’, I’d like to start.”  Angie and Mr. McGucket nodded.  Mrs. McGucket’s eyes met Stan’s squarely.  “Are ya a legitimized child?”

              “Oh, great,” Angie muttered, rubbing her forehead.

              “It’s an important question!  I understand yer husband is a knight already, but if he’s legitimized, then there are a lot of things we need to discuss.”

              “Ma, it’s not-”

              “What do you mean?” Stan asked.  Angie looked at him wearily.

              “My ma thinks what everyone we’ve come across has thought.”

              “Which is…?”

              “That yer a child of the king through an affair,” Angie said.  Stan’s jaw dropped.  “If yer an affair child, normally ya ain’t allowed to be in line fer the throne, but if the king decided to legitimize ya-”

              “I’d be a potential heir, yeah, I know,” Stan said.  He looked at the McGucket parents.  “I wasn’t legitimized.  ‘Cause I didn’t need to be.”

              “Elaborate, please, son,” Mr. McGucket said.

              “I’m not Sir Stan.  I’m Prince Stanley.”  Mrs. McGucket gasped, her hand covering her mouth.  Mr. McGucket turned pale.

              “A prince married a scullery maid?” Mrs. McGucket squeaked.

              “No.  A prince married a knight,” Angie said.  It was Mrs. McGucket’s turn to go pale.

              “Banjolina Quinn McGucket, you didn’t,” she scolded.

              “I did.”

              “You-”  Mrs. McGucket stood, her hands resting on the table, fury in her eyes.  “I explicitly told ya not to pursue knighthood!  A young lady don’t belong anywhere near that nonsense!”

              “Like I’ve ever cared where a young lady do or don’t belong!” Angie snapped, standing as well.  “It’s over and done with, anyways!”

              “Sally, Angie, sit down, please,” Mr. McGucket said.  His wife and daughter slowly sat.  “We won’t resolve anything like this.  And I don’t think we’ll make much headway askin’ more questions, neither.  We need to let Angie and her husband tell us the whole story.”

              “That’s gonna be the way to go, yeah,” Stan agreed.  He looked at Angie.  “Should you or I start?”

              “Yer the prince,” Angie said cheekily.  Stan rolled his eyes.

              “Fine.”  He turned back to the McGucket parents.  “It all started a few years ago, when I jumped out of my bedroom window to sneak out…”

[wallf1ower]

@leaveblackkbrosalone hey emery, i'm really sorry that i never finished that post i was supposed to make about how to understand compilers/assembly. i got SLAMMED with work/life; literally everything is insane right now, and i'm not sure if or when i'll be able to do it anymore. however, it's been hovering in the back of my mind, even though i haven't had the brainspace to organize my thoughts into a whole post. so i thought i would quickly share my best study technique that i use in order to learn this stuff, in case maybe we learn the same way and i can help you in that way.

basically, i get a physical book on the subject, and download all the material i will need on my computer for the day (ie a syntax guide for the language i'll be using, locally download any digital tutorials i want to follow, import any libraries i will need for my code, make sure to download the playlist i'll want to listen to while i work, etc). then, i take my laptop, book, a notebook & pen, a folding chair, my headphones, and some water/snacks out to the nearest natural park. and i sit there all day with no internet (and only a flip phone for emergencies) and nothing else to do to occupy my mind. sometimes i don't even bring my laptop - i just write everything (even my code) in a notebook and then test any code i wrote when i get home. this way i am comfortable, relaxed, getting my vitamin d, and entirely free of distractions. it's amazing how much more at ease i feel when i'm outside, surrounded by nature. i find that being in a relaxed state is key to learning, for me at least.

if i need an answer to something i'm stuck on while i work, i can't google it - i have to physically flip through my book, or scroll through my downloaded guides, and look for it. i find that this slower, extra effort it takes to find something, makes me more likely to remember the answer, since it took real work to find it. whereas when i just google something or ask chatgpt and get an instant answer that i instantly use, i also instantly forget it. this system also helps me think through things when i'm stuck on them for longer than i would otherwise, since i can't just get an answer from google the second i don't know something. i find that this is key for people (like me) who lack self-confidence in their own abilities to figure out an answer - if you don't believe in yourself, you are much more likely to quickly give up and turn to the internet for all your answers, and never learn to think things through for yourself, so you always feel confused no matter how much you learn. but when that isn't an option, and you have no choice but to sit there and think about it for a while, you will find that you are actually capable of figuring out way more than you thought you could.

if i really can't figure something out, i write down the question so i can google it later, and move on. i find this delayed system really helps me from giving up entirely when i get stuck on something, since otherwise i can often slip into a "what's the point" mindset, or from exhausting all my energy by refusing to quit on this one problem i can't solve. instead, i do what i can for the study session, and i come away with more work done than what i had before, and i also know exactly which parts of the topic i do and don't understand. this way, when i get back to somewhere with wifi (sometimes i just move to a coffee shop or the local library) i know exactly which areas i need to topic to complete my understanding, and i know how to update my materials so that i'll have everything i need when i'm ready to go sit in the forest again.

working outside like this has really helped me more than anything else to improve my sustained focus, consistency, and ability to understand complex things. the biggest thing for me is that it keeps me away from distractions. i find that when i always have internet, i get pulled in a million different directions by all the cool and interesting-looking things i want to learn, and i never get anything done because all my effort and attention is spread too thin.

so, if you want to learn something like assembly, here's the roadmap i would suggest: first, learn basic linux and programming in c. then, learn about computer hardware and how it works, especially the cpu. then, learn about computer processes, kernels, and machine code/assembly language. if i were you, i would get a book for each topic (you can check them out one at a time from the library) or find a tutorial guide that you can download and do offline if that's what you prefer (although i strongly prefer books, but that's just me. everyone learns differently!), plan and gather everything you will need, and then make a habit of consistently putting yourself somewhere with no internet, no smartphone, no distractions even available to you at all. if you do this even a few times a week, i think you will be amazed at how quickly you start to learn and truly absorb & understand the information given to you.

sorry i couldn't do my full writeup :[ i still want to, i'm just genuinely so overwhelmed right now; things are absolutely insane on my end, and my brain is completely depleted. i just don't have it in me. but once things slow down, i would like to start writing more tutorial/explaining-type posts again, so i might end up doing it in the future. it's just been a long time since we talked about it and i didn't want you to think i just forgot and blew you off. i've been thinking about it!! i never forgot! life is just crazy sometimes. so yeah, sorry :( but i really hope maybe this study tip could still help/provide you some value! i literally do this every day, lol. it's good for my mental health to decompress and it's also just such a good way for me to focus and learn.

[estranged-foreigner]

Anxiety

Such a strange concept that affects so many people: one day you're normal, and the next it feels like everything is a problem and you can't solve them; you just gotta deal with it. Deal with my heart racing at every step I take, the fact that actually breathing seems so much harder than it usually is, and how everything can just go wrong in a second.

Anxiety, for me personally, is when I walk into a crowded place and it feels like everyone is staring at me and judging me for every decision I make, and I start to feel so bad, doubting all my decisions, feeling like I'm going to throw up all my organs.

Anxiety for me is when I finally find the courage to get out of my room, and then every single thing seems to be against me: the light is too bright, feels like it's burning my eyes, the floor is too cold, my family comes right up to anoy me, I know it's "for my own good," but I still am unconfortable.

Anxiety for me is when I can't seem to do something right, and then my own frustration turns against me, and crying seems to be the only option to relieve that, but everyone around me is just so worried about me, and all the attention makes me feel like an attention seeker. All those eyes looking at me, it just feels like they are passing eight through my skin, straight to my mind.

Anxiety makes me feel so vulnerable.

[kirbyddd]

my own negative totk rambling

TotK has so many arbitrary restrictions on its building it's not even funny. You can't even build a simple glider because wings despawn after 30 seconds of flight.

Aonuma's like a helicopter parent who suffocates their child with constant denial of freedom. His entire design philosophy unravels the moment you stop and ask the question, "Yeah, but would it be more fun if that restriction wasn't there?" It rapidly becomes obvious that the enjoyability and sustainability of the game experience was not the primary concern of its designers.

When you stop and ask "Why is this mechanic restricted like this?" the answer is inevitably "So we didnt have to account for more potential player actions."

Speaking from personal experience as a hands-on developer in a couple of professional-level games now, having seen a few design projects unfold from infancy to full product... The mindset of trying to address balance issues by simply cutting off gameplay implications at their source is such an easy pitfall to fall into. Before you know it, you're trimming more and more mechanics and forbidding more and more applications until you realize your game has been locked away from what made it so compelling in the first place.

You realize if you want your game to be an experience people look forward to and not just an arbitrary time waster, you have to put on the big boy pants and dive headfirst into those overwhelming implications of your systems, and lean into what empowers the players, rather than crippling their options to save yourself a headache.

It's baffling that Aonuma has now had nearly 30 years in the field and still systematically falls into the "just solve the problem by forbidding the system altogether" mindset. You have to wonder if he's gone back to not actually playing his own games. So many aspects reek of "Well I'm not exactly enjoying this, but this is my job. Surely other people will enjoy it once it's out there."

Good designer's rule of thumb is, if you aren't compelled and inspired by your own work, the only people who will be are the ones who project so much onto what they consume it doesn't matter what it actually contains.

TotK feels like wistful dayjob design, not "I'm doing what i was made for" design. When we finally get on-camera interviews, I somehow doubt the developers will be lighting up with excitement when they talk about it.

"Wouldn't the game be more fun if this restriction wasn't there?" "Well, yes, but that wasn't what we were going for."

Aonuma's no Yonebayashi.

[funkymbtifiction]

heyy again! I read your recent post about tritype and I have to say that it’s really comforting to know that I don’t need my entire typology laid out to get some use out of it. after all, this is supposed to be about improvement rather than “finding an answer”… inspired by your words, I wanted to ask how you battled the E6 habits and behavioral patterns that you mentioned. what about your inner monologue changed? I know that everyone’s journey is different, and that what helped you won’t be a 1-fit-all, but I think it’s worth a shot! thanks a lot for what you do and I’m happy that you’re getting more comfortable making big moves in this blog! :)

I read absolutely everything I could find about 6 so I could start identifying problematic behaviors, and then started paying attention to myself instead of just doing my usual patterns of projection, over-thinking, pushing people away and then pulling them in, projecting my insecurities onto other people, assuming people were mad at me without evidence, over-apologizing, etc.

I'm always going to be a 6 and it's always going to be hard for me to move into action instead of thinking and rethinking and being over-cautious, but I asked questions like -- is this person really mad at me? As in, have they told me they are mad at me? Or am I afraid they are mad at me, without there being any evidence to support it? Does this person really think this way or am I projecting my opinions onto them? Am I thinking instead of doing because I'm scared that one mistake is going to destroy my life? (If this is about hair color, this is stupid, lol.) Am I causing people pain by second-guessing them, pulling away, and giving them mixed signals, by not committing to a plan instead of being honest with them and saying, "I don't know if that's what I want"? Do I really expect criticism from this person, or am I opening myself up to be criticized when I actually don't need their feedback? Is this something I need to apologize for, or am I allowed an opinion here? I wait to be told they're mad at me, before I try and make something up to them, rather than fearing they are mad at me, projecting that onto them, and getting anxious about it. That has completely stopped, much to my relief. (That was a huge thing in my teens and younger 20s. Constant angst about relationships and needing to hold onto people; now I am less worried about conflict.)

Something else that was overnight useful was realizing that I don't have to listen to my super-ego, and I can let things go that aren't mine to solve -- like, not every problem is mine to fix, and I don't have to absorb other people's problems and feel upset for them. Friend does something stupid? Not my problem or mine to worry about. This person needs something done? It's optional, not an obligation for me to help them. I now delete asks I don't want to answer, instead of feeling like I "should." I don't burden my family as much by venting about my friends' not-6 choices and don't give advice unless asked.

I would say the biggest things that have changed are -- not being as insecure (realizing I don't need to put myself down to get attention or affirmation), not expecting rejection as much, not treating people with suspicion and causing them to dislike me (thus being my own self-fulfilling prophecy), and dialing back my attachment to the point where I am okay with not everyone liking me, not needing everyone's approval, and am not as clingy with my relationships. (I screwed up so many of them through unhealthy 6 behaviors... sigh.) But I still struggle with wanting people to agree with me, being a rule-follower, and second-guessing and over-thinking. I know consciously that I must stop spinning my mental wheels, make a decision, and commit to it, but there's a lot of doubt festering in the back of my mind. It doesn't help being a Ne, either, because everything sort of ... dissipates and I lose information out of my mind, so not only am I worried about not remembering it, I won't actually remember it.

I'm also now working through sorting out my "excuses" -- namely, am I using being a 6 as an excuse not to do things when the truth isn't that I am afraid of doing them, but I just don't want to do them? I'm also getting better at handling things and not procrastinating, and on taking more initiative (leaning more into my assertive wing). But I still feel a lot of super-ego pressure and guilt, especially when I take time off -- I'm learning to commit to "not doing anything useful" and see marathoning a show all weekend as a valid use of my time, instead of feeling like I "ought" to be getting things done.

I feel like I am slowly moving toward 9 integration -- which is to say I am a little better at calming myself down than I used to be, and reminding myself that most things don't matter; I don't push my points as hard with my friends (thus I don't alienate them as much out of a 6ish need to win an argument) in favor of maintaining peaceful relations between us; I am embracing 'doing nothing' as a legitimate way to spend an afternoon.

[matzobs]

[cw: I am a parent processing my emotions about my kid behaving inconsiderately and this post touches on intergenerational trauma, religious trauma, & transphobia, so that I don't direct it at my kid.]

My kid was inconsiderate at the Purim Spiel last night and I, being new at parenting, didn't realize making him sit in the lobby or the car while the rest of us had fun was an option, so I decided we should come home early.

We got home and his mom showed me that he wasn't sad, he was acting badly, and this morning I'm accepting that I got manipulated. He's 12, that'll happen.

My brain thinks that being manipulated is a problem, so it's trying to solve it. Here are some terrible ideas it's come up with:

* Control every minute of his life until he can "show me he is a considerate person" or some other nebulous achievement or I get tired of doing that

* He's grounded! Remove all opportunities for him to do the things that help him regulate himself, and just really make sure he knows for like six months that he was bad in every minute of every day.

* Spend this time before school really digging into how bad he made me feel. Make sure he really feels how shitty I feel, even though he can't comprehend it, and then tell him his mother is going to talk to him about it after school, and kick him out of the car.

* Just really be physically withholding for as long as I feel bad. No hugs. No I love yous. Just cold. So he knows I think he's an asshole in his bones.

*Don't ever take him to anything at the Temple ever again. Cancel his Bar Mitzvah. Tell him he doesn't appreciate the opportunity so he doesn't get to be Jewish.

* I could maliciously make him late for school today. I could just make him do all his chores and then drive him to school in my own time.

* I could make an "infographic" (like we have for his routines) listing the things he should be embarassed about.

Just out here rawdogging BPD and raising a child. I will not be doing any of that, thanks brain, you're so good at coming up with revenge plots and we should like write some fiction or channel it into art. None of those options are going to achieve the desired results, and all of them are pretty destructive, so let's just not.

I did wake him up a little early this morning to eat breakfast. It feels like I'm getting my little revenge because he doesn't get to lay in bed until the second alarm, but he does need to eat some breakfast because his tantrum last night was about how he didn't like dinner and he didn't end up eating it, so that's actually good parenting and I'm fine with that decision.

Baruch Hashem Adonei Eloheinu Malech Ha'olam thank you for giving me anger so that I could use it's fire change the world for the better and the ability to manage the emotion and direct it appropriately, and not at my child. And if you could possibly help my kid be like Ephraim and/or Rebekah that would be tops.

And his mom is going to talk to him about it after school, so all I have to do is manage the trauma response rising within me until I drop him off at school.

That's something parents never seem to talk about. I suppose my dad sort of was talking about it when he shouted "at least I don't hit you" at me while his hand was in the air. I don't think that's a constructive jumping off point for a conversation for a child tho. Here are some sources of pain that are informing this moment:

*I do not have good parenting models and this is a lot of work, and I am trying to get a promotion at work and finish a painting and otherwise live an adult life, and this is bullshit.

* When he behaves badly, the way he behaves badly is the way cis het adult men behave badly on dates. This is because cis het adult men never have to do better than a 12 year old, and then they went on to model this behavior to him.

*He's up now and he's love bombing me. Which I fucking loathe. It makes my skin crawl so bad. I know I have to teach him that this doesn't work, when you harm someone, you make amends, you don't love bomb, but I barely know the difference myself.

* As his father, it's my job to model different behavior, but I'm a butch lesbian and not a cis het man so maybe he won't see me as the role model he needs and he'll continue to follow the example of the cis het dudes.

* This is my first Temple, and it was my first Purim Spiel and I wanted to see it and shout at Haman and cheer on Esther, and I didn't get to, and there's 40 years of religious trauma behind this bullet point.

* Parenting in community is challenging in ways I don't yet fully understand and can't yet anticipate and I can feel the other parents being embarassed about things and I don't know if I'm supposed to be embarassed (I refuse to be? but maybe I am?). Before this guy moved in with me, I was cautiouly participating in the t4t kink mutual aid community, and the mores about judging one another and ourselves are just different.

* There's an absolute MILF who was flirting with me and we were going to sit next to each other and I didn't get to do that.

Ok.

All I have to do is get him to school untraumatized. There's less than 10 minutes before we leave. I can do this. I can do this.

it's already time to goooo! hooray I'm doing it!

[nickywhoisi]

SO IT HAS BEEN A GODFORSAKENLY LONG TIME

WOW I KNOW and sadly there has just been too much to regale. A lot that would be very uncomfortable, but thank the whole entire cosmos that now I can say that, for the past few days, things have finally become steady and even a little good again. I got some motel stays to get out of this absurd heat AND IT HAS BEEN SO GOOD TO BE ABLE TO COOK AND HAVE A FRIDGE AND MILK AGAIN

I can watch some good TV, and I have finally gotten the energy back to come to terms with such slimebucket populus' mental ideas about homeless people, and how it really does not apply to me and no matter how much I can get accosted by it, I should try my best to not...automatically hate people. I mean, I still do, but I am working towards getting all my trust back. It will be a very long road there. But I also have enough energy to rekindle my love for my interests and catch up on my shows and videogames and art. I have been slowly creating and doing more, and it feels good.

I am really hoping a certain pet store does not get kicked out in place of a fucking shitty pot store. That just means to me all of the mall its in will be literally smoked out of all business, and it will all go to be destroyed. I don't want that, and I am so tired of these things like this. I will be sent to an early death by dementia if this world keeps changing too much around me exactly into what I don't want it to be.

I did get to visit it for a couple final days though. So now I will always have the memories of the tetra fish, the bubbling sounds of the fishtank filters, the sights of the colorful dioramas, the bird cages and the gerbils. The slightly checkered floor. It's all there in my mind now. I even got a pet, so I fulfilled a wish of mine from way back when; to get a pet of my own from there. Sadly, the bird is a little shit at the moment, but I'm slowly learning how best to take care of it, and hope that it will finally learn to appreciate my efforts for it. It was not an easy decision to make as a homeless person and was a great expense, and the bird is also still a baby so it has a lot to learn. Far too many errors and badness between us happened so far, but just last night and today seems different from these rocky beginnings.

And most importantly, I got the correct help from Options, and UCRC got me not only one but two referrals for their mental help and homeless prevention teams! I have to figure out where I'll be on Tuesday so I can make it, and I really wish I could get started on getting help from the other team, but tomorrow, I can at least call the second team to get psychiatry help. I think this will be really good for me, like this journaling has been. But it's so incredible to me! I set out to get a referral, and I got TWO when I was beginning to dread that they didn't have/do these services and I would have been so afraid that options would be just another organization who cornered me with incorrect information and I would have had no reason left to trust anyone trying to "help". My social connections I think would have been fully over, dead in the water. That would not be okay. So as impatient as I am with one team not being available while I very much am ready, I will try to get some more time here at the motel, because it still seems like the weather is absurdly hot, and I need to keep me and the bird out of that heat.

Additionally, I have FINALLY AFTER EONS OF WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME gotten back into watching One Piece. I'm on the Nanone G-8 island, the series' best filler arc. It is still super good, just like I remember 8D Jonathan is such a great guy and amazing captain. He's the only one in the whole show with a galaxy brain and he has actually good strategic thinking. The Straw Hats get a really different kind of battle here; purely of wits and creative problem solving, and I think that's why in a shounen show famed for spectacularly wild battles and pure combat, this arc sticks out so well even today. I can only hope there are more moments or characters like what we get here later on in the episodes.

My art I am still working on slowly, with limited art supplies too. But I did get some good inks, so I'm gonna upload. And I finally extracted the files I needed for the book finishing posts. Unless my mind is really going and I've already done? Might need to check. Disregard if I have.

[deusexlachina]

Antisocial DAO Part 6 (Nature of the Beast): Euthanize three of my own people for trinkets and cool powers

In which I prepare for disaster and things go shockingly well.

I impartially decide the best army is the Dalish elves, and set out to recruit them. They're happy to help, but they're sick with turning into badass werewolves. If anything, you'd think this would make them better soldiers, but it doesn't, so I have to go on a quest for the heart of the alpha werewolf.

The Brecilian Forest is full of sidequests, mostly to help out the Dalish. It turns out that several of these "side" quests are not so side after all, because these ones give you special items you can trade with a hermit to get a magical acorn to appease the rhyming tree and get through the forest, in an unusually whimsical segment of this gritty fantasy series. So, unless I want to fight one of two very difficult boss fights at my Low And Tender Level, I need to get one of these special items.

The easiest reward is from Camden's Lament, a quest where you stop fighting a relentless, massive zombie horde to help a guy with his girl problems. There are several ways to do this quest, all of which involve...social checks. As I flail helplessly through Camden's surprisingly elaborate dialogue wheel of helplessness, I try convincing Camden to actually flirt with the girl he wants, but this only leads to an unqualified sex ed lesson where he confirms he is a virgin. Ladies.

This fails to solve his girl problems, so I get no reward from him. And because I Am A Grey Warden and need to hurry to stop the Blight, I can't make any unnecessary world map travel - no going back and forth between the Dalish camp and the forest. Finding a trade for the hermit is gonna be tricky. I'll have to look in the forest itself.

Some werewolves block my path. I warn them of the consequences should they not get out of my way.

Because I Am Socially Inept, this is about as effective as everything else I try to tell people. The werewolves attack, for about seven seconds before I focus fire down their leader and he decides He Cannot Die Here. Fine. Whatever. (They attack again later and I fail to intimidate them yet again).

I encounter Danyla, an elf turning into a werewolf. I tell her I'm setting out to cure werewolves, so she should just sit tight, but she's almost completely beastmode, and I Am Socially Inept, so she doesn't listen and demands that I put her out of her misery. Refusing just makes her fight you to force your hand, and she never appears in the camp even after you cure everyone of being werewolves, so I bring out the trusty Murder Knife and kill her.

Just before she dies, she hands me her scarf to give to her husband. I promptly trade the scarf with the hermit to get the acorn and reach the werewolf lair. This is a frankly dickish course of action that becomes necessary because of my own exceedingly unforgiving rules - without backtracking or social checks, my options are down to "misplacing" a tragic keepsake, robbing my own people or murdering someone.

Inside the lair, I meet an ancient spirit tormented by his inability to die, presumably because he is an Arcane Warrior, the most hideously overpowered subclass in the game. In exchange for his secrets, I destroy him, just like I will destroy the game's difficulty level. This entire exchange happens telepathically while my party just stares at me, wondering if The Warden Broke.

Finally, I reach the heart of the werewolf lair. In an incredibly awkward cutscene, werewolves glare and growl at me for like a full minute. For some reason, the werewolves, who have a highly developed sense of smell, have attacked me at every possible turn. Fortunately, the stench of my miasma protects me. The werewolves decide to parley, a word which fills my heart with more dread than the word "werewolves."

The werewolves reveal that the clan's Keeper, Zathrian placed the curse, and only he can cure it. By dying. Unfortunately, Zathrian doesn't want to die. I didn't skip over a part where he comes over here, by the way. He just kind of appears right outside, agrees to parley, doesn't, summons demons, and refuses to elaborate. This is a truly hellish fight, but between picking off his minions and antimagic, I eventually prevail. Zathrian stands down...but we're still at a negotiation standstill. The only way forward is to convince Zathrian to die -

Oh no.

I can't convince anybody of anything! There's no way I can cure the curse and save my people! I wait for a social check to come so I can fail it, just like I fail every other social interaction, just like I fail my people. I wait for it, and...

What do you know, there isn't one. I distinctly remembered this route requiring a Persuade check, but I was wrong. Only the worst outcome requires a Persuade check. Convincing Zathrian to die takes no social skill whatsoever. I add him to the list of my own people I've euthanized for expedience and move on.

Honestly, I'm shocked this all went so well.

[musicarenagh]

Unleashing the Soundscape: A Conversation with Genre-Defying Musician Parham Gharavaisi Welcome, let us dive into the world of multitalented Parham Gharavaisi, a musician who makes sounds like he blends colors - strong, surprising and completely his own, this man mixes types of music just as a crazy scientist does in an audio workshop. Parham is not like most people in the music industry. He doesn't like trends or want to be well-known. He just creates music for himself, where he pours his heart and spirit into every note. He does this even if it means being alone in a world that likes to put things into boxes. He's like a rebel with guitar, finding his own way in the music world. This might come as a surpise, but when it comes to production, Praham producedand recorded “Mirror’s Gaze" with close to zero musical instruments, but not much equipment, making his own recording and trying to understand the puzzles of music world comes with some problems he meets. Parham Gharavaisi’s songs are puzzles waiting to be solved. It's a window into his thoughts, where video game sounds mix with metal shouts and everything in between. In a recent interview with Mister Styx of Musicarenagh, Parham made lots of disclosures and we'll talk about where he gets his ideas, how he makes music and the big hopes that come with every song. When asked about his plans this is what he said “Additionally, I have two upcoming metal albums scheduled for the next two years, both professionally produced by other studios for the first time. The first album, titled Ghosts of Nations, is set for release on October 14, 2024. It's a rather grim album that addresses sensitive subjects such as societal collapse, domestic abuse, suicide, and mass shootings, among others. I hope to approach these topics in a tasteful manner. The second album, Infect the Clouds, is a concept album featuring a villain protagonist who is a disgruntled misanthrope seeking revenge on humanity. This album is scheduled for release on October 14, 2025.” Mirror’s Gaze’ is expected to be released on 24th  January so stay closed to have an experience of this. Here is a link to the official YouTube video which will go live on release day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulA2FMDRdw8 Follow Parham Gharavaisi on Twitter Spotify Soundcloud Bandcamp Youtube Telegram What is your stage name Parham Gharavaisi, same as my real name. Is there a story behind your stage name? I had to choose my full name because it was the only option still available. Every possible combination of letters from the dictionary has already been taken fifty times over by other bands. You wouldn't believe it, but even made-up words and misspelled words are already used as band names. So, the only reasonable option for me was to go with my own name, I guess. Where do you find inspiration? Mostly video games; I guess I'm a huge nerd since it's pretty much my only hobby. Growing up, I played games on the Sega Genesis, which made me fall in love with the sound of its 8-bit music. Even now, it's pretty much the same. In fact, some of my all-time favorite records are actually video game soundtracks. What was the role of music in the early years of your life? What was the role of music in the early years of your life? Well, my initial exposure to music was through video game soundtracks, which I grew up listening to. Later on, I was introduced to the metal genre, and it was an instant connection. I fell in love with the intensity, complexity, and emotional depth of metal music. This transition from the melodic and often atmospheric tunes of video games to the powerful and expressive world of metal has been a major influence in my own musical journey. Are you from a musical or artistic family? Not really, I don't think so. Who inspired you to be a part of the music industry? No one specifically inspired me; I just thought that if I'm going to make music, why not also share it on the Internet? You know, what's the harm, right? So, I just decided to put it out there.

How did you learn to sing/write/to play? You could say I'm a self-trained musician since I never really took any formal classes or lessons. I vaguely remember some piano lessons as a little kid, but I don't remember much from them, and I don't really play the piano now. My instruments are the electric guitar, electric bass, and classical guitar. Vocally, I do both clean singing and metal screams. This self-training extends to recording and production as well. In fact, I feel I've only recently begun to scratch the surface in achieving professional-sounding audio quality on my own. My single Mirror's Gaze marks a significant step up in production quality. The violin is one of my favorite instruments, and I aspire to learn how to play it one day. What was the first concert that you ever went to and who did you see perform? Actually, I've never attended any concerts or other kinds of live events. Social gatherings don't interest me at all, and I tend to avoid them unless absolutely necessary. How could you describe your music? I believe diverse is the best word to describe my music, as it spans across many different genres and subgenres. This can be both a blessing and a curse, though in my case, it's been more of the latter. It's kind of too heavy for the pop crowd, yet too soft for the metalheads, if you see what I mean. In any case, this is the sound I like the most, so I'm going to stick with it, hoping to find my niche. Describe your creative process. Here's my process for creating new songs: First, I start by composing riffs and/or chord progressions on the classical guitar, as it's more convenient for me. Once I'm happy with the results, I transpose them into whatever key sounds or plays best on the electric guitar. After finalizing the song structure, I begin the recording process, starting with the electric guitar, followed by the electric bass. Once the guitars are recorded, I add in the drums. Next, I write the lyrics and vocal melodies simultaneously and then record the vocals. The final step involves adding synth elements and atmosphere to the song. https://youtu.be/HtZj5yCQh5Q What is your main inspiration? I wholeheartedly adore the sound of old-school melodic death metal as well as gothic/doom records. To me, metal is all about authenticity and catharsis; it's about releasing a sound that truly embodies who you are, without any compromise or doubt. Ever since I was introduced to the metal genre as a young child, I've been deeply fascinated by both its aesthetics and philosophy. I knew from early on that this was the path I wanted to pursue in my own music-making. In a sense, I aspire to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have shaped this genre. With that being said, I do hope that I may contribute something new of my own as well. What musician do you admire most and why? Oh, choosing between Olivier Deriviere and Akira Yamaoka would be incredibly difficult! I absolutely adore every piece of music they've composed, so much so that picking a favorite seems impossible. While they primarily compose music for video games, and as I've mentioned, I'm a huge nerd, I'd rather talk about my favorite work from each composer. Starting with Akira Yamaoka, there's something magical about his song 'Cradle of the Forest' from the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack that's hard to articulate. It has the most haunting atmosphere I've ever encountered in music, hands down. Everything about it perfectly harmonizes with the game's themes. When you listen to this song, you can visualize the game; it's beyond impressive. The same can be said about Olivier Deriviere's 'An End for a Prelude' from the Alone in the Dark (2008) soundtrack. The Bulgarian choir vocals are spine-tingling, and the orchestral background is simply out of this world. However, if I had to choose my all-time favorite soundtrack, it would be Hideyuki Fukasawa's work on the Chaos Legion Soundtrack. Did your style evolve since the beginning of your career?

Absolutely! My debut was an instrumental post-rock album, featuring no drums or vocals. The albums that followed were a mix of rock and metal. It wasn't until my 5th full-length album that I fully transitioned into metal. As for the subgenres, that's a long story for another day. Who do you see as your main competitor? I'm not particularly well-versed in the music industry or other artists, so I can't say for sure. However, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it would likely be another artist who experiments with blending various genres and subgenres together. What are your interests outside of music? Video games are undoubtedly my biggest, if not my only, hobby. These days, I'm mostly into competitive first-person shooters, and I take my ranking on the leaderboards very seriously, always striving to compete against the best. Mobile games have significantly evolved, so I spend a lot of my gaming time on mobile shooters, though I was primarily a PC gamer in the past. For instance, I've been playing Counter-Strike 1.6 since its early days. However, when it comes to story-driven games, I'm a huge fan of Action RPGs, particularly the soulslike genre, as I love overcoming meaningful challenges. If it wasn't a music career, what would you be doing? My alternative interest would be either video game development, which I have some experience in, or writing. Speaking of which, I recently authored my first anthology book. It's a collection of my older short stories, poems, and previously unreleased lyrics. You can find it on Google Books. What is the biggest problem you have encountered in the journey of music? Right, I can actually think of a couple of examples off the top of my head! As you might know, I operate from what you could technically call a home studio, but in reality, it's quite basic. My only physical instruments are an electric bass and an electric guitar, which I used to plug directly into my PC's motherboard line-in jack with an adapter. It's only recently that I've acquired an audio interface to use with my new microphone. Frankly, I was quite surprised to realize that it didn't make much of a difference, if any, in terms of instrument signal quality. However, I needed it to connect my dynamic mic, so there's that. The point is, I have practically no physical gear, and everything you hear is the result of computer software magic. The fact that it's now possible to make this kind of music without going to an actual studio filled with tons of colossal gear is a testament to how far technology has advanced. Impressive, isn't it? One can only imagine where technology might go in the future. Honestly, it's kind of frightening, I guess. The fear of the unknown and all, but I digress. If you could change one thing in the music industry, what would it be? I'm not sure, maybe add more kittens to the music industry or something, because I love animals. Like I said, I'm not deeply involved with the music industry, nor do I know much about it. So, it's really hard for me to say what I'd change when I'm not fully aware of all the ins and outs. You see what I mean? Why did you choose this as the title of this project? I've always been fascinated by mirror metaphors in literature, so it felt natural to incorporate what I like into my work. The primary reason I chose Mirror's Gaze as the title for this single was because I couldn't find any other artist using this exact title, at least not from what I could find on search engines. https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QqBOZOiit5hIBwW6Bs9G7 What are your plans for the coming months? My ongoing plan is to release a new song every first Friday of each month. Additionally, I have two upcoming metal albums scheduled for the next two years, both professionally produced by other studios for the first time. The first album, titled Ghosts of Nations, is set for release on October 14, 2024. It's a rather grim album that addresses sensitive subjects such as societal collapse, domestic abuse, suicide, and mass shootings, among others.

I hope to approach these topics in a tasteful manner. The second album, Infect the Clouds, is a concept album featuring a villain protagonist who is a disgruntled misanthrope seeking revenge on humanity. This album is scheduled for release on October 14, 2025. The tracklisting and lyrics for both albums are available online now. Do you have any artistic collaboration plans" I don't have any specific collaboration plans of my own, unless it involves working with my friends and associates. However, I am open to receiving collaboration offers and will consider each proposal on a case-by-case basis. What message would you like to give to your fans? Be kind to animals. Peace!- What was the role of music in the early years of your life? Well, my initial exposure to music was through video game soundtracks, which I grew up listening to. Later on, I was introduced to the metal genre, and it was an instant connection. I fell in love with the intensity, complexity, and emotional depth of metal music. This transition from the melodic and often atmospheric tunes of video games to the powerful and expressive world of metal has been a major influence in my own musical journey.- Are you from a musical or artistic family?