#also covid did make them go through some stuff lmao

[niko-sasaki-dbd]

Queue Interview with the Dead Boy Detectives Cast 👻🔎

This is going to be a long post! (These are my favourite parts from the interview!)

George Rexstrew as Edwin Payne

Acting Inspiration

Oh, gosh. Well there are so many. Meryl Streep, obviously. Viola Davis, obviously. More recently, I was blown away by Enzo Vogrincic in Society of the Snow. And Eden Dambrine in Close.

Cast Camaraderie

I loved working with all my co-stars. I’m practically related to Jayden [Revri] and Kassius [Nelson] at this point. Yuyu [Kitamura] is a dream. Jenn [Lyon] is mother hen. Bri[ana Cuoco] is the cool older sister. Josh[ua Colley] is the cheeky cousin. Ruth [Connell] is the godmother who gives you a card and £20 for your birthday. It really is one big happy dysfunctional family. I’m grateful for all of them, on and off camera.

Jayden Revri as Charles Rowland

Dressing The Part

These heads of departments, and Monique and Kelli, [they’re] unbelievable. They were so collaborative. We went through different hairstyles and different things we could do with the makeup. We added a bit of eyeliner for [Charles] just to make it feel more 80s. And then Kelli, I mean, it was like she did her research on me. She added badges to the jacket which kind of represented me as Jayden, before I even got there. It wasn’t until I got the haircut, put the makeup on, put the costume on, and I was like, Okay, this is Charles.

Cast Camaraderie.

The vibe was just incredible. Me and George, we really wanted to set the tone for the series and make sure that everyone’s having fun and it’s an environment where we could all talk about how we’re feeling. We were just such a big support blanket for each other. If there was ever a time that somebody needed space, or they wanted to prep themselves for a certain scene they were going to film, we all respected that and we were each other’s cheerleaders the whole entire time. And it’s still the same to this day now. I think it really shows when you watch the series that we all knew what we were making and we wanted to make something that we would want to watch, which we’ve all done. I cannot shout out my castmates enough. Forever grateful.

Kassius Nelson as Crystal Palace

Acting Inspiration

I watched a lot of animation. I used to watch the Addams Family, the black-and-white one, because I didn’t have Disney Channel or anything. Monk, Murder She Wrote, I was watching those things, so maybe I was actually destined to play a detective, now that I’m thinking about it. I watched a lot of cartoons and animations. I just liked the idea that I could be engrossed in another world. And I always wanted to know what happened next, or when the film finished, I would be like, “Okay, but then what? What happens after that?” And now I get to be part of that question or that answer (...).

Dressing the Part

We have a fantastic costume designer, Kelli Dunsmore. I always say that she literally wove the story into the fabric of the clothes, because there are things that she foreshadowed in the clothing that happened episodes later. Or, if characters start to get in some sort of relationship with each other, that will be reflected in the clothes that they wear or the colors that they have. Or, if they’re feeling any type of emotion, (...)l. Crystal wears these massive platform boots that must be about four or five inches. They’re huge, very heavy, but it’s funny because they change the way that you walk. (...) She’s not very light, which makes sense with the things that she’s going through and the experiences that she’s having. Practically, it helped, because Jayden and George are like six-foot-something. So, if I film a scene and I’m at the bottom of the lens and they’re up there, that helped. I’ve got a good couple inches on my feet.

Yuyu Kitamura as Niko Sasaki

Acting Inspiration

Sandra Oh is a woman that I will forever be indebted to because who she was on Grey’s Anatomy was so formative for me. The most interesting thing about her character was not that she was Asian, but that she was such a fully fleshed person with flaws and amazing qualities. And her work ever since I think has been iconic, so she’s a woman that I deeply look up to.

Landing the role in Dead Boy Detectives

I auditioned from Hong Kong and my dad was my reader because all of my acting friends were in New York. My dad was able to carve out time and be an amazing reader. And in that audition side, it’s the scene where Niko gets to see the “Dead Boys” for the first time, and there’s a line in there that was something along the lines of me talking to Edwin and asking, “Do you two make out with each other?” And my dad stopped the tape and he was like, “What are you reading for?” And I was like, “Don’t give me notes, it’s fine!” And so that was the audition process! I think within a month I found out I got the part and it’s been an absolute dream ever since.

Dressing the Part

(...) I think on paper Niko can seem like a certain type of character, but even in the choice of every costume we did, every color that she wears, every meticulous little piece about everything from her nails to her room, it’s so well curated and thought out. Through her journey, we also find that she’s a woman that wears what she feels. On the surface, she might seem like the most joyful, young, optimistic girl, but it’s the inner confidence and bravery where we find that she’s layered, and she is very much a young woman coming of age.

SOURCE: MEET THE REAL DEAD BOY DETECTIVES (AND FRIENDS)

[ettawritesnstudies]

in the tags on a recent post you said your day job is "mind numbingly simple" do you know if that's common of chemical engineering jobs?

(i am currently pursuing a chemical engineering degree and honestly don't know that much about chemical engineering jobs. but i would not mind a simple job that gives me mental capacity left to write at the end of the day)

So it strongly depends on the kind of engineering work you end up going into and any job will vary in complexity on a day to day basis but with a chemical engineering job you have a lot of different options!

Specifically I'm a R&D Applications Engineer/Technical Customer Service in a polymer science role for a big international corporation so I'm working with existing products in a company and figuring out how to make them work for customers who are having issues.

What this looks like on a project to project basis is that we get an email from the customer or the plant outlining the problem and what kind of material they're sending us to test, I design the experiments we need to do to validate all the variables and properties, and then I spend a few weeks in the lab churning out data, then plug it into an Excel spreadsheet, crunch the numbers, throw that in a PowerPoint, and send it off to the relevant personnel.

The mind numbingly simple part is the standing in lab running through tests because it's hands-on labor that requires very little thinking once you've established your parameters. I usually just put on an audiobook or a podcast to kill time. The design of experiment can get somewhat complex and you have to be very good at time management if you have multiple projects with time sensitive lab components going on at once, but the number crunching has never required anything more complicated than 10th grade algebra. I'm not doing much chemical formulation either, just following established recipes and procedures within my company, but I'm learning more specific stuff as I go.

Now I'm only a year out of college and I've never had an internship or anything that WASN'T in a non-lab setting, so I can't speak to how something like a Process Engineer spends their time. I knew I didn't like being out on the plant floor because it's often Loud and Dirty and Sensory Overload so I tried to avoid applying for those roles. You learn a lot more about the production that way though, just not my cup of tea. You also have chemical engineers who design entire chemical plants and control systems (which is very very cool and important but I was bad at those classes lmao). Some also go the biochemical angle and get into pharmaceuticals but medicine scares me.

That's just my personal take but I encourage you to talk to your professors and upperclassman and see what they have to say! Career fairs >>>>>>> linked in for getting anywhere in this hell of a job market if your school has them and I hope you have a better time of it than I did during the COVID times. 🫡

[softpine]

Do you think your sims would have survived the lockdown part of covid? I know we all pretty much lost our minds. Do you think any of them would have been the type that "took advantage" of the time?

honestly i don't know when 2020 would've fit into the timeline so i'm basically fudging this whole thing lmao

oh beth & caroline would've been REALLY close to filing for divorce. with cara being a tattoo artist, she would've been completely out of work and beth would've been working from home (she's a children's therapist) but there are no extra rooms in the house to use as an office, so she would've had to either use the computer in the living room/dining room/kitchen which would be a major privacy issue, or set it up in their bedroom which is super small. they were already having relationship issues at that time, but being trapped in such close quarters..... they would be at each other's throats... and they wouldn't even be able to have crazy makeup sex (the only tried and true solution to their problems fjksjd) because asa is in the next room doing virtual school 😭 btw asa definitely started making bread from scratch and promised himself he would keep doing it after life went back to normal (he did not).

stevie would still be working. KD would have let her stay home, but stevie would be desperate to get out of the house (oh my god her parents would be insufferable) and not be lonely anymore. you know that tiktok that's like "you think you can hurt my feelings but it was my job to enforce the cracker barrel mask mandate as a 17 yo butch lesbian" literally that but "it was my job to enforce the mask mandate for rural american truck drivers as a 16 yo trans girl" 🫡

elaine and jada are lucky because their bedroom windows face each other, so they could technically see each other. elaine would've fallen down the skincare rabbit-hole and completely ruined her skin in a matter of months (me too girl...... happened to the best of us) and jada would've had time to make tons of art, but she would have extreme art block and spend most of her time just laying in bed being anxious (again. me too girl.)

i guess casper would still be in high school, and sadie was still just a toddler. danny had already been working from home for years, so it would be nothing new for him

trigger warning for serious discussion of covid below

mikaela is a pediatric nurse at a hospital, so i don't really want to go into detail about how emotionally damaging that time must've been :( she would be working nonstop and i think she wouldn't even want to go home afterwards for fear of transferring germs. she might have stayed in a hotel during the peak of things

i'm gonna be honest i think 2020 would've been the worst year of coco's life because her boyfriend had cancer and was going through chemo, so obviously she could not be anywhere near him unless she was willing to be 100% quarantined with him, which she couldn't do because she needed to work. she had people counting on her. and she had.... a lot of other stuff going on too, some of which would've been affected by a pandemic but i can't really go into detail about that

and finally i have to state the obvious -- people died, no matter how careful they or their families were, and sometimes it didn't even matter how healthy they were before covid hit. i had family members who were immunocompromised get covid and i thought they wouldn't survive but they did, while other people in my life were only in their 40s/50s and healthy but they didn't survive. so in my mind, there's no point trying to guess how my characters would fare, and also it just feels icky in general. but it felt weirder to not acknowledge this at all, so. here's this ramble.

i also want to send love to anyone who continues to be affected by covid in a world that wants you to believe it's "over", whether that be from long covid, grief, being immunocompromised yourself, etc. i see you ♥

[anexperimentallife]

This "if you don't brag about it online, it didn't happen" culture is so weird. I regularly get people accusing me of doing nothing but posting my thoughts online and not actually helping anyone, and it's like...

Dude, I'm not gonna go online and brag and post pictures every time I donate supplies or money, give someone food or a place to stay, serve as a sympathetic ear, help another adult escape their abusive family, encourage someone through a bad situation, stay on the phone with someone when they just need a human voice, let someone ahead of me at the store, overtip a tired server, stand up when someone's being bullied, or do some other random act of kindness. Posting "proof" of all that shit would just feel weird to me. And pointless. The point isn't to show off; the point is that we're all in this together, and everybody should be pitching in to make things better for all of us. It should just be the standard.

I literally owe my life to people who helped me in hard times with no thought of reward--often when I didn't deserve the help. Hell, when our family was in danger of forced separation because paperwork errors wouldn't let our daughter travel with us, y'all pitched in to pay for getting it straightened out.

(Not to mention that even if all I did was post, posting thoughts online can be helpful--a lot of people have posted things that have been helpful to me, and a lot of folks have thanked me for things I've posted, saying my words helped them.)

I mean, I get the theory that posting about ways you've helped people might inspire others to do more good, so I'm not gonna say everyone who does it is seeking glory, but that's just not the way I roll. I don't even like being acknowledged for stuff like that. It all just comes under the heading of doing my job as a human being. Because if we're not taking care of each other, what's the point of anything?

If I could help out completely anonymously, so that not even the people I'm helping knew it was me, that's what I'd do. Not because I'm some saint, but just because a) the attention embarrasses me, and b) I don't want anyone to feel embarrassed or lesser for accepting help.

Honestly, I'd like to do more. But I'm autistic, disabled (spine, joint, and soft tissue inuries, severe arthritis, a traumatic brain injury that affects my memory and focus, and then there are the brain and body effects of long covid on top of that), have adhd, had covid three times, almost died of illness three times in the past five years (once from double pneumonia with secondary lung infections, and twice from covid, which also left me with a two-year foot infection that ended up requiring surgery to get rid of), and other issues, am about 15K USD in debt (from the issue with our daughter), PLUS I'm raising a toddler and supporting two other adults on a fixed income (and still need to somehow come up with around thirty thousand dollars for needed surgeries and scans and dental work and other treatments that got put off because of the aforementioned issue with our daughter), so yeah, there's only so much I can do.

But it's not "nothing." (And I'll allow myself a little bit of chest-puffing by saying it's probably more than most of the people who accuse me of doing nothing do.)

So yeah... "all you do is post online instead of helping people." Oh, you mean because I don't... what, make people "earn" my help by posing for embarrassing pictures or videos, or giving testimonials about how grateful they are? LMAO what a sad, mean, tiny, drab little world you must live in where no one helps anyone without bragging to the world about it.

(Hell, I'll probably delete this later, because tbh this little rant feels a little too much like bragging to me, but I needed to vent.)

[hms-no-fun]

i both really wish (and dont wish) cohost had a similar ask system to tumblr because im 300% more comfortable on that website than this one but ive had this particular burning question since i binge read godfeels during a covid ridden fugue

The more general version of this question is: how has optiministDuelist been involved in the writing of godfeels 3.1? (or even the future parts you're working on, if you can do so without spoilers)

The more specific version that makes this a question better suited towards you rather than shooting the question towards optimisticDuelist, and is rather a series of questions extrapolating on the first one is: why did you involve them? are they helping you write dirk or jake? are they providing input/advice? and that goes towards other people you've had help with the project too, if they're comfortable with being spoken about - i was just a fan of od's analyses and was surprised to see his name attached to godfeels! in fact im so curious about the nature/process of collaboration in godfeels it seems reductive to even try to condense it into questions that would be easier/faster to answer, in that i fear that what i put in will be what i get out, and that logically it's silly of me to bank on the fact that you might go more in depth than how these questions may imply on first glance. i fear my words make no sense and rather instill anxiety into the reader. anyway these are more like guidelines for something i was hoping you could talk about

oooooo this is a good one! i've written a fair amount about my collaborations in the past. here's a post where i talk about working with taz on chapter 8.2. here's a post where i talk about working with janet girlpillz on chapter 8.6. and here's a post where i talk about working with julia on the nsfw interlude 'stomach'! and then for bonus points, here's a piece my gf zoe wrote about working with me on the first official godfeels art in chapter 7.

but you want more, so here's more.

to start with, taz and i have been friends for some years now! back in early 2019 i was on the hbomberguy donkey kong 64 stream where i (briefly) tried to defend homestuck, which i guess gained me some form of notoriety/infamy. i can't remember if it was taz or kate who reached out to me first but i know taz liked my stuff (and i liked his!). then kate had me on pgen, i joined the pgen server, we all started gaming together and talking about homestuck in group chats. this period, pretty much through the entirety of 2019, is when i went from feeling like i had zero grasp on homestuck to becoming cohost of an at-the-time popular homestuck theory podcast! it's funny going back to my first appearance on pgen because you can tell i was so in over my head. i couldn't remember the names of the hiveswap trolls and still didn't even really know all the homestuck trolls by name. AND I OPTED OUT OF TALKING ABOUT VRISREZI LMAO. oh how turned the tables did the tables did turn

[[[oh god i just realized the pgen website expired and i'm not sure if the eps are still up anywhere... i should talk to kate about that lmao]]]

anyway, i actually talked to taz a bunch when i was first writing godfeels 1!

shortly after this we all did a stream for the launch of the epilogues with folks from the pgen server as well as hiveswap writer/director aysha u farah. i played gamzee lmao i still have the clown horn app on my phone from that

i guess i don't really know to what extent any of this is common knowledge anymore now that i think about it! this feels sort of superfluous to me but i guess this was FOUR YEARS AGO lmao

early godfeels straight up would not have existed without all these people. i cannot stress enough that literary obsession is a social contagion. i was not born a homestuck, i was made. and i think maybe some of the extremities of gf2 especially feel a little weird or dated these days, because on top of everything else godfeels was responding to it was also responding to the particularly toxic 2019-era vriscourse. so a big part of june's confrontational nature came from me being fucking sick of the baby's-first-conservatism that took root in the wider fandom when us cancelable queers had the audacity to like problematic womens and not apologize for it. i won't say anymore about that because like, whatever, it's all dead and buried now even if the ghost lingers. that ghost will have its day eventually! but not anytime soon.

ANYWAY, so, going back to the beginning even though i wrote godfeels alone, it came about in a context of lengthy conversations with other homestuck theorists. so when gf3 started to blow up in scale and become less about my trauma specifically, it made a lot of sense to broaden my horizons and get some new blood into the mix. the posts i linked at the start will fill in a bunch of gaps for you there, i think. it’s worth noting that a bunch of us already had a history of at least attempting to collaborate. we had a thing building for a while like a visual novel with one choice that was basically, what if we wrote every possible version of “transgender john” and just had them all together as branching paths. this was before some of the broader fandom really dug their heels in on the reactionary transphobia, after which point i at least lost some of my taste for that project. maybe we could come back to it someday, we wrote some cool stuff for that...

as far as my collaborative philosophy goes, idk. i first started writing fiction on the zeldapower forums in the early 2000s and developed a thick skin for critique pretty fast as a result. i wrote and rewrote constantly, shared what i could with friends and talked about plot/story/character ideas with them. when i realized in year two that writing school had nothing to offer me, i transferred to film. but i did so explicitly not wanting to be a director or writer or anyone above the line, really, because i didn't know what i wanted to make or even if i wanted to make something of my own. what i wanted was to help other people realize their own visions and see how they did it. so that's how i ended up working grip/electric in the oklahoma film industry, because it turns out all it really takes to get your foot in the door is to lose the ego and make yourself useful. it helps that i am cursed with constant psychological awareness of absolutely everything in my vicinity at all times, so i gained a reputation for being practically psychic the way i could know exactly what my bosses wanted lighting-wise before they even said anything.

i miss that job tbh. i loved the people, i felt more physically and psychologically fulfilled than at any job i've ever had. oklahoma has a relatively small film scene so it wasn't long before i was on a first name basis with most everyone working on my side of the state. when a crew is all on the same page, man, there's nothing like it. not every set can or should be like this, but some of my favorite experiences were on sets where it felt like everyone was the director. the director had their own vision but they knew how to adapt it to the location, to the ideas of technicians and craftspeople who had their own insights. a good director knows how to let their collaborators take ownership of the work, even when they reject their suggestions! i loved film work and i think about getting back to it sometimes. problem is it's extraordinarily physically demanding work and it leaves no time for anything else. 12 hour days five days a week minimum. i quit because i wanted to focus on video essays, one thing led to another, now we're here and homestuck changed my life lmao

so that's where i come from as writer. i have very strong opinions about my work and what it means and what it needs to do, but i try very hard not to have an ego about it.

the way we work together is pretty simple. when i finish the first draft of a chapter i’ll post it to the work server, and then folks will leave comments. but also, every member of the team has their own little corner of godfeels that they’ve adopted. taz is the dirkjake whisperer, julia is the queen of dana and the upsilons, etc. so when i write these characters i’ll ask for their insight, and invite them to modify or add to the scene as they see fit. sometimes this means prose, sometimes this means dialogue. our understanding is that nothing goes in the final published work without my approval, but that also that nothing is entirely off the table until we’ve had a conversation about it.

i get a lot of my storytelling philosophy from the tv show LOST, where every question was introduced with an explanation in mind but with the caveat that those explanations only remained true until the writers came up with something better. this gets back to something i said yesterday about needing a story to be dynamic and not planning things out too much in advance. for more detailed explanations, here’s a post i wrote about my hooks & hats philosophy, and then here’s another post about my process in general. but basically, i have this massive web of interconnected plotpoints going out very far into the future right? so when someone makes a suggestion i know exactly how possible it is to fit within that framework. i know how much information about any given hook has been introduced, so i know whether one explanation has been seeded too thoroughly to be changed.

but the flipside of that is that now my collaborators are inventing OCs! taz created a fantastic character named xifus that i can’t wait to write more of in 3.2A. we talk about this setting all the time, we talk about what makes sense for it, what would be cool, what mistakes would absolutely RUIN IT, how we can avoid the mistakes of our predecessors, all that fun stuff.

collaboration is all about honesty. godfeels has become what it is because we’re all fans both of homestuck, of anime, of broader culture... and of godfeels. my dirty secret is that i love writing godfeels because i’m its biggest fan. it frequently does not FEEL like i am composing this story, but rather that it is just happening to me. always i am wrangling cats in this petting zoo. i don’t want to be making this thing for the rest of my life but also this story is SO COOL and we are all chomping at the fucking bit to get to the upsilons and so much other shit besides. is that egomaniacal? idk. i think the idea that you’re supposed to be neutral leaning negative on your own work is kinda bullshit. but also, i don’t see the creation of art as bound to suffering or even being a process that requires much expertise. writing isn’t magic, even if it can feel that way sometimes.

i talk a lot about my work and how i write because i want to help demystify the process and try to show that it’s a learnable craft same as anything else. imo the preponderance of mediocre-to-great artists is not proof of Exceptional People but rather that it’s actually dirt simple to become a mediocre-to-great artist. all you need is time and money and access to the right tools! which is why so many mediocre artists are the rich failsons of killfactory millionaires. which is why every artist should be pro student debt relief, pro public transit, pro affordable housing, pro welfare, pro socialized medicine, pro deprivatizing mass media, and pro wide-ranging government arts funding. our nightmare neoliberal media landscape is the result of decades of making the creation of art & culture economically inaccessible to the working class, hence everything being set in rich suburbs with giant houses, hence the inescapability of pro-capitalist pro-nationalist messaging, hence the refusal of all national media to talk to trans people about trans issues, because only the middle and upper classes get to touch the levers of public perception and they have a direct economic incentive to convince the working class that they are middle class.

the notion that this stuff is at all mysterious or naturally the purview of those who can afford expensive degrees is just the narrative they sell to working people to cover up the fact that once you ascend past a certain income bracket, absolutely everything is just nepotism. it’s all just rich guys giving their rich friends and their rich friends’ stupid fucking libertarian manchildren high paying jobs forever. that’s why they never go away, that’s why they always fail up, that’s why trans women and queer people can get bullied off the face of the internet for half-joking that a fictional woman who did a murder was blameless in her crimes while grifters who moonlight at raytheon can weather blow after blow and stir the pot and solicit donations they don’t need and never disappear no matter how hated they are, because they HAVE money and they HAVE security so none of this shit is a real threat to anything besides their shallow fucking egos. which, you know, to be fair, threatening a rich person’s ego is basically the same thing as killing a man in cold blood, so who can say what is wrong or right?

there’s obviously a lot of complicating factors to the anticapitalist yarn i’ve spun here, but that’s how i see it. the rich want to own culture, they commodify it through copyright and box it up and insist that we are trespassers if we try to reflect those “““properties”““ through ourselves. that is, in part, a big reason why i haven’t given up on godfeels or tried to “file the serial numbers off.” i love this story and i am treating it with as much care as i would something original, because i believe this is art that stands up even with its imperfections and it’s insulting to me that “fanwork” is considered naturally lesser than “original” work when literally everything around us that is owned by disney et al was stolen from what was once an open culture. i reject the enclosure of the commons of our imagination, and andrew hussie themself quite famously said that postcanon homestuck belongs to the most conscientious and invested members of the fandom.

and frankly, even as i wish i COULD make a living off of godfeels alone, i like that my art isn’t particularly monetizable. i like that it is considered low art. i like that many people see it as shameful or a waste of time. i do not want to create a commodity. i do not want to run a business. i do not want to be famous. i want to make art that is freely available that maybe, just maybe, can help a handful of queer people deal with the shit going on in their life and have a good time in the process.

in short: we have no choice but to revolutionize the world.

UHHHH wow that got off the rails at the end there didn’t it? i love giving writing advice hahaha!

[bossyuri]

Ima put my random thoughts about SRV in here! It probably won't make much sense but wtv sdfsg

again I haven't placed the last building or conquered the whole map yet, as context, but i did finish the main story aside from that.

So ima start of with thoughts while disregarding how the bugs affected the experience!

Overall, I had a good time! I really enjoyed it. I love the new crew. I loved the focus on friendship. I'd say the story overall is nothing really special though, which I don't think is necesserily a bad thing. Sometimes a chill story packaged in a fun game is good ya know.

I loved finding out bits and pieces about our friends through dialogue, I think that was great, and I really liked that it felt like a solid friend group. Modern Yuri (as I like to colloqually call him lmao) is so much more mellow from having a good support system early on lol. But he's still got some Classic Yuri in him.

The rival gangs I think that thematically, visually, their music and stuff, they were great. I liked them a lot, they had good contrast, their music when you fight them rules. I do think that they were a little underused in the actual story though so they don't quite leave the impact that say, the Syndicate did. The threat they posed felt more theorical than anything you actually see. Again not the worst thing, but I feel like they could've used a bit more time to be more present. (I did like how the Panteros stuff ended because it tied in with other things later though!). Like I think in particular that the collective could have been used a lot more.

That said I did play with looong months-long break for the first quarter of the game so idk how that affected my impression. And the last few missions I think were really, really cool, I really liked them! But I felt like the middle parts after a certain point weren't quite as memorable.

But I don't think it was bad! And the game isn't quite over yet, so I'm looking forward to what's to come.

Also I did like how narratively the game tries to give you a nice fantasy release from a lot of real life issues. I'm sure many people at Volition had to face these frustrations in their lives and it felt like. relatable yknow.

Now though.....so I work in game QA, going on my 7th year, and the game released in....really an unnacceptable state, which was really a bummer and really harmed it. I don't blame the devs. Devs want to give us good games. But they don't control release dates.

and they did not control covid. I know a lot people see covid as an "excuse" to fuck up games but trust me as someone who was working in the industry through it all, it absolutely messed up a *lot* of stuff that you may never know about. My setup from home is still not ideal. And thats not even getting into employee burnout but anyway-

I've had crashes to desktop, blockers in missions (regularly), broken multiplayer (tho i havent had a chance to test it again after patches) needing full game restarts for a variety of reasons (clothes broken, face broken, world stopped populating, quest blocked...) the clothes system still breaks for me after so many months after release (thought its a lot better. i dont fear the stores as much anymore lol). I don't know if it's a quirk of the PC version, but it would have been so much more of a good experience if they had had the time to polish the game more before release. Lots of gamers don't have much patience for this kinda shit, and it's a shame for a game that has a lot of love put into it.

But they're still patching the game, and the QOL changes that they keep adding are really good. The game is a lot more stable for me too so I will definitely keep playing, and I'm hoping that my mental state will allow me to make some fun content from it. I'm still kinda hoping for a steam release sometime so I might get to replay the story again if that happens. Because taking screenshots on epic is a goddamn pain.

So huh anyway. I don't think anyone cares that much but if you've read that far thank you! And also thanks for sticking around with me for so long despite my dropping off the face of the earth in a depression spiral. But I'm still around and Yuri is still around. And Saints Row V is fun!

[spinoff-antithesis]

[@distinguished-turtle-enjoyer ]

i actually have not stopped thinkin bout your bb!edit like,,,, its so good and scratches my brain right

how long have you been doin edits for? do have any tips for someone, who hypothetically, wants to start doin edits too? what programs do you use? how did you do the cool animated bits?

im so sorry for all the qustions 😭😭 i just think youre very talented and inspirational and i hope you have a good day ^_^

hi firstly oh my gosh you're literally so sweet i am gently shaking you i love you so much /p. secondly, i apologize for the long answer! (it's all under the cut. this got away from me. i'm so sorry apparently i have a lot to say.) (also you're so good about the questions i would constantly be asking one of my professors questions during class to the point where she said i didn't have to go "i have a question" every time i approached her)

i've been editing since 2016! around march/april, i think? loved it so much i went into film & video production in college as a major so i could do editing for a living. (i have done more motion graphics for my classmates than i have done edits outside of class assignments, BUT!)

the program i use is after effects - i started learning it when covid first hit the united states because i had nothing better to do with my time (other than music theory but i failed that bc my professor focused more on the history aspects than the actual theory soooo) and my ipad kept giving me the "no more storage" whenever i tried to use videostar lmao. (vs has, apparently, gotten a LOT of good updates, so if you're looking to start editing and have an ios system, i'd look into it! only downside is you have to pay for some of the cool stuff).

also the program i use for masking (i think i explain this later dwdw) is superimpose. i've been using it since 2014 and it's SO nice bc i can use my fingers to erase backgrounds & stuff instead of hoping i can get it to work correctly in ae or photoshop (photoshop my DETESTED i'll use it but i'll complain the entire time).

for people who want to start editing: tutorials on how your program works and how to do specific transitions are gonna be your best friend when you're first figuring things out! i forced a friend to literally walk me through how after effects worked when i was first figuring it out, and when i had swapped to videostar back in 2017/2018(?) i had watched a Lot of tutorials. that and played around a lot and figured things out on my own - which is also always a good way to start!! it's also totally valid to look at other people's edits for inspiration - most editors don't really care, as long as you don't flat-out remake their edit (some people don't like that!). i have a style insp folder on instagram where i save edits that i like so if i need transition ideas or i'm doing a different style, i can look there for inspiration. at the end of the day, as long as you're having fun with it that's all that matters!

also, starting simple is always okay!! my edits for a year were just me slapping gifs & video segments together on a timeline in cute cut pro bc imovie didn't load them lol & it'd crash every time i breathed. ++ it never hurts to ask people for feedback/constructive(!!!) criticism/etc! (also not to sound like everyone else but practice? good. it's so good. if i showed my 14/15y/o self some of the edits i can make now they would've passed out on the spot bc i was still trying to figure out transitions back then. programs can also sometimes make a difference in edits, but usually it's not super noticeable until you start getting to the Complicated Shit.)

a lot of popular programs i've seen are ones like video star (ios only), alight motion (android only), after effects (i recommend 🏴‍☠️ing it tbh, i only use it legally bc i had to use adobe programs for school), capcut, and i think some people still use sony vegas pro & maybe cute cut pro (i've heard it may have actually gotten better since i last used it in 2018)? i have no idea. programs also depend on whatever device you're using to edit on! since i've been using my laptop, i'm able to use after effects (it's computer-only), but when i used my phone/ipad to edit i used ccp & vs.

for the animation - it's a lot of cutting up the image and masking! more complex animations, like the one i had of leo walking down that red 'hallway' have several different layers that have been masked. (i removed the background & filled in the spot where leo originally was in two different apps - superimpose (taking leo out) & photoshop (filling in the bg)) in after effects, the way i've done this was mask out the specific thing i wanted to move (like an eye) and then put that mask on what i've called a "base" (not animated), and then stick a solid behind the base to match the color of the object. (some of my layers are not named appropriately; base 2 is the left arm & the four "SIX_[...]" layers are the mask/bandana tails)

an example of this would be for any of the eye blink animations i did! this (above) is the same shot, with and without the eye - since it's masked out and i have the background solid behind it, it doesn't look too unnatural/have a black outline/mass where his eye should be.

what it looks like without the solid layer behind it ^ (the red lines are from the null layers - ignore that)

this is what my timeline looks like if it's a more simplistic animation - the only five things being animated here are leo & raph's eyes. (there's only this many layers bc it's two characters in one shot & i was also animating their pupils - typically, an eye-blink animation is about 4-6 layers for me (solid, base, mask, & null to animate with, 6 if i'm animating both eyes & 4 if just one))

in after effects, there's this really cool tool called the puppet pin that one of my friends (lovingly) yelled at me for not knowing about - which. yeah fair she wasn't wrong it's SUPER useful in animating, provided you chop up your image first. if you don't it's a mess.

(separated by layer vs i should've really put the mask tails & leo's head on separate layers and didn't bc that was the 2nd to last animation i had to do and i was losing my mind bc i wanted to be done with the edit lmao)

the way people animate depends all on their style (there's two common ways to do blinking animation - having the anchor point at the bottom of the eye, or the middle of it) and the program they use. it's been a while, but i could probably tell you how to do some basic animations on videostar still even though i've been doing them in after effects for about 2-3years now. ALSO the best way to have an animation be noticeable is to over-exaggerate it/make them Big - which, yes, can mean 'breaking bones' and having the limbs be a little wonky at the start. (if you want it to be realistic though go Just to the point where it looks uncomfortable lmao)

uhm. again i am so sorry that this is so long i THINK this is everything? if not: my inbox/dms are always open if you ever want to ask more questions, wanna follow up on something, etc etc!! (also if you ever start editing please send me your edits!!! i'd love to see them <3)

[pluralsword]

TLDR on our HRT journey (nearly 4 years now), very glad that we may be ending the chapter of our body’s life similar to how Phase 1 Arcee felt about her body lmao and moving on to feeling more euphoric with our organic frame (it is what is, we love it even though even our oldest headmate/our body desires metal, guess making shapes EVA foam will help compensate someday on occasions that would feel safe to do so):

Okay so, four days in on finasteride with estradiol (having given finasteride enough time to bond with our body tissue, takes four to five days) after switching out of spironolactone with estradiol (which we were on four almost four years) and personally;

finasteride is fucking fantastic so far:

- feel much more cogent/less brain fog (we’re told this is due to being more hydrated)

- it’s easier to plan doing things and then to do them

- body feels less unhinged/off-kilter

- sensation actually feels better/more intense, it’s easier to appreciate and immerse in touch and thus we don’t crave intimate relief as often, all of which has helped with our health a lot

Hopefully whatever “masculinizing” traits might resurface due to finasteride interfering with dihydrotestosterone instead of testosterone like spiro does won‘t be a bother, but from what we’ve seen/read/heard from folks a lot of people’s experience of it is okay. Finasteride is apparently recommended for folks who tend to get/are sensitive to side effects from medications (we definitely are).

For us personally, pre-HRT testosterone was no fun, it left us rather angsty and having difficulty with feeling a sense of composure, apart from the dysphoria, so spiro with estradiol was a remarkable improvement in all regards. Just with various psychological experiences piling up in the last three years on top of stuff from the rest of our life, spiro no longer felt tenable, so we had to switch to something else, and weren’t willing to take gender stuff by needle for personal reasons. Interestingly; a trans man we used to work with said that estrogen before HRT also left him feeling off-kilter in the head, and that taking HRT helped clear things up. This is just an experience some gender expansive folks have we suppose. :3

So yeah, here’s to the future! Whatever happens to our psyche for other reasons aside, we’ll probably be writing and doing art more consistently. We have some more thoughts about spiro and Arcee in regards to canon below:

To some degree though (this is going to be a very unhinged artist take, but more than anything it’s us processing what we went through), we’re glad we did spiro because of the effects it had we wanted that will carry over, and also because it did give our non-Arcee headmates and bodily experience personal insight into how much of a pain the aft sensory side effects and brain fog especially from something that was supposed to give euphoria is.

Given- we knew what many of the side effects could be going in, our gender affirmation providers did their best to inform us and we are deeply appreciative of how they’ve helped out all these years including by being supportive of our xenogender stuff and plurality when we finally felt comfortable talking about it. And, we know that having contracted the original strain of Covid in early 2020 could have left us with long covid which also can cause brain issues, and then there’s all the additional baggage of our psyche from how our brain is wired and living in the world, which we’ve done our best to compensate for with other medications, learning wisdom techniques from dialectical behavioral therapy and philosophy and various orgs and studies and contacts and experiences in life, seeing a therapist as needed, and so on.

So, it’s not as if it was just spiro, just as for IDW1 Arcee, it wasn’t just her surgery; it was also everything else going on in her life that was so hard, and she eventually found a way to reconstruct her life and be happy, just as we continue to attempt to do, appreciating happiness when it does come our way. This is all to say that there’s always hope; even if spiro had been the only thing in the world at the time, we would have clawed onwards, we wouldn’t be as happy but we would still try, for all the love we are lucky to have and make.

[servin-up-surveys]

survey #126

Tell me about the first five photos you have on your phone or camera. First by date taken (or saved) and not like, my five most recent? There's a meerkat wallpaper, a Markiplier quote one, me holding my niece Emerson when she was born, and then two of Roman.

Have you got any half or step siblings? One half-brother, two half-sisters (that I count, there's one more but I don't know her), and technically a stepbrother through my dad's current wife, but I don't consider him my brother at all. Also barely know him.

Have you ever known someone online and then met them in person? If so, which website did you meet on? Yes, Sara. We "met" via the Meerkat Manor fanbase on YouTube at like, 8 and 10 years of age. DARK fuckin days lmfao

When was the last time you were sick and what illness did you have? Covid, many months ago.

Do you know anyone with a serious anger management problem? No, thank FUCKING god. I can't handle people who show anger on an aggressively physical level, never mind on a regular basis. I fucking can't, especially if it's a man. I'm breaking the FUCK down, no matter what man it is/his relation to me or what setting we're in.

What color is your wallet? Red, black, and creamy white. It's a Harley Quinn (comics-style) design.

Have you seen all the Lord of the Rings movies? I haven't seen any, actually. Not interested.

Do you have an unhealthy obsession with colored furry throw pillows that are different shapes and sizes? Haha no, but I AM obsessed with those pillows that have been a "thing" lately that look like various types of succulents. I SO BADLY wanna get one of those totally ethereal bed comforters that looks like moss or just other grassy stuff along with some of those pillows, goddamn I would be so happy.

Have you ever had to call the cops on someone else before? *I* didn't, but my sister did on a VERY obviously intoxicated (or dealing with something similar) driver. This motherfucker nearly hit so, SO many people, like I KNOW we weren't the only people who called them in, given we were on a Raleigh (NC capitol) highway, where it's extremely busy. It was actually on my birthday on the way back home and I was in full panic attack mode freaking the TOTAL fuck out. I just hate cars, man.

Don’t you hate it when people suddenly love a celebrity when they die? I. HATE. This question. Somebody - and usually someone very loved by a massive number of people, if they're a celebrity - just fucking DIED, left the fucking world, and you wanna complain about people caring? Go fuck yourself, like jesus fucking christ.

What was the last cocktail you drank? I tried a Mai Tai yesterday that Mom made, but it was disgusting (aka too strong) so I certainly didn't truly drink it.

Are you good at keeping running counts and tallies in your head? NONONOONONONONONONOONONONONONONONONONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, it is honestly absurd how bad I am at remembering numbers in any context. With counting, if you say a SINGLE word to me while I'm focusing way too fuckin hard on not messing up, I'm immediately losing where I was, even if it was single digits.

Are there any foods you hate the smell of but like the taste, or vice versa? Well, I absolutely adore the smell of coffee, but I think it tastes disgusting. I'm sure there's other stuff, too.

Do you have a dishwasher? Yes, thank god.

Do you make to-do lists? I actually recently downloaded a nice to-do list program on this laptop that I've been enjoying using. It's been helping me. It's called Todoist if you wanna check it out, it's nice, and free.

What pet names do you use for your friends/loved ones? "Hun(ny)," "dear," "darling," and "love" are most common for me with friends. I'm also one of those people who use "bitch" affectionately lmao, don't be offended by me saying that.

What pet names do you like to be called? Just about anything is fine with me, but I definitely favor cute ones, like I know I've mentioned in the past a doctor I used to see who called all her patients (including elderly men) "ladybug" and it was my favorite thing ever, please she was SO cute and I miss her. OH, one I CAN think of that I will absolutely hate from anyone is "princess," holy fucking shit don't.

Have you ever developed your own film? No.

What breed was the last dog you saw? She's a chihuahua.

What’s your favorite thing to do at the end of the day? Lately my unwinding routine in bed has been scroll through Tumblr, then Facebook before actually trying to sleep. Sometimes I'll add Insta or Pinterest.

Do you have a hard time letting things go? I have a miserably hard time letting people go, like it's absurd JUST how reluctant I am with basically anybody, no matter what they've done.

When did you last feel fear? Stepping on the scale for my weight to be logged at the psychiatrist today. THANKFULLY, it hadn't gone up.

What last made you smile? I saw this super fuckin cute picture I hadn't seen before on Tumblr of Richard and Paul being girlfriends, smiling was mandatory

Have you ever walked through a sunflower field? NO BUT I WISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you a fan of Taylor Swift? What’s your favorite song from her? No, but there are a couple mega-old songs by her I enjoy; I sincerely and wholeheartedly love "Love Story," and I'm sorry but "Picture To Burn" is a CLASSIC that I think every teenager has belted at least once lmfao

What’s something great that has happened to you recently? Actually today at PT, I noticed in the mirror that the pants I regularly wear out looked a lot baggier on me than what I'd grown used to. I commented mostly to myself on it, and Mom pointed out, "Brittany, you have absolutely lost weight," and it was really really REALLY validating and exciting to know other people could see progress.

Would you ever paint your bedroom bright blue? No. Maybe a lighter blue, but not bright.

What’s your favorite way to eat rice? As pork fried rice.

What’s something that has really impacted your life? Dealing with a plethora of mental illnesses, as well as experiencing relationship trauma.

What did you last have as a snack? Some peach rings.

Do you like lima beans? NO, I despise all beans. As a kid I used to explain hating lima beans with "they have fluff in them" and girl real and true 😭

How many bottles do you see from where you’re sitting? Just the water bottle by me.

Do you ever do these surveys with your SO? Nah.

Do you have a waste basket in your car? Mom generally keeps a plastic bag hooked around the transmission thing.

What’s the last wild animal you have seen? Well realistically I'm sure a bird, but maybe close to a week ago, a rabbit was in our front yard around dusk! Lil guy was just grazing and I freaked bc bunny. I immediately tried getting a picture of it from my window, but because of the lighting but especially the window blinds, it wasn't gonna happen.

Something you were surprised to learn about your parent’s childhood? [TW: RAPE] Childhood, idk, but I never knew my mother was drugged by her "boyfriend" and date-raped until like, literally this year. That's how Katie got here. My mom is just too fucking good for this world and even any heaven, I learned because via DNA testing and stuff Katie recently got in touch with her father, and has apparently been building a relationship with him, and my mom is entirely refusing to tell her what really brought her here; like, I asked her, and she responded with so much fire and SO quickly that she was not taking this away from her. I cannot IMAGINE the pain it causes her, especially when Katie's told her he's been nice. I just can't even try to imagine, I fuckin can't.

Have you ever told a friend you thought their parent was hot? Uh no, that's weird.

Have you ever destroyed another person’s belongings out of anger? Absolutely not, find a better way to be angry, ffs.

Which painkiller do you use? Usually Ibuprofen 'cuz it's cheaper than Advil but still basically the same thing.

Would you like to be part of a wedding party? It's honestly not my favorite thing, primarily because of all the pictures, but of course I would be in them for my family and close friends.

Have you ever thrown anything up to hang on the power/phone lines? No, not a fan of that.

Something you taught yourself how to do? Edit videos in Sony Vegas programs at least semi-decently.

What is the last song you listened to in a car? Uhhhh I honestly can't remember what was the last thing on this morning.

Do you currently feel calm? Yeah, I'm fine. Probably going to sleep soon; surprised I'm not already honestly, last night was TERRIBLE sleep-wise and I've been a complete zombie today, so I really shouldn't be awake.

If applicable, what’s your favorite sports team? Not into sports.

When did you last sign your signature? Today at the psychiatrist actually, for a certain sort of info release.

What cover do you think is better than the original song? Two BLARINGLY obvious ones imo that I always instantly go to: Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" (originally by Nine Inch Nails) and Disturbed's cover of "Sound of Silence" (originally by Simon & Garfunkel). Like, it's not even a competition.

Who is the last person that gave you butterflies? Girt.

Are you planning on kissing anyone tomorrow evening? Girt is coming over tomorrow so I'm sure I will.

Have you ever told a guy you were a lesbian to get him to leave you alone? No.

If you have a favorite television show, who’s your favorite character? In Meerkat Manor, it's Mozart. Growing up it was always Flower, but I mean, she was basically everybody's with her being like the "main" character that you were always rooting for, but I've considered it Mozart for many years now. Don't get me wrong, I adore Flower (I loved every single meerkat merely mentioned in that show), but Mozart was just a truly gentle meerkat, even without the MM script that made up or altered things. In That '70s Show, it's SO hard to pick because all the characters are so memorable and lovable in their own way, but I think I've always liked Hyde the most.

[angelvyxen]

I think a big part of the fact that jaysons mom is always around is because he had deuce his rookie year. idk how different/her involvement in his everyday life would be if he didn’t have him so young but I’m sure she would still be in charge of his finances. another weird thing is that they’re really open with each other about everything like jayson brings some (not all) of the girls he fw at the time around her and she doesn’t seem to care lmaoo. like another anon said if he’s dogging all this girls out and is a “mommas boy” you’d think he’d be more compassionate/a lover boy 😂 I think his stepfather is weird too cause why you following these people around everywhere you don’t have a job? He also has a kid too but you barely see her in their celebrations of anything

jayson relationship with his father is also concerning cause his dad makes it seem like they were best friends but jayson has done interviews saying their relationship was purely basketball and he obviously didn’t live with him. I think jayson has some attachment issues lowkey though cause having to see your mom go through all that alone and being with her all the time while also feeling like your dad didn’t love you had to have been a bit traumatic for him

another thing that’s a little weird is some of the girls he goes for (toriah, Ella, some Memphis girl he was fw during covid) all resemble his mom. the only public girls he’s fw that dont is his white college gf and Bella.

I have read nothing but solid points. I don’t know if Deuces’ existence contributed to how much she’s around, I feel like even without Jayson having a kid young she would’ve still been handling his finances, coming to every game, and living extremely close to him.

You’d think that men who love their moms so much wouldn’t be dogs but surprise-fucking-surprise, a lot of them are. 🤣I think a good chunk of his foolishness was just due to being young & having endless resources. I think he’s starting to calm down. Regarding his step-daddy, I keep forgetting he exists, how did you find out he had a child? But no, I think the stepdads job is to just be Brandy’s husband lmao. He probably helps with Jayson’s philanthropic stuff, like charity events. Brandy can’t be doing it all.

I don’t like Justin (Jayson’s dad). He feels like one of those dads that didn’t start caring about their kid until the kid got successful. But I think as Jayson got older, their relationship improved. Because in some throwback pictures Jayson looks like he hates that man 💀.

I keep saying this! The women Jayson messes with have similar traits to his mom, ESPECIALLY THAT JOJOS ANGEL GIRL. That’s the one that made me side eye him a little.

[doverjazzghost]

wow it's the 2022 new year's post' [[MORE]] 2022 really sucked. It was the worst year for me in a while. I was seriously ill 3 separate times and I was even hospitalized for covid for a day. Also I was in a car accident :( all of that compounded and made me really backslide on my mental health which made doing things a lot more difficult. my goals from the 2021 post: -learn how to relax more and just do things for the sake of doing them instead of a goal uhhhh not really! I still can't really relax and have to be goal oriented in stuff that I do -edit and finish finish my novel no! I really fell off on this. I started a first edit read through last winter and just got tired and didn't finish it RIP -(if possible) start going to cons/doing cosplay more consistently I am actually doing this one! I finished like 4 cosplays this year and I am going to Magfest next weekend and probably Colossalcon East in the fall. -(if possible) take more time off to travel no! Travel still makes me really uncomfortable (covid and anxiety-wise). This past year, I think I've been to, like, DC, Philly, and Western Maryland but that's it . . . .I had plans to go to MA but those got covid'd. But I did use all my PTO this year at least -make some long term goals no!! I still have no idea what I'm doing even tho this year sucked, I still have some stuff to be grateful for: -I am still in a relationship with my beautiful gf!! -I made a lot of new friends! Especially people from my orchestra! -I started arranging music and finished my first symphonic arrangement -I started DMing and kept a campaign going for 6 months and I am better at DMing I think -I am still working out! I kind of have ab lines even when I'm not flexing! -I have done 2 live concerts (including 1 with a solo) and I didn't die! -My job doesn't make me want to fucking kill myself lmao -my pie and cake placed at the state fair -I learned how to crochet! goals for 2023 that hopefully I can actually manifest lol: -have a symphonic arrangement I've made be performed live -actually do it, actually travel this time -go back to working on my anxiety and agoraphobia -finish this Dnd campaign lol -be more proactive in reaching out to people -focus on craftsmanship in the things that I make happy new bear everyone ᕦʕ •`ᴥ•´ʔᕤ

[comfortablyunsolved]

2022 summary (tw for sa and si). mostly just making this post to go back over my own year for myself + to have for posterity for Reflection Purposes idk:

january - STARTED TESTOSTERONE and got covid. that's pretty much it

february - by far the ugliest, most painful friend breakup i've ever been through but it needed to happen. in retrospect the friend was at best pretty inconsiderate and at worst abusive so ... yeah. w more time to reflect i've realized i also had my own faults in ways so i think it's ultimately just true that we brought out the worst in each other and it was for the best for us to part ways

march - my voice broke and started dropping!! it was so great!! went to nyc during spring break to see two of my best friends who i don't get to see very often and mean the world to me. seriously adore them

april - saw lorde (LIFE-CHANGING), got my giant stuffed rat that i'm still obsessed w, joined a (gender-inclusive) greek house at my school

may - weird situationship with this girl who's really lovely and we are still on friendly terms but it didn't work out lol

june - went to california for my brother's college graduation, saw most of my relatives for the first time since starting my transition and it was a bit awkward but overall pretty good

july - mostly school, partied a lot bc it was summer and whatnot. had The Drunken Makeout Incident That Started The Hell My Life Spiraled Into right at the end of the month

august - hell hell more hell. every corner of my life had drama blowing up in it, guy i made out with asked me to be his boyfriend and when i said i wasn't comfortable w that label yet he immediately went and told everyone we were boyfriends, he did some other questionable shit that i will not go into detail about and other ppl also did some other questionable shit and i was caught in the middle of it all having close friends on both sides and it was really bad! was pretty much constantly dealing with suicidal ideation and just wanting to run away somewhere

september - stuff settled down a little, i finally got the courage to break things off with this guy, made up w one of the friends i hadn't talked to after everything went down. really started changing my conception of social fulfillment in terms of who i spend time with and how, got a lot closer w the people i was living with in my house

october - mostly marching band is what i remember!! didn't do marching band first two years of college but i missed it a lot and had so much fun picking up a new instrument this season

november - everything immediately went downhill again. jarringly public twitter feud with the ex-friend from february, my childhood pet died, my dad had a medical emergency and had to go to the hospital, got contact traced for tuberculosis, the drama from the summer came back almost out of nowhere and it got even worse for me, realized i was probably assaulted by my ex from july/august, got my first c in a class ever, parents told me they're getting divorced. lmao.

and now it is december! despite how shit last month was i am feeling okay! studying abroad in aotearoa (new zealand) + the cook islands starting on new years eve so i will try to document that on here, the drama in all of its facets and complications will be waiting for me when i get back to campus in march but i'm gonna try to have as good of an experience as i can because it'll def be very once in a lifetime

[strawberrymilkgeorge]

Part Ten. Faces

warnings: swearing, hate comments word count: 4.1k (not including pics)

behind the screen (irl dream x f!reader) series masterlist ultimate masterlist

A/N: sorry its late!!!! this feels rushed but i was just too excited to get to some parts!!! also i have had some parts written out for SO long that they dont even feel cute to me anymore so im literally praying to every deity rn that you guys think its cute lmao anyway enjoy!!!!

**********

It had been about a week since Karl's slip up but everything was already more normal than Y/n had expected it to be. Of course, George, Sapnap and Quackity were all very understanding and gave her space while simultaneously reassuring her that she was safe with them. She fully believed it too, she knew she was safe with them and they weren't going to tell anyone her name.

The one unusual thing was now she had a heavy guilt, like someone dropped another sandbag in her stomach, every time Dream texted her. If the others knew, it was only fair that she tell him her name too, right? I mean, it's Dream. Dream! The boy who had quickly slipped his way into her life and, though she wouldn't admit it to Karl or Naomi, her heart.

But how? Does she just come right out and say it or wait until it gets brought up? She hadn't practiced telling anyone her name because she wasn't planning on doing it any time soon. Though, maybe she should have been seeing as she was going to see them all in person in a little over a month.

Regardless of the guilt, Y/n had other things to worry about today; Quackity was coming to visit. Karl had picked him up from the airport and the two of them spent all day catching up and doing who knows what but Y/n still hadn't met him. She was scared. She wasn't scared of Quackity, but scared because it was the first time one of her online friends would be able to put a face to her name and voice.

Y/n shuffled across her living room rug and reached for her phone on the coffee table, looking for some sort of distraction while she waited for them to arrive.

-

Y/n rolled her eyes but smiled, shaking her head as she threw her phone on the couch. Okay, he's right. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be great. It's just Quackity. If he said anything rude or annoying or anything she could literally just step on him like a bug.

A sharp knock on the front door of her apartment snapped her back into reality. She shook her limbs of nervousness as she made her way to the door, two familiar voices begging to be acknowledged from the other side.

"Let us iiinnn!! Y/nnn!!!!" Karl whined.

After countless times asking the same question, she finally convinced Karl that she was okay with him using her real name in front of Quackity. He clearly still felt guilty about telling the boys her name, asking her multiple times in different ways whether he should call her Y/n or Bugsy in front of the guest. She finally got it through his head that she didn't mind either way.

"Hold on!" she yelled back. She unlocked the door and swung it open to see Karl and Quackity. "So impatient."

"Holy shit, you are tall! Goddammit, I thought that was a joke!"

Y/n laughed shyly at the greeting, looking at Quackity like he was crazy. "Hello to you too. Tried to warn you, dude."

"Yeah but, damn! You're tall and attractive, what the hell?"

"Dude," she said with a warning in her voice. She thought the flirting on Twitter was funny, but in real life she got embarrassed easier and wasn't a fan. "I'm about to kick you out of my house before I even let you in."

This was weird, meeting Quackity before meeting some of her other friends. She loved Quackity, but she had known George much longer and Sapnap even before that. There was no problem with meeting Quackity, she just had no idea how to act since she felt like she hardly knew him.

"Am I allowed to tell people that you're hot?" he asked as he fell on her couch, Karl following right after.

"Quackity!" Y/n yelled, her face heating up at a compliment. "Seriously?"

Karl cackled and shoved Quackity. "Shut up, Alex! No, you're not allowed!"

"Sorry, is that compliment reserved for Dream?" He cackled at his own joke and Y/n's face heated up even more.

"I seriously will kick you out of my house."

"You wanna be flirty on main but not in real life?" Quackity scoffed.

"I'm not flirty on main, you are!" she laughed. "Seriously, don't."

"Okay, sorry, I'll stop," Quackity promised with a laugh in his words.

The three of them fell into easy conversation, mostly because Karl and Quackity were already comfortable around each other at this point. They eventually decided to go to the mall, just to mess around and do something.

*reminder: covid doesn't exist in this fic bc we only want happy things so ignore their masks :P*

Y/n frowned as she unlocked her front door, staring at her phone. She had been so happy with all the fans freaking out about the meetup so she looked at the trending list, expecting to see a flood of keyboard smashes and happiness, but that's not all she ended up seeing. BUGKARLITY was trending, so she scrolled through the tweets and was upset to see not all of them were positive. In fact, when she typed her name in the search bar, lots of the tweets using her name were rather mean.

A few that stuck in her head called her an attention whore and said that her friends only flirted with her because she paid them too. Who on earth would even do that? Some hurt way more than others but she tried to push them aside. It wasn't like this was the first time she had seen comments like this, but they had only gotten worse since her Minecraft date with Dream. She was worried it was cause more hate for her friends and the last thing she wanted was to be the cause of their own hate.

She typed several different messages to Dream, deleting them all after she reread them. She felt like she had to request the same thing from him in a different way. Maybe because she felt like his words meant more, even if he really was just joking like the rest of them. She decided to call him instead of texting.

"Hi!" he chirped happily from the other end.

"Hi, Dream," she said as her chest filled with something warm at the sound of his voice. "How are you doing?"

"Good," he dragged out the word. "How are you?"

"Okay."

"Just okay? What's up?"

"Um," she started, immediately forgetting the words she decided she'd use. "I just... would you mind, uh, not flirting with me so much on, like, Twitter and streams and stuff like that?"

There was a silence before Dream's frantically apologetic words came through. "Yes, of course, oh my gosh. I'm so sorry. If I had known I was making you uncomfortable, I wouldn't have—"

"Wait, no," she interrupted but he must not have heard.

"—said things like... oh gosh. Bug, I'm really sorry—"

"Dream!" she raised her voice, getting him to stop ranting. "You don't make me uncomfortable."

"Oh. Really?"

"Of course not. I actually think it's really..." Cute? Adorable? Endearing? "funny," she decided.

"Oh. Then why...?"

She sighed heavily and explained what she told the others. "So, yeah. I just don't want you guys getting hate because of me so I figure if you stop then... you know."

"Bug..." he said gently. "I'm really sorry. I promise you that I don't—none of us think those things about you."

"I know."

"No, seriously," he said, clearly not believing her. "You need to understand that I..." he paused. "I mean what I say. Always."

Always? she thought. There's a few things he's said that certainly he didn't really mean... like calling her cute?

"I don't joke around like that unless I want to. I wouldn't say things like I say to you unless I really, really, genuinely considered you a close friend and felt comfortable around you. And I do."

Her heart swelled. "Thanks, Dream. I just... maybe don't do it so much for right now? Online, at least," she clarified, not wanting to deprive herself completely of Dream's flirting.

"Yeah, if that's what you want, of course."

"Well, I don't want you to stop flirting with me but, yeah."

He chuckled. "Oh, you do like when I flirt with you?"

She hummed and changed the subject. "Did I interrupt you doing anything?"

"No," his teasing voice dropped and was back to his regular self. "I'm just editing the video we filmed the other day."

"Oh, the 'Minecraft, but you can't touch the floor'?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh," she said, not meaning to sound disappointed. "I'll let you get back to it—"

"No. I mean, you can stay on the phone. Unless you're busy."

She smiled and put her phone on speaker and set it next to her foot on the floor. "I was just gonna paint. So I can stay."

Before she knew it, almost two hours had passed of them sitting in comfortable silence, occasionally speaking to share something with the other before going back to their tasks. It was comforting knowing she didn’t need to speak constantly and could just hang out with Dream.

Y/n's phone rested on the floor next to her, Dream on speakerphone on the other end, only the sounds of his keyboard clicking letting her know he hadn't fallen asleep or hung up. She wasn't sure when they started doing this, staying on the phone even when they had nothing to talk about, but they had done it a few times before. They had talked on the phone and Discord many times but it was usually always with purpose, not usually this silently-enjoying-each-others-presence nonsense. Who was she kidding calling it nonsense, she enjoyed it an embarrassingly insane amount.

She repositioned so she was laying on her stomach as she finished sketching an image that was in her mind.

"Hey, you still there?" Dream asked softly.

"Yeah. Sorry, am I taking away from your sitting in silence time with George?" she joked.

Dream chuckled lightly. "Nah, you're more fun. I was just seeing if you ditched me for Karl yet."

"Nah, you're more fun," she mimed truthfully. "But I'm very focused on this drawing."

"Can I see it when you're done?"

"Don't expect too much. It looks bad."

"If you don't tell me what it is, I can't know how accurate or inaccurate it is."

"Very true..." she trailed off, holding the canvas further away to examine it all at once. She wanted the sketch to be perfect before she made permanent choices with paint. She enjoyed the serenity they maintained even when talking, voices low and delicate like they were keeping secrets but not quite whispering. "Are you almost done editing your video from the other day?"

"Sorta. I'm at the part where you and Sapnap almost died laughing because a ghast knocked George into lava and then Sapnap laughed so hard he fell into lava."

She chuckled, remembering the situation vividly. "That was so funny. The way George screams is so funny."

"Let Naomi know that," he mumbled, causing Y/n to gasp.

"Dream!" she laughed loudly and he joined.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's true though."

"Disgusting!"

A distant voice sounded on the other end and she assumed it was Sapnap. "What do you want for dinner?"

Dream responded with a soft, "Nothing, I'm good."

"Are you talking to Bugsy?"

He must have responded physically because the next sound was Sapnap's very clear, much more lively voice speaking directly into the phone. "Hi, Bugsy!"

"Hi, Sapnap!"

"Can you tell Dream to eat some damn food? This man literally hasn't eaten a single thing all goddamn day."

"Dream," Y/n scolded slowly. "Please eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"I'm not showing you my painting until you eat."

A door closed on the other end and she took that as a sign that Sapnap had left.

"I don't wanna see it anyway. It's probably trash."

"Take that back!" she gasped lightly. She looked at the canvas as she grabbed the first paint color and laughed. It was only a sketch and it was already trash. "Fine, then I won't go on the trip if you don't eat in the next ten minutes."

"That's punishing yourself too though."

"Who says I want to see you?" she asked.

"I never said anything about not seeing me being the punishment."

She had been caught. "It was implied."

"Sure it was."

"It's true though. Who says I wanna see your stupid face?"

He didn't say anything, but an incoming FaceTime call lit up Y/n's phone. A FaceTime call from him.

Her smile dropped. "Clay?"

"Answer it," his voice was lower and her heart started beating faster. Was he really about to show her his face to prove a point? Reveal his biggest secret that only a few close friends knew? To her of all people? She made sure she couldn't be seen in the small window and pressed accept, the voice call ending and the FaceTime call starting.

To her surprise, what came into view wasn't his face, but the logo of the hoodie he was wearing, the simple smile of his merch taunting her. She laughed, the anxiety slowly fading away as it was replaced with a heavy feeling in her stomach. Was she disappointed? Maybe a little, but he teased her into believing she would see him.

"Oh, wow! Dream face reveal! He looks just like his icon, no way!!!"

His chest moved up and down as he laughed, not moving the camera away. "You heard it here first, guys! You've known my face all along, the logo is actually my face!"

She laughed and returned to painting, not paying any more attention to her phone since he was now also showing his ceiling, a small corner of his monitor in frame but nothing else. "I mean it though, if you don't eat, I'm going to be so mad I won't even want to be friends anymore. Or you'll die from malnourishment before we get the chance to meet."

"I doubt it. I'm just not hungry."

"Whatever."

"Oh, hey, so you met Quackity today. How was it?"

"Very scary."

"Yeah?" he asked sympathetically, urging her to explain if she wanted.

"Yeah. But it turned out okay! He didn't act any different so it was fine. It was mostly just awkward. He's also so freaking loud. You would not believe how much louder he and Karl get when they're together."

"I can imagine. Aren't they doing a stream right now or something?"

"Yeah, I think so. I don't wanna watch though, I've had enough of them for the month."

Dream laughed. "How will you deal with them together for New Years'? It'll be for like two weeks."

"Who knows if I'll actually go?"

"Wait, what?" he asked abruptly, not even bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice. His keyboard stopped clicking and she could picture him staring at his phone as if looking at her. "Of course you're going."

"Not if you don't eat food! You have, like, 3 minutes to eat something until I officially am busy doing other things whenever the trip is."

Dream groaned and clicked a few things on his computer before the image on the screen became blurry as he walked through the house, still pointing it at the ceiling. She looked away again and kept painting.

"Quackity's really funny though," she continued. "It was super awkward at first but it was fun to have someone else to help me make fun of Karl."

"Wait, Bug," Dream called out over the sound of wrappers crinkling.

"Hm?" She hummed, continuing to paint.

"Bug," his voice was much softer and he sounded nervous.

She looked at her screen and dropped the paintbrush as she focused on what she saw, grabbing her phone and holding it closer to her face so she could see, still making sure she wasn't in view. All the anxiety from the beginning of the FaceTime suddenly came back and hit her like a truck. Sitting on her screen, waiting to be seen, was Dream. His hood was up, tufts of blonde hair sticking out, and he was standing with his back towards a dark room, the dim light from his pantry making his face just visible.

He held up a cookie in front of his actual, real face. "Are you watching?"

"Y-yea... I... Yeah. I'm watching. Is that really you?"

He nodded once before shoving the cookie in his mouth. "There, I consumed food," he announced, his voice muffled by the cookie. "Now you're legally obligated to come."

"I—What? CLAY! WHAT?"

"What?" he asked innocently as he chewed, walking back to his room and still holding the phone up to show his face. His room light was on, making his face much more visible. If Y/n thought he was attractive in the harsh pantry light, he must have looked like a god in his room lighting, even as pixelated as he was due to the quality of FaceTime. He fell on his bed and Y/n could only gape at his features. He slumped against his headboard, surrounded by roughly a thousand pillows, sporting a small, shy smile as he stared at the screen. "Bug, what?"

She opened her mouth but no words came out. Needless to say, he was unbelievably handsome. Part of the speechlessness was from the shock that he showed his face out of the blue, but obviously, the majority of it was that he was pretty much the most attractive person she'd ever seen. It should be illegal for someone to look that good in a hoodie, especially when pixelated.

"Hmm," he hummed thoughtfully. "Wanna take back what you said earlier?" He bit into another cookie.

"W-what did I say earlier?" Why was she stuttering???

"You said you don't wanna see me and that I'm ugly," he teased.

She paused for too many seconds too long before finally muttering, "you arrogant son of a bitch." He laughed loudly at that.

His eyes crinkled and he threw his head back. So that's what he looks like when he wheezes, she thought to herself, pretty.

Dream shuffled his position on his bed and rested his head on one of his hands. He looked so comfy. "Why are you so quiet, weirdo?" he mumbled.

She set her phone back down and touched her cheeks with her hands and looked away for a moment, grounding herself to the real world for a second. She couldn't process her thoughts when she was staring at a man as gorgeous as Clay. "I don't know, maybe because you gave me no warning before showing me your face? Or because you failed to mention that you're incredibly hot?"

She was so glad she had looked back at her phone or else she would have missed the glorious sight of his cheeks turning bright red before he turned the camera back to his ceiling. "Oh my gosh."

"Aw cute, I made you blush."

"Shut up," he mumbled. "You threatened to not come if I didn't eat something!"

"You didn't have to—you showed me your freaking face just to prove you ate a cookie!! DREAM! I would have believed you if you just said you ate something!" she laughed breathlessly, staring at the phone now for a chance to see him again. "I was joking anyway!"

"Sure you were."

"I was."

"Well, oh well. You deserved to see me anyway."

"Oh, I deserve to see you?" She laughed. "How big is your ego?"

"You know what I meant," he groaned. "You got doxxed by Karl and you met Quackity in person. And you've clearly had a bad day because of all the hate and stuff. You've done a lot of stressful things recently and you deserved to be let in on a secret too."

He was so sweet. Like, tooth-rotting, Halloween candy stash hidden under a kid's bed, upset tummy sweet. She also couldn't get over the fact that he was a million times cuter when he was shy like he was being now, his voice soft and unsure. It contrasted vastly with the confident, loud-mouthed Dream everyone usually saw, though she liked that Dream too. She wished he could show his face for just one more second to see what he looked like shy. Probably sickeningly adorable.

This was it, wasn't it? The chance she had been waiting for to tell him her name? He just let her in on his biggest secret, now he was the one deserving to be let in.

"Y/n," she said with a confident, but soft voice.

There was a long pause. "W-what?"

"Y/n."

He understood the second time immediately. "Y/n..." he tested, the smile in his voice clear as day. "I like it."

"Yeah, well, I guess you deserved to know the secret too."

"I would have been content never knowing."

"Really?" She didn't believe him. He seemed like the type to never be satisfied, always looking for something better. Not in a greedy way, but in a motivational, goal-oriented big achiever way.

"Really," he hummed. "I already feel like you're too good to be true so I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't a real person."

It was silent as she tried to collect her thoughts.

"Bug? You okay?"

"Yeah, I... it's just a lot."

"Sorry."

"No, it's not you. Well... I don't know. I just don't know what I'm supposed to say when you say things like that," she admitted.

He paused. "I think you always have the perfect responses when I say things like that."

"What do I usually say?" She smiled shyly, pulling her hoodie up to her lips.

"You usually call me a nerd or say you can't stand me. 'Oh my gosh I cannot stand you'," he mimicked before laughing.

"What? How is that the perfect response to you saying you can't believe I'm real?"

He hummed and she could practically hear him shrugging. "Because it's a classic Bug response. It's a hundred perfect you. So yeah, it's perfect."

She was silent, trying to compose herself before she exploded.

"By the way, check Twitter."

"Why, are you bragging about me calling you hot?" she teased, hoping to make him blush like she had earlier. It worked.

"Oh my gosh, no. Just look."

She clicked her home button and navigated to the app, her feed instantly flooding with the same similar messages.

"Oh, my gosh," she muttered, her fingers flying away as she typed out her own tweet in response to the love.

Dream chuckled from the other end and when she asked him why, he vaguely said that George texted him but didn't explain further.

"Um, I have to go," she said mournfully. "Karl and Quackity are coming over again."

"Booooo," he pouted.

"Sorry, you aren't the only man in my life," she teased before instantly regretting her choice of words. Too flirty, Y/n, she thought to herself.

"Hm, shame. Am I at least at the top of the list?"

She bit her lips, wanting desperately to repeat what she had told him on their Minecraft date. In the end, she gave in. "I always mean what I say too," she started. "You're my main bitch, baby."

Dream made some sort of sound, a mix of a scoff and a whine but Y/n didn't comment on it, just glowing with heat in her cheeks.

"Leave before I don't let you," he said softly and the heat only grew.

"Goodnight, Dream," she pressed, the tone in her voice letting him know he was being a tease. "Thanks for... thanks for your tweet. And for everything you said earlier."

"Of course. Sorry that you have to see those kinds of things a lot."

"It's okay when I have people like you."

"People like me? What does that mean?"

"Just.... people like you." Cute, sweet, kind, genuine people who make her heart flutter.

She could hear his smile in his words and she figured he knew the unspoken words in her thoughts, the ones she was saying without saying. "Okay. Goodnight, Y/n."

"Goodnight."

**********

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[birdantlers]

How did your brain latch onto wtwb? Was it sudden inspiration or a longer process that led to the epiphany?

In late february/early march of 2020, I had a dream where I briefly saw Izuku and Toshinori sitting on the bed from interstellar like this (the rest of the dream was unrelated) and I wanted to draw it

(pic from March 9th 2020)

I never finished any of them but originally I just wanted to do 3 fake anime screenshots from an interstellar AU; the pic shown above, a shot of Izuku hanging out of a truck watching the drone fly overhead, and future Izuku running through a field with a gas can.

I got tired of drawing these for some reason and never finished, but I did write the Ghost oneshot which is. Quite literally just the scene from interstellar with a dadmight coat of paint lmao. The end is kind of the only part that deviates a little, which is why it's probably going to be the most unchanged part of the actual chapter, but I digress.

By the time I wrote the oneshot, COVID was in full swing and I was working as a bagger/cart pusher at the local grocery store at the height of the hoarding scare so. Kinda hellish lol.

The upside to my job though was that I actually had a fair amount of time where I didn't have to talk to anyone so I could just space out and think about fic stuff. I kept thinking about the interstellar thing and how that would work as an AU, title included.

I got so into it that at one point I thought of a scene I could write (extremely long in the runtime mind you) while I was at work and I remember stopping by the meat counter and thinking "dammit. I'm going to have to write this aren't I. I have to write That Scene."

There were also a few things I wanted to change about the tone and structure of the plot itself; namely weighing on more abstract, emotional, and mystic qualities of space than hard science. Also bird people. Those are mandatory

So I whipped out a Google doc and started outlining (I still use that thing to this day it's like 80 pages long 💀💀💀) and a couple months later I had chapter one done lol

Idk I think my brain latched onto it because.. I just like it lol. I think it's got some good ideas and it's a fucking. Ridiculous undertaking; the timeline looks like spaghetti and at my current rate i calculated that it could get into the ballpark of 300k words, but I like the idea so much I feel like I just have to test my mettle and do it. I want to say I was able to do it.

Also space just makes my brain and quite literally most of my body go brrr lol. Fueled by like 2½ hyperfixations

[vicea]

dream merch discord recap (june 12, 2021) - disclaimer: i may have missed some things or mistakenly heard other things, apologies in advanced for that!

he has not played the new minecraft update

dream “knows” the date george is coming to florida but he’s not saying it :p

dream doesn’t have anyone muted on twitter

dream guesses his favorite disney princess is belle

sapnap has seen dream’s feet before

he’s not actually connor’s dad in the dsmp lore

dreamnap do not have nicknames for each other D:

dream likes olives but especially black olives

his mother makes homemade pickles

he doesn’t have a phone case

he has dropped his phone from his ear onto concrete in the parking lot before and the screen didn’t crack

dream has six fingers /j

he pours cereal first not milk when making cereal

dream calls sapnap nick most of the time :D

what’s your dream car? “idk the one that gets me to point A to point B consistently”

he finally fixed his sleep schedule, woke up at 8 am today

mrbeast owes dream a tesla because he never sent dream the audio file

dream is a very analytical person - he thinks with numbers/data

creativity is one his strengths that he is the most proud of

3 to 4 years ago, dream used to say george looks like shawn mendes a lot, now he doesn’t resemble him as much

patches is currently sleeping <3

swimming is very relaxing to dream, he swam the other day!

many houses in florida have pools than other places, even the cheapest houses in orlando have pools

dream has merchendise defects (misprints on merch) + milestone merch and he wants to give them away to those who live in orlando (probably to anyone but the event will be held in orlando) though he doesn’t want it to be a covid super-spreader thing so once you pick up your item you gotta dip. just all an idea though

he has been donating them to charity too though :)

dream has likely read Heroes of Olympus before a long time ago

he says that he’ll do a give away of his childhood books with his signature on it

he was obsessed with the series (Percy Jackson) 

he really liked the Alex Rider series

has all of Maximum Ride books, 39 clues books

has read the legend series, the twilight series, and the maze runner

has all/read of the harry potter books, divergent, eragon

he would read all the time, to the point he would read more than one book a day (a book worm he says)

dream had a goal to read 200 books in a year and he wind up reading about 150

he doesn’t want to call it a library but- growing up he had something like that that had 600 or 700 or more books in it (privileged he admits it)

he has not read a book since he started youtube (about 2 years)

dream has a folder called Book that has his own writing in it

word count: 76000 words for one of his stories 

another one he wrote 5 chapters of

he sounds very excited/embarrassed talking about the stories he wrote he’s so endearing

the very first paragraph of one of his stories (he was young when he wrote this) “What exactly is darkness? is it the lack of light? is it a pit of nothingness? ... your mind is full of darkness...” then he couldn’t continue.

the story is about a kid who wakes up in a cell and has no idea where he is with other people who are in the same situation

dream has a world building document

he has a sequel to the first book he has ever written

he found a query letter that he wrote because he wanted to get his book published- he finds it very funny

he’s calling himself a nerd but idk it’s kind of endearing

“as you can tell i’ve always been incredibly cool and not a nerd at all! ever.”

he cringes at his own old videos

dream took a lot of inspiration from witches and wizards by james patterson for writing

the story is written in a way where the main character is actually writing the story so you’re getting input from the main character during it. there’s a lot of sarcasm in it and it’s making dream laugh

very first person narrator

he feels like it’d be very cool if he were to publish his works he wrote when he was 16 on amazon or something but he probably never would because he’d have to read through all of it and it’s just embarrassing for him

dream used to video call sapnap fairly frequently- even before youtube

he strictly remembers, a very long time (at least 7 to 9 years) ago he was at his old childhood house he video called sapnap. he was wearing a (technically) suit and he remembers specifically that he was giving sap a tour... 

“snazzy in a suit”

he had no reason to put on the suit (wow time is a flat circle huh)

drista is pretty close to sapnap’s height, she’s like 5′7″ but sap is still taller than her

dream filmed the whole thing when he and sapnap met but... it’s... gone because when he was clipping that one clip for twitter... it edited the whole video

he’s sure when they meet up with george they will film that too :D

DREAM IS PRETTY SURE THAT HE AND GEORGE WILL MEET THIS YEAR-- HE SAYS A 95% CERTAINTITY the five percent is like either restrictions or visa issues

dream does not play any instruments but he had a guitar hanging on his wall when he was younger...

dream is convinced they’re the same height but also sapnap is probably taller??

they had george compare his height to a door frame and dreamnap were googling for any doorframes to find any possible chance that george is taller than 5′8″ ... nothing came up

there’s a chance they’re both lying about being 5′8″

sap and george will literally just show up in stilts to prove they’re taller than each other /j

dream without shoes is between 6′2″ and 6′3″ with shoes he’s 6′3.5″

dream is talking about awesamdude’s fake height arc again LOL

dreamnap are very private people so they don’t bother each other but george doesn’t care and would just barge into their rooms and start bothering them- they were all joking about that over a voice call

he will visit europe

he thinks that greece would be a cool place to visit because sapnap’s family is from there :) so it’ll be like a nice “treat” to go back with sap :D

dream isn’t entirely sure that the dream team meet up will happen this year but he’s working out the details because he wants to make sure it’s safe

he’s talking to youtube about his face reveal

it’s up to george if he wants to eat healthy when they finally move in

dream just has a lot of meat and vegetables in his house

spinach with chicken is good

not much fruit (only apples and tomatoes)

“DRISTA IS 5″ is trending on twitter LOL (her height got cut off)

dream doesn’t want people flying to different places because he doesn’t want to encourage travel so he wants to do all of the meet ups with a two day heads up at most

he thinks that it’s awesome that ranboo and tubbo are meeting soon !! :D

it’s very cool to dream to see how far everyone’s has come since the beginning of the dsmp. everyone has done so much

dream finalized his youtube plan a couple weeks before he uploaded his video and he was talking to drista about how he was gonna be a big youtuber in a parking lot :”)

she was the first person he really ever talked to about it

dream would love to teach george how to drive it’d be really funny :D (a very good video or a livestream idea) 

dream knows how to ride a bike, he used to have to bike to school

he can’t explain dnf.gay he has no clue he is not responsible. sapnap was the one who found it LOL. he is adamantly exclaiming that it was not him

dream doesn’t worry about views/likes/dislikes a lot- mainly views but that’s for the new uploads

he hasn’t uploaded in like a month and a half (*cries*)

he wants to stream at some point but he doesn’t know when 

he wants to play geoguessr but not now... he doesn’t want to alt stream rn- maybe tomorrow!

he is insisting that the splash text on his minecraft home screen is by callahan

he asked callahan to send him bunch of text files that are dream team related so that the splash can rotate through it but callahan thought it was funny (it is) to put only dreamnotfound <3 so it doesn’t ever change at all and dream doesn’t even know how to change and he has asked callahan to change it but he said no (even though dream pays him LMAO)

the video referenced in the padilla’s video is still in the works, it might be handed over to sapnap though !

he has no idea if he will be in MCC pride yet

padilla got dream’s input for the video, dream found him to be a very nice guy ! :) it’s the first interview that dream did that wasn’t by a person with a negative opinion of dream

dream felt relaxed doing the interview with padilla 

?????? he’s blaming callahan for his “dnfisreal” nickname in bedwars 

he’s blaming callahan for a lot of dnf-related stuff

callahan runs the dream fanart account thus the liking of dnf content

he’s so insistent that it was callahan

dream admits that he was lying about the twitter and other stuff but for sure callahan did code the splash text in LOL

dream liking that tweet “the chances of george doing a hot tub stream is the same of dnf dating” was “funny” he wasnt trying to do any commentary...

the inside joke of “oh it’s all just a joke to you” originates from george and sapnap actually always fighting (like them yelling and shouting at each other) and george said something really mean and sapnap was hurt then geroge said “it was just a joke” and sapnap replied with that line and ever since then it’s been a meme LOL

he says that everyone does the hand-on-the-passenger-seat-while-reversing thing

dream is offline raiding with his chat with 6k people

dream appreciates us and will talk to us soon! 

[the-penalty-box-imagines]

Mistletoe Magic

Author: Mila Player/Team: Cale Makar - Colorado Avalanche Prompt: #10 - Mistletoe Requested: Yes    No   || Word Count: 1107    ||   Rating: Pg

TW: None! A/N: i'm back!! i've been obsessing over cale lately so have this :) let's just pretend this one takes place in pre (or post) covid times lmao also requests are open, so send me asks for imagines/ships/etc.!

"I'm so sorry I was late! There was an accident on the highway, and I-" you said through ragged breaths. "Hey, calm down! It's okay. You didn't miss anything. Just take a moment to breathe, though. I don't want you passing out on me," your best friend Cale grabbed your shoulders and gently squeezed them to try and stabilize you. Little did he know that it only made you feel weaker. You smiled painfully and tried to catch your breath while he took your coat. The Avs were having a Christmas auction where bidders could buy some of the guys' old stuff - sticks, pucks, jerseys, the works. All of the proceeds were going to the children's hospital. While the guys, of course, had to be there, they were also encouraged to bring their significant others or friends. According to Cale, they were told to "invite as many people as possible". The more people attending, the more money to donate to the charity. Plus, nothing helps publicity more than a nice wholesome family vibe. While you weren't family or Cale's significant other, you were his best friend. And to be honest, there was no one he would have rather invited that night. The dress code was formal, so you were wearing a gorgeous dark green outfit that complimented your skin and hair colors perfectly. Per your request, you had coordinated outfits beforehand with Cale, so he looked absolutely dashing in a dark black suit with a green tie to match the same deep green as your outfit. Once you'd shrugged your coat off, Cale held out his elbow and you gently took it. "What a gentleman you are, Cale," you said with a grin. "I can be when I try," he responded, and you giggled. He led you to a table where you had some snacks and drinks. Champagne, wine, and beer were all available. Cale had a bottle of beer and you decided on a glass of champagne. Neither of you would know the difference between a high quality brand of alcohol or a low quality one, but it didn't make much difference. Sitting there with Cale, drinking and looking fabulous, you felt so very happy. He didn't know, but you had been crushing on him hard for three or so years. You wanted to say something many times, but you just couldn't bring yourself to actually do it. Instead, you just laughed at his jokes and spent as much time with him as possible - without being weird. Now that he was playing for the Avs, he was gone much more frequently than he used to be and finding quality time to spend together was hard, especially in the winter. You were more than overjoyed when Cale had asked you to be his date to the Avs charity auction. After snacking and sitting through the auction, Cale left you alone to take some pictures and sign some merch for the fans who attended. You talked with some of the other players' partners and then just rested at the table until Cale returned. When he got back, some games and a little bit of dancing had broken out. He offered you his hand, and you took it. "Want to play Connect 4?" he asked, and you laughed. "Not particularly. Do you want to play cornhole?" "Not particularly," now it was his turn to laugh. You had been too busy to notice the group of Cale's friends standing in front of you, but when they started hooting and hollering you turned your head. It was Nathan, Gabe, and Mikko. You awkwardly waved as Cale introduced you and said hello. “So, are you gonna follow the rules or give us all bad luck?” Gabe asked with a chuckle. “What are you talking about?” Cale asked with a laugh, and Gabe pointed above you. You followed his finger to see a tiny sprig of mistletoe hanging above your heads. It was taped to the ceiling with white hockey tape, which made you giggle. You glanced down at Cale to realize he was also taking in the meaning of everything. You were standing under the mistletoe. Both of you. And now both of you were flushing furiously. Cale’s pink cheeks were now a deep shade of burgundy, and you imagined yours weren’t far away on the color spectrum. You folded your arms across your chest and avoided eye contact while the boys roasted Cale. Eventually, you gained

enough courage to lift your eyes. You met his own, and he sheepishly grinned. “Well…if it’s bad luck…” he said and stepped closer to you. You couldn’t move, your feet firmly planted on the ground. When his hand cupped your cheek and the other slid around your waist, you felt your body go even stiffer, if that was possible. He gently leaned down and pressed his soft lips against yours. They were slightly cold, but thanks to your burning embarrassment it was a welcome temperature change. You pressed back against him and let your hands rest on his chest. As his lips began to pull away and head turn down, you felt yourself moving further into him. When he finally broke away, you noticed his moment of hesitation before the air cleared between you. You heard the boys even though your eyes were closed. They let out a chorus of “oohs” and “awwwws”. When you finally let yourself look, you saw Cale standing across from you with the biggest smile on his face. You had both felt that the kiss was special, and you had the urge to tell him. You had to tell him now, before this moment was ruined or expired. You reached out and grabbed his hand, but as you opened your mouth he spoke first. “I like you,” he said, and you started. Before you had a chance to respond, he continued. “I really like you, and I have for a while. I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. And I want to kiss you again and again and again. If you’ll let me.” You hesitantly glanced toward the hoard of grown men watching your drama like it was a reality tv show or an episode of The Bachelor. “Of course I’ll let you, dummy. I would want nothing more than for you to kiss me for the rest of my life!” you finally responded and threw yourself into his arms. He squeezed you tight, gleeful laughs spilling out of your lungs. As he twirled you around, you only laughed harder when you saw the puppy dog expressions plastered all over the boys’ faces. Mistletoe really is magic.