#and it kind of forms a... personality of its own? its.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Options for the next web serial Patreon vote

It's time to vote on what the next derinwrites web serial will be. Sample chapters for each option will be provided shortly, then a poll will go up so that patrons can vote on what web serial I should write next.

Inner Life

Nobody knows who they really are when they’re first born. But most people get time to figure it out, and when you’re a body-snatching alien parasite, you don’t get that luxury. The parasites that find themselves on the starship Jolly Codger don’t know what a human is, or what their spaceship’s mission is, or where they’re going. They don’t know who on the ship is an ally, and who is an uninfected human who’ll kill them the moment they’re detected. But they’d better figure it out, because the Jolly Codger has its own secrets and its own enemies, and the real threat isn’t the crew – it’s what’s chasing them.

Child of a Wandering Star

Tyk is a normal adolescent girl, interested in normal adolescent things – earning gems for her carapace, learning to be the best burrower for the hive, making her mother and father and altmother and altfather proud of her. But Tyk was born under a Wandering Star, destined to be a traveller, and it’s hard to really feel a part of a hive that raises you with the expectation of watching you leave them someday. Tyk doesn’t want to go. She’s ready to fight destiny.

But her destiny finds her when a star-egg falls from the sky and hatches a baby god. Soft-shelled, two-legged and clawless, this larva is all but helpless on its own and quickly attaches itself to Tyk. The Stargazers divine that it should be brought to Starspire, the place where earth meets sky, so that it can be returned to its people. This, here, is the destiny that Tyk was born to.

But Tyk’s not sure she’s cut out for such a gruelling journey, and she’s certainly not cut out for raising a baby god. Is this really her journey to make?

Silverbane

Jade was just looking to fulfil her jobseeker requirements and get her Centrelink payment. She didn’t expect to actually get the job working at the mysterious new pawn shop full of weird, creepy artefacts. She had no interest in dealing with bleeding knives, ghost dolls, and whatever the hell it is that keeps using all the mugs in the break room without washing them, even when nobody’s present in the shop but her.

Jade would like to be able to shrug and say that it’s none of her business. She really, really wishes that she was the kind of person who could leave things alone if they weren’t her business. But after snooping a little too deep a little too often, she finds herself tangled up in something a lot scarier than the occasional haunted doll, working for the kind of… “people”… who are perfectly happy to eliminate something the moment it becomes more dangerous to them than useful. And through them, she can learn more about how the world really works than she ever expected.

She just has to hope that it’s worth it.

Our Side of the River Styx

A woman who can see the dead joins forces with her zombie wife to become exorcists-for-hire, helping the dead and living alike find peace. But there’s something strange going on with the barrier between worlds; something stranger than murderous phantoms in white or menacing shadowy figures in hotels. Something… organised. Something growing.

The exorcists are out to pay the rent, not save the world. But when a string of supposedly unconnected jobs forms such an obvious trail of bread crumbs, what is there to do but follow it? Will our Styx-crossed lovers figure out what’s at the heart of this conspiracy in time to thwart it, or does this adventure end in a long-overdue funeral?

The Princess of Ruby Island

Every little girl dreams of being whisked away to be the princess of a magical world on their tenth birthday. But for Jessica Nyle, born on February 29th, finding herself in a strange magical realm on her tenth birthday at age 40 is surprising, to say the least. And what they don’t tell little girls about fantastical magical realms built from dreams is that they’re prone to environmental instability, which can cause mass famine. And that magical limitations can cause factionalisation and extreme power imbalances, which leads to oppression and war. And that the idea of an island made entirely of ruby sounds fantastic, but ruby loses its charm and value as a gemstone when it’s literally the ground you walk on and, as a probably unimportant side detail, one thing you can’t do with ruby is grow crops in it. So that’s less than ideal.

This isn’t the whimsical adventure that mass media had lead Jessica to expect as a child, where all you needed to do to save the world was be brave and true and hold love in your heart and believe in yourself despite everything. Being the Princess of Ruby Island is a dirty job that requires cunning, hard work, political acumen, and a whole lot of luck. And it certainly doesn’t help that forces festering on Ruby Island were quite comfortable filling the previous power vacuum and would very much prefer it if there was no Princess bustling about and messing up their plans.

This is gonna take the power of a LOT of friendships to sort out.

The Cinder Boy

Owen is a wizard’s servant, and has been since he was old enough to walk. He doesn’t remember the mother who abandoned him there or the world she came from, and has never really thought much on the issue. Until the day the old crone comes to the wizard’s tower and, defying the wizard who tries to throw her out (Owen had never, until that moment, see anybody successfully defy the wizard), tells him that his mother was one of the Cinderellae, the hidden organisation of destiny-weavers named for the punishment doled out to them if they are caught – to be burned alive on the town pyre. Other people, she tells him, will try to get their hooks in him, and this tower can no longer keep him safe.

With the help of three friendly breezes trapped in the bodies of helpful mice and a shard of mage glass for protection, Owen must journey into the dangerous world that the wizard’s tower has sheltered him from his whole life. He’s watched the wizard weave people’s destinies for years, but until now, he’s never had to weave his own.

He’d better figure it out fast. Because danger is brewing in the kingdom, and he seems to be somebody’s pawn. He just wishes he knew whose.

Drops of Blood Like Neon Stars

This one is already being written on and off in my free time. Promoting it to main story would allow me to spend my full time on it and ensure weekly updates.

Vampires are good at stability. Life in the Scarlet City has been stable, despite the competing blood factions, for a long time, as has been their mutually beneficial relationship with the human city above. But when a drastic political play by young vampires coincides with a mysterious slate of human murders, Lissa needs to find out what’s going on and put a stop to it before the City is plunged into all-out war.

Holy Light

It’s been 164 years since the Rapture, and 157 years since the end of the world, but humanity’s still doing what humanity does best: holding on. Ageless and resistant to damage and disease, the people who had the luck and quick thinking to hide themselves from God’s purifying light as it uplifted every soul it touched a century and a half ago live on in the dark, doing their best to keep going forward in a world trying to end. But with no new souls coming into Earth, no children have been born since the end. And all it takes to be abducted to heaven is one mistake, one small kiss of sunlight. Eventually, humanity is going to lose this fight.

But Claire thinks she might have found an answer. A way to bring new children into the world once more, a way to return to the flow of normal time. And if it works, then just maybe, they can save the world.

I Am Not The Chosen One

Hannah is having mysterious dreams of a gate on a hill. Jake is getting urgent messages from a strange man in the mirror. Victoria might have accidentally summoned a demon, and Blaire is the luckiest unlucky seventeen year old in the world and has almost died three times this week alone, which is great for his tiktok career but less so for his long-term survival. But the thing that’s really interfering with all of their lives is the shadowy organisation of strangers who keep trying to abduct them.

They’re looking for the Chosen One. The Chosen One, firstborn child of the lost princess of Vanalia, needs to go with them through a portal to a magical land to save everyone there from a tyrannical dark lord, but anyone other than the Chosen One would almost certainly die. Hannah, Jake, Victoria and Blaire are pretty sure that none of them are the Chosen One, but the strangers seem dead set on trying anyway. The only way out seems to be to find this lost princess or her firstborn child for these strangers, and send them off on a magical coming-of-age adventure. But how does one even go about tracking down a Chosen One?

Denise Frank’s Feelgood Recipe Blog

Join me, Denise Frank, on my blog, where every week I share one of my favourite recipes! Every recipe blog needs long, rambling personal stories before getting to the recipe, and mine is no exception. I’ve had a lot of time to cook and not many people to talk to since The Event, so you can expect a high quality blog from me, full of recipes that have been tried hundreds if not thousands of times! Thousands of times over thousands of days. Thousands and thousands of days. I’d have thought I’d be noticeably older by now, but I’m not. I guess that’s what good food and a positive attitude can do for you!

Come and visit my blog for delicious recipes and happy memories, and positive affirmations to help you make it through the day! After all, we gotta get through today to see tomorrow, and there’s gotta be something worth seeing tomorrow! Experience suggests that it probably won’t be something pleasant, but it’ll definitely be something worth seeing! This has to end eventually. Join me to learn to make delicious apple crumble, a microwave brownie for every day of the week, and a beef jerky recipe that my husband used to love! Can’t wait to see you there!

I’d really like to see you.

[riacte]

Big Terracotta and the "Let's overthrow Rendog" storyline

My knee jerk reaction to Ren saying they would be making minigames to fight over the permits because they wanted the plot to progress was "oh no NOT again". I initially thought of the minigames in the King Ren arc finale but I suppose it's also similar to the Mycelium War finale. I love minigames, but it's like another Ren vs Scar plot, which might very well (but not necessarily) extend into Neighbourhood vs Mountain plot (and I guess the Redditors will cry about a "civil war" because they've been anticipating it since the season began).

First of all: Big T is basically Ministry rebranded. It doesn't contain everyone from the Neighbourhood, but it's inherently linked. From what I remember of that stream from months ago, Ren's idea was for the Neighbourhood (at the time the Ministers) to band together and sell terracotta. To me, the Neighbourhood feels like it's become a conglomerate of its own: they live next to each other, they collab together, build farms and minigames together, and they have storylines together. The Ministry storyline pretty obviously formed the basis and set the tone. False's rivers permeate through the entire neighbourhood. They have a meeting spot and maps and roads and villager set ups and the bank of Iskall. It's not just "people conveniently live close to each other"— it's "people whose individual storylines intertwine". We got invested in the Ministry storyline. The minister roles felt fairly early season to me, so no surprise that it ended. Now we get Big T, which seems like an optimistic look forward with the idea of a "permanent" branded group because it's about selling a highly wanted commodity.

But what if it's not.... permanent? What if Short-T gets the permits? What then? Another rebrand? I have absolutely no doubts that the Neighbourhood, broadly speaking, will continue to hang out as a neighbourhood. At least until they run out of space / ideas in there. So it's not like they'll stop interacting if Big T ceases to become a thing, but that's exactly what it is— Big T gives them something to do. A common storyline. A collab opportunity.

Back to the Ministry storyline. It's a typical "Rendog seizes power" arc that we've seen before, prominently in S9 King Ren arc. But the thing is, it kind of fails at sculpting Ren as this awful leader who needs to be overthrown. (Partially due to Cleo's mic not working when they suggested overthrowing Ren, and there were also talks of people doing a coup, but in the end Ren decided to take the matters in his own hands.) Ren tries to be incompetent and bossy but they all end up indulging him. Because, despite everything, Ren is good at bringing people together, both in and outside of the game. He organises stream weekends (the others were thanking Ren on his shift during the last stream weekend, a while ago on another stream weekend Scar made Ren tear up with his heartfelt words). He "annoys" people into following him, and then he gets scared of the power, "annoys" people into overthrowing him, and BOOM Rendog kickstarts another plotline by playing the villain (again. And again).

(Arguably, Third Life also kinda followed this formula. I had a feeling Ren was trying to make the Red King unlikable by barging into people's houses and demanding them join the Red Army, and Martyn did "claim" he had "planned" to "betray Ren" from day one (looking at the camera with knowing but non-judgmental stare) but didn't do it.)

Point is, Ren has the personal charisma and thick enough skin to start groups and wrangle people into joining them. He's silly and the hermits love him, so they kind of bemusedly smile and let Ren drag them along. That's his first way of uniting people. Ren's second way of uniting people is by playing the villain, which he often employs and tries pushing it into this direction. In the Ministry plotline, the first way worked, but nobody cared enough to overthrow Ren (lol) so the second way didn't work that well.

... And I feel like Ren doesn't trust himself to play the role of a good leader. He has to be evil. Because he likes dramatics and being publicly humiliated (side glance) and killed. And also because he doesn't like playing the role of a good leader despite having clear visions of infrastructure / change he wants to achieve (S10 roads, S9 Hermit Quests). If anyone's dreaming big about community storylines and banding together to work on something, it's Ren.

So my fear for the Big T storyline is that Ren will seize power again and turn evil so they can overthrow him and Ren volunteers to be the villain for plot progression. I like seeing Ren being in the leader role. But to see him be overthrown again feels a little sad considering what they all went through so far. I don't want more self sabotage. I don't want Ren to go "yeah it's fine you can have it". I don't want Big T to lose the permits and disband. Obviously Big T isn't just Ren, but Ren is the main guy who does story and roleplay.

Good news: Big T contains competitive people who will no doubt enjoy defeating Scar and Bdubs. Bad news: those are the exact same type of people who like trapping Ren in pits. Even if Big T as a whole pulls through, I hope Ren doesn't do something stupid on purpose to set himself up. I want the power of friendship and neighbourhood solidarity to win. It's such a good overarching storyline and content.

[myfandomrealitea]

saw ur post about going incognito into spaces and stuff and i wanted to add my own thoughts about my experience of basically being stuck in places where proshippers r hated (not against wut ur saying! i definitely agree that theres no benefits and honestly its not that fun)

the fandom that im currently in is.. very toxic. someone got harassed to the point of having to delete their account bc they "supported" a proshipper (it was literally just them saying that u shouldnt harass this person just bc theyre proship-). a lot of my friends were very supportive of this person and agreed that ppl shouldnt be harassed over shit like that and many of them seem to have similar viewpoints as me (anti harassment and all that) but prefer to stay away from that stuff

the fandom is basically ran by antis. theres a small corner that some ppl have made where they talk about proship stuff freely (love those ppl so much theyre genuinely so nice) but overall its. not the best place to be if ur proship. which is interesting to me bc theres actually a shocking amount of proshippers that just... dont say anything. on my side blog ive had multiple ppl interact that i thought were anti (or at least just. not proship in some way) but would literally go and like all my posts about incest ships of the characters.

and sometimes i think about it and how theres actually a bunch of proshippers but we're so heavily harassed and silenced that we just- dont say anything. but the fandom is small and we cant exactly separate ourselves from it if we really like the show. and i feel especially bad for some of the bigger blogs that ppl love and adore bc i know wut would happen if somehow ppl found out and made some big post or wutever.

i dont pretend to be antiship but i dont outright say im proship unless i really trust that person

im currently trying to make my own lil space with some friends so at least if anything goes wrong i at least have a few ppl but its a bit scary to think about honestly-

Although it can be full of snot-nosed superiority complexes, I do recommend using the AO3 Subreddit in order to find likeminded people for your fandom. The very vast majority of the AO3 Subreddit is proship or at least proship neutral. Antis are generally eviscerated on sight whenever they try to poke their nose into it.

If you have any other fandoms that you are active in or have friends within, there's also no harm in introducing them to your small fandom.

From what I understand the Marvel fandom did kind of the same thing you're describing with the Starker shippers, but they flourished and supported each other anyway.

I know its easy for me to simply say 'do it anyway' as someone who generally could not give a fuck about anyone's opinion of me, but honestly. Do it anyway. Form your little collective. Support each other. Learn how to write and draw and make GIFs so you feed your own portion of the fandom. You physically do not need those people, it just unfortunately takes a bit of effort and means potentially a bit less content until you start really generating your own.

Fandom spaces do not start out from nothing. Promote the shit out of your fandom. Draw people in. Comb through the proship tags and send asks to blogs like mine asking other proshippers to check out the source material.

People in small fandoms are easy to bully because you're so enclosed into this circle of the exact same people. They happen to be the majority in the room and they're weaponising it.

Force them into a bigger room.

[statiicstag]

[ ooo im seeing a lot of people talking about their alastors and how they handle relationships today makes me wanna join in !! yapping under the cut

i honestly think part of why i was so intimidated to bring my interpretation to tumblr was specifically because of how he handles emotions and how it could be seen as ooc (which I see now why does that matter there's so many unique ways to write this guy lol) in the way that mine is not completely emotionless but oddly emotional and That is what fuels him to be the way he is

mine is mostly fear driven and that I diverged from the finale where he's blatantly freaking the fuck out about nearly dying for the hotel. now the way I read that I honestly think he was just trying to show off by killing Adam and didn't expect to be nearly killed but the fact he'd nearly sacrificed his life for someone else clearly horrifies him, and i don't necessarily think its because of attachments to the hotel but even the vague Idea that, if he DOES form attachments, this is what happens he nearly dies

and i personally think that's the root of all his problems: he doesn't experience love like a normal person, he equates love with ownership (he considers husk a friend canonically yet he has him on a leash, same with niffty he canonically cares for her) i think he thinks he has to force someone to stay by his side or they'll walk away and his care will be tor nothing. and i think he has a very "eye for an eye" mentality—like each party has to be Doing Something for the other party to stay involved, love itself isn't enough. i also truthfully write him as fearful of the hurt that can come with letting someone in and caring about them, because that's a weakness

i think the reason he's so comfortable keeping rosie as a friend and not under his thumb is because she doesn't seek him out? like they have a mutually beneficial relationship for him, he can come and go, vox was Too Much and it frightened him so he self sabotaged the relationship to avoid pain

most people he just wants to be of use to him—he views others like pawns, and if you can't provide either entertainment or some kind of service, you're useless

clearly all this can be pushed past I have several ships on this blog he actually cares for but overall even at the beginnings of those, he sees them as someone he has to sink his nails into and own to a degree (though that can be worked past too). and good luck getting an i love you out of him, its simply not how he operates. anyone whose walked away from him has walked away with claw marks embedded in them ]

[creature-wizard]

Why the fuck conspiracy theorists love to use pop-culture as an explanation for things so much?

"OMG, world is a simulation, just like Matrix!"

"OMG, Back to the Future described Project Monarch!"

"OMG, Mandela Effect is just like Dark City!"

and uncountable others

There's multiple overlapping reasons, most of which stem from assuming that the entertainment industry is controlled by The Conspiracy.

The most straightforward one is the belief that the Conspiracy uses entertainment to brainwash people into accepting heretical beliefs and degrade their morals.

Conspiracy theorists also claim that the Conspiracy puts "predictive programming" into media in order to brainwash their audience into accepting whatever evil scheme they plan to spring next, regardless of how the story frames its subject matter. (Seriously, a narrative can be like "do not build the Torment Nexus!", and these people will claim that the Illuminati is brainwashing people into accepting the existence of the Torment Nexus. Conspiracy theorists are among the worst bad faith readers on the face of the planet.)

Another belief that's developed (and I couldn't tell you its exact origins, but it's highly popular among the types who claim Project Monarch is a real thing) is that the Conspiracy cannot act without announcing their evil plans to the world in some way. Supposedly, this is just one of the requirements of getting your power from Satan. So allegedly, the New World Order people are creating movies that announce their plans to the public by working them into fictional narratives. (And again, it's a form of extreme bad faith reading.)

One other reason is that a lot of media is influenced by conspiracy theories. For example, nearly anything with aliens or Atlantis has been influenced by conspiracy theories to some degree. The Matrix was very much influenced by conspiracy theories. That doesn't mean that this media is all inherently bad, but it does mean that anyone looking at the world through a conspiratorial lens is going to recognize their own beliefs and language, and read it as a kind of validation.

Conspiracy theories also serve as a way to maintain belief in things that scientific evidence doesn't support or even precludes. Like where a more well-adjusted person might accept that dainty little unicorns aren't real animals but write them into a fantasy story because they like the idea of them, a conspiracy theorist type might essentially believe that dainty little unicorns are real animals, and the big elite meanies are hiding it from us.

There's probably more dimensions to this than I've covered here, but yeah, in my experience, this is what a lot of it comes down to.

[sae-mian]

❛ you okay? caught you staring off into space again. ❜

i had like. 3 separate ideas for this one so i hopE THIS ONE'S OK

TIMELINE: ballad WHEN: 6.1 WHO: nira'sae/g'raha SUMMARY: i don't know how to succinctly summarise this ;;; uhhh local Warrior of Light returns from the end of the world with Voices In Their Head

┈┈┈┈┈❀┈┈┈┈┈

Hey.

Come on. I know you can hear me.

You can't keep doing this. You know you can't.

Listen to me-- hey--

"Hey--"

Nira'sae jumped as a hand gently grasped their shoulder.

G'raha. He was studying them, brow pinched.

"H-hey, sorry."

They tried to put on a convincing smile, hoping to appease some of the worry clearly evident on his face.

"You okay? You've been staring off into space out here for a while, now."

Had it been a while? They looked back out over the skyline, Old Sharlayan sprawling out beneath them. The lights from windows and lamp-posts emitted a soft glow, illuminating the streets where the sky above did not.

Huh. They could've sworn it was still light out, when they came out for some air.

Time flies, doesn't it?

What? You want me to stop? To go away?

I fucking can't. I wouldn't even if I could.

You can't escape yourself.

Nira'sae.

"Nira?"

They shook their head roughly, as if that might help dislodge this... presence in their mind.

There was nothing for it. Sooner or later, they'd have to figure this out, once and for all.

No point in needlessly worrying 'Raha about it, though.

"I'm fine." They smiled at him again, though they couldn't help but think it was even less convincing this time.

It didn't matter. They pat his hand where it rested on their shoulder, before hopping down from the wall they were sat on, and heading back to the Annex.

[puppyeared]

personal character design headcanons + brainrot

Note: the re-bound!au does NOT belong to me, it belongs to @chipper-smol I’m just not normal about it lol

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

still mad about this post lol so let me also say: “they taught us critical thinking in english class” is extra funny to me because there’s a genuine debate among Ed Heads about whether “critical thinking” as a discrete and decontextualized skillset can actually be taught :) so it’s pretty silly to go around confidently branding yourself as a critical thinker while simultaneously revealing that you’re extremely comfortable making assumptions about the relative simplicity of complex ideas which remain contested in their respective fields :) personally i would be pretty embarrassed to call myself a critical thinker if i also couldn’t stop myself from revealing i was totally lacking in the intellectual humility that would enable me to understand that we have yet to reach consensus on unbelievably complicated issues like how best to educate an entire population :) but i guess i was absent the day that tenth grade english covered running your mouth like an asshole on social media :)

[commsroom]

the "big picture" - whether that refers to some detached, calculated greater good; ruthless ambition and progress for the sake of progress; or even the dear listeners' cosmic indifference - as an antagonistic force in wolf 359 is so fascinating to me because of the way eiffel as a protagonist is set up to oppose it, just by nature of who he is. eiffel retains his humanity even under the most inhumane circumstances. his strength is in connection, and with that he's able to reach others who share his core values, but he's operating under a fundamentally different framework from the show's antagonists. he can never understand where they're coming from or be swayed by their points of view because, for better or worse, he can only see the world through a close personal lens.

it's an ideological conflict he has with all of them, but notably with hilbert: "you talk about helping people, but what about the real, live people around you? [...] that's your problem. you're so zoomed out." eiffel will never, ever see that "big picture" because he is so zoomed in. at his best, he puts things into perspective and grounds the people around him. at his worst, his perspective narrows so drastically inwards that he becomes blind to everyone and everything else. his failings are deeply, tragically human - they're personal, they're impulsive, they're self-destructive. they're selfish. no matter how much he might try to narrativize or escape from himself, he's still left with doug eiffel: "it's taken me this long to realize that running from everyone else means that you're alone with yourself." eiffel could never be convinced to harm others on purpose, but he has hurt people, and it's never been because he didn't care. the very fact that he cares so much, that he's incapable of reconciling the hurt he's caused with the things he values, is what keeps him from real growth for so long. where many of the other characters in wolf 359 will justify their cruelty in service of something they consider more important, eiffel is so caught up in vilifying himself and the fear that he's always going to harm the people he cares for without meaning to that he shuts himself off from the people who care about him and perpetuates his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

[deggies]

[[[SPOILERS FOR SLAY THE PRINCESS]]]

Slay the Princess caught my eye after seeing a thumbnail of the game from a vtuber, and ever since I was considering playing it. Even during the steam Christmas sale I was deciding whether or not I should get it. I didn't end up getting it on sale (bought it the day the sale ended) and honestly I don't even feel bad about it. Going into the game I only knew that 1) it has elements of horror and 2) the game gaslights you. So knowing that the game was trying to trick me and emotionally manipulate me, I went in with the mindset of what would I do if I was put into that situation and— I slayed the princess. But not without her taking me out with her.

So began a Lovecraftian timeloop nightmare that ended in me getting horribly killed over and over again until I was met with a being that took the Princess's heart (literal) and claimed it needed other versions of her to become complete. So now learning what the game is about now - getting different 'endings' to feed the being life experiences - I decided, hey what the hell, let's try being nice and even try romance her, if given the option. I was still suspicious of her kind demeanor in this run, still heeding to the narrator's warnings that it was all a manipulation, but she was... pleasant. Still a little deranged, but overall a more pleasant person. And it made me realise how I wanted to get the rest of the princess endings. I didn't wan't to kill her as much as I was able to.

In the rest of my run, I did just that, only killing when I didn't have a choice and learning more about her I began to think to myself that maybe she really is misunderstood. Maybe, in a meta-sense, she was forced into the role of a villain by the creators, since although she does 'end the world' in endings where you are kind to her, it seems that the world simply ceases to exist as opposed to endings where you were a heartless killer she explicitly states she tormented the world.

So then finally, when it was revealed that the player was created to become a god to end death (the princess) and I was given a chance to talk to the now completed entity, whose goal was to bring suffering upon the world, I was given two choices: slay the princess for good and fulfill the role I was given or join her in an endless cycle to create and destroy worlds. I, was not happy with either of these choices.

Fortunately, the game has another option. You are given one last chance to speak with the princess again. Just, the regular ol' princess chained in the basement of a cabin, though she now knows everything you do. And there, you are able to free her and end the cycle of death and destruction and enter a world of uncertainty. A world where a higher being no longer dictates their every action.

I did not do the themes and emotions of this game justice, but this is more as an entry for me to remember how much I love this game. I'm not the type to replay games, so I'm really happy I was able to get an ending that I enjoyed and connected to a lot.

Play this game if you ever get the chance, it's good fun and really touching (at least, the ending I got was).

Also, here's the playlist I got at the end.

[walker-lister]

I just have to remind myself sometimes that no matter what anyone else says, the way a piece of media makes me feel and the positive impact it has had on my queer identity is valid, and that tearing myself apart thinking I have to defend it or questioning my own place within queer communities is not at all important when compared to the almost tangible sense of 'rightness' that piece of media helped me to feel about myself.

[rainingmbappe]

The rise of "let people enjoy things" is single handedly the backbone of the rise of anti intellectualism

[kuroshirosb]

pokemashe sinnoh trio relationship chart ft two joke ones

[yioh]

I HAVE A SHORT STORY IDEA …..

[waywardsalt]

i have planned to write a pseudo-essay or some kind of detailed look at linebeck in phantom hourglass and how he can be interpreted as autistic but thats not going very well right now so here are some autistic linebeck headcanons

He has low empathy and as such has a hard time responding very well to emotional situations, but he can take advantage of his lower empathy in situations where empathy could make things harder, like tending to wounds or rationally handling emotionally-charged situations

His coat is a comfort object and he made it specifically to act as a very slight accommodation; it’s heavy and barely lets any light through it, and he can keep all kinds of little things in pockets sewn into the inner lining, but larger objects do make it more uncomfortable to wear at times. It’s mostly good to carry around things to fidget or stim with and can be helpful in trying to recover from overwhelming sensory experiences

He doesn’t usually stim in public, but taps his fingers on tables quickly and tends to rhythmically snap his fingers when excited, and on his ship is more vocal and more willing to stim, even if around others. One of his main stims that he’ll do for no particular reason is that he’ll hold his arm or back of his wrist/hand up to his nose and mouth for the smell.

He masks frequently to please people. His default mask is that arrogant and brave front he puts up for islanders and other he may come across. Usually, if that mask doesn’t work, he tends to double-down because it usually works and, in his experience, dropping the mask has usually gone badly (non masking he’s rude and blunt but more outwardly excited about adventure and his ship and all of that, i consider it where overseas in the game is when he usually isn’t masking. this shifts his arc to be about him learning to stop masking and feel comfortable being himself)

His special interests could include stuff related to treasure hunting but it could really range from stuff about adventuring or the ocean or engineering (relating to his ship) to stuff not at all touched in the game like music. He really enjoys music, listening to it, playing it, and writing it. He also enjoys and is fascinated by shellfish.

When busy or otherwise occupied, he doesn't usually notice when he's hungry. He doesn't have as much of a problem noticing thirst or exhaustion, but feeling hunger is a problem for him, and often leads to him going a long time without eating. On the other hand, he doesn't mind eating the same thing repeatedly and is perfectly fine with blander foods, so handling food supplies for when he'll be overseas for a long time is easy for him.

He knows he's autistic, he's known for a pretty long time, and he has books on it; he also knows that Link is autistic, but doesn't say anything about it and instead waits until someone else tells him. Until (and after, I suppose) Link actually learns that he's autistic Linebeck just makes sure to keep note of what accommodations he might need and if there are any textures or tastes or smells he can't stand. He doesn't have much of a problem helping out during sensory overloads, even soon after meeting him. It's more out of understanding how it feels to not have your needs met and a sort of solidarity rather than actual friendship.

[decepti-geek]

I’m sure people have lots of fun with the doomed by the narrative thing but whenever I see it I turn into the project runway guy

“doomed by the narrative” shut up it’s the fucking creator making creative decisions