#and then turning around and profiting off of those same videos

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I actually think it's evil that youtube has gone back to playing ads on demonetized videos.

[ghostofskywalker]

More Than The Persona

Tyler Owens/Fem!Reader

Words: 2,248

Summary: Tyler Owens is the poster child for storm chasing, his videos often leading to viewers glamourising these drastic weather events. As a first responder, you're no stranger to the death and destruction that tornadoes leave in their wake, so the two of you don't exactly click the first time you meet.

Note: i saw twisters yesterday and i was pleasantly surprised with how much i enjoyed it, since i also love the original 1996 one. as far as why this was written, i’m procrastinating writing zine fics right now and that's the only explanation I can offer lol. i'd love to write more twisters fic in the future though, i did have fun with it

As you stepped out of the ambulance, you could see destruction wherever you turned. Countless houses were razed where they stood, their contents strewn all across the street. Even the structures that had been lucky enough to only get clipped by the tornado were still damaged beyond repair, in some cases with their entire facades ripped off, now laying somewhere smashed on the ground. No matter how many times you had seen scenes like this, the gravity of the situation never got lighter. For almost all of these people, recovering would take months, if not years. 

Crowds were just beginning to collect on the streets as some emerged from storm shelters, but you knew there were some who hadn’t been afforded that luxury. You shared a knowing look with the other members of your team as they began to step over the debris in search of those that might be trapped under rubble. 

By the time more pickup trucks pulled up to the scene, you had set up outside one of the ambulances, hard at work treating the wounds of those who could make it over to you. The crates of water bottles next to you were quickly diminishing, but the line of people in need of medical care never seemed to, which was a sitaution you were unfortunately used to finding yourself in. 

As the newcomers fanned out through the area, you weren’t the only one who stared. Although not a fan yourself of the self-appointed “Tornado Wrangler,” you unfortunately recognized the man who led a small group down the street. Resisting the urge to roll your eyes, you turned your attention back to the person in front of you. There was nothing you could do about the fact that some wannabe celebrities were trying to profit off of the disaster by getting in the public’s good graces, so you would just have to suck it up and hope they eventually get bored enough to leave.

Hours later, you were still in that same spot, and there was still so much to do. Some of the ambulances had left temporarily the scene, taking those whose injuries were more intense off to the closest hospital. Right now, your priority was getting immediate medical aid to those who needed it, even if you could feel your eyes drooping with fatigue. As you gently bandaged up the arm of a young girl, someone tapped on your your shoulder. “Take a break,” and you could hear the sound of your best friend’s voice even if you were looking at him. “I can tell that you need it.” 

You shook your head as the little girl walked off in the direction her mother was standing. “Don’t worry about me Isaac, ‘m fine here.” 

“I don’t believe that,” he responded. “At least get some water and take a few moments to eat something.” 

After a few more passes back and forth, Isaac practically shoved you from your post. With a water bottle in your hand, you wandered around the area, mind racing as you tried to find a way you could help once you had taken a few minutes to yourself. But of course, you were not granted solitude for long. Right as you had raised the bottle to your lips, a voice interrupted your thoughts. “Need anything?” 

Tyler Owens was standing a few paces away, a small box in his hands. The cowboy hat on his head looked pristine, a stark contrast to the way that your work clothes were already too grimy for your taste. “I’m okay,” you said, sending a tight-lipped smile his way and hoping that he would get the message that you weren’t interested in conversing right now. “Thank you.” 

“Are you sure?” he asked, clearly not having picked up on the signs. “You’ve been out here for hours and this is the first time you’ve stopped for any kind of break.” 

Your gaze hardened slightly as you regarded him. “And how would you know?” He was correct of course, but you had no plans to admit that, especially not when he acted as though he knew everything about you. 

“It was just a guess, but I can see that I’m right,” he said, a smile crossing his face that you hated to say that you found attractive. Why did the best looking people have to act as dumb as they did? 

By the grace of the universe, a colleague called you over to them right as you opened your mouth to respond, and Tyler didn’t follow as you headed over to help once more. The whole time, you found yourself thinking about him and his team. What were they even doing here, besides getting in the way of those actually trying to help? 

***

After that time, it felt like you ran into Tyler Owens at least three times a week. He and his team showed up to the sites of destruction with their video cameras out as they surveyed the damage. Multiple times, you had to shoo them away from you as you worked, tirelessly bandaging cuts, scrapes, and other lacerations that people had suffered from the winds of the storm. Despite the fact that your initial conversation with Tyler had lasted less than a minute, he apparently felt that it was enough to bother you again, and to act as though you were much closer than you were. 

This time, you were bandaging up an older woman when you heard his voice interrupt your focus. “Hey medic!” 

Resisting the urge to sigh, you turned to look at him. “What are you doing here?” 

Unfortunately, the smile on his face didn’t shift at your tone. “Helping, of course.” 

“And how exactly is annoying me while I’m just trying to do my job considered helpful?” 

“I’m convincing you to take a break,” he said. “I’ve seen how hard you work, and the way you put others first so many times. Sometimes you need to take care of yourself to take care of others.”

Sighing, you finished gently wrapping gauze around the woman’s leg before speaking. “Nice try, making it seem like you have any concern,” you said. “But I don’t have any interest being on in your  YouTube videos, and I can take care of myself perfectly fine.” 

His smile dropped slightly as he registered your words, the first time it’s happened since you met. Every other time, your words seem to pass right over him, no matter how annoyed you sounded as you spoke, but not this one. He mumbled something you didn’t quite catch before stepping away, and you felt your heart sink slightly in a way you didn’t expect. 

“He’s right you know,” the woman you had just bandaged said as she got up from the chair in front of you. 

“What?” you asked, still trying to wrap your head around the conversation with Tyler.

“You need to take a break at some point. If you’ve been out helping like this after all these recent storms, it’s going to take a toll on you.” 

You nodded, knows that both her and Tyler were right. “I will, I promise.”

“Good,” said. The woman left after giving you another knowing smile, and you flagged down Isaac to take your place for a few minutes. 

It always felt strange, to sit down on the ground and look at the tornado’s destruction. Children’s toys, blankets, and even the skeletal remains of furniture were on the street now, no telling which homes they had once belonged to. You stared out as the wind picked up a photo and pushed it away from you, before it was eventually grabbed by someone. 

As you took a sip of the water bottle in your hands, Tyler appeared from the crowds once more, his hands up in mock surrender as he approached you. “I see you took my advice.”

“I see you’re still dead set on bothering me wherever I go,” you said, but the tone was halfhearted. 

“It’s not my only goal in life, but it’s one I get to work on often,” he said, sitting down next to you. 

“Why?” you asked, finally gathering up the courage to voice the question that had been swirling around your mind since you first met him. “I don’t know you. No offense, of course.” 

A small snort of laughter left his mouth. “I don’t know, I think at this point we could be longtime friends.” You raised your eyebrows at him, and the smile on face grew as he realized that this was once again lighthearted teasing. “I keep bothering you because I can tell you need someone to tell you when to stop.” 

Immediately, you got a little defensive. “No I don’t.” 

“Come on, I think the only time I’ve ever seen you take a break is when someone else said something, and I doubt it’s ever done without some kind of denial.” You looked down at the ground, slightly embarrassed that he had hit the nail on the head. “People all across the community are going to be incredibly grateful for the hours you put in to help them, but it wouldn’t matter as much if you’re neglecting your own care.” 

You stopped, staring once more at the destruction in front of you. “Just because I’m not smiling and laughing for the camera doesn’t mean I’m not taking care of myself.” 

“Going hours without even a sip of water doesn’t exactly back that statement up you know.” 

“Fine,” you admitted. “Maybe you’re right, but it certainly doesn’t help when people like you show up to these scenes to sightsee all the destruction and try to get some clicks out of it.” 

His face changed in an instant, growing more somber than you’ve ever seen before. “Is that all you think we’ve been doing?” 

You nodded slowly, not sure what to expect from his change of attitude. 

“I suppose the way you’ve treated me makes sense now.” 

You stopped. “So you’re not just here for fun?” 

“Half of what we do can usually be considered stupid, I’ll admit that,” he said, looking over at you. “But it’s not all fun and games, I promise. See over there?” He gestured to where a group of people were standing around a table outside his team’s camper van, the reason for their presence obscured by the growing crowd gathering there. “A portion of our our t-shirt sales is put towards disaster kits, and my team over there is handing them out. Free of charge of course.” 

As your eyes focused on the scene, you could see he was right. There was no exchange of money as the team of people handed out boxes of food and bottles of water. You could see a stack of T-shirts sitting to the side, but even those were being handed out to the those that asked whenever requested. 

Immediately, you were overwhelmed with embarrassment at the way you had always perceived him, when all this time he had been doing so much to aid those who just had their lives disrupted. Maybe if you had taken the time to look past the thrill-seeking attitude you could have seen that, but instead you had been so wrapped up in your own life and work. “I’m so sorry for the way I saw you,” you said, turning towards Tyler with a sincere look on your face. “You want to help just as much as I do, and I let my opinion the ‘Tornado Wrangler’ persona get in the way of understanding that.”

He smiled in a way that was more genuine than any of the others you had seen on him. “Thanks,” he said sincerely. “But don’t worry about it, you’re not the first person to make the assumption, and you probably won’t be the last. I willingly drive into tornados for fun, it’s not exactly something you do if you’re not a little bit crazy.” 

You laughed. “Yeah, as a medical professional I really can’t condone that.”

“Most people would probably agree with you.” 

The two of you sat there for a few minutes more, a comfortable silence enveloping the air before you had to get back to work. There was still so much more to be done, and the daylight hours were slipping away. 

But as the two of you got up and you began to walk away, Tyler’s voice stopped you. “Hey.” 

Turning around to face him, a quizzical look overtook your face. “Hmm?” 

“I’ll see you around, alright?” 

You smiled, the cautious fluttering of tiny butterflies taking hold of your stomach. It was only a matter of time before this happened, you supposed, but you tried not to let anything show on your face. “Yeah,” you said, a genuine smile breaking through any attempt you made to remain nonchalant. “See you around.” 

***

That night, as you laid on the couch watching TV, you saw a text pop up on your phone from a number you didn’t recognize. 

It’s Tyler. Before you get mad at me, Isaac gave me your contact info. 

You playfully rolled your eyes, making a mental note to confront your friend later, that perceptive bastard. 

Do you wanna go out for drinks sometime? I don’t wanna have to wait for another tornado to see you. 

Sure, was the response you typed out and sent off, but on the inside, you were a lot more excited. 

Okay, maybe you didn’t have to be that hard on Isaac.

- the end -

i no longer have a taglist! if you're interested in being notified when i post, you can follow my library blog @ghostofskywalker-library and turn on notifications!

[give-grian-rights]

Hermitcraft - Basic History of Teams!

Alright. Buckle in.

Only a few days from now, and Hermitcraft 10 will begin! If you're new, I hope this helps!

Hermitcraft has existed for over ELEVEN YEARS now! While very few have been here for every single season, with the exception of our lovely Tumblr Resident, and official Tumblr Sexy Man Joe Hills, and our derp Xisumavoid.

You are under NO obligation to watch every season. There are probably few, if any, active users in this community who have. It's just not possible to watch it all. You don't need to watch the previous seasons to enjoy our community space! While there are a lot of back-references, for MOST people, it doesn't extend to lore and actions any older than season 6.

Most of the Hermits are associated with specific other members, despite ALL OF THEM taking turns collaborating, interacting, and sometimes building whole new dynamics and factions in the process. Some of the team-ups that you'll see referred to in fandom-spaces and the occasional one-off mention from our creators, include:

(Season 5) NHO, New Hermit Order - Docm77, Ethoslab, Bdoubleo100, and VintageBeef. Living in a jungle while having "fights" with others. Attempts to tax those who enter their jungle, had traps around it, and criticized the then-popular AFK Fishing Farms. Bdoubleo100, or Bdubs, especially enjoyed stealing from these. (Season 5-6) Convex, or ConCorp - GoodTimesWithScar and Cubfan135. One group I am the least familiar with unfortunately. They built a brand around the Vexes, with their business having pretty extreme low-morals that includes pollution and war profiteering.

(Season 6) ArciTects - Very close to be naming "BuildStone", it was proposed by and founded by Grian to Mumbo, later giving an invite to Iskall85. The purpose of this alliance was for builders to help redstoners, and redstoner to help builders. It accumulated in the ATTEMPT of founding the "greatest shop in the history of Hermitcraft", Sahara. It was, hilariously, a very large failure. Grian miraculously managed to entirely ruin the system with a single baked potato. No, I don't know how.

(Season 6) G-Team & Team STAR (Superior Tactical Alliance for Retaliation) - The Hermitcraft Civil War, consisted of a long list of minor conflicts in which various members of Hermitcraft blamed other people for pranks they committed, eventually spiraling into the confusion that was The Civil War! G-Team: Grian, TangoTek, Iskall85, Joe Hills, ZombieCleo, StressMonster101, and iJevin. Team STAR: Docm77, WelsKnight, FalseSymmetry, ImpulseSV Xisuma, RenDog

Mumbo Jumbo acted as a mole in Team Star, for the G-Team. He created this commercial for Team STAR. Team STAR made a very iconic diss track, which was soon remixed. It is a...Very iconic piece of Hermitcraft fandom. The result was Joe Hill's Response, in his short video also remixed by the same creator. Albeit missing the additions of the totally real voices of the other G-Team members

(Season 6) Area 77 & The Hippies - (I didn't finish Hippies POV and i didn't watch anything of Doc or Scar's POV of this unfortunately) Area 77 was founded by (unsurprisingly) Docm77, and GoodTimesWithScar, where they were doing experiments and studying abonomalies. SOmehow, this lead into Grian, once again, turning against them and forming The Hippies with the help of Ren, with Impulse soon joining. The conflict primarily consisted of them griefing Area 77 with flowers.

(Season 7) Boomers Demolition - Early game business formed by TangoTek, Bdoubleo100, and ImpulseSV which consistedo f almost exclusively non-duped TnT demolition, and was very fun!!

(Season 7) The Mycellium Resistance/HEP (Hermitcraft Environmental Protection) Hermicraft 7 saw Grian introduce the Hermitcraft Mayoral Election, created with the idea of putting Mumbo in as a puppet-government. If I had a nickel for every time Grian tried to start a puppet government (at this point) I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice. Grian and Mumbo lost. In it's place was GoodTimesWIthScar. As Mayor, they had further control over the shopping district. Scar's promise was to replace the shopping district's Mycellium with grass. Despite very happily admitting that grass looked better, Grian, in a moment of nostalgia, decided to replace some Mycellium. Scar proceeded by putting caution tape around the area. This spiraled into The Turf War

Mycellium Resistance: Grian (Mother Spore), ImpulseSV, RenDog, XBCrafted, iJevin, Ethoslab, StressMonster101, Docm77, and Mumbo Jumbo HEP/Mayor Scar: Scar, Bdoubleo100, Keralis, Xisumavoid, TangoTek, Cubfan135, FalseSymmetry, Mumbo Jumbo, who joined due to them having the better vault. Etho had intended on being a double-agent, selling information to Scar. His information, however, was useless on purpose and decided to pledge full loyalty to The Resistance.

(Season 8) Boatem Hole - Grian, Mumbo Jumbo, GoodTimesWithScar, ImpulseSV and PearlescentMoon more or less stumbled and tripped into forming a group after innocently stacking boats and crafting tables and crystals on a pole, dubbed Boatem Poll. They then proceeded to create a hole down to bedrock, and eventually into the void, called the Boatem Hole. It was a large plains biome which was turned into varying mountain terraforming and the like from all of them and was connected in some small ways.

(Season 8) The Big Eyed Crew - Bdoubleo100, Keralis, and TangoTek. Tango did not, in fact, have big eyes and instead wore sunglasses to compensate. They had a town and shopping area and was occasionally dragged into pranks by the Boatem Crew.

(Season 8) Octogon/Goatem - Docm77 and RenDog! Main rivals with Boatem (thus the Goatem - pole of goats) had a mega business, game-breaking creations, and jaw-dropping spidery teal-and-deepslate creations. Weird Science!

(Season 9) Soup Crew - ImpulseSV, PearlescentMoon, GeminiTay. Made the CRAZIEST combo-base where all their different themes blended into a cohesive build

(Season 9) Buttercups - Grian, MumboJumbo, and GoodTimesWithScar. What's up, Buttercup? They formed after an incient where Scar and Grian blew up a massive, complex tunnel bomber in Doc's base. They could not understand how to repair it, and left a few diamond blocks before conflict started. They dragged Mumbo in, and had a robot fight with...

(Season 9) The Perimeter - Docm77 and RenDog. Doc's base, known as The Perimeter, teamed with Ren to attack the Buttercups using walking redstone creations to do a robot fight. Due to an issue with one of the server's plugins, they all re-logged, breaking one of the bots and ending with Buttercup's bot to do more harm to itself than the Perimeter's, but ultimately the destruction did prevent Doc and Ren from getting any further. Ren and Doc then launched flying TnT dupers, which looked like butterflies, towards all of the Buttercups' bases and camp. They stopped them both, with one butterfly destroying The Perimeter's own bot even further.

I am so sure that I'm missing some, but I am losing my mind with all this trying to remember them all!! I hope this could give people an idea of who they might enjoy watching!

[miekasa]

i’ve seen like 12 videos about people complaining about 10-12 year olds being annoying in sephora and i genuinely genuinely wish they would all fall into a ditch people are so mean to children for absolutely no reason idc if an unknown child in public is annoying to you, they’re still a child trying to navigate the world. them being purposefully rude or disruptive is one thing, but if children just being children in public spaces is annoying to you then you really, seriously need to reevaluate yourself. every single one of those videos is complaints or saying how the young girls are ruining their shopping experience and not once has anyone stopped to question WHY groups of young girls even feel like sephora is an appropriate place for them to be!! ofc when they go online and see every 3rd person pushing product or talking about anti-aging and beauty and makeup and skincare, that they’re going to want to participate in it. nobody has a problem profiting off of the impressionable nature of kids, and then will turn right around on them when they’ve been influenced.

also, complaining about kids to your friends, in person, or coworkers is one thing, but to go onto social media where they can see and hear you put them down for the same thing you made them sign up for is insidious behavior!! they’re just girls!! and part of me doesn’t even blame the kids if they are a little bit rude, because they’re probably just emulating the meanness that’s driven towards them online. everybody hates what young girls love, everybody finds space to find them annoying or distasteful or diminishes any “meaning” in what they find joyful; of course, eventually, they’ll just grow rude and bitter and jaded to it all what do you expect when you treat someone like that!!!

bad enough that children don’t even really have public spaces that are built and kept for them, so of COURSE they’re going to find their way into sephoras and restaurants and department stores and ANYTHING because where else are they supposed to go!! if you see a child and they’re annoying to you in public, maybe just think for a moment and remember that you are the adult in the situation, whether you like it or not—the responsibility is on your shoulder to not be a dick to them!! especially online!! you are entitled to a child free life, not a child free world!!

[sexhaver]

games where you work for an evil exploitative megacorporation that very obviously views you only as easily replaced capital (Hardspace Shipbreaker, Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic) kind of paint themselves into a narrative corner. on the one hand, it's tempting to make your employer the villain and set up a story arc where you work your way up the ranks/unionize/etc to win against all odds in a David and Goliath story. and that would be fantastic if this were real life, but it's not real life, it's a video game that you presumably bought because you, the player, enjoy the gameplay loop provided by what your in-game avatar would consider "exploitative and unsafe working conditions". so you either completely overhaul your entire game once the player hits a certain point in the storyline (bad) or end up with an ending that by definition cannot change anything despite supposedly being focused on overthrowing the status quo (less bad but silly) because it turns out people like to replay games after beating them on the same file.

Hardlight Shipbreaker does this the wrong way by shoehorning in a plot about unionization that ends with the union "winning" against the company, except for gameplay reasons none of these victories translate to any change whatsoever in your in-game working conditions (because that would fundamentally change the game that people enjoyed enough to play all the way through the storyline of).

Deep Rock Galactic takes the approach of having the titular company be less "comically evil" and more "comically focused on profits", which meshes super well with the conceit of the game. for example, when loading into a Salvage mission, Mission Control opens with "a previous crew lost their Mini M.U.L.E's, their Drop Pod, and their lives in this cave." the order those things are listed in tells you everything you need to know about DRG's priorities as a company without having to hammer it home with character arcs

Satisfactory takes imo the best approach by making you an active hand of the evilness of your employer instead of just a cog in the machine. you're sent to a beautiful alien planet full of breathtaking views and diverse wildlife, then told to destroy it by extracting every last bit of value out of it to make stuff that you then turn around and fire off into space. and you do! gladly! like. you know how Spec Ops: The Line had that scene with the white phosphorus that was supposed to make you, the player, feel like a monster for gleefully pressing the buttons to make it happen? Satisfactory is like that but for environmentalism because the gameplay loop gradually changes how you view the world from childlike wonder to ruthless efficiency. what was formerly a rolling grassy field is now a site for mining outposts. you don't see a waterfall, you see placements for water pumps to cool your coal plants. alien forests full of plants unknown to science become annoyances to be chainsawed down so you can run conveyor belts back to your megafactory. in this way, Satisfactory is a much better critique of capitalism than Hardspace Shipbreaker not even trying to be

[y-rhywbeth2]

Assorted thoughts about Astarion's epilogue that I have only seen in video because patch 4 broke my save files and I have to replay the whole thing to get there.

From what I've seen everyone's good endings seem a little... overly good and free of consequence? But at the same time I haven't seen everything with my own eyes and everyone deserves to be happy, so whatever. If I want angst, there's fic.

Sooo... is it that unromanced Astarion disappeared after the scene at the docks and nobody could find him, or did you assholes just not try? I will be generous and assume the former.

Stop stabbing the table you little gremlin. ...although I'd probably enjoy doing that, if I could get away with it.

I still hate that outfit with the ruff.

Not surprised Larian is doubling down on the "no cure" angle. I don't really care if Astarion remains a vampire or if he goes the cure route, so long as he's happy - although I do think in his shoes I'd look for some way to day-walk anyway, on practical grounds alone.

Hiding a knife behind his back while asking an unromanced Durge if they're showing any signs of being under Bhaal's control... I adore a pragmatic bastard.

---"I could've told you that [you can kill people in a socially acceptable manner]" ---"You realise I don't actually pay attention when you talk, right?" ^This is why I both love him with all my soul and also want to push him off a roof.^

Delighted and validated by Astarion feeding by taking jobs as a bounty hunter or something like that. That was 100% what Vel was suggesting to him post game. Like "Hey, have you considered bounty hunting? if my memories of killing people for fun and profit, and the last month or two of everyone suddenly celebrating instead of getting mad when I murder has taught me anything; if you eat the people the majority want dead, you can have all the blood and money you can get your teeth into and nobody will have a problem with it."

And then there's Ascended Astarion... who I will put under a read more to save space and for those who'd like to avoid the uglier side of endings.

So I don't think Larian read the supplement Van RIchten's Guide to Vampires (it's from 1992, but as far as I know it's also still the most comprehensive write up of D&D vampire lore, and some of it still looks to apply here (or at least, it can).)

But the first thing I thought of, watching him constantly turn into a bat, is that it reminded me of the vampire psychological development stages. Stage one is where a vampire is drunk on their shiny new powers and just will not stop showing them off. (Stage two is the "find out" stage of the fuck around process, where the vampire discovers they're not as invincible as they believed and descends into full blown, paranoid monstrosity.)

Then "I will be watching." "I/We need to eavesdrop on everybody."... Oh, the paranoia. How's that thing where the curse of vampirism is twisting the trauma and fear going for you, my dude?

"I'll never forget the time we spent together, though. And I know you'll never forget about me. Until next time, darling." ...might be his expression or the datamined epilogues where he still wants his ex, but that feels like a threat to me? Might just be a jab after being dumped...

And, oh yeah, we're definitely looking at vampire bride/groom tier stuff here: Just sit on the decorative pedestal I built for you and look pretty until I'm in the mood to take you down and play with you. Stop complaining about how you're bored and want freedom!

The PC isn't weak by any measure, they could become a rival.. AA isn't my ending of choice, but I am morbidly fascinated with the concept of Tav and Astarion as toxic vampire divorcees: Two angry, powerful "lovers to enemies" vampire lords "sharing" territory; passing the centuries obsessing over each other; fighting each other; sometimes maybe hate-fucking, and generally making their bad relationship everyone's problem.

[theoryandahalf]

as much as I love ash gtlive will not work if it’s not at least 2 ppl on it as the conversational and theorizing craziness is what makes it gtlive. so if matpat leaves i wonder if the theorists will take turns on gtlive? or even just space out uploads? ppl talk about forgotten middle child film theory but gtlive is just the skeleton on the bottom of the ocean flor lmao

OMG. Do I get to talk about my Theorist conspiracy theories now?! YESS!! STRAP IN FRIENDS.

So I agree with you anon, I think its very tricky to replace Matt on GT Live, that's why they didn't transition him off at the same time as the other channels. Personally, I think Matt's still on GT Live for three main reasons.

1.Failsafe. If they misjudged the transition and watch time dropped off dramatically, they had Matt still existing in the Theorist ecosystem and could use GT Live footage more frequently (see Tom's Kintopet episode for an example). I don't think they'd ever bring him back as host, but they're not stupid and they probably wanted to keep him around just in case.

2. Nostalgia. GT Live is special for Matt as its really the livestream that catapulted him into his big Youtuber status. I think Youtuber Kamermoon says it really nicely in their video "How Game Theory Survived the Hate"; the live channel was Matt's way of rehabilitating his reputation (and the reputation of gamers in the wake of Gamergate) by showing everyone he's a normal-ish likable dude. So he might be loathed to leave it because it has a lot of his emotions tied to it, and because it also requires slightly less work from him (by slightly i mean its still a huge commitment, Matthew please take a nap).

3. Profitability. I think a lot of older brands or brands that are frequent on the channel are reassured by Matt being the one to represent their products. I did wonder going in if the ad reads would be changed with the new hosts and overall there hasn't been as much #spon on the other channels. But you know which channel has had the uptick in sponsors? GT Live. So far we got at least three recently sponsored episodes on a channel that used to rarely get them. I think its because its Matt and the advertisers want him. He's well known in the industry, popular and safe. They don't know the new hosts. Thus I think Matt's kinda stuck on GT Live for a little while just until the advertisers adjust to the new normal and they have proof that the channels aren't tanking with Matt's departure.

So what does that mean going forward? Food Theory and Style Theory have lower views with Santi and Amy right now, and I think that's understandable. Those are the channels where Matt did the most live action so its the most jarring to have him missing.

(Sidenote thats also probably why there's more ads on gt live, sorry guys we have to live with them for a while)

What I think is going to happen is that over the summer you're going to see Santi and Amy on the couch with Matt much more frequently. Lee as well, but mostly because he lives down the street and he's an easy pull. I think they're going to try to slowly transition the audience to them so that they will share the live channel (Amy mentioned Theorist is looking to buy a studio space and I think that will allow Santi and Amy to film "Live" content from the west coast). I think its going to be much slower than the fast(ish) transition we had before for the above three reasons. But I'm fairly positive Matt will leave at the end of the summer (its rare that this man does not do what he says he will) and we will have a steady rotation of the various channels doing livestreams or lets plays, with Ash either running or organizing their schedules (basically serving as a mini Jason).

I also think there was always a plan for Tom to move to North Carolina because he has hinted many, many times that he wants to move to the United States and likes NC. It makes logical sense to move to where Matt lives since he's running the flagship channel and has to take over his boss' many industry contacts. The only thing that would stop him is that immigration is a bit of a mess right now in the US. I guess they stopped issuing as many work visas during the Trump administration and they haven't really recovered? Honestly I'm not 100% sure the exact story there, I just know its hard to move out here so they might have to wait a while before Tom could take over for Matt. If he eventually makes it stateside, then he can film live content with Lee as the "east coast" branch of Theorist, probably in Matt and Steph's house, until they truly give up and kick everyone out.

TL;DR...I agree that Ash will not be the solo host for GT Live for fiscal reasons (I'm also not 100% sure they want the role? Hard to say) and it might take a while for Theorist to get everyone in place for Matt's last departure. It will happen, just not right now.

[commanderquinn]

meta: sam coe - post-campaign analysis

allllrighty i am officially post-campaign so time for first thoughts. since im still collecting my feelings/opinions on the main quest i dont want to go super into that. i wanna wait and consolidate into a deep dive on that one. BUT i am a fic writer with a fixation on socioeconomics, intergenerational trauma, and more specifically the phenomenon of atheists clinging to their religious parents morals because they haven't taken the time to evaluate their biases and the reasons they still hold them

translation: the silver spoon space cowboy is an interesting concept. poory executed in the case of starfield, sadly, but great framework for fandom to chop the head off of and bring to their own individual comfort interpretations.

this meta will include spoilers for the following:

-sam's questline and the npcs involved

-his romance

-cora, the safety storyline around her, and how she's the best part of the space game

-why bethesda was fucking stupid to turn the cowboys into cops when they have the perfect opportunity for not that. i went in hoping for retired/reformed army rangers fed up with war looking to defend their home from fascism given the "han solo simulator" marketing, but all i got was this lousy ass rendition of the texas rangers, which i for SURE did not want

-i WONT be going into detail about the main plot for this post, just fyi. i wanna save that, and sam's relation to it, for its own essay. id still recommend not reading meta's until you finish the game tho

-i miss obsidian's writing. this game made me want to play outer worlds for the 100th time. that will probably come up a lot

this is probably gonna sound more than a bit scattered and off the fucking plot for the first section, but bare with me, im making a point eventually i promise. gotta make sure we're all on the same page first.

now that ive done a majority of his content, it's clear what the intent was for sam and i applaud it. i like it when good hearts in bad systems spot the fundamental flaws and decide to abandon it entirely, or work to change it. i hate perfect characters. i hate characters that have no growth to find. sam is a great character for showing the awesome power of a perspective change. but damn. what a waste when you're talking about a format where a writer is constricted to:

-an exact conversation trigger (bethesda games have always relied on interrupt & player approach, and i didnt notice any variation on game engine front but i wont know until they release the ck so)

-word limit on all responses (yes, you can make long dialogues in engine. but those words still have to be f u n d e d from a dev standpoint. words are not free in video games. capitalism sucks for art.)

-multiple conversation branches that ALL have to circle back to the original topic (they have to follow a set pattern of establishing a subject, then the players possible responses to that subject, the npcs responses to those responses, AND provide a seamless, one dialogue tie-in path to the next branch. it sounds super easy until you're the shmuck writing it, and then it doesnt feel so easy anymore)

-get approximately two personal quests with, what was it, 12 motion scripted scenes? (im watching other peoples pts now so ill try to remember to count, but it was. hmm. lack luster imo. im not saying quantity is vital. im a bioware fanatic, i know the power of quality when its actually delivered. i didnt have any moment like that for sams quests and it was kind of crushing. ill get into it.)

-appeal to a wide enough audience to obtain profit by holding back eXtReMe ViEwS (id like to point out that there is, at this exact moment in time, an active pr campaign (and a few scattered gaming content creators) surrounding starfield talking about how pronouns are politics and should be left out of gaming. over a setting flag in a save file. you literally dont even have to press a button about it. like, you pick your characters body. masc bodys are auto assigned m pronouns. fem bodies are auto assigned f pronouns. you literally dont even have to SEE the button, and it never gets brought up. the only purpose it serves is so the game knows what voice lines to fire. that. is. it.)

im not going to humor the "thats dumb, bethesda makes political games" contribution to the argument.

i get straight people think they're being super helpful and witty on that one, but i think the world would collectively benefit from allies taking just a few extra seconds before standing on that soapbox to maybe consider that calling existence "politics" might be, gee idk, insulting. maybe more than a lil dehumanizing. maybe super easily solved by just NOT giving into their parents obsession with playing devils advocate. i think if maybe allies could shut the fuck up for a minute or two at a time and go look for voices of authority within the communities they're defending instead of trying to talk over them, that'd probably work out better. might help cut out the completely useless middle man their parents taught them to be when they drilled home "you have to respect everyone's opinion"

no the fuck you do not, actually. i, as someone on this earth attempting to be a compassionate person, owe people a chance at understanding. i do not, under any circumstance, owe someone any kind of respect WHATSOEVER if they cannot respect me as a human being. full stop. i dont owe it to them, i dont owe it to their religion, i dont owe it to the government they try to establish. i do not owe respect to people attempting to oppress me. i never have and i never will.

but remember. there is context to be found in the passing of time. yes, you need to tell grandma to stop being racist. no, you do not need to banish grandma to the nursing home if there's still a chance that she's willing to sit and listen. a chance that she'll empathize with social perspectives that the racist society she was raised in never allowed her to have. breathe and give grandma the chance. then send her to the home if she's still racist.

(yes that was an analogy for how i imagine a perspective conversation with jacob would go. i do not have high hopes of that man finding self awareness given. well. who he is as a person.)

now. if you've played through sam's content, you already know why im bringing all of that up, but lets put together a list of all the things that Make Sam Coe Who He Is before we wrap it all up in a pretty bow that hopefully reads a lot less scattered than this "yo society got some trauma actually" lead up ive dumped on you

quick interrupt just for me: i love that im back on tumblr where i dont really have to give all that much of a fuck about making sense. any audience i could find here is equally unhinged so mostly i just have to format it in a way that makes your brain not hurt. sorry if you dont have adhd <3

1: lets talk about cora's hair.

im going to make the race observation because its bothering me from a dev standpoint AND the gamer crowd is already starting to make cuck memes which sucks to see.

i get that this doesnt matter in a colonialism scifi future where a service like enhance exists and we're talking about two rangers that apparently went under cover regularly, but it matters in the context of how sam was handled in a 2020 era commercial, creative environment. im just going to MENTION that cora coe's biological mother (that jab was me not liking her as a person, not me giving a shit that she's white) is paler than pale, and sam does NOT look like some of his earlier promo images. bethesda as a company also has a very long history of making characters arguably tan to avoid this shit.

9/16 edit: was asked for source, heres the exact image im referencing, which is still his set image on the starfield wiki to date:

(im going to preemptively warn any white artists building the urge to argue over this: you DO NOT want to die on a hill about lighting for this one, fucking trust me. thats not what this conversation is, and if you dont understand that as a White Artist, you need to sit this one out until you understand the full weight of the conversation and the profound effect of media treating skin color like a rare diversity accessory. bethesda has a very very long history of this. their last major story title, fallout 4, (76 was a money grab made in the other studio and i barely want to call it a game) had a whopping total of two black characters in its main cast, and both of them acted in subservient roles so please. please please please just. stop trying to defend bethesda on this one. its dehumanizing, cowardly, and malicious in this day and age. i promise im not trying to bite anyones head off here, im just Old And Tired when it comes to suburbanites in fandom.)

i think having solomon be canonically black would have been a really important aspect. i think it would have given the opportunity to show white people why its fucked up that they get SO EXCITED to save war mementos (or in the case of starfield a nasa memento) and will go on and on about how vital it is to save that piece of history, but when you bring up memorializing the importance of race as it pertains to human history and cultural history/pride, they suddenly start getting Very Uncomfortable and throw out phrases like "what does it matter we're all human" while standing next to the gun their grandfather smuggled home from the war

there is no brightness slider on pc and i havent gone reshade tweaking so everything is still washed out on my end (dont worry, as an rtx user, imma be makin a rant post on that) b u t. cora coe has a pale as fuck mother and a vaguely tan father with blue eyes and straight hair, meanwhile my precious angel has a darker complexion and curls that look like they're closing in on the 3c range so like. im getting vibes that sammy boy mighta been whitewashed during game dev, and thats about as far into THAT topic as im gonna bother to venture for this post.

2: his dad

were we supposed to have more daddy issues content??? istg it feels like there was the initial map talk and then nothing. im not saying that i cant pull blood from a stone and give you an entire essay on that glimpse of family trauma just from a few lines of dialogue, but still. feels like thats maybe something that should have gotten more detail.

"no forgiveness between me and my old man. it's uh... coe tradition."

oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy. what a line to start his personal quest

before we go ANY FURTHER im gonna drop a reference to one of my favorite aaron sorkin scenes of all time. its from the movie he did about the chicago seven, and i think it fits VERY well when having a conversation about how sam is shaped by his father

unfortunately the exact scene i want to show isnt clipped anywhere easy i could find, so here's an article that talks about that scene specifically if you want more context but dont want to watch the whole movie. what we're really focused on is this:

which is a scene where a fictional account of bobby seale, the leader of the black panther party at the time of the chicago 7 trial, said that above quote to a fictional account of tom hayden while they were having a conversation about how the stakes of this trial are life and death for him as a black man, but little more than a family dispute and a dark spot on their records for the (all white) chicago 7.

its a GREAT continuation of sorkin’s fascination around father son conflicts (he covered it a time or two during his writing days as west wings original creator, which is a great political show id strongly rec) and it really really works when used in comparison to those rebellion days sam had that he still flagellates over

sam was a privileged kid without a foundation of emotional support or a safe environment to vent to. he didnt have the words needed to communicate what he was feeling and thinking and experiencing. he didnt have the means to express himself in a way that wasn't immediately criticized by the people in his life. it doesnt take a degree in psych to figure out that sam first ran for the stars to run from his father. and it sounds like that was tradition

from the MOMENT YOU MEET HIM, jacob is full stop "my way or the highway" until you hit him with the good ol bethesda persuasion and his disposition pulls a 180 to hand you the next plot device

sam: "you know why im here."

jacob: "oh? and what's that? you come to your senses? realize where you ought to be for once?"

w o w

i wonder why sam never felt safe in his own home. i wonder why he doesnt feel safe leaving cora there. i wonder why that miserable fucking attitude and guilt has sam convinced that jacob will be the worst possible thing for his curious daughter's self esteem.

yes, grandparents sip a different kind of koolaid when it comes to their grandkids. no, that is not enough to protect that child from that much intergenerational trauma. sam's made a bad choice keeping cora in space, but he's made an EXCELLENT choice keeping her away from jacob.

forget "showing respect" to his son's choices, jacob won't give them the time of day. he brushes off constellation and wont go meet them for himself, he insists that cora being "in her family home" is the only priority (isnt THAT telling) and, as if that wasnt enough to prove he's incapable of empathy, the fact that he outright, direct fucking quote during that first scene with him, says to sam's face

"the only mistake im seeing here is you"

fuck anyone who walked away from that scene of a parent saying that to their own kid and had the response of "i dont understand why sam wont let jacob take care of cora." fuck you, genuinely from the bottom of my heart, if that was your reaction.

i looked for opportunities to get sam to talk about what the rest of those "30 plus years of experience with the man" really looked like after that. the fact that it was used as a plot device without any (from what I COULD FIND in my first pt, if i find any ill edit this) kind of dialogue discussion about that trauma around his father's behavior/mentality and the terrible influence it had is such a waste. chances are!!!!!! id fucking agree with him!!!!!!!!!! SO TELL THEM TO ME BETHESDA!!!!!! give me the chance to storm back into that house with the full story and let that geriatric fuck know why he will not be allowed back into my daughters life (yeah we're gonna be calling cora our daughter on this one bc, again, she's the best thing in the game) until he can learn to be a safe emotional environment for her

and THEN, at the end of the romance, the wrinkly mf drops a "hey can you go over sam's head and make the parenting decisions now" 20 minutes before your vows get exchanged in his living room (WE'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT MESS OF A WEDDING LMAO ITS A LOT but im probably gonna save it for another sam post where i talk more in depth about why packing a complicated romance in that tightly just Dont Work). like wow. wowowowwow. if that doesnt perfectly sum up how he views the dusty's (shhh i really hope that name catches on pls i keep seeing ppl use captain instead its heartbreaking) role in the family now, and confirm how he's always viewed his own son, idk what does

3: lillian "i can abandon my kid and demand she be taken care of in the same breath" hart

i was originally going to go into hella detail on his relationship with his ex but honestly i think im just gonna leave a few paragraphs and not touch on her again bc its bad for my blood pressure.

okay, here's the deal. im biased in the sense that i had a mother with attachment issues and lets just say that his ex is worth about as much to me as a pile of dogshit. it'd be one thing if she had that moment of "oh. sam and cora bond really well and i dont fit" and decided to look at that and evaluate if she wanted to continue trying to be a parent.

but she didnt have a moment of reflection. she didnt talk to a therapist. she didnt have a discussion with sam. she went back to work and decided "oh well, my kid doesnt like me" and then left her daughter with an open wound and no shot at closure. which is just. wow. that's active abandonment. she WALKED OUT of cora's life because she couldn't stomach the idea that she didnt immediately win over her daughter without any effort to connect to her.

then she has the nerve to yell at sam for not doing the best for cora. like bitch, you cant even consistently answer the phone??? what are you on??? she's REPEATEDLY broken cora's heart with false promises, and clearly made no effort to truly atone for that given just HOW angry sam is ALL the times he brings it up.

and she does it all for what????? a beat cop reputation and some shiny medals????? like shut the fuck up with that righteous indignation piglet, you're killing smugglers under someone's made up authority to protect COMMERSE, not creating galactic peace. the idea that THAT SHIT is worth more to her than her own daughter having a mother who's around for all her life milestones is inFURIATING and id fucking deck her if i could.

the fact that there's zero chance to call her out other than one single "thats a pretty awful thing to say" option is a real cop out from bethesda. they realized they put a woman in a position where she could be really, truly yelled at for something like child care, and chickened out on following through with it so they wouldnt take any heat.

thats gross and should piss you the fuck off, by the way. that sure the fuck isnt what equality looks like by any measure. you don't empower women by acting like they're infallible creatures you cant call out for being flawed. and you sure as shit dont empower the next generation of women by forgiving their abusers.

4: cora's safety

which brings us to the big sticky: sam is a disaster and i DONT think that keeping cora on a combat-active spaceship is right. i think she'd be much better off living in constellation hq (aside from the main plot obvsly) with a constant open comm to her dad and the ability to bring her to outposts and secured sights.

the problem with the biomother's abandonment isnt the distance. its the lack of attempt to connect. its the lack of forming a bond. its the fact that she had zero desire to understand her child once she figured out her child didnt "love her the most" when thats literally not a thing. the problem was never the physical space, and it wouldnt have to be in sam's case, either.

he's a dad that's there for cora day in and day out, he just never got the chance to grow out of the panic stage of a parent worried the first fever is going to kill the baby. he didn't have his dad because he had to get out to protect himself, he doesnt have a mom because of how long she's been dead, and lillian checked the fuck out at an early stage apparently. so sam was left to be the nervous wreck trying to keep history from repeating itself. the man's flying blind in the face of all the combined generational trauma of himself, his father, and his ex, all while trying not to fuck up shaping a human life.

you're damn fucking right he keeps cora glued to his side, i legitimately do not think his own ptsd would allow him to do otherwise without someone like the dusty to come and and go "hey dude, maybe its time we read some emotional intelligence and trauma books so we can start getting cora into a stable environment for literally the first time in her life? also im going to teach her gun safety for my own sanity because you keep letting her walk all over you and its scaring the fuck out of me thinking my daughter is going to try to raid a pirate ship at 15 because no one taught you proper boundaries."

5: his morals

its been 30+ years and his father wont let go of arguing and micromanaging long enough to try to understand his son. lillian is a workaholic who believes her only inherit value is what she can provide to an organization that views living, breathing human beings as occasionally expendable while screaming about its pursuit of freedom and equality.

sam coe is a man who got told what he was supposed to be his entire life, tripped into drugs and crime in an angry, sheltered act of rebellion, and walked away from it all with a very skewed, very flawed interpretation of morality as a result.

lillian and his father are the clear moral compasses in his life. like yeah, sure, he'll talk about how cora is his driving force until he's blue in the face. and he's not lying!!! he's not even technically wrong. she is his active motivation day in and day out. but she is not his Morality. she hasn't developed enough as a person to be able to be that kind of beacon. she's a kid rushing herself through childhood because she thinks that will make her better and no one in her life recognizes it enough to stop it. she shouldnt have to be the moral guide for someone who's supposed to be guiding her

sam cant let go of the ranger envy. he couldnt stomach being around it, but he cant look at that discomfort long enough to identify why. he can walk into a bank and plain as day go "ah, don't you hate the smell of capitalism," but he can't bring himself to blink the stars out of his eyes long enough to ask why the rangers are so willing to put smugglers to death without trial. sam has enough awareness to identify the system is flawed, but he doesnt have the guts to really stare that down

he'll make cracks about walter having too much money and influence, but he wont actually mention how he and his wife are the root cause of an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering and perfectly avoidable manslaughter as a result of their business. i get that constellation runs as a dont as dont tell organization, but if sam's going to give me shit about nabbing a paper weight from a guy's desk, i think we should talk about how he doesnt display anger for walter's business practices.

sam coe, at his heart, is a dreamer who doesn't want to look too close at things. he was taught that some things just Are, and looking for too many answers will find you trouble. he's got the spirit of an explorer dampened by a lifetime spent under cops.

you can hear it in his voice whenever he talks about how proud he is of cora for being a goddamn prodigy. you can hear the wonder and the excitement there. you can hear the curious kid in him that probably got pushed out of the way while he was trying to shape himself into a Proper Coe

i think sam coe is a dreamer who was forcibly taught to fear learning as a child, and thats the real tragedy of him.

so let's start to tie our bow here.

sam is a man who, in a way that only a privillaged kid can, stumbled into neon's life of drugs and smuggling and self harm through destructive behavior with both eyes firmly shut.

he didn't fall into drugs after a lifetime of being submersed in the culture of it. he didnt take them because he grew up surrounded by people that just knew that's all life was ever going to hold. he didnt get into smuggling because he was starving. he didnt take on his first "criminal act" because there was a life and death battle going on somewhere in his life.

this man was drowning in guilt and shame centered around not "being a proper coe" by the time he was free of his father's control, by all accounts. you can hear how much self hatred he has over the memory of that time in his life. look, im not going to say that age and recovery doesnt come with regret, but he talks about it like degeneracy and something to be guilted about rather than just... living life. like so what you did some drugs?? so what you did a capitalism no no?????

corporations arent people. you shouldnt steal from them because itll put YOU at risk, but under no circumstance should anyone hold onto any guilt for stealing from them. money is fake and capitalism murders people every hour of the day. fuck the system, its fucking rigged, look out for you and yours while capitalism is stealing your natural resources and making private homesteading prosecutable (translation: in our actual, real life here, the government can throw you in jail for building a house without a permit. go look up at the sky and think about the moral journey humanity had to take to get us to that point, and then come talk to me about how i shouldnt encourage people to steal from corporations)

anyways back to the video game, as far as the "what if he was unknowingly smuggling something like organs or weapons" argument, there's no desire for me to defend it, tbh. i dont view crime as a personality brand the way cops do. someone being convicted of a crime doesnt make me see them as lesser, it makes me see them as a person who did a bad thing. i do bad shit all the time. we all do. we're human. sometimes there's an excuse for the behavior, and sometimes there isnt. that's not the end of the world. you own up to your actions, you apologize, and you put in the effort to make amends that fit the situation. end of story. the obvious exception to that being when someone you have victimized tells you to fuck off because they dont want your further involvement.

yes. yes there are people in the world that are genuine monsters that spend their time and energy looking for ways to do the cruelest shit imaginable to their fellow human beings. but those are fucking outliers, so no, im not going to let a conversation about morality be derailed by a fraction of a percent of the population

but people (like the rangers) who aren't ready to look at the whole picture of context, who would rather hyper focus on the unbending rule of the land, don't see that. they see a "type" of person once a crime has been committed rather than "a person who found themselves in this scenario"

sam was raised by cops. he fundamentally does not understand how biased his own view is. he'll sometimes make a vague mention of crime being a necessity, but you can hear how many strings are attached there just from the way he talks about it. he truly views crime as a black and white subject with exceptionally few slivers of grey to be found. you can hear the "law and order is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom" in his voice whenever he talks about how the rangers are "good people" he just "didnt fit anymore" and it's heartbreaking

he'd be so much better off if he would take a moment to reevaluate his priorities and look a lot closer at that guilt he carries and why he carries it. i think it would even help him better connect with cora in the long run. it would for sure give him a better handle on why letting his daughter take on college courses this early in her life isnt something to brag about. its a bad sign that she's pushing herself to Be Something in the exact same way he used to. he just doesn't recognize it because her way is "healthy" by society's fucked up view of child prodigies

tl;dr

i don't need to fix sam coe. he's stubborn, traumatized, and sheltered, not broken.

give that man good enough head and i'm absolutely sure he could be talked into reading some -clutches pearls- marxist literature

[butch-reidentified]

hello hello my lovely Tumblr gals!

I've been waiting to post about this until it was like, a forreal sure thing, but I'm SO excited I gotta share the news 🤩

soooo as most of you already know, my wife & I both have serious chronic health conditions, which come with severe chronic pain as well as all the other wonderful symptoms. We have been struggling to maintain a life of working full time, doing things we enjoy to keep ourselves sane, taking care of our 6 pets, and also getting chores/errands/tasks done like keeping the house clean, grocery shopping and cooking instead of frozen meals and doordash, etc. A couple weeks ago, I posted an ad on a roommate seeking page to "rent" out our spare bedroom. Except instead of money, the majority of the rent would be "paid" by helping us out with those sorts of tasks to help us live as close to a normal life as possible. I created a scaled system where the more assistance = the more the reduction in rent, with a very low cap on the money side of the rent bc we really don't want to take advantage of anyone or profit off renting out a room, so just enough to cover the basic costs. The goal was to find a mutually beneficial arrangement with someone who needed a place to live without paying the current horrifying rental prices of South FL, and was able bodied and capable of helping us out a bit (on their own schedule, around their other work/obligations).

I posted it pretty impulsively when I had the idea, thinking not many people would see it or respond to it, just sort of putting feelers out to see if there was any interest in that kind of arrangement. I specified female only (and of course got multiple messages from men). First thing the next morning, a woman who looks about my age sends me a message. She and her gf have been urgently looking for housing since the plans they had made had fallen through last minute, after they were already packed and everything with their lease ending at the end of February.

She was 100% good vibes right away. We messaged for a couple hours straight, just got talking, and intermittently throughout the day. It turned out there were so many strange coincidences between us, it was uncanny. And talking to her felt like talking to a close friend of many years, not a total stranger. That first day I talked to her, really good things happened to me the rest of the day. Solutions to problems that had been causing me stress for weeks or months fell into my lap. I'm not spiritual or superstitious or anything for the most part, but sometimes the universe is just screaming in your face that something is right.

We kept texting, and planned a video chat "wine date" to discuss the arrangement and get to know each other better. We talked for hours, past 2am, and it felt so natural. Never an awkward moment. We have very similar couple dynamics, we like the same lifestyle and hobbies, we have the exact same sense of humor and communication style, the first woman I had talked to and I go by the same nickname, their dog and one of our dogs are very similar breed mixes and born almost exactly just 1 month apart... I could go on. I mean we even buy the same brand of vapes 😅 They're clean freaks who enjoy cleaning together, and one of them is super into cooking and likes to keep an herb and vegetable garden (we have a huge backyard and have been longing for a garden for ages). I looked up their post in the group, which was posted weeks before mine, and they were a perfect match. We were looking for the exact same things in a roommate.

The decision was made that first video chat night (there have been more since). They were abso-fucking-lutely going to be our new roomies. I wrote up a unique lease, month to month like we both were looking for, and had it looked over by a lawyer, who said we're good to go. My wife and I have been gushing about them to all our friends and our parents. We've been calling it a "couples crush" 😂 I told them that, and they excitedly admitted they've been doing the same thing. My wife and I have also been so much happier and more productive and active since all this started.

These absolute angels have even offered to help us get the house clean from where it's at now instead of us rushing to deep clean before they arrive. They seem genuinely empathetic and like they want to help 😭 And we feel the same way about their housing and financial situation. We own the home, which means there's an inherent power dynamic when renting out a room, so I worked hard to talk to them and create a lease that would equalize as much as possible. My wife and I emphatically expressed that we want them to feel like it's fully their home - we remember from renting in the past how it can sometimes not feel like your home. For me, renting was damaging to my mental health. All the rules and restrictions made me feel unable to create a safe-feeling home environment. We don't want to put any restrictions on them when it comes to pets, drilling into walls, painting the room, re-landscaping the backyard, whatever. We also told them they're always welcome to give us feedback, communicate totally honestly with us about any of their needs, complaints, changes they want to the lease, etc.

Soooo with all that said... they're moving in on Friday! We are all counting the days. We already know we're gonna have a ton of fun together. We even agreed to have "family dinners" sitting together at the table a couple times a week 🙈 We are all just so dorky it's beautiful.

And! I accidentally said "gyns" referring to them in a message 😅 so I had to explain that, and they were SUPER interested and want us to teach them about radical feminism. Like??? We couldn't have created a more perfect roommate situation in a mad scientist's lab. I've been working on trusting my gut recently, as it never seems to lead me astray, and every instinct I have says this is Good.

[songsofelisa]

Unexplainable Episode 172 The Donyis → true crime

Warning: This episode contains discussion and descriptions of violence against both werewolves and humans. Listener discretion is advised.

Gang wars and territory disputes aren’t exactly uncommon on the island, particularly in areas where close knit groups can clash such as Bloodhearth or Carynthia. However, those battles between groups are often smoothed over with agreements between gangs. Bosses will agree that parts of the city are off limits, but other prosperous areas of business are free game. Organized crime, as the name implies, will often have their own rules and laws they operate by, with the consequences resulting in torture and death. That seems to be the case for a pair of werewolf hunters, the Donyis, found murdered in their own home. Still unsolved, is it as simple as a dispute between werewolf hunters and their kills or is it something more sinister? I’m Elisa Salaliphus and this will be a look into the deaths of the Donyis. 

*cue introductory music*

The Victims

Not much is known about the Donyis and their early lives. However, as humans, they seemed to be unremarkable. Natives of the island, the two seemed to have met and married as a young couple. They never had children, but were part of a community of hunters. They were your typical hunters, hunting wild game. For the Donyis it was a hobby they did together. 

It is unclear when, but it is thought when they were in their late thirties and early forties, they grew bored of their usual routine. The Donyis were wanting a challenge and that is when they turned to hunting werewolves for profit. Not only did it create a new challenge for them, but they were good at it and it earned them a nice profit. 

It is also unclear whether or not the Donyis were part of a larger organization of werewolf hunters or if they operated alone. At the very least what we do know is that they hunted and prepared the werewolf pelts, but did not distribute it themselves. Instead, they sold it to a third party for larger distribution. 

The Donyis weren’t just known werewolf hunters but would often head up smear campaigns of known wolves. The most notable was that of Elba San Luis whose own case would be worthy of its own episode, but who did suffer vicious abuse that was spearheaded by the Donyis. 

The Crime

The assault and eventual deaths of the Donyis is still under investigation and presents a unique challenge. It is a case that has so much evidence that points in so many directions that it is almost incredible that it remains unsolved. It is a case, however, that the authorities maintain is still solvable given additional time to investigate. It is also a crime that has details that have been withheld due to still being an investigation still. 

It was the day of July 7, 2022, almost two years prior. It was a particularly hot day as the summer that year had been brutal. It was just after midday and we do know for a fact that a man and a woman approached the Donyis’ property. The Donyis had several cameras around the outside of their home. The quality was poor and is the sort of camera that captured images every few seconds instead of filming a video.

The man and woman captured never show their faces to the camera, and it is thought that they potentially knew the cameras were scattered around the property. There is no attempt by either to disguise their identities either, though it cannot be confirmed either that they weren’t already wearing disguises of some sort. They do appear to have dark hair and both appear to be around the same height which is thought to be between 5’6” to 6’. 

Those are the facts that are known so far with any sort of conclusive nature. Moving forward, everything else was gleaned from the investigation. However, once the man and woman entered the home, it is believed that the Donyis were immediately assaulted. Mr. Donyi was found with his hand pinned to a coffee table inside his home, a knife still through his palm. Mrs. Donyi was found to have been knocked out, her windpipe bruised. What is interesting about the case is that both Donyis were thought to have been left alive, but both perished due to natural causes. It also creates a very interesting case of whether the perpetrators in question would be charged with assault or murder. 

The last piece of evidence of the case is that all the werewolf pelts on the property were taken. It is unknown if the motive of the crime was to commit this theft or if it was an afterthought once the Donyis had been overpowered. Nonetheless, the pelts have never been recovered. It is unknown if they were sold on the market, kept by the couple or given or away or even destroyed. 

The Theories

This case is interesting because it is known that the main suspects are a man and a woman. What is unknown are their identities and potential affiliation. It is also unknown what species they were. There was no conclusive evidence to identify them at the crime scene. All the blood tested belonged to the Donyis and the only evidence of any other species was that of a werewolf which would be impossible to determine if it came from someone they hunted or if the perpetrators were werewolves themselves. 

This brings us to our first theory that the two were werewolves. It is not a secret that werewolves would have a huge motive to terrorize and taunt those who are known to murder them in cold blood in order to profit off their skin and fur. However, many dismiss this theory as many do not believe werewolves would have left the house with the Donyis alive. It is believed that if werewolves were behind the crime, the scene would have been left bloody and the Donyis would have experienced far more violence. Though, it cannot definitively be dismissed. 

The second theory is that some organized crime group was behind it. It is known that the Donyis did not distribute their own product, instead selling their pelts to others to distribute. It is thought the distributors would have most likely been organized crime mafias or gangs that may have had a deal with the Donyis where they would sell and distribute the pelts and each would receive an agreed upon percentage of the profits. However, once again, this theory is dismissed due to the arguable disorganized nature of the assault as well as the fact that the Donyis were left alive. Many believe that organized crime would have not left such a messy crime scene. Gang and mafia crimes tend to be professionally done by hitmen and assassins that know how to leave as little evidence behind. I can confirm that this is the case with almost every major crime group in the city. There is a reason it is so hard to prosecute mafia related crimes. 

The third and most widely believed theory is that the man and woman were fellow and rival werewolf hunters. As mentioned at the top, it is not unheard of for there to be disputes between groups due to territorial issues. 

One of the biggest reasons authorities believe this to be is because there was no forced entry. Officials believed the Donyis would not have opened the door unless they knew their visitors in some manner and also doubt they would have opened to any werewolves without being prepared to handle a potentially violent encounter. It is believed the Donyis recognized their rivals, or they may have been friends or acquaintances, and let them in. The motive is believed to also line up as the wolf pelts were stolen and most likely distributed on some sort of black market. 

Even knowing this, it doesn’t answer the question of who. There were potentially hundreds of independent werewolf hunters and many more who are unknown. However, two of the biggest hunters known to the community are Ramon and Carmen Grimaldi. Many who have thoroughly looked into the case point to this couple as the primary perpetrators. They are known to be particularly cruel and sadistic and while this may be the description werewolves use to describe them, many seem to think it fits the nature and manner of the crime. 

The Grimaldis may have simply been tired of competition and decided to eliminate some of their rivals and in doing so, did it in the cruelest way possible. Many online also speculate that this may have had something to do with the child the Grimaldis were known to have lost in mysterious circumstances. Not much is known about their lost child, but while many theories point to werewolves being the ones who murdered their son, others believe that perhaps the Donyis had something to do with it and the Grimaldis simply decided to retaliate. However, that is another rabbit hole for another episode altogether. 

Wrap-Up

With the approaching anniversary of this crime, many still have hope that it will be solved. However, that doesn’t mean many believe the perpetrators should be charged, particularly the werewolf community. The Donyis were known to be cruel and ruthless and very few people actually feel any remorse for their deaths. The case not only presents many unique challenges in having so much evidence and yet very little answers, but also the moral dilemma of: is murder ever justified if it's seemingly warranted? Many might answer no, but with enough context and the right victim at the center, others may not be so quick to extend their sympathies as the Donyis have proven.

[thessalian]

Thess vs AI

So, the SAG-AFTRA deal with Replica.

I posted a link about this yesterday, and reblogged several more, but it's something that's massively on my mind. Mostly because it frustrates the hell out of me on so many levels.

Like, this came up in one of the subreddits I follow, and there was this one guy there going on and on and on about how he wanted this exact thing - he wanted to buy voices like art assets because he couldn't afford to hire voice actors and wanted to "realise his dream". And obviously he didn't want to turn around to uni students who might do it for a portfolio reel, some pizza and a promise of a cut of the profits (if any, because seriously, like fuck is this dude's asset-flip bullshit going to sell to any massive degree); he wanted real actors ... except not, because you're not getting real acting out of a computer. (And I'll go back to that point in a minute.)

But ... I have stories that I'd love to turn into games. Thing is, though? If I can't afford actual actors to voice this shit, I will do without voices! A lot of games have done that and done pretty damn well, all things considered! Hell, Dredge has, like, two or three acknowledging noises and the entire rest of the thing is text only. Being able to work within your resource limits to create something wonderful is just ... how you do it, when you're being creative. Everything from movies to cookery demonstrate to us time and time again. So expecting to be able to buy someone's voice off a virtual shelf and plug it into your game just because you can't "realise your vision" without a voice actor voicing a thing? That's just cheap cop-out bullshit.

Going back to the point about real acting - it really grinds my gears that voice actors aren't actually considered actors by a depressing percentage of people. Like, again we have Reddit (sometimes I have to see what the non-Tumblr version of the internet looks like so I can cozy back up into my blanket fort and be glad I curate my online experience so well) going, "There are only just a very few voice actors, right?" when stating how this is fine because it's not going to affect that many people. Which ... dude. There are only a few famous ones that you know about. There are a surprising number of people who make their livings doing "additional voices" in video games and three lines of "shop clerk" or "third soldier from the left" in Western cartoons and anime dubs. It's the same problem actors have - so many people think that the only actors that exist are the really famous ones, not the ones who are doing whatever bit parts they can to pay rent and hopefully find a line on a better role at some point.

Also ... I guess it's a bit like how too many people don't consider actors who are predominantly in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, anything that isn't "serious cinema" as "real actors". When I personally respect those actors an awful lot. I'm sorry - you've got people expressing a mix of fear and defiant rage while staring at the fucking tennis ball standing in for the big-ass demon they won't see until the final cut of the movie. How can you not give that props? Similarly, voice actors are giving those performances to a blank wall. To use our most recent epic example, you've got Astarion giving those lines - everything from debonair malice to barely-controlled terror-pleading to pure trust and gratitude - to a wall. In a little soundproof room. He made up all that - everything he needed to - in his head, and he gave those lines, and it was epic.

A computer cannot do that. I've heard some of Replica's AI voices. Gods, they're awful. Maybe - maybe - you could get that shit for "reactive NPCs" (although I'd personally hate that; even if it was done right, it feels creepy ... and I get a kick out of wandering around a major city covered in blood and nobody appearing to notice, thanks), but it'd still be awful. And you couldn't do it with main characters. Or if you did (and you know some of these awful companies would try), it'd be just awful. We're a long way away from a nuanced performance from a computer.

I respect artists because of the work they put in. Hell, I'm one of them. I see the phrase "AI DM" (yes, one of D&D Beyond's things was talking about a VTT with the potential for an AI DM), and I shudder because ... have they met a D&D group? Ever? At all? How could an AI determine "rule of cool"? Just ... ugh. The idea of an AI scripting TV shows or writing novels ... as a writer, it makes me sick. And actors? They hardly get any respect as it is unless they're some of the big names who do Serious Cinema (or make a hell of a lot of money); this is just shitting all over them even worse. What happens to the next generation of voice actors if greedy-ass corporations give the little roles that most VAs cut their proverbial teeth on to a fucking computer?

I hate it. I keep saying - the whole thing about automation was that it was supposed to let machines do the grunt-work while humans created art, and now it's the other way around as art is considered "just another saleable commodity". So ... maybe it's not that video games stopped being considered art, as I was thinking awhile ago. Maybe it's just that art itself stopped being art, because the money-makers are chewing it up into one big spitball of off-grey blech and throwing it at a wall.

[kitty-c4t]

I HAVE RETURNED WITH A NEW IDEA!

Idea 15: Vanessa is good at bedtime stories

This idea is inspired by a point I made during idea 2 that I wanted to attempt to elaborate on. This is actually based on the fact that Vanessa's voice actor, Heather Masters, was known for reading children's books before getting involved in FNAF (I am not kidding, check her interview with Dawko ). 

It is logical to assume that most young kids would probably get more nightmares when their parents are not at home. As such it would be a good idea to learn how to calm them down. Vanessa, as a teenager, initially made stories using the video games that she plays as a base. This turns out to work a lot better than she expects, so she continues to refine and use it until she stops babysitting when she goes off to college. This will be important later.

Anyways, let us set the scene. It has been a few weeks since the Pizzaplex decided to reenact the Sampoong Department store collapse. The robots have been handling their new “jobs” at Silver Parasol fairly well. Roxy and Monty serve as sources of motivation for the team. They have also taken up smaller versions of what they used to do; RC car racing for Roxy and setting up a small putting green for Monty. Chica makes lunch for everyone, proving she can make other things besides pizza in the process. Freddy helps organize schedules with the management. The Daycare Attendant serves as a sort of mental health checker, working with Roxy and Monty. And of course the ALMIGHTY MAPBOT “gives out” (forces people to take) maps for the building to the people working there, except for Vanessa, whom he decided to forgive after she fixed his speech issues. All of the animatronics do still interact with children when employees bring their own or their friends' children in for various reasons. 

The VR games also turned out to be a hit, and with Fazbear Entertainment no longer taking any percentage of the profits, it is earning Silver Parasol a large amount of money. In fact, they have so much excess that they start making plans on buying a building to serve as a proper location for the animatronics. This idea was actually spearheaded by Vanessa because she feels bad that they don’t have a real “home” and wants to return the favor for them being so nice to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, after all these months, she can finally say with full confidence that she feels like her old self again. She is able to use knives, look at rabbits and not feel scared among other minor things. She has also become a lot more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Vanessa recently even went on an actual proper date with Luis.* It went really well, considering that they both are awkward nerds! So a lot of things are going well for our blonde…beneficiary? 

* Everyone is just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. Roxy and Monty even had a bet going on for when they would do it, Roxy bet over 4 months and Monty bet under. Roxy won, meaning she and Chica got to “redecorate” Monty. I will let you decide what that means.

However the same cannot be said for Gregory. He has recently started to have terrible nightmares, which he hasn't had since before his mother died. The reason that he only appears to be having bad nightmares now is ironically because he now knows that he is in a safe and STABLE living situation. Back when he was living on the streets, staying silent at all times was key to surviving and not being caught. This included being quiet when sleeping, so he just stopped having nightmares. This continued for the first month or so he was living with Vanessa since he still didn't completely trust her yet. But now that she has proven herself to be an actually really good person and safe to be around, the nightmares have returned in full force.

They start out consisting of what you would expect for a kid like Gregory. Vague things such as being abandoned. Then they start to be about things like being chased by hundred pound animal themed death machines. He could handle those ones easily enough. As the months go on, they get worse, more specific. They start to involve Freddy turning evil, Vanessa turning back into Vanny. They usually end at that point because the real Freddy, in his plush form, notices that something is wrong and would wake Gregory up. He then comforts him by simply reassuring Gregory that it was just a nightmare and giving him a hug. However, this method has been getting less effective as time goes on.

Something else that you have to know is this, most of the animatronics are not good at storytelling or making up stories. They are simply not designed or programmed for it since they are not meant to be doing any activities that involve sleeping. You would think that the daycare attendant would be good at this since he is supposed to help kids fall asleep. He does tell stories, but they are preprogrammed and all end with some variation of the theme, "Buy Fazbear Entertainment merch" . This is because he was originally intended to generate his own stories like DJMM can generate music. However FE couldn't risk him coming up with a story that already existed and getting sued so they attempted to make their own. Also some of the in-game logs indicated that he isn’t even that good at getting kids to go to sleep regardless (yes I know he was partially hacked, but something tells me that the getting kids to go to sleep problem existed before this issue). Basically, Freddy and the gang are not good at getting kids to go back to sleep beyond basic reassurance.

Then one night, he has a nightmare that is worse than all of the others. He is cornered in a dark storage room inside of the pizzaplex, surrounded by all of the animatronics including Freddy. Gregory knows that they aren’t themselves, their eyes glowing a distinct purple. In the center of it all, is Vanny. She is in that disturbing suit that he saw burnt before his eyes, her posture aggressive and towering over him. The shadows over her mask make it appear even more deranged than normal, and her knife in hand ready to kill him and make his death as painful as possible. Before Gregory can even react, Vanny grabs him by the neck and forces him to the ground and raises her knife into the air. As he struggles to breathe all he can hear is Vanny’s insane laughter, so unlike Vanessa’s it is almost impossible to believe that they were once the same person. Vanny raises her arm and then plunges it into his chest. As searing pain and darkness overtake Gregory, he wakes up with a horrible scream.

Vanessa wakes up when she hears the noise and upon realizing that it came from Gregory, immediately rushes over to his room to see what’s wrong. Both Vanessa and Freddy are very concerned, because Gregory has NEVER cried or screamed before. Sure, he’s looked freaked out before, but never has he ever appeared to be this scared. Vanessa slowly and quietly moves to his bed and sits down to try and calm him down. Eventually Gregory’s crying is reduced to occasional sniffles Freddy is at a loss of what to do, so Vanessa decides to, hesitantly, ask Gregory if he would like to hear a story. Gregory at first wants to refuse because he is a big boi . However he looks up at Vanessa’s face that shows genuine concern, and with a sniffle says yes.

Vanessa starts telling a story about a kingdom and princess, one who brought joy and hope to all who saw her, who could almost literally brighten someone's day. She tells of how this princess was deceived by a stranger in purple, who then locked her inside her own castle dungeon and spread evil throughout the kingdom. But it was done in such a way that no one noticed anything was amiss. The differences were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Everyone except one person, a knight. One smaller than most, but no less brave. He was the only one to realize that something was wrong and ventured into the kingdom to figure out what was wrong and fix it. He quickly found some assistance in the form of a large yet friendly bear, who had somehow managed to avoid the corruption that had befallen the other creatures.

They discover that the kingdom has been corrupted and learn of a way to get rid of it using 3 keys or sorts. So the 2 go on an adventure to find these keys and save the kingdom. They encounter a multitude of trials and tribulations on their journey as the bear and knight bond and work together. In the end though they find the 3 keys, unlock the dungeons to free the princess and defeat the corruption, saving the day! And thus the 3 of them, the kind bear, the brave knight, and the imprisoned princess all lived happily ever after

By the time Vanessa has finished speaking, Gregory has fallen back asleep hugging both her arm and Freddy close. Freddy is just looking at her with that dad-like “I’m so proud of you” type expression instead of saying it since he doesn't want to wake Gregory up. Vanessa rolls her eyes but accepts the gesture. Upon seeing that she can’t go back to bed since Gregory has effectively latched onto her, she decides to just spend the night with him.

And thus, with no more nightmares to trouble them, the 3 of them have a rest filled night and will proceed to have many more. For although healing might take a long time and be full of setbacks, the end can make it all worth it. :)

Awwww I'm so happy that they have a happy live now (also YES I KNEW LUIS AND VANESSA WOULD DATE YES YES YES) AKHEM

The tale was adorable I wonder who the characters be based on *wiggles eyebrows*

(also r relationship between Gregory an Vanessa r more like sister and brother or mother and son?)

[fnafsbheadcanon]

I HAVE RETURNED WITH A NEW IDEA!

Idea 15: Vanessa is good at bedtime stories

This idea is inspired by a point I made during idea 2 that I wanted to attempt to elaborate on. This is actually based on the fact that Vanessa's voice actor, Heather Masters, was known for reading children's books before getting involved in FNAF (I am not kidding, check her interview with Dawko). 

It is logical to assume that most young kids would probably get more nightmares when their parents are not at home. As such it would be a good idea to learn how to calm them down. Vanessa, as a teenager, initially made stories using the video games that she plays as a base. This turns out to work a lot better than she expects, so she continues to refine and use it until she stops babysitting when she goes off to college. This will be important later.

    Anyways, let us set the scene. It has been a few weeks since the Pizzaplex decided to reenact the Sampoong Department store collapse. The robots have been handling their new “jobs” at Silver Parasol fairly well. Roxy and Monty serve as sources of motivation for the team. They have also taken up smaller versions of what they used to do; RC car racing for Roxy and setting up a small putting green for Monty. Chica makes lunch for everyone, proving she can make other things besides pizza in the process. Freddy helps organize schedules with the management. The Daycare Attendant serves as a sort of mental health checker, working with Roxy and Monty. And of course the ALMIGHTY MAPBOT “gives out” (forces people to take) maps for the building to the people working there, except for Vanessa, whom he decided to forgive after she fixed his speech issues. All of the animatronics do still interact with children when employees bring their own or their friends' children in for various reasons. 

The VR games also turned out to be a hit, and with Fazbear Entertainment no longer taking any percentage of the profits, it is earning Silver Parasol a large amount of money. In fact, they have so much excess that they start making plans on buying a building to serve as a proper location for the animatronics. This idea was actually spearheaded by Vanessa because she feels bad that they don’t have a real “home” and wants to return the favor for them being so nice to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, after all these months, she can finally say with full confidence that she feels like her old self again. She is able to use knives, look at rabbits and not feel scared among other minor things. She has also become a lot more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Vanessa recently even went on an actual proper date with Luis.* It went really well, considering that they both are awkward nerds! So a lot of things are going well for our blonde…beneficiary? 

*Everyone is just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. Roxy and Monty even had a bet going on for when they would do it, Roxy bet over 4 months and Monty bet under. Roxy won, meaning she and Chica got to “redecorate” Monty. I will let you decide what that means.

However the same cannot be said for Gregory. He has recently started to have terrible nightmares, which he hasn't had since before his mother died. The reason that he only appears to be having bad nightmares now is ironically because he now knows that he is in a safe and STABLE living situation. Back when he was living on the streets, staying silent at all times was key to surviving and not being caught. This included being quiet when sleeping, so he just stopped having nightmares. This continued for the first month or so he was living with Vanessa since he still didn't completely trust her yet. But now that she has proven herself to be an actually really good person and safe to be around, the nightmares have returned in full force.

They start out consisting of what you would expect for a kid like Gregory. Vague things such as being abandoned. Then they start to be about things like being chased by hundred pound animal themed death machines (sadly not like those ones). He could handle those ones easily enough. As the months go on, they get worse, more specific. They start to involve Freddy turning evil, Vanessa turning back into Vanny. They usually end at that point because the real Freddy, in his plush form, notices that something is wrong and would wake Gregory up. He then comforts him by simply reassuring Gregory that it was just a nightmare and giving him a hug. However, this method has been getting less effective as time goes on.

Something else that you have to know is this, most of the animatronics are not good at storytelling or making up stories. They are simply not designed or programmed for it since they are not meant to be doing any activities that involve sleeping. You would think that the daycare attendant would be good at this since he is supposed to help kids fall asleep. He does tell stories, but they are preprogrammed and all end with some variation of the theme, "Buy Fazbear Entertainment merch". This is because he was originally intended to generate his own stories like DJMM can generate music. However FE couldn't risk him coming up with a story that already existed and getting sued so they attempted to make their own. Also some of the in-game logs indicated that he isn’t even that good at getting kids to go to sleep regardless (yes I know he was partially hacked, but something tells me that the getting kids to go to sleep problem existed before this issue). Basically, Freddy and the gang are not good at getting kids to go back to sleep beyond basic reassurance.

Then one night, he has a nightmare that is worse than all of the others. He is cornered in a dark storage room inside of the pizzaplex, surrounded by all of the animatronics including Freddy. Gregory knows that they aren’t themselves, their eyes glowing a distinct purple. In the center of it all, is Vanny. She is in that disturbing suit that he saw burnt before his eyes, her posture aggressive and towering over him. The shadows over her mask make it appear even more deranged than normal, and her knife in hand ready to kill him and make his death as painful as possible. Before Gregory can even react, Vanny grabs him by the neck and forces him to the ground and raises her knife into the air. As he struggles to breathe all he can hear is Vanny’s insane laughter, so unlike Vanessa’s it is almost impossible to believe that they were once the same person. Vanny raises her arm and then plunges it into his chest. As searing pain and darkness overtake Gregory, he wakes up with a horrible scream.

Vanessa wakes up when she hears the noise and upon realizing that it came from Gregory, immediately rushes over to his room to see what’s wrong. Both Vanessa and Freddy are very concerned, because Gregory has NEVER cried or screamed before. Sure, he’s looked freaked out before, but never has he ever appeared to be this scared. Vanessa slowly and quietly moves to his bed and sits down to try and calm him down. Eventually Gregory’s crying is reduced to occasional sniffles Freddy is at a loss of what to do, so Vanessa decides to, hesitantly, ask Gregory if he would like to hear a story. Gregory at first wants to refuse because he is a big boi. However he looks up at Vanessa’s face that shows genuine concern, and with a sniffle says yes.

Vanessa starts telling a story about a kingdom and princess, one who brought joy and hope to all who saw her, who could almost literally brighten someone's day. She tells of how this princess was deceived by a stranger in purple, who then locked her inside her own castle dungeon and spread evil throughout the kingdom. But it was done in such a way that no one noticed anything was amiss. The differences were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Everyone except one person, a knight. One smaller than most, but no less brave. He was the only one to realize that something was wrong and ventured into the kingdom to figure out what was wrong and fix it. He quickly found some assistance in the form of a large yet friendly bear, who had somehow managed to avoid the corruption that had befallen the other creatures.

They discover that the kingdom has been corrupted and learn of a way to get rid of it using 3 keys or sorts. So the 2 go on an adventure to find these keys and save the kingdom. They encounter a multitude of trials and tribulations on their journey as the bear and knight bond and work together. In the end though they find the 3 keys, unlock the dungeons to free the princess and defeat the corruption, saving the day! And thus the 3 of them, the kind bear, the brave knight, and the imprisoned princess all lived happily ever after

   

    By the time Vanessa has finished speaking, Gregory has fallen back asleep hugging both her arm and Freddy close. Freddy is just looking at her with that dad-like “I’m so proud of you” type expression instead of saying it since he doesn't want to wake Gregory up. Vanessa rolls her eyes but accepts the gesture. Upon seeing that she can’t go back to bed since Gregory has effectively latched onto her, she decides to just spend the night with him.

   

    And thus, with no more nightmares to trouble them, the 3 of them have a rest filled night and will proceed to have many more. For although healing might take a long time and be full of setbacks, the end can make it all worth it. :)

Oh God this is adorable

[riahlynn101]

Idea 15: Vanessa is good at bedtime stories

This idea is inspired by a point I made during idea 2 that I wanted to attempt to elaborate on. This is actually based on the fact that Vanessa's voice actor, Heather Masters, was known for reading children's books before getting involved in FNAF (I am not kidding, check her interview with Dawko). 

It is logical to assume that most young kids would probably get more nightmares when their parents are not at home. As such it would be a good idea to learn how to calm them down. Vanessa, as a teenager, initially made stories using the video games that she plays as a base. This turns out to work a lot better than she expects, so she continues to refine and use it until she stops babysitting when she goes off to college. This will be important later.

Anyways, let us set the scene. It has been a few weeks since the Pizzaplex decided to reenact the Sampoong Department store collapse. The robots have been handling their new “jobs” at Silver Parasol fairly well. Roxy and Monty serve as sources of motivation for the team. They have also taken up smaller versions of what they used to do; RC car racing for Roxy and setting up a small putting green for Monty. Chica makes lunch for everyone, proving she can make other things besides pizza in the process. Freddy helps organize schedules with the management. The Daycare Attendant serves as a sort of mental health checker, working with Roxy and Monty. And of course the ALMIGHTY MAPBOT “gives out” (forces people to take) maps for the building to the people working there, except for Vanessa, whom he decided to forgive after she fixed his speech issues. All of the animatronics do still interact with children when employees bring their own or their friends' children in for various reasons. 

The VR games also turned out to be a hit, and with Fazbear Entertainment no longer taking any percentage of the profits, it is earning Silver Parasol a large amount of money. In fact, they have so much excess that they start making plans on buying a building to serve as a proper location for the animatronics. This idea was actually spearheaded by Vanessa because she feels bad that they don’t have a real “home” and wants to return the favor for them being so nice to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, after all these months, she can finally say with full confidence that she feels like her old self again. She is able to use knives, look at rabbits and not feel scared among other minor things. She has also become a lot more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Vanessa recently even went on an actual proper date with Luis.* It went really well, considering that they both are awkward nerds! So a lot of things are going well for our blonde…beneficiary? 

*Everyone is just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. Roxy and Monty even had a bet going on for when they would do it, Roxy bet over 4 months and Monty bet under. Roxy won, meaning she and Chica got to “redecorate” Monty. I will let you decide what that means.

However the same cannot be said for Gregory. He has recently started to have terrible nightmares, which he hasn't had since before his mother died. The reason that he only appears to be having bad nightmares now is ironically because he now knows that he is in a safe and STABLE living situation. Back when he was living on the streets, staying silent at all times was key to surviving and not being caught. This included being quiet when sleeping, so he just stopped having nightmares. This continued for the first month or so he was living with Vanessa since he still didn't completely trust her yet. But now that she has proven herself to be an actually really good person and safe to be around, the nightmares have returned in full force.

They start out consisting of what you would expect for a kid like Gregory. Vague things such as being abandoned. Then they start to be about things like being chased by the animatronics. He could handle those ones easily enough. As the months go on, they get worse, more specific. They start to involve Freddy turning evil, Vanessa turning back into Vanny. They usually end at that point because the real Freddy, in his plush form, notices that something is wrong and would wake Gregory up. He then comforts him by simply reassuring Gregory that it was just a nightmare and giving him a hug. However, this method has been getting less effective as time goes on.

Something else that you have to know is this, most of the animatronics are not good at storytelling or making up stories. They are simply not designed or programmed for it since they are not meant to be doing any activities that involve sleeping. You would think that the daycare attendant would be good at this since he is supposed to help kids fall asleep. He does tell stories, but they are preprogrammed and all end with some variation of the theme, "Buy Fazbear Entertainment merch" . This is because he was originally intended to generate his own stories like DJMM can generate music. However FE couldn't risk him coming up with a story that already existed and getting sued so they attempted to make their own. Also some of the in-game logs indicated that he isn’t even that good at getting kids to go to sleep regardless (yes I know he was partially hacked, but something tells me that the getting kids to go to sleep problem existed before this issue ). Basically, Freddy and the gang are not good at getting kids to go back to sleep beyond basic reassurance.

Then one night, he has a nightmare that is worse than all of the others. He is cornered in a dark storage room inside of the pizzaplex, surrounded by all of the animatronics including Freddy. Gregory knows that they aren’t themselves, their eyes glowing a distinct purple. In the center of it all, is Vanny. She is in that disturbing suit that he saw burnt before his eyes, her posture aggressive and towering over him. The shadows over her mask make it appear even more deranged than normal, and her knife in hand ready to kill him and make his death as painful as possible. Before Gregory can even react, Vanny grabs him by the neck and forces him to the ground and raises her knife into the air. As he struggles to breathe all he can hear is Vanny’s insane laughter, so unlike Vanessa’s it is almost impossible to believe that they were once the same person. Vanny raises her arm and then plunges it into his chest. As searing pain and darkness overtake Gregory, he wakes up with a horrible scream.

Vanessa wakes up when she hears the noise and upon realizing that it came from Gregory, immediately rushes over to his room to see what’s wrong. Both Vanessa and Freddy are very concerned, because Gregory has NEVER cried or screamed before. Sure, he’s looked freaked out before, but never has he ever appeared to be this scared. Vanessa slowly and quietly moves to his bed and sits down to try and calm him down. Eventually Gregory’s crying is reduced to occasional sniffles Freddy is at a loss of what to do, so Vanessa decides to, hesitantly, ask Gregory if he would like to hear a story. Gregory at first wants to refuse because he is a big boi . However he looks up at Vanessa’s face that shows genuine concern, and with a sniffle says yes.

Vanessa starts telling a story about a kingdom and princess, one who brought joy and hope to all who saw her, who could almost literally brighten someone's day. She tells of how this princess was deceived by a stranger in purple, who then locked her inside her own castle dungeon and spread evil throughout the kingdom. But it was done in such a way that no one noticed anything was amiss. The differences were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Everyone except one person, a knight. One smaller than most, but no less brave. He was the only one to realize that something was wrong and ventured into the kingdom to figure out what was wrong and fix it. He quickly found some assistance in the form of a large yet friendly bear, who had somehow managed to avoid the corruption that had befallen the other creatures.

They discover that the kingdom has been corrupted and learn of a way to get rid of it using 3 keys or sorts. So the 2 go on an adventure to find these keys and save the kingdom. They encounter a multitude of trials and tribulations on their journey as the bear and knight bond and work together. In the end though they find the 3 keys, unlock the dungeons to free the princess and defeat the corruption, saving the day! And thus the 3 of them, the kind bear, the brave knight, and the imprisoned princess all lived happily ever after

By the time Vanessa has finished speaking, Gregory has fallen back asleep hugging both her arm and Freddy close. Freddy is just looking at her with that dad-like “I’m so proud of you” type expression instead of saying it since he doesn't want to wake Gregory up. Vanessa rolls her eyes but accepts the gesture. Upon seeing that she can’t go back to bed since Gregory has effectively latched onto her, she decides to just spend the night with him.

And thus, with no more nightmares to trouble them, the 3 of them have a rest filled night and will proceed to have many more. For although healing might take a long time and be full of setbacks, the end can make it all worth it. :)

I'm not crying; it's my allergies

I just watched the interview, and all I can say is that it will never not be funny that Heather Masters had zero idea that Baby's purpose is to kill kids.

And for context, for other people, this was the second part of the theory:

Idea 2: Vanessa is great with kids

Contrary to most fics, where "freed" Vanessa acts exactly the same as Vanny, just not evil; I believe that in the pre-Help Wanted era, Vanessa was actually great with children. My reasoning is as follows:

Fazbear Entertainment wants to improve their reputation before the VR game release and the pizzaplex opening. 

Decide to make each of their "branches" (companies that work for them) send one of their employees to schools to talk about their job as a way to "be transparent."

Vanessa's job is basically "play/ break video games," so Steel Parasol, the company that made FNAF VR in this universe, decides to send her out.

Vanessa finds working with the kids to be very enjoyable. Her positive and bubbly personality (as evidenced by the cut FNAF AR emails) makes the kids really like her. They are blown away by the idea that they can be paid to play video games.

Vanessa especially likes when some of those kids get that look of "I have found what I want to do with my life."

It's a win for everyone! Vanessa inspires some kids to get into tech, the children get a newfound love for technology, and Fazbear Entertainment's reputation goes up...slightly.

All this just serves to make the whole "Vanny" thing even worse, especially if some of her victims were those same kids Vanessa once talked with."

--

I don't have much else to add, but Vanessa being good with kids/being kind person at heart, will forever be my favorite type of theory (and story).

This story was beautifully written, and I enjoyed reading it. I love the idea of Vanessa turning her own personal trauma into something helpful.

[fnaf-sxc]

I have returned with a new idea!

Idea 15: Vanessa is good at bedtime stories

This idea is inspired by a point I made during idea 2 that I wanted to attempt to elaborate on. This is actually based on the fact that Vanessa's voice actor, Heather Masters, was known for reading children's books before getting involved in FNAF (I am not kidding, check her interview with Dawko). 

It is logical to assume that most young kids would probably get more nightmares when their parents are not at home. As such it would be a good idea to learn how to calm them down. Vanessa, as a teenager, initially made stories using the video games that she plays as a base. This turns out to work a lot better than she expects, so she continues to refine and use it until she stops babysitting when she goes off to college. This will be important later.

    Anyways, let us set the scene. It has been a few weeks since the Pizzaplex decided to reenact the Sampoong Department store collapse. The robots have been handling their new “jobs” at Silver Parasol fairly well. Roxy and Monty serve as sources of motivation for the team. They have also taken up smaller versions of what they used to do; RC car racing for Roxy and setting up a small putting green for Monty. Chica makes lunch for everyone, proving she can make other things besides pizza in the process. Freddy helps organize schedules with the management. The Daycare Attendant serves as a sort of mental health checker, working with Roxy and Monty. And of course the ALMIGHTY MAPBOT “gives out” (forces people to take) maps for the building to the people working there, except for Vanessa, whom he decided to forgive after she fixed his speech issues. All of the animatronics do still interact with children when employees bring their own or their friends' children in for various reasons. 

The VR games also turned out to be a hit, and with Fazbear Entertainment no longer taking any percentage of the profits, it is earning Silver Parasol a large amount of money. In fact, they have so much excess that they start making plans on buying a building to serve as a proper location for the animatronics. This idea was actually spearheaded by Vanessa because she feels bad that they don’t have a real “home” and wants to return the favor for them being so nice to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, after all these months, she can finally say with full confidence that she feels like her old self again. She is able to use knives, look at rabbits and not feel scared among other minor things. She has also become a lot more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Vanessa recently even went on an actual proper date with Luis.* It went really well, considering that they both are awkward nerds! So a lot of things are going well for our blonde…beneficiary? 

*Everyone is just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. Roxy and Monty even had a bet going on for when they would do it, Roxy bet over 4 months and Monty bet under. Roxy won, meaning she and Chica got to “redecorate” Monty. I will let you decide what that means.

However the same cannot be said for Gregory. He has recently started to have terrible nightmares, which he hasn't had since before his mother died. The reason that he only appears to be having bad nightmares now is ironically because he now knows that he is in a safe and STABLE living situation. Back when he was living on the streets, staying silent at all times was key to surviving and not being caught. This included being quiet when sleeping, so he just stopped having nightmares. This continued for the first month or so he was living with Vanessa since he still didn't completely trust her yet. But now that she has proven herself to be an actually really good person and safe to be around, the nightmares have returned in full force.

They start out consisting of what you would expect for a kid like Gregory. Vague things such as being abandoned. Then they start to be about things like being chased by hundred pound animal themed death machines (sadly not like those ones). He could handle those ones easily enough. As the months go on, they get worse, more specific. They start to involve Freddy turning evil, Vanessa turning back into Vanny. They usually end at that point because the real Freddy, in his plush form, notices that something is wrong and would wake Gregory up. He then comforts him by simply reassuring Gregory that it was just a nightmare and giving him a hug. However, this method has been getting less effective as time goes on.

Something else that you have to know is this, most of the animatronics are not good at storytelling or making up stories. They are simply not designed or programmed for it since they are not meant to be doing any activities that involve sleeping. You would think that the daycare attendant would be good at this since he is supposed to help kids fall asleep. He does tell stories, but they are preprogrammed and all end with some variation of the theme, "Buy Fazbear Entertainment merch". This is because he was originally intended to generate his own stories like DJMM can generate music. However FE couldn't risk him coming up with a story that already existed and getting sued so they attempted to make their own. Also some of the in-game logs indicated that he isn’t even that good at getting kids to go to sleep regardless (yes I know he was partially hacked, but something tells me that the getting kids to go to sleep problem existed before this issue). Basically, Freddy and the gang are not good at getting kids to go back to sleep beyond basic reassurance.

Then one night, he has a nightmare that is worse than all of the others. He is cornered in a dark storage room inside of the pizzaplex, surrounded by all of the animatronics including Freddy. Gregory knows that they aren’t themselves, their eyes glowing a distinct purple. In the center of it all, is Vanny. She is in that disturbing suit that he saw burnt before his eyes, her posture aggressive and towering over him. The shadows over her mask make it appear even more deranged than normal, and her knife in hand ready to kill him and make his death as painful as possible. Before Gregory can even react, Vanny grabs him by the neck and forces him to the ground and raises her knife into the air. As he struggles to breathe all he can hear is Vanny’s insane laughter, so unlike Vanessa’s it is almost impossible to believe that they were once the same person. Vanny raises her arm and then plunges it into his chest. As searing pain and darkness overtake Gregory, he wakes up with a horrible scream.

Vanessa wakes up when she hears the noise and upon realizing that it came from Gregory, immediately rushes over to his room to see what’s wrong. Both Vanessa and Freddy are very concerned, because Gregory has NEVER cried or screamed before. Sure, he’s looked freaked out before, but never has he ever appeared to be this scared. Vanessa slowly and quietly moves to his bed and sits down to try and calm him down. Eventually Gregory’s crying is reduced to occasional sniffles Freddy is at a loss of what to do, so Vanessa decides to, hesitantly, ask Gregory if he would like to hear a story. Gregory at first wants to refuse because he is a big boi. However he looks up at Vanessa’s face that shows genuine concern, and with a sniffle says yes.

Vanessa starts telling a story about a kingdom and princess, one who brought joy and hope to all who saw her, who could almost literally brighten someone's day. She tells of how this princess was deceived by a stranger in purple, who then locked her inside her own castle dungeon and spread evil throughout the kingdom. But it was done in such a way that no one noticed anything was amiss. The differences were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Everyone except one person, a knight. One smaller than most, but no less brave. He was the only one to realize that something was wrong and ventured into the kingdom to figure out what was wrong and fix it. He quickly found some assistance in the form of a large yet friendly bear, who had somehow managed to avoid the corruption that had befallen the other creatures.

They discover that the kingdom has been corrupted and learn of a way to get rid of it using 3 keys or sorts. So the 2 go on an adventure to find these keys and save the kingdom. They encounter a multitude of trials and tribulations on their journey as the bear and knight bond and work together. In the end though they find the 3 keys, unlock the dungeons to free the princess and defeat the corruption, saving the day! And thus the 3 of them, the kind bear, the brave knight, and the imprisoned princess all lived happily ever after

   

    By the time Vanessa has finished speaking, Gregory has fallen back asleep hugging both her arm and Freddy close. Freddy is just looking at her with that dad-like “I’m so proud of you” type expression instead of saying it since he doesn't want to wake Gregory up. Vanessa rolls her eyes but accepts the gesture. Upon seeing that she can’t go back to bed since Gregory has effectively latched onto her, she decides to just spend the night with him.

   

    And thus, with no more nightmares to trouble them, the 3 of them have a rest filled night and will proceed to have many more. For although healing might take a long time and be full of setbacks, the end can make it all worth it. :)

What is this

Srs no offense but what is this wall of Security Breach text? I haven't touched SB I'm a bit confused????

[hexyz09]

Idea 15: Vanessa is good at bedtime stories

This idea is inspired by a point I made during idea 2 that I wanted to attempt to elaborate on. This is actually based on the fact that Vanessa's voice actor, Heather Masters, was known for reading children's books before getting involved in FNAF (I am not kidding, check her interview with Dawko ). 

It is logical to assume that most young kids would probably get more nightmares when their parents are not at home. As such it would be a good idea to learn how to calm them down. Vanessa, as a teenager, initially made stories using the video games that she plays as a base. This turns out to work a lot better than she expects, so she continues to refine and use it until she stops babysitting when she goes off to college. This will be important later.

Anyways, let us set the scene. It has been a few weeks since the Pizzaplex decided to reenact the Sampoong Department store collapse. The robots have been handling their new “jobs” at Silver Parasol fairly well. Roxy and Monty serve as sources of motivation for the team. They have also taken up smaller versions of what they used to do; RC car racing for Roxy and setting up a small putting green for Monty. Chica makes lunch for everyone, proving she can make other things besides pizza in the process. Freddy helps organize schedules with the management. The Daycare Attendant serves as a sort of mental health checker, working with Roxy and Monty. And of course the ALMIGHTY MAPBOT “gives out” (forces people to take) maps for the building to the people working there, except for Vanessa, whom he decided to forgive after she fixed his speech issues. All of the animatronics do still interact with children when employees bring their own or their friends' children in for various reasons. 

The VR games also turned out to be a hit, and with Fazbear Entertainment no longer taking any percentage of the profits, it is earning Silver Parasol a large amount of money. In fact, they have so much excess that they start making plans on buying a building to serve as a proper location for the animatronics. This idea was actually spearheaded by Vanessa because she feels bad that they don’t have a real “home” and wants to return the favor for them being so nice to her.

Speaking of Vanessa, after all these months, she can finally say with full confidence that she feels like her old self again. She is able to use knives, look at rabbits and not feel scared among other minor things. She has also become a lot more confident and outgoing than she used to be. Vanessa recently even went on an actual proper date with Luis.* It went really well, considering that they both are awkward nerds! So a lot of things are going well for our blonde…beneficiary? 

* Everyone is just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. Roxy and Monty even had a bet going on for when they would do it, Roxy bet over 4 months and Monty bet under. Roxy won, meaning she and Chica got to “redecorate” Monty. I will let you decide what that means.

However the same cannot be said for Gregory. He has recently started to have terrible nightmares, which he hasn't had since before his mother died. The reason that he only appears to be having bad nightmares now is ironically because he now knows that he is in a safe and STABLE living situation. Back when he was living on the streets, staying silent at all times was key to surviving and not being caught. This included being quiet when sleeping, so he just stopped having nightmares. This continued for the first month or so he was living with Vanessa since he still didn't completely trust her yet. But now that she has proven herself to be an actually really good person and safe to be around, the nightmares have returned in full force.

They start out consisting of what you would expect for a kid like Gregory. Vague things such as being abandoned. Then they start to be about things like being chased by hundred pound animal themed death machines. He could handle those ones easily enough. As the months go on, they get worse, more specific. They start to involve Freddy turning evil, Vanessa turning back into Vanny. They usually end at that point because the real Freddy, in his plush form, notices that something is wrong and would wake Gregory up. He then comforts him by simply reassuring Gregory that it was just a nightmare and giving him a hug. However, this method has been getting less effective as time goes on.

Something else that you have to know is this, most of the animatronics are not good at storytelling or making up stories. They are simply not designed or programmed for it since they are not meant to be doing any activities that involve sleeping. You would think that the daycare attendant would be good at this since he is supposed to help kids fall asleep. He does tell stories, but they are preprogrammed and all end with some variation of the theme, "Buy Fazbear Entertainment merch" . This is because he was originally intended to generate his own stories like DJMM can generate music. However FE couldn't risk him coming up with a story that already existed and getting sued so they attempted to make their own. Also some of the in-game logs indicated that he isn’t even that good at getting kids to go to sleep regardless ( yes I know he was partially hacked, but something tells me that the getting kids to go to sleep problem existed before this issue ). Basically, Freddy and the gang are not good at getting kids to go back to sleep beyond basic reassurance.

Then one night, he has a nightmare that is worse than all of the others. He is cornered in a dark storage room inside of the pizzaplex, surrounded by all of the animatronics including Freddy. Gregory knows that they aren’t themselves, their eyes glowing a distinct purple. In the center of it all, is Vanny. She is in that disturbing suit that he saw burnt before his eyes, her posture aggressive and towering over him. The shadows over her mask make it appear even more deranged than normal, and her knife in hand ready to kill him and make his death as painful as possible. Before Gregory can even react, Vanny grabs him by the neck and forces him to the ground and raises her knife into the air. As he struggles to breathe all he can hear is Vanny’s insane laughter, so unlike Vanessa’s it is almost impossible to believe that they were once the same person. Vanny raises her arm and then plunges it into his chest. As searing pain and darkness overtake Gregory, he wakes up with a horrible scream.

Vanessa wakes up when she hears the noise and upon realizing that it came from Gregory, immediately rushes over to his room to see what’s wrong. Both Vanessa and Freddy are very concerned, because Gregory has NEVER cried or screamed before. Sure, he’s looked freaked out before, but never has he ever appeared to be this scared. Vanessa slowly and quietly moves to his bed and sits down to try and calm him down. Eventually Gregory’s crying is reduced to occasional sniffles Freddy is at a loss of what to do, so Vanessa decides to, hesitantly, ask Gregory if he would like to hear a story. Gregory at first wants to refuse because he is a big boi . However he looks up at Vanessa’s face that shows genuine concern, and with a sniffle says yes.

Vanessa starts telling a story about a kingdom and princess, one who brought joy and hope to all who saw her, who could almost literally brighten someone's day. She tells of how this princess was deceived by a stranger in purple, who then locked her inside her own castle dungeon and spread evil throughout the kingdom. But it was done in such a way that no one noticed anything was amiss. The differences were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Everyone except one person, a knight. One smaller than most, but no less brave. He was the only one to realize that something was wrong and ventured into the kingdom to figure out what was wrong and fix it. He quickly found some assistance in the form of a large yet friendly bear, who had somehow managed to avoid the corruption that had befallen the other creatures.

They discover that the kingdom has been corrupted and learn of a way to get rid of it using 3 keys or sorts. So the 2 go on an adventure to find these keys and save the kingdom. They encounter a multitude of trials and tribulations on their journey as the bear and knight bond and work together. In the end though they find the 3 keys, unlock the dungeons to free the princess and defeat the corruption, saving the day! And thus the 3 of them, the kind bear, the brave knight, and the imprisoned princess all lived happily ever after

By the time Vanessa has finished speaking, Gregory has fallen back asleep hugging both her arm and Freddy close. Freddy is just looking at her with that dad-like “I’m so proud of you” type expression instead of saying it since he doesn't want to wake Gregory up. Vanessa rolls her eyes but accepts the gesture. Upon seeing that she can’t go back to bed since Gregory has effectively latched onto her, she decides to just spend the night with him.

And thus, with no more nightmares to trouble them, the 3 of them have a rest filled night and will proceed to have many more. For although healing might take a long time and be full of setbacks, the end can make it all worth it. :)

I'm not sorry to say yer not getting that arm back anytime soon Ness. This likely won't be the last nightmare Gregory has, so you'll have to get ready and set for some impromptu sleep overs whenever that happens. XD And it's absolutely adorable and precious and I can totally see Gregory accidentally calling Ness "Mom" when asking what happens next.

And yes, I shamelessly support Mama Ness dynamic alongside the Sibling One. XP But that aside, while I am beyond glad that Vanessa is healing, I do can't help but find the unlucky happenstances rather depressing, on account that Vanny, the psycho furry she is, specifically, and sporadically went after kids that Vanessa read, talked, and watched over during the whole possession period.

I can only hope this new dynamic doesn't really cause any flashbacks or unintended parallel's within Vanessa while she reads Gregory bedtime stories in order to distract him from the nightmares.

But aside from that, I do fully stand behind the fact that the Glamrock's are not at all programmed to take care of kids. Entertain them yes, as well as being careful as to not crush them accidentally underfoot, but caring for them for extended periods of time? Not so much.

And the thing with the Daycare Attendant only knowing Preprogrammed Fazbear Made stories make sense on account that on the Party Room White Boards; the one's with the Birthday Set's for the room, there's a note that says Freddy or any of the Glamrock's are only allowed to sing Fazbear approved birthday songs and the like.

So it'd make sense if such a thing was attributed to the Daycare Attendant as well. Who, i will also readily admit, probably had a lot of trouble getting kids to take a nap on account of how frecking colorful the Daycare is.