#calling people names is dumb

[densewentz]

more dreamling dad au bc thats just what i do now apparently i like lazy afternoon naps and so do our boys

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

DPxDC media story prompt

Okay first off, this sort of thing has been done before, but here’s a different version involving Jazz Fenton.

Popular in DPxDC fanfic is that the GIW have a media blackouts—or whiteouts, there’s kind of a difference, where whiteouts work more like… there is a file, but you can’t edit it or it may be locked out for certain users, or an edited version of events where things are ‘whited out’ like with correction paste, among other definitions.

Point is!

The GIW have a media restriction, and among these is social media, probably with certain words or phrases pinging to location restrict the post. There was probably a phase for a while where the A-Listers tried to get around it, but ultimately failed, and since they could only get information IN rather than information OUT, and possibly still a limited amount of outside information in the first place, social media didn’t take off as much in Amity Park than in other places in the world. There’s still a small local presence, but at this point it’s almost like a city wide chat room than actual social media.

Enter in, Jazz Fenton. She’s chronically behind on trends, so by the time she decides to get on social media, the GIW aren’t being as militant on it. And she has that habit of calling the ghosts by code names instead of their actual names, such as Crate Creep instead of The Box Ghost, or Ghost X instead of Skulker. By pure coincidence of her personal language use and Tucker messing with all of Team Phantom’s phone locaters for easier excuse giving, Jazz manages to dodge all the word censors.

She accidentally creates a whole online story community convinced it’s some kind of altered reality game or role playing game, what have you. Meanwhile, Jazz is letting off steam by ranting online with, of course, made up names of all the people involved. She doesn’t even notice the numbers, and that’s assuming the GIW didn’t just—region lock the ability to see them for whatever reason. The few Amity Parkers on social medias see Jazz, maybe look at a complaint post or two, then move on because this isn’t even an unusual video inside Amity Park’s social media sphere.

Heck, PHANTOM has a social media presence and he’s done several rant videos too! One particularly famous one is him complaining about keeping his boots and gloves white while being chased and one of the GIW agents actually stops and gives him advice before shooting at him again.

Those outside Amity Park, of course, only see Jazz’s videos. And she has no idea that she has an entire online presence and mild amounts of online fame. And again, almost everyone thinks the whole thing is just a fun little game, if oddly detailed.

Until, that is, a certain young man by the name of Bernard comes in. One of the few who are totally convinced this is real, he tries to also convince his boyfriend—Timothy Drake-Wayne. Who, in turn, finds it incredibly suspicious that it’s this hard to get news and posts from one random town in the Midwest.

[dumb-doll-lips]

Maybe controversial, but on posts about being dumb where girls are like saying ‘but I’m actually smart.’ Like tbh, I don’t really believe them. Like if you’re smart why does feeling dumb feel so good or hot or whatever to you then? I kinda feel like it’s having an excuse to let go of trying as much as you would be when you’re saying your smart. If you’re like really actually smart, I don’t feel like a break from ‘being smart’ would be such a relief or like as appealing.

[humijpg]

I've been thinking about them too much so have a small dump of various things

[charizardstolemynickname]

Jimmy, reading a donation: "'Twitter has exploded with rancher crumbs', HAS IT?? Did twitter enjoy that one? Did twitter enjoy it? I hope you did"

Jimmy with that smile KNOWS we enjoyed this stream, 10/10, I do not buy for 1 SECOND that he didn't know tumblr and twitter were exploding, I am not on twitter anymore but even *I* know it is

[sincerely-sofie]

Be careful when complimenting celestial bodies, y’all.

(Audio source)

[n7punk]

for all the None people who follow me and care about Trace Memory/Another Code (spoiler free I promise): if you're interested in the remaster, I recommend you only get it if you're getting it for the sequel that was never released in America. they changed a lot in Trace Memory (Another Code 1) and this isn't a "new is bad" thing (usually I prefer remasters), this is a "they cut puzzles, 'streamlined' the game, and reworked/removed the best scene in the entire game" kind of thing. the game undoubtedly looks better, but it's also missing some of the hand-drawn art that really added to its story. there are some improvements (the new voice acting is cool to have, especially having it be optional, and the way they implemented the autoplay feature for that is clever. there are some improved scenes they could rework with the benefit of 3D graphics and voice acting), but I don't think it should be your first Trace Memory experience.

if you can't get your hands on the DS line and an emulator isn't working for the puzzles (something I can see - some of them did actually need to be cut just for being janky or more difficult than they needed to be) and this is the only way you can ever experience the first game, I recommend it over not playing the game, I'm just saying it's not the original. from what I can tell they normed the style of the first game with the second, so it's brighter and all the dialogue and non-flashback cutscenes are rendered in game, which loses some of the impact of the stylistic comic panels. I never thought I'd prefer flat art to rendered cut scenes but in a game like this the hand-drawn, kinda gritty art did a LOT and the brightly-rendered 3D models just don't lend themselves to the mystery of all these people's deaths. I am excited to play the second game since, changes or not, this is the only way to experience it in America (like I said, I still recommend Another Code: Recollection if it's the only way you can experience Trace Memory), but I would say the remaster is mostly worth buying for the sequel if you like the original game.

[phoenixkaptain]

Have you ever noticed that while we have a bunch of evidence that William explicitly told Elizabeth not to go near the Circus Baby animatronic, and the implication of the lines is that he said this multiple times and was very insistent on it, and the Fredbear plush (no matter who you think is speaking through it) told the Crying Child not to go near the animatronics in general, the lines here also suggest that it has given this advice multiple times, we don’t actually have any evidence that Michael was ever told not to go near any of the animatronics?

In fact, in regard to Michael, the only evidence we do have is Michael being explicitly told to go mess around with animatronics. “It was right where you said it would be.” “I put her back together, just like you asked me to.” These both tell us that 1. Unlike the other children, Michael was not only encouraged to go hang out with animatronics but was also encouraged to go mess around with animatronics and 2. Michael’s tone of speaking could imply that this is the first time he’s been told to go mess around with animatronics.

Now, I’m not saying that William, from the very start, took a baby Michael and just handed him over to Fredbear without worrying about it, but I do think William tried to get Michael invested in some aspect of the business. I believe this because Michael’s the oldest son. And while Utah doesn’t have heir apparent to the family title, it did, back in the seventies and eighties, have a common idea that young men should follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Or, at the very least, the oldest son should bond with his father through a shared knowledge of the father’s job.

This was exceptionally common everywhere, but especially in Utah, where the people have always been (as we will diplomatically call it) traditional.

(But, of course, the Aftons probably are not originally from Utah. That doesn’t actually have much of a sway in form of argument in this particular case, because Mormons have a long history of outcasting people they considered “other.” If you smoked, if you drank to excessively, if you didn’t go to church, if you did go to church but not the “correct” way (I have no fucking clue what the correct way is, I only know that I, personally, did not do it correctly as a four-year-old, I know, baffles the mind), you were other and therefore, nobody would speak to you. And, more importantly to my case, nobody would go to your business.

William, being the one who spoke to more people (if we trust the books) had to at least play at being charmingly British enough that his neighbours wouldn’t think he’s a bad person. In fact, they would probably accept that he doesn’t want to go to church if he just used being from another country to get out of it (but they would probably suggest it everytime he spoke to them anyway) but William would have to fit in in other ways so he didn’t come across as too other. Enter Michael.

His relationship with Michael, if it mimicked the common relationship of father-and-son at the time, would be enough to charm people into believing he’s a family man and going to his diner anyway. Having three children was already going to boost people’s opinions of him, but if, on top of that, his oldest son “helped” with animatronics or paperwork or even if he just occasionally wiped tables, that would add more to the public image of the business being a family operation, just this one included two families.)

Admittedly, we don’t know much about how Michael acts. But, since it’s a similar case to Ethan Winters from the Resident Evil series (1. Both first person. 2. Both keeping the face out of view from the viewer, even going as far as obscuring mirrors or leaving mirrors out entirely. 3. Both of them get taken over by an outside entity (Ennard and Mold, respectively). 4. Both seem to do incredibly stupid things (“I think I’ll go see my wife in this ominous house I was given the address to multiple years after her disappearane and assumed death. I want my dearest darlingest baby girl back so I am going to fight hell monsters with whatever weapons aren’t nailed down and if I have to fight a god, then I guess I have to fight a god. I inexplicably know how to put together a functioning flamethrower.” “Well, Dad told me to go down in his weird undergroudn bunker that he keeps behind the house where my sister who has been missing for some amount of time is apparently hanging out, so I guess I’ll head down there on the nightly.” “I will not make any noise of complaint or annoyance or fear or even pain as I am inconvenienced and hurt and even murdered.” “I inexplicably consider being used as a flesh suit by the possessed wires of multiple animatronics a win because I’m pretty sure my sister was in there somewhere, so great news, Old Man, I’ve succeeded in the task.”) 5. I like comparing media that technically is very different but is similar in key ways and that’s what I’m currently doing. Shh, go with it, my child, go with it) I’m going to assume that Michael’s face does the same thing Ethan’s does. As in, if you wait long enough, even in situations where Ethan should reasonably be terrified, he just looks sort of like he’s wondering if he left the oven on. I like to think that’s how Michael’s face looks. Like: “Oh no, Ballora could catch me at any moment and kill me! …I wonder if that bird I saw last week is having any luck finding worms? It’s been a bit of a dry year.”

Michael certainly seems determined, but he only seems determined if we assume that he’s in more than one game. Like, if we think Michael isn’t the guy running the pizzeria in Pizzeria Simulator, then Michael said “I’m going to come find you” to his father and didn’t do anything? If we assume he isn’t the nightguard of the first game, if we assume he isn’t the second nightguard in the second game, if we assume he is only the protagonist of Sister Location, then Michael is the funniest character of all time. Because he literally said “Father, I am going to come find you” and then went back inside and enjoyed a quiet life? Maybe he did look around but didn’t go to any of the obvious places, the restaurants his father worked and killed at? Maybe he knew exactly where William was and just said “Ah, fock it, I’m going back to my tele-novella, tell me when you’re dead, Father.” It also makes William screaming for Michael a lot funnier because oh my God, William, do you think he’ll just teleport there?

(Sorry, that was a tangent. I saw someone complain about the night guards all being the same person or related to the events of the game in some way and it kind of annoyed me. “Why must they be the same person?” you ask? Because that’s just basic storytelling. The characters have to be related to the plot in some way, or the storytelling is nonexistent. And besides, from a narrative perspective, it makes a more satisfying story if Michael is the night guard of at least one location, because it means that Michael isn’t the stupidest man alive. He’s looking for his father. If I was in Michael Afton’s shoes, looking for my father who I knew was a tad obsessive about robots, I would go to the robot restaurant. It makes sense. (I’m sorry, I went on a tangent within my apology for going on a tangent. I will get back to the actual point now.))

We know that William told Elizabeth not to go near animatronics (or at least not to go near one animatronic). We know that someone told the Crying Child not to go near any animatronics. But we don’t have any evidence that Michael was ever told any of the animatronics were dangerous. In fact, evidence suggests that he was not only told to hang around animatronics, but he’s basically used to them. He finds his brother’s fear of animatronics amusing, which, to me, suggests that he finds the animatronics to be the opposite of scary. It suggests that he’s around them enough (because apparently Crying Child and Michael just hung out at the robot restaurant nearly every day of their lives, for some reason) that he’s either ignored any warnings that they’re dangerous or he was never told they could be dangerous in the first place.

Why does any of this matter?

Because I am sick and tired of people complaining about Michael killing his brother. They say it makes him an asshole big brother, I’ve seen some suggest it makes him just like his father, and I respectfully disagree. Michael is certainly not winning any Brother of the Year awards, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t find his relationship with his brother to be unrealistically cruel.

Michael doesn’t hurt his brother. He only scares him. That’s his entire goal. He’s a dick, yes, but he doesn’t seem to actively pursue harmjng his little brother.

Michael was never told the animatronics were dangerous. Michael was never told to stay away from them, and even if he was, it wasn’t terribly convincing. (“Son, the robot performers are super duper dangerous and you should never ever not once go near any of them. Now, here’s a dollar, go play near the robot performers.”)

Michael, if anything, is trying to get his brother to see that he’s overreacting. He’s trying to prove that they aren’t dangerous. He’s trying to show his brother that the animatronics won’t hurt him. He’s making fun of his brother, yes, but the fact that he gets him so close to the stage and goes so far as to put his head in Fredbear’s mouth tells me that he was basically doing something similar to shoving a worm in someone’s face. He was trying to scare him, yes, but then his brother would, we assume, see that nothing happened and would be shaken, but ultimately admit that Michael was right, the animatronics aren’t dangerous.

This, obviously, isn’t what happens. But I’m pretty sure Michael didn’t purposefully kill his brother and I’m even more sure that he wasn’t even trying to hurt him.

I have three older brothers. And, it was a similar situation in that the four of us were left to watch each other a lot while our parents were at work. And while I know my brothers are not the mold for all brothers, I also know that there’s a reason people talk about the “Cain Instinct.” Boys roughhouse. And, while not actively encouraged in Utah, it’s certainly not discouraged either.

Michael was being a dick, yes. But, the behaviour is similar to a child who doesn’t think that guns are dangerous, whether because they’re not told or because they’re left unsupervised with access to guns. This sort of incident is not without precedent. And while it was certainly stupid, Michael didn’t do anything that a dumb big brother wouldn’t do.

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'd love it if Kindle had the option to change character names in romance novels. In paranormal, it drives me insane that a hero's name is often ridiculously spelled. I mean, I'd swap Ehneeighmagh for just Enigma in a heartbeat. Not to mention many ppl pass on reading a romance when the MCs have the same name as their kids. I understand some authors may not allow such a feature enabled for their stories, but I bet many will not care.

I’m going to be real honest with y’all.

If you are so distracted by the character name that you need to change it, the book isn’t grabbing your enough.

One of my favorite books of all time is Lothaire, starring the character Lothaire, and I think that name is…… I won’t go into it for fear of offending the Lothaires of the world, but suffice to say, I thought it was very goofy.

The book won me over because it’s good. And I think the same can be said for allll the people who read and bought Black Dagger Brotherhood books despite the characters being named things like RAHVONGE (not a BDB name, but it could be).

As for people passing on books because the characters have their kids’ names, that’s a personal call that not everyone will make, and it’s never been a game changer before? So I don’t know why it would be one now.

As a writer? I choose character names for a reason. I bet a lot of them will care. And I bet a lot of them simply won’t want y’all to have the ability to change rather important details about their work whenever you want, which is absolutely valid and important.

[palettesofrenaissance]

why did the "Tumblr sexy man" have to be chosen like this?

[quil12]

I'm literally at the point where I have to give myself a mental slap on the wrist at the thought of starting a new fic lmao

[tiktaaliker]

one thing that really charms me about the dialog in malevolent is how often Arthur and John say each others names when talking to each other. like they call each other directly by name a LOT and at first i was like. ok kind of goofy but thats fine. and like it makes sense for arthur to specify he's talking to john but kinda odd for john to say arthurs name so often tho since arthur is the only person he can really be talking to in the first place??? its not like he NEEDS to clarify that he's talking to arthur or to get arthur's attention. if john speaks its very obviously going to be directed to arthur, so what's with that???

ok. so. hear me out. i thought about it a bit more and i like to think that it started as like. a manipulation tactic by john to make arthur more willing to play along. in the same vein that in every job ive had in customer service ive been told to use the customer's name as often as possible to make them more "comfortable." it very much fits in with early season 1 john's whole thing where he's trying to get arthur to play along by claiming that he's trying to help

and when all the pretenses are dropped john just keeps doing that because that's just how theyve always talked to each other. theyre so codependent if they dont say each other's names every 30 seconds theyd both explode

[dying-acc-idk-man]

Scarian is literally not a duo name for those two.... its literally the ship name. Just like Convex is for Scar/Cub or Grumbo is Grian/Mumbo... my dude, you have it right with desert duo as the duo name lmao If you aren't shipping them why use the shipping name

convex is also a duo name i hope you know that they call their duo convex. its either concorp or convex is what they use

anyways im still using the scarian tag regardless due to the most of their interaction and if i didnt its cuz its just a plain conversation so L

[nightcolorz]

With all due disrespect, if you think that the Axl joke in Thor: Love and Thunder was about trans people you’re too white to function and you need to take a walk

[ei-mugi]

theres actually a cat out there named after my most stupid online alias becuase when i was 13 some rando with like 78k subscribers on their roblox youtube or something like that ended up in my online friendgroup and so i was in a few of their videos. and some kid commented that they loved me and this youtuber so much they named their 2 new cats after us. i think the channels deleted now but i still love knowing about the cat out there with the stupidest name ever