#granted stuff is generally a lot better now (though I still need to do more)

[ko-eko-ev-go-ms]

Smth I think about sometimes is how like, I do so much stuff to overcompensate my struggles with various things, but generally I don’t acknowledge that I’m doing outside things to overcompensate or if I do I don’t get into specifics.

And then because of that like even if I tell people I’m struggling with x thing they just won’t believe me sometimes coz they didn’t see/listen to me doing work on my own time.

Even if I’m already underperforming they won’t understand how much effort it was taking JUST TO UNDERPERFORM.

But then if I make any progress or aren’t the literal worst it’s all swept under the rug as if it’s easy for me and I just wasn’t working hard enough the whole time or something?

[kisskiss-slashslash]

Slashers when you say “I love you” for the first time

Jason Voorhees

He freezes up and disappears for a while. But don’t interpret that as rejection, please. He is just utterly overwhelmed by the idea that anyone not blood-related to him could ever actually *love* him.

You, of course, are left confused and maybe a little heartbroken by that reaction. Did you do phrase it wrong? Was it too soon? Does he just not feel the same?

He returns a little while later, once he had a moment to process it, and immediately sweeps you up into a backbreaking hug. Good luck getting anything done for the rest of the day, because he won’t let go. Are you hallucinating or is there water dripping from under his mask?

Vincent Sinclair

Vincent knows just enough about love and romance by watching people getting caught in Bo’s charming web, so he sees the signs in the way you are acting around him. Still, when you finally gather all of your courage and confess your feelings to him, he pauses, surprised by how open you are about it.

When you want to start listing all the things you love about him, he takes your hand to stop you, and you see the expressionless mask shift as the mouth underneath curls into a gentle smile.

“So does that mean you feel the same?”, you ask softly.

In lieu of an answer, he gets out a sketchbook that has obviously been recently used, and hands it to you.

You flip through it and find it almost entirely filled with sketches of you, each sketch coming with little notes meant to draw attention to all the little things he loves about you; and there is a lot, from the way your eyes light up when you smile, to the shape of each of your facial features, to decidedly more intimate details.

“Aw man, that makes my confession look kinda lackluster in comparison”, you quip sheepishly and hand the sketchbook back to him.

Freddy Krueger

Be prepared for him to turn it into a joke. “Of course you love me. Look at me. I’m amazing.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m serious!”

“Hi Serious, I’m Freddy.”

“Really? A dad joke?”

“So why are you coming out with this now of all times?”

You open your mouth and close it again a few times. “I don’t know? I just felt like it was about time one of us say something like that?”

“Eh, talk is cheap. The fact that we’re putting up with each other is already enough of a love confession, don’t you think? And that’s way better than all that corny stuff about eternal love or whatever.”

You chuckle, despite being still sort of frustrated at him blowing you off like that. “If you say so.”

Bubba Sawyer

Bubba drops his chainsaw as soon as the words leave your mouth. He looks at you, nervously licking his lips, then clumsily tries to pick the saw up again. The sudden confession has his hands so jittery that he is really struggling though, so you eventually crouch down and pick it up for him.

“Sorry for just saying that out of the blue.” You hand his weapon back to him. “I guess I just… want you to know.”

Now *you* are the one dropping the chainsaw, mostly because you find yourself a foot or so in the air, held up by the vice-like grip of Bubba, who is pressing you against his chest and happily blubbering what you generously interpret as a reciprocation of the confession into your shoulder. Sometimes you really wished you could understand Bubba as well as Drayton did. But then again.. a loving gesture like this doesn’t really need words.

Brahms Heelshire

Self-absorbed as he is, he naturally assumes that you love him, so he doesn’t act too surprised when you tell him as much. Instead, he pulls you into a hug and replies:“And I love you.”

However, the fact that he expected it doesn’t mean that he takes it for granted. In his mind, the love confession is what actually begins a relationship. That’s how it works in stories, after all, and stories were the only real window to the outside world he has had since he was eight. Meaning that now, he views you officially as his significant other, rather than just a caretaker he just so happened to kiss and have the occasional fling with. Which also means that he at least tries to do a bit more for you instead of only ever taking.

The first results of his attempts at being helpful are disastrous, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

[howlingday]

Oh ok so I'm about lore dump one of the most important for my Rwby world. So

I have seen all of Rwby and don't know everything so I'm gonna step over real Canon lore.

I'm not good with power balancing in stuff.

A lot stuff my be understanding which you might see differently.

Feel free to call anything out you think could be better also I'm not asking to write anything if want to use my ideas I give you permission but I'm asking you to?

Without further ado let's talk about The Keep and it's Keeper.

Long ago when the brothers still wandered the Rement with their creations a women would follow and worship them. The women was mighty curious about the gods. She would flatter them, bring them gifts and talk about how the world was. Inreturn they would sparly talk of a relam they lived before. The women wonder if they were born their or if it was another world they made. As she grew old and Time neared its end she would build a magic mask to keep her memories and a piece of soul so her apprentice would have all the tools he needed.

As time pasted the mask would gather more soul pieces and memories. Soon a women named Salem would gather the armies of Humanity to fight the gods. The current holder of the mask thought she was insane with how much he knew of the gods.

So he gathered a small group of people and ran far away from the battle and prayed for mercy. It is not know if the gods listen or were seemingly so egotistical that they missed the spot. With population they would try to reproduce but it was quickly show 2 generations they would end up inbreeding with how little they were. So the current holder tried to slice human and animal DNA to fix the problem and it worked.

But would one see humans came back so the host now called the Keeper would return and learn of Salem and Ozma using the relics he would learn Salem,Omza, and even the Ever After story and mangne to get a single leaf of the Tree. The next Keeper would become one of Salem's handmaidens. Which would go terribly so as the castle burned the Keeper would shove a child away causing the child to knock out but seen by someone else and saved.(A story for another time)

Salem and Omza were locked in battle so the Keeper would hide away. The Keep would soon develop fully as it's own entity. As magic started to die out the Keep and it's current Keeper were able to grow a small tree from the preserved leaf. Using the tree they were able to make a Potion that would awaken magic in people without magic but kill those unable to handle it. So the Keeper title would be passed down all the way to morden day always staying out of Ozpin and Salem sight even giving people Magic or making Magic tools to keep them of its tail.

I think that's enough for origin. Many of his actions will effect my Rwby world. Feel free to ask any questions or critique anything.

This sounds like a really interesting idea. I'm kinda curious to see where this story goes. Though I do have some questions about the story, too.

First off is the mask the Keeper wore, and how it would store the memories of the previous keeper, as well as their soul. Does the mask still do that? What happens when someone wear the mask? Does it ever come off?

Next is the topic of the inbreeding group who were able to solve their problem thanks to splicing animal DNA. How exactly did they do that, and were there any ramifications to the inbreeding?

Last is the tree growing in Remnant. Is it sentient? How is it decided whether or not a person is worthy? And if these people are granted magic, how are they kept out of sight by the rest of Remnant?

[frozen-fountain]

It's ten years today since I made a pilgrimage down to Brighton to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live in concert. My purpose today isn't to get into the circumstances that preceded this or the specific reasons why being there meant so very much to me; maybe some day I'll do that under this name as well. For now, suffice to say it was the best show I've been to, and one I doubt will ever be surpassed. I think the Bad Seeds were on stage for the better part of three hours, with two encores and everyone clearly having a great time, reflected just as strongly in the audience. I really hope I get to go again eventually, though it'll be a more sombre affair now. And that's fine. I've always looked on his music as a big congregation that plumbs the depths of human existence without ever denying or shutting out the light, and it's this that's struck such a resonant chord with me across the years and made him one of the most key pillars in my musical journey.

One of my most vivid memories of the night doesn't even concern what was happening on stage. The whole time, I was fascinated by the two ageing punks sitting in front of us. I love ageing punks; I was raised by one, and they're my favourite people at shows because of their sheer enthusiasm for the music and utter disregard for what's generally considered age-appropriate dress and behaviour. Deeply inspiring stuff. But I remember one of them lifting both fists in a cheer when this song (from 1986) started playing – and he did the same for Higgs Boson Blues, a track from the contemporaneous album. And I was struck by what a gift it must have been to watch this wonderful group evolve and shift over the years, to meet new songs at different stages in life, and to remain no less excited for their new creations even decades later.

It was many things, but to me, it was a thick, bold line under what I'd spent the previous year working to convince myself of as I left my youth behind me, and that this band's congregational music helped so much in drilling through my obstinate, oblivion-seeking skull: there are and always will be things worth sticking around for.

I don't know anything about this man besides what the back of his head looks like and his enthusiasm for Bad Seeds old and new. He never even turned around to look at me in turn. I highly doubt we'll ever meet again, and if we do, I'll have no way of knowing it. But I still smile every now and then when I listen to Sad Waters, or simply when my mind wanders back to the show from time to time. When I need to remember the future is unwritten and the world has a capacity for many things, and one is endless surprise. Regular readers of whatever it is I'm doing here will know my young life was not the happiest, and I expended a lot of time and energy wrestling with the desire to end it. As I write this I'm closing in on the eight-year anniversary of the last time I seriously contemplated suicide – which is something I couldn't have even dreamed about saying back in 2013. It's these experiences, these moments of connection between strangers through the shared appreciation of another stranger's artistic expression, that go along way to making this so, and I'll never forget it.

This last decade has intensified a cultural shift that was gathering steam around the time of the concert. And one of many reasons I feel conversation can be so divisive and contentious is that we're rapidly becoming more aware to how badly we can hurt one another through simply existing as we are. Whether it's the descendants of colonisers reckoning with the ways we continue to benefit from that bloody history, or men being pushed to evaluate the allowances they are granted to take up space persistently denied women, or any of us learning the benefits of initiating awkward conversations about boundaries in our interpersonal lives, what is bit by bit rising to the surface of our awareness is how easy it is to become a bad story in someone's life just by being people. It's a very difficult thing to come to terms with no matter who you are.

And I wanted to write this memory down and share it because, at least to me, it's a reminder that we can help one another, too, and often without trying or knowing. You don't know what you might have done for a stranger you had no idea was watching. A simple, unguarded gesture that I doubt this man thought about for so much of a second has stayed with me, cheered me, and reminded me of several crucial lessons when I most needed them. If I've learned anything in the years since it's that, simply by being you and being open with your joys, I can guarantee you're someone's good story, too. Even if you'll never know about it.

In the meantime, if you're so inclined... maybe tell me a story about a time a stranger helped you in a similar way?

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) Part 1: Emerald Hunting

Now we’re getting to the fun stuff

I love Sonic 2. It’s not even my favorite in the whole series (though it most certainly is in the top 5), but it’s a game that I can’t help but appreciate for its overall simplicity

This is a no-nonsense kind of sequel: take the ideas introduced in Sonic 1 and actually flesh them out by jacking up the speed, improving the physics and making the level design a helluva lot more appropriate for this kind of gameplay

Granted: the level design is definitely still more on the simple side, I’ve even seen some claim that it’s borderline “hold right to win”. Yeah sure, do that in Aquatic Ruin without falling in the water. Or in Oil Ocean and Metropolis without getting hit every 2 seconds. (No defense for Emerald Hill though, but tbf that’s the first level). The platforming is also generally less focused than in Sonic 1 but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Sonic may ideally strike a balance between speed and platforming but if he really has to veer into either direction I think it’s best to veer towards the former because 1) That’s what makes Sonic stand out and 2) Sonic can’t do pure platforming as well as the likes of Mario. His physics based movements, while great for speed, are generally not ideal for the kind of pixel perfect jumps that hardcore platformers often require, which is why, if you notice, Sonic games usually have pretty big platforms for him to jump on and the platforms themselves don’t often move too quickly and the few times the games do throw smaller platforms at you, like the ones with retractable spikes in Metropolis, it feels awkward even though those would be pretty standard in most other platformers. You probably wouldn’t be able to put Megaman’s Yoku Blocks and make them work in a Sonic game for example. Besides to say that Sonic 2 has no platforming is just silly: Aquatic Ruin is litererally built on the concept of trying to stick to the upper route so as to avoid falling into the water, which instantly makes it a much better water level than Labyrinth Zone

Casino Night Zone feels like a more fleshed out Spring Yard what with its more focused pinball mechanics. I do wonder though if any pearl clutching mothers back then had any issues with their children playing a kids’ game that featured literal slot machines...

I don’t even think that Chemical Plant needs any introduction, though I will say that act 1 is way too short and underwhelming

Are there issues? Oh yes. Because of the increased speed there’s now also an increased chance of running into enemies that come from offscreen. Granted this is an issue in all 2D Sonic games, even Sonic 3 (Marble Garden says hi), but I can’t say that this game does much to mitigate it, especially with things like Chemical Plant featuring stuff like flipping floor boards at points, which may just flip right as you’re about to approach them plunging you to your death through no fault of your own! And who could forget the Pit of Doom?

The way Special Stages are accessed is undoubtadly much better: yes having to collect 50 rings without getting hit is still a pain, but now you get so many more chances to actually play a Special Stage

The Stages themselves are full of issues, don’t get me wrong: the frame rate is super choppy, the controls laggy, you pretty much have to know in advance when some bombs are coming and from where because the stage itself gives you little to no heads up, having Tails with you is like having a literal ball and chain strapped onto you. Hell I think it’s quite telling that one of my clearest childhood memories of this game is...going on GameFaqs to look up the Super Sonic cheat code, not to mention the fact that, even 20 years later, I STILL have muscle memory of these stages, like a sixth sense telling me when I should turn or when to jump.

Despite this however I would still much rather contend with these than those of the previous game: these Special Stages are made to be mastered on repeated playthroughs, which is encouraged both by the amount of attempts you can possibly make throughout the game and the fact that, when you fail, the next time you warp in you’re going to retry the one you failed in rather than moving onto the next one like all the other Classic games do for some stupid reason.

I can get better over time at these Special Stages and get more or less consistent results. With Sonic 1′s, even after 20 years of playing them, it still feels like a luck of the draw half the time

It also certainly helps that, this time around, you actually obtain something worthwhile by getting all the Emeralds and not just a slightly different ending

[gingersnapwolves]

so I got tagged by @cinematicnomad to pick my top 5 fics, and I thought, this is an outrage! I’ve got 99 fics on AO3 alone! though granted I wouldn’t pick anything not on AO3 since my old stuff is ... not great ... but anyway how I could pick 5? So since I missed fanfic writer’s appreciation day yesterday I decided to appreciate myself, bend the rule, and change the prompt to .... give your favorite fics awards! 

Best Epic:

The Sum of its Parts (1.2 million | T | Teen Wolf | Sterek, Scallison)

What started as a simple "fork in the road" AU became a series and ate my life.  

This obviously had to be on the list somewhere but it’s barely a fanfic anymore, it strayed so far from the source material! I adore every word. Well, most of the words. 

Best Smut:

Get Off (Me) (77K | E | Teen Wolf | Steter)

Stiles hates being left behind with Peter while the pack is fighting monsters, because he never knows exactly what Peter will get up to.

Boy did I have fun with this one. Dubcon smut turns to consensual-but-not-safe-or-sane smut turns to ‘wait did we catch feelings wtf’ smut.

Funniest:

The Lost Cause (18K | T | The Untamed | NHS + JGY)

AU in which Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao work together to take down Jin Guangshan from the beginning.

Or: the story in which Nie Huaisang just wants to paint fans and feed birds and he doesn't understand why this is so much to ask.

I may live to be a hundred and never write anything funnier than “you have a praise kink!”

Best Roast of the Source Material:

Adult Wolf (232K | T | Teen Wolf | Sheriff/Peter, Sterek)

As if Sheriff Stilinski doesn't have enough to deal with, now he's been attacked by some enormous dog in the forest, and that's normal compared to what happens next...

Re-telling of seasons 1-3B with Sheriff Stilinski being bitten instead of Scott.

230K words of me writing a strongly worded letter to the writers of Teen Wolf on all the things they could’ve done better. I enjoyed it.

Best Tearjerker:

picking up the pieces (111K | M | The Untamed | LWJ + JYL, WWX/LWJ)

The AU where Jiang Cheng dies at Nightless City instead of Jiang Yanli and she takes her son to raise at Lotus Pier. She and Lan Wangji bond over losing Wei Wuxian and raising their children, and over time, they start to have suspicions about what happened at Qiongqi Way....

This is probably the most poignant thing I have ever written. The whole thing is woven with grief and love. The scenes between Lan Wangji and A-Yuan still make me a little teary-eyed when I think of them.

Best Romance:

An Atypical Courtship (48K | M | The Untamed | LXC/JGY, WWX, LWJ)

Meng Shi dies with her debt to the brothel unpaid, and the madam decides Meng Yao needs to work it off for her. Eight years later, Lan Xichen meets him at Koi Tower.

I generally don’t write a lot of pure “romance”, so I’m really proud of how this one came out. The whole fic is just so soft and loving.

Best Post-Canon:

you’ll never walk alone (21K | T | Not Me | Black + White, Sean/White)

If Black got his way, he would never go back to Gumpa’s garage.

Spoiler alert: Black does not get his way.

Sometimes I finish watching a series and so desperately crave more that I just write a couple more episodes for them, free of charge. This one is probably my favorite of that variety. I just want Black to be happy, damn it!

Best Overall:

What Goes Around (71K | M | Teen Wolf | Sterek, but the relationship at the heart of the story is the father-son relationship between Peter and Stiles)

“Well,” Stiles says, “if they’re going to hunt werewolves, I’m going to hunt them.”

It’s a ridiculous statement from a ten-year-old, but he’s obviously one hundred percent sincere. For the first time since the fire, Peter feels life stir inside him, feels purpose. It’s kismet, clearly. He’ll never meet the child he would have had with Olivia. Instead he’s met this boy, this brilliant, determined, cynical child with a world of potential.

Peter kneels down in front of him so they’re at eye level. “How do you feel about doing that together?”

This might be the best fic I’ve ever written. It’s probably better than most of my original work. I love everything about it, especially the way I used outside sources like news articles and forum posts to show the passage of time. It’s just really good and I’m very proud of it.

Who else wants to give themselves some awards? I don’t really like tagging people but anyone else is welcome to steal the format and shower love upon themselves!

[blujayonthewing]

I'm inserting a crisp dollar into the Thoughts About Felix machine, wondering:

What are his sleeping habits like?

What are his coping mechanisms?

He's granted three wishes. What's the fourth thing he would wish for?

How would you describe him, using only emoji?

me @ this ask

Left to his own devices he's naturally inclined to be crepuscular; in his home village it was normal for most people to sleep both in the middle of the night and the middle of the day (though a little longer at night), and for the day to start well before dawn and end well after dark. Since he's kind of a loner and drifter at the moment he can usually still get away with this kind of sleeping schedule even after having left home; people get the impression that he never sleeps, or must sleep really poorly, because he appears to be out wandering around at all hours, but really he's just splitting up his sleep. After spending so much time in human/ mixed cities he has gotten better at being able to adjust to only sleeping at night when needs be, but he gets noticeably sleepy around lunchtime if he's not getting naps in.

He's a pretty light sleeper, partly because his hearing is so sensitive; he likes to be cozy, and preferably somewhere very quiet and dark, but he can fall asleep fairly easily almost anywhere. I feel like I have a lot of OCs who routinely stay up way too late/ refuse to sleep or, like, sleepwalk, or are otherwise Bad At Sleep, but actually his sleep habits are generally pretty good, unusual circadian rhythm notwithstanding, lol.

YELLS IT'S GETTING SO LONG SORRY I AM INCAPABLE OF BREVITY SDFKJHDFKGJ

Coping mechanisms! Small scale/ acute: he fidgets a lot, chews on things. He's mostly gotten himself out of the habit of biting his nails by redirecting to other stuff (he goes through pencils a lot faster than he actually wears them out with use). A big go-to is seeking space to be alone, particularly somewhere high up; as a kid he used to climb trees a lot, and now in aboveground cities he spends a lot of time sitting on roofs.

For bigger/ more ongoing things... it depends. On the one hand, it can feel comforting to surround himself with people by spending time in places that feel crowded without being intimate, like markets or popular taverns, but it stresses him out if people can tell he's Going Through Something, so he ends up isolating a lot instead, or just hanging out with animals and avoiding people (pigeons aren't usually good enough at humanoid body language to pick up on and ask about anything short of an actual breakdown, for one thing, but on the other hand breaking down fully in front of animals still feels significantly less stressful than in front of other people, somehow). He hates talking about himself, and he really hates trying to explain his feelings, especially when he's already having a bad time, so he doesn't really get a lot of support even when he really needs it. He mostly doesn't Journal His Feelings with his sketch/ travel journal, but I think he's more inclined to do so at least a little bit when he's trying to cope with something just because he's got no other good outlet, much less someone he can actually talk to.

In terms of coping beyond the immediate 'managing the feelings' sense, he always wants to understand things as much as possible, so a big part of coping with anything is to try to learn everything about it he can. Like, not that this has happened to him but he's very much primed to be the guy whose loved one disappears/ is killed under suspicious circumstances which sets off a chain of events leading to his single-handedly unraveling some deep convoluted conspiracy-- you know? Something extremely upsetting and Deeply Weird happened to him before the campaign started, and now he's obsessed with making sense of it. Honestly, now that I'm writing this all out, I imagine his interest in studying people and body language and social nuances and motivations came at least partly from a way to cope with not understanding those things intuitively like other people seem to, and being really bad at performing social skills correctly himself 🤔

Lacing my fingers in front of my lips pensively. The wishes question is so intriguing. ...... okay. I have his three wishes. The unwished fourth wish is 'I wish for [people who left him for dead] to forget that I exist.'

the lad in emojis: 🥺🤫🐈👁👁👂🔍🍂💬❔

[kasugas]

GAIDEN THOUGHTS

I have too many to count so im making this a draft and then posting it when i think ive gotten my thoughts out enough.

The fact that they made this game significantly gorier than previous games was cool as hell. The blood looking water-thin was kind of funny though.

While I kind of focused on the main story for my playthrough I did feel like this game was kind of lackluster in terms of content for the price point. Y6 is longer and was like. less than half the price. Granted i think the fighting engine and everything from judgment is a massive improvement it just feels funny paying a lot for stuff thats been in the games for like. almost 10 years now (holy shit y0 came out in 2015).

The lighting in this game looked fucking GORGEOUS. Whoever worked on the lighting rigging in this game i need to shake their hand because wow. I think this is the best a rgg game has ever looked and lost judgment was UP there.

While the callbacks in this game were a nice touch it feels kind of funny to bring up yumi's name after 2 million games of radio silence. I get that kiryu is a stoic individual who wouldnt be wailing abt his feelings every 4 seconds i just love how rgg puts its women on the shelf until theyre ready to be dusted off for emotional effect and nothing else. Also WHERES THE RIKIYA MENTION. PLEASE.

Speaking of women. Any time kiryu interacted with akame me and my friends just kept chanting "PLEASE BE NORMAL". I was so fucking scared for a sayama 2 treatment. I do really like akame and i hope to see more of her. She has akiyama vibes but in a good way.

Seeing kiryu's competency at going through yakuza business was really cool to see. He hasn't lost his edge in the criminal underworld and it kind of provides some much appreciated information to stuff we've seen in the past. Hes naturally built for a yakuza lifestyle, he knows this and yet pushes this talent and desire aside to provide sanctuary for the kids at morning glory. Ik in the final fight he mentions civilians in general but its clear he has his family in mind.

Seeing daigo look like a wet rag in every single cutscne was so funny. He looks so lost someone help him. I feel so bad for him, seeing someone he considers his father who he last heard from in a letter after his 'death' and then just being told to play along bc its not him... man.

WHO WAS HANAWA IN THE PAST?? I know its probably a throwaway line to add mystery but GOD its got my mind racing now.

I still suck so bad at mahjong. Giving a mahjong tutorial to my friends while getting my ass beat really says "i know what im doing".

The entire final scene with the gravestone. I am destroyed. I know i've said in the past kiryu better either retire permanently from being a protag or die (said when i was slightly more annoyed that he got announced as a protag for 8) but. man. I dont want him to die he needs to see his fucking family again no beating around the bush no daidoji bullshit PLEASE.

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Welp, against my better judgement I looked at the Hazbin Hotel leaks and ooh boy, do I have a lot to say!

I know some people are very skeptical of the legitimacy of these leaks, but considering that the person who leaked all these character slides also leaked stuff from various other IP’s, I do believe that these leaks are legit.

First off, I really hate how Alastor’s voice breakdown states that “any ethnicity” is fine. Like seriously, why even give him a New Orleans Voodoo aesthetic if he’s just gonna be voiced a white dude? Now granted, they can fix this issue in the final product by ditching the Voodoo aesthetic and going full on 1930′s radio host. But it’s still annoying none the less.

Also, I love how Vox is supposed to have a 1950′s TV show host motif but he looks like a parody of the Tumblr Sexyman trope. I guess Viv thought that giving him a TV head was good enough.

Another reason why I’m convinced that these leaks are real is because a lot of the character designs are bad. Why is Adam just a black repaint of Bltizo? If Carmilla is meant to be an arms dealer, why does she have a ballerina/fashion icon aesthetic? Why is Angel wearing white gloves when his fur is already white? And why does Velvette look like a regular human when she’s supposed to an Overlord of hell?

The only design I kinda like is Lute, mostly because I like the concept of a demonic looking Angel/Nephilim slaughtering other demons.

Oh, and is it possible for Viv to come up with a father character who isn’t estranged from his daughter? Stolas’ antics in Helluva Boss are bad enough, but now we gotta go through the same shit with Lucifer on Hazbin? No thank you. I also wanna talk about the theory that Viv herself is the person who leaked all these slides onto 4chan, which isn’t true at all. Now yes, it’s not uncommon for creatives to leak stuff online, but in most cases they only end up doing that for shows/projects that have already been scrapped or cancelled, thus there’s no need for them to worry about getting into trouble with companies for breaking NDA’s.

Viv doesn’t need to leak anything to generate interest in her shows because her shows are already popular, so many industry professionals consider her a success story. I really doubt she’d be so worried that the hype surrounding her shows would die down that she’d resort to leaking character slides on 4chan to drum up interest.

Though I do find it odd how the leaks popped up on 4chan a few days after Viv announced that she needed more animators to work on her shows. But make of that what you will.

Overall the leaks don’t give me much hope that Hazbin’s writing is gonna be better than Helluva Boss’. But I’ll most likely end up watching the first episode out of boredom or if I need some background noise while working.

[inklingofadream]

6, 18, 19, 25, and 35 for the weird writer asks!

What is your darkest fear about writing?

My mom finding it, wildly missing the point, and deciding that enrolling me in talk therapy is non-negotiable lol

Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end.

Gonna scroll it back to Till Things Are Brighter, which no one whose followed me in the past year has read because I last updated in ~February 2021~ but which is still the work I'm most determined to finish

I hadn’t meant to tell you so much. [Growls] There’s too much of a risk of Magnus pulling it out of you and accelerating his plans, or out of my dreams since you’ve made it a proper Statement , but apparently knowing when to stop asking questions isn’t a power granted to any Archivist. Next time you can’t stand not Knowing, just ask me to write it out. Statement fucking ends.

(From the end of chapter 9, for any who want to read my beloved magnum opus bc of this passage lol)

(cut because I am at heart a rambler)

So I knew that in order for various plot events to work I needed Daisy to meet with Gertrude, and I realized that it didn't make much sense for Gertrude to meet with this mysterious lady telling her all this stuff with little if any context to why it's important and not eventually getting fed up and taking a statement by force. That wasn't in my original plan, because it introduces a couple complications, but I actually ended up with a lot of affection for the chapter as a whole.

The handy thing about forcing a statement out of one of your characters and including it in the narrative is that it's an excuse to break the writing rule that people almost never just state their emotions in plain terms. The format by definition requires honesty and usually some explanation of the character's emotions either generally or at the starting point, sometimes complete with their assessment and feelings about those feeling in hindsight. So I got to use it to incorporate stuff I couldn't otherwise!

But Daisy gets pretty mad about having her statement taken every time it happens in canon, she just doesn't have the full details for Jon and can't take it out on Elias. She can't afford to take things out on Gertrude, either, other than peacing out. And I don't generally like including swear words in my writing but... nothing else fit. So Daisy got One Swear, for a treat!

Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

Ahahaha, I started writing in second grade. My best friend and I were going to make a novelization of the Rankin-Bass Santa Claus in Comin' to Town Christmas special with her doing illustrations and me writing. It was never finished and lost to time because my family moved the summer after second grade :( I wrote other things throughout elementary school, but sadly never found such a willing cowriter. The draft of the story that made my mom point out that people might not be interested in reading a story that interrupts the action every time a character is introduced to tell you their age, hair and eye color, favorite color, height, and hobbies is a happier loss X'D I did Nanowrimo for the first time in 7th grade, and did finish the story (it's still around... somewhere...) but it was handwritten so I don't know the wordcount. Probably more in the 20k range, but whatever. Did it again successfully on a word processor in 9th grade (also around... somewhere... in printed form even though the computer it was saved to is long gone). Those would probably be better if they were Mary Sue stories, I think if I reread them they'd probably be mostly very boring.

There's a local day event thing for teenage writers in my area called Teen Author Boot Camp, my best friend since toddlerhood got me into it and the first year we went we got 1st (her) and 2nd (me) place in their first chapter writing contest (year redacted bc you could def dox me from their FB). That was probably the last gasp of me successfully writing as a teen. I went again as many years as I was eligible, because it was hugely fun winning aside, but never won again lol. I started reading fic around the time I started high school, and wrote some a few years after that (it's all MCU/Marvel fic, don't go that far back on my AO3, some of it I probably still stand by but some is for sure Bad). I spent most of high school with major burnout writer's block. I started writing again slightly before listening to TMA, but that was what got me back into writing recreationally in a big way. Since I think 2019? maybe 2020 idk, every year I've had an end of year wordcount on AO3 that's... honestly a big embarrassing lol.

I have a fistful of original ideas (fiction and non) that I want to get around to, but right now those are on hold until I finish the final paper for my Bachelor's, which has sadly NOT been blessed by the inspiration gods... fic gets to happen because on a conscious prioritization level I can post it for instant gratification which original writing can't do and on a less conscious level because the chronic health issues that blessedly got me accommodations on that paper interfere enough with my brain on most days to make academic writing hard where fic just isn't. I'm finally in a decent enough place that I'll hopefully be able to get past that, and once that's out of the way original writing (and hopefully improvements in health once that stress is gone) here I come!

What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

My Daisy Tonner is femme but mostly can't express it because it's impractical at work. She always painted her nails because it lasts decently and doesn't detract from how her colleagues view her. She has a bunch of more feminine clothes that she doesn't wear much because she doesn't spend that much time not working. Basira doesn't really know all that about her because by the time she was in the picture Daisy was too Hunt-influenced to pay much attention to unrelated things, which got worse over time.

Or for an OC, Cece who shows up in Little Archive is biromantic asexual and has freckles and moles because projection thy name is Ink

What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

When I was a baby teen writer I would absorb anything that seemed to have a decently informed source and for a long time I had this quote from Elmore Leonard hang on

Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

taped to the side of my bedside table where I saw it all the time. Anyway screw that guy, I love exclamation points! Avoiding them outside of a non-personified distant third person POV is janky! It sounds weird! It distances you from the character! What about dialogue?! Anyone transcribing mine would have to use a bunch, that's how lots of people talk!

[braedybread]

//Sge movie spoilers, kind of a more detailed review and my opinions about some other opinions I’ve seen about the movie, I feel like these are going to be controversial aaaa

I miss the Agatha mirror scene and Circus of Talents as much as anyone, but idk I still think the movie is good and a great adaptation of the book. I’m getting the vibes that there are a lot of people who read the book and wanted the movie to be an exact copy, which is a very common thing in book to movie adaptation reviews. I’ve always been under the belief that adaptations are adaptations though. They require some change: to be able to fit that time constraint of movies (which this was very generous on by the way!! 2 1/2 hours is about an hour more than I was expecting!), to make sense to people that haven’t read the whole series, and to have something new for readers to see. Going in with that expectation made the movie much more enjoyable than expecting the book word for word, and left me open to the new aspects that were just as enjoyable and gave me new content about this world and characters!

Why do so many people keep talking about missing stuff from the other books? It’s just based on book one people.

I’m glad they didn’t make Sophie as mean as she was in the book. It made so much more sense to me why her and Agatha were even friends, Sophie was such a bully in the book. It also made it so much less obvious that they were in the wrong schools (making that entire plot point less annoying), and exhibited that lesson about gray area between good and evil that makes these books so special. Sophie was so much less OBVIOUSLY bad, she had nuance, she was a human.

The school master thing wasn’t done in the same way. But that doesn’t mean it was bad! Just different. I liked it! I thought it made it a little more surprising in a way; because he was so open/involved, they definitely all took for granted that he was the good bro. Sorry, but when the school master is all mysterious and hides away in his tower all day and literally wears a mask, it’s so suspicious and I wouldn’t have been so trusting that he was good if I was literally anyone in the story.

Speaking of school master, him just stepping back and letting good get all cocky and vain and taking their wins for granted?!?! Loved that twist!! Again it shows some nuance in evil/good!!! It also apparently just worked better to unbalance good and evil which was what he wanted to do.

Sorry again but I’ve never understood why people shipped Sophie and Agatha so hard. They’re LITERALLY SO TOXIC and I guess I’m biased because of how much I disliked Sophie in the books, and loved Agatha and wanted better for her. I think the movie does their relationship a lot better honestly. Agatha isn’t such a like, victim? Idk what to call it. Their friendship was so fake and I hated reading about Agatha following Sophie around like a puppy the whole time. For the movie, Sophie literally saves her from the creepy drunk guy, and they laugh together and like make fun of the other people in Gavaldon together and it actually seems like they’re friends, they’re all they’ve got in the world. It makes Agatha’s devotion to Sophie make so much more sense to me!!! Of course she loves Sophie, Sophie is actually nice to her sometimes!!! Genuinely!!!! Not a good deed!!! They also assured several times and made it very clear that their relationship is platonic so hopefully there won’t be so much freaking out about incest or queer baiting like people are expecting. It’s more powerful that they’re platonic anyway, we kind of need more of that relationship in media I think. You can have very strong friendships and have romance.

Sophie’s movie character!! She still wants to be a princess and she still wants power and she still wants to be beautiful! I get her SO MUCH MORE NOW! It makes sense that she thinks she can be good because she does save people and she is genuinely Agatha’s friend! It doesn’t seem like she’s faking it as much as she does in the books. She is still power hungry, and vain. To be honest I think that makes her more like some of the good characters like Beatrix, making all the concern about the “switch” seem much more valid. But then her embracing the evil, the fact that she likes it, she doesn’t feel guilt, she just wants what she wants, is what makes her truly the evil queen she is. She’s not pretending to be good. Her desires just happened to align with good things sometimes. Like Agatha/their friendship. She does want to protect Agatha because she actually values her; I never really felt like Sophie even liked or valued Agatha in the books, just blatantly used her to get what she wanted. I think it was less blatant in the movie which makes it more evil, if that makes sense? Subtlety and manipulation rather than just being a brat :/

Omg but also Sophie not actually hating and being ashamed of being ugly??!!! She totally purposefully rocked it to make her point and then was able to fully be her evil self and it just wasn’t as much evil=ugly as the book kind of became. Same as we can say for Agatha, her coming into her beauty was like, not even a thing which made her beauty not equate to her goodness! A lesson not very well executed in the book, was basically taken out!

Hort in skirt??! I can’t believe no one mentioned that as fas as I’ve seen??? He was also so much creepier, seeing it was totally different for me than reading it.

This movie was also funny!! I’m so glad it kept some of the silly stupid humor that the books have. (At least there was no fart jokes,,, I would have died of embarrassment)

Also the diversity of the cast in so many more ways than race! An Ever in a wheelchair, not ugly Nevers (other than Sophie), various body types/shapes on all sides! Vanessa appearing to be mixed race!!! I just wanted to appreciate that for a moment amongst the upset about queerness and race things. This is probably one of the most diverse casts I’ve seen,,, ever!! (Pls don’t come at me for that I don’t watch a lot of tv or movies other than anime/cartoons, I don’t PERSONALLY know yet about other more diverse casts.) I just know I would have really appreciated seeing Agatha, with her thick, big, gorgeous curly hair, or Chinen, or Dot, or Anadil, for not being super skinny and still being beautiful Evers and Nevers! Being humans instead of models!

I thought the CGI was good! The blood magic was definitely,,, interesting, but I guess I can see it as purposeful, it kind of seemed glowy and popping off the screen, out of place, like it should have been if it was supposed to be so strange and taboo and dangerous (or I’m just making excuses for it asgdhjflglf) I miss the unique finger glow colors and the iconic pink magic, but I was surprised in the ball scenes that there was different colors sometimes so maybe it’s just because they changed and added the blood magic so I think it’s fine

Omg GREGOR!!! Was so cute!! I loved his addition, and the fact that it wasn’t a random Gargoyle and it was someone Agatha KNEW and was kind of friends with that turned into a animal and that Tedros killed makes it more impactful. I still cried at that and the wish fish scene even though I’ve read it probably ten times lol. The fact that it isn’t given that absolutely everyone wanted to be at the school, even if they grew up in fairytale land.

I loved how over the top and dramatic the fight scenes were, it felt as fantastical as it should be, and showed that they don’t take themselves too seriously which I appreciated a lot!! It’s literally supposed to be fairy tales I don’t want realism

I am sad that the trial by tale, Agatha mirror revelation, circus of talents, and even Sophie killing the wolf had to be cut/reduced. Reading the trial, I thought that was the end of the story, the climax, and the fact that it moved past that kept me so invested I was like what can possibly be next?! An even BETTER climax with a HUGE CLIFFHANGER!! That’s why the book has always stood out so much to me, it kept twisting and surprising me. I miss Agatha discovering she was beautiful the whole time. I miss the realization that Sophie was truly off the deep end when she pushed the wolf in the water. Those were VERY important to their character arcs, and the girls do feel underdeveloped in the movie because of that. But from a non-reader perspective, I think that the fact that Sophie isn’t so blatantly evil as I’ve described makes up for her lack of murder, and Agatha just didn’t seem as insecure in the movie so I don’t think that was as much of a barrier for her to overcome, so it probably wouldn’t have fit as well anyway. The circus of talents is like, my favorite scene in the book, but the same goes for that, I’m not sure it would have fit? I feel like it was replaced with having Gregor become the stymph. He was Good, and became an evil creature. It just wasn’t as knocked over your head as the circus did it. And the whole collaboration of good and evil was still there in the end with the students picking each other up after the Balls. A movie couldn’t be as long as the book, and as I’ve expressed, I think the movie plot choices make up for it in subtler, different, but still good, ways. For the trial, it wasn’t as big, happened SO FAST, but it accomplished the same goal as in the books. I’m probably most disappointed about these four scenes being gone than anything else about the movie, but I can understand why they were cut/changed and I don’t feel like it entirely detracts from the quality of the movie.

I’LL SAY IT!! I LIKED THE MUSIC CHOICES!!! Toxic by Britney Spears as the big climax fight song!!! ICONIC! WONDERFUL! SHOWSTOPPING! BRUTAL OUT HERE?! YEAH IT SURE IS!!!! It made me laugh, but it wasn’t overused and it was mostly instrumental too or like more moody remixes so I liked it a lot actually

I guess my general rebuttal to a lot of complaints about how different it is, is just that there are (good!) reasons for much of it and it even fixed a lot of the flaws of the books in my opinion. I’m excited to read what more people think even if it’s different from my thoughts :) still so excited for my family and friends to see it and understand what I’ve been talking about for literal years!!!

I miss Prof Sader :( because of the plot changes he wasn’t exactly necessary and I get it but Agatha father figure and he was so fun and quirky and I miss him

OH MY GOSH I CANT BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT TEDROS THAT WAS LIKE MY FAVORITE CHANGE!!! He’s actually cute and funny!!!! He’s still like stereotypical prince and Agatha still is helping him see less black and white sides but he’s not like, soooo egotistical, and the fact that he is drawn to Agatha because she’s sassy, from the beginning, instead of being immediately drawn to Sophie being hot means a lot to meeee :) and I feel like thinking you saved someone and then punching you for it is a valid reason to be salty and confused about it just sayin. But he actually gets some development and charming personality traits I like him so much more :)))

[yoiku]

Just feeling like unpacking and sorting out some thoughts on this wonderfully rainy morning (begone, roadside dust!!)

Now, I've always been the type to post new art the moment it's done. Posting stuff only on Patreon has still proven easier than I expected. Perhaps since i am still posting stuff -somewhere- it doesn't feel as weird, even though I do miss the interaction from posting on socials. But that'll be back once I have a buffer big enough to keep Patreon relevant. It's also getting easier on letting posting on social wait as time goes by, lol. Actually thought that what if I make the publish gap with the comic even bigger, like several months between Patreon/other sites. But aaaah, I really do want to get it out. It might create more of a gap with time anyway. And the best way to get new people interested in my Patreon is to have interesting stuff out there in the wild. And I'll be honest, it feels validating af to see even a few people willing to spend money to access my Patreon.

It's still conflicting sometimes, because I would really want to keep my stuff available to everyone without paywalls. Art in general is meant to be shared and should be accessible to everyone, this is something I feel on a larger scale. Things like commissioned, unique pieces are luxurious though. They are after all often personal as well. Artists don't live on grants and stipends, hell, even those are usually available for artists who have already made a name for themselves on a larger scale/are well connected. Majority I know struggle with part time jobs, unemployment, studying or are disabled, barely scraping by what they can get in terms of welfare etc. I'm no different. I'm on welfare due to health reasons + in debt, so basically I don't have any "extra" money at the end of each month left for nice things™. And if I do, it usually goes to paying a larger portion of debt away. Sometimes I spend and always regret it later, lol. But if you -never- get to treat yourself even a little, life starts to feel quite depressing. I know so many people are in the same kind of position, where it's just not possible to pay for more than 1-2 subscription services monthly, or none. So having my art behind a Patreon paywall of any kind feels bad, knowing I would likely not be able to afford it myself, lol. Will it ever be easy to combine the thought of art + money without having dreadful crapitalism thoughts creep in? Probably not.

I still want to do my best to pick up some commissions as well, I need to create some sort of hidden stash of money now that I have the cat. Because when (inevitably at some point) a trip to the vet happens, that's going to be at least a hundo no matter what. And when the last trip to the vet arrives, that's gonna be closer to 300-400 with all the cheapest options. (hopefully not anytime soon, but something i have to take into account) I am currently working on a painting comm and might have another one coming up as well, which is giving me much joy. Watercolours are a lot of work, but they're less taxing in the sense that there's only so much detail you can do compared to digital, and tradi allows the happy little accidents with the medium. So it's easier to feel like I did my best wihtout having the thought "ah... i should've kept fixing it"(without asking for more money bc I gotta do better ad infinitum) So I'm really happy peeps have shown interest in tradi comms, even though I'm not very well versed in techniques with those. Learning tho!

My head's been in a relatively good place for a good while now, all things considered. But I have to pull the brakes on myself every now and then because I know it only takes one hard hit in the old mental health for all of it going to shit in the blink of an eye. So I'm trying to tread carefully, prep and plan while keeping the bar set low enough.

Mom has moved to hospice care, which also means that getting the phonecall about her passing can also be any day now. I feel like I've made my peace with it, but even if it doesn't initially hit hard, I'm pretty sure it will bring some mental struggle later. And there will be the whole episode of handling her stuff afterwards. Thankfully there won't be any wealth to distribute, so likely all the mandatory/legal expenses will be handled by welfare. How dreadful that even in that, money is the first thing to have to worry about, huh.

At least the sun has returned from the winter jail, bright days lighten the mind.

[dollsonmain]

Sorry I have to blather to ......uh

word brain thing

have a cut and a dedicated tag at least.

Ok, so this is what I had going before learning about the form 8949:

This is not exactly accurate (also I haven’t put in the purchases for July, yet) for the kind of data required on the 8949 (which I am still dreading filling out and may not until the 2022 form is available?). It’s also a bit vague. Granted it was meant more to give me a vague idea of my spending vs. income than for good tax reporting purposes.

What I had here was expenses for each month regardless of whether that item was sold or not, but only purchases made with the intent to sell. Anything that I bought to have wasn’t included in the data. Kind of negates the “for the purposes of tracking my spending” idea. And those expenses were a bit vague, too. Used My Little Pony could be any number of ponies in a lot.

Then I was told about the 8949 and set up separate tabs in the same spreadsheet for both short and long term assets. Right now there’s only short term stuff on there because MH were the first long term assets I’ve sold this year and I haven’t gotten to that, yet. I’ve only gotten through Feb. and those were sold in July.

And that tab looks like this (the names look redundant because I C&Ped them from the sales titles):

This is me trying to match the sold items to when they were bought more accurately, but specifically in the way the form8949 wants so I can easily C&P that data from the spreadsheet to the forms later down the line.There’s more data off to the right but it’s all order numbers. That info isn’t on the tax form, that’s for my personal use.

Kind of wish I could submit the spreadsheet AS form 8949 and only have to do it once, but whatever.

I’m going to be wasting so much ink and paper come tax time.

Anyway, so what I’m trying to brain my way through right now is how to adjust the first spreadsheet, which is the first tab out of 3, to reflect the information in the other two in a similar breakdown so I can at-a-glance the new data. And also trying to brain whether I SHOULD do that or not.

I kind of think I should to eliminate one out of two different forms of reporting that I’m running because switching between the two is more time and might cause confusion for me (it does), while at the same time I do kind of like also having a running total of how much I spent in general vs. how much I brought in each month, and that wouldn’t be reflected exactly the same way anymore. It kind of wouldn’t at all because some of these expenses are rather old compared to when they were sold.

One thing that’s really throwing off my numbers, though, is the way eBay reports refunds to the seller. They’re separate transactions and the original transaction report isn’t adjusted to reflect the change in either the income or the fees owed (they give a refund to the seller on fees un-earned when the seller sends a refund to a buyer). So I have to go “This one’s a refund...” then go back and find that item in my spreadsheet and adjust it manually.

Which causes more confusion.

I need eBay’s reporting to be better.

The 8949-ish tab doesn’t have shipping fees because that’s not an allowed deduction on hobby income, and doesn’t show how much is paid in eBay fees per item because that’s already calculated out by eBay on their report (with that information being available to view, just calculated out) and if I wanted to better represent that on the spreadsheet I’d have to do extra math to adjust the income to HAVE the fees, then add a column to note and deduct the fees again (which is how the first tab IS set up), though I COULD add that in off to the right with the order numbers (both for when it was bought vs when I sold it), but then that’s going to get messy and look weird having fees and numbers out of line with and not visibly factored into everything else, AND I probably don’t need to do that.

How much did I pay in eBay fees this year? I don’t know, it’s already subtracted, though. Like, the sold price that’s noted on the spreadsheet is AFTER eBay fees because that’s how eBay reports it and that’s how form 8949 wants it.

I suppose I could keep that on the front page, too, but again, trying to reduce the stress and paperwork I have to keep up with, not increase it.

And like, I recently had a post come through the doll blog queue saying that some parts of your hobby you might not like, so maybe don’t do those parts and only do the parts you DO like so you don’t lose joy in your hobby, and this is a major joy killer that I can’t choose not to do (or maybe I could choose not to since my income will still be too low to have to pay taxes regardless).

This brain noodling is why I can’t get anything done. Unfortunately none of this noodling actually answered any problems I was having, but it does help me understand the parts of the problems a little better and having it typed out helps me not forget things while trying to come up with a solution to something my brain is screaming to get away from.

[masschase]

34, 36, 41 for casey for the ask meme :^]

SR character building questions

34. What activities does your character do when they’re not doing Saints business?

I'm guessing this is activities as in hobbies etc. not Activities which would come under Saints stuff?

I feel like obviously the Saints hang out just watching tv/movies and drinking/getting high a lot. So whenever that's an option, she'll take it because honestly she does have this constant fear of abandonment that frames her interactions with her friends. I mean that both in the sense of making the most of it and also feeling like she can't let them down even on the occasions she could probably do with some alone time.

Casey's also pretty good at poker. I did make a mention before of the time she won one of Pierce's tournaments because she had terrible cards but couldn't stop smiling all night, but that aside I think she's already really good by that point. She generally has that pretty chill facade and is used to hiding her emotions, plus, if she's playing with people she doesn't know, it's even better as they're very likely to underestimate her intelligence because of the way she talks. One might even speculate that the way she goes from desperately wanting people to realise she's not an idiot to realising that it can be useful at times may be something she realised partially through playing.

She still likes to practice shooting even when she's not doing that at work, she even builds a shooting range in her own home on Ragnarok/New Earth. Now the thing about this one is that generally, Casey does not enjoy physical violence out of work so much, she prefers to wind down from all that. But she enjoys target practice at all times, she gets a big sense of achievement out of it. She has a preference for doing this with Johnny because of the high standard of competition involved and in fact until her friendship with Matt develops, her target practice with Johnny is about the only regular (she does other stuff e.g. shopping with Pierce but it's more occasional/sporadic) one-on-one friend time she has.

I feel like sex should be mentioned as it takes up a fair enough chunk of her time. She has a high sex drive and while she obviously could deal with things by herself in that respect, perhaps more crucially she isn't fully comfortable with non-sexual intimacy for a long time. Did I just say she fucks everyone because she needs a hug? Yes, she fucks everyone because she needs a hug. My point is, 2-3 one night stands a week is time consuming. Granted sometimes calling up a sex worker can speed things up but by the time she has enough money to regularly do that she's also somewhat famous so has to weigh up the risks of that being found out.

She was a big, big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic the Gathering in her teens, but none of the original Saints are into that and later on she's kind of embarrassed about it and doesn't ask. She does get back into MTG after the Forbidden Planet trip and teaches Matt. They start with the most basic thrown together decks then build on them together until they are able to reasonably challenge each other. She likes board games but I feel like there were several incidents pre-therapy that mean no-one wants to play with her anymore, even though as she matures she would take it way less seriously. I think various board games are brought out on the ship. She is fascinated with various tabletop games as she peeked some at YGO/MTG tournaments but has never actually played any.

Then when she's alone... reading! Big one! Obviously I make a big deal out of Jane Austen bc she is her favourite but the Brontes are a very close second, and like most avid readers, though she does have her favourites, she is always reading something new when she gets the chance. Unfortunately that's not generally the case for a long time because those moments of complete calm are rare. After SRIV she has a lot more free time (and the ability to time jump for books) to the point where Zinbir, one of my antagonists suggests"...your only capability; that of running around shooting people, has been replaced by sitting around on a spaceship reading books." (but fuck him tbh). But the main reason she has the time to do that is because I feel like she finally learns to say no to hanging with everyone all the time because it's hard enough to all get along in that living situation without being together 24/7.

36. What diversions did your character like to do in Steelport and Stilwater? Which ones did they avoid?

don'tsayho-ingdon'tsayho-ingdon'tsayho-ing

Again, I'm guessing specifically just diversions? I love this question bc I have to think about what the character would enjoy not just what I do.

I feel like in SR she really likes tagging but she is not an artist, half the time in my hc it's probably just a smiley/angry/sad face, a dick and her pseudonym. She starts off doing it again post-coma but when she actually processes the fact she is suddenly not a teenager anymore she finds it kind of embarrassing.

I think she mugs people but not quite as we see in game. Honestly I like anything to do with stealing stuff with Casey, it's a random trait I apply across universes. She's not the stealthiest though, that's why it's hilarious. She'd pickpocket someone and they'd totally notice and she'd just be like yeah I took your wallet, I also have a gun, like... where do you want to go with this? You'd think theft would be on my list on this basis but I doubt she's great with safecracking tbh.

Combat tricks are a diversion right? I feel like you can only kill so many people before you start wanting to get a little creative. I can see her saying, right, today I am shooting everyone in the balls. Whether they have balls or not.

I also think it would be really, really funny if she's not usually into collecting things but it's something she gets incredibly into when she's high. That said in 4 she doesn't really have the ability to get high and she still likes collecting clusters when she's bored. I think this is because obviously she gets to use the super powers to get them and plus the habit of collecting things maybe just stuck.

Once she has worked out her strengths she avoids racing, stunt jumps, anything involving a car bc she can't fucking drive... she only gets driving stunts by accident 🤣 I don't think she much likes photo ops in 3 as I make it clear she sees fame as a necessary evil most of the time. She's also terrible at those tower jump things in 4. Maybe if she wasn't wearing heels all the time that'd help. Also, although it's fun in-game, realistically I think she should be a complete fail at like 90% of store hacking.

41. Name the top three Saints your character got along with the least.

Ooh difficult!

I feel like Oleg and Casey have a pretty meh relationship overall. This kind of goes back to the recognising intelligence thing. He does respect her as a leader, but he doesn't really see her as an intellectual, because I guess she's not really. He seems genuinely surprised when she shows brief moments of linguistic prowess or brilliance in problem solving for example. I think they get along just fine for work but they don't form the sort of close friendship she does with a lot of the other Saints. Which is a shame because I like Oleg and his dynamic with some of the other Saints a lot.

Angel... I don't know if this is because Angel is such a meh character to me or what. But I feel like they barely knew each other especially as I see him as so super focused on Killbane throughout SR3 so they never really got to connect. Since Casey saves Shaundi, I always see Angel and Killbane kind of disappearing off into the sunset together. Idk, I like the idea of a love so passionate it resembles hate and vice versa. I don't necessarily know which is them. Unless I decide I want to do something with them later, they are presumed dead though.

Finally I'd say maybe Keith. Because just thinking back to the dynamics in the white house and on board the ship, they just don't make that kind of connection. Plus I think he thinks she doesn't take anything seriously enough. Like Oleg he doesn't bother her enough to scratch the surface, which is fair. Not everyone wants to have to unwrap every layer of someone just to make a friend.

I think this is the thing, Casey has Saints she argues with more and less and has her ups and downs with. Also sometimes her personal and work relationships with one person manifest very differently. But she's still with them, interacting, keeping them close. It's the ones who she doesn't make the effort with or who don't make the effort with her that I class as her not getting along with.

[baldurs-gate-3-cheats-engu8]

Baldur’s Gate Cheats List , Item Codes, Spawn NPC and Glitches

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 Hints and Tips for: Baldur's Gate 3. Baldur's Gate 3 Cheats. Breaking this wall will give you access to the area the quest can be picked up in. You could collect the large amount of weapons note that the masterwork weapon will require a sythe, greatsword, or dagger so you could leave one of those there for later. After picking up the quest from the chest and realizing you need susser bark, the bark can only be found in the underdark and is protected by several level 4 hook horrors which can be devestated to an unprepared team. The hook horrors can be more easily managed by bringing them up onto this ledge here and after taking a swing you can push them off the ledge for some heavy fall damage, they will then waste their next turn getting back up onto the ledge. Defeating them you can now loot the tree of it's bark. Heading back to the forge and using the bark on the fire will turn the flames blue. Now use either a greatsword, scythe, or dagger on the forge to finish the masterwork weapon. Enjoy your new Sussur weapon! Sorrow is a unique 2-hander with a powerful ability. A successful pickpocket will yield the room and navigating back to the statue surrounded by runes and placing your own newly commandeered rune will open the secret passageway. The legendary weapon is now available to be obtained and is sitting on the table. While looting all the other goodies you will also obtain the Robe of Summer, granting a resistance to cold damage. Useful Tips and Tricks: Written by Crunchie Just a collection of stuff that is not immediately obvious when playing the game. Also some ideas for characters and stuff. Top tip: Avoid teleporting spiders. Very important for high dex characters. Seriously, is not a good idea. Keep an eye out for them. Play your cards right and you can have some fun. Or turn down everyone like the socially awkward person you are and realize why you are still single IRL too. Or you can just punch them in the face and feel like a badass for 0. Not sure which. Not judging, just thought you should know that the spells and stuff are on loan. Hence only two spell slots. The type of ability score you hex will determine the affect of the hex. So, if it's a big strong dude who hits really hard in melee, hex strength so he can't hit you. Hex the dexterity of the archer, so they also can't hit you. Or combine and hex to wisdom and a spell from another caster to give that spell a better chance of working. Sleepy sleepy trolls. But it's more fun to say squishy. Movement, attack and healing spells are the most valuable in my opinion. But you do you. This is more important for people in the front with light armor. This should be your highest score. In general though this is str for fighter, dex for rogue, int for wizard, wis for cleric, and wis or dex for ranger. It is merely another path. Which all your characters must take. If only one or two die, it'll be fine. I think. So expect to get flanked, put to sleep, have a single character focussed down, and all the things your DM could do to you IRL but doesn't because he wants you to come back and play with him next week. A lot can happen, personal drama, cinematics, new friends, and it's very easy to put a foot wrong when you you were just trying to be funny. Just like real life. So save, it's not save scumming if it was unintentional! The bigger the die being rolled for your weapon damage, the more damage it will do, however, more die, of a smaller number, offer more consistent damage If you want to know the nerdy math behind it, 2d6 cannot roll lower than a 2, but have a lower chance of rolling two 6's. Overall, the affect is debatable but more die tend to feel more consistent than larger, but fewer die. This matters because Backstab is a thing basically you get a bonus to your attack roll if attacking from behind this applies to all enemies and your characters too. Preferably from stealth. With a rogue. Anything that can stun, terrify or put to sleep the enemy. They aren't fancy or flashy but boy howdy are they effective. Cleric FTW. As you level up you can use a bonus action to hide again as a rogue. However, you need to make sure you are out of line of sight of the enemy to do this. It is more effective to be a dual-wield melee rogue. As you get to attack again with your off hand as a bonus action. Letting you get as much as four! Get horns It's an RPG, stop playing human fighters, ugh. Healing word is a bonus action that lets you pick up allies from a distance. There is no reason to ever not have healing word. Keep healing word in your spell list! Bane anti-bless is more situational but more useful in those situations. I wonder what they do? Nice to have, but not necessary for survival. Do not make fun of their noses. I just.. Everyone will think you are probably stuck up because you think you're better than them. Which is quite unfair. You know you are better than them. It will want to but be afraid of leaving the goblins. It showed up at my camp after a few long rests. They are not necessarily the most powerful, but they are simple and straightforward. The Warlock is the simplest class to understand if you are aiming for magic-users. If you want a little bit of both, the Cleric is a great martial class with healing magic. If you have three party members taking turns at the same time, then an enemy afterwards, you can swap your party member turn around however desired before the enemy turn. You can do the same if you just have two characters taking turns at the same time. This can be very useful. However, the breaking glass does cause damage -- so do not use this technique if your ally has almost no health. You can also throw potions on the ground to create a little pool of healing your party members can stand in. If there is a weak wall, make sure to inspect it to see which type of damage needs to be applied. Force or Blunt damage will knock down walls, while piercing or slashing damage will not help at all. Lure Enemies to Death: The Find Familiar spell summons a Familiar you can command and lure into advantageous combat areas. Summon a Familiar and lure enemies under a rooftop so you can easily snipe them. The distraction can be very useful. Use the Environment to Your Advantage: Using the environment can be your best weapon. Pushing enemies off ledges, luring them into traps, or setting off explosive barrels are great strategies for tough fights. You can also throw a poison potion on the ground in a chokepoint and defend that position, poisoning incoming enemies as they try to reach you. Instantaneous spells are cast immediately on use, but Concentration spells take some time. If you are attacked while trying to summon a Concentration spell, you will have to make a successful ability check or your spell will be interrupted. You will have to take short rests to recover some abilities and spells, and others can only be recovered after a long rest at your camp. Try to save spells for situations where you are outnumbered or in a tough fight. Rogues Tricks: Rogues are normally good with bows-and-arrows, but they are also good in close-range. If you are in a fight, you can jump Free Action to avoid reaction attacks and retreat, or you can enter sneak on your turn and hug the back of an enemy for a sneak attack. It seems strange to activate mid-battle, but it can work. With bows, you can dip your arrows into fire to set them ablaze and burn enemies. Try taking the high-ground as well. You will get bonuses for accuracy and range. Additionally, if an ally is standing next to an enemy in combat, you will have a better chance of hitting that enemy. The same is the case for magic-users trying to sling spells. Throw Teammates and Enemies: If your strength is high enough, you can throw teammates and enemies. You can pick up enemies and throw them over a ledge for a quick kill. Submit your codes! Having Codes, cheat, hints, tips, trainer or tricks we dont have yet? Help out other players on the PC by adding a cheat or secret that you know! Submit them through our form. Covering more than CheatBook-DataBase Cheatbook on: Twitter Facebook.

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.