#i can give u basic rundowns on the characters or even post here...

[kevinsynthv]

would it be possible to fnvpill my tumblr friends

WOULD TUMBLR FRIENDS LIKE TO HEAR ME RAMBLE ABOUT FNV.. HERES THE SUMMARY:

"FNV, otherwise known as 'Kin yobi no yoru' (On a Friday Night) is a slice of life styled story in the sense that it follows the life of three best friends who enable each others chaos in a way, even unintentionally.

It's backstory is filled with deep lore and interpersonal relationships, motivations that are driven by loss, love and a search for community, identity, self and comfort. The stories of the main three characters intertwine into one as you follow along on their journey to becoming who they are today"

[ca-suffit]

Hi! I'm new to the fandom (on Tumblr, anyways--I watched season 1 when it came out (haven't watched season 2 yet)), and I wanted to ask what the racism in the fandom is about? I mean I can guess, since the new show changed Louis, Claudia, and Armand to black/brown actors. I guess I just figured that if people were really against the race and time period changes, then they simply wouldn't watch and be fans of the show?? I mean they are significant changes and they happen from the very first moment of episode one, so if they bother people so much, how would they be able to or want to watch the show and get into the fandom at all?

I guess basically I'm wondering if the racism you see is in the AMC fandom too, or is it more like people who are IWTV fans of the books/movie who don't like the changes?

hi!! thank u for being new here and somehow ending up at this account and asking questions. I feel like it's rare that that happens so I am glad ur here.

so for ur questions....a lot of the racist stuff comes from book fans.

idk if u know the history of the books and also the show, but let me give a brief rundown of it all.

the books started in the late 70s and were a lot of ppl's first exposure to a lot of things (gay relationships, gender stuff, polyamory) at young ages and also when these things weren't seen in many other spaces. anne rice also encouraged her fans to develop parasocial relationships with her, keeping in contact directly thu letters, emails, and phone calls. she also routinely hosted costume balls and stuff (which still happen today).

as for the show history, it took about 7 years for it to end up with AMC and start doing *anything.* anne and her son excitedly kept ppl updated on everything that happened in that time, then suddenly all went quiet once AMC started moving on doing anything. then anne died in 2021, before the show's release within the next year.

if u look at a lot of book ppl's posts about the show, u'll see phrases like "I've waited x years for this." take allllllllll of that info ^^ and stuff it into a single person, who then has existed in this fandom however many years, usually in an echo chamber of likeminded ppl with the same history, and u get a v specific mix of fandom racism. they're in their "sunk cost fallacy" era, basically.

a lot of these ppl don't care at all about the show itself, they're here to see the VC books in a visual format *finally.* they will "suffer" thru whatever just to get any crumb of something they feel is "owed" for being fans so long, for connecting so much to these stories, to anne, w/e the thing is. a lot of them are here for lestat only.

the main issue is that a lot of these fans....just hate the show even from the lestat perspective. they feel like his character is "ooc" for the abuse shown in 1x5, specifically, and have spent the last 2 years writing all kinds of angry posts about it and jumping thru hoops to explain why it's all a lie and why S3 (based on his book) will "fix" everything "finally." they also disregard any of the discussions about race and have targeted black fans a lot over time (general fans of color too but a lot of emphasis on black fans specifically) in attempts to push all of this out of anyone's view, so that they can remain the popular fans. this isn't done by white fans either, a lot of it has been done by other black fans. it's a common tactic used in a lot of spaces, fandom or otherwise, to "give permission" to ppl to let out racist behavior on certain other groups of ppl....but ur not in the group so it's ok, ur safe for "reporting" on "them."

a lot of the problem is these ppl (collectively referred to as "white fandom," which is a mindset, not a skin color), and u can see so many examples of what this looks like if u browse around the account. it's not always so obvious, prbly if ur new too, but u'll learn to see it once u find the pattern.

there's also book ppl who don't engage with the fandom anymore outside their circles but watch the show (or at least parts of it) and still moan how the tags are filled with show stuff and not the books anymore. it's the same "logic" but a different type of fan.

the show only fans aren't rly a problem. a lot of white show only fans haven't understood the racial themes but these aren't usually the ppl who are bullying everyone. it's mostly the book fans who need to feel superior at all times for having read the books. I mean, I've read them too, it's whatever, but some ppl just need that extra special attention about it (even tho they're awful books tbh. she fired her editor three books in and it *shows*).

I felt insane writing this lol but hope that helps clarify??

[bisexualfagdyke]

HIIII so i’m slowly trying to get into fnaf but i’m very confused by the lore n characters could u give me a rundown of some of them??? i watched a lore video but forgot like all of it ALDJSKDJD totally ok if u don’t want to btw i just see ur posting a lot abt it now :3

HAIIII ^^ so funnily enough im actually in the middle of watching matpat's 4 part series on the timeline of the fnaf lore (it's here if you're interested – it's long, but I recommend it!!), I'm definitely not super into the fnaf lore (hence why I'm watching the videos lol) so im probably not the best person to ask, but I can try and explain some stuff since I have been a fnaf fan for a while!! :3 I think I'm hyperfixating on it rn due to the hype around the movie, and its making me want to learn about the lore more .... which I have been doing recently :P

So first of all .... the lore is INCREDIBLY confusing, long, and complicated 😭 I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be confusing, so don't worry about it too much. A lot of the lore is based on theories and speculation, and it often changes with any new content that comes out. It's definitely not necessary to know all the details about the lore to enjoy the games.

Here's my vague rundown of some of the characters:

William Afton - along with his friend Henry Emily, he opened the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza restaurants and made the animatronics. He killed Henry Emily's child, and later uses the animatronics he made to kill more children. He got springlocked while inside the springtrap suit, so he is inside the suit / possesses it. He is the main antagonist.

Michael Afton - William Afton's oldest son. He is the security guard in most of the games (uses different names / aliases) in order to try and find his father. Before he becomes a security guard he gets scooped by and is therefore basically a walking "purple" corpse.

The Crying Child / Evan Afton - William Afton's youngest son. He get's accidentally springlocked by an animatronic (when Michael was playing a prank on him (this is referred to as the bite of '83).

Elizabeth Afton - William Afton's only daughter. She also, accidentally, gets killed by an animatronic, Circus Baby. She possesses the Circus Baby animatronic.

Those are like... pretty much the only characters I know ☠️ but they're the most important I think!!! I hope this helped somewhat, I'm rlly not the best at the fnaf lore so I might have got stuff wrong, but yeah!!! I hope ur able to enjoy fnaf :3 even if you don't get super into the lore, there's always other stuff to appreciate in the series like the animatronics (I love the animatronics personally I think they're so silly) and fan-made content / art !!!!

[pestriddencarnivore]

smth smth “oyaji”

Ok so this is rant nr 1 for the evening: It is probably a bit long considering the topic ( we p much just talking abt 1 word in the Japanese language here ) but I didn’t know how to make it shorter. I think it’s mainly interesting from a linguistic standpoint cause I’m a nerd ( ppl like Japanese language might like it ), and bc the ways u can lay it out for the relationship Chisaki has to the former boss.

Also throwing this out bc the English release fucked it up ( tho tbh it just doesn’t translate well ) and some Overhaul stans might be interested bc its abt relationship between Chisaki and the boss...

So first of all in Japanese Chisaki always refers to the boss as “Oyaji”. This word has two meanings that are significant in this case.

1) Oyaji = father

2) Oyaji = boss of a Yakuza organisation ( This is because the Yakuza have a family structure in several of their titles, superior members that manage others are also referred to as “Ani” which means older brother. )

Now Hori makes it distinctly clear throughout the entire Overhaul arc that Chisaki always means “boss” when he says “oyaji” through the use of Kanji and Furigana. The basic rundown of Furigana is that it’s an accessibility tool to tell people how a Kanji is pronounced, however Hori also likes to use it to give a sort of dual-meaning to what’s being said. It’s to note that the Kanji shows the meaning of the word, while the Furigana (either Hiragana or Katakana) shows how the character pronounces/says the word.

The Kanji he used is 組長 actually pronounced “kumichou” and means boss. ( And オヤジ as the Katakana “Oyaji” as the spoken word ).

However this changes with Chisaki being freed from Tartarus. Most notably in the very scene when his prison cell is opened, the first first word he says is “oyaji” but with the Kanji 親父 which means father. ( The Furigana here is in Hiragan おやじ ) This means that Hori in this very scene distinctly expresses Chisaki viewing the boss as his father.

Additionally in his following appearances Hori has taken to writing the word “oyaji” in pure Katakana オヤジ instead, which leaves it ambiguous whether or not Chisaki refers to him as boss or father. ( This is bc each Kanji has a meaning, but Hiragana and Katakana are only syllable alphabets, their characters don’t have specific meanings attached to them. )

There is only a single instance since his breakout, where Hori writes the word “oyaji” with Kanji, which is when Chisaki makes his deal with Nagant to see the boss, the Kanji used is 組長. At the time it came out that conversation felt like quite a distinct moment of clarity from his side ( before it didn’t seem like he could even talk normally. ). It it also to note that immediately after making his request he goes back to his rambling where Hori only uses Katakana again. 

I won’t go into making an interpretation in this post ( but if you legit read this far you probably already have your own idea of what it all could mean ) but I thought it was interesting enough to point out.

[forabeatofadrum]

Splatoon 2 Basic Glossary

So, you just started reading Ebb & Flow and you have no idea what the fuck Splatoon 2 is? Well, you’re in luck, because here is a handy rundown of basic Splatoon 2 knowledge!

Thank you for reading Ebb & Flow! Enjoy!

What is Splatoon 2?

Splatoon 2 is the sequel to the Wii U game Splatoon. Yes, a creative title, but we can forgive Nintendo for it, since the quality of the game makes up for it. The game got released on July 21st 2017 for the Nintendo Switch family (as in Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch OLED). It’s Nintendo’s version of a 3rd person post-apocalyptic shooter game, but without the gruesomeness of a usual post-apocalyptic shooter. After all, Nintendo needs to retain its family friendly brand!

So instead of a war-like shooting game, this game is all about ink! Squid ink, to be more specific. You play as a squid-like character (called Inklings) and you use several weapons to shoot/distribute colourful ink. You are bound to the colour of the ink. You can shoot and store your colour and also swim in it to make speed or to refill your ink tank. If you are in the enemy’s colour ink, you get hurt and if an enemy shoots you with the other colour, you get “splatted” and you need to respawn.

(Fun fact, the initial concept was tofu characters instead of sea creatures!)

Basically, there are different ways to play it. Most of them get mentioned in the fic, but you don’t actually need to know a lot about it. I do namedrop things, hence this glossary, but I don’t go super in-depth about the gameplay. (Or so I think.)

There is a single player story mode. This is a classic RPG where you traverse through levels and beat bosses. This one does not get mentioned in the fic, since it’s a solo thing.

Salmon Run. Here you pair up with 3 other people to defeat a bunch of rouge Salmon-like enemies (Salmonids) who want to steal Golden Eggs. It’s basically Splatoon 2′s version of an shoot out where you have to defeat zombies or something. This doesn’t get mentioned either, which is a shame, since this is my favourite mode.

Turf Wars. Two teams of 4 vs. 4 have to cover as much ink of a stage as possible. The team that inks the most, wins. Kurt and Blaine play this for Splatfests (we’ll get to those).

Tower Control / Clam Blitz / Rainmaker / Splat Zones. These are four game modes where two teams of 4 vs. 4 have to fight against each other in a certain mini game. Tower Control needs you to ride a tower to the enemy’s base. Clam Blitz is, I suppose, some sort of basketball. Rainmaker needs you to transport a weapon to the enemy’s base. Splat Zones need you to cover a specific zone with ink for the longest time. You can play these as Ranked Battles and League Battles. Kurt and Blaine play a lot of League Battles, since you can choose your team or duo. These game modes alternate each other. There’s always one in Ranked and one in League and it changes every 2 hours.

Octo Expansion. Another extra single player mode. Only gets mentioned once in passing.

What is Splatoon 2 even about?

I redirect you to this nice video. 

You don’t really need the storyline of the game for the fic, since that’s in the single player story mode and Kurt and Blaine don’t play that in the fic, but if you’re interested, you should give it a watch. Beware of spoilers, though!

Splatfests

A Splatfest is a special event that happened every month. Players can choose between two choices in a category (Chicken vs. Egg, Ketchup vs. Mayo, Dog vs. Cat etc.) and then those two groups battle in Turf Wars to see which side has won. A special stage is made for each Splatfest and you get extra gear. The two Off the Hook hosts (we’ll get there) represent a side. It is always seen as a big in-game party with the Off the Hook hosts giving a concert wearing specific outfits. Player characters dance around and wave banners with player-made art etc. It’s honestly pretty fun.

The Splatfests mentioned in Ebb & Flow were real, and I used them to keep track of the timeline. You can see an overview of all Splatfests here.

Weapons, gear, stages

Don’t worry about these! I name dropped them for fun. I did put some thought in what weapons they’d use for each game mode (i.e. Kurt’s Carbon Roller is definitely for Turf Wars only), but it doesn’t really impact the story. 

Each weapon has a main weapon, a sub weapon and a special weapon. The main weapon is what it says on the tin, a sub weapon is an extra thing like bombs, and a special is a big game changer that needs to be charged during the game. So when the fic mentions things like the Baller or Tenta Missles etc., those are special weapons. That’s all you gotta know, I guess.

I put zero (0) thought in what gear Kurt and Blaine wear. Gear is, in gamer language, the armour. It brings extra stats and abilities, but I stopped myself from losing myself into the world of Splatoon 2 gear, especially since I am like Kurt and I use the gear for aesthetics only. I have no clue what abilities etc. are out there. I did a bit of research for this fic, but that’s it and I didn’t really put it in the story anyway. All you need to know is that in the Splatoon series, there are a lot of in-universe brands and Kurt, as a fashion lover, likes this extra layer to gear.

Stages are where the games take place. I often picked the stages that were actually happening at the time of writing. All you need to know is that stages change periodically, which is why Kurt and Blaine sometimes wait for a certain stage. Current stages with its accompanying game mode always get announced when you start the game, which leads to...

Off the Hook

An unskippable intro! It happens every time you start the game. It’s a TV show format and the two hosts Pearl and Marina announce the stages, whether Grizzco is open for Salmon Run, and extra news like patches or upcoming Splatfests. Kurt loves reading the news every time (as do I). Blaine wishes he could do without. Boo, Blaine, boo!

Competitive Splatoon 2

It is quite funny that so much about this fic is about Competitive Splatoon 2, since it is actually quite difficult to learn about it if you’re not part of this world. And I am not part of this world. Kurt’s probably a better player than I am. 

Basically, like other Nintendo games, it is possible to play Splatoon 2 as an eSport. You create a team and start to train. Like I said, I don’t know enough on how you can get to a competition, but there are big and small tournaments, with the biggest one being hosted by Nintendo itself: the World Championship. There, teams from Asia, Europe, North-America and Oceania are fighting for the title of World Champion.

If you are reading this right at the beginning of Ebb & Flow, then here is a small spoiler for you. I know I said it was going to be spoiler-free, but alas, have this. Blaine has tickets for the World Championship of 2018. This too was a real event. The semi-finale and finale are on YouTube. The finale is here:

You can watch this if you want to know what a game looks like. When you do, skip to 29:09 to see one of the best plays ever!!! I did actually write some plays from competitions into the fic.

The music

Yeah, so, the music of this game is amazing on its own and one of the reasons it works so well is because there is an in-universe explanation for why the music is like this. There are multiple styles, because there are multiple in-universe bands. Ink Theory does experimental jazz, Diss-Pair loves adding EDM and metal elements to their songs, Chirpy Chips live up to their name with chiptune music, Bottom Feeders mix pop rock with sea shanties, ω-3 does whatever the fuck they’re doing, and so on, and so on.

And yes, I will point this out in the actual fic, because I don’t even know much about music, but Blaine does, and I assume he has an absolute field day with all this information.

Anyway, my favourite band is Wet Floor. Stan Wet Floor.

Oh and remember Off the Hook? They are also a girl group. One of their songs, Ebb and Flow, is the inspiration behind the title.

I listened a lot to the soundtrack while writing it. It’s really upbeat and if there’s some singing, it’s in a made-up squid language. Nintendo is aware of the music’s popularity. As a result it even hosts hologram concerts for Off the Hook and the Squid Sisters (the hosts from the first Splatoon game).

This particular concert even has K.K. Slider from Animal Crossing as an opening act!

Why Splatoon 2?

Why indeed. All I can say is that I love this game a lot and I saw reasons for Kurt and Blaine to like it. It’s a fun game and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. The music and gear felt like an added bonus. And to be honest, should there be a reason? I just thought to myself “what if Kurt and Blaine meet through Splatoon 2?” and here we are.

I didn’t pick the first Splatoon since I never played it, and Splatoon 3 only got announced last year and it’ll be released in September 2022. Oh, and like I mentioned, all the events mentioned are real, so Splatoon 2 also made the most sense for a fic set in 2018. Splatoon 2 got updated a lot in its 5 year lifespan, so I did have to let go of some game things that weren’t out yet in the time the fic takes place (one day, Kurt will get a Kensa Splatterscope), but again, you don’t need to know that for the fic.

So why Splatoon 2?

Why not.

I hope you enjoy!

[yozzers]

vexos hcs and random notes

ill update as i go, because yes i do update my masterlists every once in awhile, i should probably add them to my pinned... 

General

I sincerely hope they have a small living arrangement so I can inflict them with the pain of having to share almost everything with each other

I just want Shadow and Lync to share a bunk

Like to think that alongside Volt, Mylene and Lync were also recruited by Hydron

None of them officially joined until they were a bit older but probably trained to eventually join the Vexos; in the mean time they probably worked for Hydron or something like that

Volt recruited at 11; Lync a year later and Mylene following not long after (respectively 13, 8, 12 when they’re all gathered)

My reasoning to why Volt is patient with Lync’s antics and Mylene less so but doesn’t lash out as badly as you think she would around annoying little kids; grew up tgt moment

Spectra probably forced his way into the Vexos like “hiiii i see you dont have any Vexos members <3″ bcs obv he wasn’t using royal scientist dad privelages (i think, bcs Clay seems horrified abt Spectra being a Vexos and well, being Spectra) 

Shadow had an advantage of being a nobleman (in terms of him being accepted into the Vexos’ ranks)

the Vexos and their set of rules magent-ed on the fridge door or something and every time they go over a page they have to staple/tape a new page on

Joined in this order, Volt, Spectra, Shadow, Mylene, Lync, Gus 

Vexos being a “chance of death low but the chance is still there” type of job... they feel like idols girl help they are bakugan idol group who work for the government 

sorry the way the vestal kids talk about them... going to treat the Vexos like a kpop group now

Spectra Phantom / Keith Fermin 

[canon] son of a (royal?) scientist. definitely had it good and comfy

think it’d be REALLY funny if he already knew Shadow before he became Spectra, Shadow just doesn’t recognize him bcs of his stupid get up

throws childhood friends Shadow Spectra at you, just two weirdos 

Keith specifically keeps Shadow from ever meeting his sister which is why neither of them really recognize each other

Pre-Spectra; probably would’ve been really into bakugan biology and what not. Feels like the kind of person to talk w/ his dad about “do you think we could change their appearance if we messed w/ their mechanical ball form or would it not carry over to their released forms”

this mf looks like a biology major i feel it in my guts 

mom isn’t dead she just divorced Clay bcs he didn’t know how to balance family and work, good for her

probably lives in another city now, and it’s a bit more of a hassle to meet with her kids so they don’t see her as much but she is present in their lives (keep in contact in other ways) 

probably went a bit silent when Keith went missing

didn’t bleach his eyebrows bcs he didn’t want to harm the skin around there and he never thought he’d take the mask off around others, or about how stupid he’d look without the mask

please please please please draw him with his pink hair roots in his MS fit he should've grown out some of his bleached hair by then

daddy issues is truly the root of evil

Gus Grav

Just Some Gut background; middle class just living life

[canon?] was going on a route to being an “idol brawler”, because that’s kind of what their brawls felt like, since it was all purely for show with some competition. it felt less like a sport and more spectacle.

Gus wanting to be an idol brawler is actually such a funny string of words put together I’m making that a thing, if he didn’t join the Vexos he would’ve been an idol brawler

I like the Gus needs glasses hc (shoutout to @marmeladebois ‘s post on that) 

The hc of him being half human and Runo’s half brother is so good 

Cooks well but refuses to help cook fr the Vexos (unless Spectra specifically asks) --> that job is usually left to Volt

not related but reminds me heavily of yugioh vrain’s Spectre (or other way around... Gus was the blueprint) 

Shadow Prove

[handbook canon] a vestal nobleman 

has an older brother (oc; Lux- casual Haos brawler)

inferiority complex or whatever, the only thing he bested his brother in was Bakugan

the Prove family being typical prim proper noble family and forcing Shadow to be repressed is something, but the Proves having the same kind of wavelength as Shadow but in different variations is funnier. They’re just Like That.

Probably not a military family, does work closely with the government still; um im thinking somewhere under the Fermins but not by much

Considered running away from home several times 

Unwillingly has knowledge on Vestal classic literature/ music

hard clutching a wall whenever he wants to join in on discussions about it bcs he knows this stuff but no way is he going to make himself look like a nerd + hes not actually that interested

*debates you for fun and bcs i hate u <3* 

You know how he doesn’t take his job as a Vexos member super seriously, I wonder:

did his parents force him to be a Vexos since he wasn’t interested in the political side of his family and probably against taking up anything related to it, so they had him do something that’d still be beneficial to the family?  

joined to pursue a freedom he didn’t have as a nobleman and is now just taking it really easy?

has clowns > jesters debate with volt; obv he’s team clown, volt is team jester

incredibly irrelevant but if he was a human he’d be chinese, i’ve claimed him, prodigal son older brother and fail son dynamic is there 

Mylene Ferrow

While I like the idea of her being from a military family, I want to make her like Ling Wen (TGCF) in the sense she started from the bottom and climbed to the top... it fits her ambitious nature of grasping for more, she hasn’t reached what she considers the top just yet... 

[very Ling Wen specific but Mylene being put in jail fr crimes unknown to me and being recruited  by Hydron bcs she kicked serious ass is an entertaining thought] 

I like to think she’s closest to Shadow due to the fact he kind of forces his presence onto her so... not her choice in that matter. “annoying” to “endearingly annoying, you still aren’t getting special treatment though”

Ofc Volt and Lync are on the same level, but I think they all know when to give each other space so they’re more of a “we hold each other at a distance, but we’re aware of out closeness which is enough for us”

Then its Spectra and then Gus in the “closest to Mylene” scale; she just straight up hates Gus and it’s mutual

whoever made the “Mylene and Spectra were exes” hc I think it’s really funny so I’m adding it here 

terrible fashion, she’s the one who chose the outfits when she and Shadow went to earth; her fashionable armor look she usually has was designed with Volt’s help, she just voiced what she generally wanted 

Her red lipstick look was bcs she thought it’d make her look more serious/ intimidating (Volt and Lync approved, it rlly does work on her)

Shadow matches w/ her (via his red nails) after they get teamed up tgt several times bcs he thinks they’re basically the go-to duo matchup whenever they’re assigned work n it’d be cool

Very forthcoming about the fact she used to be considered a criminal and was from same rundown area Volt and Lync come from

She’s grateful she got out of jail but she still has no respect for Hydron and despite how much she tries to hide it she does make it pretty clear to him she doesn’t really like him

I wish I had more to say about her... but It’s all relationship esque, i think in general she’s enjoyable and good so what I want more out of her is character dynamics

Lync Volan

[eng dub] he has grandparents; whether they’re still alive or not is...? 

was part of the same area Volt is from

probably aware of each other but didn’t really know each other

you sound like you have mommy issues 

came from the same area as Volt, but lived further out and closer to those areas where there were some bits of nature left 

ill expand on why he got picked up by Hydron another day lazy rn

Volt Luster

[canon] he’s from an area that just straight up looks like yugioh 5ds’ Satellite, and Hydron was the one who pulled him out of there  

He says Hydron pulled him out of there when he was a kid? I’d assume at youngest it’d be like Hydron (8) and Volt (11)

has a neat collection of handmade jester dolls 

lot more artistic than he seems 

Had his guardian bakugan with him the longest; had Brontes even before he met Hydron

Would the others consider him weird fr having a talking Bakugan that acted friendly with him n cracked jokes? 

[soyouareandrewdobson]

…the ugly. SYAC: The Master Review 4

Last post I covered much of what I consider the good or passable strips of SYAC of the pre-Dobbear era. What I have admittedly not covered yet, were three certain characters of the strip that exist beside Dobson.

Persistent Pam

 Curmudgeonly Carl

And… this guy I am not even sure has a name.

No, seriously. He shows up in like the 61th strip of the series for the first time and yet I never see his name mentioned once

All I know is that he is an accountant, who pities Dobson (for good reason)

And despite Dobson not liking alcohol, they regularly meet up in a bar as if they are some late 80s comedy duo

Funnily enough, he shows up way before Pam, who would have her premiere in these strips

 And despite only showing up in a few strips after her premiere (mostly to make “fun” of overbearing and snarky commissioners I suppose…)

 She actually managed something no other character or series by Dobson managed to get: A fanclub

 Not that she would really be of any major importance afterwards.

As for Carl, he is supposed to be something like an antagonistic embodiment of Dobson’s “old” art teachers and people being stuck in old ways, who shows up for the following strips forming a sort of arc.

In addition, it is very obvious, that Carl is supposed to be a mockery of people flaming Dobson. Not helped by the fact that THIS character sheet of him made by Dobson assures us, that there were quite a few even less “endorsing” things he wanted to name the character.

Yet funnily enough, Carl turned into such a popular character with readers, Dobson was essentially “forced” to make him reappear in other strips. Not of the “classical” SYAC strips, but he showed up as the “antagonist” to Tenku in the storydriven multi pagers. Though even antagonist is a strong word, as he is essentially more of a jerkish art teacher and college advisor who is harsh on Tenku, but actually has his best interests in mind. To the point he even offers him to be his “harsher” art critic in the years till he enters college, because he wants to see him grow artistically.

 However, Carl was also more of an “accident”. Cause when it came otherwise to tackling criticism or things that irked Dobson (and were not anime related) he would end up more or less creating strips that painted him in a manner where he would supposedly always look like “the better” compared to his opposition or mock it. Which is where a lot of the irk Dobson would earn over the years eventually comes from.

Now to be fair, I do not want to call every comic in that regard “strawmanning”, nor do I want to say that Dobson doesn’t have the right to also mock to a certain extend the mentality of certain “snobs” and so on. For example…

On one hand, I know there are people out there who think they are “special” by having the best tools at their disposal. When in reality you can achieve good results also with less expensive stuff. So mocking that sort of attitude is fine to me to some extend

BUT, when you also make down the line a comic like this…

… essentially making yourself come off as a “better” artist or person than others because you have “chosen” the better mass produced crap (btw, that is coming from someone who types this review on a Mac that runs Windows) , then the hypocrisy ends up to be rather strong with you.

 Which is also essentially the biggest issue with the strips I am about to show. The hypocrisy of Andrew Dobson. And no, I do not mean the tumblr blog by that. I mean the simple fact, that the content of some of the soon to follow strips gets kinda muddled when you take into consideration some of the things real life Dobson had said and done either at the time or in the years to come. Well that and the way how he tries to mock issues people have with his work, not realizing how he is essentially just reassuring those “silly critics” in their opinions while making his flaws more obvious to people that may have been previously unaware of them.

But enough talk, let me just show you in quick succession examples to confirm said point.

Considering Dobson’s longterm disdain for DnD you have to wonder what the joke really is outside of him portraying DnD players as ugly nerds, supposedly too geeky even for him. Which is hilarious in hindsight as he would years later become a fan of TAZ among other things.

Less hypocritical but the set up is kinda flawed. Like, you are obviously at a convention trying to sell stuff. Why would some old dude not interested in “kids crap” be at the convention anyway? Is he just bringing someone there and just wants to go, but first needs time to belittle your life choices?

 Rather hilarious in hindsight to me. Cause for someone claiming he has ideas that last for a life time and who seems rather distraught on the idea of others giving their input, he turned out to be so in need of ideas. Alex ze Pirate e.g. became from 2015 onward only defined by Dobson talking about the sexualities of his characters (and not even in comic as by that point it was discontinued, but rather in tweets and so on). Formera, which ran heavily on cheap shonen anime tropes ended up cancelled after two volumes, Cabin Rest was a failure after 20 strips, 2019 he relied primarily on cheap comics about Miraculous Ladybug and his understanding of certain genres is so bad, he can’t even think up the most basic ideas for a magical girl story.

Weirdly enough, that pitch of a garbage truck driver who fights crime? I think that could make for an enjoyable short story about a vigilante a la the Punisher or Sin-City.

 The way Dobson perceives criticism, while also essentially giving a quick rundown how he appreciated criticism in his childhood way better than in adulthood. Yeah, because criticism by your parents as a kid was always VERY constructive. (looks back at certain drawings from own childhood) brrr. And sorry Dobson, but sometimes criticism by strangers is better than criticism from friends. Cause friends may mince their words. Plus people have over time given you quite some insightful criticism aside “U SUX” when it comes to comics. You were just never willing to listen

Hey Dobson, you hear that? That is the sound of your career, dying and no one caring.

Yeah, I think someone who made such “brilliant” comedy as in these comics, totally has the right not to listen to what seems to be solid theoretical advice.

BTW, that Talus comic… I swear to god the worst “joke” Dobson ever told.

 Wow. You essentially make a point why you suck at drawing. While still not trying to change.

And as someone else once said: Don’t play with fire if you can’t deal with the heat, BLOCK-son!

This is not how I perceived your shit over the years. See, on one hand it is true that Alex ze Pirate e.g. has its own webpage to read the comic for free. HOWEVER most of his comics Dobson would hide from the start behind a paywall. The idea being that he would e.g. put a small reading sample of 10-15 pages up somewhere and then expect people to buy his comic for full price to get the rest. And you know, if you are e.g. a professionally published writer, that is fine. But when your average art output looks like THIS

And you expect people to pay more than 10 dollars for something that is only around 70 pages long while most people can get 200+ pages for the same amount of money that look like this…

 You can frankly go and screw yourself.

On one hand I get that the joke is meant to be, that as an independent content creator you may find yourself in a weird spot where your “child friendly” work may be put in a palace between edgier stuff other creators sell at conventions. On the other hand, I find it rather insulting in hindsight, that self declared feminist Andrew Dobson portrays such competition as either psychopathic murderers or stereotypical cartoon bimbos. If modern day Dobson saw the same strip by any other person, he would be insulted on behalf of the female that she is portrayed as a bimbo, when she could also be a very smart and attractive woman who knows how to tell brave and sexy stories.

Also, I have read your “child friendly” stuff, Dobson. I would call Atea or Alex abusive bitches who like to bully orphans but child friendly? Not to forget that your work is so basic and shallow in depth, it’s like the someone tried to create a chimera out of some of the worst traits associated with Dora the Explorer, 80s toodler cartoons and the Fairly Oddparents.

I frankly hate this theory on comedy. It is true, a lot of comedy can be deprived from conflict, misunderstandings etc. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and other cartoons as well as screwball comedies such as Rat Race can depend on it. Heck, one of my favorite comedians of all time is Christopher Titus, who based his entire career on the misery and absurdity of his life.

But comedy is not just defined by misery and conflict.

There are for example also the following theories when it comes to comedy…

And to get back e.g. to Titus, yes, he has build a lot of his comedy on the bad stuff that happened in his life. But he is also someone who in his comedy has build a lot of punchlines on the absurdity of certain situations he has been in life but which in a way have enriched his life positively.

 What I am trying to say is, comedy (and entertainment in that regard) does not just have to be defined by misery. And all things considered Dobson, you could have really tried to also just make comics wherein either you or your characters are just happy with their situation in life.

For example, this page from an Owl House fancomic?

I think it holds more entertainment value than your “joke” right here, despite not even telling a joke.

Simply because as a page overall, it tries to convey a positive emotion. Which is more than I can say about the strip.

Because of a lack of different level of thickness regarding your lines, which would trick people into perceiving depth, the fact that the fill bucket and shade layers can only do so much to cover for the rather monochromatic dull nature of your comic, the fact that your characters are not really all that complex and look rather simplicstic even compared to stuff from a comic like this…

And that is just coming from the top of my head as someone who never studied art. If any reader has something to add, I am willing to listen

And considering you could in later years never keep up to any release schedule, which among other things resulted in only three SYAC strips in total being released in 2016, I say go fuck yourself. Not to forget that even some of the worst newspaper comic strips out there tend to actually find a decent following and good jokes eventually, otherwise they would not manage to stay popular for years, if not even decades.

As someone who has worked internships a lot in life, I just want to say fuck you in all our names. Glad to see you having just as much respect for interns than any other scumbag on the planet. Probably even less respect, cause you know, in some places interns tend to get paid.

Also, there is supposedly an entire real world story going on about Dobson having worked at his former university at the time the comic came out and Chaz is based on a fellow intern.

Things are unfortunately rather vague in that regard and only hold up by demonstrative evidence such as the name of Chaz showing up in certain pages of the university and Dobson’s internship being mentioned somewhere.

Well, would you look at that: People have different opinions on your stuff.

There are ways to draw memes funny and then there are ways to fail at them

 You failed.

Funnily enough, that comic rings a lot truer to text than you expect. Considering how Dobson would often emulate certain aesthetics in his comics of shows that were rather passee by the time he published his stuff, plus how he will obsess over certain trends and games for years to come (like Skyrim or his Quiet Hate Boner) while also being unaware about current trends (how do you e.g. not have heard of My Hero Academia by 2018 at least once by accident?) Dobson has always been kinda late to the party. Missing the “zeitgeist” of nerd culture and as such never quite finding an audience.

Yeah, what Pam says. Not helped by the fact that yes, the floating eyebrows are real. Look at some earlier sketches or “professionally published” comics by his and you will see that each time characters get excited, their eyebrows will suddenly split into sets of three and float higher than Pennywise’s victims.

Ironically, that fits real life Dobson at the time and later on even more so than this comic version did. Sorry, but what am I supposed to call a person who has an hate boner on anime for years for superfluous reasons, made Danny and Spot a “gaming webcomic” deliberately to piss on non Nintendo fans and has admitted in some by now deleted youtube video, that he kept a list of usernames from an old forum just to remember even years later the people that were mean to him online?

 Fuck both of you. I do not expect the Sixtin Chapel in the background, but something to filll up the empty space behind you is at times needed.

The comic here is actually called politics. … ironic how things changed once a certain reality show host turned president.

Jesus Christ. I am not even that much of a Transformers fan (Prime fan for life however) but even I know that this is not supposed to be what you design the head of a Transformer like. Not even if they ever produce the Transformers equivalent of Teen Titans Go.

Too bad you still can’t stand the heat, otherwise you wouldn’t have completely disappeared last year.

When you know you are in a no win situation, and still manage to choose an even dumber option to escape. I really don’t get it. I just think the Portal reference makes the comic dated and Dobsn’s attempt at a smug face looks so stupid. Like his cheeks are falling in and his mouth is about ready to get raped by a garden hose or something.

Yeah, considering Dobson’s later constant need for safe spaces and to be in control of a situation and the narrative, which led to so many blocks over the years… if you know anything about Dobson, how this comic becomes harsher in hindsight is rather self explanatory. I just want to say one thing: There is a difference between genuine agoraphobia and just wanting to be by yourself. And I think Dobson just prefers the later on average. Which is okay, but humans still need to interact with other human beings in one form or another, even just for the sake of keeping their mental health stable. Why do you think are so many people getting depressed in times of covid lockdowns, despite many having all sorts of technical gimmicks at their disposal to at least keep boredom at bay?

And by putting himself into a bubble like that, I think Dobson has deprived himself of some of the most basic human interaction, which was likely a severe factor in his mental degeneration over the last years.

It is still a valid suggestion! Just draw some cartoon characters or a nice fantasy scenario on a mural and earn yourself some bucks. Just be sure they are not by Disney or the Mouse will tear down the school!

… Just google up the words Andrew Dobson and Samus Aran commission by ED and you will see how this comic just further shows how much Dobson seems to actually be proud of being an unproductive asshole.

 And by the way, I know that any form of artistic work takes time. Just writing these review posts takes a lot of time for me. But that doesn’t change the fact that people should post and create stuff in a timely fashion, especially when there are e.g. deadlines to hold up too. And by the way, Sloth’s don’t have fingers, they have claws!

And that is it.

Sorry if I missed anything folks, but I just saw how many pages in word this is already filling up, so I call quits for this part here right now. I think I made my point about how Dobson trying to badly deflect arguments people may make against his art and work ethics via jokes clear enough, while also showing some posts that are either harsher or hilarious in hindsight.

Next time we will however address one certain issue about our main character, that has been not directly addressed here. In the meantime, have a little fun video that shows hopefully how entertainment and a certain amount of comedy can be gained NOT via misery.

[albatris]

uhm hi there im new to your blog, and your ocs/snippets seem really interesting! i also love your art, but i have no idea whos who and i can’t seem to find a master post with all of your characters, what they look like, their pronouns, backstory etc. would it be possible for you to maybe give a brief rundown of each character or link some posts related to them?? it doesn’t have to be super in depth and please DO NOT feel obligated to do this at all if you don’t want to. but id love to know a little bit more about them! hope you have a good day and sorry for the long message :))

hello!!! thank you so much, that’s so nice of you to say!!! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen so far :D :D

now, you’ll have to forgive me, it’s super late and this reply will NOT be neat or concise whatsoever....... which kinda sets the tone for most of this blog tbh so I guess it’s cool

I don’t really have any sort of masterpost, most of what I post about these guys is in the form of snippets and rambles and usually people just jump on board wherever..... which, yeah, can be confusing and difficult for folks to keep up with especially if they’re new HAHAHA

I will start out with the bits I *do* have nice neat intros for! I have two main WIPs, All The Doors Are Open and Undertow! Undertow is currently more of a side project, but you can read about the characters here, and here’s some art for Aster and Kit and also Meg so you have faces to the names c:

and now this:

the main four I speak about on this blog are Noa, Tris, Shara and Kai from ATDAO, n I have these handy character intros on hand for this exact purpose!! here u go (I mean here’s the link to the old post but it’s still got the wrong name for Tris so eh)

n honestly knowing these four is like 90% of the work tbh, I am a simple man, I post content about the same four OCs 24/7 until everyone is sick of it,,

Tris and Noa are the protagonists and viewpoint characters! 

Tris’s plotline involves him trying to figure out what happened to his older brother Jacob, who got hit by a car and straight-up vanished from existence entirely, and involves a quest into an unreality that can be described as “getting lost down the back of an interdimensional sofa”. also there’s a sword and a cat. think fantasy/adventure vibes that veer into horror

Noa’s plotline involves her work at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities! and her becoming tangled up with otherworldly energies and gaining some strange powers, as well as her clash with basically-a-cartoon-supervillain Laurence Marrick Thiele, whose full name I like to type out and who’s attempting to manipulate interdimensional doorways for his own gain and putting a hell of a lot of people’s lives in peril. think mystery/sci-fi vibes!

Shara and Kai aren’t viewpoint characters but they’re still up there as MCs and I love them! Shara’s story centres around her attempting to solve three mysteries from her childhood which she believes will lead her to the source of the apocalypse, and Kai’s story involves them dealing with the emotional and interpersonal repercussions of losing seven years of their life to a time loop and their attempts to reconnect with their family, who thought they were dead

annnnnnnnd that’s basically all the nice neat concise stuff I can give ya! 

under the cut will be some additional rambles you don’t really need to read, I’m not so good at coming up with Nice Neat Character Summaries on the fly, so it’s just me scrambling about to find vaguely relevant posts and links..... it will unfortunately be a bit of a mess and perhaps only tangentially relevant

cannot emphasise enough that I debated not even including the next stuff but hey! I like talking

OK SO

Other side characters you might see around are Alice (she/her, red curly hair, undercut, dresses in lots of green) and Jet (he/they, green spiky hair, freckles, dresses like a thrift store got hit by a tornado), who are Noa’s teammates at the DII! Alice is Noa’s love interest n is cool and mysterious and Jet is the team leader n is completely chaotic and unhinged

these two

There’s also Kai’s younger brother Kieran (he/him) and Tris’s siblings Becca (she/her) and Jacob (he/him), none of whom I have ever drawn more than twice and whose appearances seem to change every time I write about them so I’m not going to describe them here hahahaha

I do have a Kieran for you though uhhhh where’s my One Decent Kieran Drawing

that’s the one!

anyway, backstories are................ a lot. so I don’t think I’m gonna go into too much of it here on this post

I have, like........ a collection of posts scattered all over the place that kind of go into some things? but in very tangential ways. I’ll toss you some plot + character rambles that might be of interest! though my rambles are not everyone’s cup of tea ‘cause they’re, well, rambling

first! the plot of the story is here! which might give you some context for the Everything! this one is a Big ramble, not all of them are like this lol

Greer siblings!

romance?

here’s Jacob info for an ask response I did one time which is one of the few posts where I talk about Jacob at length ‘cause he’s just lots of spoilers

also did one for Kai which might have some info for ya?? but idk if it’s all that relevant

might come back and add more rambles later, it is currently 2 in the AM

or I might come back and be like “logan could you really not think of a better way to answer this question” and delete the rambles

yeehaw thx for listening I love you

also apologies for the complete and utter lack of info on Kieran he is a mystery that eludes me still

[excorcismic]

uhm . . . cheesed to meet you ?? - HI GANG !! what’s up , i’m hylia and i . . . love . misa and death note with my entire heart . I KNOW FOR A FACT i will probably pick up more characters along the way but i couldn’t have picked a better one to start out with !! i have experience writing both misa & light - i actually am more experienced writing light than misa , but i still have a lot of experience with her under my belt !! i’m currently writing him in another group and when i saw duality i just HAD to write her here - i’m so excited to plot w/ y’all !! so lemme tell you the basic facts & some connections and ideas i have under the cut c: ( this got long i’m so sorry )

ooooooooooooo you wanna plot with misa so bad oooooooo - AHEM . so . 

IF YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH DEATH NOTE / MISA : death note is a manga / anime revolving around a smart young man ( light yagami ) who discovers a supernatural notebook who can take the life of any human as long as the writer knows their name & face . light uses this book to essentially try and purge the world of evil , earning the alias ‘kira’ ( who gains a following ) , and misa , who acquires a death note of her own , seeks him out as the second kira . she possesses things that he doesn’t , so essentially she becomes his partner in crime - she , falling in love with him ( or more so the idea of him she created for herself ) , and he , entertaining her fantasies in exchange for her abilities and assistance . it’s . . . way more complicated in detail and honestly pretty sad but that’s the getgo . she’s a pretty girl with a very powerful notebook and she likes a guy with a powerful notebook that sees her more as a tool he can use to further his plans . OH OH OH and also she has a protective monster lady who’s in love with her and looking after her and threatening to clap light if he hurts misa in any way . 

death note . . . is a story about how people who were good can become awful towards other people and themselves if you give them a bit of power . 

BUT ANYWAY . misa actually has a much happier life here than in death note !! it’s . . . still kinda eh in some places but overall much better since that godforsaken notebook doesn’t exist and isn't here to screw anyone's lives up .

she's a former child actor, now a musician in a pop punk band called 'your friends & the skeletons!!' but as of rn with her taking a break from big performances and touring she's just a streamer operatin' out of alucard and trying to entertain herself since sometimes the world gets a little too big for her and she needs to take a step back.

it’s a pretty cute life & that’s the rundown !! of course , it’ll be more detailed and developed in my intro for her , but that being said - CONNECTIONS .

OHHHH YOU WANNA PLOT OUT THESE WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS WITH ME SO BAD OOOOOOHHH AND OHHHH YOU WANNA LIKE THIS POST FOR ME TO DM YOU FOR PLOTTING SO BAD OHHHHHHHHH

okay so obviously some band mates !! YF&TS i imagine is a four-piece with misa on rhythm guitar & vocals , then lead guitar , bass , and drums . i imagine they’re all friends with misa , but maybe one person has been friends with misa since like . . . forever . and has seen her go through literally everything .

so , misa lives alone . maybe i’ll have her look for a roommate along the way but as for right now , even though she lives by herself ( and honestly is a lil lonely ) , i really like the idea that maybe she’s the helper neighbor that wants to befriend everyone that lives on her floor , runs to get groceries , always visits and checks in on people , etc . !! so neighbor friends pretty please !!

obviously if u wanna make ppl be fans of misa & her band that is a-okay with me just pls keep in mind they’re kinda big but not . . . big big . like they’ve got some dedicated fans but not full on stans y’know

SO  . . . folds hands . i kinda like the idea that misa hasn’t been through that many serious relationships ( always gets her heart broken through them ) but maybe there was that one serious ex-partner she had and they broke it off for whatever reason . it’d have to be when she was 18-20 and they’d be together for maybe about two or three years before her career takes off and stuff and yeah it’d be the saaaad relationship that fizzled out even tho it was serious for a bit

also some not so serious/long relationships where misa got her heart broken !! fun times !! misa throws her full heart into things way too easily so this could’ve happened in many different ways . flings ?? check . short-term relationships ?? check . she wrote a letter for someone on a starbucks napkin asking them out and they rejected so whenever she comes into said starbucks she feels shy & awkward ordering something ?? check . ( we can have fun with this basically it’s ‘ misa tried it with y/m and it didn’t work out and she’s still lonely ’ )

friends please !! friends that misa’s made in alucard !! also friends with benefits maybe !! idk !! misa is a very friendly person she will be your friend if you say ‘hi’ in a positive tone towards her !!

oh i think it’d b rly funny if there was one person misa kept trying to befriend and they’re just rly stubborn abt it for some reason bc idk maybe they find misa annoying or something anyway give me sb who misa wants to be friendly with n they’re just No abt it for whatever reason

ONE OF THE THINGS I HAVE FOR MISA AS A STREAMER IS THAT SHE’S RLY INTO THE PARANORMAL AND RECORDS STUFF WITH IT SO PARANORMAL GHOST ADVENTURES PALS PLEASE !!

she’s also a gaming streamer so imagine she gets into a fight with sb behind a screen on a game and/or stream and then finds them in alucard like ‘oh fuck’ aka cyber enemies

also the exact opposite scenario with cyber friends aka misa makes a friend on a game and they meet each other irl and it’s cute !!

misa . . . is not a huge party girl but i imagine she has ppl that regularly invite her to parties and stuff so there’s that . but like . she only knows these people in context of partying - they’re her party friends and that’s it and her relationships with them are just kinda shallow .

i’d ALSO like a friend she makes that’s maybe a little more sheltered & naive to the world than she is so she just takes them to cool places and stuff !! shows them what it’s like to live on the ‘ wild side ’ !! whether it’s driving to a 24 hr gas station for candy and snacks in the middle of the night and staying out until sunrise just on the road or just sitting at misa’s apartment and watching true crime documentaries in their jammies . just sb misa’s gonna take like ‘ hey we’re gonna show u what LIVING is like ’

actual shipping . . . i would love to explore at a point but i wanna explore other things first so that’ll just be smth that comes up in development maybe !! i want misa to get a chance to experience what actual love is and explore the relationship aspect of it so i’m open to it but also i just wanna develop it n let it come naturally . filled !

ANYWAYS . i’m open to rly anything !! enemies ?? friends ?? frenemies ?? friends or enemies with benefits ?? unrequited crushes ?? exes ?? found family ?? party pals ?? streamer pals/enemies ?? LET’S PLOT IT OUT I’M SO EXCITED

sorry this is a long as hell list anyways let’s plot out some relationships even tho i’m bad at plotting and trust me the intro is. probs gonna be even longer. i am so sorry.

ANYWAYS ILY ALL IM SO EXCITED TO WRITE/PLOT W/ U GUYS

- - - - - - - - - - - POST-EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT EDIT : okay so this one is rly specific but , , , i rly would like if maybe misa had sb to go to the cirque du eradicus with ?? probably as a date !! a date that doesn’t have to amount to anything but they’re gonna b the one who witnesses misa go into the hall of mirrors n it’s gonna be kind of like a connection since they’re gonna have been together when that stuff happens and it could be rly fun to work with in the future . just gonna put the age limit for this one at 22 - 26 just bc gaps and all !! i think it could be cute if it goes well or interesting if it doesn’t but . yeah idk they can split off at some point for other threads bt ANYWAYS I JUST THINK IT’D B FUN filled !

also if anyone wants to bring me anyone from death note i will kiss u ESPECIALLY for light , l , rem , or matsuda . pls . maybe these characters can ACTUALLY get a normal fuckin’ life this time around - ( sometimes we just want to live in the yotsuba arc forever where everyone’s runnin around solvin mysteries and not scheming against each other - )

death note hits differently .

[edge-lorde]

hp update: its ur favorite tumblr user back at it again with another great post. thats right, as promised here is a more in depth look at the recent dragon themed time sensitive event!

this event takes place in year 6. bill is graduated but has been coming back to the school periodically to teach us bootleg DADA just like harry did in the books. it is on one such occasion that bill lets it slip that his next job from gringotts involves him going to the dragon reserve that we know charlie will eventually work at. bill had not told charlie about this job prior to this discussion precisely because of what happens next, which is that charlie wants to go.

this brings me back to year 4 days with the first charlie focused sidequest, where we scrounged up money to by what may or may not have been a dragon egg (it was not) from a strange man who had been seen trying to approach other unaccompanied minors walking around hogsmeade. this pure of dragon centric heart, but dumb of dragon centric ass quality was what made me start liking charlies character in the game in the first place. he begins negging his older brother in a way that is very familiar to me as a younger sibling. i as the mc of course jump on the bandwagon with charlie immediately. 

bill sounds very defeated in this part because he knows the negging wont end, and/or knows that he will eventually cave to charlies demands. “no you cant come.” he says with a sigh.

but well see about that, because charlie and i go ambush bill at work to ask again. 

as stated previously bill works at gringotts bank, which is run by goblins. i already had access to the location diagon alley, but before this event gringotts itself was closed to me. newly unlocked, charlie and i walk inside. unlike the hogwarts kitchens, it does not feel like walking into hell for me to do this. unlike house elves which only have 1 basic model used for every elf except for the 1 named elf, there is some variety in the goblin designs. there appears to be one basic goblin face that i can tell, but its paired with several different outfits and hairstyles, giving them the illusion of originality typically spent on unnamed background characters. there are also 3 named goblin characters with all their own stuff.  

the first is obviously griphook, the only real goblin character from the books. hes bills supervisor. in the books hes a pretty unlikable guy but here, though hes not nice exactly, he seems at least kind of chill. he doesnt kick charlie or me out for barging in and says its ok for us go on the mission with bill. its nice to see him unstressed. 

the other 2 goblins are the perhaps, hopefully, cool ones. one is younger than the rest and has some friendly dialog with you and his other named goblin friend, who possibly exists so the first one has someone to banter with. they dont do anything else this event but gringotts stays open after the event is completed so hopefully they will come back again and get their own plotlines. 

anyway, charlie and i harass bill at work for a bit. his boss comes in, hears our plea, and doesnt immediately tell us to leave.  instead he tells us the rundown of bills mission: a long time ago a goblin boasted that he could craft a golden dragon egg that would be indistinguishable from the real thing. he did, and it was. so much so that a dragon destroyed his house and stole it, i think he died in the process. 

“so,” says griphook, “that is why we must send you, 18 year old we just hired, to go to a remote location filled with dragons by yourself to rifle through their nests and bring back what is rightfully ours. no we dont know which dragon took the egg or even the type. yes you can bring your little brother and his friends.” 

sounds legit. charlie and i convince bill to not only let us come with him, but also our other classmates from his DADA class due to scheduling mishaps. we go gather the rest of the class to tell them about this but only merula, penny, and barnaby show up and so only they get to go on the field trip, which is convenient because otherwise wed have half the school out there and that would be entirely too many characters for the devs to write at once. 

we borrow the same tent the canon characters will eventually use in all their camping shenanigans in the book from hagrid and get to the dragon reserve via portkey. the reserve now appears on the stairs screen as a permanent new location, not a fleeting one as i once thought. theres dragons flying all around, majestic as hell. 

its too late in the day to start searching so we set up camp and settle in, roast marshmallows, barnaby tells a story about a vampire broomstick. then we go inside the tent and play truth or dare. im asked to pick at one point which of my friends id most like to have with me if i were to get lost in the woods. i pick barnaby because hes the one who asked, but really id probably want merula there more. barnaby is supposed to be into dueling but ive never seen him in a real fight. ive seen merula take a Cruciatus curse and then get up and walk. pennys whole thing is potions too. i thought this choice would be relevant to something in the event but it was not. 

in the truth or dare game, merula gets bill to tell some embarrassing stories about charlie as a kid. he talks about charlie putting wings on their rat and a dragon mask on their owl, pretending that they are real dragons. everyone laughs.  this his a cord with charlie though and he storms out. we wrap up truth or dare and go to bed. 

the next day we begin the search.charlie has not come back yet. we realize this and begin freaking out, start looking for him instead. we scare a mother dragon off its nest for unfathomable reasons. eventually we hear charlies voice coming from inside a cave. we go in, charlie is alive and uneaten, but has a broken leg. he ran off to find the egg by himself in order to prove himself as teen boys are wont to do. bill and i then realize the other 3 didnt follow us into the cave, and a big ol dragon walks in. i gotta fight it singlehandedly while bill heals charlie in the back. 

the boss fight was actually pretty hard. it took me like 5-6 tries to beat the dang thing thing. much enjoyment many high stakes. i put a sleeping spell on it to stop its attack at the end, though i had the option to use the Cruciatus curse which seems a little intense, game. then the other 3 run in and are like cool your safe! sorry we couldnt help u fight the dragon, there was a dragon. im like “yes, understandable.”

bill had given up on finding the egg at this point, but then charlie finds it! its a gold egg. in retrospect this egg might have been the egg that will inspire the gold egg stealing challenge in hp book 4 but i forget if that was inspired by a story or not. 

then we have a cool down level with bill and charlie, where they both apologize, and charlie says what he did was stupid, but i insist its wasnt stupid it was cool and good even though that is factually wrong because thats what i would say in real life regardless. bill and charlie promise to never speak of this trip again, especially not to their mom. 

the last level is us going back to gringotts and regaling griphook with the tale of our journey, including the marshmallow and truth or dare bits. he says “great job, teens!” and then we all jump up in the air and the theme song plays as we freeze midair and the colors fade to black and white. we all learned some valuable dragon based lessons today friends. it took me 2 full hours to write this and i have to wake up at 6 tomorrow. 

[askthegemgrumps]

Okay so,,, Im just getting into this and I have no clue what’s happening can you help me with like backstories and such? Idk man

@dinah-kitty-52

Okay, 1? I love you, and I wish you luck surviving in this content desert.

I’ve scrolled through some of my old posts to jog my memory, so I’ll give you the best rundown that I can for not having used this blog in a while and having a computer with none of the old CG files. Most of my headcanons or speculations for this au line up with the general consensus for backstory and characters, but little things differ here and there.

Also, please note that some of this au’s content... didn’t age well... From my scan of the Crystal Grumps blog, a few people have technically been removed from this au (which I support) but I will do my best to report things as they were.

Arin: I think he’s a pink rhodochrosite? He was a gem technician on Homeworld and was tasked (I believe by Orange Diamond or Blue Diamond) to do experiments on fusing shattered gems. Arin quietly objected to the work at first but he did his job and made many half-formed abominations. However, he did have one truly successful experiment on Homeworld: the fusion of two gems named Sunshine and Zyanne. Two halves of two gems combined to make someone entirely new: Suzy. Arin defected with Barry and they landed on earth together (I’m pretty sure)

Barry: Orange Diamond. In this au there is no large revolution, but Barry leaves behind his life on Homeworld for reasons that I can’t entirely remember. I think he just wasn’t happy? Also, there was some messed up stuff going on behind closed doors (ninjas, Arin’s work, etc.). He befriended Arin over some time on Homeworld and they escaped together. I don’t think anyone ever made any content about Barry faking his own death like Rose Quartz from the main show, but he may have done it?

Brian & Dan: Brian is a bloodstone and Dan is a Cummingonite because we had to. They are elite warriors, specially produced gems made for their ability to move undetected and to strike before their enemy knew they had company. Dan and Brian are ninjas. They always come in pairs (I think that is well accepted but I can’t remember), so Dan and Brian have been together since the very beginning. However, ninjas have a more nefarious purpose beyond the murder on the tin- ninjas are supposed to kill so thoroughly that there is never a chance of their target reforming. Ninjas shatter and eat other gems. It’s thrown around here and there that ninjas need to eat gems but its honestly just used for angst. These boys can get real sad.

Holly: was a commander in the past? Uh, I’m pretty sure she was shipped with Ross because this was all like 3 years ago so things are very different now.

Kevin: Ok so Kevin was supposed to be some sort of Prophecy Gem? He was a special boy or something. For some people, he was shattered and the two halves of his gem were combined with other stuff to make Matt and Ryan of Supermega, but I never got on that train.

Jacksepticeye: Green Diamond. I can’t remember much about him but he was there.

Jontron: Was Blue Diamond. Slightly malicious but just missed Barry. No longer included in some of the main au sources and has no replacement.

MatPat: Peridot equivalent. I can’t remember how much actual characterization he had.

Mark: He was an amethyst soldier, Jasper equivalent. In some of my writing, he previously commanded Matt and Ryan.

Matt and Ryan: In my writing, they are a pilot and a soldier respectively. Other people had them as halves of the Propechy, created by Arin (I think) after Kevin’s death. People are weird around them, especially Barry as he and Kevin were so close.

Pewdiepie: Yes, I know. He was White Diamond and is no longer included in main circles of the au. I never touched him in the first place. No thank u.

Ross: Remember the ninja partner thing? here’s where it gets sad. Ross was a ninja, left in a kindergarten by mistake for a while with another gem who became his sister. They were ninjas without knowing it, and they were there as partners. However, Ross’s sister’s gem was defective and cracked, and eventually she shattered. He keeps her shards with him when he leaves the kindergarten to live with the Grumps. Dan and Brian figure out that he is a ninja and both try to protect him from the horrors of what he was supposed to be and at the same time try to keep him in check for his safety and everyone else’s. I also did some toying around that he had persuasive powers and that he could (unknowingly) influence gems with his emotions.

Suzy: Like I said before, a fusion of two broken gems from Homeworld. She doesn’t really remember either of her past selves and is pretty stable.

Also NateWantsToBattle is there? I don’t remember much about him.

I have to cut this off because I need to leave for class here in a minute, though I’ve basically covered everyone? Other people try to include other YouTubers of note, but I never did. This au needs a lot of polishing (get the joke?) to fit to 2020 game grumps and everything that has happened in SU/SU: Future (even though we don’t follow that source material too strictly) but I hope you enjoy whatever content is out there now!

I can’t cover the fusions today bc there’s a ton and I don’t remember most of them but they’re there too.

[serenasoto-blog]

9 Best Places to Add Keywords Inside Content for On-Page SEO

Catchphrases. Web optimization is about catchphrases.

Right stated, huh.

Catchphrases resemble the seeds that connote the entire tree in itself.

Accordingly, they convey tremendous significance with regards to SEO.

Truly, SEO is nothing without watchwords.

Its everything about the best catchphrase rehearses, utilizes and the executives that prompts all around streamlined on page SEO.

Previously, I will proceed onward directly to the subject, it will be a great idea to convey a harsh foundation on catchphrase inquire about.

Substance cover up

1. Watchword investigate

2. #9 Best Places to Add Keywords in Content

3. 1. Website design enhancement Title – The #1 Best spot to include watchwords

4. 2. Meta depiction

5. 3. Title of page content

6. 4. Beginning passage of substance

7. 5. Headings and subheadings in content

8. 6. Fundamental substance

9. 7. Picture alt labels

10. 8. Stay writings

11. 9. Labels and breadcrumbs

12. Outline

Catchphrase inquire about

The world is loaded with words, characters and sounds. So do you put all of them any place you need, anyway you need?

No!!!

Truly, much the same as you can't talk b***s***t to anybody, you can't compose anything you desire, trusting getting included on the first page of Google.

In this way, you have to do an appropriate research before you even beginning composition.

I have quickly canvassed watchword explore procedure in my instructional exercise here.

To close to put it plainly, you can utilize Google straightforward hunt, just as different instruments for catchphrase explore.

Google catchphrase organizer, keywordtool.io, SEMRush,.. There are many out there.

OK… So now you're prepared with your rundown of catchphrases. Next what?

You will obviously begin composing on the theme. This is what you have to mind while adding watchwords to the substance piece.

#9 Best Places to Add Keywords in Content

Website design enhancement Title

Website design enhancement Meta portrayal

Blog entry title

Beginning passage of post

Headings/Subheadings

Fundamental substance

Picture alt labels

Stay writings

Labels and breadcrumbs

Lets comprehend individually.

1. Website design enhancement Title – The #1 Best spot to include catchphrases

website design enhancement title

Website design enhancement title is the MOST (I state multiple times) significant thing you can't pass up a great opportunity.

Fundamentally, it is this title appears on Google indexed lists in blue shaded connections.

So you can think about how idiotic will it be to skip including SEO title.

Let me clear one thing here.

In reality, regardless of whether you don't include SEO title and depictions (coming up straightaway), your substance despite everything can possibly be positioned!

Goodness God, at that point what was that previously? You may be thinking.

Truth is, its not tied in with planning for the most pessimistic scenarios all things considered!

Furthermore, on the off chance that you don't include these labels, Google will haphazardly pick the initial not many lines as the portrayal for your page, and the blog title as SEO title.

Also, wonder in the event that you that isn't as significant as what you could really had in charge of!

Right?!

Thus, don't face such challenges, simply compose a basic better than average SEO title.

It has be to totally pertinent to the substance and exact, long-tail!

In case you're utilizing WordPress, you can a few modules for this.

Yoast SEO, RankMath SEO are truly outstanding out there for holding nothing back web optimization benefits.

I have added connections to the modules toward the finish of instructional exercise.

Give them a shot!

2. Meta portrayal

That is second most significant spot.

Meta portrayals are essentially said metadata of the run of the mill site page.

You can check for metadata of destinations in their source code, which can be seen utilizing "View page source" (or Ctrl + U) in Google Chrome.

These are some place covered up inside <meta> labels in the source code.

As examined in the past subject, the equivalent modules, Yoast SEO, RankMath SEO can likewise be utilized to include meta portrayals in the substance.

Along these lines, when you include both the SEO title and depictions, you essentially state the Google, "Hello bae, please me. Take me with you."

Tips to remember while including meta information:

Try not to keep it excessively short or excessively long. The modules in WordPress help you with as far as possible.

In the event that conceivable include the center watchwords, in the beginning just as in the center of the meta portrayal.

Try not to include immaterial stuff here. This should be extremely important just as appealing at that point. Think, individuals perusing your portrayal ought to get spurred tom read your substance further by tapping the connection to your subject.

3. Title of page content

post title search engine optimization

This is only the genuine title of the substance that you see when you land on the page.

For instance, here in this example, "10 best places to include catchphrases inside substance" is the subject of this post.

This is additionally eqaully significant in light of the fact that it can possibly get the peruser's consideration.

Envision, if a peruser likes the title of your post, he will peruse on further. Or then again he may simply tap the back catch and skip perusing by any stretch of the imagination!

You won't care for that occur!

In this way, take a stab at including a sharp however alluring title to your blog entry.

As a tip, its better to keep the title long-tail here as well.

4. Beginning section of substance

WordPress modules like Yoast SEO request you to specify catchphrases in the beginning section of the substance.

Its not critical to state honestly. Be that as it may, including it, won't hurt you truly.

Consider it like the third limit for your peruser, the first being SEO title-depiction, and second, post title.

Who needs to lose individuals in the wake of snaring them in not once, however twice?!

Feel free to compose the primary passages for your posts.

5. Headings and subheadings in content

Headings resemble the little loosen up focuses in your article!

Truly, envision that it is so exhausting to peruse entire large lumps of content with no breakpoints in the center.

Senseless right?

Indeed, even I despise that. C'on, we are bloggers, advertisers, scholars. Not promoters or Ph.D. holders.

Try not to outrage please. I regard you as well.

So as you probably are aware, its imperative to include watchwords in headings and resulting subheadings in article.

This gives an away from to web search tools of something identified with the watchwords and valuable coming up in the accompanying segment.

Snappy tip: Never include superfluous sub-headers and headers in your substance. Break the substance into pieces as required and reasonable to facilitate its meaningfulness.

6. Fundamental substance

Furthermore, here's coming the body of your substance.

I will pressure more here.

There have been numerous contentions, a large number of them uncertain and even profoundly questioned with respect to what ought to be the specific include of watchwords in content.

Suppositions with respect to this shift from individual to individual, SEOs to SEOs, journalists to authors.

The best practice is to include the catchphrases just where required and coordinate the significance of the present setting.

In straightforward terms, I mean, simply be it common.

It ought NOT be constrained notice. Keep in mind, Google has treated such substance gravely previously.

You additionally may fall prey to Google's punishment, emerging by the spam factor.

7. Picture alt labels

picture alt labels for website optimization

Pictures resemble the magnificence of your article.

They add beat to the understanding experience.

As the time is advancing to an ever increasing extent, visuals have become a significant piece of our lives, Internet is no special case to it.

Thus, adding pictures to content is sound. Truly.

However, does the Google search bots truly comprehend your picture proerly like we people.

You may contend that, AI and Machine learning is changing the way Google bots decipher substance and visuals. I concur, master!

Yet at the same time its a best practice to add alt labels to the pictures in content.

Who knows, Google bots may be as yet searching for it?!

You can include these basically by altering the HTML code of your page.

In HTML, the <img> label serves picture on the site page. "alt" is one of the key traits of <img> tag, which you can alter utilizing any code supervisor of your decision.

Good karma!

Tip: The alt labels ought to carefully be basic, short and direct. Try not to be senseless to compose long queues and passages here.

Get familiar with picture website optimization in our article.

8. Grapple writings

Ever observed those blue hued hyperlinks on sites?

Did you consider it a spot to grandstand your watchwords?

Truly. The content on which a hyperlink is assembled, is called a "stay content".

All things considered, it fills in as an extraordinary open door for good SEO.

The truth of the matter is very generally welcomed that watchword focused on grapple writings fill in as solid advantage to both on page and off page SEO.

Ensure while composing stay writings, it needs to representation the connected substance extremely right. A ton of fledglings miss this out.

9. Labels and breadcrumbs

catchphrases in labels breadcrumbs

Truly, this isn't SO significant one. So I'm hardly any requiring some investment here.

Labels and breadcrumbs are essentially billboards on your site. Inquire as to why?

At the point when you read a concise substance, regardless of whether short or little, labels help to associate the substance with explicit subjects. This is especially valuable while having more substance than typical.

In spite of the fact that labels have been a pattern via web-based networking media, their utilization on online sites and entryways is as yet common.

Breadcrumbs are the office to sort out your substance into a chain of command.

This is something that you frequently find at the highest point of the substance on certain website pages.

Assembling everything, labels and breadcrumbs do support your site or blog look progressively sorted out in a way. Be that as it may, the decision is to actualize them is yours.

You can utilize your catchphrases in these and help Google and other web crawlers see better.

Synopsis

So people, since you have the information, its opportunity to execute it straight.

Beneath you can discover connections to different modules or applications for different stages, which will assist you with doing SEO.

[homebrewpodcast]

Transcript: Home Brew 08: Skeleton Party

Transcript: Home Brew 08: Skeleton Party

Thank you for your patience! Please explore this transcript of our latest episode at your leisure and look forward to more transcripts to be posted here and on the homebrewpodcast.podbean.com page! 

Order of events:

☕ Hero Cultus!

☕ Main topic: Shadow Work & A Skeleton Party Near You

☕ Mythic feature: El Sombreron (A Guatemalan Tale)

☕ Devotional thought with Danny

DANNY: Hi, and welcome to Home Brew podcast. I'm Danny…

JOHNA: And I’m Johna, two pagan friends exploring spirituality in the Modern Age.

DANNY: We’re queer…

JOHNA: And definitely not so white.

DANNY: So please be aware that we are grown-ups, who may discuss sensitive topics as they relate to our own experiences.

JOHNA: That being said, we welcome and incorporate the experiences of our listeners. You can contribute by messaging homebrewpodcast.tumblr.com—

DANNY: Or by tagging @homebrewpagans on Twitter. And so, let’s get into the episode!

[transition music]

DANNY: This episode we're going to have a new segment that we're gonna introduce in lieu of Make Talk Good, definitely not because we forgot to do—

JOHNA: —we didn't forget, we remembered very good.

DANNY: It's fine. But as we have no Make Talk Good to show you today, we also wanted to introduce the segment anyway called Hero Cultist and we're going to talk more about that in just a second.

JOHNA: And after Hero Cultist we’re going to get into our main topic, shadow work.

DANNY: Whoo!

JOHNA: The Ultimate skeleton party.

DANNY: Yeah, and then after that we're going to wrap our myth and our devotional thought kind of together as one, and you'll see what I mean when we get there.

JOHNA: Dude. 

BOTH: [laugh]

JOHNA: I'm so excited about this segment because I know we've been wanting to do some other stuff, but here it is. We are introducing hero cultist. We just want to take a few minutes to recognize the figures that may not be gods but have nevertheless made a huge impact on our culture or our development as people. I know—well, Danny, you haven't read American Gods, but maybe our reader has read American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

DANNY: I've read American Gods.

JOHNA: Oh, wait you did?

DANNY: Yeah! I haven't seen the TV show, though.

JOHNA: Oh, I haven't seen that either, but I only care about the book

BOTH: [laughs]

JOHNA: Um. There's a character that remarks something like “heroes are the same as gods, except they're allowed to fail.” This stuck with me for a long time, so I want to find ways to respect the influence that some figures had in my real actual life practice. So, for Hero Cultist I have a shout-out to the spirit of Leonard Nimoy. Thank you, dude. Thank you for bringing your legacy of questioning to daytime television. I reblog “The Hobbit Song” in your honor.

DANNY: [chuckle] And I shout out to the spirit of Terry Pratchett. Thank you for bringing your legacy of righteous anger to comical literature. I will have a nice cigar in your honor, once I’m allowed to do so post-surgery, which is happening tomorrow. Or early—early today, it’s very very very late. It’s later than usual here, my listeners.

JOHNA: He would appreciate that cigar, dude.

DANNY: Though like having a cigar right before surgery is like such a Sam Vimes thing to do I kind of want to do it. I’m definitely not going to because I'd get uh beaten up by my spouse. 

JOHNA: Yay!

DANNY: Proverbially. With love.

JOHNA: Yeah. Don’t do that.

DANNY: [laughs]

JOHNA: Leonard Nimoy, Terry Pratchett. We honor you.

DANNY: Yes.

JOHNA: Moving along. 

DANNY: [laughs]

JOHNA: Shadowwork. Have you heard of it?

DANNY: I have heard of shadowwork.

JOHNA: As a cool fun Pagan pastime, perhaps?

DANNY: Yeah.

JOHNA: Oh my god, it pains me sometimes. Thinking about how shadowwork is used, at least in internet pagan land, as sort of a system of, like, dark and edgy personality tests can be bothersome. I mean, I know that like what we put online is not the sum of our practice. Basically, we're just trying to like share the fun bits, share what might generate interest, but new people who are just getting interested only have those superficial attention-grabbing tidbits.

So I’m going to give you a super quick rundown of Jungian psychology. That's Jung, J-U-N-G. So Carl Jung was one of Freud's proteges. When Freud realized that he couldn't be famous and successful and get money from benefactors by calling out family rapists for messing up perfectly good children, he sold out and he wrote all about how kids just latently desire their parents in a sexual way, so it’s actually all okay.

DANNY: Nasty.

JOHNA: Yeah. Ugh. Kay. Jung, who did study under Freud, managed to sidestep some of that and wrote all about how maybe it's horrific parents, maybe it's not, but maybe it might could be, but anyway he knows that for sure that it happens at kids, it happens to them.

My thoughts about Jung and Freud aside, the theory is very useful. In Jungian Theory, the shadow is considered the whole of the hidden and/or undesirable aspects of the personality. The shadow is sort of a potpourri of the id and the subconscious and the emotional all thrown together. It's instinctive and irrational and it tends to project our weaknesses onto others in the form of moral judgments, of jealousy or anger.

People tend to ignore or distract from their shadow personality aspects, but Jungian shadowwork tries to expose and embrace those aspects. So the work is meant to liberate your mind so that you can make deliberate choices that improve your mental health. Many times in therapy you'll find techniques that ask you to confront your shadow, like introspective journaling or guided meditations. But because this work requires a lot of emotional heavy lifting, many people find it useful to use a spiritual lens and approach it with techniques like divination and prayer and spirit journeying.

DANNY: So something to keep in mind as you approach the concept of shadowwork is that there are a billion different ways that shadowwork can be, and we’ll kind of get into those anecdotally in a second, but even deciding what type of shadowwork in the realm of secular versus spiritual is actually something that you're going to be faced with eventually.

For example, shadowwork in the realm of just therapy specifically for work that pertains to mindfulness is really really difficult for me. Mindfulness, just kind of a brief, like, definition, I suppose, is a technique that therapists use a lot, especially lately. It's a really effective, like, meditation technique on the fly that helps train your brain to focus on what is happening to you and about you and within you at the exact moment in time that you are present in. So it teaches you to not dwell on the past or worry about the future, but to be completely in the present.

It is a great tool and it does not work for me. So when I did have to do, when I decided to do shadowwork to benefit some of my, some of struggles that I was going through, it helped me to do that work through the lens of spirituality. And there's really no reason why or why not, it just be like that sometimes.

So when you approach the techniques of shadowwork, know that it might not work out the first time around, and it might be because you are approaching shadowwork in an entirely different realm to what is actually compatible with you. So if you want to do this thing but, say, spirit journeying and journals and tarot aren't working for you—I think everybody should go to therapy anyways just, just as a rule—but try maybe therapy or some kind of mindfulness or cognitive behavioral therapy, something that’s more secular. This can be interchangeable. It can be a little of column A, little of column B. But expect to also have that be some but you have to figure out as well, which I didn't really know what the time.

JOHNA: That's an excellent point. It all just depends on your goal.

DANNY: Yeah.

JOHNA: It depends on you, what works for you and your goal. I remember my first attempts at shadowwork were, I mean I remember them being very very aesthetic. I mean, I approached it from primarily a religious perspective, you know. I wanted to be close to my gods, I wanted to improve my energy work. So I would be like, like meditating after midnight, and only by the light of my Michaels-brand black pillar candles. But allowing, like, the perfumes of totally good and legit incense to allow me to journey into my deeper self.

So, like, I was experimenting a lot. I was trying a bunch of things all at once to see what worked and generally exploring. I didn't know what kinds of skeletons were in my closet. One time I did visualize a house, and I found a literal skeleton in the closet. And I didn't know what to do about it, not at the time. I didn’t know what it was or what I should do, so. That was just when I was first trying it.

Shadowwork’s not something that you do intensely always all the time, at least most people don't. But, you know, you come back to it when you're done or when you've figured out something else that you want to do. So my more recent attempts at shadowwork are obviously, you know, less theatrical and a lot more focused. And while I do pray, I also use techniques that are mostly secular. I might be more aware of the skeleton parties that are happening in the closets

DANNY: [chuckle]

JOHNA: But I'm less afraid of them now. You know, after all that get-to-know-you stuff. So they're more likely to talk and move and make conversation, and sometimes it can be scary and angry, but now I know what to do with them. And the shadowwork helps me decide who I want to invite to my skeleton party.

When you first start out, it’s actually really really fun to get to know yourself, especially because it's sort of like indulging in your vanity. You can talk about yourself all you want, because it feels purposeful now. But everything stays the same if you don't have a goal. I mean, when I first started, I had no goals except getting to know myself. But my new goals are things like, I want less anxiety about medical visits. So, I need to address those shadows. Or I want to spend less energy being annoyed at my co-workers, so maybe I want to look at those shadows. These things are in the shadows for a reason. I mean it takes a lot of energy to move them out to where you can see them, so unless you're going to do something that's where they’re always going to go back to. That's where they stay.

DANNY: Absolutely. And you know we talked about your first attempts at shadowwork. I was really lucky in my like first foray into shadowwork, because I was actually introduced to shadowwork and the concepts of by Johna.

JOHNA: Ooooh.

DANNY: Oooh! So that's like the pattern of, like, half of these anecdotes is like, Johna showed me, and it was neat. [laughs] But it's true. And it’s something that I really needed at the time, because I was going through a really rough patch in my life with regards to having toxic relationships, being kind of a toxic person. I had a lot of old coping mechanisms from earlier points of life that were now periods of trauma for me that I didn't need these coping mechanisms anymore because I wasn't in those places. So I had to learn, like, my goal for shadowwork is to kind of unlearn some bad habits and to reacquaint my brain with the fact that things are a lot safer than they used to be, for example.

So, part of that was figuring out, like I said, what works for me. I've been going to therapy for forever, but my shadowwork I sort of wanted it to be a separate venture and something that was a little more spiritual. And so, what ended up happening is that we had a group of myself, Johna, and another friend. That was like our shadowwork group. And we checked in with each other. Um, I know that our other friend did journaling for a while and would check in with, like, “I did journaling, this is what I learned today.” Daily tarot or, as daily I could possibly be, was really helpful for me. Boy did I get Temperance a lot.

And you know, I was still quite young in terms of practicing. I was like really new to tarot; I was really new to a lot of things. So having a group that helped me kind of like internalize what I needed to internalize and to like, positively reinforce this was really helpful. But, like we said, I had a good time taking, like, my spiritual personality tests, but also I learned how, like, you learn a lot of hard stuff about yourself.

I learned some methods about centering myself emotionally because I took the shadows of, like, my toxicity. regardless of how it happened to me and how I became that person, and I had to like stare that in the face. I confronted a lot of personal foibles. I confronted the fact that I have like a lot of moral absolutism, and that maybe that that doesn't really exist in the real world. 

I learned better ways to communicate with a lot of people. I learned better ways to communicate with my ancestors, because I relied on them a lot during this time to kind of reflect upon the person that I was. I learned how to communicate better with myself in different stages. I had internalized so much, like, unhealthy coping mechanisms as a teenager that part of these meditations where I would you know enter my own mental house, this house was something I had made as a teenager to cope with like stuff. So I would approach this house and find really honestly my teenage self as part of my skeleton party.

JOHNA: Mmmmm!

DANNY: She was still there, that poor bitch! 

JOHNA: Oh my god.

BOTH: [laugh]

DANNY: And so like, confronting that person and learning to cut that kid some slack was really difficult, actually. And it was like the culmination of all of the fun stuff. All the tarot and the journaling and the like, you know, stickers and memes that we shared with each other on Facebook Messenger, um, kind of culminated in this really slow process of learning like, okay, I am allowed to be angry, but I am not allowed to be mean.

JOHNA: Mm-hmm.

DANNY: And like, I am allowed to let go of, like, this, like, piece of trauma. I can tell, like, I don't have to be mad at teenage me anymore. That kid was just a teenager, you know? So that's like the highlight here and the reason why that, like, we kind of dwell on these anecdotes is to illustrate that there are, like, actually a lot of different ways to approach shadowwork.

But go--the underlying truth of it is that you have to be attuned to your own emotional needs, your emotional faults, your foibles. You don't have to, like, have a perfect knowledge of self. That's what you're doing shadowwork for. But you have to be prepared to have your self-perception change, and sometimes that perception is not super flattering. That's why you do what you do. You approach it with the understanding that you're going to be seeing some stuff. That’s why it’s called shadowwork.

BOTH: [laughs]

DANNY: Ugh I personally believe that if you can't confront yourself authentically and honestly, then it is not going to be a super successful venture for you. And it's just kind of a waste of your time. Uh, that's my onion.

JOHNA: Yeah, yes. You know what, the superficial stuff? Like, the personality test feeling stuff, that’s a lot of fun.

DANNY: Yeah, for sure.

JOHNA: But you're absolutely right. It is work. It’s called work for a reason. But it’s so worth it.

DANNY: Yes.

JOHNA: If it's what you choose to do.

DANNY: Yes, I learned a lot.

JOHNA: For sure.

DANNY: And definitely became a less shitty person.

BOTH: [laugh]

JOHNA: If you'd like to dip your toes in a little bit, I did prepare a suggested meditation, just so that you can figure out what skeletons you have, like, who's hanging out in there, and you have a place to start if you're just getting back into it or if you're exploring shadowwork for the first time. We are using a tarot number in this one, that you can use tarot to do a reading on it later. It helps. Helps to review.  

DANNY: Yes.

JOHNA: So, first about the meditation. You're going to create your house. Just want to visualize it. I mean, you can do that by drawing a picture, you can build it in Sims or Minecraft, but only the outside, cause that's all we need for right now. So once you have that visual, sit down someplace, get comfy, focus on your breathing and imagine. See the house in your mind's eye. 

When you start, you are 21 steps from between where you stand and the front door. So with each slow, controlled breath you take, you take another step closer. So starting at 21, smoothing patiently down to 1, till you get to the front door. Then, go into your house.

Easy, right? You go inside. It's your house! Look at your awesome stuff. But you hear music coming somewhere, and you know what? It's the closet. That's right, that’s right it was the skeleton party. You knew about that. So go knock on the door. Let them know you're coming in to check on them. I mean, they may be made of bones, but they’re still a part of you. And they’re a part of this kick-ass house. It’s an awesome house, ‘cause it's yours.

So then you open the closet and see who you meet. And if they want to come to where you are, or if you want to come to where they are, shake hands, say hello, learn new skeletons’ names. 

Then whenever you're ready, you can leave the way you came. From closing the door, step 1 all the way to 21, back to where you stood before. And you can exit your meditation from here.

There's a lot of ways to leave a meditation like that, and if you plan on visiting that house again, maybe you promised the skeletons you were going to come back, I might recommend that you lock up your house before you leave, so you don't like accidentally have any cretins waitin’ for you on your next visit. Another thing is that you might also pray and ask your gods or ancestors to come and visit, so maybe you can give them a key to your house. It's your house, you can do whatever you want.

So Danny and I actually did this meditation before we recorded this podcast. We didn't like do it together, but we did make sure to do the meditation. So personally, because I've been doing this for a while, I didn't actually exit the house, because at this point it's my house. 

DANNY: [laughs]

JOHNA: So I kind of just like sent myself to bed and counted 21 breaths until I woke up here in the real world. But it's my house. I live there, so I don't leave. But you can do whatever you want. The point is, you did your meditation, and maybe you have some skeleton names that you want to think about.

So here’s part dos, and it’s a suggested tarot reading. So you can use tarot cards if you have them, oracle cards, whatever. You can use a free online deck. Just go to Google and ask what a free online tarot deck is. You can use it. You can use a tarot app. You can do whatever you want. The goal is to just decide if you're going to do anything about who you met in your house and how you might do it.

So you start with a small number of cards. We recommend starting with just one so that you can focus on one thing to figure out.

So Danny, you want to demonstrate this part with me? We both have cards.

DANNY: Yeah, let's do it! I've got my cards.

JOHNA: Yes, okay.

DANNY: Let’s talk about my cards, I want to talk about my cards first.

JOHNA: Yeah, well you shuffle, shuffle good.

DANNY: Yes, I'm shuffling. They're called the Darkana Tarot, and I got them because they are—I think that they…quote “combine a modern grunge style with a non-traditional tarot symbolism.” But the frank way to say it is that the art is kind of muddy and ugly. [laugh]

JOHNA: Ooh!

DANNY: But I like it, I like that it’s—they're like kind of like, uh…stained and ugly deck. It seems like a good…it’s a good, um, set for me. And so I wanted to plug them a little bit, because I like them.

JOHNA: Wow. My deck is the opposite. 

DANNY: [laughs]

JOHNA: It is super pretty, gorgeous, dreamy watercolors by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. It's called the Shadowscapes tarot. It’s like, probably one of the like most popular decks on the market because it really is beautiful, but I remember waiting and waiting and waiting for Ms. Law to like finish the paintings for this deck—

DANNY: Oh my gosh.

JOHNA: —because she was updating as she went. I was like, I was one of the original fans of this tarot deck, dude, I was so excited. I pre-ordered as soon as it was available to get the shadowscapes tarot deck and I was not disappointed. So, that’s how I like it. Anyway.

DANNY: That’s awesome.

JOHNA: So usually, I don’t know. Not everybody has practiced a lot with tarot cards, oracle cards. You traditionally like shuffle the deck like a spiritually significant number of times. Seven is, of course, a common lucky number. I use five when I'm doing shadowwork, because it's traditionally a number for like change, even chaos, and change is usually my goal for shadowwork even if it means some chaos. Some people like nine because it's a number of completion. They want the bigger picture.

DANNY: I like nine.

JOHNA: Oh, that's cool.

DANNY: I don't usually, um, have a number when I shuffle though. I just shuffle. Till it's time to stop, I guess.

JOHNA: Oh man. I actually had to replace this deck. These cards are, like, still stiff and I'm like a little bit sad, because this is obviously a later printing and they are like not as good quality as—

DANNY: Oh no.

JOHNA: —the original printing, I know. This coating on the deck is like, plastic. I, and I'm spoiled when it comes to playing cards, because I like a nice waxed card. [sigh] But that's not a—that's neither here nor there. Let’s go. We draw the cards.

DANNY: We draw. [whip sound] Oh cool!

JOHNA: What does yours say?

DANNY: I got the nine of cups.

JOHNA: [gasp]

DANNY: Yeah, I’m like, oh hey! Um, and I guess for edification, because I don't mind if the internet knows my innermost thoughts, the--

BOTH: [laugh]

DANNY: Um, the thing I'm trying to tackle is my like stress around moving and relocation, just cause there's some stuff there. So that's what I kind of asked the cards about. That was the, the…the big chief skeleton in my skeleton closet party.

Um, and my deck, this deck is also nice because it has two, like, keywords underneath the picture. So under the nine of cups, keywords is fulfillment and pleasure. So like, a really super quick and dirty, like, analysis of the nine of cups is this is like, the cup overfloweth card. They—you are, uh, um, at a place of extreme contentment and satisfaction. Things are falling into place, and you will, like, receive a period of good fulfillment, usually emotionally. Cups are a, an emo--, a feelings card. And especially in this, um, picture, the cups have water flowing out of them. Water is like a feelings thing. So that’s a pretty optimistic one card reading.

If I wanted to, like, I guess for our listeners, if I wanted to ask a question from there, you can take this one card reading and expand upon it. Ask your cards some other stuff. You can also use rocks if you like. But we aren't going to do rocks today because I don't want to go get them. [laugh]

JOHNA: Oh, well you know what, I am glad you brought that up, because I definitely expanded mine. When I did this meditation, I met two skeletons. One of them I am not familiar with, and the other one is, uh, sort of a development because of some other work that I did. So I like went in the closet and, you know, wanted to see who was hanging out in there and the first skeleton to introduce itself to me was dementia.

DANNY: Oh.

JOHNA: Yeah. You know what, I didn't think that I had any, uh, had any stuff about that, but my dad actually had dementia, and maybe I should like, think a little bit about that because I might have like some unconscious anxiety making me act a little foolish sometimes. When it comes to like medical stuff, and maybe taking care of myself. So that's like, you know, that's good.

And the other skeleton I met, this was interesting. Usually I approach like the skeleton of “things I resent my mom for,” “the things I resent my dad for” separately, because I felt like, I always felt like they were two separate things. But this skeleton introduced itself as, “I am the failings of your parents.” And that was different from how I've approached it before because this skeleton was like, very kind and not shy at all and like very very gentle. And I have yet to approach that kind of demon in that way.

So, when I drew my one card I got the ace of cups, which is cool. It can be...I am reading this right now as like, a card of beginnings, particularly emotionally. That means that it's like meeting the tip of the iceberg, and I’ve got some exploration to do, but generally it's a good omen. But I wanted some clarification for that, so I drew two other cards. And one was the queen of cups, which I take to mean as, I'm going to have to be accountable and responsible for myself, but also that means I get to call the shots. Good deal.

DANNY: Nice.

JOHNA: And then the other one was the High Priestess, which comes to me off and on. One of those cards that follows me. So, in this case, I’m going to take this as like, sort of a current in the wheel of fate, you know what I mean? 

DANNY: Mm-hmm.

JOHNA: Like, whatever is coming is coming, and all I can do is just what I judge to be best in that situation. So, cool. All right. That's how you do it. That's how you start. What I definitely got was a place to start.

DANNY: Nice. [chuckle]

[pause]

JOHNA: Come on, where's our tagline dude?

DANNY: Oh.

JOHNA: You got to say it.

DANNY: Fuck. Do you want to hear a story?

JOHNA: I do!

DANNY: Hell yeah. [laugh] So, brief disclaimer on this story. I don't speak Spanish. My accent’s very bad, and I sometimes don't know how to pronounce words. I beg forgiveness. But. [laughs] This myth is a Guatemalan myth and it is the story of “El Sombreron.” It’s found on uexpress.com, the version that I'm using, because I thought it was funny. Uexpress.com has a tell me a story section, which is where I found this, and this is retold by Amy Friedman and Meredith Johnson.

Once upon a time in a Mayan village, twins were born to a hatmaker and his wife. The couple were overjoyed the day their sons were born, but their joy did not last long.

JOHNA: Uh-oh.

DANNY: One of the boys was kind, soft-voiced and even-tempered. But the other lad was born with the devil in him.

JOHNA: [gasp]

DANNY: He was always doing just what his parents told him not to do, and as he grew older, he continued to do whatever he was not supposed to do.

He wasn’t cruel, but he was mischievous. He hid his brother's toys; he stole fruit from the neighbors' gardens. He teased children, he spilled his milk, and laughed when he should have been quiet, and would not speak when teachers asked him questions.

I, as a side-note, have taught many of these children. I have loved all of them.

But he never stopped running and jumping and playing, and his parents fretted and worried and wondered what to do.

At last the boy's mother begged her husband to call upon the brujo for advice. Among the Mayan people, the brujos, wise men, were known to have the power and the magic to cure every imaginable ill.

I imagine in this case, I kind of, another author’s note, that “brujo” is being used in the same way that “curendero” would be used, um, instead of like the broader meaning of like “brujo” just meaning “witch” or “wizard,” I guess.

JOHNA: Mm-hmm.

DANNY: So, these brujos could cure bodies, minds and spirits, so the people said. They knew exactly what to do to fix every problem that arose.

So the hatmaker went to visit the brujo and begged him for help. "My son is a troublemaker," the man said. "Please, tell me how to calm him down and cure him of his mischief making."

The brujo sat and thought, for wise men always listen carefully and think long and hard. And they pray. Finally, the brujo spoke. "I know how to help you," he said. "You must return to your shop, and there you will make a huge sombrero, the biggest sombrero you have ever made. Bring it to me, and I will solve your problem."

The man returned home and worked for several days, fashioning a sombrero so large, it could have fit upon the heads of several of the villagers together. When he was done, the sombrero was so big he couldn’t carry it, and so, with the help of his good son and the neighbors, he carried it to his cart and rode it to the brujo's home.

"Now," said the brujo, "I will put my magic inside." He lit his candles and placed rose petals upon his altar, and closed his eyes and prayed. He began to weave. He was weaving magic into the sombrero, but no one was allowed to watch. People say this took him many hours; the sombrero was big, remember, and the magic was strong. But by sunset he had completed his task.

"Take this home now," said the brujo, "and place it in the middle of the floor of your house. Your son and the magic will take matters from there."

The man did as he was told.

In the middle of the night, the father awoke, startled, when he heard a large crash from the living room where the sombrero sat.

He ran to see what had happened, and there he found the sombrero moving, walking around as if powered by its own spirits.

"Help!" the man heard, and he bent down and listened. "Help me, father," came a voice from beneath the sombrero.

JOHNA: [gasp] Oh my gosh!

DANNY: The man tugged at the hat, and sure enough, there was his son, the head in the center of the sombrero, and his legs thrashing about.

"Take this off my head!" the boy cried. "I climbed under to see what I might see, and now I can't take this thing off!"

JOHNA: Mm-hmm!

DANNY: The father tried to lift the hat, but he could not remove it. It was stuck to the boy's head, and no matter how he struggled and pulled, and no matter how the boy pushed and shoved, and no matter how the neighbors pulled and yanked at the sombrero, it remained stuck to the boy's head.

JOHNA: Wow.

DANNY: The hat never did come off.

JOHNA: Oh!

DANNY: The boy had to wear it all the time, and the villagers began to call him "El Sombreron," the Big Hat.

JOHNA: Oh my god.

DANNY: They laughed when they saw him running through the village, only his legs visible, that enormous sombrero atop those little legs.

JOHNA: Oh my god.

DANNY: "El Sombreron" never grew taller that day.

JOHNA: [gasp]

DANNY: The hat was so big and heavy, it pushed him down, and he stayed short, like a little boy, even though he grew longer in years.

They villagers laughed at him only for a while, though. The trouble was, there was magic in that hat, and "El Sombreron" learned it all--

JOHNA: Mmmm.

DANNY: --and so he never did stop making mischief. He could make himself invisible; he could climb up walls and across ceilings--

JOHNA: Mm!

DANNY: --and he could walk through walls, so sometimes, when he was invisible, he would tear through the streets, stealing fruit and tipping carts. And some nights, still invisible, he would sneak into the neighbors' stables and steal their donkeys.

JOHNA: Wow.

DANNY: For a while people prayed "El Sombreron" would vanish altogether, but he never did. And it seems he never vanished at all, for all over Guatemala people still talk about him. It is he, they say, who turns things inside out and upside down, and is the cause of all the little annoyances in life that no one can quite explain. That's the way things are sometimes.

The end.

JOHNA: Oh my God. That's awesome.

DANNY: Isn't that the funniest way to end a fable ever? It be like that sometimes.

BOTH: [laugh]

JOHNA: Wow.

DANNY: Oh god. I’d never heard of this little creature before, though, so I was delighted to find him. But as you might recall, everybody, the—the devotional thought this episode is going to kind of relate to the myth. And I did that for a couple of reasons, but primarily because the ending of this myth is what I would one day like to actually internalize. 

After all of this effort and magic and like making a big hat the nuisances that this Village encountered never really went away, it just got more ridiculous. And the ending of—

BOTH: [laughs]

DANNY: And the ending of this version of this tale ends with, “that’s the way things are sometimes.” And I, I would like us all kind of while we consider the topic of shadow work and while we enter the winter time where sometimes things are hard, to really internalize that concept. Especially in the case of “El Sombreron,” when things are kind of turning all kinds of different ways, and there's all kinds of annoyances, to really remember that truly sometimes that's just the way things are. But it also means that it isn't going to be like that all the time. Things will be different.

It be like that sometimes. Don't sweat it man.

BOTH: [laugh]

JOHNA: So, our question for you this week is…are you doing shadow work? Did you try the exercise? Did you try a different one? Tell us about it.

DANNY: Did you find a technique that works better for you than even the ones we suggested?

JOHNA: Than even those?

DANNY: [laugh] Let us know!

JOHNA: For sure. Thanks so much for joining us this week you guys. Look for new episodes every other Friday.

DANNY: A big thank you to Vexento for the use of our theme song, “We Are One,” and to The Miracle Forest for the background music, “The Magical Tearoom.

JOHNA: Again, you can send your comments and experiences to us on Tumblr and Twitter with #homebrewpagans.

DANNY: We are at homebrewpodcast.tumblr.com and @homebrewpagans on Twitter. We’ll talk to you real soon.

[shtbgs-blog]

GANGGANG, alright hi it’s tea and this is shitbags central aka your #1 station for all trash, all the time!!! I already have ( 7 ) fucking muses because I’m a whole ass mess of a person and I’m here for legit any plots I even have a plots tag that I started because.... I wanted to ANYWAY let me give you the rundown on my shitheads alright.

jesus fuckin christ this took way longer than anticipated and some have more information than others rn but i’mma make aesthetic posts for them all later tonight ok :///

DONALD “DON” O'CALLAHAN looks an awful lot like JUSTIN CHATWIN. HE is THIRTY and while they’re FLIRTATIOUS they have a tendency to be pretty UNFAITHFUL. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to ALONE by HALSEY FEAT. BIG SEAN & STEFFLON DON.

so... first things first... he’s in the mafia

but he makes it seem like his life is amazing and he’s some big important CEO ( wow am i the only one getting jimmy/steve vibes already? )

That’s probs because he’s heavily inspired by the character but he is not canon.

He’s FUN and EXCITING and literally brand new i don’t know shit about him besides how he’s gonna act

which is nice and sly and secretive and flirty aight

IMOGEN WARD looks an awful lot like MADELAINE PETSCH. SHE is TWENTY-TWO and while they’re REBELLIOUS, they have a tendency to get pretty CLUMSY. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to REPERCUSSIONS by BEA MILLER

Imogen was a twin sister but her sister died in a haunted house like technically three days ago but we’re gonna pretend like it wasn’t okay

Honestly, she’s loud and exciting most of the time. She’s kind, compassionate, cuddly, sweet and adventureous. It’s just like, too much though. She wilds the fuck out and is constantly go go going like she doesn’t want to stop

she smokes a lot of pot

and she was technically living in a college dorm with her sister but.... she is now officially a college drop out and living back at home

not that she’s ever there tbqfh

She’s got an ex boyfriend that makes her feel a lot of conflicting emotions and will make her REAL WEARY of active relationships because like, STUFF. IM NOT TALKIN BOUT THIS!!!!!!!!

anyway that’s imogen

JAMES  WILLIAMS looks an awful lot like MILO VENTIMIGLIA. HE is THIRTY-FIVE and while they’re FLEXIBLE, they have a tendency to get pretty AGGRESSIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to IROBOT by JON BELLION.

He Was Married to his highschool sweet heart but then one of his younger twin brothers (? does that make sense) died of an overdose and he sort of lost his mind

And the other twin is in and out of jail for drug related issues

He an alcoholic but he doesn’t fuck with drugs

and he’s actually a police officer

just your generic ass cop he wants to get a promotion but he doesn’t see it in his future

he’s nice but it’s VERY EASY to piss him off

MILO SHEPARD looks an awful lot like NICK JONAS. HE is TWENTY-FOUR and while they’re DISCREET,they have a tendency to get pretty RIGID. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to FLARE GUNS by QUINN XCII FEAT. CHELSEA CUTLER ALL THE KIDS ARE DEPRESSED by JEREMY ZUCKER

He’s a foster care social worker meaning he deals with kids who have real fuckin ruff lives okay

He was inspired to join this life because he himself was in foster care for a majority of his life and his case worker basically adopted him when he was fifteen

He’s dedicated his life to giving back like his adoptive father did for him

He has vague memories of his mother but he doesn’t remember much because last time he saw her he was 6

He is constantly busy with cases / children and there’s a strong chance you’ll find him at an ice cream shop with one of the kids he’s working with

oh and he 100% probably has nights where he just stays at the office and lets the kid sleep on his couch because he couldn’t find a foster home

which... u know, with a life this hectic u think he’s ever had any sort of relationship? ha, NO.

OPHELIA MONROE looks an awful lot like BILLIE LOURD. SHE is TWENTY-FIVE and while they’re FRIENDLY, they have a tendency to get pretty JUDGEY. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to THUNDER by IMAGINE DRAGONS

So originally I was gonna have her still living at home and working in a mom n pop shop

but since she’s twenty give I’m actually gonna progress her a little bit

She’s left home and now lives in a little bus that she transformed into her house

It’s literally one of the short yellow buses but painted white and black

She got a whole ass house in there a bed, a kitchen, a table

and her cat

And she’s in Kola just to kind of get out and see what the world is like maybe get a job and move out of her bus bc she’s been traveling the past two years it’s time to settle

She’s probably been here  maybe a few months

SHANE FRANCIS looks an awful lot like CARLSON YOUNG. SHE is TWENTY-TWO and while they’re ADVENTUROUS, they have a tendency to get pretty DISRUPTIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to BETTER DAYS by HEDLEY

OK SO SHANE comes from old money and like you can tell she wears designer and she’s kinda bratty sometimes

but she’s got a good heart like real life

okay no she doesn’t she can sometimes be real bitchy to strangers but the SECOND you get to really know her you know it’s all just a reflex to people trying to get to know her ig??

She loves to give back to charity / work with those less fortunate than her

Whenever she can, ( which is not a lot ) she breaks away from her parents and lives her life how she wants which means partying but, not always, they sort of have her on a tight leash because she has a reputation to uphold

( aka rich spoiled posh ) but Shane doesn’t like this life she wants her own life

WESLEY LLOYD looks an awful lot like AARON TAYLOR JOHNSON. HE is TWENTY-FIVE and while they’re HARD WORKING, they have a tendency to get pretty OBLIVIOUS.You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to I’M NOT FAMOUS by AJR.

ALRIGHT so this is, last but not least, Wes Lloyd

At 15 he left home to move in with his grandfather

while there he began rapping with his friends ( hoodie allen vc )

and life was honestly good he was getting good at music and had a girlfriend who he really thought he loved and he was happy

then his girlfriend left him

and his grandfather died

and he was twenty three and miserable

when his grandfather passed he left him a great deal of money and the house he had grown up in. Wes took this time to rebuild the home by hand because that’s what his grandfather would have wanted. 

During this time he still wrote music but it was sad ( front porch step vc )

Now two years later, the house is complete and he is living with his best friend in his big ass house and honestly his music career is taking off, especially with the happier, more up beat music he’s creating ( jon bellion vc )

He’s just here for a good time and he wants to LIVE his BEST LIFE

[jjinomu]

Explain the appeal of MeikoLuka to me, I'm all for sapphic ships, but don't really understand this one, even if I like to see it on my dash.

oh BOY OH BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! well let me give u a very brief rundown before i head off to get my blood removed from my body (i know great way to start the day)

edit: ok i said brief but this turned out longer than i expected also im bad at explanations and life in general 

sOO well, meikoluka, depending on the person, is probably headcannoned a lot differently all the time- which is normal as shit since vocas don’t have canon personalities so they’re super flexible etc etc.

in my case, luka’s always been like headcannoned to be like the quiet, reserved, elegent, seductive beauty lady of the group??? she helps out w meiko out with the dishes stuff like that- super domestic u know what i’m saying, but i’ve also headcanoned almost like a closeted pervert hehe (think of that animu character that’s always like…….. quiet and stuff but the moment something remotely dirty or watever is said or seen, like that blush appears and the smile u know u know)

on the flipside, meiko is cool and collected, super charismatic, charming leader kinda type of the group (in animus, she’d be the one with glasses all stern and shit u  knooW WHAT IM TALKIN ABOUT), she’s the one that’s stern and knows how to Do things Properly, but she’s oblivious sometimes, and if she gets any flattery, it really stops her in her tracks and flusters her- or she’ll deny it etc etc.

now together, they form this beautiful gem that is the meilu or lukamei ship!!!! first off, besides the fact that they’re both the adult ladies of the group (well meiko has no canon age but i ain’t gonna say she’s a 3 year old baby- but she might be idk) that expands a lot more potential for more older mature adult kinda things

and by adult things i mean responsibilities ‘’’hypothetically’, like washing the dishes, cooking together, taking the kiddies to school together, voting together lel, doing taxes together, going grocery shopping at 3am together, heck- even drinking together and getting super deep about life and problems (before luka knocks out, because she’s a lightweight- and before anyone screms legal age of drinking is 20 in japan, 18 for us aussies hehe don’t underage drink kids- i thought about this)and i didnt know where else to put this so ignore the messy flow of this response, but since meiko’s vocals are often powerful, while luka’s are often soft- their voices blend together kind of well while also remaining kind of contradictory u know what i mean??? it’s not my favourite pairing vocal-wise (i actually like meiko’s vocals with either of the kagamines the most for some reason- so strong) but i know of originals and covers with them together and it’s still p 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻 no complaints here hehe

actually since this is getting way too long, i’ll cut it short here and give u a tdlr on how i see lukamei, since there’s an video pretty much portraying them how i see their soft dynamic hehe

ok in this video its like mainly the first two minutes then it kinda gets weird, and along side this video probs also the one that was for meiko’s bday and luka’s in a ribbon ehe- that’s the video that got me into them in the first place hehe

of course!!! this is only just how i see these two gfs!!! to each their own yknow what i’m saying?? i wouldve loved to ramble more and more bc i honestly can write an essay for any meiko ship ever- even if it’s super crack, i could probably pull something out of my ass lbr y’allbut you probably don’t really give a shit so that’s just the basic gist of it!!! please don’t feel obligated to agree with me or whatever, i’m happy you asked and that you’re ok w the pairing (since i do post them kind of often too huu) but i hope that sheds some light on how i see them hehehe

[bangtanficrecs]

Lost & Found Batch #8

Here’s the new lost and found batch! If you happen to know the fic the ask is looking for, reply to this post or send us an ask with the request number and title/author. If you happen to know any fics from Past Batches, those are more than welcome as well. Thank you!! ~ Admin P

1)  Hello! I'm looking for a smut oneshot I read a while ago, it was about Jungkook thinking he had a choking kink (maybe he already knew, I'm not sure) and he asked Namjoon to help him out since he was the best option out of the members. Jungkook got himself off and Namjoon choked him when he got close. It was like a fwb thing though. I also vaguely remember him finding out when a girl got him off backstage and choked him to avoid making noise and getting caught or something. Could you help me?

play your little games by finedae

2)  so i know that there's a fic called little red (I'm like 99.99% sure) and its description is oh my what big eyes you have or something like that and i can't remember which members it is but I'm pretty sure yoongi is one of them (could be wrong) also i love ur blog ❤️❤️❤️

3)  Hi! I can't seem to find a fic and I really wanted to read it again. It's kinda an old one, I think the main rs was between jikook. jungkook in it is a cyborg made by namjoon who wants nothing but to create a superior being, who could know it all, and wouldn't be affected by emotions. however as the story goes on, jungkook catches up on social issues, morals, emotions etc, and his creator wants to destroy him. The characters may not be these, im only sure about jk :/ hope you can help me thank u

4) Dodo you know the yoonjin fic where jin was an old friend of Namjoon's and was left behind by namjoon as he went to pursue his dream. Promising to come back for him. And Jin decided to surprise him and finds out he's not the same boy that left. Meanwhile yoongi jumps in and decides to take Jin and even asks his sister in the fic is he could stay with them. (Sorry it's such a long summary and it's really late here!! I just couldn't get it out of my head!!)

5)  so there's this abo fic that i read a long while back on ao3, i, for some reason, didn't bookmark it or anything -- it might have been deleted, i'm not sure, but i know it was vmin, abo, and it was something about jimin being part of some inner circle/court thing and he was supposed to find a mate, but he went outside of the court and ended up finding tae, and it had tae's mother in it talking about him and how she knew tae was the one for jimin. thanks!

6)  hey i read a fic that had one of the members in abusive relationship i think it was tae/jm/jk and the one person was trying to help him and he was working in a cafe i think?? idk i didn't read bc i don't ever read unhealthy relationships because they trigger me but i couldn't stop thinking about it!! thank you

7)  hi! im looking for this fic i read a while back, its yoonmin and it was a break up au that was based on the 1d song called love you goodbye? i was wondering if u could help me find it ㅠㅠ

8)  Hello! I'm looking for a jimin x member fic that im not even sure if it exists anymore because i couldnt find it ;-;-; if i remember correctly, jimin has some forbidden power / ability and the fic is fantasy based with everyone having superpowers~~

give me the rundown by gangbang

9)  Hi! I'm looking for a yoonmin fic I read a while back. It takes place in high school or college. JM is a loner and depressed. YG is popular and plays the piano in a music room. I think JM likes YG and secretly listens to YG's playing because it makes him feel better. He starts leaving notes on or in YG's locker asking for help. YG leaves a note on his locker asking how to help. He eventually figures out it's JM and leaves a note on his piano. That's all I remember. THANK YOU for the help!!!

10)  IM GOING TO CRY OK HERE GOES it's a yoonmin fic but jungkook and namjoon are mentioned several times, its a/b/o i'm pretty sure and jimin goes into heat and the boys take turns fucking jimin and it's yoongis turn and like yoongi teases jimin a lot and jimin is like i'm gonna go get namjoon, and jimin tastes like "burnt caramel" i'm pretty sure but anyways, lots of dick sucking and heat sex goodness!! please help me find it ;-; thank you ❤️❤️❤️❤️

give me the rundown by gangbang 

11)  Hi ! I was reading a fic but my phone broke down and I basically lost all of the fics I was reading and that I saved... It's a yoonmin au, where Yoongi is basically in love with Jimin but Jimin only knows Y as his fwb's neighbor. Yoongi is in a group chat with the hyung line were he talks about J a lot, and Jimin is best friend with Taekook (who are a couple). Also J has a lot of issue regarding self love and everything ! I hope you can help me find it, and I really love this blog, thank you !

he brings the sun (to its knees) by dreampvck

12) Hello! First of all English is not my first languague, sorry for any mistakes. I REALLY want to find this one shot. Yoongi develops a friendship with a producer of big hit, she is foreigner, they really get along, they exchange messages when he is on tour and I remember when he comes back he says something like "I want my hug now" and he asks her to be his girlfriend. It's a really sweet story. I tried everything to find it but I failed :(