#i made sure this post wasn't in the main character tags

[mswyrr]

thoughts on the R vs A stan debates

I see Rhae/nyra and Alicent as equals in their sins ultimately - not the specifics, but the capacity for doing wrong (and for wanting to do good) and that they both keep sinning against each other and then trying to make it right at just the wrong moment, when the other one is most angry and nursing her wounds.

People are valid to have a preference for one over the other or dislike one or the other, but there’s this “Cinderella and her wicked stepmother” headcanon some stans of the book seem attached to that the R focused parts of the fandom keep trying to push that doesn’t work for the tv canon. It flattens and erases the complexity of both characters IMO. Because then A stans try to similarly flatten her and it gets very intense back and forth. The book has no interiority, is a faux history told entirely from a pov centuries removed from events, of course their tv inner lives are and should be more complicated than that?

The way Twitter fandom does it, there’s this endless argument over who is the Madonna and who is the Villain and it’s flattening both women: “Madonna” is not actually a compliment and it requires doing a lot of twisting of their characters for people to shove their “fave” into the role of perfect mother goddess.

Neither of them are, that’s what makes them good lead characters?

For one example: Emma has outright said they played the lead up to the knife scene as R directing aggression and a real desire to do real harm at A and R’s half-siblings.

So, in that pivotal scene, we have BOTH R using her status as heir and favoritism from her father to demand her little brother be tortured AND Alicent demanding her step-grandson's eye be taken.

I love them BOTH. That is messy af. And fantastic? Let women be MESS. And people of their culture and time period, where those are things you can actually demand if you have their respective forms of status.

That moment sticks with me because, as I see it, that was the final moment where they put the wounds in their own kids/half-siblings that led to the war.

At a certain point one stops being solely an abused child and has the choice whether to become an adult who abuses kids in their family or not .

*Both of them made the wrong choice* and wrote the future in blood IMO.

Am I saying the equation of wrongs done perfectly balance on both sides? No. I think that's a useless discussion people have been having for months now. There’s no end to it. It cannot be finally resolved.

I've seen people screaming back-and-forth for months and what I came to is this idea of them as equals, narratively speaking. Because they are narrative creatures, not real people, and it doesn't matter. Nothing will be gained by one side “winning.” Even if they were real and went to family therapy (...or couples therapy) the focus wouldn't be on tallying up.

I see it as this story of 3 generations where each one wrongs the next and then becomes adults who do their own wrongs in turn. With the time between "fuck around" & "find out" getting shorter each time until the 4th Gen who mostly don't even get to live to adulthood & make their own mistakes.

Otto and Viserys 100% started it. But along the way, carrying those soul wounds, R & A become adults who continued it, writing soul wounds into the next generation of kids, and did their part writing the bloody future Viserys and Otto got started. And some of their kids are just old enough to make some awful adult decisions to bring it all home so the 4th generation doesn't even get to have a peaceful childhood.

The only 100% innocent victims are the 4th Gen kids (all the ones who were under 10 when the war started including R's youngest kids and I would say I include Lu/cerys as well since he hadn’t fully become an adult when Aemond killed him). Everybody else is varying levels of involved in the shitshow IMO.

Anyway, all of that is why I find the entire debate irrelevant to me at best and, at worst, a source of a lot of hot takes that seem to want to vilify or Madonna-ify one or the other and I don’t agree with vilification or Madonna-ification of either.

[factual-fantasy]

@octonauts16 (Post in question) TLDR at the bottom!😅

Yeah, that was Wally <XD I doodled that on the screen while kind'a forgetting all the stuff I've talked about Welcome Home recently. How I don't wanna join the fandom and such..

But to be honest I've been kind'a torn on Welcome home over the past few days. I recently developed 3 big main reasons why I don't want to join the fandom and draw the characters. But those reasons are quickly starting to dissolve-

Reason #1. Now I don't know if I just saw the wrong side of the fandom, but it felt like everywhere I went there was shipping content. Cannon or not, it was everywhere. And of course I'm known for not liking ships or really drawing any lovey dovey content.. I was worried enough about people tagging all of my Welcome Home art as shipping, that I figured I'd save myself the trouble and just.. not post any art of it all together.

But then I thought about it.. I mean, Undertale was a huge shipping fandom too. And I was able to weasel my way around all of that and come out unscathed. Surly the Welcome Home shipping fandom wouldn't be much harder to navigate.. right?

Reason #2. I wasn't really sure.. what to draw exactly. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation for the story of Welcome Home. Wally's the Bad guy, no House is the bad guy and he's controlling Wally, no no Wally and House are both the bad guys together. Their world is real- no actually its all make believe and Wally is the only one who knows its fake- aaaa so many stories!

I felt like it would take a lot of work and research to make my own version/interpretation of the story and the characters. So I just dropped it and didn't want to bother. I'm still so busy...

...But then its like 4 AM and I have ideas for redesigns of every character, a story is being constructed, angsty situations are being plotted, lore is growing- I hardly know much about Welcome Home truly, yet I already have a whole world built that I wanna start drawing-

But! Its reason #3 that's kept me from drawing anything. Clown, the series creator.

Looking around the fandom.. It seems that Clown is like me. They have certain boundaries when it comes to their characters and what they do and do not approve of others drawing about it. I know about the copywrite issues they're dealing with.. people selling merch of their characters and profiting.. its really sad. But there's more to it.

I saw some artwork for Welcome home and went to the comments. Everyone was like "I'm so glad to finally find an artist that respects Clowns boundaries!" And I'm like uh oh- are people drawing things that make Clown uncomfortable? Has Clown been dealing with that? What are those boundaries? Is anything I would like to draw something that would cross said boundaries?

So out of laziness to not dig deeper to find these boundaries, but also wanting to RESPECT said boundaries.. I just cut off any artwork from being made all together.

But my interest in this series is definitely getting stronger. And maybe sometime after these projects are finally off my chest, I'll look into Clown and see if any of my artwork would cross a line..

For now I'm too lazy, and too busy to make any artwork for Welcome Home <XDDD Maybe someday though!

TLDR; The #1 reason why I haven't drawn Welcome Home fanart is because I think Clown has certain boundaries when it comes to fanart. And I don't know what they are, I am also too lazy to look into it. So I just decided to not draw anything at all until further notice <XDD

[fereldanwench]

I didn't want to completely sit out a year-in-review, but for reasons I'll explain at the end of this post and under a cut, doing the traditional pick-one-pic-from-each-month approach just wasn't going to work for me. So instead, here are 20 of my favorite shots (in no particular order) of Valerie from 2023!

(I'll share solo Goro shots and shippy/story shots in two other posts before the year ends.)

Some thoughts about this year (cw for anxiety and depression mentions):

So yeah. I actually hadn't planned on joining in on the virtual photography year-in-review fun in part because... Well, frankly, I wasn't sure if it would actually be fun for me.

Although I do have pictures for every month, the first third, maybe even half, of the year was a struggle on almost every conceivable level. A lot of it was shit that carried over from the end of 2022, which was also an incredibly difficult year for me. I don't really want to delve too deeply into why--Some of it was personal, some of it was professional, some of it was fandom, and if you know, you know.

The main obstacle I had here is that looking at a lot of the shots I took from about January to May (give or take a few weeks on either end) honestly reminded me of Bad Times™️. I've worked really hard to pull myself out of that depression/anxiety cycle and return to a healthier approach to fandom and online socialization in general, but I just didn't want to spend a lot of time in that mental space. There are a few shots from those months that made it to my favorites, and I hope one day I can look back on that stuff and just feel the good from it again. Alas, that day is still not here.

But I am happy to report that the other reason I wanted to approach the review differently is a lot more positive! It's also two-fold: 1) I spent the earlier part of this year exploring more of a technical side of virtual photography and 2) I was really prolific the last third or so of this year so trying to narrow faves from about August until now was just not possible.

One of the few good things about the end of 2022 was being able to upgrade my graphics card, which meant I then had a rig that could support ray-tracing and hot sampling. As a result, I started putting a lot more focus on lighting and getting acquainted with new tools. I also was trying to work with the new AMM posing system, which is very convenient in some ways (100s of poses without reloading the game!) and a complete pain in the ass in others (can't move characters without their poses breaking!). Custom photomode poses + Nibbles Replacer has been the game changer I've been waiting for.

Or to put it more succinctly, December 2022 through about April 2023 felt like a relearning/return to basics kind of creative period, which is essential, but also means I just don't really like a lot of what I did, lmao.

Then, shockingly (I'm not shocked at all), starting treatment for my anxiety and depression in the second half of this year suddenly made creating a lot easier and fun again! Crazy how that works.

Even bumping this little review up to 20 shots instead of 12, there are still pictures from the past few months that I had to cut as favorites. There was just no way I could condense the amount of fave shots I took from August to now in just 5 options.

I also owe quite a bit of this revival to modders for asking me if I wanted to take shots for them--Exploring more of a fashion photography approach to my shots I think did a lot to build on what I had learned earlier in the year and encouraged me to try something new. I don't want to tag anyone in this long-ass glorified diary entry, but if you invited me to take mod shots for you, just know that it really meant a lot. ♡

And that's where my head has been with a yearly review! Is filling out a little template with 12 pictures this serious? No, it definitely is not, lmao. But hey, overthinking shit is still something I'm working on. ✌️

[cupcakeslushie]

Okay. I've been tip-toeing around this AU for a while now, but I just got caught up, and now I think I have a (decent) grasp on what's going on. So I wanna go over everything I know so far to see if I'm right or wrong on anything. Don't know if you'd be willing to correct me or not. Either way, I hope my mistakes can help you understand what to clarify to other fans like me. But, I also have some questions. You probably won't be able to answer most of them, but it's at least worth a shot.

First, where's Venus? Like, why is she not in your comics that are (sort of) separate frome the canon now story. The ones that skip to the future way after all the turtles reunite. Did she die? Did she escape? Is it because she wasn't introduced yet when you made those comics?

Two, why do you keep on making references to the future timeline? I know you're planning on possibly making your own stuff leading up to the events of the movie. It just gives me a jumpscare when I see certain...imagery in those comics. I guess you're hinting at what your version of the future apocalypse would look like, but it just hurts to see. Specifically in the comic explaining both the events and aftermath of the movie and the bad future timeline. It's starting to really confuse my brain as to where this story is headed. What's meant to be the main focus? The Hamto's reuniting? The aftermath? Or the future?

Third, did you make all those min-comics before you started the actual AU? Or did you do them during?

Fourth, are any of those mini-comics relevant to the actual story now? Or have you changed your mind on a few things? It's just that everything is so all over the place, I don't really know whether to trust if they're accurate. I know most of them are just there for funzies, but the longer ones concern me. I guess I'm just not used to the storyteller doing sequel, start, prequel, start, sequel, prequel, prequel, sequel, and then end. Or maybe it's just me, and I'm sleep deprived.

My little observation speech is gonna take a while for me to get out in your asks because when I get theoretical, my speech gets long, and my proper English goes down the drain. So I'll be back. I appreciate your work very much. Despite the pain it causes me, it's still amazing.

I’ll try my best to clear up what confusion I can!

1. As far as Venus. The answer is kind of a mix of, I was still figuring out her design and backstory while coming out with some of those early comics, and then, once I had that down, I wanted the boys to grow strong bonds as a main cast. That’s why a lot of the side characters are only making small appearances in the Sep!AU Life stories, as those are mainly for the boys reconnecting. (Usagi shows up the most because I love him and am totally biased towards him).

This maybe hasn’t been stated outright, but I wasn’t really expecting so many ppl to like Vee as much as they do, and now im trying not to spoil too much of her story. It’ll unfortunately just take us a while to get to the meat of it. Since the boys reconnecting takes up a lot of the early s1s2 story, Im trying to follow the familiar Rise blueprint of Draxum, Shredder, Krang, and then in s3 we’ll have crazy fun new stories with the extra characters.

Ive also decided to take this little nugget from one of the Q&As, and use it for Venus instead of Jennika. It was a much needed bit of inspiration to explain why Venus sorta disappears for a while and will go through some major physical changes (not yet revealed) before the family can figure out a way to reach her.

2. I’m not sure if you mean jump scared in a bad/triggering or neutral way, but if you need me to tag anything on those posts please let me know!

The glimpses of the future timeline, are being scattered throughout wherever they parallel the present story in little ways, but that’s only for now. As we get closer to the movie plot, bigger chunks of the future will be revealed, because the future versions of the boys will have a larger role to play in the present timeline. So we will need more backstory than what the canon got. And also I just enjoy drawing my future versions so sometimes I don’t think too hard on a reason. I just like throwing them at ppl with no warning or reason.

When s2 ends, I plan on collecting all the future related stuff that’s been released, and recapping it for easier reading. Right now, it’s just little sprinkles of foreshadowing to give ppl an idea that, ‘oh crap. The doomed timeline is a bummer’. In my mind, I guess i thought it’d be kinda like a fun scavenger hunt for clues, but maybe ppl don’t like that 😅

3. All of the side-stories were written as the main comic was/is being released. A lot of them resulted from asks that just spawned the need to expand on certain ideas, or a desire to give all the turtles their time to shine.

For instance, when I was doing Donnie’s section of the main comic, it was a good few months where we hardly saw anyone but him and Venus. I wanted to just mix it up, and give Raph some love with his ‘Raph Time’ short. When Leo was front and center in the main, we hardly saw the others, so Mikey and Donnie got their little ‘Secrets’ short (and it was also I fun thank you for EW making it so far in the tmnt sep competition).

4. Anything that has been reworked/revised or just plain dropped should have an ‘Edit’ note because yes—I have gone back and changed some things, but more so from the asks i got in the early days, and some movie idea drafts.

All the short comics done in the last year, especially the ones that are listed in my pinned post, are canon and fall somewhere in the timeline. They’re like supplemental reading though—extra meat to give the world and the characters more personality. They do have particular backstory plot and important info in them, but nothing that shouldn’t eventually be re-visited/repeated in the main story.

um I hope that cleared up some things! I know it’s kind of a crazy amount of lore. I’ve tried my best to organize it in the pinned post, huge timeline, and search bar tags, but I know it’s getting harder and harder for newer ppl to jump in as it just get bigger. Thanks for reading regardless!

[arimiaromage]

Strange house - DGM doujin fangame guide book scans

so in January I found a physical copy of a 2010 d.gray-man doujin visual novel called Strange house by the doujin group MOONLIGHT CAFE. the game is a romance visual novel where you play as Lavi and can date Kanda while out on a mission with him to, you guessed it, a strange house.

the game is completely in Japanese and almost all mention of it online has gone away as it's a 14 year old game, so suffice to say finding anything about this game has been difficult. it won't be a complete mystery now though as I have the game and the guide book!

so... let's look inside this guide book!

before we crack it open, here's the scans of the DVD cover slip. the outside is similar to the guide book (see above) but the inside is an adorable collection of chibis.

now let's look at the guide book! all of these scans are at a high dpi so open them up in a new tab if you'd like to see them up close. also, most of this is in Japanese and I won't be able to translate a majority of it. if you'd like to translate it, please feel free to and add it to the post!

D.Gray-man LaviYu Only

Windows only sound novel type adventure game

(side note- visual novels are usually called adventure games in Japan. sound novel is another term for them that was more popular to use years ago)

The next two pages go over the system menus- the main menu, the CG gallery (where you can view cut scene artwork), in game menu, save & load, and the options menus.

Now that we've gone over the system, it's on to the character bios! Lavi is up first as he's the player character followed by Kanda and the finder Doma.

(somehow Kanda ends up in a bridal gown in this game)

(she has doll arms and legs? it says she's the other guy's sister)

(I have no clue what her name is suppose to be. Yuno Moreta? Yunoo Moreeta?? I'm guessing it's trying to be like Yu Kanda??? Allen's bio here mentions him being the 14th and that he doesn't appear much as he wasn't assigned to this mission)

(Lenalee's basically says that she's an exorcist and Komui's younger sister, but mentions that she might be seen on the mission in front of Lavi? the guy on the right was apparently meant to be something like a love rival in the MVP [think beta build] for the game)

after the character bios is the route guides!

while not every visual novel has choices or multiple endings, visual novels that do have multiple endings refer to them as "routes" or "scenarios", i.e. the series of choices you make to reach each ending. this game has 4 routes, each with a different artist.

scenario A is called Dolly and written by 響夜 and illustrated by Guriko.

scenario B is called Coming Home and written by 響夜 and illustrated by Seiko and others.

scenario C is.... something about a bracelet? it's written by 秋吉 and illustrated by Bonnu.

scenario D is called lonely travels / loneliness while traveling and is written by 木花 and illustrated by ネコ科ノコ.

to be honest this is a lot more than I was expecting! we're already at 7 team members and haven't touched the programming or music aspects. I also have no clue how long this game is - there's only a few choices listed here to get each route so each ending could be 5k words (short) or over 50k words (long).

now onto staff!

sadly, I won't be able to translate these as it's a majority kanji, but here they are.

and that's it! there's a lot of cute art here that I hope will be saved on the internet now that the sites for MOONLIGHT CAFE's games are mostly defunct.

personally as a visual novel developer I find it amazing that they were able to not only make such a good looking fan visual novel in 2010 with multiple endings but to get so many people on board and make it all work out. and then to make a physical release of it! (side note- I'm still unsure what engine this was made in! I'm thinking kirikiri but I'm not sure)

I have the game set up and am able to play it, so at some point I'll share some footage of it on this tag on my blog. I'm hesitant to put the exe online as this was a paid game at one point and the doujin circle seems to be disbanded, but I might if there's interest (is this considered a no-no for doujins? I'm unfamiliar on etiquette for doujins, so some advice on that would be appreciated if you have any)

[vivilingriphyn]

Hi! Could you tell me what The Sham au is about? I tried going through the tags but tumblr (once again) wasn't functioning properly 😭 I love your art btw

Hai hai!(´｡^ ᵕ ^｡`)/ Thanks for asking @ishusi! The Sham is ofc my Ninjago AU that first takes place in Skybound, where Nadakhan places a curse on Jay which brings C!Nadakhan into existence and making Jay’s life a constant hell. Which is kind of the main concept, and as well as also keeping some headcanons of mine and characteristics into Jay’s character like one of my headcanons is that Lightning elemental masters are part avian and keeping his snake attributes when he was turned into a serpentine and making them more fused into his powers and his body. Which explains in Part 2 of my comic, Jay’s claws/talons, and as well as the name of the au if you guys can figure it out.

The main idea for the story is where Jay's time in misfortunes keep is prolonged and he continues to persist despite how long he's been beaten down and kept there, because of Jay persistence, Nadakhan decides to place a curse on Jay, not through magical means but through gouging out Jay's eye, and after a couple weeks Nadakhan replaces Jay's eye with a cursed one.

A curse where brings C!Nadakhan into existence (the C ofc means Curse because I didn't wanna change its name but still want a distinction between the two Nadakhans.) C!Nadakhan was made to ruin Jay and his perception of things, the longer Jay has the eye the more C!Nadakhan begins to materialize to the point Jay could feel C!Nadakhan, and since the curse was made because of Jay’s persistence, Nadakhan made sure to grant that wish by making sure C!Nadakhan never lets Jay die by any means necessary, from using provocations or even being nice to Jay.(it's unbelievable ik.) But it's not being nice based purely on how it was made, because the curse is actually sentient and has a level of self-awareness. And that it's self-aware enough that if Jay dies, it also dies. And the more the curse stays, the more C!Nadakhan begins to gain the fear of non-existence or Jay’s persistence, while also gaining the potential to become more than just a curse. Or even becoming an extension of Jay's existence, like an invisible limb that has a mind of its own. But if it finds an opportunity to become part of Jay's soul or become an actual individual being then it will take it.

The drawing I posted of C!Nadakhan and suit Jay would probably the be the present time in the AU, while the comic I've been working on is more of when Jay first got or experiences the curse and I might rename it as “The Sham | Origins”

Anywho this AU is ofc for my own self-indulgence for my headcanons to have their own place and gain a purpose and story rather than just staying as pretty illustrations in my mind and on my canvas. Also thanks :3 really glad you guys like my art and I've always try to improve and refine my art as an artist and will continue to improve ^^

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

this was quite a while ago so my memory is hazy but it still sort of bothers me, so

AITA for making a quick comment about a ship dynamic(???) i didn't like in the ship tag?

before you jump on my ass, this isn't pro/anti stuff. literally just a matter of preference.

not going to mention the specific characters or media in question for pure anonymity's sake. i'm just going to assign arbitrary names to the characters in question for readability. let's say Albert and Bartholomew, or something. and the ship name can be Fucking BartBert I Guess.

"Bartholomew" had a traumatic experience in his childhood that had a very large impact on his mental state, let's say. as a fan of. um. "bartbert". i had noticed a trend in fan works of this ship depicting an AU version of Bartholomew that had never had this traumatic event happen to him. not that there's anything wrong with that, really. i just found it sort of strange and i was more interested in the canon character, additionally i found it sort of comforting to think that Bartholomew was worthy of love scars and all, so to speak. so i made a short post in the tag expressing pretty much that. along the lines of "why is there so much fanart like this? can't he be loved the way he is?" or something like that, and tagged it as bartbert because i wanted to see other people's thoughts on it. in retrospect it could've been read as dismissive or inflammatory i suppose but i really didn't mean it like that. i was just a little bit annoyed and confused by it.

fast forward a little while and this person comes into my notes saying something along the lines of "for some reason i can't reblog this on my main, but it's because people have been nice enough to make fanart of the AU that i made." i didn't think i knew this person at all, so i essentially just responded trying to assure them that i don't know them and wasn't trying to attack their art or them personally or anything.

i'm not sure exactly what happened after that because it's been like 2 years but in essence, i had actually blocked their main a few months before, because they had been posting about that AU and i didn't like it, so i just blocked and moved on like i usually do with stuff like that because i didn't want to see it in the tags. i probably didn't even realize at the time that they were the creator of the AU. but this person pointed out that i had their main blocked as like, evidence that that post i had made was a personal attack against them, or something like that?? of course i didn't mean it in that way, i had just blocked their main months ago and forgotten about it, and i wasn't even really trying to be rude but they blocked me before i could try to explain myself.

i remember this whole thing pretty vividly because i was at the zoo with my family that day and feeling like i was being accused of something i didn't do, or being called mean or being picked on by someone with a much larger following than me presumably, just for making a single post the night before was really stressing me out on what was supposed to be a fun day. in addition i ended up leaving the fanbase for the work in question entirely pretty soon after because i didn't want people to think i was weird or mean. it's sort of colored my recollection of the work in general, which sucks because i do still really like it.

in retrospect i'm honestly not sure if what i did was wrong or not. i suppose i shouldn't have put negativity in the tag but also i feel like you should be allowed to express negative opinions the same as positive ones, right? as long as you aren't being a jackass about it. although at the same time i can sort of see their perspective because i think if i saw a post like that about something i had made i might've jumped straight to being defensive about it, too...

but anyways it's one of those memories that creeps up on me while i'm trying to go to sleep, so,

was i the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[makerofmadness]

What's with Balloon Boy and the Daycare Attendant?

The Balloon World arcade machine exists, it's in the DA's room and both characters are involved in it. It's probably one of the most cryptic minigames in the FNAF series as a whole, but while we could ponder what exactly it's supposed to mean (maybe I'll do that for all the security breach minigames eventually), the main question I have is this:

WHY Balloon Boy specifically? Why is the minigame about HIM?

Is there a connection between the two characters? Or was it a completely random decision?

Out of nowhere, thinking about Balloon World, I came to a realization:

The Lights.

Balloon Boy's entire gimmick in FNAF 2 was that if he got into your office, he would disable your flashlight and vent lights (...somehow. I know we all make the jokes about him taking the batteries [and then that FNAF 57: Freddy In Space thing in FNAF World said he just straight-up steals your entire flashlight], but you never see the battery icon disappear or appear empty in FNAF 2 itself when he gets into your office. And the vent lights also stop working, so unless they also operate on batteries, then... does he actually take them from you?).

What's the one rule in the daycare?

Keep the lights on.

His mechanic is the antithesis to what Sun wants and exactly what Moon would want. Balloon Boy doesn't keep the lights on. He prevents you from turning them on at all.

(which also makes me kinda sad there wasn't a Glamrock version of BB. Then again, I don't know how exactly he would've uniquely affected like anything. Regardless I am hoping for the day someone in the fandom makes a glamrock bb who is arch-enemies with sun and gets along well with moon skseijdndndnd-)

It feels kinda obvious and I'm guessing I'm not the only person to think about this, but I have never seen anyone else bring this up. Not on YouTube, not on tumblr, nowhere. Maybe if I go looking for it I'll see, but i'm surprised I haven't bumped into anyone else saying this just naturally. I go into the BB tags a LOT, surely SOMEONE would've said something, right? I don't even see it noted in the trivia on the page for the arcade game on the fnaf wiki.

...but is this supposed to mean anything? Or is it just a cute little reference or callback? it's hard to say, especially with how ambiguous the minigame is.

Though I DID think of ONE thing... (possible minor spoilers for Ruin under the cut):

Saw this pointed out in a youtube video that the BB World screen (with Eclipse, who makes their proper debut in Ruin after effectively being foreshadowed by the minigame in SB's base game) can be seen on the ceiling in the DA's room. Which makes sense, obviously, but also take note of the pirate-themed windows in the hallway leading to it.

...now, which character do most of us tend to associate with Balloon Boy? His "tag-team partner," of sorts?

Foxy. The Pirate.

With this, I found that there's more Foxy-related stuff associated with the daycare area than I had previously realized because I had never made any connections before. I mean, Kids' Cove is directly linked to it for god's sake.

Like. I hope i haven't forgotten to mention anything (I've been writing this post over the course of hours 'Cus I had stuff to do in the middle of it all). My brain's kinda starting to fry. But basically: Was Foxy originally meant to be the Daycare Attendant, in-universe? Was there gonna be a Glamrock Balloon Boy with him, like as his first mate or something??? Were they gonna be connected to Fazbear Theater????? (Uh basically Sun/Moon to my knowledge from confirmation in the books and a lot of more subtle implications in-game mainly involving environmental pieces were originally meant to be in the Fazbear Theater as a stage animatronic but got moved to daycare duty instead and being reprogrammed. Which actually explains a lot about them when you think about it-)

Like. Ok I'm forgetting where I was going with this, I'm sorry, but I guess it's food for thought/adds to the weird connections between DA and BB, I guess. Idk. I can't focus that well right now to keep making new ideas.

felt like sharing my interpretation of the Balloon World minigame itself at least since earlier I did kinda finally get it down concretely:

I kinda developed a theory that Eclipse is Sun/Moon's "safe mode" and that rebooting DA reactivated Eclipse as a result. Like, they're their own AI that was at one point implemented. but then Vanny happened and locked them out thanks to the whole Glitchtrap virus thing (albeit it only seemed to reach Moon, while Sun remains seemingly unaffected. Guessing it's because they're different AIs [finally implied/basically confirmed by their Ruin dialogue). Eclipse has seemingly not been active for some time, or at least never post-pizzaplex closure, given how they're seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that this place is closed with no signs of opening.

So the minigame was foreshadowing Eclipse's existence and implying their "trapped" nature, which also could be seen as paralleling Vanessa's whole "Vanny" situation, especially given how iirc one of the messages related to princess quest can be found near the arcade machine.

[piosplayhouse]

Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

(or, an extended study in how to hate your own playerbase as much as humanly possible)

(or, or, tldr there's pretty much no updated information on just how ridiculously bad this game is so here's a writeup on how I got banned and all the subsequent information I found during my time playing for documentation's sake)

Part I. The Backstory

My beloved followers will know that a few months ago I began playing Horse Isle 3, a horse-raising MMO surprisingly released in the year of our horse 2019 despite its 1997-era website and Runescape-esque graphics. Some of my play through (mostly just horse pictures) is chronicled in my tag #homophobic scum horse chronicles ¹ if you want to see how drippy my horses were before they killed me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have endless respect for small teams of game devs that manage to create insanely impressive products-- which HI3's elaborate real-genetics breeding system, its main draw, certainly is. Coding is hard, modeling is hard, moderation is hard. Tip a coin to your local small indie teams that work hard to make incredible art.

However, HI3 is far from an admirable success story about a small dev team that triumphed over its obstacles.

The game is known for a variety of things, chief among them being the staff's rampant homophobia (which has earned it the moniker "the homophobic horse game"), hilariously uncharismatic mods (to the point where one of the main moderators, Connie, is mentioned by NAME in the majority of poor reviews of the game), the dev team's unrepentant rejection of criticism, and racism with a side of downplaying war crimes.

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

Now, it's marketed as a game for ages 8+, which, as I've briefly talked about before, is unfortunately a rarity in today's hostile internet climate. I grew up on a variety of typical child friendly MMOs like ye olde Pixie Hollow and PetPet Park, and truly lament that so many of these have been shut down over the years. As such, I have no issue with strict rules or word filters in games, with the caveat that they are effective and genuinely intended to keep people safe. Kids are naive, and can and will say things that they shouldn't (I, for example, got kicked from a Minecraft server when I was 8 because I posted in chat that my mom told me sex wasn't a bad word. things happen). Filters are a very appropriate tool to aid manual moderation of chat features, especially in an environment where mistakes will be made.

However, HI3's, as shown below (words that are forbidden from chat are marked in red), are... questionably selective.

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

This appears to be attributed to the fact that along with having horrible moderators, HI3 also seems to have a remarkably horrible developer backend, which is a trend that you'll see pop up quite a lot in this post. Taken straight from the horse's (haha) mouth, the lead developer is the only person who seems to be able or willing to add to the filter list, and for whatever reason only wants to block the "most common inappropriate words"- because saying transgender is more of an issue than nazi and gulag I guess.

(Screenshot taken from Top R.'s Sitejabber review, here)

¹ I'm not sure how far this will reach out of my audience, and since people have already assumed weird stuff about me I thought I should probably clarify-- I'm not calling the game "homophobic scum" ghghg, my play through was focused on making horse versions of characters from a novel called "scum villain", so I took the scum and added horse (I actually have another tag for a different horse breeding game called "scum horse chronicles" so I needed to distinguish them easily but am not very good at tagging). That's it.

Part II. The Game

The game itself is, putting it simply, a mess at best and openly hostile towards newcomers at worst. The game's UI is comparable to your average petsite with 20 thousand things to click on but if you tried to navigate that while also watching the Pilgrim's Progress movie by Scott Cawthorn on 90% of your screen. This is a very good overview of what your experience first logging in will be like, with the added caveat that talking in global chat costs in game currency and that the game doesn't tell you this at ALL until you try to type in chat, and that depending when you log on it's entirely possible that you'll spawn into a completely dead town miles away from anyone who can help you, wilderness survivor-style.

To make things more complicated, information about the game is split between the game itself and the laughably horrible website/forums. Spectacularly enough, the forums, which provide vital game information and rule elaborations, cannot be searched in any way (not via Google or any hard-baked search bar) and are regularly purged by admins to erase evidence of scandals and poor moderation complaints.

Now, something you will find to be generally people's biggest issue with HI3 is their strict no "date-speak" rule, which sounds ok on paper but is worded *just* vaguely enough to give the moderators full jurisdiction over whether or not they think you're breaking the rules. Selective moderation is a major theme in the HI3 chronicle, but it is perhaps most documented with regards to this rule, because what the hell does "boyfriend/girlfriend talk" even mean?? Outside of vagueness, this rule has also been scrutinized extensively by others due to the fact that a pair of previous moderators were openly married with the igns "FrogLips" and "MrsFrogLips". I don't personally think this is super condemning, since kids usually address adults by Mr/Ms etc whether or not they know they're in a relationship, but regardless it's clear that the complete lack of elaboration on what this rule means can be easily manipulated to lodge any number of complaints against people.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website rules page, here)

What I will say, however, is that this rule would probably hold more water if the game wasn't literally about breeding horses.

You can pimp out your horses, you can pay others to breed your mares, you can put any number of special (real life currency-bought) amulets on your horses to make them more fertile/have twins/give birth faster. I paid $1000 to castrate Jiang Cheng. The word "stud" (which btw, is another word for a black butch lesbian) is used constantly. Perhaps most shockingly, horse inbreeding is very common and accepted among the community, to the point that it is explicitly mentioned and EXPLAINED in the game guide; the only penalization for it is that your incest product foal will have a lower intelligence stat. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though implementing and acknowledging that horses can breed with their own relatives is hmm perhaps more harmful than another player saying the word gay, but what do I know.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website game guide page, here (only accessible with an account))

Well, you might ask, after you breed and sell a horse, is there any way to put a brand on it so you know it's from your ranch? That's where the "prefix" system comes in. Prefixes are bolded titles that appear in front of a horses name in lists and in the overworld, and are described in the official game guide as follows:

(Screenshot from the same Horse Isle website game guide page as linked previously)

I think you can toggle them off if you don't want to see them, though I could be wrong. They're basically just 1-5 letter titles you can put on your own horses (nobody else's, importantly). There's no way to search prefixes, and you won't see them in game unless either a horse with a prefix is listed in auctions or you actually encounter someone in-game and see their horse.

In fact, I would learn later that not even the moderators monitor the prefixes, and apparently have no way to mass-delete them. At all.

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

Now, it's not unusual that a game as complicated as HI3 would inevitably have a pretty taxing server-side code. Millions of multifaceted assets and features is really nothing to scoff at. However, the notion that your lead developer has to perform a manual search in the game's code to delete the equivalent of a stamp from every instance individually is hilarious. I'm not going to pretend to be a game developer, but there HAS to be a better way of coding a feature that intakes user-generated content that should probably be monitored regularly than that, right? Or, at least, there should be a robust filter system that could prevent any issues from occurring before they would need to be fixed so tediously. You might think.

On December 29th, 2022, I discovered how to register a prefix. It's very common to headcanon the characters I was naming my horses after as transgender, and I thought it would be cute to attach "TRANS" to my horses as a nod to this. However, a filter blocked the word. I was disappointed, but not surprised², and then tried to think of another word that was under 5 letters. To my complete and gay surprise, "GAY" was not filtered out, and henceforth, this worked as my prefix.

As you can see on the popup here, there are scant guidelines for what the requirements for a prefix should be. And, in this moment of apparently utter foolishness, I was under the impression that since "GAY" was NOT filtered out despite there clearly being a filter on this function, it was ok to register. Possibly it's not filtered because it's a synonym for "happy", I thought, which is also cute because I do like when horses are happy. Perhaps the staff had learned from their past criticism and had loosened the restrictions slightly because they felt restructuring was appropriate now that gay marriage is legal in the US, I imagined.

(My original post)³

What I could not imagine, however, was that the only reason the word wasn't filtered out, despite being possibly the most common sexuality-related word, was just because the lead dev couldn't be assed to add it to the filter list. And that apparently I was supposed to know this because it would lead to a permanent ban on my second offense with no warning.

² Hence typing "eat shit lol". Admittedly childish of me, but I didn't put a lot of thought into the post because it was just part of a casual silly live blog I was doing to blow off steam. The "if I get banned" tag surprisingly was not referencing "GAY", as I genuinely thought I was in the clear for that for reasons stated above, but because I tried to register "TRANS" and then posted about it online. You don't have to believe me, but I feel the need to defend myself since some people have wildly extrapolated that my actions were malicious instead of just a split second decision I made because I was bored one morning.

³ Despite the pop-up box saying that prefixes cannot be removed, they actually can at any time, given only that the person that owns the prefix unregisters the horse from it. The unregistering mechanic is for whatever reason not told to the player upon registering the prefix, but is mentioned in the official game guide linked above.

Part III. The Ban, The Report

I will preface this section by saying that I played the game normally. I do like being outrageous sometimes for my followers' entertainment, but I really don't like dragging random people into my antics if they aren't interested. Because of this, I really didn't interact with other players unless we were mutuals on some other platform. I rarely used the chat feature except to participate in server-wide events that required team participation, and I typically just explored on my own for fun. In general I think I was a pretty ok player, objectively, which lines up with my user trust score.

You see, the way moderators of HI3 allegedly keep track of rule breaking is through a "user trust score" with points added if you use features in the game, help people, etc, and points deducted if you violate rules. Anecdotally I've heard that around the -10 total points mark is when moderators put you on a sort of list to be monitored for suspension or punishment, which is pretty reasonable.

By the time I was banned, I had a score of +31. The -10 offset was a part of this debacle. The only thing I had ever done in the game which warranted any kind of violation was, as you will soon see, literally just naming about 30 of my own horses "GAY", a sin egregious enough to apparently offset about 200 hours worth of playtime with no issues.

Because of this, I was a little bit confused on multiple levels. For one, I had never even seen a moderator in game, nor been informed of discipline at any time before. On top of that, their permanent ban notification is extremely strange and vague. The text pop up when you try to log in just reads "Account currently banned -1 minutes ().", which is probably just copied straight from the server-side code for things and just wasn't translated into user-side comprehensibility. You'll also notice there is a "()" section in the notification, which I would assume is where they put the reason for bans, except for the fact that mine was completely blank.

The website which allegedly would hold more info just repeated a near identical code: "BANNED! -1min. Reason:".

So, with nothing else to go off of, I messaged support on the jankiest help center submissions I've ever seen on a website with this:

"Insisting" and "total disregard" are very strong words to use for a situation in which I just typed a word into a textbox because the game let me, I'd think, which is why I tried to reason with her. The prefixes mentioned in my message are well-known amongst the userbase and are much older and wider-spread than mine, so I would think that there would be at least some sort of precedent for this. The "geldings and yearlings" reasoning was mostly a joke, but also intended to express that the nature of an acronym (as the majority of prefixes seemed to be) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Intent was thrown around a lot when I was discussing the issues of prefixes with other users, and it seemed to have been used to excuse previous behavior in situations where mods liked the users in question better.

I also cannot emphasize enough how much they did not warn me about my prefix being removed. When I logged in and saw my horses' names did not include it, I was suspicious that the moderators removed it just because of the history of their behavior. However, I had no hard evidence because they did not inform me at ALL. Not through in-game mail systems, not through server messages, not through the website. Complete radio silence except for the addition of an unexplained "-10" to my user score. I did complain to some people that I thought it was removed, but a combination of things suggested that it wasn't a huge deal, so I mostly let it lie. For one, I had over 100 hours of playtime and was mildly worried that one of my chat messages had been flagged without my knowledge. For another, my profile text had also mysteriously disappeared, probably because of a glitch, so who knows what could happen in this game. Lastly, I went to the prefix registry again just to check and hilariously enough, they didn't actually block "GAY" from the database. Yeah, they apparently individually deleted it from all of my horses, but couldn't be assed to add such an "inappropriate" word to their filter system.

So I just registered it again and publicly told people that I would do it again if the mods didn't actually tell me to stop. I didn't really care about the prefix because to me, the feature was purely cosmetic. All I wanted was transparency from the staff.

Well, anyway, I assume Connie couldn't think of a comeback, so she just closed my report. I was annoyed because quite literally none of my questions were answered and she didn't even refer to anything in specifics. It would take less than 1 second to type the number of the rule I violated, but I guess that was too much work for her.

I tried to give them as many outs as possible to just apologize about poor communication, but they didn't even take the bare minimum. I would also like to mention that this support ticket process is the ONLY way to directly communicate with any staff. There's no ability to upload files or images on this system, and no email listed that you could contact. So essentially, there's no way to give actual evidence for anything you say even if you want to.

Kat, who is known as the slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-bad mod then picked up the case. Her response actually provided specific information, which made it leagues above Connie's, but still included some very strange elements for sure.

The notion that this game is intended for a worldwide audience is especially funny to me because you would really think if they cared about other countries they wouldn't violate their own rule one by using a slur for Europe's largest ethnic minority, but ok. It's a weird hill to die on considering how USA-dominated the staff's opinions towards rules are (Connie justifies the usage of a slur for Rromani people based off the opinion of a single roommate she had who reclaimed it, Joe defends a store in-game being called "The Gulag" because Americans don't think gulags are that bad (discussed and cited in the conclusions section)). But then again, picking and choosing what parts of other countries' customs you want to respect is very American, which is why I think they should add an extra star rating for its patrioticness on the website.

As I mentioned before, the prefixes I included in my response are definitely older and more commonly-used than mine, so I'm not sure how they wouldn't have seen them before. This comment also ties back to the suggestion that the moderators have very little control or insight over a distinct feature of their game, which is not a great thing to admit so casually.

Kat has a strange habit of immediately contradicting herself in the same paragraph, as can be seen here. "The glitches never happen and bugs were quickly fixed, but games still have bugs". "People that break the rules usually write in to ask what was wrong, but most people usually never ask". At this point I think we can confidently say that they don't even make an attempt to proofread any of their responses, to be honest.

Her 7th paragraph has one of my favorite lines in this exchange. "If we had to notify players every time we made moderator changes to their account we would spend 24 hours a day" is giving huge Yandere Dev "stop emailing me because I have to spend 24 hours a day reading all my emails instead of coding" energy. You really have to wonder why these people that seem to hate moderating so much are moderators.

You can tell by my response, but I do not like the use of "most" and "usually" in this at all. What's your standard isn't others' standards, and this is a topic which needs to be navigated gently, especially when kids are concerned. I never played the previous Horse Isles. I had no experience with the mod team, or with violations, or with anything because no one bothered to take five seconds to send me a message. No, I did not know that you would permaban me for typing a word that's in one of the most popular traditional Christmas songs in a place were only people who interacted with me would be able to see it. Most games would not do this. To take a lackadaisical approach to your literal job of community management because you want people to moderate themselves is contradictory to your claims of keeping children safe.

I will admit I was being a bit cheeky here as a subtle hint that perhaps they should take feedback, but I also would have taken a genuine response. I try my best to be as polite as possible to tech support staff because not everyone is! But they're people too and a simple thank you is worth a lot in customer service, even virtual. But Kat... you're not really giving me anything to work with here! If anyone reading this has feedback for how I could've rephrased things, feel free to comment them honestly. I actually ran drafts of these messages through a few people before sending them to make sure I was as concise and polite as possible, even if support clearly wasn't interested in reciprocating the effort ("following out rules using the the GAY to begin with"...?).

Part IV. The Backlash

I won't go too into depth in this section because it's more personal than documentarian, so feel free to skip to the next section if you want!

After this, the girlies were not happy with me. The one saving grace of HI3 that I've heard pop up over and over again is that the community is great. And a lot of users are! Don't think I'm disparaging people who play the game because I'm not-- it's a really fun experience with the right people. I was in a Discord server with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and kind.

However, within the community, there's also a pervasive culture of silence. According to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest, a lot of people will refuse to go public with their complaints about the staff due to fear of retribution, which I feel is unfortunate but understandable. There's a pressure to shut up and eat your food lest you be seen as someone causing controversy for the sake of it and ruining the sanctity of the game, which is an attitude explicitly encouraged by the staff (discussed more in the next section).

I liveblogged my entire correspondence with the support team to a group of other players for the 2 days I talked to them, and did have a lot of acceptance from people who appreciated someone speaking out. After the 2020 Mane Quest article, public information had sort of just gone dark as the community was pushed further into niche seclusion, despite things not improving at all. However, towards the end of my messaging, a group of people that I had never even spoken to or seen online before accused me of a variety of things ranging from "displaying my sexuality to children" (note: all I ever did was name my horses "GAY". I never once talked about my own sexuality in-game, nor did I say the word in chat ever) to "joining the server to cause drama" to "mocking the lgbt community by throwing around the word gay" (actually I'll attach a picture of this one even though I don't want to put people on blast in this section just because its so funny).

I think most of this can be attributed to the game having gained such a notoriety that longtime players, especially those with strong nostalgic feelings, have become completely desensitized to it. And this compounds with the fact that the game is so niche it doesn't yet have a good alternative to turn to to create a toxic cocktail where people tell themselves that they have to be loyal to the staff to play this one of a kind game-- and that anyone who doesn't follow them just doesn't understand. It's really sad, honestly.

Part V. Conclusions

I don't necessarily think the devs of HI3 are legitimately consciously homophobic-- unfortunately LGBT rights are still controversial amongst the largely southern and rural population of horse enthusiasts, and I could understand if they felt it necessary to skim the line towards conservatism to maintain a userbase. It's cowardly and dumb but it's not a sin to do what you have to do to survive in a capitalistic hellscape as cutthroat as the game industry.

However, what I do think the devs are is power-hungry and hypocritical. They have failed at every turn at community management because they're unwilling to admit they make mistakes, instead choosing to issue non-apologies like "[we] regret you guys got so upset and did not realize neither our true intentions nor motivations nor the whole situation [that we said it's ok that a player has a shop called The Gulag because it's 'not direct or violent']". To respond this way to a userbase filled allegedly with young children as a fully grown adult with a wife and kids is laughably out of touch. 'Sorry your fee-fees were hurt by our adult moderator responding to a serious complaint about inappropriate user-generated content with "lol", but actually you just misunderstood us and we're going to ban anyone who brings this up again' is the sort of response you'd see from the teenage mod team of an Undertale amino, not the supposedly responsible head dev of a 'rare oasis of kid friendly content'.

Telling an audience of impressionable kids that the fact that their feelings are hurt is their fault for not intuiting the intentions of 40+ year old adults is unbelievably toxic, and it's no wonder why people are so nostalgia-bound to feverishly shut down criticism about the games. They've been guilt-tripped into believing the mod team can do no wrong and any controversy, even if valid, that springs up is just extrapolated by people that haven't been laboriously groomed to know what the mod team wants to hear.

Countless times throughout my time researching and playing the game, the number one advice I've heard has always been "suck up to the mods or they won't do anything for you". It's crystal clear that the moderators care more about the joy they get from having power over some 200 users who will kiss their ass if they say a buzzword more than they care about you, your child, or the game itself.

It's essentially a model scam Kickstarter's wet dream, a game propelled to release and popularity by its singular defining feature and left to fester on the shelf as the only game in its niche market. Because of this, I believe there's truly no better way to describe HI3, with its messy backend, refusal to improve, narcissistic moderators, broken features, poor visuals, and inefficiency than as the Yandere Simulator of horse games.

[doshiart]

Gallavich Intro

uh huh, thank you @callivich for these encouragement reblogs post, so here we are!

(nick)Name: Doshi

Age: 22

What made you fall in love with Gallavich? I mean… gallavich, they're they. Okay, if serious, I just knew about them but never interested in it and don't remember whether I watched this show before or not. But I seen all of seasons attentively only in November 2023. Then I fell into it entirely and completely.

How long have you been a fan? 3.5 months / since November 2023

Favourite Gallavich moment/scene? oh god, it's hard.. so many really awesome scenes. I want to highlight a few and maybe make a top.

Mickey Watching Over Ian [S04E07] — my s-tier, i love re-watch this scene, i love this song (and i'm so sad that it's been removed from spotify but ok whatever). It's incredibly emotional, that's all. Mickey is so protective, there are so many thoughts on his face. And this silent talk with Svetlana screams very loudly for me. I just like to think that in that moment Mickey is thinking about how much he loves Ian and how glad he is that he's finally here.

"First Time I Felt Anything Since…" [S05E10] — just one more emotional scene before disaster. Really like it and the song is good too.

The Club Kiss [S04E08] — they are so touch starved for each other's. yummy.

"I Gotta Worry. You're My Husband." [S11E04] — it's really sad that this scene was deleted :\

"Rain On Me." [S11E07] — PLEASE they're so domestic and comfort, singing together, what could be better??

idk i just can't stop?? ok i'm quickly pick these important ones for me: "Don't." [S03E12] "Ian. Look At Me." [S04E10] "Sorry I'm Late." [S05E08] The Dock Scene [S07E10] "A lot." [S07E11]

Favourite Shameless character apart from Ian and Mickey? Carl! I actually really love a lot of the characters, but Carl the most. Love his character development, love his sibling bonding with Debbie and how they grew together, as well as his brotherly relationship with his elders. Love his interactions with Mickey and wish there was more. He's so sweet and silly kitty. I also had a crush on Sandy and would have liked to see more of a storyline with Debbie, but eh.

Do you write or draw or make edits? I draw! tag in tumblr / commissions open + other social

Favourite type of Gallavich fics? I'm absolutely in love for AUs! Before gallavich I didn't realize how much I loved the AUs. It's just amazing and this fandom is amazing because there are so many things I want to read, but there are sooooo many. I love multi-chaps and slowburn! Any universe, the main thing is our boys and tension between them!

Most of all I want to mention my love for texting/social media or something like that. I like it when text messages are inserted into the writing.

I prefer fluff, but I have nothing against angst, only if it is hurt/comfort. I love getting different emotions and I love crying too, but I don't like bad endings.

Favourite Gallavich quote? "You're Under My Skin, Man." "What You And I Have Makes Me Free." "Hit My Husband Again, I'll Fucking Kill You." "Don't fucking tell me what's impossible! We're taking care of him here. You, me, us. His fucking family. "Fuck You, Fuck You, And Especially Fuck You!"

Anything else you’d like to share about yourself? I'm a bit of a shy introverted lurker and didn't understand at all how tumblr blogging system worked until that moment, usually I just threw my art and ran away. But now I'm watching how people do their posts (use a queue?? what). And I wasn't completely sure how to blog with drawings without turning it into something personal, but it seems that's the point of blog?

So I'm just getting used to everything and want to stay in the shameless fandom, because it's very nice to be here. You are all very nice people and I have already become attached to y'all.

Apart from anything else, I have a huge obsession. I constantly read something new that comes into my hands, and I have a lot of ideas for new arts. (I might even want to do an edit, but shhh, I'm not sure I'm really mentally ready yet haha).

So yeah, you are truly amazing and I hope to be more active in the fandom! <3

[timur-pannonicus]

Azula, Iroh and Lu Ten speculation and possible hc

It's been a really long time since I made an original post so here we go.

Trigger warning: Gender roles, marriage within families, historical realities that are repugnant to a lot of modern people.

Anyway...

I didn't come up with the theory myself but there's a headcanon that Azula and Lu Ten were supposed to be married, as arranged by the then Fire Lord Azulon.

If you take the comics as proof, there's a scene where Azulon says that he's marrying Ozai of to Ursa so that the union of Sozin's and Roku's blood will create a powerful dynasty that will rule the world.

However, Azulon is outraged at the very notion presented by Ozai that his firstborn Iroh should be disinherited, which leads to the possible conclusion that Ozai and his progeny were never meant to succeed the throne but to marry into the main line to strengthen it.

Even if you reject the comics it still remains plausible. Azulon clearly didn't have much love for Ozai, marriage between cousins in a great lot of societies through history barely raised eyebrows among commoners, never mind royalty, who often mistakenly believed "pure" blood makes offspring stronger.

Azulon might have arranged the marriage soon after Azula was born or also likely when she proved to be a prodigy and genius at firebending.

In any case, it provides a different or at least additional kind of explanation for Iroh's attitude towards Azula.

Lu Ten was most likely at least in his twenties when he died so Iroh knew what kind of women his son got along with and which not. Thus he tried to influence her into being the kind of girl his son would like. As we all know, she wasn't measuring up when she was little and after Lu Ten's death Iroh lost a good chunk of his motivation to try getting along with her.

It also gives new light on why Ozai dug his claws into her so early and raised her to be as much like him as possible. Even if he never formally got the throne he could influence the nation through his daughter, the queen.

This adds to his she was born lucky comment, from the start she had the right gender.

Plus, in my benefit of the doubt interpretation of Azula she did feel at least somewhat positive towards Lu Ten. Apart from condemning Iroh for not razing Ba Sing Se in revenge for his death there's the infamous moment where she asks Ursa and Zuko what would happen if Iroh died. She did not ask about Lu Ten and when Zuko counters and asks how she would feel if Lu Ten wanted Ozai dead, she doesn't talk back but runs out of the room.

Might also explain why she never really mentioned wanting the throne. For a good chunk of her life she was supposed to be queen anyway, giving her a rather secure sense of entitlement, so why announce it out loud to everyone?

Rant end.

Note: I'm pretty sure I will face disagreement but I simply like speculation for its own sake at times. Maybe I'm too hard or too soft on a character. Feel free to give reason why I am wrong but NO foul language or personal insults will be tolerated from my side and I don't want to see people being rude to each other in notes or reblogs either.

I'm also not exactly the best at tagging so if you have suggestions for that I'm all ears.

I wish you all a nice day.

[sweetblossoms]

saw your post abt rapunzel manipulating tim in their convo and god hard agree it Is concerning that so many ppl didn't see it. also crazy to me that ppl are mad at tim and defending rapunzel, saying that they would have taken the book too because tim was being rude etc. to me it seemed that both tim the character and ally the player Wanted to believe that rapunzel wasn't part of the plan and was good but just kind of strange, and both are successfully fooled. tim absolutely fumbles the interaction and ally could have played things better, but rapunzel was so clearly in charge of the conversation, leading him into saying worse and worse things and putting his foot in his mouth while tim was genuinely trying to be nice. tim is awkward and blunt and eccentric with Everyone, it's weird that ppl are saying he was being singularly rude to her or patronizing her or that he deserved to get the book taken. that interaction was clumsy as hell and so many words could have been chosen better but tim so clearly was trying so hard to fix his initial fuck up and be friendly w her in the same weird way he talks to everyone. I don't see how ppl came out of that scene on her side even if tim was a little rude and unfortunate w his word choice, and it's concerning to see ppl being like "ha take that stupid old man!!" abt the book being taken + in defense of a character we met an episode and a half ago and who we have been told outright is an expert at deceiving people. the princesses are so so interesting as characters and the morals going on are complex and that's a whole different conversation, but I feel like no matter whether you love rapunzel or not, ppl should be able to recognize that she was manipulating tim in that moment and taking advantage of his trusting disposition. not trying to start discourse in your ask box ofc!!! I've just seen No One Else express discomfort w rapunzel in that scene

anon this ask has been living in my head rent free since you sent it, i've been stewing over how to respond because y e s. for context, check out this post to save discourse on main (this is about to be a long one of fan critic analysis, get your popcorn and settle in if you wanna read, this is the longest post i've ever made), im gonna put my thoughts and response under a read more, sososo many spoilers under the cut read at your own risk

These were all in the replies and tags and I want to reply to all of them bc they're all worthy of being talked about bc i feel like the majority of the fandom is almost scared to critique?? So like let's talk about it since nobody else seems to be taking this approach from what I can tell (thank you to you anon for being on my side as well as the rest of you who are screaming with me) I will begin by saying that my original post is not critiquing ally the player, or any of the other players. i understand that they were in that dome, filming a session of dungeons and dragons, and improv acting and roleplaying for many hours on end with back to back episodes. i kind of get ally and the rest of the table maybe just wanting to "hope for the best", especially ally as they are quite a "hope for the good in others" type of person. it's frustrating from a viewer perspective sure, but i totally dont blame anyone ever for making a "wrong" or "non-optimal" choice while playing a ttrpg, they just have the misfortune of being filmed while doing so. i myself have made tons of bag fumbles while playing dnd, even when i thought everything through ten times over. so anything i have said or will say forward isn't to put any shouldering on to the people playing these silly storybook characters, like, i Get It

What i do want to critique is the fan response, which is the more worrying one!!! like i said in my original post, i was surprised by my d20 watch buddy having a similar response to ally. the total "oh, maybe she's just quirky bc of the self isolation, maybe she's autism rep" approach. my friend, love her to death, is also one of those "sees the best in others and hope everyone is always aiming to be their best selves" type of person, very similar to ally. i came online after that episode expecting everybody on the fanbase level to be screaming with me in a "i told you so!!" way

instead. i came online and saw people just on the attack and the defense in absolutely skewed ways!! out of NOWHERE, all these fans have come on to post about how "tim was patronizing her, and thats why she stole the book" "wow i would have hated being called girly and honey as well" "wow these conversations really didnt go their way why was tim so mean to her :(" or the opposite of "rapunzel is the evilest person to ever exist bc xyz these princesses are evil villains" or "we need to protect these princesses bc they just didnt know any better uwu"

i feel like, on a fan level, me and you anon (+all these lovely folks in the notes of that post) were the only ones screaming "hold on, that is literally not the same media i just watched"

i've seen before a lot of people be like "wow, media literacy is at an all time low" and i never really understood that until i saw the reactions after that episode. as a fan or viewer watching any media, we have the privilege of seeing more about the media than the people who are creating it. that's the best joy of being a viewer, we get to sit back and spot those foreshadowing moments and bite our nails in suspense when the music goes creepy and see the artwork and overall, we have the privilege of catching vibes that maybe those acting in it do not. this leads to those bonding moments of "i told you so" "wow im biting my nails and pacing" "oh they're gonna REGRET that". and, an "oh my god no no no do not hug her she wants to take your book god now she's feeling you up with her hair she's looking for the book ROLL INITIATIVE!!!!". it leads to glorious moments of ~dramatic irony~, a literary term for literally when something is happening in a story and the readers can catch it, but the protagonist probably didnt bc they're not seeing the full picture. While watching, from my perspective, yeah it was frustrating to watch the player bag fumble turn after turn, but it's a game of dnd, they film so many back to back, they don't get the same experience as us. however.

brennan did a great job at dropping the foreshadowing, to the point of not even so much subtly foreshadowing, he DIRECTLY TOLD THEM rapunzel was a liar and uses her words as knives. like someone pointed out, the players even PAID for that information, with the golden bridle. by the time they met these princesses, they probably knew the most about rapunzel's true nature over all the other princesses, that she uses her charisma to her advantage. the players made their choice to do the diplomatic route, to split up and chat. ally did the right thing for picking rapunzel with tim's 19 charisma stat, it would have been charisma against charisma, and an even playing field for someone they have been explicitly told is a master of words and deceit.

as fans, we've seen these episodes edited and put back to back. clues are lined up in a row. was it frustrating to see ally playing tim in a naïve way? sure. but tim's been pretty naïve this whole time, so you could stack it up to a character choice. what's more frustrating is seeing the responses of viewers being blindsided by the book thieving and chalking it all up to "evil vs good" and rapunzel's choice shaking them to their cores.

by this point in the story, by the time you get to that episode, rapunzel already gave enough bad vibes with the talk of her charismatic deceits and with her hair everywhere spying on them. maybe that last one wasn't explicitly stated, but it was heavily implied to the point of gerard writing the plans on a note instead of wanting them said out loud by elody, a scene that happened way before tim's. by the time we see rapunzel get to the kitchen, she is INSTANTLY catty. someone described her on the post as "eldritch regina george" and. yes. exactly. eldritch regina george. from our privileged spot as a viewer, rapunzel comes in, puts on the fake smile, puts on her fake tone, and says "what are you doing in here? :)". she was already ready to fight timothy. that first sentence was hostile. she was OFFENDED and checking on tim to make sure mother goose wasn't counter-spying. i honestly didnt think that would have to have been explicitly stated, she was in attack mode and plastered the fake smile for a show so that she had the upperhand in the conversation that was about to happen. this is something that fans should have at least caught on to right off the bat, we've been explicitly told that she is fake more than she is honest for the sake of being a "performative person"

the conversation happens, and she starts becoming more verbally hostile. "i dont know, what SHOULD we do hehe. it's ruined now :)" "no use in crying over spilt milk *pours milk with hair on the floor with a smile* oh no :)" "...or if it was on purpose :/ :)" "why dont you go get a mop :)" "i chose to be charming :)"

every sentence she replied with was carefully chosen. as viewers, we can watch brennan's face in full clarity of intimidation. we can have the knowledge that has been provided to not trust rapunzel as she is a charismatic spy who has words for knives. in my opinion, even without those clues before now, her show that she put on in the kitchen should have been enough as is to show that she is acting maliciously and with hostility. the smile is there as to not incite physical violence on tim's part bc then it would make TIM look like the bad guy if he attacked first. by the time she goes in for the hug. im sorry. but ally the player should have caught that, the whole table should have caught that, and-more importantly-the fans should have caught that. we all watched the same thing. we have all been told the same information. to purposefully ignore all of the red flags just to pull a "well tim was kind of mean and patronizing, and rapunzel doesnt have social skills from being locked in a tower, i forgive her, wow i didnt see that coming" is absolutely *batshit*

the lack of people catching on is what concerns me. i've met TONS of people growing up (sorry here, im all for women's wrongs, but mainly cis-girls tbh) who act like rapunzel does. from middle school and high school bullies/mean girls. mean girls at college. from parents or teachers or bosses. from normal adults in my life. they always have the same tone and inflections in the same places. the same faces with the wrinkled nose. the same sickly sweet smile. brennan played rapunzel, a known manipulator, perfectly. to a T. he embodied it fully. people JUST LIKE RAPUNZEL walk amongst us every day. i can guarantee you that even these fans that didnt catch it have met people like rapunzel in their own lives.

rapunzel is a character yes, but she is a character that mimics a masterclass manipulator. she IS the mean girl, the regina george. it leaked out of her every word, tone, and inflection. every single thing told about her and shown was, in no world, some "uwu the sweet bean was locked in a tower and doesnt have social skills". that was her origin, her start point. just like sleeping beauty locked in a castle, snow locked in her coffin. rapunzel directly says "i chose to be charming. :)." she had her origin of no social skills, her sad origin of being locked in isolation in her tower, and said "this is my greatest flaw, so i am going to dedicate my life to improving this skill bc it's what stopping me from achieving my goals." she trained her social skills to be good. too good. so good that she hopes nobody will catch her sweet charming self in the act of malicious intentions. this. was. directly. stated.

it worries me on a psychological level of the fans. yes it shows a lack of media literacy, something is frustrating on a fan-to-fan level. it shows a lack of ability of critical thinking. it shows a lack of ability to participate in dramatic irony, a necessary literary device to instill tension into a horror campaign. but also, and to what is probably my main point in this novel long hot take: it has real world implications. mean girls like rapunzel are a guarantee in life. i'm sorry, but it's true. maybe the person acts differently, maybe they aren't as obvious or more obvious. but these people walk amongst us. they use the same tone and same cadence to their words. these manipulators see what they want, and devise a way to convince the person into giving them what they want. rapunzel did not use the Charm Person spell, or the Friendship spell. She used. her words. like a normal human being. and by doing so, we as the fans were able to catch on and should have had a moment of "RUN GOOSE, RUN AWAY, NO DONT LET HER HUG YOU". but instead, a lot of people turn a blind eye to these manipulators in their lives. they pull a "aw but they have a tragic backstory, they're just confused and need love :/" "they cant be THAT bad..." they see a sweet little smile on the face and an upticked tone of voice, and go "well, they're playing nice, so now i have to play nice bc otherwise im the bad guy here" which!!! you do not!!

this is exactly how manipulators worm their ways in, this is what ALLOWS manipulation to work in its various forms. it's how people get trapped in abusive relationships. it's how people get scammed. on a personal end, i lived a narcissistic manipulator for a long time growing up, and it was exhausting. once you could put down the rose colored glasses and see right through the act, you notice how every inch of their mannerisms are performative. everything they say and do comes with the caveat of them wanting something from you and are trying to butter you up in the meantime. if you catch and call onto it, they IMMEDIATELY turn on you, they sneer and retreat to their next target who it will fool. the cycle continues, the next target is selected.

on a fan level, if we as fans cannot play into dramatic irony as a practice, if we cannot exit our seats of mind to catch on to those "eldritch regina george" quirks at the bud in a piece of fictional media where the puzzle has been handed on a silver platter, then there is a l o t more work to be done on 1) general media literacy 2) ANY fandom perception on media and 3) general awareness of how to spot and deal with manipulators in real life. if you can't catch on to it in a silly fictional ttrpg media, how do you expect to catch on to it in real life? how many of these same fans are trapped in manipulative relationships around them? how many more will they fall for bc of the "oh no but they have tragic backstory so it's forgiven uwu"? as fans, you cant sit there in the same breath saying that tim was condescending to rapunzel and then follow it up with not noticing what was ACTUALLY happening in real time. if you wanna say that rapunzel was ALLOWED to be a manipulator because of her origin, what other manipulators are you defending in your real life? how many of these manipulators continue their tricks BECAUSE they know naïve people exist and will fall for it? how many have been enabled in the same cycle bc it worked on one so it'll work on the next?

i wish i had a fun way to conclude this absolutely massive chunk of fandom critique gibberish, but i just dont. i wish i could find a more comprehensive way to scream about this, so take this post as me SCREAMING about this, anon my dm's are open if we wanna rant some more

[c6jpg]

okay okay arlecchino story quest thoughts

overall i liked it but mainly the whole duel sequence which was fucking awesome but some points that bugged me:

the release of arlecchino's animated short basically spoiling the entire story quest

mentioned in the tags of my previous post but yeah i think the story quest would have been a lot more... idk interesting? revealing? if the animated short had been released after this patch/story quest. you basically spend the entire first half of the story quest already knowing the "twist" and have to watch literally everyone else figure it out which is never really engaging nor fun story telling.

like you KNOWWW arlecchino is not "that evil" and you KNOWWWWW all these atrocities were from the previous knave so seeing literally everybody go through these theatrics is a little. sigh. idk. like i was just waiting to get to the boss fight bc i knew the corresponding cutscenes would be awesome (and they were) and getting random fatui insider knowledge was fun i enjoyed having what was effectively seeing arlecchino and childe in the office break room but we didn't really learn anything we didn't already know

also. arlecchino is hardly the first but it really is just kinda. sigh when you basically get a whole scene of the character explaining their OWN tragic backstory. once again genshin fails to show not tell

freminet

i know a lot of people are upset about the freminet timeline. honestly idc at this point i'll suspend my belief whatever yadda yadda but i do think it was a cop out for freminet to have like. not at least been SUSPICIOUS that clervie was possibly talking about the previous knave just because crucabena "didn't talk about it and all the experiments ended" by the time he joined the house

like he spent a significant time with clervie (half a month right?) trying to help her out and even if clervie was "a child stuck in the past" she wasn't exactly trying to hide anything and they ALL knew she was some sort of ghost or maybe something tied to memories/leylines. and he KNEW crucabena so i'm just like. a little aghast he didn't have any damn idea like at least make him suspicious right so he and the traveler can join heads and be like "hmmmmmmm something is not right here HMMMMMMMMM" like if you are SO sure arlecchino isn't "that kind of person" (ig this was more lyney saying this but still) wouldn't you consider maaaaaaaaaaaybe the previous knaves were?

there was a single moment when they were at the table sharing intel that freminet was "lost in thought" and i think that would have been a fantastic moment for freminet to be the star and voice his suspicious but we got literally nothing from that.

honestly just disappointed freminet didn't do more in the story tbh. the trailer was really hyping him up to literally change the game lol

the results of the duel

i mean we saw it coming we knew she was gonna spare those children somehow. idrk how to describe it like on one hand yes would be nice to have more morally fucked up characters and its a little disappointing that arlecchino isn't "that bad" she's actually super normal all things considering (childe fucking LIED) on the other hand i don't necessarily hate this is the way they made her character? but the result of the duel still felt like a huge cop out lmao like it was basically an indirect "your resolve towards family impressed me so i'll let them live" which was exactly how i didn't want this to be resolved but also don't know how they would have done it otherwise

arlecchino's curse/flames/????????

GIRL CAN YOU ELABORATE PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE i know it has to do with her being part of some khaenrian (?) bloodline or something but lajdksfldjflads can you elaborate what do you mean your flames can be extracted and burn memories we're just all gonna take that and run with it huh

anyways.

regardless i loved the main battle cutscene in her boss form. loved that bit where she blocked freminet and lynette's dual attack and was like "sorry for what? this pitiful excuse for an attack?" i was banging my fist on the table i loved that bit sooooooooooo fucking much dear god

ending cutscene was expected and bittersweet but i liked it a lot as well. really the graphics and me just really liking arlecchino saved this quest for me LOL i think it has a lot of plot holes compared to other story quests but also a much more interesting story (bar is in hell) although you're guaranteed to get some sort of lore with a weekly boss but anyways it averages out to being a pretty okay but not spectacular story quest 👍 maybe like a 6/10, would have rated it higher if the animated short didn't spoil everything

[kfcfingerlickingood]

OOC:

Posting here cause it'll get ignored on my main.

Alright, so, Goncharov seems like it was really fun to be a part of. Sure, it's still kinda happening, but it's not as big as it was. I'm honestly kinda bummed I wasn't involved in it, and I'm willing to bet that some other people feel the same way I do or just wanna bring it back.

So, I propose this idea: we do something similar, except with a videogame from 1998 (obviously any older than the 90s won't make much sense, especially considering most Tumblr users seem to be under 40) that was discontinued. An action-packed story game which was discontinued for being deemed too hardcore for kids. I want to confuse new Tumblr users, and I want others to join me. Plus it's fun to come up with lil bits of lore and characters and game cheats and stuff. It wouldn't be too far fetched as a lot of people here grew up in the 90s so can pretend to remember it, and those who weren't born then can say they collect old games consoles (something a few people do) and found the game in their attic so got their GameBoy and started playing.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that it'll be more fun because instead of gaslighting people to believe a made up movie from probably years before they were born exists, it'll be gaslighting people into believing that a fake videogame from probably their CHILDHOOD exists.

Before we do this I wanna make sure others are on board, please reblog for bigger sample size :)

[poisonioushearts]

The Un-unbirthday Party

Characters: Heartslabyul (some are there more than others but they all speak)

Gender neutral reader

Warnings: Not proof read

Synopsis/tags: I had this idea while lying in bed and contemplating my life choices, fluff, slight angst, no use of y/n, reader is ramshackle prefect, you can guess the ending, takes place after book 1 but book 2 hasn't started yet

Notes: First time posting a fic on here so please like and reblog if you enjoyed reading!, tried to make this aesthetically pleasing to look at lmao

Do not repost, reblog only(if you enjoyed reading do reblog it helps with motivation)

Word count: 800+ (I skimmed to count so I don't know the exact number)

It was a cycle.

Go to school. Keep Grim in line. Get dragged into trouble by your friends. Go back to Ramshackle exhausted because some bird insisted on you doing something to repay him because of he is 'oh so generous'.

Ha.

You realized one day that time was really flying by because as you were rearranging things in the main room and trying to clean stuff up the ghosts popped up.

"Sheehee, hello there prefect."

You jumped, startled. The picture you were adjust on the wall almost slipped from your fingers and you fumbled to catch it.

You sighed, "Hello. There something you need?"

"No." One of them responded.

"But we do have a question." Another added.

"Sure," you put the picture on the floor and faced the ghosts, "What is it?"

"Is it true your birthday is in a week from today?"

You hummed in thought, pulling out the phone that Crowley lent you out of his graciousness (whatever) and you check the date.

Sure enough your birthday was to be in exactly one week from today.

"Seems like it yeah," You answered nonchalantly, "Why do you-" looking up from the bright screen you saw that the ghosts had just vanished. "Okayy?"

Shrugging off the encounter you put your phone back in your pocket and picked the picture up again.

"Henchmen!"

"Gah!" You yelped and the object crashed to the floor, a sure sound of something breaking made you internally groan.

"What now Grim?"

"Why didn't you tell me your birthday is coming up?"

You tilted your head, "I never told you when my birthday was."

"I- ah-" he stuttered over his words, "I overheard you speaking to the ghosts about it! Not because I was curious about why you didn't say when your birthday was but because I was just in the area at the time and I am curious."

You chuckled, "Of course. I wouldn't have thought any differently."

"So..." He trailed off, and knowing Grim he wouldn't let it go until he had an answer.

"Well," you started, walking away from the shattered picture and towards you kitchen for a glass of water. "I guess there's more so two reasons. Reason one: I haven't really thought about it. Being here has kept me running everywhere so I guess I haven't had much time to think. And two..." You trailed off, staring into the cup of water, fingers tightening around the glass, "I suppose I'm trying to avoid it."

"Wah!?" The cat sputtered from his spot on the floor, he quickly crawled to your leg and climbed until he was sprawled across your shoulders. "Why would you avoid your birthday?!"

You sighed, "Because the people I usually spend it with aren't here." Finally you decided to take a sip of the water, it's coolness helping your parched throat only by a little. "My family and friends back home...they...I..." You stopped talking for fear of the tears that were threatening to fall.

"Oh..." He trailed off. The cat was at a loss for words. You? His henchmen- without your family on one of the most important days of the year? No. He wouldn't have it. Not for his henchmen.

---

It's been a week and today was your birthday, although it didn't feel any different from any other days at Night Raven College, you knew that this day is different.

You weren't home. You wouldn't see your family or friends and as the days passed it felt as if Crowley wasn't even trying to get you home.

Like the other days your mind was on autopilot as you went from class to class, the day was beginning to mush and blur together.

There was one part of the day you were excited for however, and that was the Unbirthday party Heartslabyul was hosting in the evening. It was the one thing that seemed to be good in your day as you treked from class to class and tried not to fall asleep in Trein's lessons.

At the moment it was Lunch time and you were silently eating your food while you listened to your friends talk.

"So," Deuce faced you, "You still coming to the ah-Unbirthday Party later?"

You nodded with a smile, "Wouldn't miss the chance for free food." Your friends chuckled in response as you finished up your lunch.

Although you could definitely feel something was off with your Heartslabyul friends you didn't say anything. You didn't know why but you just brushed this moment off and hoped they hadn't gotten into any trouble.

Your hopes were thankfully answered. (You didn't know this though)

"So, prefect. Anything interesting going on today?"

You raised a brow at the sudden question and opened you mouth to speak and faltered when Ace suddenly yelped, as if he had been elbowed in the side.

"What was that for?" Ace hissed as he faced the boy next to him who just wordlessly stared at him.

They say in silence for a few long minutes before you looked at the cafeteria clock.

"Well I don't know what's going on with you to and I swear if you got into some type of trouble." You stood up with your tray, "I will murder you."

"Oh nothing-"

"It's just that-"

"We didn't do anything we swear!"

You gave them an incredulous look as they stood with their trays, "...okay..."

As the day went on they just acted more and more suspicious. They must have done something to be acting like this!

Throughout the classes you had one(or both) of them with, Deuce would shuffle in his seat nervously and stutter over his words and Ace was... semi-normal. He didn't insult you as much as usual though which made you very suspicious because he never once made fun of Grim-who has been awfully quiet for the most of the day as he clung to your shoulders.

'What is going on?'

---

Finally the school day had come to a close, and you were currently attempting to get ready for the un-unbirthday party.

But it seemed like you had nothing.

The outfit that Riddle had given you when you first went was kind of ruined from trying to run away from Trey and Carter, for it had gotten caught on the rose bushes. But it didn't seem like you had much of a choice. At least it wasn't that torn? It was noticable but not terrible.

You just hoped that the dorm leader would let this slide- knowing him before his overblot, you would surly loose your head.

You fiddles with the sleeves nervously as your shoes clacked in the quiet halls of the college. Grim had already left while you were getting ready, insisting that he, the great Grim, could take care of himself.

You gave him the benefit of the doubt and now you were walking in the halls alone.

You didn't think your birthday was terrible so far. Not much homework, Grim was cooperative, and you got the change to go to a party- even if it wasn't yours. You'd say it was a pretty decent day, but at times you couldn't stop thinking about your home.

What could they be doing? Did they miss you? Did they think you went missing or died?

The questions were endless and you attempted to push them out of your mind. You wanted to focus on your friends and the Unbirthday party today. You didn't want to worry anyone with your troubles.

You finally stood in front of the steps to the mirror. Your foot hovered over the steps when someone suddenly stumbled out of the mirror.

"Deuce?" Said boy stumbled down the steps and you moved out of the way so you wouldn't get crushed and you caught him before he could faceplant into the floor.

"Oh-ah- hey there prefect!" He straightened out and your arms fell to your sides.

"What are you doing? Shouldn't you be at the party?" You asked, gesturing to the mirror.

"Well actually I came to get you! Um, Carter and I."

You tilted your head, "Carter's with you?"

"Yep, mhm. So we should probably wait for him."

"But you just said you came to get me, and I am here so..." You took a step towards the mirror but a hand on your wrist stopped you.

"Well we should probably wait because he doesn't know your here yet! He could end up going to you dorm only to realize you're not there so we should totally wait."

You didn't pull away from his grip, "Totally..."

Not to long later after a long awkward silence, Carter appeared.

"Ah prefect! There you are! Glad we found you."

You deadpanned, "I've been standing here for a while."

He ignored your comment, "Come on let's go- wait." He stopped and looked at your outfit before frowning, "It's ripped."

"Yeah I know... But I didn't have anything else."

He waved his hand, "Not a problem let me just..." He took out his pen and with a flick of his wrist, your outfit had been repaired to it's previous state, with just a little more...'pizazz'.

"Oh!" You looked at yourself and one of the previously ripped parts and hummed, "Thanks Carter!"

"Not a problem prefect! Can't have you looking like a mess at your-"

"At the Unbirthday party!" Deuce suddenly shouted, his voice an octave higher than normal.

"Oh yes, Riddle would not have been pleased." Carter agreed.

"Well then I believe he also would not be pleased if we are late yes? Let's go."

"Ahh, not just yet." Carter stepped into your path.

You frowned, "Why not?"

"Well... preparations have not yet finished up and we had a uh... incident. I came to get Deuce for the extra help. I'll text you when we are ready!"

Before you could utterly another word Carter had already grabbed your classmates wrist and disappeared in the mirror.

You blinked.

"Okay then...might as well go to the library and try to do some research..."

---

The gardens were quiet, the roses red glistening with fresh red paint, the only sounds being your shoes against the pavement as you walked into the gardens to get to the main area.

Minutes ago you had gotten the text from Carter saying that they were ready for you.

What did that even mean? It's an Unbirthday party they are meant for well-everyone.

You looked from from the roses, to the trees, and to the cloudless sky.

It was nice, the quiet and the serene nature. You felt almost at peace.

No cat complaining about the school work.

No friends getting themselves into trouble.

Just yourself on this nice and simple day. Your birthday.

And cake.

But that would be later.

You had finally come to the same old space in the garden where the party's were held. Tables were set and silverware shone when hit by the sun's rays.

But where was everyone?

The place was empty not a single soul in sight. You pulled out your phone with a frown, re-reading Carter's message. They should all be here by now...

Something collided with your body and you crashed to the ground with a yelp, your phone slipping from your fingers.

"Ow..." You groaned, attempting to sit up, about to hit your attacker when you paused. "Ace? What the hell what was for?"

He only smirked and helped you to your feet before pulling an item from behind his back and placing it on your head.

"Happy birthday prefect."

What?

At that moment the students came filing out from where they hid, greeting you with a smile and 'happy birthday' before taking seats at the tables.

"What? But- how?"

"Grim and the ghosts." Riddle appeared beside you, "The cat gave Trey quite a fright. Luckily he wasn't holding anything but a tray, unfortunately, that tray will filled with treats which hit the floor. Grim had no problem cleaning them up and he told Trey in muffled words that your birthday was coming up."

"I went to Riddle and he told your friends." Trey smiled as you turned to meet his eyes, "It was Riddle's idea to push the Unbirthday for another day and have this be, in other words, a surprise birthday party. Happy birthday prefect." He handed you a small wrapped box and you could barley stutter out a thank you.

You were shocked and happy.

And on the verge of tears(but they didn't need to know that).

You smiled, straightening the ridiculous and nostalgic hat on your head as Deuce wished you a happy birthday and Carter pulled you close for a picture(after he handed you your phone which was somewhere in the grass after Ace tackled you).

"Then I guess it's an un-unbirthday party." You joked. "Thank you guys."

This is one moment you wouldn't trade for anything. Not even a ticket home.

Because at the moment, this was the now.

This was your home.

Whether temporary or permanent.

No matter how much chaos you get into with those guys- you wouldn't have it any other way.

---

Reblogs and likes are always appreciated, thank you!

[giwhiteday2023]

"Welcome to the White Day Bakery!"

APPLICATIONS: CLOSED

Welcome to the White Day Bakery! A Genshin Impact community exchange gift event, where you get paired with random person and exchange White Day themed gifts! They can be both in the form of an x reader fanfic and an artwork.

"Welcome to our bakery! We are celebrating White Day and we have new, special menu for our clients! Oh, you ask what you can get? A present full of love, made specially for you! Please come in, come in! Let me show you what we've got!"

"Make sure to read our menu fully and pick your order carefully~ We can't afford redoing cakes... Ah, I mean, have a good stay at our bakery!"

rules:

This is a SFW Genshin Impact community event, including both the x reader community and artist community. It would be nice to avoid NSFW works. That way everyone, no matter what, can take part. You still can join if your blog is multifandom, just as long as you create Genshin Impact content.

The applications will close at 01.03 10 PM GMT+1.

Please apply only if you are sure you can do it. If it happens that, for whatever reason, you can't take part in it anymore (after applying) please contact us as fast as you can!

The posting period starts at 14.03 and ends at 16.03. Please post your gift under the tag #giwhiteday2023

To take part in, just fill in the Google Forms! If you have any problems with it, feel free to DM or send an ask.

Feel free to follow the blog for more updates and announcements!

"Do we have all the cakes ready?? Why is there a lantern here it's supposed to be a white day celebration not chinese new year-- AH! Hello~ I didn't see you there hahaha... --let me take your order!"

how to apply:

Answer the google form here!

FAQ:

"What's the main prompt?" — Everyone will get to create a prompt they would like to see, just make sure it's related to the White Day!

"Do I need to create content of all preferred characters?" — Nope. You can pick only one, you can pick all, whatever works the best for you.

"It's already past the posting period and I got nothing, what do I do?" — Feel free to reach out, we will work it out and see what happened.

"What's the word minimum for writers? Limit?" — There is no word limit or minimum amount!

"I have a question that isn't on the list" — Ask us! In DMS or our inbox, whichever you prefer.

"Thank you for visiting our bakery! ...I'm already starting to have regrets."

"Why did we do this to ourselves.."

"As if it wasn't your idea! A bakery out of all thing possible..."

"Shut up if you hasn't messed up our original plan in the first place we wouldn't have even HAD to do this--"

"Shut it! Another customer is coming! ...welcome to the White Day Bakery!"