#i mean it still is but there's not that many writeups up there if that makes any sense

[flickering-nightfall]

could you tell us more about the gift? :D

Oh, sure! I can stick some of my Gift drawing backlog in here while I'm at it~

The Gift is an unruly creature whose presence begets chewed wires and headaches wherever it goes. It's spunky and mischievous with a penchant for violence, and it revels in its job: to kill as much rot as it can without getting eaten by it first.

It exists only in an alternate universe where Pebbles is stopped before Moon collapses. Moon is damaged but alive - and after many long talks, Pebbles begrudgingly allows the other iterators to assist him with his rot.

The Gift's campaign uses the points system with an emphasis on rot kills. The gross cyan mixture on its spears is - via interacting with their stomach, in true slugcat fashion - weird altered barf. On contact with targets, "immunospears" explode like a spore puff and damage everything Five Pebbles related within their radius. This means you can kill even Mother Long Legs with good aim and enough food pips. Unfortunately, this does also kill neurons and inspectors, so the Gift has to be a little bit careful on its path of carnage.

Notably, Gift's goal isn't to eradicate the rot, just to help control it. If there's a way to cure the rot, this one silly creature can't do it for a whole superstructure.

It's been specially made (with love and care) by the other iterators so that Pebbles' inspectors don't target it. This is also why Pebbles won't murder it unless it shows direct violence towards him. His local group worked hard on this wretched being and they'll be very upset with him if he kills it. Plus it is actually good at its intended purpose. He just has to count the days until it keels over on its own.

Gift probably has some scavenger in there somewhere too, and maybe a bit of lizard. They're strong, but outside of fighting, I wouldn't say they're the smartest slugcat...

I've also played with the possibility of Arti and Spearmaster existing in this timeline. It ends as well as you'd expect. (I thought it would be funny if you could team up with Spearmaster and piggyback them around as your living spear generator though.)

There's some other stuff to the idea, such as a repeatable campaign where your strength and food requirement goes up every time you replay it, and a random pool of pearls you spawn with addressed to either Moon or Pebbles. I might go ahead and post that old campaign writeup still, so there'll be more in that!

[despazito]

could u elaborate on "parrots make bad pets"? not disagreeing (far from it) just interested to see your take! looking to learn more about this

(i've gotten this ask before so please don't mind i'm just gonna paste a writeup i did a while ago)

There’s a blog run by an animal behaviourist who specializes in parrots that i really enjoy reading, she has a very good writeup on the state of companion parrots as an industry: The Inconvenient Truth About Cockatoos

so basically the average person usually cannot meet the needs of a parrot, especially medium and ESPECIALLY large species. they are long lived, extremely social and intelligent animals who are very demanding if you are their only companion. in my mind the most 'ethical' pet parrot setup is having some pairs of budgies in a dedicated bird room filled with foraging enrichment and doing some basic command training as a bird-human bonding activity instead of cuddles.

most pet parrots are hand reared or even hatched in incubators by breeders and are never given a chance to be raised by their parents, and virtually none stay with their parents until a natural weaning age before getting sold. which is wild considering it is fucking ILLEGAL to do that to puppies or kittens.

A parrot isn't really born wired for human companionship in the same way that a dog or cat is. they imprint on their parents which sets the blueprint of their kin, and they generally want to only form extremely close bonds with others of their kin. To get a very people-oriented parrot, it has to think it’s people.

This is different from the socializing practiced in raising cats and dogs or acclimating ferals to people. socializing means exposure to things so that the animal doesn't grow up to see the target as a threat, and ultimately that the target is something that can be very rewarding to spend time around. A dog raised with its mother and socialized to people still understands that it's a dog, it can get along with other dogs, but can also form strong bonds to people. They actually read both dog and human body language and legitimately have an awareness that we are different species.

The companion parrot is raised to think it’s people, and as a result many lose the ability to form bonds with their own kind. in fact the reason many breeders remove eggs or chicks from the nest is arguing that the parent birds don’t really know how to raise their chicks- because they themselves were hand reared and never learned how to parent from their parents! it seems that, like us, parenting isn't perfectly hardwired in parrots and they need to learn the skill from their families, oftentimes even staying to help their parents raise younger siblings!

That's why it's not at all uncommon for pair bonded breeding birds to be sold as a completely separate product from companion birds in many aviary operations. there's so many ads for people selling breeding parrots that fucking hate humans or are semi tame specifically listed for sale as breeders not as pets:

then their babies are bred for the pet market so they are taken either before or right after hatching to get hand reared and imprinted onto humans, because a parrot-bonded parrot just won't be as interested in forming those close human companionships you see in viral videos. this isn't the case for all aviaries, i want to acknowledge there are smaller scale breeders who have tamer breeding birds, but big producers can have borderline feral pairs and the point i'm trying to make is when you socialize a parrot to either the human world or parrot world, it's often at the expense of the other.

most trouble starts once the parrot begins reaching the age of sexual maturity. they stop being openly cuddly to most people, and will try to pair bond with their primary caretaker. It's not uncommon for this to lead to aggression towards other family members because parrots don't share partners, they can even do this to babies they are jealous of!

But a human can't become a suitable mate substitute for a parrot, and some of their mating behaviours such as regurgitating on you can seem straight up gross so the human then shuns the parrot and shuts down their advances. this can make your bird become very sexually frustrated that can lead to more unwanted behaviours and even health emergencies such as prolapse. we lead them on by stroking their chest and backs (only something bonded pairs do, you are essentially jerking off your parrot when you do this..) then reject them with no other outlet for their natural urges, and spaying/neutering isn't an option either! so they're stuck in a psychological purgatory of being unable to fulfill their instincts. and if they're in an understimulating environment and left alone for most of the day in addition to all that, frankly i think that's just an awful life to give to an animal we allegedly love!

we essentially alienate them, and when they don’t have people around to meet their extremely high social needs because you work a 9-5, even if there are other birds around, the lonely or frustrated human-bonded parrot can become depressed and self mutilate.

parrots that were left with their parents, are raised as parrots, and weaned at their own natural pace overwhelmingly do not exhibit these destructive behaviours.

 a productive relationship with a pet parrot is one that fosters independence, not dependence, on the human companion. the most responsible parrot owners should strive to act more as a zookeeper to their parrot instead of cuddling it and creating a ‘velcro’ bird glued to the hip, and socialize with them via training sessions instead of letting their birds indulge in pair bonding behaviours like petting and preening which leads to sexual frustration and aggression or self mutilation.

Ultimately I believe any parrot hand reared and imprinted onto humans is some degree of psychologically damaged and suffers from the parrot equivalent of a developmental trauma, they have been robbed of a normal parrot life and it cannot be undone.

SO many parrot rescues are completely flooded with unwanted pets, many with tough behavioural challenges (for example it's not uncommon for parrots to be reactive to an entire gender, so that cuts the adopter pool immediately in half). and these patterns can be difficult to break especially without the aid of a behaviourist. and the thing still has another 40 years of life left in it but nobody wants to adopt because it's another "crazy bitey bird that hates everyone", has reached sexual maturity so it's no longer as friendly, and it's much easier to start from scratch so folks choose to just buy another baby and keep the cycle going.

And none of that even touches on the rampant poaching that keeps supplying the trade in many parts of the world. and that's why everyone should have domestic chickens or pigeons.

[remxedmoon]

“the valiant bison. it leaps to protect its fellow creatures, but not you.”

hooved

2 power - 8 health - 3 blood

protector - when a creature on this card’s side of the field is about to take damage, this card will jump forward to take the hit instead.

sharp quills - once a card bearing this sigil is struck, the striker is then dealt a single damage point.

BISABEAU!! YIPEEE! and a fancy custom sigil to go with him! wow! writeup below, as always

that custom sigil huh!! i had to rewrite that description SO MANY TIMES and it STILL ISN’T PERFECT GRAAAA. i couldn’t fit it into the proper description, but isa’ll return to his original spot after taking the hits. he basically redirects all attacks on his teammates to himself. like a moleman but in reverse.

also ^ he won’t try to protect terrain cards! because that’s a boulder. not his friends. the entire concept around the sigil is based around him protecting his friends from harm.

sharp quills is there to let him counterattack while covering for his allies! fun fact, in my original concept for this card, this was replaced with the mighty leap sigil?? for some reason??? even though airborne cards can’t attack cards on the field?????? idk what my thought process there was. thank god i caught that before finalizing his card

don’t ask how he has sharp quills btw. it’s uhh. his horns. yes. the quills are his horns.

i went back and forth between calling him a bison or a buffalo. his design was based more on water buffalo than american bison? but i ended up going with bison just because it was shorter lol. plus the bisabeau pun. i am beholden to the pun.

you might’ve noticed that the patch is in a different spot here! i couldn’t find a spot that didn’t cover an important part of the card. so i had to go through the miserable experience of moving the patch and cutting it out even more thoroughly to prevent it from messing up the pixels around it. somehow that damn patch was harder to make than the CUSTOM SIGIL.

speaking of the sigil patch. he gets burrower! which makes him move to any empty space that’s about to be attacked. functionally, this means that ALL damage on the board will get redirected to him. except for airborne attacks i guess

this card doesn’t have a hidden trait! and there’s a reason for that! because…

“a meek, unassuming calf. it has not yet learned its own strength.”

hooved

0 power - 2 health - 2 blood

fledgling - a card bearing this sigil will grow into a more powerful form after 1 turn on the board.

clinger - when one of your creatures is placed in a space, a card bearing this sigil will move towards them as far as possible.

TWO CARDS!! he gets to have a fledgling form :3

fledgling is self explanatory i think? i wanted to keep some kind of reference to his Change and this was the best way i could think of! lil baby thing based on his past self…

clinger is a sigil from act 3! it’s like. only on the lonely wizbot i think. initially i was just going to give them sprinter (which makes them move to a different space after attacking) but it felt… too similar to the elk fawn for my liking. and it felt more appropriate character-wise

this card is also part of the reason why i went with bison. buffalo calf is a long name!!!

idk how well it comes across but they have their lil braid!! i wanted to include the glasses in some way but it felt a little out of place with the card design. so they only have the braids. a necessary sacrifice

i realize that burrower is a TERRIBLE sigil for this card but! i had to keep it consistent with his mature form. hope your bison calf doesn’t fling itself into danger and die! oops!

that’s everything to do with these cards! phew! that was a lot of text. here’s the patchless versions!

[ouroborosorder]

OK but when you're free of all the other obligations and able to do it can we get the Ines skin writeup anyway because I liked the Eine Variation one and why do they keep giving Caprinae ops skin like this do they just hate goats at hypergryph or what

Okay so I got this ask a month and a half ago and am just now getting to responding to it. In that time, I got a job as a professional VFX artist so my opinion means double what it did before. So that's fun! Respect me and bow to me, peasants.

I wrote a massively long writeup here and then my page refreshed and I lost all of it twice. Let's speedrun this shit, alright? (She says, immediately writing a 5 page unhinged rant.)

This skin sucks because of the exact opposite reason Eine Variation does, it's just too fucking detailed for its own good.

...Also what the fuck is that in the background is that a goddamned alien spaceship has anyone else noticed this?? This is a bloodline of combat skin this is canon does ines just fight aliens at some point what the FUCK?

Anwyay VFX in the readmore.

Deploy animation. I hate you. I hate this. I hate it.

It's rare I get to see an entire skin's mistakes in microcosm like this! That's fun!

This is so detailed that it actually ceases to have any real shape or identity. This doesn't look like shadow, because skins can just. Change character lore to make something look cool yes I'm still mad. Is it stars? That would explain the weird yellow dots, and there are stars in the art. Fire? No, it's not actually fire, there'd be fire here. Burning fabric? It only looks like that if I squint and zoom in, but I can't... think of anything else.

The colors are so awful. The way that there is a hard line between the dark lavender and the scarlet which then fades into orange is. A choice. I would not have made. At all. In any way. Ever. At any point. Also the random dots of yellow are very funny because they are so clearly just random pixels of yellow. Some of them even aren't in the orange, so they're just like, highlights that have decided to break out of the highlighted areas. Did they.. want this to look like her burning dress? In which case, why are they.. blue? Her dress is black with orange embers, I don't GET IT.

Also small thing but it has a drop shadow, but like. She's literally in all black until she fully appears. And the swirling ribbons are dark-colored. There's no worry about them not standing out against a light background. Is that just supposed to look like she's surrounded by shadow if that's the case then why isn't the rest of this shadow AGH.

This looks weirdly... JPEG compressed??? Like, you can kiiinda see it in the big version, but if I shrink this down to phone resolution...

GOOD LORD SHE'S BEEN DEEP-FRIED.

S1 is good. I like it. It's simple, elegant. Good use of colors, and I think the impact looks great, good use of red and orange to create visual interest. Not gonna bother to screenshot it, it's not that interesting NEXT

S2!

Stop it. Stop it. Put a few colors away. I am counting 8 distinct colors in this one swing alone, and then two more for Ines herself. Stop it. That is too many colors. Add less colors.

I don't even see what the colors are there FOR. Are they selling the tip of the swing? That's not right, because the red highlights start at the tip, then swirl inwards until the red is in the inner part.

I do actually think this one is a lot better at actual resolution.

It's still too detailed, and that detail ends up being crunched and not really... serving any purpose in the grand scheme of the effect, but I do think it is... better. It makes it more clearly light on the outside, dark on the inside.

Also I hate the ends of this swing. I hate it. Why is one a perfect circle that's been stretched out and the other end a rectangle that's fading out. Why is that how you did this. This effect looks like two different swings that have been stapled together like goddamned Catdog.

BUT WHEN IT FADES IT HAS AN INKBRUSH LOOK SO WHAT IS THIS EFFECT.

Why not lean into the burning dress look? Have it be a black trail that like, burns away when it fades? That would be STUNNING, anything but. Whatever is happening here. Mrgrgr okay fine it can't get worse right

DEAR READER. I PRESENT. S3. THE CULMINATION OF EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM.

So this IS a stars theme after all. This IS stars? Just wanna make sure we're all on the same fucking page here.

Dear reader. I hate this. So fucking much. This may be, and I do truly mean this, the worst piece of VFX I have ever seen in any game. This doesn't read as a piece of VFX in an anime game, it reads like the background of a YA fantasy novel's cover.

The nebula doesn't move. It's static. It is clearly just a jpeg. It's not even doing the Chowder screen-space orientation thing. It's just. There. Inescapable.

The comet itself just. Ends. It doesn't fade out or taper. It just. Stops. There's barely any anti-aliasing here. It's just a hard line between the comet and the background.

Ines herself is surrounded by identical dark lavender and orange energy, so there's no visible difference between the effect and herself. Sure. It's not going to be onscreen long anyway. Who cares.

The center of the comet is bright white as if it's the highlight of the effect, but it's... it's off-center?? so it's ultimately... Highlighting something. is it highlighting the sword? Is it supposed to be a haze that shows you the sword? But it doesn't look like it because it took me 15 minutes while writing this to realize that the sword was there at all because it's the same orange color as all the other highlights and so it gets eaten. If your highlight color stops drawing my eye, then you've fucked up because that is literally what a highlight color is supposed to do. Where am I supposed to look at this thing, where is the focus, the shape?

It's even funnier that the blade leaves a little cartoony goofy team rocket blink when it leaves, before immediately turning into whatever public domain NASA star image they're using for the comet. A real glimpse into what it would look like if Spiderverse sucked ass. (I do like the blink itself tho, a small little blue haze to add color and contrast against light backgrounds, smart touch.)

Explosion sucks. Suddenly they decide the palette is something entirely different. Where did the yellow come from. Yellow isn't even on the art. I guess when your palette is that big, you can change them up how you want. I would actually like this effect if it was slightly less detailed and in a skin that had actually used this pallette. It reminds me a bit of Specter the Laurentina. But with this level of detail and these colors... This somehow looks more like a YA book cover. A Sword of Goats and Stars. Fuck me I hate it.

I almost like this buff uptime indicator, It's just that the red from the swords fades into the orange on her dress and makes the whole thing muddy. Also she has an actual roiling flame behind her LMAO GET DUNKED ON HOEDERER THAT'S RIGHT I WILL DUNK ON HIM EVERY TIME EVEN THIS PIECE OF TRASH HAS ONE UP ON THE HOE LMAOOOOO

(In fact I actually... think this might be a recurring texture? It looks familiar, but I can't pin down from where. This is a bad screenshot for showing it but I'm not bothering to get a new one. This is my mental breakdown and I get to choose the visual aids.)

Anyway, maybe I'm being mean. After all I'm criticizing an effect for being too detailed when I am actively zooming in and looking at the details. So let's shrink down to the resolution of my phone just to see how it would-

Ah.

Final Ouroboros VFX ranking: A jpeg compressed photo of a wizard airbrushed on a van / 18 Originium Prime. Actually wait no that sounds too cool. Uh. The wizard is also racefaking. Now it's no longer cool. Nailed it.

[aemiron-main]

~what the hell is going on the night will disappeared? TIME FUCKERY, PERCEPTION FUCKERY, SOME EXTREME STRANGENESS REGARDING JOYCE BYERS AND TERRY IVES THAT IVE NEVER SEEN MENTIONED ANYWHERE BEFORE~ i dont have all the pieces put together yet but there’s too many strange coincidences. ill make a proper document or smthn abt this theory at some point but for rn im just throwing this together

SO. THIS IMAGE. which i’ve made posts about here and here.  Long story short: im basically certain that this netflix still image, which is not from a scene that exists in the show but IS shown on the s1 ep1 pause/idle screen, is from the exact moment that we saw will disappear/the lightbulb get all bright in s1 ep1.  Which means that this is seemingly an image of Will watching himself disappear inside the shed OR watching whatever ACTUALLY happened when the lightbulb started glowing in the shed. 

Now, my focus for this writeup is going to be pointing out the little discrepancies that indicate that we’re not seeing the whole story in s1 ep1 the night will disappears. IMO there’s some pov/memory/unreliable narration fuckery afoot. SO, i wrote about how the door to the shed is completely different when will’s in the shed vs when hoppers in it in this post. Long story short: outside view of door the night will disappears + outside view of door when hopper goes to the shed + inside view of the door when hopper goes in the shed are all the same door. but will’s inside view of the door the night he disappears is a COMPLETELY different door with no spaces in between the planks- it’s not just a different door from hopper, but it’s a different door than the one we see from the outside the night that will disappears, as from the outside view, the gaps are clearly visible, whereas they’re nonexistent from the inside view.

I also want to point out the LAUNDRY. *charlie kelly voice* “can we talk about the laundry? i’ve been dying to talk about the laundry” This post has a more in-depth explanation of what I noticed with the laundry, but long story short: a.) that scene where will seemingly looks out of the living room window and sees the demogorgon was absolutely not physically shot from the living room window. it is not possible with the location of the clothesline. they cannot put a camera outside of the living room window and get that shot. however, it DOES line up EXACTLY with the location of will’s bedroom window. and b.) the clothes on the line the night will disappears vs the clothes on the line the morning immediately after, are completely different clothes. There is very clearly a plaid shirt with some sort of large, thick towel-like item next to it. However, the next morning, the laundry line has a pair of pants and a polka-dot shirt. This could indicate either time fuckery or perception fuckery, as the laundry could be from another day OR just edited entirely if it’s perception fuckery. I’m not sure which it is, but it COULD be time fuckery if we’re seeing will’s pov from a different time/date somehow in that scene?? 

Since that first screenshot labelled “will pov s1 ep1″ could not physically have been shot from the living room window, and instead aligns exactly with will’s bedroom window, it’s also worth noting that the blinds in will’s bedroom are pulled UP the morning after he disappears, and we don’t know if they’d been closed or opened before he got home, but we DO know that joyce or jonathan didn’t open those blinds since they would have noticed that will was missing if they went into his room. So, there’s a solid chance imo that will opened those blinds and was somehow looking through his bedroom window at the demogorgon- which would align with that still image that we see of will looking into a glowing shed, because both of these things point to a different will POV that we haven’t been shown yet/possibly point towards will somehow watching himself the night he disappeared.

  There’s also the phone. Two things about the phone: a.) will leaves it hanging off the hook the night he disappears, and b.) there’s different writing on the phone the night will disappears vs when joyce uses the phone the next morning. Who put the phone back on the hook?? Did joyce and jonathan just come home that night and go “oh, the phone ringing off the hook, that’s completely normal, let me just put that back and not check on will at all or bring it up whatsoever”?? Or, maybe, did something happen and the phone was never actually left off of the hook- was that scene part of an illusion/warped memory? I’m not sure but it’s definitely strange. And speaking of coming home that night: this is mostly speculation, but why didn’t jonathan check to see if will was home? was he just so tired that he went to bed + didn’t think to check if will made it back? did joyce not think to check on will either? did neither of them notice that his bike wasn’t outside? or that his shoes and coat weren’t at the door? Now, regarding part b.) of the phones- the phone in will’s disappearance scene just says AREA CODE 501, which, I made a post about here, and @byler-4-life​ made a post here about how 501 isn’t even the hawkins area code. The phone in joyce’s scene the next morning, and in the scene where joyce gets zapped by the phone for the first time, the phone has another line of writing underneath it, which is NOT present the night that will disappears.

As well, we’ve got the light switch. The light is already on when will seemingly runs into the shed. And it’s also on when we see him disappear/the light bulb gets all bright and then returns to normal. However, the light is then switched off, not just a dead bulb, but switched off, the next morning, when hopper goes into the shed and switches the light on.

NOW: something ELSE i’ve noticed: the fog. not only is there fog the night will disappears, just like how there’s fog in the upside-down, and fog in max’s upside-down billy graveyard vecna vision, but the fog literally seems to follow will. And it seems to emanate from behind the demogorgon, much in the same way that it seems to emanate from behind vecna in max’s  graveyard vision.  And also- WHERE IS THE SHED LIGHT? In the scene where will’s running into the house, we can SEE the shed in the fog: but we CANNOT see any light coming from it. which is extremely odd considering that when will gets to the back of the house, the door is open and the beam of light stretches across the backyard. We should be able to see it in that initial shot, espeically considering that the gaps in the shed walls allow light to seep through, as seen in that first netflix still image in the beginning of this post, but the shed is dark.

Visually, the image of billy/vecna disguised as billy in the fog is very similar to the demogorgon in the fog the night that will disappears. As well, vecna even sounds like billy in that scene- so there’s a chance that he could have disguised himself to look and sound like a demogorgon (like not actually disguised but rather done the same sort of perception warping/vision stuff that he does to max). As well, max runs into the fog in s4 in order to get away, and ends up in vecna’s mindscape. The fog literally seems to act like a barrier in vecna visions, almost like the invisible walls in a videogame. Will, however, does not run into the fog, so unlike max, he doesn’t escape the weird upside-down vision world. And also, note the lack of weird tentacles or typical upside-down stuff in max’s graveyard, despite the fact that it looks like the upside-down. That indicates that there’s a chance that what we see of the byers house on the night that will disappears COULD be a similar sort of upside-down looking vision situation except without the tentacles and other upside-down stuff??? and that will is going both physically and mentally between the real world and the upside-down on the night he disappears, just like he does in s2 with his episodes (he is able to interact physically with BOTH worlds at the same time in his episodes), which could explain why certain actions like leaving the phone off the hook didn’t actually happen in reality, but other ones like slamming open the back door and leaving an indent DID. (basically, the phone was never left off the hook in the real world because that scene happened when he was in the upside-down/vision/whatever, whereas the door slamming was when he came back to reality and then the shed would be when he went back again into upside-down/vision land) Going back to the fog again, it’s also interesting to me that this imagery of billy/vecna in the fog is blue-toned, whereas for will’s it’s warm and yellow-toned. which seems like nothing until we recall that picture of henry with the mindflayer in the yellow section of the upside-down. I wonder, if like how the red area started to peek through the blue for max + how running through that fog lead her to vecna’s mind lair, that if the fog would have lead to the yellow area for will. It’s an interesting lighting choice that i think is worth noting, at least, because aside from that moment, the fog is always lit in cool/blue tones for Will. 

SO: my conclusion? i don’t quite know HOW this all ties together yet, but something’s not right about the night will disappeared. I don’t think what we saw in s1 ep1 was what actually happened, I think it’s possibly what will remembers, but it’s not the entirety of what happened. I think that SOMEHOW, and im not sure HOW, or WHY, but i think that somehow, will was either watching himself go through what we saw in s1 ep that night, AND/OR will was flipping between dimensions/in and out of a vecna vision like he does in s2/when hes in the upside down using his true sight in s1/ AND OR, something else entirely happened in that shed, and will witnessed it (hopper even mentions at the library in s1 that there’s a chance that will ‘saw something he shouldn’t have’ related to hawkins lab + they got rid of him as a result). Hopper’s comment about will witnessing something becomes even more interesting when we consider the following:

a.) the discrepancy between the s1 article vs the s2 article I’ve written about this more in-depth here, but long story short, the article in the police station in season 1 tells a completely different story with a completely different timeline than the article in will’s locker in season 2. In the season 1 article, it says that will was found as a subject of the hawkins lab after a week of searching, having been subjected to mind control experiments/  In the season 2 article, however, it says that will was missing for eight days (”had gone missing two days prior” and “six days later hopper found him in a cabin”, so according to this article, will’s body was found after he was missing for 2 days, and then 6 days after the body was found, hopper found him, making him missing for 8 days), and claims that hopper found will in a cabin and that the coroner misidentified the body.  Strangely enough, the season 1 article makes no mention of will’s fake body/the one that they found in the quarry.  Both articles are written by the same person, with the same headline, and the same photo. They both seem to have been published at the same time (as i don’t think that they’d publish an article about will’s disappearance in s2), and they almost look like the exact same article except with difference content (again, same author same headline same photo), and part of me wonders if this is some sort of vecna perception warping/unreliable narration, because it really does strike me as strange that there was a whole article about will being tortured at the lab, an article that specifically says that joyce claims that will was taken to the lab and tortured, when the whole stipulation of joyce and hopper being allowed to go into the upside-down and rescue will, was that the lab had nothing to do with it. And why would joyce say that will was experimented on at the lab? Because as far as we know/joyce knows, that’s not true- he was stuck in the upside-down, not found in the lab having been part of mind experiments. So if joyce WAS going to break her agreement and expose the lab, then why wouldn’t she just expose the truth? 

As well, when you look at this uncropped image of the s1, article, there’s something VERY strange when you read further down in the second paragraph: “In a statement issued yesterday mornning (can’t see the other half of the word but ‘morning’ is inferred), Ives mentioned her ‘disgust’ towards, (word ‘towards’ isnt visible but we can infer it) the organziation, saying ‘our own american people are being treated like the enemy (again, with ‘enemy,’ we can only see the last two letters so its inferred), we should be directing out ___tion (not sure what word that is) to the real target, the Soviets, not our own daughters and sons” Wait- Ives? Ives who? What first name? It’s never mentioned.Why’d they just mention an “Ives” out of nowhere with no first name and no introduction, as if Ives was who they’d been speaking about the entire time?  “In a statement issued yesterday morning-” Which ives is even capable of issuing a statement in 1983? We know that terry isn’t, because she was tortured by brenner long before 1983. But we also know that Becky is very unlikely to issue a statement either, as she didn’t even believe terry’s story until El came to visit in s2. So that only leaves terry. But this statement was issued “yesterday,” which means that it’s from 1983. With the way that the last name “Ives” is dropped without a firstname, it almost feels like they’re conflating Joyce and Terry- because Joyce is mentioned with her first and last name, and JOYCE is mentioned as being the one who is making the allegations against the lab, so it would make sense for them to refer to her with her last name regarding statements and allegations in the second paragraph, but instead, they just say “Ives,” and don’t say any first name or give any context to Ives. It feels like it’s absolutely out of nowhere, especially considering what I just talked about with how we only know two Ives, and one of them (terry) isnt physically capable of giving a statement, and the other one (becky) doesn’t even believe in the words being stated.  This smells like time fuckery and perception fuckery, ESPECIALLY time fuckery in regards to “Ives” giving a statement “yesterday” in 1983. It’s very, very interesting to me that things are phrased in a way where it seems to conflate joyce and ives, ESPECIALLY since the story that is being credited to “joyce,” about will being the subject of mind control experiments at hawkins lab, is the EXACT story that we find out that Terry was saying about El at the lab, ESPECIALLY since at no point has Joyce ever said that Will was tortured/found at the lab, because as far as we see in the sshow/joyce sees, he WASNT!! And  that line at the bottom, about brenner issuing no comment- as far as anyone knew, brenner was DEAD at the end of s1. Even owens claims to jonathan and nancy in s2 that anyone involved with will’s and barb’s disappearance is dead. So why are articles being published claiming that he’s declined comment??  What the HELL is going on here?? Why is Terry’s story about El being credited to Joyce as being about Will???? This smells like timeline fuckery. 

b.) the fact that will seems to recognize brenner in s4 I know the 8flix scripts were a contentious affair, but i’m personally of the belief that they weren’t entirely fake, even if they were from earlier in production. And in the 8flix script, it’s mentioned that Will recognizes Brenner when he’s dying in s4. And even the script aside, watching that scene, Will’s reaction/expression towards Brenner is definitely different from Mike’s, and Will’s definitely looks like recognition/realization, imo.  c.) the fact that hawkins lab was able to create a perfect replica of will’s body How on earth did they manage to create such an extremely lifelike version of will’s body?? especially with the technology available in the 80s, compared to what we have today, that’s no easy feat. and it’s even harder, if not borderline impossible, if you don’t have the person to use as a reference or tons and tons of detailed images of that person. Will’s missing flyers were all in black and white, and yet they even managed to nail his hair colour and skintone. And even then, doing that sort of intricately detailed and accurate work based on a few photos from a small handful of angles alone?? I don’t buy it.  d.) the fact that the hawkins lab team, including brenner,  immediately went back to the shed when they visited the byers house.  They didn’t even go into the actual house. They immediately went around back to the shed, and YES they had their little machines that they were using to track, so that could totally be a large part of the reason, but it’s still a little odd to me that they basically made a beeline for the AND were geared up for the upside-down before they even got there, meaning that they knew/highly suspected that some upside-down shit had gone down at the byers household. I also wonder if there’s a chance that THIS is when will saw brenner + why he recognized him, since maybe he was in the upside-down version of the shed at the time, and with his true sight shenanigans, was able to see brenner the same way that he could see the alphabet that joyce painted.  long story short: there’s an absolute metric fuckton of discrepancies between the shed and the byers house the night that will disappeared vs the next day, and this isn’t even all of them. and that still image of will looking into the shed at the exact same moment that he would have been disappearing keeps me up at night because WHAT THE FUCK?? there could be time fuckery at play (i’m looking at you, laundry that’s definitely not clothes from the day that will disappeared), there could be memory/perception fuckery at play, there could be both!! and WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON WITH THE JOYCE AND TERRY STUFF?? IM BAFFLED. I’m probably gonna go compare that Will article to the actual articels written about terry’s comments. Much to think about. 

[evelili]

I just finished your Magnum Opus, and it was super great. I especially loved the Pinkie chapter (which surprised me because she’s my least favorite character!). Anyway, do you have any mlp fic recommendations?

oh boy do i have a list for you, strap in!

if you read my magnum opus writeup, you may have seen i mentioned three authors that dragged me back into mlp. if you're interested in sciset (and what's probably the most popular eqg fic on the entire site), Long Road to Friendship by Albi is a longfic that started after the first eqg movie and is a rlly lighthearted read. i don't normally care for OCs but gosh if i dont accept Albi's version of trixie's parents as canon in my heart haha. if you're interested in pony adventure fic, i also rlly liked Sunset of Time, another rlly well done longfic ive carried in my brain since i first read it xd

the second author, Monochromatic, aka the raritwi authority aka someone who has a GREAT taste in editors, has written three of the most formative longfic ive ever read: The Enchanted Library, its sequel The Enchanted Kingdom, and Crimson Lips which i unfortunately can no longer link since she's taken it down, but i believe you can still buy physically through PFP if you wanted to take a gamble on it (it would be a very good gamble). apart from her longfic though i also adore some of her shorter works, including but not limited to The Choices We Make, a really interesting Pinkie study that's definitely shaped how i view her, Your Own Worst Enemy, which is just. peak rarity content, and Injuring Eternity, which while being one of her older works still has certain passages that wreck me emotionally on sight.

and the third author responsible for my magnum opus is the one and only Aragon, who i can not only recommend for his fics but ALSO for his blog posts and comics (see the comic index on his profile for links to all of them, as well as this amazing blogpost about his neighbour that is just peak comedy). he's also the writer responsible for the banger longfic Crime and Funishment which absolutely defined my writing aspirations for a few years and is the definition of comedy if you looked it up in my heart, as well as In Hindsight, yet another banger rarity fic, and Love Is In Doom which is just bloody, silly, stupid fun (and has sunset shimmer in it)

and then if we want to talk fics i love written by other authors, Sleepless Knights by r5h has my favourite brand of scitwi written right into the margins, Administrative Angel by horizon has one of the most amazing endings to an opening chapter ive ever read AND an amazing celestia, The Best Night Ever by Capn_Chryssalid is a fandom classic with a groundhog day twist on the gala episode from s1, Side by Side by Krickis is a feel-good rarijack oneshot w a focus on lgbt (specifically trans) themes, Wax Earplugs by Reedhoarse has a dysfunctional mess of an adagio dazzle that i adore, Merge Request by FanOfMostEverything has all the scitwi/midnight shenanigans you could ask for wrapped up in the relatable content of github hell, Guppy Love by PaulAsaran is a rarijack longfic with an incredibly realistic setting and an interpretation of mermaids that i love so much, Doused Flame by heartlessons has me handshaking on the "sopping wet pathetic relatable guy" flash sentry interpretation that won me over recently, 80 Days 'Til the World's Farthest Shore by Cynewulf feels like reading a professionally published short story (and i mean that in the best of ways, it's enthralling), and finally if you'll allow me to be self-centred a bit i also am very proud of my two oneshots Heartstrings and Something About Midnights if you wanted to check em out too xd

oops long post!! im not sorry for it, i hope you can find something in here that catches your fancy (or even all of it haha), there's soooo many incredible fics in the fandom it floors me every day that i can read all these incredible works for free!!!

[olderthannetfic]

Escapade Dance Party 2023 Writeup 2/3

Here is the playlist I ended up with this year, plus my commentary:

First Half

Good Omens | Running in the 90's by Maria Morningstar

Good Omens is so tricky. On the one hand, there are a billion fantastic vids, many with editing that's better than this one. On the other, a lot of the preferred music is syrupy and slow, and GO fans are actively seeking out vids and have already seen many of the ones intended for cons in the English-speaking world.

I wanted something high-energy to open the dance with, and this ridiculous song fit the bill. It woke people up and got them noticing the music had started.

I don't know Maria, but her channel has a bunch of things with cyrillic titles, so I'm guessing she's Russian. That meant a higher chance of this vid being new to people at Escapade.

Tubthumping by Aaronantium

To be perfectly honest, I do not care about this anime, but I was chilling with Aaron at Vidders Chat and discussing my plans, and he offered to make me a vid for his vampire fandom.

I don't generally accept premieres because it means wrangling more people and dealing with uncertainty, but Aaron suggested this song, and it's always a crowd pleaser as is the vid everyone makes to it. This fandom is also unusually perfect for said joke, featuring as it does a repeatedly dying vampire who… well… gets back up again.

Actually, despite it not being most people's fandom, I think this vid got one of the biggest laughs and reactions of anything during the party.

Kirk/Spock | I Knew You Were Trouble by mogo nit

K/S is a perennial favorite with con attendees—more TOS but AOS too. I don't recall why I was specifically looking for it this year. Probably, it ranked best out of things people mentioned on their site profiles.

This is an old-ass vid from 10 years ago, so if people have seen it, they probably haven't seen it lately. It's also a song I love, cliched though it might be for vids.

Word of Honor - Wenzhou - Hit and Run by CelestialMoonDragon

I knew I wanted to include WoH, both for its many fans and for people still dragging their feet about checking out Asian live action m/m stuff. The fandom has a wealth to choose from from vidders all over the globe. The big issue was simply finding vids that weren't too plastered with show audio.

When I heard this song choice, however, I knew it was the one. WoH has some unusual genre elements for wuxia, specifically all the central government focus where wuxia characters usually stay away from politics. The song really highlights that aspect. Those lyric matches! Genius!

【夜访吸血鬼】【莱斯特】【Young and Beautiful】献给我最心中最美艳的吸血鬼——莱斯特 by 欧阳夏右

Obviously, if I was going to celebrate the new IWTV, I couldn't leave out the old movie!

This is a brilliant song choice given what happens to Lestat. It's interesting to me how many Chinese vidders use music I know well. It's always fun to see what they do with a Western source and Western music, and I think bilibili is largely uncharted territory for most Escapade attendees.

【The Sentinel】【Jim/Blair】It's consuming me（Lash视角）美剧-哨兵 同人mv by ozakikaoru

The Sentinel still has monofannish fans, but covering it for a dance party is a pain in the butt. I generally end up scraping the depths of Bilibili, and this year was no exception…

So how excited was I to find this refreshing and freaky take! This audio is apparently from some short film and has become something of a meme amongst vidders, but I hadn't heard it before and I don't think anyone at the con had either.

It's always extra surprising and wonderful to find a more serious and darker vid for fandoms everyone associates with camp and retro cheese. The Sentinel fans I included it for were blown away too. It's apparently a pretty good representation of the episode in question.

Forever Knight Vampires | Darkness, Darkness | Gothic 90s by knightvision1228

Because I had the vampires theme, I made a huge list of vampire fandoms to try to include. Forever Knight was one of my fandoms of the 90s and very popular with het shippers and slashers alike. Finding a vid that didn't look like bad VHS transfer, however, was easier said than done.

This one won out for featuring a rare song from the FK soundtrack that was never released. The vid also showcases the main trio instead of just being Nick/Jeanette het.

Megatron x Optimus (Song: Wrecking Ball) by Mellew

We have a lot of Transformers fans, and it's always so hard to find something I can play in the dance party… well… something that's not a 10-minute compilation of explicit fan art to horny reggaeton. Personally, I'm all about that reggaeton, but I've been looking for actual shipper vids that are a little more representative and a little less likely to make the fans combust in embarrassment.

When I heard the song choice… well… no other vid could compete.

But don't let the literalism and hilarious if one-note joke fool you: this is a fantastically edited vid that makes excellent use of the song's varying tempo.

And yes, I made sure to loudly say "WHY ARE YOU ALL LAUGHING? THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS VID" as the vid started.

BakuDeku AMV - Lucky Strike by caliowl 333

Do I watch BNHA? No. Do people at the con watch BNHA? No. Do antis hate this ship? Absofuckinglutely YES!

I love stupid shonen nonsense, and this fandom provides it in spades. It took a while to find an AMV that wasn't littered with not only show audio but dubbed show audio. (What am I, an animal?!)

I also just really love this song for dance parties.

Dancing on My Own - Robyn (Izzy Hands Edit) by auxiliarywardrobe

OFMD is another tough one. It's not due to a lack of vids: if anything, there are too many. But so many aren't suitable for a dance party and many are already familiar to people.

While I did find this on AO3 (honestly nearly a requirement for finding non-show audio vids in this fandom), it hadn't gotten any attention from people I recognized as an Escapade type crowd.

I loved the indignity of pairing Izzy with this ridiculous song. OFMD was a little anodyne for me in some ways, so the sleazy obnoxiousness of Izzy is a welcome antidote to all of the fluff and angst vids about the main ship.

At the same time, I don't particularly ship Izzy with anybody. I enjoy watching him be miserable, and the song is actually quite a good lyrical match for his impotent frustration.

Do You Wanna Touch Me? [Fanvid] by resurrecho

Okay, this one is cheating on my own rules. I'm sure people had every opportunity to see it… But it's also a femslash vid that is very, very horny.

This one's for you ladies tired of ~dewy flower~ soft bullshit!

Cult of Dionysus - Leverage OT3 - Eliot/Parker/Hardison by leverage brain worms

Leverage remains a perennial favorite and the new show had attendees talking,  but people often request the same tired old vid choice. I went looking for something that hadn't been played at every con over and over.

I liked that this vid was relatively recent. The song with poly lyrics was a fun touch.

HeiHua FMV~|| Hei Ye falling for the Thorny Flower by Black Flower

When I saw this vid, I said to myself: I don't know who they are, but I ship them!

AND GUESS WHAT? SEEING THE SHOW DID NOT CHANGE THAT OPINION!

Yes, this vid is directly responsible for me watching all these DMBJ adaptations.

I knew a lot of Escapade attendees were vaguely familiar with Reunion because of Zhu Yilong, but I didn't think most had checked out the rest of DMBJ, and this vid was so diametrically opposite of both that adaptation and the vibe of the big ship that I knew I just had to include it.

But seriously, this vidder actually has an excellent grasp of narrative. Now that I've seen the show, some of this stuff is repurposed and out of context, but you wouldn't know it from the eyelines.

Cover Me - A Fanvid by TinTurtle

Ah, Pros. The Professionals has the most dedicated fans at Escapade, hands down. They keep the con afloat and keep their fandom vibrant even after decades. Finding a dance vid to include for them, however, is a bit of a trial.

Realistically, I'm never going to find a vid they haven't all seen unless I make it myself, so I look for songs with a better beat than the typical old fandom vids tend to have.

The Fanged Four - Play with Fire (BTVS/ATS) by SlayerVid

People were talking about the Buffyverse again this year. Was it an anniversary of some kind? I can't recall, but it's a big nostalgia fandom for a lot of attendees, and it's one of the bigger vampire fandoms, so I wanted to include it.

While there used to be a billion vids for Buffy and Angel, only a fraction of them are findable online now. I went hunting for something not by a con regular and with visual quality that would play okay on a projector.

This is a great song for its grinding beat, and the vid is both recent and features a variety of vampire characters.

BL | Mobu ✘ Kikuchi S2 || So What by rosenana708

I suspect I found it by looking for Kei x Yaku vids, but as soon as I spotted it, I knew it was a must-have.

Yes, this is full of stupid show audio, but too bad: Nobody at a slash or BL con should be allowed to escape without knowing that A Man Who Defies the World of BL exists.

The Locked Tomb | Fences (SPOILERS!) by peachy 💕

This fandom was the latest hot flavor for many and f/f to boot. I was skeptical about finding a vid, but what do you know!

die for you / beyond evil by butillmissyou

After being pimped in by last year's vid find, I knew I wanted to include it again.

This music grabbed me by the throat. I'd never even heard of LÉON, but the soulful sound is perfect for this fandom.

Personal Jesus by killabeez

I desperately wanted a vid to this song. The cover isn't my fave, but I couldn't turn down the combo of a vampire fandom and this classic.

True, Killa isn't exactly obscure to anyone at Escapade, but this is a relatively less seen older vid and excellently edited.

BTS Vampire FMV | Bad Things (True Blood OP) by GoldenArmy7

I'm so clever.

Yes, this is mostly here so I can follow the True Blood vid with one to the True Blood theme song. Also to inflict BTS on people.

● Ichiro + Shiro | 'dope' (KeixYaku: Dangerous Partners FMV) by xXScarshadowXx

And now some BTS music, LOL

Sadly no longer online from what I can tell

WEDNESDAY | “Sweet But Psycho” Netflix Serie [HD] by SHIK

There are like thirty vids to this fandom using this song. This one blew the others out of the water.

I'll be honest, everyone was trying to push Wednesday/Enid around the time of the con, and that ship is the most boring thing you could possibly take away from this show. I wanted a vid that showcased what's actually fun here, which is not sucking all the creepy out of an Addams Family adaptation, for fuck sake.

ALIEN SUPERSTAR | Wanda & Scarlet Witch by LittleLaceBoots

MCU is still big with attendees, but it's so sprawling that knowing what to choose is hard. I found this music choice quite interesting for how it showcases the weird schtick of this particular show.

A Cowboy's Love by lilly_the_kid

If there's one AO3 vidder I will always play, it's lilly_the_kid! I wanted something for Star Wars, and I wanted it to be slash. This classic and ridiculous vid fit the bill.

Is it appropriate for a dance party? It is IF I SAY IT IS!

Boss Bitch | Lan Wangji (陈情令 The Untamed FMV) by slowparade

Everyone vids this song, but this example is particularly great!

I like aspects of The Untamed a lot. Sadly, those aspects do not include the central ship. I'm always on the hunt for vids that actually work for me. This take on Lan Wangji is hilarious.

Geraskier - Fine By Me by CainnetreIt delights me to find vids to other versions of popular canons. This is such a classic slash vid. It's not particularly danceable, but it's so fun that I wanted to include it, so it needed to go at the end of a section. It's the kind of song you wave your beer around to.

[semper-legens]

153. This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Owned?: Yes Page count: 198 My summary: Red and Blue, time-travelling agents working for rival agencies, start writing to each other just to gloat. They write in fire, in animals, in plants, in tastes and colours - but what they don’t realise is that they’re growing closer with each letter. If they are caught, they will certainly be killed. But Red and Blue are falling in love… My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

I've spoken about this book before. It took me a long time to read This Is How You Lose The Time War initially - I knew about it as I follow one of the authors, Amal El-Mohtar, on social media thanks to her being featured in a Blake's 7 podcast I was listening to. It's been long enough since my first read-through, however, that a reread would be both an interesting prospect. I remembered some things about the book going into it, but not all of the details, which is always fun when you're reading something like this. Overall, I still really liked it, for many of the reasons I highlighted in my first writeup of the book. So, let's get into it!

First of all, I absolutely love the lyricism and poetry of the prose here. Long-time readers of this blog might remember that I like my prose on the purpler side, and this does not disappoint in that capacity. The words are archaic and modern, teasing and serious, playful and sombre all at once, and the overall impression is of a hazy dream, the kind of thing that would get endlessly quoted online to show how deep and cultured the person doing the quoting is. Not that I think that's a bad thing. It very much fits the tone of the piece and the impression of these two endlessly smart, endlessly devoted women. And I absolutely love how the letters between Red and Blue are themselves written - not just pen and paper or keyboard and screen, but found in smell and touch and taste as much as sight and hearing. It's a very sensual experience, by which I mean that it involves all of the senses. This is a book that you can feel, deep in your soul. (Now who's wanting to sound deep?)

Red and Blue are incredibly engaging protagonists. Blue is from some sort of biopunk flower place, where everything is grown and everyone is supposed to be encompassed in a sort of hive mind, led by the Garden. Red is more cybernetic, with hacking and connecting to computers being her thing, and she's led by the Commandant. Nevertheless, they both employ very similar methods in their fight to change time to favour their particular future, perhaps highlighting the similarities between their two shadowy organisations despite their very different backstories. They're two very similar women, but I found their voices to still be unique and distinguishable, both in the narrative style of their chapters and in the letters they write to one another. And, of course, the fact that this is a love story between two women is a huge selling point for me. We see their relationship go from slightly flirty rivalry to deep and pervasive love, the kind that would have both sides ultimately desert their original function and devote themselves entirely to each other.

Overall, this is still an incredible book, and I would still highly recommend it! I'm sure it'll be popping up on this blog again in due time.

Next up, snapshots of life in Weimar Republic Berlin.

[enddaysengine]

Paths Beyond - Remonstered and Remastered

I've meant to give an update on the state of Paths Beyond for a while, so the release of Monster Core seems like a good moment to do so. I've had many different balls in the air, including freelance work for Scion, community content for Changeling: the Lost and Pathfinder Infinite, and the almost-three-year-old goblin running around my house. Oh and the day job. Anyhow, the point is that updates have been slow, even though I'm picking away on some new writeups when I have time. My hope is to build up a couple months of buffer so I can make regular posts again. With a little luck, it won't take too much longer.

I think there's a solid argument that the entire Remaster was worth it for the new hags.

Then there's the Oliphant in the room— the Remaster. I've been waiting for Monster Core to release to see what monsters get changed in the update, but I'd be lying if I said that waiting hadn't killed some of my motivation to write. I'm getting that back now, but it has been a challenge to overcome. One way I'm going to refocus is by getting the writeups for Monster Core done first, then loop back around to other monsters. This won't be a hard and fast rule since I am a firm believer in writing what motivates you to write, but it will be a firmer guideline than the pirate's code.

Conspiracy Dragons are so damn weird and I absolutely love them.

There's also one change I'd like to point out: the scope of Paths Beyond has shifted a bit. This is a consequence of the Gatewalkers Adventure Path. It hit the tone I want for Paths Beyond, yet it doesn't feature any planar content beyond (heh) its first installment. That challenged me to rethink what I wanted Paths Beyond to be and the insight it gave me is to the project's benefit. Paths Beyond is definitely still about the planes, but it is also about the weird, the strange, and the bizarre. If it is an attempt to recreate the tone of Planescape within Pathfinder, it is far more about capturing the tone of high weirdness and the impossible made possible than it is trying to recreate the feeling of Sigil itself. Sometimes that will mean stories that jump from Heaven to Hell and back again — but it doesn't have to.

[mindstormpress]

Illusory Sensorium ran a game of Barkeep and their writeup is one of the clearest signs that the hard work we put in was worth it.

Here's the recap. I genuinely was laughing out loud a few times. Highly recommend: https://illusorysensorium.com/b1-wand-of-embiggening/

If you want to delve into the design theory of Barkeep, keep reading! ⬇️

When we were working on the book, we came up with a sort of mantra for the encounters: Is it sticky? Is it toyetic? Do the NPCs have means, motive, and opportunity? Is there information, choice, and impact?

That's a lot of jargon, and it's been synthesized from across multiple sources. Prismatic Wasteland summed it all up here:

Sticky means that the encounter isn't something the characters can avoid. It sticks to them.

Toyetic came from false machine as well, but also from a post now lost to time from Rebecca Chenier. Basically—will the players and GM want to pick up and play with the encounter?

MMO is just a way to conceptualize NPCs in a simple, understandable form.

ICI is from Bastionland. We can't make informed decisions without information, and there's no point to making decisions if our choices don't matter.

Building the encounters meant looking at each of them carefully and considering those foundational elements. Not EVERY encounter needed every single thing. In fact, with the way WFS wanted to write the book, each encounter had to be relatively short and packing a punch.

A really really sticky encounter didn't need to be as toyetic, and a really fun and interesting encounter that the players would NEED to investigate didn't need to be all that sticky. Everything is a gear of a different size that turns the whole engine.

Illusory Sensorium thinks that they ran the game "wrong" and I disagree. They used the tools provided by the book and had fun! Mission Accomplished!

But one thing they point out very early on is how they "trusted" the encounters in the book as written. The very first one they got is quite simple: 54 skeletons in a conga line, labeled like playing cards.

Incredibly toyetic, not sticky. But the players immediately joined in!

They could have moved on, but that situation was too tantalizing to skip. The rest of the game unfolded from that first encounter, and was filled with shenanigans. The work we put in—hand crafted encounters—worked out!

I'm incredibly proud of the work everyone on the team put into Barkeep, from the writers, artists, and fellow editors. I'm especially proud that people are playing the adventure and having fun. People playing the stuff you've worked on and made is the best feeling as a creator.

Thanks for reading. There's a lot of links in this thread, because I love tracing the history of things. It's no surprise that blogs are the home for so many of these ideas—word of mouth and common practice are easily lost forever when not documented!

The bloggies, a celebration of rpg blogs, are happening now! I've got a post in the running, and I'd love it if you voted for it. My competition is FIERCE (and I recommend all the nominated posts as reading material!)

Vote for RANSACKING THE ROOM today!

[linkspooky]

Your Choujin X writeups are great, it's a shame the fandom is so small that they get relatively few notes. I'm glad you appear to have a more sympathetic view of Azuma than most CX readers I've seen. I think I remember you predicting before the time skip that Azuma would be the one to leave Yamato Mori, but recent chapters look more like Tokio will diverge from them - any predictions for the how our main trio may be split up?

This is a great question anon, and my answer is... I dunno. By which I mean to me it could go either way at this point. Me and my friend have actually debated on this, which one is more likely to side Sora and which one is going to stay with Yamato Mori. I'm still leaning towards Azuma leaving Yamato Mori, but there's evidence for both sides of either Azuma or Tokio leaving. Predictions about the Azuma and Tokio breakup underneath the cut.

Evidence of Azuma Leaving

The first piece of evidence is that Azuma is pretty clearly headed for a negative character arc, to parallel with Tokio's growth. While Tokio grows more self-confident and independent, Azuma in turn starts to feel inferior and resentful. Azuma states it pretty clearly at the end of their first fight, he's no longer Tokio's hero, the relationship they had in the past where he was the one who Tokio looked up to is gone now. Azuma can't really handle the shifting power dynamic because he was as dependent on Tokio as Tokio was on him.

Instead of bridging the gap in their relationship, Tokio leaving has made Azuma even more distant from him. Azuma isn't even on speaking terms with Tokio right now. When he's introduced to Tokio, the first thing he learns is that Tokio freed an entire province from a dictator while Azuma just a few days ago failed to stop a plane crash resulting in the deaths of so many people.

It's not like Azuma wasn't training while Tokio was gone, and yet from Azuma's perspective it seems like Tokio is still leaps and bounds ahead of him. Which could push him to conclude that Yamato Mori is not enough, either out of a desire to be stronger, or personal resentment for Tokio.

Evidence number two, Tokio and Azuma are a clear parallel to Sandek and Batista. The two of them trained alongside each other to be heroes, probably all their lives, only for one of them to betray the other. Batista is the one who either left Yamori, or fled after his brother attempted to kill him. Azuma is the Batista in that parallel, he has the ability that's less powerful than Tokio's, and Batista has multiple times took a vested interest in him even asking Zora if she could hand off Azuma to him.

Azuma also made Tokio promise to kill him if he ever went rogue, which is another parallel to Sendak being commanded by their profit to kill Batista.

Why go so far to make this continued parallel throughout the story, unless Batista was planning on inviting Azuma to their side?

The third is more recent and may just be me going out on a limb here, but Azuma met this clearly supsicious girl searching for corpses on the beach, and didn't really investigate into her any further. Noh Mask met with her shortly after this scene and dragged her into a bigger conspiracy with The Tower / Zora's followers, so she's going to be plot relevant and the fact she ran into Azuma isn't a coincidence. After all, every single detail that happens in a story is purposefully put there by the author to mean something. IE, if they ran into each other once it's likely they'll run into each other again.

One more important detail is, Azuma's not dumb. He found her right next to a washed up corpse, and even the girl thought she was done before at that point. Only for Azuma to quickly change his tune and act totally oblivious. This is the face he makes, before he smiles and offers her crabs instead. It's likely he actually knew what she was doing there, but for some reason decided to let her go, maybe to investigate her further instead of blowing his cover right there.

While Tokio is the one who is more curious right now about hearing what Zora has to say, he's also steadily growing and gaining influence in Yamato Mori.

It's Tokio of all people who spoke up against the Opium mission, and Tokio who convinced the higher ups to listen to his plan instead. He's once again the one gaining more strength and confidence, while Azuma's position in Yamato is stagnating. Sato even makes a comment along the lines of Yamato's soldiers not being what they once were.

If Azuma isn't making progress with the Yamato Mori, if he's stagnating and not getting any better that's even more reason for him to want to leave.

Evidence of Tokio Leaving

The first and most obvious is that Zora is pretty desperate to choose Tokio as her successor. Tokio is also the one who seemed to have inherited the most power from Zora, as she comments that being an iron choujin makes Azuma unworthy of the mark. In the parallel between the big three Choujin X of the past, Tokio is clearly the parallel to Zora, he uses the same wings and scythe swords she did. Azuma is the parallel to Queem because they both use recurring tank and gun imagery in association with their characters, and Azuma's choujin power seems to have come about because of his obsession with war, weapons, the military, etc...

Tokio is also the only one who's spoken in favor of listening to Zora about her prophecy. Azuma's been keeping his head down the entire time just listening to orders in Yamato Mori, Ely even points out that Azuma didn't speak up when he disagreed with Tokio. It's Tokio who's questioning authority and speaking up directly in front of them.

Tokio is also the first person who sympathizes with Zora, when the whole of Yamato Mori who are the ones who cast her out seem only intent on hunting her down. He's expressed a clear interest in talking to her.

Tokio also has been diagnosed with a clear case of Kaneki Ken SyndromeTM! By which I mean Ishida Sui reuses ideas from previous works all the time, and in Tokyo Ghoul his last manga he had the hero defect from Anteiku when he became too afraid that he lacked the strength to protect his friends. Tokio seems to suffer from a similiar fear of losing people. He even resolves to strike Zora down if the danger becomes too much and just ignore her prophecy.

Tokio has also already left once, leaving both Ely and Azuma without a word because he feels he'd become too dependent on them if he stayed. His growth was also jumpstarted when after the island arc he wasn't able to contribute a single thing in the battle because he wasn't strong enough. He could leave for a similiar reason, if Yamato Mori isn't enough to protect his friends he could try to go off on his own and work from the outside instead.

The last piece of evidence is that we still have Tokio's prophetic dream to worry about. Considering Tokio shares so many of Zora's powers, he might have even inherited some of her future seeing.

Tokio hasa dream of a ruined Yamato, and an Azuma who turns around to face him and declares that the disaster is all his fault. Tokio defecting / siding with Zora could start the chain of events which leads to this. In a version where Tokio defects, we could see an arc of Tokio joining with Zora, only for Azuma to hunt him down while working with Yamato Mori.

It still fits the general pattern I outlined before of their positive and negative charater arcs, if Azuma stayed with Yamato Mori he might become more like a blind servant to justice, hunting down Tokio no matter what the cost without listening to his friend. Especially if Tokio really is the cause of a disaster.

To mention Ishida's previous work again, Tokio shares a lot of parallels to Arima Kishou, to the point of even wearing glasses like him and having worsening eyesight. The fact that Arima for most of his life was a blind follower of the CCG is not a good thing and led to his tragic ending as a character. So Azuma's character could follow the same general pattern if he chooses to stay with Yamato Mori and hunt down Tokio after he defects.

There's plenty of evidence for either side of the argument, so we may just have to wait and see how it plays out. Considering it's Ishida though, it'll probably be painful when the boys finally do break up.

[theothin]

What is your MTG project?

it's what I've been calling a hypercube - a group of mini-cubes that can be combined in various configurations. the main type of mini-cubes I've been aiming for are 90 cards and focused on a single set, ideally including cards suitable for a set jumpstart cube, since set jumpstart cubes are great ways to set up quick games. being focused on a single set also means that after combining the cards together for a larger cube, it's easy to separate them and determine which mini-cube they belong to. for sets where I don't have as many cards, I've been going for smaller batches of 15, 30, or 45, and in some cases combining cards from multiple related sets

once it's complete, I plan to post it along with a more extensive writeup, but there's still some things I want to sort out in the meantime. so far, I've picked about 8,000 cards to include, and over the past couple of days I've started sleeving some of the mini-cubes, which is of course quite an undertaking!

[despazito]

Aussie here, why not a cockatoo? I would get that importing it to the US would be fucked, and that they're one of the loudest birds ever. What other reasons?

There’s a blog run by animal behaviourist who specializes in parrots that i really enjoy reading, she has a very good writeup on them: The Inconvenient Truth About Cockatoos

the average person cannot take proper care of a large parrot. they are extremely social and intelligent animals who are very demanding if you are their only companion.

most pet parrots are hand reared or even hatched in incubators by breeders and are never given a chance to be raised by their parents, virtually none stay with their parents until a natural weaning age before getting sold. which is wild considering it is fucking illegal to do something like that with puppies or kittens.

A parrot isn't really born wired to human companionship in the same way that a dog or cat is. they imprint on their parents which sets the blueprint of their kin, and they generally want to only form extremely close bonds with others of their kin. To get a very people-oriented parrot, it has to think it’s people.

This is different from the socializing practiced in raising cats and dogs or acclimating ferals to people. socializing means exposure to things so that the animal doesn't grow up to see the target as a threat, and ultimately that the target is something that can be very rewarding to spend time around. A dog raised with its mother and socialized to people still understands that it's a dog, it can get along with other dogs, but can also form strong bonds to people. They actually read both dog and human body language and have an awareness that we are different species.

The companion parrot is raised to think it’s people, and as a result many lose the ability to form bonds with their own kind. in fact the reason many breeders remove eggs or chicks from the nest is arguing that the parents don’t really know how to raise their chicks- because they themselves were hand reared and never learned how from their parents! we essentially alienate them, and when they don’t have people around to meet their extremely high needs even if there's other birds around, the human-bonded parrot can become depressed and even self mutilate. parrots that were left with their parents, are raised as parrots, and weaned at their own natural pace overwhelmingly do not exhibit these destructive behaviours.

I think any parrot hand reared and imprinted onto humans is deeply psychologically damaged, they have been robbed of a normal parrot life.

 a productive relationship with a pet parrot is one that fosters independence, not dependence on the human. those owners act as more as a zookeeper to their parrot instead of coddling and creating a ‘velcro’ bird glued to the hip, and socialize via training sessions instead of letting their birds indulge in pair bonding behaviours like petting and preening.

[bluespring864]

Novak said in his serbian presser he doesn’t care about finishing his career alongside Rafa because it wouldn’t mean anything to him

Okay? Yeah well, they haven't been on the greatest of terms recently, and I'm kind of glad Novak is leaving his "please like me" attitude behind a bit. I remember Novak also said when Roger retired that he would like to have as many of his peers there as possible for his own retirement, so I assume that would still include Rafa if he wants to come.

You've made me look up a writeup of that presser now so I'm adding this part which I thoroughly enjoyed:

"I am really enjoying the rivalries I have with all those guys. Alcaraz, Medvedev, Sinner, everybody near the top I get along with quite nicely. If I were to compare my relationship with them to the one I had with Federer and Nadal, the relationship with my younger fellow players is much better, nicer. I enjoy it.” 

Asked to elaborate on his words, Djokovic replied:

“I don’t know, it’s just more open, the younger guys are more communicative. We just get along better, that’s it.”

Or how to say "I tried, but Roger and Rafa didn't like me, so I gave up" without saying it :)

Btw that whole conversation happened because Danya shared this story about Novak in his presser again. (Nole's reaction when asked about it: "I want to thank Daniil for his kind words, he pleasantly surprised me." Poor guy has so rarely had this experience that he gets surprised when someone says something positive about him.)

[aemiron-main]

no bc it’s so funny to me that canonically we have seen mike look repelled by girls/references to them more times that we’ve seen will (canonically gay) be uninterested/repelled by girls

like sure, Will rejects the girl in Lenora + wants a day free of girls (which seems to also be mostly tied to the fact that will associates girls with not being able to spend time with his friends which IS true in s3 even with sexualities aside), but mike?

Mike canonically:

-looked visibly disturbed/grossed out when dustin was talking about phoebe cates

-made a more disturbed face when El kissed him at the end of s3 than he did while literally holding an inter-dimensional snot slug in s2

-took his girlfriend’s hands off of him while she kissed him

-could not to kiss his girlfriend in s4 without wearing sunglasses

-stood in front of the word “women,” while looking upset and talking about “bullshit media propaganda”

-other examples I’m too tired to grab rn but will put in my full gay mike writeup

like will is absolutely not interested in girls, but the writers show that by not putting him in very many scenarios with girls in any sort of romantic way (ie, it’s just total apathy towards girls in a romantic sense) whereas with mike, the writers chose to put him into those romantic situations with girls but also chose to make him look actively upset by these interactions, rather than just apathetic.

like we don’t have a scene of Will’s face when Dustin mentions Phoebe Cates- because it’s a literal representation of his apathy, the show isn’t even SHOWING us Will’s reaction because he simply does not care. it’s the epitome of apathy. but we DO see Mike’s reaction because the show is showing us his active dislike of affection from women/his active lack of attraction towards women. like we aren’t just Not Seeing It due to apathy like we are with will. We are being explicitly shown that mike Does Not Like it.

and imo (like I’m gonna write in my analysis), this is due to the difference in Will and Mike’s upbringings and the difference in how heteronormativity affects them and how Will is more accepting of his sexuality and less affected internally by heteronormativity compared to mike and how therefore will doesn’t feel the same pressure to BE attracted to women because his sexuality is framed as an attraction to men rather than a lack of attraction to women (ie lonnie and the bullies target will for being gay and verbatim call him gay a queer whereas for people like Ted towards mike, it’s jabs about a LACK of girls around him, Ted doesn’t make fun of Mike being around Will or call him gay/queer, he pokes fun at mike for NOT being around girls) and how even the viewer’s pov of Mike’s sexuality, which is inherently queer by nature, is still put through a heteronormative lens and framed as lack of attraction to women rather than active attraction to men (even though he IS attracted to men)/how Will is rarely shown to lack attraction to women (even though he absolutely does) but his interest in me /being called gay is brought up repeatedly.

We DO see evidence of an active attraction towards men for Mike just like how sometimes (like the girl in Lenora), we DO as we evidence of a LACK of attraction towards girls for Will. But usually it’s us seeing active attraction towards dudes for Will (ie I don’t mean him staring at men gayly 24/7 but I do mean things that are overt references to being gay rather than overt references to not being attracted to women, things like the Alan Turing poster, things like him being called gay slurs, things like him being bullied specifically FOR seeming gay) and also seeing a lack of attraction towards girls for Mike. (Ie mike still shows us hints of being attracted to guys just like Will shows us hints of being actively repelled by girls but for Mike it’s usually us being shown an active dislike of girls (in a romantic sense not a misogyny sense) rather than Will who is shown to have the active interest in men more often. They’re equally disinterested in girls and equally interested in men, it’s not that mike is just not really into girls or guys/less into men than Will is, it’s about their upbringing and the differences in the ways in which heteronormativity has affected them + their worldview + how they view themselves)

[chronicallyuniconic]

Prep for appointments🌼

~

I've got a writeup in my notes that I've been working on for my Neurology appointment so I don't forget anything & I really want them to read it or let me read it out before they chip in and interrupt my flow.

It's quite hard seeing all the symptoms I'm dealing with and how they affect me, written across 6000 words, like some sort of sad statistic. Yet if i was reading this about someone else I'd feel so sorry for them & wanna give them a hug. If I was a doctor, I'd definitely want to know what's going on (yet they never seem to?).

I feel that saying all these symptoms out loud, still won't be believed. It's as if the words I say mean something else to them.

"That's a shovel"

"No, it's a spoon actually"

A headache means a headache, you'd think. I'm not ready for any second guessing of what I'm going through.

There's about half of me, tingling, worried that the consultant will be dismissive and brush everything off, as has happened many times before. I'm worried about them talking over me, getting stressed that they will mince my words because they think I'm just listing things off a med page to get a specific diagnosis, when no, this is actually happening to me. What if again, I've waited all this time, for nothing?

I'm trying to ask myself what I want and need out of the appointment and whether I directly request something or not, like an EEG or an MRI. (I am sick of going for bloods for the same shit to show up that they never treat, i.e anaemia).

Are they just going to question me if I ask for some sort of intervention, thinking I have no clue what I'm talking about? Again, I've not got the energy to fight this anymore, even though it's for myself. I can't will that energy out of anywhere, it doesn't exist.

The anticipation is stressing me out.