#i think i need 2 start joining character specific discord servers again

[emp-blast]

hiiii (with the intent of talking to you about my favorite characters)

[ineffablesnakegender]

Hello every nyan /ref I guess I should do this sort of introduction/everything you could possibly need to know about me type post. Everything here is subject to change and I'll update it as needed

The easiest way to get ahold of me is through my discord (theriverwitch). While you're there consider joining my art server.

Fandoms:

Our flag means death

Umbrella academy

The owl house

Sanders sides

Good omens

Doctor who

Undertale

Hannibal

TMNT

FNAF

DND

MLP

YouTubers I watch:

Love2DrawManga

Moriah Elizabeth

Thomas sanders

GingaNinjaOwO

Safiya Nygaard

Samantha Lux

LaurenZside

Sam Collins

Dollightfull

Lovely Lor

Oxventure

OneTopic

Lilsimsie

Drawfee

Katzun

Boundaries:

No sexual or romantic comments towards me, I'm 16 and I'm dating someone (even if you're a similar age to me just don't) hard boundary

No radqueers. (No you can't transition into being autistic stop making a mockery of my disability) Hard boundary

No proshippers/comshippers/ darkshippers or whatever (no incest, no adult x child, no animal x human, just no illegal shit. I don't care why you do it. I'll block you anyway so just go ahead and block me now) HARD boundary

Shota/loli con people go fucking die KYS you won't be missed pedophile

Don't interact too much if you're an nsfw blog (again I'm 16) soft boundary

No bigots (Zionists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, transphobes, ect) HARD boundary

Do NOT use my art for AI. (You can't anyway because I use a program that messes up your data 😝) hard boundary

If you're a super religious blog please leave me alone (I'm not interested in your religion, don't preach to me) soft boundary

If you support Dream, Wilbur, Shane Dawson, James Charles, or literally anyone who has done similar shit to them. GTFO. We support victims on this blog (I'm not open to arguing about this simply block me before I block you) Hard boundary

Art request/commission info:

I always have art requests open but I don't promise to get to yours if you request anything.

I don't do animals or very complicated backgrounds for commissions just because I'm not very good at it.

My commission prices + examples vv

If you think this is too expensive just know that I don't care and you don't have to commission me if you don't want to <3

I use cash app

Prices half on all art for holidays (this doesn't include birthdays)

Prices go up if you want the art in less than a week (depends on how fast you need it)

No NSFW. No hate art. No proship art. I have the right to refuse a commission or request if I'm uncomfortable making it. I do my research on characters, do not try to "trick me" or something I'm just going to block you

I require 50% upfront before I start on your commission. I will send updates throughout the process to get feedback, they will be plastered in watermarks for my safety. I will send the finished product with watermarks on it, only after you send the rest of the money will I give you the real image. The finished product will have one watermark in a place that will be hard to hide but does not interfere with the art

I don't need your business. This isn't my job. I will cancel your commission if you're rude, uncooperative, break my rules or boundaries, or are trying to rush me when you didn't pay for it to be quick. I'll tell you to stop once and you won't be given a second chance, you'll just be blocked and refunded.

Other info:

Pronouns: pretty much anything but she her unless I specifically say you can. My favorites are in my bio

Names: you can call me by my username, snake, Crowley, Janus, or river

Age: like I've said I'm 16 (17 in like 2 months)

Other: I'm autistic, I have degenerative disc disease, I'm a vegetation (meat hurts my stomach), my favorite animal is hognose snakes, I use xenogenders and I'm nonbinary/genderfluid, I don't post very often, I'm always open to art requests and critiques, I want to go to law school, I'm Irish on both sides of my family and indigenous French Canadian (Metis!) on my mom's side (although I'm very disconnected from both cultures), I live in America currently but I plan on moving as soon as I can bc this place is a hell hole

User boxes:

[accal1a]

When Fandom Isn't Fun

Fandom is a wonderful place.

Strike that.

Fandom is supposed to be a wonderful place.

It's a place where you can find friends, motivate and encourage each other, and a place where everyone can have a truly wonderful escape from the rigours of the real world.

I could talk for hours about the myriad of joys that Fandom can offer, and I'm sure I will.

This is not that essay. It isn't even close.

The Roswell Fandom is not a welcoming place.

That's a bold statement to make (no pun intended), but it's one I find true and not willing to equivocate on. My experience can charitably be called one of peaks and troughs. I have, of course, made wonderful friends in the Roswell Fandom, and those experiences are the high point for me.

The low point is pretty fucking low.

Let me start with: I've watched the show since Day 1. I was so excited that Roswell was being rebooted that I had it in my calendar for the premiere, and I watched the show week on week. I was heavily entrenched in another Fandom at the time, so I suspect that was why I didn't seek out the Roswell Fandom. This is something that I'm both sad about from a shipping perspective, and very glad about from an interpersonal perspective.

This is to say that, whilst I am aware this is a sweeping generalisation, the Fandom is, once again, not a welcoming place.

When I did finally get around to joining the Fandom in October 2021 I very nearly turned around and walked out again. I'm glad I didn't due to gaining the aforementioned friends, but it was a very close run thing.

The very first thing that I was told, after making a thread for RNM on The Fandom Playhouse Discord server, was that I needed to be very careful whom I spoke with about certain events that happened in canon. 

That was surprising to me, because Fandom has always been a 'pick the bits you like and put back the things you don't' place in regards to creation of fic/art. Whilst there are issues in Fandom: the Purity Police, shaming, or disagreements over characters or ships or plotlines etc.; in general, people can engage with what they like and disengage with what they don't. We can have discussions with people without attacking one another.

Not so for the hellhole that is the Roswell Fandom.

One of the things I was warned about was a threesome that happened in Season 2. Now, I am very much one for this interaction. I think it was an intimate way of showing the absolute need you have to be close to someone after a near-death experience. There's a reason why 'sex after angst' is such a trope in many pieces of media. This threesome, to me, showed that very clearly, and it also showed a great narrative break between one couple and another and I think the writers did a really great job with it.

Hoboy was that 'not an okay thing to say'.

The person who warned me about the scene is a friend of mine (from a previous Fandom) and was very kind in warning me. They themselves don't like it, but they therefore do the correct Fandom thing and subsequently don't engage. They don't kick off and vilify those who do.

But I digress.

I was warned to be very careful who I spoke to about this scene, this characterisation, this storyline, because I could walk into the Fandom equivalent of being taken out back and shot.

Yikes, methinks.

But, this person was at least one person I can speak with about the show, so I didn’t worry too much. I figure I can be Fandom adjacent, and that'll work.

Of course that's not always how you Fandom, and I quickly got sucked into not one, but two Discord servers…which was when it got even weirder.

I quickly joined in to AV Chats on the Roswell 18+ server, which were lovely, and finally jumped into Literal Skeletons when I stopped being scared by how quick the conversations moved over there.

All was well in the world.

Then, I was warned about a specific person – Milo.

Now, Milo had done nothing wrong in my eyes at that time. I was actually in the process of working out how I could speak to him more, as he seemed to be very similar to myself. So, the things he had been accused of didn't seem to track with what I had seen of him up to that point.

I was told he had an intense personality. No shit, have you met people in Fandom.

I was told he had problems. No shit, have you met people in Fandom.

I was told he often played the victim.

Let's, for the moment, set aside the biased, ableist, and toxic portions of the first two, and merely say two things which could be expanded on to a greater degree, but we don't have the time right now:

'intense' well only to some people, other people might like that. I'm sure I'm 'intense' to some and 'mousy' to others. Not everyone is going to like everyone, but it takes zero effort to be nice to someone. Wait, apparently it is a huge effort, my mistake.

'problems' ableist language is just fantastic in this day and age isn't it?

Now, I had nothing to base the last part on, the accusation that he liked to play the victim, so I decided to sit back and wait. I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I've been in Fandom for 22 years, people sometimes rub up against each other wrong, and in Old Fandom you would just step away and not interact with that person anymore. Not so in this New Fandom. Now, apparently, you must vilify them and make sure that no-one else can ever get anywhere near them. *Exaggerated sigh*

That's batshit. 

Old Fandom vs. New Fandom, however, is a rant that may have a post of its own on another day.

So, I thought I'd keep an eye out, but I wouldn't make any decisions, certainly not from second-hand information, and certainly not from someone who I didn't know very well yet myself.

On 11th December 2021, there were the Meet & Greets for the Black Friday Vlambase merch drop.

It was a fun experience had by all. (No, but what is your fifth favourite raccoon?) I got to know some people much better, met others for the first time, and felt more able to spend time on Skeletons with the zany folk.

Which again, would have been fine, until I started to hear about just how bad things had gotten elsewhere in the Fandom.

Now, whilst I appreciate people can like or dislike someone (I suspect I won't be making many friends with this post, but I don't care), the Milo situation seemed to be more targeted harassment.

I was told about him speaking up about queer issues, and being smacked down, despite the fact he is a queer person, and it was relevant to the topic. I was told about the harassment that had happened elsewhere and how that had given people a bad taste in their mouths.

I was affronted by this, and couldn't (honestly) believe that that was how it had been explained to me, because what the fuck?

Certainly, the queer issue, the fact that calling someone a TERF was somehow the 'hot take' when someone engaged in TERFy behaviour, was a surprise to me. Fandom is a mostly queer space, and for there to be a take that TERF behaviour wasn't bad, was a shock to me. Perhaps it shouldn't have been, who knows?

I am nothing if not a nerd, so I did my research and collected my thoughts and feelings. Here's my take:

@im-the-punk-who has been done dirty by this fandom as a whole, and by certain people in particular.

He was systematically attacked in multiple spheres, and that's not appropriate at all. It is never appropriate to be an awful human being to someone, it's even less appropriate when someone is purposefully piled on by multiple people at the same time.

Fandom can be a wonderful place full of fun and friends, but it can also gather its torches and pitchforks and destroy all joy over a Fandom. The collective 'cult' of Fandom is quick to judge sometimes, much to my chagrin.

Ordinarily, the pitchforks are for show runners, sometimes actors, networks. Now, I'm not saying that is right either, this kind of Cancel Culture is not appropriate in any sphere; but those people have the ability to hide from it to an extent. Verified Twitter can screen their tweets, showrunners can avoid vitriol, networks can just flat out ignore everything. There is a shield and a barrier between the Fandom Crazies and the media involved.

Now, don't get me wrong, that barrier is VERY important to me, and I 100% believe it should be there. The knowledge of media creators even knowing about Fandom is a bit too close for comfort, and some personalities are more aware than others. That fourth wall conversation is also something for another day.

But Milo didn't have that.

Milo was a lone fan in the middle of a sea of a Fandom that was part attack, part indifference, and part inability to come to his defence. 

Now, please don't misunderstand me, I know there will have been those who saw the bullying behaviour and didn't want to jump in for fear of being bullied themselves. I hold absolutely no ill will towards them. I've been there, it can be terrifying. They are not the ones who should be feeling shame for their behaviour. Not by a long shot.

But here’s the thing…I'm new.

I have zero fucks to give.

And my 'not a hot take' is that Milo deserved better.

Milo didn't deserve to have his own feelings invalidated when speaking about personal issues. 

Whilst differing thoughts and conflicting opinions can happen in the same sphere; after all, we all take different facets of anything we consume and see it through the lens of our own experiences, invalidating someone’s life experience and elevating your own as the be-all-end-all of the subject is neither useful for reasoned debate or kind to the other person.

Milo didn't deserve to have his boundaries or his triggers willfully and purposefully ignored.

To push past someone's triggers occasion after occasion knowingly is cruel. Have some respect. Have some compassion. If you don't like someone, that's fine, you're going to dislike people, but it's no excuse to deliberately step into someone's triggers to hurt them. It makes you a cunt. Pure and simple.

Milo didn't deserve to be dogpiled when someone disagreed with his opinion. 

A difference of opinion about a fandom matter is not ever a good reason to kick the metaphorical stuffing out of someone, and more importantly forcing a person to constantly justify themselves is absolutely not okay, and has in fact led to the silencing of many voices in this fandom.

Milo didn't deserve to be ousted by a group of perceived 'popular kids' like we're in some kind of 90s Teen film. 

People disagree in Fandom all the time, this isn't new, but to have someone with lived experience explain why something is problematic and then still have people flat out bullying you? That's not on.

Anyone offended by this post has the right and privilege to be.

If you're offended, you're likely part of the problem and I want (though don't expect) you to have a good long look in the mirror and think about what you've done.

Bullying someone out of a Fandom is never a good look, but bullying someone out of a Fandom for nothing but a difference of opinion is particularly reprehensible. Bullying someone out of Fandom for calling out problematic LGBTQ+ behaviour is probably one of the worst looks you could take on.

My experience of Fandom is that it is an inherently queer space, and if calling out TERF behaviour is the hill I have to die on, then start building the damn thing, because I'll plant a fucking flag on the top. The queer flag, you know, the one that is called 'progress'?

I do wonder how you manage to function in real life, where people disagree all the time, but that's all I'll say on that, after all, thinking on you any more than this very long letter is more time than I have in my life.

Roswell Fandom? You nearly bullied a person who is kind, compassionate, and loving out of the Fandom. The fact that he's somehow still hanging on by a thread is something I'm grateful for because I can say this.

Milo.

Come back.

The people who wronged you are going to leave you alone now, if I have anything to say about it, and this post is that armour you need.

I wish this hadn’t happened to you, and I, for one, am sorry for not speaking up sooner.

I want you to know that you are supported, you are seen, and you are valid. 

I hope that you will consider returning to us.

We can't wait to see you.   

[fictional-lvr]

Code

A/N: Yo! Sorry this req took me so long to fulfill, I hope you all enjoy it. Remember to drink water and reblog writers!

-----------

I awoke to the sound of my phone pinging, signaling a text from my best friend, Emma.

Emma: ‘Yo, if you wanna play Among Us with us, the code is ______’

She knew that I hadn’t been talking to anyone recently. Compulsive self isolation amirite? I figured that I should at least try. I slowly sat up, rubbing my eyes with my fists. I checked the time, 2:00 pm. I groaned, sick of being unhealthy, but unable to become healthy. I padded over to my setup on the other side of my small bedroom. I turned on my pc, wincing at the bright screen, a contrast to the dark surroundings of my room. I quickly opened up Among Us, typing in the code that Emma sent me. I watched as my finger hit the wrong key, but I hit enter before I could react. My mouse hovered over the exit button, that was, until I saw the names of the people in the lobby. Corpse, Spedicey, Rae, Sykkuno, Toast, Pewds, This could not be happening. I did nOt just somehow, accidentally, join my favorite streamers and youtubers lobby. The little red dot popping up on the chat icon pulled me from my thoughts.

Corpse: ‘Uh, who r u’

My fingers crashed across my keyboard, desperate to not make it look like I somehow searched out, and found, this one specific code.

Y/A/N: ‘sorry. i think i typed in my friends code wrong’

I quickly typed out, slamming enter with my pinkie. I took a deep breath, trying to not freak the fuck out. I anxiously stared at the chat icon, waiting for someone to say something.

Rae: ‘I mean, we do need a filler,’

Spedicey: ‘Wanna play?’

Yo. What the fuck? Was this happening? Was this real? I shook the thoughts out of my head, starting to frantically type.

Y/A/N: ‘fuck it. sure’

I buried my face in my hoodie sleeve covered hands, letting out a muffled screech. Alright. I needed to calm the fuck down. I took a couple deep breaths before seeing the red dot appear once again on the chat icon.

Corpse: ‘whats ur discord’

-------------------------------------

After putting my discord in the chat, I waited. Staring at my discord, waiting to be invited to a server or something. Then I got a notification from Corpse, a friend request and an invite to the Among Us server, in that order. The way I slAmmed my finger onto the mouse button the accept the friend request was almost sinful. “Jesus christ” I muttered to myself, accepting the invite to the server, much more calmly this time. I saw that everyone has already joined the call. I adjusted my mic, cleared my throat, and joined the call. I heard all of them laughing at what someone had said “Wait guys they’re here!” I heard Sean's voice cut through. “Uh, yeah, hi” My voice sounded quiet and small. I cringed a little bit at it before I heard Rae say, “Oh my god I love your voice it’s so cute!” In an excited tone. I chuckled a bit. “Thank you, I just woke up so it’s a little wonky right now but that's fine” I stated, rubbing my eyes a bit, still tired. I never got enough sleep. “What time is it for you?” I heard Corpses voice say. His voice sounded even better on call than in videos, and probably even better in person. But his voice is not him, it’s not why we love him. It’s just a feature of him. Nevertheless, it gave me butterflies. “Uh like 2:15 I think” I replied, checking my phone for the time as I did so. “Oh, cool, same for me” Corpse said, he didn’t sound anxious per say, but he sounded a bit nervous. But, to be fair, I sounded more than a bit nervous. “So, what’s your name?” Sykkuno asked. “Y/N” I stated, smiling a little. “Nice to meet you Y/N’ Sykkuno replied. “Pretty name,,” I heard Corpse mumble. “Uh, I- Thank you” I stuttered out. God, why did I sound so damn nervous? These people are just people. They’re the same as me. I heard Corpse let out a small nervous giggle.

------------

We all talked for a bit, just them asking me simple questions and me answering. “Yo, who wants to wear the cat ears with me?” Corpse asked, I replied without a thought “I gotchu, Corpsey” I heard him laugh a little bit. His laugh was so nice. “WELL I WANNA WEAR THEM TOO” Sean scrEamed. You don’t realize how much he turns the volume down in editing until you’re actually talking to the man. “Goddamn that was loud” I laughed. “Oh yeah, Sean is very loud. All the time. You can’t escape it.” Felix warned, I giggled at his statement. “Oh I know, I know” I responded, receiving a laugh from Sean and Felix. “Y/N! Put on the fUcking cat ears” Corpses voice boomed through the call. I jumped a bit at the sudden sound. “Woah, a little close to the mic there aren’t we?” I laughed out, moving my littol bean character to the customization thing, putting the cat ears on. “How else was I supposed to get your attention?” Corpse asked, still very, very close to the mic. I laughed, and before I could open my mouth to respond, Sean cut in “Literally just talk. You have a voice like fuckin shortwave radio.” I started laughing even harder, attempting to put my head down on the desk, but instead, FULLY bOnking it. “ow” I muttered, laughing quietly. “yo was that your fucking head?” Sean asked, I laughed a little louder before answering, “look, I have like zero control over my body at any given time” earning a chuckle from Corpse. I smiled, making him laugh made me smile.

----------------

After a few games, Corpse and I got imposter together. I hate being imposter. We were doing alright until fUcking Rae just hAd to see me vent. “ITS Y/N SHE VENTED I SAW HER” 

so naturally we lost that round

---------

After we had played quite a few games, everyone was pretty tired, except for me and Corpse. “Alright bye you guys! Thank you so so much for letting me play, it was fun” You could literally hear the smile in my voice. Everyone had left the discord call other than me and Corpse at this point. “So, uhh, can I get your Instagram real quick? I just realized I don’t even know what you look like” Corpse spoke somewhat awkwardly, almost as if he was nervous for some reason. “Well, to be fair, I don’t know what you look like either” I retorted, laughing. He gave me a chuckle in response and hesitated before saying; “I mean, we could change that, yknow, if you like, wanted to,,or something”

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Tag List:

@amaikitsune

@into-the-end

@corpsesimpp

[daughter-of-freya]

How to confess to your gamer bestfriend

tw: none, fluff (mutual pinning)

wc: 1572

note: kenma x bsf!gn!reader, lowercase intended, sorry for not posting in two (2) weeks i had a lot of homework, n e ways enjoy :)

you and kenma had been best friends for years now. you met him in middle school when he was sat next to kuroo as he played on his nintendo, you went up to him and asked him what he was playing and the rest is history. now being best friends is a bit tricky when you're in love with that person, so you're in quite the predicament here, however you're in luck because he is in love with you too, you just don't know it, yet.

3 am

you and kenma are playing minecraft together while on a discord call. you're working on building a castle for you two to live in, while he's gathering resources. this has been going for a good 4 hours now, neither of you feel the need to fill the silence, you're just enjoying each other's company. kenma can surprisingly get quite talkative when a new game comes out he's been wanting to play, or he can't seem to beat a specific boss, but he's also a really good listener. you know you can tell him if something is wrong and he'll listen, though this problem directly involves him so talking to him isn't an option. you're in love with kenma and have been for quite some time now, i mean he's always been by your side, supporting you, just being a good best friend. somewhere along the way you fell for him and you just don't know how to tell him.

7:30 am

kenma lives close to you and kuroo, so you three walk to school together. though this morning everything goes just a bit slower since you two were up late gaming. while you and kuroo are walking to kenma's house, you decide to ask him for advice.

"kuroo?"

"yeah, what's up?"

"i'm in love with kenma"

kuroo laughs and teasingly says that he already knew and that kenma is in love with you too.

"how would you know that, does he talk about me?"

"y/n, you and games are literally the only things he talks about and he hasn't our right said that he has feelings for you but just trust me on this one."

"how can you be sure though if he hasn't actually said it?"

"you'd have to be blind not to see the way you two look at each other, even lev has picked up on it and he's the most clueless person i've ever met, i'm sure y/n just confess."

"but how, what if he rejects me and i ruin our friendship, that is the last thing i want kuroo."

at this point you've reached kenma's house so you decide to finish this conversation some other time.

12 pm

it's now lunchtime and like usual you're eating with kuroo and kenma, well it's more kuroo trying to force kenma to put his psp away and eat.

"kenma please you have to eat, you already didn't get enough sleep so at least eat, you need energy." you said to him worried for his health

he ultimately gives in and puts his psp away and grabs his bento to eat. kuroo is used to fill silence at this point since the both of you seem to be introverts and not really talkers but usually you would join in a conversation with him, but your thoughts are preoccupied with how you'd confess to kenma. so while kuroo is going on about some volleyball related thing, kenma watches you as he noticed that you had been distracted even in class, you got called on but weren't paying attention so kenma whispered the answer to you from beside you. this got him a bit worried because out of the two of you, you'd always been a great student, after debating for a bit he decides he's just going to ask what's wrong.

"y/n?"

"y/n?" he pokes your cheek after saying your name twice, since you weren't responding.

"oh what, yeah sorry i was just thinking." you answered a bit flustered at suddenly being called out

"yeah, i noticed, you were distracted in class too, something wrong?"

"uhm no no, i'm fine maybe a bit tired since we stayed up late?"

"if you were tired you could've just gone to sleep, i'm not going to force to play with me."

after hearing that you reassured kenma that you loved to play with him and that you weren't tired then, but just now. after that little conversation the bell rang signaling that you had to go back to class.

4 pm

you're walking home alone today because the team has practice, normally you'd stay to watch but you've still got to think about how you're going to confess to your best friend. so you would be distracted and getting a ball accidentally spiked at you doesn't seem that appealing.

after you've arrived home, you say hello to your parents and go straight to your room. still not finding a way to confess, you decide to just do your homework and come back to it later. though that doesn't go too well because all your thoughts go back to kenma and if what kuroo said was really true and if he really did have feelings for you. now that doing homework was thrown out the window you start up your computer and think about just playing some minecraft, maybe working on your castle a bit.

you decide to do that, and while you are building a thought pops into your head, what if you confess through minecraft, you both love games and it's the way you met. how you were going to do that was the next question, which seemed even trickier than the ones before.

7 pm

kenma was on his way home from practice, being a little disappointed that you weren't there. he enjoyed your company a lot and dare he say even fell for you. he's not sure exactly when maybe it was love at first sight, you asking him what he was playing, being the first to actually take an interest in him beside kuroo made him feel weird, a good weird though.

he really liked the mutual silence you two shared, it wasn't awkward just basking in the other's presence, he also loved how he could talk to you about anything knowing that he wouldn't be judged. this got him thinking about lunch again and you said you were just tired, but he thought there was something more, he hoped that you would share your thoughts with him, he wanted to help but if you didn't need his help then he'd be lying if he said that didn't hurt him.

all of that aside he was still looking forward to playing together again, making a mental note to stop earlier since he didn't want you to be tired. he liked the server you two had and thought it was cute how much effort you were putting into that castle of yours, it even made him think that there was a slight chance that you liked him back. with that thought he arrived home, went to his room and messaged you on discord to ask if you wanted to call.

a couple of minutes later you called kenma and he immediately accepted the call.

you had everything planned out and hoped he would like it. "so i've got a surprise for you, can you come to the castle second floor please?"

he was quite confused but intrigued nonetheless so he went up the stairs, and there he saw your character in front of a door.

"just go in the room and tell me what you think alright?" you sounded a bit nervous to him, he just attributed that to hoping he would like the room.

when kenma walked his character through the door, he saw two beds in the room with a sign that said "wanna put our beds together?"

you had also moved through the door and were looking at his character anxiously awaiting his answer.

to your surprise kenma said "if this is your way of confessing then yes, if it's not im sorry for making it awkward"

you chuckled at his response and replied "yes kenma this is my way of confessing, im glad you accepted though that would've embarrassing if you didn't"

"y/n why in the world would i not accept, i've been in love with you for years." kenma said a bit frustrated that you would think there was even the slightest possibility that he would reject you.

"wait what, you're telling me we could've been dating for years now and you didn't say anything"

"well you didn't either, until now i gues but i'm happy you did because i would've been to anxious to do anything, kuroo's been pestering me to confess already but now i don't need to anymore."

"yeah i guess so, wanna play now?"

"duh is that even a question."

[eveningstar1516]

Rise of the Demon King ~ Chapter 12

Rise of the Demon King

Fic: Multi Chapter Paring: MC x Everyone (Mostly Lucifer) Type: Angst with a Happy Ending Total Word Count: 26,758 TW: Major Character Death, Reader gets stabbed with a sword through their chest so..., Abusive Parents, Past Child Abuse, Demon Hunters, Loss of Control Summary: You’ve done it. You’ve finally done it. You’ve managed to anger the demon king. Now you hold your head high as he hands down your sentence. AO3 Portal: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065362 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A/N: I gotta Discord server guys! It's primarily Obey Me but other fandoms are welcome as well. It's kinda baby and dead so me and the other members are looking to revive it and we'd love for you to come join us. A roleplay area is included :) https://discord.gg/F3YEmDZCPS Please remember to read and accept the rules once you join for access to all the channels. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Previously:

I faced the edge, ready to jump when I realized I had forgotten something. Turning around, I looked God straight in the eyes and threw the strongest right hook I had ever thrown in my life before jumping backwards, tucking in my wings and closing my eyes. A content sigh leaving my lips as I let the darkness engulf me whole.

I’m coming guys. Wait up for me ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CHAPTER 12 - Welcome Home (2132 words)

I woke up sometime mid-fall. The initial shock caused me to blackout. Now that I was falling, all I could hear was the wind around me and the sound of someone's pained gasps and screams. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered that the screaming was my own. My hands flew to my head and my wings wrapped around me. My wings felt like they were melting off. When I managed to open my eyes, I watched as the once pure white wings slowly fade to black. The center of each feather shining with a deep blue. My clothes started transforming at around midway. The last thing I registered was a swirl of magic surrounding me before I blacked out once again from the pain.

I woke up in a small crater. The first thing I noticed was the white hot pain all around my body, specifically my back. Using what little strength I had, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and cocooned myself in my 4 wings. Wait 4! Painfully, I stretched my wings out and noticed that my top pair had burnt off. Looking down, I noticed that my attire didn’t change much either. I stayed in my celestial garb, but all the white now turned black. The gold accents became a midnight blue. A black cape hung off my shoulders with a blue inner lining. I reached towards my head to feel for my horns but was shocked to find nothing there.

Despite feeling numb all over, I tried standing up to take in my surroundings but I just collapsed right back down. Instead, I took to crawling. I appeared to be in a garden of sorts. I found my way over to a fountain, and peered into the water taking in my reflection. I looked like I had just left a battlefield, but what surprised me the most, was the small black halo over my head. Lucifer told me that when they fell, their halo’s shattered and horns grew in their place, but my halo was still there. It was a small ring of black fire instead of light. I tentatively reached up to feel it, noting that it was cool to the touch and whatever I did, didn't disturb it.

I looked around the garden, something was strangely familiar about it but I couldn't place my finger on it. All of a sudden, I heard shouting and hurried footsteps. I turned around to see what looked to be a squad of guards rushing towards me. Before my fogged mind could register what was happening, 2 of them tackled me to the ground and secured my wrists and wings behind my back. One of the guards hands brushed over my halo and I could feel a disturbance in the fire before he screamed. His hand had been severely burned. The guard whom I assumed to be the leader of the group barked out orders to bring me to the throne room. My mind having finally caught up to the situation realized why the garden and uniforms looked familiar. I was in the Palace Garden! I felt the guards grab my shoulders and pull me off the ground as I got dragged off; my whole body still aching all over.

I knew I couldn’t take the guards in my current condition so I stayed silent and looked around as I was being led to the throne room. The hallways all looked as familiar and welcoming as they had when I first arrived in the Devildom as a human. There were a few notable differences such as the added portraits. Eventually, we stopped in front of the throne room and I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. One of the guards opened the door as 2 of them grabbed my shoulders and pushed me onto my knees in front of the king. Hissing at the pain, I kept my head bowed for a second before looking up.

Raising my head, I saw Diavolo sitting on the throne. His demon form had some subtle changes. He wore a little less accessories but the most notable change was the crown adorning his head. The once prince, now king, looked as majestic and regal as he always had been. His once carefree demeanour, now replaced with a presence that demanded respect. He looked like he was born to lead. Before anyone could say anything, I locked eyes with Diavolo and smiled. “Long time no see my Lord, or perhaps, my King would be more appropriate.” I saw the recognition of my voice flash in Diavolo’s eyes, a momentary expression of disbelief flickered across his face before he ordered the guards to release me. “But my Liege-” “Need I repeat myself? I ordered you to release them. You’re all dismissed.” The guards now scared of any repercussions that would arise, quickly released me, bowed their apologies and left. Carefully I stood up, rubbing my wrists before Diavolo came up and captured me in a bone crushing hug. I hissed in pain. “Ah! Hehe, I missed you too Dia.” Diavolo squeezed a little tighter, tears starting to pool into his eyes. “Uh, Dia. I still hurt from the fall and I kind of need to breathe. Please?” Diavolo released me with an apologetic look. Gently holding my chin, he looked into my eyes. I smiled back. “You’re here. You’re really here. I’ve missed you so much. We’ve missed you so much.” Diavolo leaned down as I embraced him. Whisper-crying onto my shoulder. “I know. I did too.” Patting his back I let him stay there for a little. “There there big guy. Where’s my happy go lucky prince hmm?” At this, Diavolo let out a laugh. Composing himself he stood up and flashed me his signature smile. De-powering, he pointed to his chest. “Still here, but not the prince anymore.” “That’s right. You’re a King now! I hope this means less pranks and spontaneous schemes are going to be pulled on the brothers?” “I wouldn’t say less, but definitely less frequent.” Barbatos walked into the throne room and dropped the papers he was carrying. A hand went to cover his mouth as he stood in shock. I made my way over to him and gave him a hug. “Hey Barb. I’m back.” Barbatos hesitated for a second. The time demon was still in shock from my appearance before he returned the hug. He held me tightly against him while being mindful of my injuries. “Your wings.” Releasing the hug I looked at them. “I know. It hurts, but it’s more of a phantom pain. I lost the top set.” “You look just like Lucifer did before he fell.” Diavolo remarked, reaching for my halo. I stepped just beyond his reach. “I wouldn't do that. One of the guards touched me and badly burned his hand.” “This is interesting. Why did the brothers lose theirs but yours only changed?” Barbatos thought aloud. “I don’t know. I wish I did but I don’t. Speaking of Lucifer and the brothers, where is he?” “Ah, I thought you’d ask that. He’s here in the palace working. I do warn you though, he hasn’t been the same since you left.” “Let me guess, he buried himself in work and reverted back to his old self from before we met?” “Well yes, but 10x worse.” “Can I see him?” “Of course! Follow me” Waving bye to Barbatos. I followed Diavolo out of the throne room. It was now that the rest of the pain from the fall wanted to hit. As soon as we left the throne room, I almost collapsed and had to lean against the wall for support. My back was killing me and my legs were numb. Diavolo saw me and caught me halfway. “Y/N! Are you sure you’re alright?” “No, no I don’t think so, but I did expect this to happen.” “Do you want me to call a physician?” “No, I’ll be fine with some rest. I just want to see him.” “Alright. You can lean on me.” “Thank you.” Walking around the halls with Diavolo, we caught up on some stuff going on in the Devildom. I promised to tell him about my time in the Celestial Realm after I’ve gotten some rest. Sometime later, we stopped in front of an office in the east wing. Diavolo knocked on the door. “Lucifer. You have someone who wants to see you.” Diavolo opened the door as I

stood behind him. I heard Lucifer sigh. “I would love to my Lord, but I’m afraid these need to get done before I am available to see anyone.” Seeing the opportunity, I chose to seize it. Stepping around Diavolo, I saw Lucifer still looking down at the documents on his desk as I announced myself. “Aww, so does that mean you don’t want to see me?” Lucifer dropped his pen, his head shooting up to look at me. His face, a mix between shock and hope. I made my way over to his desk as he stood up and walked around to meet me halfway. He stopped in front of me looking very conflicted. Slowly, his hand made its way up to cup my face. “Y/N?” I would have missed that whisper if I wasn’t paying attention. I put my hand over his and turned my head giving him a small kiss against his palm before closing my eyes and leaning into him. “Yes. I missed you.” Lucifer lost his composure and pulled me protectively against his chest, my head resting just above his heart. His head resting on top of my own. “Lucifer, their halo-!” His hold was tight, but comforting, holding on as if, if he were to loosen just a bit, I would disappear. I looked up to see my halo had dissipated, making room for Lucifer. I pulled away from him. “How? How did you not get burned?” Lucifer looked at me and Diavolo, confused. Then he saw the black ring of fire atop my head. “How did you retain your halo?” “I don’t know. But when other demons touched it, they got severely burned, but you're just fine.” Diavolo crossed his arms, thinking. “Maybe it doesn’t affect higher ranked demons?” “No, it still does. I felt the heat when I got close to you Y/N.” “Maybe it’s because Lucifer was once an angel?” “Perhaps. I can still sense some grace within you. You didn’t lose all of it when you fell like the rest of us.” “Neither did you Lucifer.” “What?” “You still retained a small portion of your celestial power and grace. Perhaps, the halo won’t harm demons or angels with grace within them. It will do its job and repel true demons.” “In that case, I should probably stay away from Satan, huh?” “I don’t know. Satan was born from Lucifer so he might have some trace of grace within him. I wouldn’t test it, but I would be cautious. Take the day Lucifer. Take care of them.” “Thank you Diavolo.” With that, Lucifer shifted into his demon form. Wings encompassing the both of us. “We will catch up later Y/N. Get some rest.” “Thank you Diavolo. Nice to see you again.” Lucifer muttered a spell teleporting us to his room.

Now in the privacy of his own room, his walls fell down. Lucifer held me tight. His head bowed down, resting on the crook of my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” The tears flowed freely as he cried on my shoulder. I maneuvered us towards the bed as sat down as Lucifer kneeled to match my height. I put my arms around his back, fingers running through his hair. “It’s not your fault Lucifer. Please don’t blame yourself. I’m alright, and I’m here with you. Please don’t be sorry.” Lucifer lifted his head from my shoulder, taking me in properly for the first time. His hand made its way to my wings, softly stroking the blackened feathers. His fingers traced the base of my wings on my back when he noticed the scarring. “Your top pair.” “I know. It’s alright. I’m still numb there so I can’t feel it.” “You look perfect in my clothes. They were made for you.” “No Lucifer, they were made for you. I just borrowed them.” Chuckling, he leaned forward and leaned his forehead against mine. “Welcome home”

I spent that night cuddled close to Lucifer. After I bathed, he tended to my injuries and wrapped my upper back where my top set of wings once were. We layed in bed together, Lucifer holding me protectively against him as we fell asleep to the sound of our heartbeats, beating in sync.

[13tinysocks]

I wanna see some anti fanfic rec plspls

You asked for it. May I present, a creepypasta x reader anti-reading list.

Quick Disclaimer: No author names will be dropped nor fic links or sites they’re on. I dislike these works but I don’t want anybody to be harassed. Don’t go after people, holy shit. These works are only here because of some heavily disturbing content. One of them just makes me super mad because of a few circumstances. These are purely my opinions. I am not writing Jesus nor do I write the cleanest stories out there. Dark topics should be explored in fiction. However, some things just shouldn’t fucking be romanticized. Fanfic is practice, I’m not taking points off for wonky writing.

You’re allowed to like whatever the fuck you want. I’m not shaming you or the authors. I’m talking about media I dislike, which I am completely allowed to do. If your friend or favorite author’s work is in here, maybe don’t send this to them. I get it’s tempting but still, it could be upsetting. Again, don’t fucking harass anybody. 

This list is in order of - Pisses me off to FBI open up to whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.

Content warning for: Rape, miscarriages, abortion, necrophilia, sexism, child grooming, multiple types of abuse, ablism, and meanie head criticism of popular fics. Seriously, this gets exceptionally bad at the final one. 

First up in our lineup a pretty popular. It’s the least upsetting and problematic. It’s a various creepypasta x reader mansion fic. This is more of an honorable mention because it’s frustrating to read over being super bad.

Recruited.

Summary: (Y/n) killed an attempted rapist and covered it up years ago. She is recruited into the cpp’s to be considered as a proxy along with two others. Follow her through a journey of no character development into becoming a proxy.

What’s wrong with it?

-Brian literally is a misogynist. He literally hates women.

-(Y/n) is an asshole. Not in an entertaining bad bitch way. No, in an unaware bland way. Points off for being a business major, girl you have no soul and it shows.

-She is treated like the voice of reason who is always morally correct. Thing is, if anyone is neurodivergent or mentally ill and ya’know shows symptoms of it, they’re cRaZy, evil, and an annoyance. 

-Yes, people creeping on or getting clingy can be shitty/annoying but sometimes the way (Y/n) acts is completely unjust. It left a bad taste in my mouth because the character felt okay to be shitty to people who weren’t like her.

-The endings are disheartening and make no fucking sense. Cody, who is clingy at worst, gets rejected Jack, who TRIES TO BREAK (Y/N)’S FUCKING LEG, gets with her. Can I get a HELLO?????? 

-(Y/n) also doesn’t get with Jeff who suddenly turned into her brother character after hundreds of pages of romantic tension. Again, Recruited is not inherently bad but it may be really disappointing to people who are here for 1-2 specific characters.

-Queer bait-y author’s notes and inconstant love interests. Author’s notes would read like “Teehee, maybe I’ll make (Y/n) have Jane and/or Natalie endings……” But that never happens after it’s teased multiple times. I get not wanting to add more to your plate but don’t suggest it if you don’t want to do it or only want to please heterosexual readers.

-They put Tim outside like a dog for being a bad boy. 

-Author’s notes and percentages fill in details for the reader that aren’t in the fic. I’m not going to read all of that. Put important information in the fic. 

-Lot’s of excessive jealousy. Painfully heteronormative. 

What about the good?

Readable. Dramatic like Big Brother. Can be an entertaining read if it’s your thing.

Conclusion

Left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like the author literally hated half the cast and was annoyed while writing them. When you don’t enjoy writing something it shows. Also, her other work (pandemic! Reader X X-Virus) is super tone-deaf and I don’t recommend that either. Don’t recommend joining this fic’s Discord server either. Won’t get into details but in my and my friend's experience: it’s not a good environment with a lot of playing favorites. 

-

Next up on our list is a grossly popular Eyeless Jack X Reader fic.

My Imaginary Monster

Summary: Immoral monster, Eyeless Jack, sneaking into a 5-year-old girl's room. He gets attached, sticks around through her childhood. Thing is, he gets real creepy. Starts to catch feelings for a 16-year-old he’s watched grow up. He kisses a minor who reciprocates his feelings which is textbook child grooming. Nasty fucker runs away, there’s some drama from that. (Y/n) grows up, comes back to town, and Jack’s a’creepin’.

What’s wrong with it?

-Jack is a literal child groomer. 

-Do I need to say more??? Immortal adult kisses a 16 y/o. Gross.

-People in the comments are going gaga for grooming. Are you kidding me, he’s a pedophile.

-The OC’s take up more than half of the ~200 page run time. I couldn’t get attached to any of them even after the supposed significance. Which is fine but they took up so much of the fic that it got boring and annoying incredibly quickly.

What’s good about it?

I enjoyed Ben. He did the right thing and I can respect that. Trans and poluyamourus reprrensentation.

Conclusion:

No child grooming in my fucking lobby. I think the author was trying to paint it in a bad light. But the thing is, you can write a creepy stalker fic without making them a groomer. A lot of people are trying to escape their troubles through fanfic, including those who’ve dealt with sexual abuse. Don’t bring that into x reader spaces. Don’t put readers through that again. 

-

Last and absolutely least we got a Tim X Reader. 

BIG TW. FUCKING HUGE TW. MOST OF THE TW’S FROM EARLIER ARE FROM THIS ONE FIC. 

Pure Forgiveness.

Summary: (Y/n) is abused by her mom. Her dad killed himself and she’s all (Y/n)’s got in this world. Until Tim comes along and “saves” her. He takes her to the mansion and keeps her as a pet to torture. 

I’m going to get into all the nitty-gritty to satisfy your morbid curiosities so you don’t read it. 

What’s wrong with it?

-Chapter 1 opens with (Y/n)’s miserable life. Her mom hates her so much she has a fucking torture table for (Y/n).

-There’s an attempted rape in chapter 2.

- She’s taken to the mansion by Tim in chapter 3 because he’s “off his medication” and “acting nicer than normal”. Hi, mentally ill person here, that’s not how it fucking works you ding dong. 

-Mental illness is made out to we wholly evil.

-Also tic’s are made out to be scary. As a person with tics, don’t write tics as scary or super weird. Thanks.

-(Y/n) not being able to escape, fight back rapists, and other horrible shit is labeled as weak.

-At one point (Y/n) is dragged through the mansion, beer bottles and used condoms are thrown at her. Girl has to shower off cum.

-(Y/n) is tortured in various ways. Mostly beaten, berated, burned, cut, starved, etc. 

-She is drugged and repeatedly raped by Brian and Toby. These rapes are recorded and shown to (Y/n).

-Brian has black hair. Why?

-Toby and Brian give (Y/n) a forced abortion.  

-(Y/n) gets raped almost every fucking chapter.

-At one point Jack orally rapes (Y/n) to abort a baby. 

-Toby and Brian are necrophiles. They skull fuck a corpse at some point. It is graphically described how they like to have sex with dead bodies.

-Slenderman forcefully impregnates (Y/n) to “keep the (Tim’s) baby safe” whatever the fuck that means.

Why does this happen?

Because Tim wants a kid because his dad raped his mom and his mom was a prostitute. He’s soooo sad guys :(((

Feeling hungry? Here’s some things that are eaten by various characters.

-Hair 

-Cum (forced)

-Toby 

-Piss 

-A miscarried baby 

What’s good about it?

Nothing. Fucking nothing. Don’t read it.

Conclusion

If you like this fic you need therapy, I’m not joking. It’s like a car crash and Rob Zombie movie horribly mish-mashed together. It sucks. The comments praise literal abuse and berate (Y/n) for being afraid. Fuck this fic and everything it stands for. It’s shock horror and torture for the sake of it. It makes no fucking sense and it’s harmful. People think this is okay. It’s not. 

-

Thank you to my pals in the server for helping out and finishing some of these where I could not. Especially you Connie, everyone say thank you Connie she got through Pure Forgiveness. Absolute trooper legend. Again, don’t go out of your way to harass these people. I made this list so you can avoid these works because they have the potential to be upsetting. I’m not the police, I can’t force anyone to stop nor do I want to. Author’s are allowed to explore dark topics but some should be done respectfully or not at-fucking-all. I hope these people grow as writers and understand treating some things a certain way isn’t cool. You can enjoy dark fics, I do too, fuck I write them too, but Jesus God, some things are a no from me chief.

[bastardtetsu]

wowowow. over 200 of y’all ??? insane. i know i don’t put out content all that consistently but thank you all for following my dumb lil thirst blog ! wild to think that less than a year ago i was embarrassed to admit that i even had a weeb phase in middle school, only to end up back on my bullshit in full swing as an adult writing reader insert fanfic on tumblr dot com,,, the validation i am feeling is unparalleled. so thank you ♡

i wanted to do something fun for this milestone, so i’m having a nice lil barbeque ! come get fed, grab something to drink, or just vibe w me :) all are welcome !

status: closed

○ THE FOOD ○

drabble requests : come get ur food fuckers !!! with permission i am taking a page out of my darling elle @/karasimpno’s book and asking u to send me:

a character 

a body part

a time of day

whether you want it mild (sfw) medium (suggestive) or spicy (explicit)

your preference of f!reader or gn!reader, if any

& i’ll write you a lil sumn sumn (~200-700 words probably) also i’ve updated my guidelines with specifics on who i write for/lewd, so be sure to take a look at that before you request !

anons are welcome, but if ur off anon you must be over 18 & indicate somewhere on your blog to request anything besides sfw

>> drabble mlist here <<

○ BEVERAGES ○

FMK : send me 3 characters & i’ll tell you which of them i’d fuck, marry, + kiss and include one or two hc’s for what i think that might be like ;) (you can include characters not on my ‘who i write for’ list, that’s only for drabbles!)

doodles : send me a character (or whatever u want idk) and i’ll draw a shitty lil doodle :) once again it will not be good :)

○ SMALL TALK ○

chat with me !! here’s some ask games if u need ideas, or ask me ur own questions, send thirsts, hc’s, roast some mf’s, flirt w me, the possibilities r endless !

all posts for this event will be tagged #bbq.200

ok moot time under da cut >:)

@karasimpno literally where would i be without u. thank you for diving into this pit of degeneracy with me and supporting & gassing me every step of the way, i can’t think of anyone else from my irls who i could go on this journey with and just make me feel so VALIDATED in all my insanity !!! i am so endlessly grateful for you ❤️❤️❤️ ilysm MWAH xoxoxo

@strawberryakaashi cait pls ur one of the funniest bitches on here not to mention a fantastic writer, so thankful we both joined the whorehouse around the same time bc having another newbie around to interact with made me way less nervous hehe :shypiss: thanks 4 being my sexiest beta & bestie 💞💘💖💗

@cultsumu nina nina nina i am SO happy i discovered your blog & started chatting with u, i’m obsessed with ur brain and talking with you is so great aaaaaa <3 we truly just clicked right away, i think we must be sexy aliens from the same planet or smth 👽💫🪐💕

@heauxzenji my angel daisy 💕💝💫 literally i was starstruck when u first followed me back, i love you so much ur always keeping us fed with ur writing, nsfw alphabets, p word hours, astro knowledge, suga content, all of it. AND ur the sweetest person in the whole world ?? bye get over here n smooch me 😩

@honeybunny-sawamura JADEEEE the sweetest ever, you are truly one of the nicest / most positive presences on my dash and i am so grateful for your support and friendship !!! all the hugs and kisses for u lovely 😇💓💘💖

@sugardaddykenma linnnnn truly The blog that made me officially return to tumblr & start this sideblog 😳 ur a sexy evil genius madam and i am in LOVE with u. yet another who i was starstruck to get a follow back from, ur brain is huge ur funny asf and ur the loml 🙏💗💞

@tsumurai OKAY FIRST OF ALL HOW WAS I NOT FOLLOWING U SOONER i really thought i had before i’m so sorry djhfdsj,,,, but darling your comments and tags on elle & i’s ficmas fics were truly keeping the two of us going, your support & enthusiasm is so encouraging and genuinely means the world 😻🥰❣️ also we gotta discuss the fact that i, too, am rabidly in love with rin matsuoka and have been for years plssss 😭😭

@stonersugawara​​ @miyangel​ @daishou-s​ (+ @strawberryakaashi @heauxzenji & @sugardaddykenma again) hi whores 😏💛 i love kicking it in the server with u all, & all of you are such talented writers and i feel honored to be amongst such icons :hheeee:

@ceo-of-daichi @chaotickatts @kagsbitch @aiiishiiiteru @tetsurolls @saetyrn9​ @velvesagi​ we’ve only interacted a lil bit (either bc i am shy or bc we became moots 2 seconds ago, or both) but either way I AM SUCH A BIG FAN OF YOU ALL & i am formally giving u an open invitation to hop in my inbox, DMs, or discord whenever u want 🥺💘💗💕

@daichis-kitty @keibby  @scorpiosanssexy @bobawithpomegranate @kmorgzz @waitforitillwritemywayout @rintaroutea​ we may not interact as much / at all bc i’m shy & we haven’t gotten to know each other yet 👉👈but know that i love you sm and you also have an open invitation to hmu wherever whenever xoxo

[hswarm]

My Experience With Simvicii, Oliveandoak & Their Discord

I’ve seen a lot of posts going around in regards to simvicii, oliveandoak, their discord and private channels. I felt now would be the best time to speak out about my experience with these things. I think it’s best that people have as much information as possible.

Disclaimer: I am not innocent to anything and neither is anyone else in that discord. We are all at fault for allowing simvicii and oliveandoak behave the way they did as well as enabling/aiding in their behaviors. This is partly why I left tumblr back in March because I realized I had become the same type of person as them and I was disgusted with myself. This does not exclude me from any blacklash/punishment but I recognize my mistakes and left to address them.

How We Met: Probably around November/December or earlier back in 2019 Simvicii had dm’d me asking for a sim, this was when they went by a different username. At the time I wasn’t giving sims away because poor experiences but I had just followed her blog and became a fan so I gave her one. She later gave me a sim in exchange as well. The sim I gave her is who everyone knows as Hollie Evans. (More on this later)

Joining The Discord: After exchanging sims I never talked to Simvicii again so when Oliveandoak dm’d me asking if I wanted to join their discord I was a bit surprised. But me being me and wanting to be apart of something I chose to join, probably in early January. Everything seemed pretty normal at first but within the first few weeks I noticed a good amount of gossip going on. The server was still small and hand picked individuals so I guess they didn’t have to worry quite yet. Everything started pretty small/mild but then once the private channel was made things escalated.

The Private Channel: I guess under the safety of the channel Simvicii and Oliveandoak felt more comfortable being their true selves. Admittedly, Simvicii didn’t say too many harsh things but Oliveandoak definitely did. I remember on multiple occasions she posted screenshots of her asks and mocked the senders. There were a few asks where they didn’t quite make sense, most likely result of poor english, and she would mock them saying ‘wtf does this mean/how am i supposed to read this’ and others of the like.

Most of the time we, we being the others in the channel, would just go along with what they said. I noticed a few of them didn’t actually participate in many of those types of conversations, probably because they knew it was wrong. I myself would simply go along or ignore them because whenever I had tried to call Oliveandoak out for being too rude, mocking people, or simply tried to defend whoever it was she would get very passive aggressive with me.

Some Of What Was Said: For the most part I don’t remember a lot of the actual words and phrases they used but I remember a few of the topics. I know on several occasions they mocked their followers/people who sent them asks. They mocked simblrs they didn’t like. I actually remember three very specific simblrs being brought up almost daily by either simvicii or oliveandoak. They also would complain about people asking them to include POC or LGBTQ+ sims.

About The POC/LGBTQ+ Topics: I wanted to expand on this specifically because Simvicii is very good with words and a lot of us in the discord kind of were persuaded to agree based on how she worded things. So, most of the time the conversation was about how simblr forces people to include POC/LGBTQ+ sims and Simvicii felt that it was wrong or whatever because there’s a lot of blogs doing already + why should they be forced to do something on their blog, or something of that nature.

Now, to a degree I agreed with her simply because me being apart of the LGBTQ+ community I really hate seeing straight people trying to portray us. It almost always ends up weird and cringey. I didn’t want to see another person making that type of content. I just didn’t. So, I agreed and told her I didn’t think she needed to be posting that because she can’t related and it’s better to not do something you’re not informed on. However, that does not mean she can’t have LGBTQ+ backstory characters.

I know recently there’s a post going around with a screenshot of her talking about how asians are normally excluded from the term POC, especially here on simblr, and I have to agree. However, that does not mean you do not exclude the rest of the POC community in retaliation. Now, I’m not saying this to be rude but even when Simvicii makes “asian” sims they still look an awful lot like their white sims because their sim style makes them all look fairly similar. So, even when she made asian sims you could barely tell. But making asian sims does not exclude you from making black, hispanic, latino, middle eastern, islander, etc sims. You don’t get to trade one for the others.

Same with Oliveandoak. She got asks about her lack of POC sims and she complained saying ‘I have POC sims!!’. It doesn’t count when they’re all extremely white passing. I even personally sent her a dark skinned sim to which she switched the content on and made her look several shades lighter. This is a problem. Aesthetic or not you still need to include dark skinned sims and other races.

Moving on.

Hollie Evans: So, back to the original topic of Hollie Evans. A lot of you who know who Simvicii know who this sim is. She was one of the main characters paired as Romeo’s bff/gf/whatever. Well, yes I actually made that sim. HOWEVER, Simvicii claims (after 2-3 months of use) that the Hollie we see today isn’t actually my Hollie but a replica she made herself.

She claims that she ‘remade’ Hollie and just ‘used the same presets and everything’. I’m sorry but that’s not true. If you took a side by side of the two sims you would see that the facial structures are identical and we all know even if you try to recreate someone else’s style using the exact same content it’s not going to be 100% identical, which Hollie to her core is identical.

The thing that bothers me and hurts me is that she went our whole friendship telling me it’s the sim I gave her and then when confronted claims it’s not that sim, when clearly it is she just wants out of the doghouse. She sent Hollie to people for collabs without saying anything to me. She changed all her custom content ‘to match her style’ and she no longer uses the ‘Hollie Evans by Honeyswarm’ tags. Which the tag thing only happened after I left tumblr.

I think it’s extremely rude and hurtful to ask someone for a sim and then change everything about them, claim them as yours and share them with other people. It’s simply not right and she knows it. She would constantly bring up a blogger who had forced her to give them her sims and then ripped her off. She knows what that feels like and she knows that’s wrong.

There’s probably a hell of a lot more I could talk about, like the three blogs they always mentioned, how they all but basically convinced the private channel to exclude someone in the discord, their lack of care/empathy towards other server members/myself, admitting to sending hate to people they disliked/disagreed with and just their general toxic behavior and manipulation but I think this post is long enough.

I don’t have “evidence” to everything here because I never thought I’d need it/be posting about it but considering everyone’s coming out I figured I would too. The only “evidence” I have is in relation to our conversation when she admitted she ripped my sim off. If you’d like those I can share them but otherwise that’s all I have.

I don’t know if this post will reach anyone or even mean anything but I felt like I needed to say these things and make it aware to others. It’s always best to have as much information as possible so that’s what I’m doing here. It’s really up to you to decide what you do with it.

I also want to apologize to everyone affected by the things Simvicii and Oliveandoak have said/done. I’m so sorry I allowed them to say and do the things they said and did. I’m so sorry I didn’t stick up for y’all better. I was afraid of losing ‘friends’ and I was afraid what might happen if I went against them. That doesn’t make it any better but please no I am so deeply sorry for everything said/done in that server that I either aided in or allowed to happen.

-Honeyswarm

[kindofwriter]

Hey there! My group of friends have been hardcore considering turning a passion project of ours into a real podcast, and I was wondering if you had any advice for newbies putting together a show. We’re a small, young team, but we have a lot of passion for our concept and some writing/sound experience under our belts. Do you have any tips regarding finding actors, the process of plotting, sensitivity readers, or anything else you’ve had experience with in your projects? Thanks for reading!

Ok, finally ready with this! Thank you so much for the question, I will try to share my ~wisdom~ in the following post, but feel free to ask any further questions!

How to start a podcast: 1. when you’re new and/or 2. when you have money!

1. It’s easier than you think! My first advice is to just go for it! Even if it doesn’t quite go as planned you’ll have fun, and it’ll give you great experience for whatever you want to work on next!

Casting:

I’m going to assume this is an unpaid project (hence the former part of this advice being for free podcasting!) but if that’s not the case please skip to section two!

When I can’t offer any form of payment for a project I like to use friends as a cast. Not because my friends deserve any less payment! But because I can pay them in free chips and credentials for their portfolios, and it makes me feel slightly less bad!

Ways to go about deciding which friends to cast: I was lucky enough to do a lot of theatre work in my first year of uni, so I already knew a lot of people who were interested in both acting and production work. You’ll probably come across several actors who think voice acting is beneath them, but who wants to be friends with those people? What I’m trying to say is: if you have friends who are interested in theatre they’ll probably be interested in this! Especially given the past year.

I also poached people from my DnD group, because I could already gauge their acting specialities from that, and I knew what kinds of things they were interested in based on which DnD campaigns they enjoyed best.

If you know anyone who is interested in public speaking, whatever you all those reading awards where you read aloud dramatically, or something like radio and TV presenting then they’ll probably also be interested and do a great job! The great thing about podcasts is that all you really need is someone with a good voice - they’re free to do whatever they like with the rest of their face as long as they’re reading the lines!

You can, of course, also put out a casting call. It’s very important that you make it clear that it would be unpaid work. Even if you plan to set up a kofi, patreon, or kickstarter (info in the money section!), if you don’t have the money to begin with you shouldn’t promise it to people.

There are up and downsides to both. Casting people you know means you’re more likely to be comfortable working with them, there’s less pressure to offer payment, and your cast are more likely to have free time specifically for this project. However, you won’t have the draw of casting known industry voices, and (like I found!) your cast may not have any social media engagement whatsoever!

If you put out a casting call you’re more likely to get a pool of diverse voices, it will likely be people invested (even if not plugged in) to the industry, and you can request that they have their own equipment! However, you then have to work with people you don’t know, a level of professionalism that isn’t usually present on first time projects may be expected, and unpaid casting calls are not wildly well received.

Personally, for your first show, I’d try to use as many friends, or even friends-of-friends as possible. That being said, if you want advice on putting together an audition pack let me know!

Plotting:

It depends on what kind of show you’re aiming to write, but in general plotting a podcast is kind of like plotting a TV show. First of all you should plot out what’s going to happen in a season. Then plot out what’s going to happen in each episode. Ideally each episode will have its own arc, but things don’t always work out like that.

I like to plan things out in a fair amount of detail beforehand (this is especially helpful if you’re writing collaboratively.) Start with what’s going to happen in each episode. Once I know that, I then like to write how it starts and finishes, then the content in bullet points. If you ever can’t think of anything then don’t worry! A lot of things really come together when you’re actually writing.

The most important thing is to not worry at all about the first draft. Just get it down, editing is much easier and more fun once you have something to work with!

There are definitely much more qualified people than me out there giving advice about writing and plotting though; even if it’s directed at prose and script writers it’s still more than applicable!

Sensitivity readers:

If you have the option of sensitivity readers they’re always a great idea! But asking someone to read your work (usually for free) is both time consuming and potentially risky if you don’t know and trust them.

Tumblr, the writeblr community specifically, is a good place to find a sensitivity reader. A lot of people want the practise and are willing to do it for free if you put a call out.

One of the best ways to get feedback on your work is to cast/find people who are appropriate for the roles and then ask for feedback. Obviously they don’t have to, but you’ll find that usually they want to. You can aid in this by giving them some way to give feedback anonymously - maybe a google form - as no matter how chill and friendly you are as the prod team you will always be seen as In Charge.

If you don’t feel right asking someone, especially from a marginalised group, to read and comment on your work for free, you can always just ask general questions in forums or on social media. This isn’t as reliable, as people can lie online, but if you find the right communities and explain you just want to portray characters as accurately as possible there will always be people willing to offer some help. Reddit, for all its flaws, builds great communities, though remember to check the rules to make sure people outside of whatever group they’re aiming to support are allowed to post.

Of course, the first step to writing anything outside of your own experience is a tonne of research. The sensitivity reader should be picking up on small things, not telling you the basics of their experiences. And everyone’s experiences are different, which makes this even tougher! You can get things so spot on for a handful of people whilst inadvertently offending others. Be prepared to be adaptable and take on criticism, but also remember that you don’t have to bend to everyone’s whim; one person saying ‘but this wasn’t my experience!!’ doesn’t mean you’ve done a bad job.

Equipment:

I know you didn’t ask, but this was what I found scariest when I was Brand New.

If you have the money and you’re very serious about this I haven’t encountered a single person who wouldn’t recommend a Blue Yeti mic. However when you’re just starting out, and especially if you’re not planning to have all of your cast together record together/separately but with the same mic, blowing over $100 on a mic is huge, scary, and not always feasible.

I have three small desk mics that I loan out to my cast when needed. They cost ~£30 ($40) from (ew, I know) Amazon. You don’t need a mic for each cast member - you don’t even need a mic for the max number of character speaking in a scene at once. You could probably do it all with one mic, but the time that would take and the affect it would have on scenes may be worth the extra cost! These obviously don’t produce the crisp quality a professional recording mic would, but they have a pop filter and a windscreen and seem to do a good job at reducing background static.

Further noise reduction: Mr Alexander Jalexander Newall, when starting his podcast empire half a decade ago, got it in one: blanket forts.

If you can build a little fabric den for your cast to record in: perfect! If not, tell them just to stick a duvet over their head. This increases the risk of moving duvet sounds, but reduces everything else! And if they shift under the blanket you can always ask them to get comfortable then read the lines again.

And, info courtesy of the McElroys: you can also record in a wardrobe or a room with plenty of bookshelves if you don’t want to build the world’s most bangin’ blanket fort.

The most important advice you will ever receive:

Don’t be scared to ask for help! Join Facebook groups and ask questions! Join discord servers! Message people on Twitter and ask for advice (certain ppl are much more amenable to this than others, but this is pretty clear from their Vibe)! Heck, you can message me on Twitter (or here. Or send another anon. And if I don’t know the answer I’ll ask someone who does!) Everyone just wants to help everyone else, and if they don’t they’re probably not the kind of people you want to associate with. Good luck! And let me know once you socials are up, so I can follow and get excited!

Now, onto 2. Money stuff!

A lot of the info stays the same, but money kind of raises the stakes. Once money’s involved, especially once money and people you don’t know so well are involved, suddenly you have to operate like a business.

Casting:

If you’re planning to pay actors proper wages from the get-go you probably want to put out a casting call. Paid work will attract professionals, and professionals will not only do a great job, but will also help you gain an audience (and have their own equipment!)

You get to decide what the hourly rate is, but usually, depending on where you’re from, there is an average hourly rate voice actors get paid, and if you’re nowhere close to that people will be put off.

You should also make clear what the hourly rate includes: whether it is just recorded audio hours, or includes table reads and directorial time. A lot of people just have every actor record their lines separately, sometimes without direction, then edit them all together. This certainly saves on cost, and makes for a quick turnaround, but it’s no fun, and sometimes makes the show kind of soulless.

Kickstarters:

You can run a kickstarter on an unpaid project, in the hopes of eventually paying the cast and maybe funding future seasons. But I’m going to assume this is advice for ‘I can pay the cast, but what is a kickstarter for?’

Well, that’s up to you! It can be for equipment, for better editing, for podcast music, for podcast art, for a pay rise for the team, for bonus content. Depending on how many stretch goals you have, it can be for all of these things!

In short: backers give money, and get things in return, for example $5 might get you a pin badge, while $100 might get you a signed poster. When the kickstarter reaches a certain goal, maybe $5,000, then the team may then have enough money to produce a holiday special, for example. At $10,000 everyone on the team may get a 10% pay rise.

This is a great way to get people invested in the show, and a great way to make money! But if you want a really great kickstarter you’ll probably want to hire someone with experience in this area.

Contracts:

Money means contracts! Usually two will suffice, they just need edited for each individual team member:

An NDA, to prevent people from discussing the show in any inappropriate situations.

And a literal workplace contract.

You’ll be able to search how to draft these online, but it’s useful to have the help of a lawyer. There are people who do this specifically for podcasts who’ll be able to help you out, but again: you have to pay them!

Equipment:

As I said, actors will probably have their own equipment, but if you want them all recording together: you can rent a studio! They’ll already have all the equipment for you, which is The Dream!

Or you can convert a room into your own studio! Get some soundproof panelling on the walls and invest in a good mixer. I’m afraid I don’t have much advice on this, as I cannot afford anything close to a good mixer! But there are plenty of articles online with helpful information.

I wouldn’t recommend making a paid podcast as your first project, as it’s a lot of pressure, and would almost definitely mean bringing new people onto even the production side of things. There’s always the option to work on another project first, something smaller-scale, to work out any roadblocks you may run into during the paid show. But I’m not telling anyone what to do: if you’re ready, go for it!

Anyway, this was very long and quite rambly, and is probably filled with things you don't actually need to know! But I hope at least some of it was useful! Please feel free to ask any other questions - now or in future, PM or anon - and again: best of luck! I'm so excited for you!

[savnofilter]

Official Callout Post (5 - Q&A)

TW: mentions of suicide, ephebophilia, grooming, pseudo racism (microaggression). toxic friendships, harassment towards minors, mental health, fandom discourse.

*DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT BECAUSE OF MY AGE OR SOCIAL MEDIA. THIS IS BECAUSE TOXICITY/TREATMENT. This post is not just minors. This is for the people from different ages 16-22 who feel like they did not have a voice by fellow BNHA writers.*

Important Topics:

Clearing last statements

Addressing my callouts

Alienated mental health

Fic stealing

BNHarem server regulation

Where is the proof that there are people not speaking up?

*1

*2

*3

*4

*5

*6

*7

*8

*9

*10

*11

*12

*13

What’s wrong with aging up?

@mci-writing: There isn’t a problem with aging up in specific, but rather how you go about aging up the characters, especially in NSFW pieces. If you’re going to age the characters up, make it apparent that the characters are aged up rather than just slapping the 18+ label, whether it be in an offhand mention of living in a house of their own or maybe something small about being in college if dorms are such an integral part to the work in question.

“If the minors knew it was an 18+ space, why did they join?”

@mci-writing: Their server is a 16+ server, so they were invited and welcomed once they proved their ages. Many minors that joined their server saw it as an opportunity to meet new people and make friends, all while being able to interact with their favorite writers in the fandom.

If the discord discussion wasn't about harassing Lady-bakuhoe, why did it happen?

@mci-writing: The first discussion quite literally was a couple of people active in the fandom, mainly writers, venting about how hard it is to currently get your works out there and just how hard it is to properly get involved in the fandom without some form of help from a clique. No one in specific was named that time. The other discussion was Sav venting about how she was treated after a whack ass callout post was made and simply because a writer was mad that Sav ran her server the way Sav wanted to, which led to her elaborating on the situation (it then prompted other people’s responses, whose responses are fairly similar to how many of you reacted to Jo’s small “callout”).

What legal offences have they done if charged?

@savnofilter: Well since you guys like supporting people you think should be in jail, considering Lady-Bakuhoe has shared a minor’s face and age, the offense would be up to the parents in question. It's stated in laws that even if the minor is a felon, you do not have the rights to share such information without law/parent consent. Although I cannot find anything about age, sharing a minor's face comes with consequences. 

- UK source: 1 

- US source: 1

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: exposing minor information without parental consent.

*****

To put in perspective, the U.S and UK are basically flip flopped. In the U.S it is not against the law to groom, but in the UK it is. It is illegal to have relationships with minors in the U.S, while in the UK it is not. 

For knowingly engaging sexually with a minor (DMs), you can also be trialed for having depictions of any picture/video of minors. (ex: students in school uniforms) or minors in sexual situations. Although having a sexual relationship with a 16 year-olds is permitted, consuming child pornography is not. Grooming is also outside of sexual abuse, you can groom anyone for any reason.

- UK source: 1 

- US source: 1 

Charges will be:

Misdemeanor: for knowingly engaging NSFW with minors, causing mental anguish.

Felony: for knowingly engaging NSFW with minors, causing mental anguish.

2 Years Prison: sexting any sort of NSFW content to a minor.

Registered Sex Offender: engaging sexually with minors (U.S).

*****

For the acts of gaslighting, you can be sentenced if proven with evidence.

- UK source: 1, 2 

- U.S source: 1, 2, 3 

Charges will be: 

Misdemeanor: causing mental anguish, this is categorized as mental abuse.

Felony: causing mental anguish, this is categorized as mental abuse.

*****

Sharing false and hurtful posts about someone with intention to hurt someone's image constitutes cyberbullying. This includes false posts to make someone look bad and sending hate (whether you directed it or not). 

For perspective, once again it is flip-flopped. The U.S has many states so there are not any direct laws against cyberbullying (in my state and my friends it is illegal), but you can categorize abusive behaviors exhibited online as a form of abuse. In the U.K it is illegal, grooming is considered being one of the offenses. 

LBH and or any adult who participated in posting, sending hate, or anything that repeatedly tore our image down would be classified as a Verbal Adult Bully. 

UK source: link

U.S source: link

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: defamation of character, harassment.

Misdemeanor: harassment, abuse.

1-2 years jail or fine: harassment, intimidation, or bullying.

12 months jail or fine: classified as stalking.

*****

You can categorize abusive behaviors exhibited online as a form of abuse. In the U.K it is illegal, grooming is considered being one of the offenses. 

- UK source: link

- U.S source: link

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: defamation of character, harassment.

Misdemeanor: harassment, abuse.

1-2 years jail or fine: harassment, intimidation, or bullying.

12 months jail or fine: classified as stalking.

*****

Since you only promote 18+ blogs in your 16+ server, the people who run/host the server will be trialed for exposing minors to NSFW

UK source: link 

U.S source: link 

Charges will be: 

Misdemeanor: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

Third degree felony: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

1-15 years jail: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

Fine: $1,000 - $10,000

Don't you (minors) know it's illegal to consume and produce erotica? 

@savnofilter​: As long as we (minors) don't go as far to engage (message privately) sexually with people who are 18+, it’s not illegal. Reblogging or commenting on a work both ways isn't illegal either 1, 2. It’s only illegal if you approach minors and send it to them personally. If it was illegal, porn websites wouldn’t even exist. If you’re concerned about minors reading your stuff, don’t put them in main tags.

Can't the person producing the content get arrested?

@savnofilter​: To put it simply: No. You will not go to jail if a minor reads your smut. With the other way around, you won't go to jail reading a minor's smut either. The laws state that you can only go to jail if you send porn (video, art, pictures) to a minor or produce depictions of a minor in sexual acts.

Therefore if you do not approach a minor with such contents, you will not be trialed. If this was the case, there wouldn't be platforms such as PornHub and etc would not be able to run.

Do you have a problem with them writing the content that they do?

@savnofilter​: No. If we did it would be hypocritical. It’s more of the personal jabs to alienate teens feel in the writing community. This means having to go out your way saying stuff like “fuck minors” “minors are stupid”. People like to shove down our throats that we want to go into “adult spaces”. Tumblr is an open site for 13+, the anime being a Shounen anime. Again, if you don’t want minors interacting with your stuff, keep it out of main tags.

What do we want from this post?

The main reason why I even decided to speak up is because I was tired of always talking about how toxic it is here and always being accused of starting drama to shut me up. Sure, call it “bitching” and “whining” but why should I take bullying because I have less followers and half someone’s age? 

The double-standard that I’ve touched upon in CCC or even how small blogs are treated. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and it’s not okay to let things slide just to keep things “happy”. Stop intimidating and shutting down people who finally have a choice to talk about the things they have been through just because your favorite says so. Don’t campaign about listening to hurt peoples voices, then proceed to ignore and ridicule people who do it in your own environment. 

I’ve had people come into my inbox and mock me for admitting to being mentally ill and say I’m doing this because I’m sick in the head, or call me a liar only because I spoke up. The BNHA fandom needs to stop the popularity mob mentality. Before you blindly someone, think to yourself: why? Stop giving toxic people passes because there is always a high chance in them not even caring about you. Don’t be a sheep, think for yourself. That’s what I want from this post. Even if people don’t believe me now, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. 

Here is what a few of our members have had to say: 

Continuation here: main post, one, two, three, four, ▸five◂.

[lyrishadow]

A Year In Review: 2020 Writing

I was Tagged by @rpgwrites​  Thank you for tagging me!!

Tagging: Not sure who to tag... But I know there are people waiting for SOMEONE to tag them so consider yourself tagged (high five style!) But only if you want to do this. I think I really started writing at the beginning of October. I wrote a bit here and there through the year but my focus and attention was really in Oct/Nov and now again starting in January.

Stats: Total Word count: (Posted on AO3 cos I am not counting unpublished works): 121221 Total Kudo count: 93

Top 5 by word count:  

Stowaway //Mass Effect// with OC: Chloe Halon  (54758 words) 

Drifted into the Abyss // Dragon Age Inquisition// OC: Milly Cadesh (7508 words) 

Rebuilding // Mass Effect// OC: Peta Shepard (6720 words)

Dawn //Mass Effect// OC: Piper Shepard  (3864 words)

Sleigh Bells and Starry Skies. //Mass Effect// OC: Egan Shepard (2501 words) 

Top 5 by kudos:

Stowaway //Mass Effect// with OC: Chloe Halon 

Fictober shorts: When I first saw you. //SWTOR// OC: Lyrae

Rebuilding // Mass Effect// OC: Peta Shepard 

Fictober shorts: Friend? //Mass Effect// OC: Egan Shepard

Fictober Shorts: Gunnery Chief //Mass Effect// OC: Malcolm Shepard

Word count:

So purely published things:  121221 I wrote a ton of things I didn’t publish. And there are a few things I did that I need to keep working on.

New things I tried this year: Participating in fictober, Nanorwrimo, and generally diving headfirst into fan fiction rather than writing original work for Nanowrimo which I have done every other time. I joined a discord server full of talented people, and even if I get somewhat intimidated these people will talk to me, answer my questions, rationalize how something will work for a fic, and cheer me on. It has been a great gift to me because I truly suck at making friends. I also tried to break things up, it is how I have ‘Dawn, dusk’ etc as those things are what I am breaking Piper’s story down into. I always come up with these bloated big ideas and they kinda fail tho, as people haven’t been reading my stuff lately. Partly because I still haven’t worked out when to reblog my stuff for timezones other than my very quiet one.

Fic I spent the most time on: Definitely my Nanowrimo: I spent a lot of time weaving it to get it flowing, and then when it did start to flow, I had no way to control the length. So I am not quite done, and it requires more words than the 50k it comes with.  I adore Characters who decide their own thing, that I can love and can send off to work on a story on their own. So that when I do come back to it, I am able to craft something coherent.

Fic I spent the shortest time on: At present, anything with Egan Shepard in has not taken me that long. All of his fics are short; in fact, I am working on a longer one but even there I am hesitant to make it massive. Egan is a fav of mine, and I don’t want to make him work (as in me having to work to write it) but having said that, I want to tell his story so I am working on it. Plus I love him so it’s not really that hard to write for him. 

Now hopefully I can aim to write some every day this year, and publish something once every 2 weeks at least. No promises. Depression, anxiety, and fatigue always kick my butt, throw in pain and I end up a mess so while I want to write and have some kind of exercise (you know how artists practice drawing, well that’s writing for you too, it needs practice). I hope 2021 is a vast improvement on last year, for my writing specifically in this case.

[violexides]

Slavmaeda- My (Hopefully Only) Statement

Note: The times listed here are mostly in EST. If it is in another time, it will state in parentheses. The other time will usually be Polish time.

Another Note: @slavmaedasaga exists, now, for all the posts. I don’t know who made it.

Possible Blackened-

Fir (aka Firanka)

Sunflower

Marshpy

Daniel

Jago

People who follow Sunflower / Marshpy / Fir / Jago

Gay Nagito Komaeda 

Experiencecarrots

Slavmaedasaga

Monokuma File- At an unspecified time this morning, Sunflower received an anon, posting “Slavmaeda rights” continuously until hitting the character limit. At 9:12 AM, Firanka confirms to receiving a similar ask. At 9:17 AM, Fir announces the case to a public discord server, “Danganronpa 2: Tropical Despair”. At 3:50 PM (POLISH TIME), Marshpy receives this ask. At 10:13 AM (or six minutes later, according to Fir), Jago receives a Slavmaeda rights ask. Then, everything went to hell.

TRUTH BULLETS

Alternate Anons: Other anons during this initial period of time were sending Sunflower asks.

“Fir”: One of these anons, not sent by Fir, uses her nickname.

Marshpy’s Account: She states to not having enough bastard energies, as well as her identity as “not Slavic” as proof of her innocence.

See: Marshpy’s Confession.

Marshpy’s Confession: Marshpy admits to sending the asks that went to sunflower and Fir, but none others.

She says she thought it would be funny.

Jago’s Account: [Jago’s] main line of defense is the website & the fact [Jago is] managing a group RP at the same time, [Jago] didnt even have tumblr opened until the situation started.

Jago proves in a screenshot that the first time she opened tumblr was at 10:12 AM.

Sunflower’s Account: She was typing up a character analysis, talking on a server, and answering other posts. Therefore, she did not have time to post these.

Worth noting that later, she would mark the times she was on/off tumblr.

Fir’s Account: She claims to being “confused the entire time”, which she admits herself is a weak alibi. She also states which specific anons she sent sunflower, none of these being the Slavmaeda posts.

See: Fir’s Confession.

Typing Patterns: The first ask was the same set of three “Slavmaeda rights” copy pasted, meaning that every third “Slavmaeda rights”, starting from the first one, had a capital S.

The second was in this same pattern.

The third was in all caps.

The forth had alternating letter capitalization.

Note: After this point, so many asks were coming in that it is hard to establish which typing patterns were used. However, it is worth saying that there were different typing and capitalization patterns.

Notes (Kind of useless but I typed it so whatever): As of typing this, Jago’s post received no notes.

Marshpy’s only received Sunflower and Fir’s declarations of innocence.

Sunflower’s posts received scattered notes.

Fir’s received an unspecified number of notes.

Sunflower’s posts, later, were reblogged frequently by the account “slavmaedasaga”

Daniel’s Account: Daniel is a bastard.

They have no tumblr account, so they can’t leave notes.

Anons can be sent without a tumblr account.

See: Daniel’s Confession.

Jago’s Website: “[It’s] not finished and navigation still is wonky but I can show if I need to prove [I’m] not really paying attention to tumblr rn”

It’s a really dope website not going to lie.

Just. Well done, Jago.

However, this could have been an alibi, planned, as Jago has been watching but suspiciously not contributing much.

Class Trial Rules: Only the first blackened gets punished.

This has nothing to do with anything.

We aren’t a class so technically it’s not a class trial.

But this is still an interesting point, motivation wise.

RickRolling Part One: Daniel is a bastard and a Mikan Kinne.

Deleted Message: Fir paraphrases it as “[trial participants] haven’t noticed something.”

This was deleted.

Daniel sent it.

Threat: “The Slavmaeda Revolution will continue without you” was sent to Marshpy at 10:31 AM.

Daniel claims this was not them.

Fir’s Confession: Fir claims to have sent the Slavmaeda asks to Jago and Marshpy, but did not send the Slavmaeda Revolution asks.

Rickrolling Ask: Someone copy and pastes the lyrics to “Never Gonna Give You Up” and sends it to Fir. After maybe a minute, she receives another Slavmaeda Rights ask.

This Slavmaeda Rights has the same typing patterns as Marshpy’s, except it cuts itself off at the end with a dash.

Threat Redux: Sunflower receives an ask that says “the slavmaeda nation shall remain eternal”

Gay-Nagito-Komaeda’s Account: They just follow Fir and are confused.

They’re innocent it’s just worth noting.

They later joined the Tropical Despair Discord Server.

Sunflower’s Ask: “slavmaeda is inevitable. succumb.”

10:55 AM.

Unsettling Truth: There is no way to track this, because, while certain asks have to have been sent by people in the server contextually, there could be people following Sunflower sending her asks, Fir sending her asks, etc.

Re: The Unsettling Truth: “Slavmaeda has already infiltrated your little trial. You are not safe there. Submit to the revolution.”

10:58 AM

Sunflower’s New Ask: The same Slavemaeda Rights that came with the Rickroll Fir received.

Sunflower’s Time Off Tumblr: 11:07 AM-11:09

11:20 AM-

Other Shit: “Rick rolling is the Slavmaeda National Anthem” (11:09 AM) (Fir)

Slavmaeda Rights (Robyn) (11:11 AM)

“Slavmaeda Slavmaeda Slavmaeda Slavmaeda” (Fir) (11:13) (not an anon, sent as daniel)

Daniel’s Confession: This fucking Mikan Kinnie.

Sent “a lot of [fir’s asks]” and “sent the revolution one to marshpy”

Experiencecarrots: “slavmaeda is the only alibi :)”

I’m gonna be honest, nobody on this server claims to be carrots.

So I have no fucking clue what is going on.

By the way, [I] is Sunflower.

THOUGHTS BEFORE POSTING:

It’s so fucking hard to track so I’m not sure if this is even accurate. This is the most information I’ve got. I’m also tired, so I haven’t looked through this in too much depth. But I think this is correct.

HANGMAN’S GAMBIT

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

r e v o l u t i o n

WHITE NOISE

Lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up

EDIT ONE - The server this is on is Danganronpa 2: Tropical Despair. 

EDIT TWO - Ignore the Hangman’s Gambit and White Noise, I got carried away.

EDIT THREE - Experiencecarrots confirms to not be on the server. I sort of figured because I think we were mutuals long before this happened, but at the same time, I’m confused as all hell.

EDIT FOUR - Maybe the real culprits were the friends we made along the way.

EDIT FIVE - Carrot’s Account (via tumblr): “Hey hey hey! I only liked the post because I refresh my feed every 2 seconds and like whatever’s there. And I follow pretty much anyone I find, so ha. Also thanks for letting me be a suspect, quite the honor if I say so myself :)” This is regarding claims of being suspicious due to being the first likes on posts, as well as following slavmaedasaga.

EDIT SIX - Gay Nagito Komaeda’s Confession: They sent Fir the rickroll ask, which was incredibly coincidental, considering that they were not in the Tropical Despair Server at the time they sent it, nor at the time Daniel rickrolled us. That was pure fucking luck. Holy shit.

EDIT SEVEN - slavmaedasaga is, most likely, on Tropical Despair. They updated the rickroll post with, in the tags, “komaeda”, meaning that they knew that it was Gay Nagito Komaeda. HOWEVER, I am aware that I updated my post with this information. We have no actual timestamps of who did what exactly, but it was within minutes of each other. My personal thoughts are that this is a person on the server, but I’m not certain.

EDIT EIGHT - slavmaedasaga claims to be a single person. It is worth considering that they could not be, but I have a feeling like they are a single person. 

EDIT NINE - Daniel knows who slavmaedasaga is. It’s probably Daniel, isn’t it. We should have seen that coming. (But I will hold my suspicions until they say it themself.)

EDIT TEN - I want to make a public apology for mistreating my spaghetti. I understand that, in the light of recent allegations regarding slavmaeda and the trial ongoing to find the blackened, it may have appeared as if I have been so caught up in the information that I forgot to treat my spaghetti with care. I assure you in the future that I will never hurt my spaghetti again. 

EDIT ELEVEN - There is now a tumblr blog called “slavmaeda rights”, which is entirely focused on slavmaeda rights. I’m losing my mind.

EDIT TWELVE - Slavmaedarights deleted their post that had “Slavmaeda rights” over and over.

EDIT THIRTEEN - Worth clarifying. There are technically two “og Slavmaeda” people. One is Fir, who started all of this by mentioning the concept of slavmaeda. The other is Marshpy.

EDIT FOURTEEN - Slavmaedasaga is in Tropical Despair. We raised suspicions in this server (More specifically, Gay Komaeda Nagito did) that they were the same as slavmaedarights. They very quickly made a post denying this. Therefore, they have to have been in the server. 

EDIT FIFTEEN - Slavmaedarights posted again (just slavmaeda rights over and over) then deleted it. I never saw this with my two eyes. Marshpy and Gay Nagito Komaeda are eye witnesses. Some of the “S”s in rights were capitalized, according to Marshpy, which is vital to consider. Marshpy claims that there is no isolated S in this post, but she isn’t certain. Also worth considering. A deviation from a familiar pattern, which is interesting. 

EDIT SIXTEEN - TWO CRUCIAL BITS OF INFO! The description of Slavmaedasaga is “Hope” in Bulgarian. Also, Daniel bluffed when they said, in the Tropical Despair server, that they knew who “Saga” is. They just wanted clout. This is important info-- we have no leads on Slavmaedasaga. But we do know that it was likely not Daniel. Daniel accuses Marshpy. who knows. 

EDIT SEVENTEEN - Marshpy was shopping when "Saga” started, and Daniel sent a cryptic smiley face. They claim they were wrong about accusing Marshpy. 

EDIT EIGHTEEN - SLVRights = Damien. They aren’t the same person as SLVSaga. Daniel has shown evidence that they only have one blog. I’m getting funky anons. One anon is the same person, sending theories. There are some others. The theory anon also called me sun, which isn’t explicitly odd but I guess you can consider it. Not sure what else to say. 

EDIT NINETEEN - Haven’t been updating this enough. I’m getting a lot of messages and asks. “Beg. Beg for the answers. Slavmaeda is an unforgiving god. -Damien” was posted, then deleted, on the SLVRights blog in binary. I have an anon in binary. I’m inclined to believe they aren’t the same person. Someone on the server, not related on the tumblr side but helpful on the server side, has a theory. They have yet to say. I have a new ask.

EDIT TWENTY - Firanka wanted me to say that a lot of Tropical Despair people are having wifi issues. I highly doubt this is relevant. Damien posted something. I won’t type it here, because it is long, but I’ll see if I can reblog it. If not, I’ll write a transcript. Thanks for sticking with me. 

EDIT TWENTY ONE - A lot has gone on. Worth saying, I turned off my anonymous asks. Nothing happened. As in like, nobody sent any asks. One of my friends did as a test. I kept it like that for a while. But, as Daniel put it, cryptid hints are better than no hints. 

EDIT TWENTY TWO - Further clarification, for those lost. According to present information, Binary, Saga, and Damien are all separate people. That is as far as we know. I don’t know everyone who did this, so I apologize if I leave certain people out, but Daniel, Nebby, Firanka (there is still suspicion), Glitter (on server), and I have shown screenshots proving we only have our one blog. There are likely loopholes, but... worth considering.

EDIT TWENTY THREE - New stuff surfacing. I’m worried people are getting anxious because of some of this. If you are, please prioritize yourself. Like, literally, even if you’re a huge part of this, if you’re getting stressed? Take a breather. Stay safe. Alright? Not to be the mom of this situation. But it’s important. Take care of yourself. I’m leaving this pinned, but as it winds down, i’m probably gonna unpin this post. But, still here if you ever want to figure stuff out. 

EDIT TWENTY FOUR - Approaching 400 posts. That’s interesting. Also, the suspect list on here isn’t updated. Updated information is in the edits alone. I haven’t even looked at the truth bullets since posting.

EDIT TWENTY FIVE - “Binary” was run by @experiencecarrots. We don’t know who Saga or Damien (now going by just “B”) is. But. Most of this has settled down.

EDIT TWENTY SIX - “Saga” was @firankamipinska. Still waiting for B.

EDIT TWENTY SEVEN - No closer to finding out B. A new day has started. Slavmaedanation has been created. They “declared war” against B. 

EDIT TWENTY EIGHT - @gayer-nagito-komeada was Rights. To be honest. I don’t know how we didn’t see that one coming. But. There you go. They’re Damien/B/Rights. Now it’s just Nation to figure out. 

EDIT TWENTY NINE - Nation is @firankamipinska. I’m not really surprised, probably because she told me she was Nation. Nation was essentially supposed to figure out who Damien was. I was too tired to give much of a shit. I woke up at 7 yesterday. I had no fucking spoons. Zero. 

FINAL EDIT - Four blogs, a discord server, a channel in a discord server, and many friends were made through the Slavmaeda experience. Thank you all for embarking on this crazy ass experience with us. I can’t believe that the day after my birthday, I helped create a meme. Have a nice day. 

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

First Monday of the month, which means Coming Attractions Post!

(Especially since I skipped last month, whoops…)

Before we get into it, as I always do in these things, plug for my Discord server--it’s pretty quiet, but basically a slightly more interactive version of this tumblr. Sometimes I talk a little more about origfic or other stuff than I do here, too.

Also, this is not my only hobby! As some of you may know, one of my others is lacework, and I now have a sideblog for that. I have pictures of my completed projects up there, and will probably have more stuff as I start…well…making more stuff.

Anyway. On to the actual writing stuff aka why most of you are here (also a few requests for feedback/Opinions behind the cut).

So, I didn’t get much done over the month until, like…the last few days. In part because work got super bonkers for reasons I’m still Cranky at but that is a vent for my personal blog, lol.

Precipice:

I have threeish scenes left, which I’m probably going to do as one more chapter (unless they end up Super Long, then I might split it into two). That’ll close out Arc Seven, and the first big chunk of this fic. As I’ve said before, I’ll split off into a sequel fic (working title Protectors) at that point, along with doing a sort of…interquel, working title Preludes, that mostly deals with integrating Rebels content. Also probably Maul.

Right now, I’m tentatively planning six installments to Preludes? Mostly because six feels like a nice number to work with, lol. These will be one-shots that aren’t super interconnected, all taking place during the six-year timeskip. These are the ones I’m thinking about doing as of right now (subject to change, and I welcome suggestions!):

one involving Kallus on Coruscant, shortly before he gets reassigned to Lothal;

one involving Hera and whoever her contact is in this AU (since Ahsoka’s doing something different from the Fulcrum stuff);

one where Kanan and Ezra connect with Obi-Wan et al. (probably through Hondo);

one with Luke, probably similar to that one episode where Leia turns up in Rebels canon;

I really do need to figure out what the heck is going on with Maul, don’t I.

…something else????

The only ones I’m 100% sure about including are the one with Kallus and the one where the various Jedi link up because those are necessary and/or plot-relevant, though I’m still working out specifics (especially on the Jedi one). I may also include something with Thrawn, since I’m doing something different with him than canon did. Like I said, I welcome thoughts/suggestions/etc.

Protectors will then pick up six years after the end of Arc Seven, with Arc Eight. And, as a treat, the working titles for Arcs Eight and Nine are Escalation and Watershed. In theory, I’m planning to post Preludes alongside arcs eight and nine, but we’ll see.

…anyway, uh, what I forgot to mention earlier is that my plan is to wrap up arc seven/the first fic in this series this month. Hopefully I will actually pull that off XD. And then we move on to the other stuff.

Other SW Fic Projects:

Big Bang is coming up again! I think signups will be next month? I’m considering three different plotlines as of right now, though that’s assuming I don’t come up with something new and exciting and/or another ObiAniDala plotline, which is what I seem to do every year…which one I end up doing probably depends at least partly on how S2 of the Mandalorian goes, since two of the three ideas heavily feature Bo-Katan. Of course, one of those lacks a plot and the other is pretty episodic/involves a lot of blank space I still need to fill in…

Anyway, we’ll see how that goes after the show airs and I get more event information, especially since it’s going to be structured differently/teaming up writers and betas much earlier in the process, which will be nice and possibly help chronically-undecided me actually pick something so I’m not scrambling to finish at the last minute but given that it’s me I probably will be anyway XD

As for other SW projects…I still owe a few meme fills from, like, April…but otherwise, extant projects are mostly back-burnered for now.

AtLA Projects:

Aka, the reason why SW projects other than Precipice and SWBB (and any one-shots/prompt fills that occur to me) are back-burnered, lol.

I am working on an AU outline, set to come out this month. There’s a couple of fulltext fics I’m playing with. I haven’t gotten any actual text written down yet, but I know where I’m going with them, at least to start.

The AU outline will be a canon-divergent thing set during the Ba Sing Se arc, and will be hopefully out Soon.

Fulltext fic #1 is…basically, the premise is, Lu Ten had a lover during the Siege, the soundtrack to this fic involves a lot of West Side Story, he left her with someone to remember him by, and then there’s some mindbending and complicated politics after his death. I think I talked a little more about this in a previous post? Anyway, one of the things I’m considering is whether to just tell this story linearly, or to start several years later, and go into the whole star-crossed lovers backstory as she regains her memories of what actually happened. The advantage to the first option is that it’s easier to work with shifting POV, which I prefer; and also involves more canon characters more quickly. The advantage to the second is that I think it would work really well for this particular storyline? Assuming I could get people invested in her and/or Ba Sing Se Politics/Worldbuilding that fast …y’know, when I think about it like that, maybe linear is the best option, lol…

Fulltext fic #2 is an Avatar Zuko AU, where he figures it out at age thirteen, and at that point decides he has roughly three and a half years until the comet, aka three and a half years to figure out how to make all this work (not to mention at least starting to learn air, water, and earth), and hopefully by then he’ll know what he should be doing with it? Whether it’s to resurface and Prove His Worth by defending the Fire Nation during the leadup to the comet, or something else (though Something Else doesn’t quite occur to him until he starts doing the other stuff). This will heavily feature at least one of my old OCs, and probably a few others (and likely one or two new ones), especially during the first two years. I’ve got things more or less worked out up until Aang resurfaces and Zuko’s plans have to shift/he has to cut his earthbending year short (much to Toph’s annoyance). Because once Aang is awake, everyone thinks he’s the Avatar (he’s not; there’s another explanation for how he iceberg’d for a century), and that fact just escalates All Of The Things.

((I’ve mentioned before that I am Pathologically Incapable of not creating a bunch of OCs and AtLA is a particularly strong example of that, so...yeah, that’ll be a Thing in pretty much anything I write in this fandom))

…anyway, this should be fun, once I actually get actual text down XD

Original Fic:

I did write one thing last month! Which was nice. Hopefully, I’ll get a bit done this month, too. For those of you who don’t know, most of my original stuff is posted on rainbowfic, which is a great community and if you guys do original stuff you post online, you should come join.

I’ve also started poking at a couple of new concepts, because that is how my brain do. Including one Arthuriana story despite the fact that I’m not super into Arthuriana but then my brain was like “what if Mordred was a girl?” and welp. Here I am.

NaNo:

I’m proooooooobably going to do a similar setup to what I had the past couple years--set myself a wordcount goal, but not bind myself to any single project. Depending on how things go this month, either with Precipice!verse or SWBB or my AtLA stuff, or if that Mordred thing catches on, I might try to prioritize one or more things (like, have my goal be 20k on X project, and 30k on other stuff), but I’ll decide that closer to the date.

…I think that’s everything! What are you guys up to lately? Does anyone have NaNo plans? Any thoughts on stuff I mentioned on my docket, so to speak? What’s on your mind?

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2019 (In No Real Order)

We’re here. The end of the decade. 2019 was a weird, turbulent year for me. Despite my cross-country move already being a year behind me somehow, nothing’s really settled yet. Living situation is still weird, still separated from most of my belongings, I left my full-time QA job for a contractor position at a mobile game advertising company that may or may not convert into a full-time position... everything about what’s going on with me still just feels like I’m completely winging it, and while that’s not a position I’m really comfortable being in for such an extended amount of time, everything seems to be working out okay enough despite it. All this is probably why I spent most of my time playing the shit out of a handful of games rather than playing a bunch of different games this year! Needed some sort of stability. Also when I did manage to pull myself away from the timesink games and play something else, a lot of them ranged from “okay” to “real bad”. But I still managed to play just enough stuff that I liked to where I can put out yet another one of these.  Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2019.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC, 2005)

I haven’t bothered to do two thirds of the story quests yet and have barely touched any Episode 4 content so this game technically doesn’t count for this list, but if I left it off I would be neglecting to mention an extremely large portion of my video game playing time this year. I fell back into PSO preeeettty hard this year after the surprise announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 finally coming to the US. Guess what: game still rules. It feels stiff to play and it’s obviously far less expansive than it seemed back in 2000, but the core of Phantasy Star Online is still as fun as it ever was and the aesthetics are still entirely my shit. I love everything about the way this game looks and sounds, I love stumbling on a weird new weapon, I love participating in the custom seasonal events the server I’m on runs, and I love how oddly relaxing the experience of playing this game and taking it all in is. I will probably continue to play Phantasy Star Online into 2020. I will probably still dip back into it after PSO2 US servers finally launch. If I know you and you want to join my Discord server for PSO get at me. PSO forever.

Cookie’s Bustle (PC, 1999)

You ever play a game that just speaks to you? Even through a language barrier? A game so incredibly out there and bizarre in the exact way you love that you can’t help but adore it despite barely understanding it? Holy moly did I ever find that game. I learned about Cookie’s Bustle through a news story last year about some rare games leaking from a Japanese collector’s stash. Didn’t manage to get it to run back then, but my off and on attempts to get it working finally paid off in March of this year and I’m so glad I kept trying. I knew nothing of this game other than it had a weird name and was about a bear doing sports, and it turned out to be a fully voice-acted and mostly unsubtitled adventure game starring Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who sees herself as a teddy bear and has traveled to Bombo World, an island nation once visited by aliens and currently in the middle of a civil war, to participate in the Bombo Sports Tournament. Dead level, I probably shouldn’t have been able to genuinely love Cookie’s Bustle as much as I did. The only context I had for what was happening and what I was supposed to do was provided by a 20-year-old Google translated walkthrough with broken images, the game’s slightly higher than usual reliance on English loan words, and 30-ish years of video games and anime allowing me to halfway pick up on a handful of Japanese words. However, Cookie’s Bustle is dripping with an undeniable and off-beat charm that genuinely transcends language. Even if you can’t understand the words and specifics, you can understand the basic plot, characterizations, and emotions they’re going for. Cookie’s Bustle manages to both be completely off-the-wall bizarre and feel totally genuine and heartfelt at the same time, a balance very few games manage to successfully hit but many of my favorites do. One could say that’s why it seems to have resonated with a decent amount of other people this year, too. Games rarely make me feel sad that they’re over. but when they do that’s how I know they’re one of the good ones. Seriously, go look up a longplay or stream of Cookie’s Bustle if you (understandably) don’t want to go through the hassle of setting it up and figuring out how to play it, it’s impossible not to love.

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4, 2019)

Here’s something crazy to think about: Devil May Cry 4 came out 11 years ago. Aside from being a potent reminder that time is moving too fast and we’re all going to die soon, that means that there hasn’t been a DMC for over a decade. Devil May Cry 5 does not bare this fact even a little bit. Not only did they pick up right where they left off and manage to make another Devil May Cry game without missing a beat, they made arguably the best Devil May Cry game. I mean I still like the story and single-character focus of DMC3 the best, but DMC5 is the best playing game in the series without a doubt. Nero finally feels like he has a complete and complex toolset, Dante is the most mechanically dense and fun to play he’s ever been, and they even added a new guy that’s... neat to play as, until you start trying to S-rank the harder difficulties. Then he’s kind of annoying to play as. But it’s still cool that they tried something totally different and mostly got it to work! They also did something very stupid that I love and used this game as an excuse to make literally every single piece of Devil May Cry media canon. Like, characters exclusively from the anime and the books show up and act like they’re someone you already know and love? And they go out of their way to explain the most esoteric lore shit possible?? And despite it all they still intentionally give DMC2 as short a shrift as they can??? It’s so dumb, it rules. It’s just one of the many things about the game that show that even with so long of a gap between entries, no love for the series was lost by the people that make it. I don’t think the suits at Capcom expected this game to hit as hard as it did though, because despite there being clear areas where the game could be expanded on with DLC there still hasn’t been anything announced. I hope they’re maybe saving it for some sort of DMC3-esque special edition, or maybe just already working on DMC6, because even after getting all S-ranks I still wanted to play more. The game’s just that damn good.

Hypnospace Outlaw (PC, 2019)

I expected very little from Hypnospace Outlaw. I backed the game on Kickstarter solely because it looked cool and I thought a game about fake GeoCities was neat, and then I immediately forgot about it until it released. Admittedly my lack of expectations stemmed mostly from the fact that it’s kind of hard to set expectations for a game you never really thought too hard about, but even in the brief period of time where I considered it enough to give it money, I never expected it to be much more than a pretty-looking 101 Great GeoCities Jokez delivery vehicle. Boy was I wrong. I mean, it is incredibly good at that, but Hypnospace Outlaw is so much more than a funny period piece. The basic premise is that you’re in alternate universe 1999 and have just become a community moderator for an Internet service provider that allows people to connect to the Internet while they sleep. You’re tasked with browsing the game’s weird fake Internet and issuing demerits to users who violate the five basic Hypnospace rules, but it quickly evolves into something way bigger. Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength is its exceptional ability at weaving together subtle world building, small and engaging character arcs, esoteric microjokes, and a genuine sense of mystery and discovery into an incredibly cohesive and engaging package. It’s as much a game about the people that use and run its weird fake Internet as it is about that weird fake Internet itself. And a lot of the problems both face echo the problems we face with our real world Internet today. When I was mapping out writing this article like a month or two ago I was prepared to go on about how at its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is an incredibly poignant story about how uncaring tech corporations actively harm their users and always have, but then a couple of days ago I read Colin Spacetwinks’ game of the year list and his #1 entry put most everything I would have said about that topic down in a way more eloquent and well-written way than I ever could have. And then I remembered that Friend Of The Site Heidi Kemps covered some of the same angle but from the perspective of the early Internet in an article earlier this year, again way better than I could have. So I highly recommend you read those when you’re done here. What I wanna bring up instead is just how effortlessly surprising and interconnected a lot of stuff in Hypnospace feels, using a mildly spoiler-ish late game example. Two of the first “zones” you’re allowed to moderate when you start Hypnospace Outlaw are Teentopia and Goodtime Valley, which are essentially alternate universe Yahooligans and a little slice of Hypnospace just for Boomers respectively. On Teentopia you’ll see a bunch of kids that are wild for Squisherz, Hypnospace’s alternate universe version of Pokémon, and over in Goodtime Valley you’ll see (much like there was back in real world 1999) a few pages made by religious fundamentalists convinced that everything the kids like these days is the work of Satan. This of course includes Squisherz, and you can find a page by one organization full of crackpot conspiracy theories with flimsy evidence that TOTALLY DEFINITELY backs up their claim. Squisherz contains a wolf, which the Bible warns about many times! This giraffe monster CLEARLY has a pentagram in its design!! And the eye of this snake-like Squisherz is the eye of Horus, an Egyptian occult symbol and NEED I REMIND YOU that Lucifer took the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden!!! It is very clear what this page is goofing on and throughout the course of the game it doesn’t get updated at all, so it’s very easy to laugh at it and forget about it. Very late into the game, you get an optional sidequest. Adrian Merchant, one of the CEOs of Merchantsoft, the company that created Hypnospace, was found out to have logged traffic indicating he was a frequent visitor of a website called Children of HORUS, and a call is put out to investigate what that even is. You can easily find the website, but it asks you for a password if you click the Enter button. Adrian Merchant is consistently portrayed throughout the game as a complete idiot, and the solution to this puzzle has you capitalize on that. Another early game objective ended up with you finding a list of cracked passwords, and one of those passwords happens to be for the instant messenger account of Adrian Merchant. If you can remember that he was even in that text file from forever ago, and then put two and two together that of COURSE that dumbass would use the same password for everything, you just punch in his messenger password and you’re granted access to the Children of HORUS page. It turns out that HORUS is an acronym that stands for Hiding Occult References in Utmost Secrecy, and the page itself is a basic leaderboard with a list of names and two numbered columns reading “Hidden” and “Found”. In that list of names you’ll find A. Merchant, along with the names of various other CEOs and celebrities you might have read about elsewhere in Hypnospace. One of the other names on this list is F. Kazuma, the CEO of Monarch, creators of Squisherz. The funny conspiracy theory website from the beginning of the game that you most likely forgot about was, about this one specific thing, correct. There was an eye of Horus hidden on the snake from Squisherz. Not as any sort of Satanic plot, mind you, but only as part of some weird millionaire dickwaving contest. This dumb tiny revelation is not called out by the game at all and nothing comes of it, it’s just there for you to notice if you’ve been paying enough attention. Hypnospace Outlaw is LITTERED with stuff like this. Weird small interconnected things you wouldn’t expect to be interconnected. Little dumb things you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of payoff but somehow do. And it’s also just as chock full of big things. Having all the pieces fall into place at once to where I was able to access Hypnospace’s equivalent of the dark web was the best sequence in a game this year for me, even beating out the outlandish shit in DMC5. Getting and solving the final case was a rush. Hypnospace Outlaw is full of incredible moments big and small. It’s genuinely engaging and affecting, which is so much more than I was expecting from a game that was pitched to me as “Funny GeoCities Cop”. It almost has no right being so good. But it is. Hell, even the music rules! I didnt even get into that! I don't have enough time or space to get into that now! The music is so goddamn good! I know I started these lists because I had no interest in ranking games, but every year I sort of jokingly-but-not-jokingly say “haha this game sure would be my number one if I did that!” for at least one game. It’s time to fully lean into it. I don’t gotta rank ‘em all, but I can pick a favorite. Hypnospace Outlaw is my favorite game of 2019 with a goddamn bullet.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Etrian Odyssey (Nintendo DS, 2007): Man, this series just started out good, huh? I dabbled with the first two games in college when I got a DS flashcart but never really dug in until EO4, and the first game is enjoyable in just about every way the modern ones are. Definitely more barebones and punishing though. Kero Blaster (PlayStation 4, 2017): This is a game by the creator of Cave Story that does not aim to be Cave Story, and that’s fine! A fun little shooter in its own right, though I do think the shooting in Cave Story felt a little better than it does here. Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008): I played the shit out of this game in college thanks to that flashcart I mentioned before, but I never finished a playthrough in full until this year for some reason. Still way stylish and way fun! I need to get a copy of the second one... CROSSNIQ+ (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Incredibly chill puzzle game that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. Almost uncanny in how well it emulates the style of late PS1/Dreamcast games. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Mario Maker 2 is kind of weird for me. It’s a solid improvement in a lot of aspects, but a clear regression in a lot of others. Also the online multiplayer is the second least amount of fun I’ve had with a video game this year (Secret of Mana swooped in and stole the number one slot near the end). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I’ll probably end up going back to it eventually. Katamari Damacy Reroll (Nintendo Switch, 2018): The original Katamari Damacy is still every bit as fun and charming as it was upon its original release. This port is weirdly based on the Japanese version with the English text inserted, which means no English voice acting and Wanda Wanda only plays in the multiplayer mode. The Joycon sticks also aren’t the greatest for doing charge rolls. But none of these faults detract too much from the game. Bring on We Love Katamari Reroll! Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4, 2018): Sandlot somehow keeps finding ways to make each new EDF bigger and explodier, and EDF5 is the biggest and explodiest yet. I think the mission design in 4.1 was more solid overall, but 5 feels the best to play and has the most fun tools. Also the dialogue is the most absurd its ever been, and the final boss goes for it way harder than the series ever has. Pokémon Shield (Nintendo Switch, 2019): This game is honestly just okay, but leaving it off would again be neglecting a game I put a ton of time into this year. Pokémon Sword is fun in the way most Pokémon games usually are, and extremely half-baked in basically every other aspect. I’m still having a good time putting together teams and finding shinies and doing The Pokémon Thing regardless.

And that’s 2019 (and this decade) in the bag! I don’t know where anything’s going from here, but I’m going to ride it out as best as I can! I hope you do too! As always, thank you so much for getting to the bottom of all these words. I’m hoping to be in a more stable place mid-2020, and then I want to get back to all the things I haven’t had time to do. I want to get back to streaming, I want to write more dumb articles like The Best Babies, I want to do it all! I hope I will be able to do it all. Until then!

[thewatchau]

i am semi - overwhelmed by the amount of lore and frankly a wee bit confused but i kinda wanna join as i love this concept and your story is amazing...

Hey friend! Welcome aboard! 

Don’t worry, I understand that it’s a LOT of lore to work your way through. Even if you start where the “Hello New People” recommends you begin, it still can seem pretty overwhelming. 

Thankfully, I have three major pieces of advice that I think will help you both wrap your mind around the lore and get involved.

#1: Join the Discord! 

There, you’ll find other people who are passionate about this AU who will help you get involved with the story through RPs, character discussions, QNA’s, and just general chatting about the AU. 

While there’s a bit more chatter than usual due to the recent community fire, it’s normally a fairly chill server. @shamrockace​ @theshapeshifter100​ @autumnleafauthor​ @marginmaster87​ and others can vouch for the welcoming and non-intimidating atmosphere there compared to other servers.

#2: Ten Helpful Posts to Get Started

I know that not everyone has the ability or desire to join a discord server. If that’s the case, I can point you in the direction of a few specific posts (instead of masterlists) that will help give you some context to get you started:

The Timeline- Posted on December 12, 2018, this timeline is one of the first major posts I created about The Watch AU. All lore posts that followed were kinda built on the assumption that you had read that post, so 100% definitely read this first.

The Enemy’s Raids Part 7- I originally suggested that new people read through the “Bard’s Journal” masterlist to catch up from where the timeline above ends, but turns out, that’s a lot of posts! This post delivers the same information, without the filler.

The “Houses of The Watch” Tag- This is a tag I reserve for the original summaries of the Noble Houses that I created within days of the timeline linked above. Like the timeline, they assume you know almost nothing about the AU, because back then, there wasn’t any other lore! It also has a few very early asks that laid the foundation for the many, many lore posts about Duilintinn’s culture that exist on the blog today; I recommend you read those too.

The Three Main Character Creation Posts: In my opinion, reading introductory posts for characters that other people have made (found in the “Meet Your Watchers” tag or on the desktop-only “Watch Roster” page) is the best way to figure out how to make a character of your own, but if you prefer more specific instructions, these posts will help:

Basic Character Template

Tropes to Avoid

Getting Involved

In total, that’s about ten posts that will help get you started. Two for the timeline, five for each noble house (plus maybe five or so extra if you read the other stuff in the tag), and three for character creation. Hopefully that helps the lore seem a bit less overwhelming.

#3: Ask me questions! 

Whether through asks, DMs, or discord, I’m always happy to talk about my AU, even if it’s questions I’ve already answered before. I barely need an excuse to mention this world I’ve built normally; please give me excuses to talk about it more and I will love you forever. 

I hope that helps! 

Thanks again, and Welcome to The Watch!

hehehe yes I got to use the line again it’s been so long