#igotasked

[reitziluz]

Hey! For the ask meme- 18 and/or 19, for Vaal?

18. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

weirdly enough. the fact that e actually fucking loves to thrown down. for a long time i approached em as someone who is fully pacifist, just a ray of sunshine, friend to all kittens etc. it felt wrong, but the thought of em being angry and vengeful felt more wrong. eir thing is like, growing and learning to be a person and reclaiming a life for emself. but actually going on 1v1 on dragons and shit is something e misses from eir former life. and if e had been able to live the childhood e was denied, it would have 100% involved chokeslamming a sibling more than once.

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

again skipping story event stuff. despite the moth theming, vaal isn't a moth. or even an insect. e actually has eight limbs. there's the humanoid arms and legs. then there's the wings, that could be mistaken for insect wings, but are actually some real magical bullshit. e has a flight mode e can shift into, so the wings aren't present all the time, and more like jets of magic anyway. but! there actually are two small modified limbs on eir back! like rudders! so that's six, right? but surprise! e also has praying mantis like limbs on eir hips!

so technically our buddy is an arachnid! :D

(also a more meta favorite fact is that vaal is my oldest oc that's still active. i should redraw the first design and put it next to the current one, and list the biggest similarities and differences, because it would be hilarious)

[reitziluz]

oc secrets pls

(here's the ask game post. i've gotten/done betrayal, desire, future, nightmare and secret so far.)

this was weirdly hard!! i hope the answers don't disappoint!

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them? 

kimon: his whole problem with prophecy and fate. there were no witnesses and the only way for people to find out is if he tells them. and he sure as shit isn’t going to claim any of that, because his chances of getting away hinge on there being as little connective tissue between him and the fated bullshit.

vaal: vaal struggles with setting boundaries so bad e doesn't have the sense of privacy to keep secrets of eir own. and like sure e wouldn’t love if certain facts about em got out and were used to paint them out as a violent monster — like eir love of fighting, or, uh, other preferences — but e’s comfortable sharing all of that with at least kimon, if not with everyone else close to em.

arin: as a teen, they broke into a protected ancient sacred site and committed light desecration when they stole an artifact from there. the consequences for this getting out would be immense.

tess: i’m sorry, i’m fully drawing a blank. it’s something actually inconsequential but something that feels mortifying. like having puked on your middle school crush type of thing. 

sam: her hallucinations. they’re not a problem, and she doesn’t want to worry others needlessly, nor be looked down upon or coddled or treated differently in any way. with any other issue she’s able to be rational and trust her loved ones, but the hallucinations are a special case. partially because she’s pretty sure they’re just caused by stress, and she knows they don’t fit in any spiritual frameworks she knows. she’d rather not get outside confirmation though. she finds comfort in the thought of being visited and having company during her tough times. 

leskel: see here’s the problem. this man has so many fucking secrets. his secret plans, how he’s not actually human, his crimes, his weaknesses… the list goes on. but despite having answered ascension for the desire ask, what he really wants, no, needs on a fundamental level, is to be known.

[reitziluz]

future!! i love hearing about peoples bad endings for their ocs

(here's the ask game post. i've gotten/done betrayal, desire, future, nightmare and secret so far.)

oh man. oh boy. 

disclaimer: with few exceptions, everyone taking part in the present of the story is at risk of becoming a part of a nightmarish flesh blob situation. or something along those lines. details might be subject to change. there's a corrupted world-eater lurking about. so, as much as possible, i’ll instead picture the worst futures if that wouldn't be a factor.��

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility? 

kimon: i’ve alluded to ascension being a fate worse than death in most cases in this world. yeah. kimon is at huge risk of getting spiritually spaghettified. he is keenly aware of this, as he has met a predecessor of sorts who got stuck in one of the worst outcomes of this, and the fate/prophecy targeting him is linked to it too. he is not taking steps, he’s running at full tilt to get as far as possible from it. using his power to do specific kinds of healing is one part of that.

vaal: so vaal is kind of doomed to the world-eater scenario. specifically becoming sort of a reaper for it. e has absolutely no clue. at the point where e’s would be getting signs and eir alarms would start blaring, e wouldn't have time to even resist getting taken over. oops! 

arin: dying disgraced and destitute. a scorned failure. they occasionally catastrophize about it, but also realistically anticipate it as the end result if, for example, they were trying to take shortcuts and cheat to accomplish their goals. they're literally working to prevent it.

tess: having her spirit broken, never getting to control her own life, being unable to make a difference in the world. her relative getting away with their schemes while she gets disposed of. like arin, she's very aware of the possibility, and working hard to avoid it. she is very focused on making her relative to answer for their crimes and to gain her freedom. 

sam: her worst future would be one of loneliness after her community collapsed. she is consciously trying to prevent it by preventing or fixing potential root causes. people dying as their working and living conditions deteriorate, infighting tearing them apart, that kind of stuff. 

leskel: he, too, is doomed to the world-eater scenario. he would be subsumed and remade into an avatar of sorts. he knows he is connected to this fate, but doesn't know the details and has made some bold assumptions. he’s actively pursuing this future. 

[reitziluz]

tess! nmbers 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 11 - 14!

oooohhh thank you for choosing tess!

(here's the ask game post. i have done 1, 3, 14, 19 for kimon and 18 & 19 for vaal so far!)

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

tess is a late addition that came in when i was playing around with group dynamics and tropes. i knew before that that i wanted a giant in the main cast. i also wanted someone a bit more upper class for contrast, and most of the Old Families in the city are giants because it was originally a giant city. and for the trope stuff, i didn't have anyone who outwardly matched The Heart trope stereotype (including being someone feminine). so tess started out as the idea to have a giant princess. 

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind? 

yes, i created them with the rest of the six in mind. they're someone who can match leskel’s status and go against him on the court of high society.* with kimon and vaal, she catches on to their shady past and has both the motivation and the means to start digging — and then later to vouch for them. (and they were also created to be part of a medical case for kimon to solve, naturally.) arin and her i created to work together rather superficially, as in she's rich enough to have commissioned stuff from them. 

the first and biggest thing in my mind tho was to create a butch/femme pair with her and sam. 

*(i don't know how else to put this in short. the city doesn't actually exactly have a victorian high society. but you get the vibe.)

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? 

thing is, her backstory is a work in progress still. currently the most influential parts are like, societal and legal matters. she's under an unjust conservatorship of sorts so that an opportunistic relative can use her vote on a council of sorts, and access her resources. she also lost her immediate family to an illness she suspects to have something more to it. (it does. horror levels of more. if you've heard me talk about wandering corpse piles, that's related.) up in the air but likely that she will enter the narrative when someone close to her seems to have caught the same disease but the family doctor and the conservator dismiss her as delusional.

also, being a giant and growing up in that culture. 

8. What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? 

being sharp and knowledgeable but hindered by lack of experience and a living situation that is counterproductive for getting more of it. i’m also piling all my more autistic-coded traits on her, mainly a tendency for formalism, and the “oh shit i missed this whole aspect that changes the meaning of this thing.” and we definitely share a frustration with obviously inefficient or counterproductive things and the Need To Fix. 

11. Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation? 

yup! they're a femme lesbian. and i first planned for her to end up in a relationship with sam, but we’ll see how it goes once i actually get around to writing their story.

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be? 

the gilded cage. she has been sheltered her whole life, controlled for a latter part of it, and it would have eaten her alive if she didn't have such a blaze of passion and determination inside her. she will break out and she will change the world if that's what it takes. but because she's been sheltered, she has a very abstract idea of freedom, and what she wants to do with it. also, she's so focused on breaking free, she tends to have tunnel vision. 

in a way they are the emotional core, first to cry and compassionate, but their compassion is driven by a sense of justice and duty that stems from their culture. love as dutiful devotion and service. but because they feel so deeply, they are also prone to harsh judgment and black and white thinking. 

[reitziluz]

Questions About Creating Your OCs, going with 1, 3, 14 and 19 for Kimon!

:D oooh thank you this was so fun! and also got so damn long lmao

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

this is so HARD because kimon is actually a compound of two old rp characters of mine. my very first rp character, siegfried, was an aggressively ordinary and well-adjusted farm boy who is doing the journeyman portion of his apprenticeship to become a carpenter. kimon’s appearance is directly derived from him, and in a way he’s an older siegfried that went through darker shit. as in, they share a certain shounen protagonist vibe. kimon’s namesake is another, later rp character, who himself was a spiritual successor to siegfried! the idea of a field/combat healer who is desperately trying to get away from the circle of violence comes from this proto-kimon.

as you can see, i tend to come up with characters concept first. for kimon too, my first thought was "hey, it would be cool to really fuck around with the idea that a necromancer is just a very late healer. maybe have a healer character who accidentally turns himself undead/into a lich.” then immediately after, if not simultaneously, i smashed old characters together to create a base to add to, haha!

3. How did you choose their name?

so i did not want to reuse the name siegfried, because it’s long and would be shortened to either sieg or fried and i don’t like either of them, and i’m pretty sure i chose it just because learning that nightmare from soulcalibur was actually siegfried was hilarious to me at the time. (i was around 15, it was like… 2007 or 2008?) kimon was the more recent oc that was a closer relative to current kimon, so i went with kimon for him too. i don’t… like the old kimon much, outside of the field healer aspect. it was kind of a rough spot in my rp career. i’m p sure the name came from a random generator, or from some baby name site? i just vibed with it. though… for a while i was worried people would think i just yoinked the final o from kimono. I think there were joking drawings of him in a kimono because of it? anyway. the name also fits the naming language i fucked around with for a while, so that’s why it stuck.

(and yeah it’s pronounced ki-mo-n, stress on the first syllable, because it stems from the time when i was writing exclusively in finnish. idk how else people might be inclined to pronounce it tho? let me know if you read it in a different way!)

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

he has literally died and reanimated himself to keep going. to keep protecting and healing those important to him. he will say it’s because he had no other choice due to the circumstances, and yet he keeps destroying himself instead of leaning on others.

under the cool and controlled exterior, this is a short guy who has had to get incredibly tough very young and has since been marathoning Challenges. there’s an Attitude to him. on the anime vs mmo healer spectrum. he’s wayyyyy in the ”get up, you die when i say so” corner. small dog energy, but not the impotent rage type, but the type where you’re scared for your life.

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

noooooo i can’t choose! uh, outside of stuff that’s also just some of my favorite story moments/concepts… i’m just really fond of the fact that when he’s using magic, the stronger it is, the more his eyes glow and the more they go from blue to white.

[reitziluz]

betrayal, desire, nightmare for OC ask thing

wooooo took ages to type these up but boy did i have fun!! 

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

kimon: mostly there hasn't been enough trust to begin with for it to count. but he did backstab a god the moment it chose him.

vaal: learned a harsh life lesson about trusting nice helpful guards as a kid. as in, got tricked into revealing emself, which directly led to em getting recruited, and things were hazy for a long time after that.

arin: has a history of Messy relationships, and has cheated and been cheated on. the worst betrayal they've experienced is the time when not only was their work stolen, but they were also framed for fraud. the fraud part got cleared up, but their reputation never fully recovered, and a lot of doors remain closed.

tess: a relative became her guardian/conservator after she lost her parents, and turns out, had ulterior motives. she's working on turning the game right back on them.

sam: there's been a few people that have turned out to be abusers or moles or swindlers in her circles. she never intentionally goes back on her word. 

leskel: has bit of a habit of using people. to put it mildly. 

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

kimon: peace. to get Fate off his ass and live a nice boring life. openly talks about the latter part. mostly his plan is to Not Do things that would drag him into Situations and have him deal with bullshit. he’s willing to take some extreme measures and make big moves, like he already has escaped a necromancer cult and defected from the armed forces of a dictatorship run by mind controllers.

vaal: struggles to express any kind of desire and does not feel allowed to pursue them. e doesn't fully know what e wants, but… maybe to continue seeing new skies. 

arin: recognition. it's hard not to hear them speak about it. they say they want fame and riches, but it's more about proving their worth and being valued and respected. academically, of course, it's not like they want their family's approval, don't get any ideas!!  they are often tempted to cheat, but also hate cheaters with a burning passion, so honest hard work it is! they used to be willing to risk life and limb, but they're starting to run a bit low on those.

tess: justice. she's open about it on a general level, when talking about politics and such. she's hiding the more personal side, because she's on a revenge quest. happens that she's also wrestling with the question of what would she be willing to do to reach her goal?

sam: unity, as in community but also unionization. everyone should join a union. the refinery becoming worker owned was great, but let's keep going. she wants everyone thriving, she doesn't want any more heartbreak, and has the dedication and disciple to put in the countless thankless hours of work to achieve that.

leskel: ascension. he will do anything to achieve it. extremely secretive.

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

kimon: he doesn't speak about it, but has a recurring nightmare. he has essentially tamed it. it's supposed to be a prophetic “Come Defeat Thine Adversary O Chosen One” deal but he just sits down and meditates in the hell cave until the dream runs out. sometimes, on more lucid occasions, he’s able to talk with it.

vaal: having a fun time only to suddenly realize e has done something terrible to eir loved ones. e doesn't like talking about eir nightmares other than to state e had one. thankfully e dreams very rarely to begin with, because e does not handle the nightmare well. it's either frightening repression or clingy bedbug mode for the day. 

arin: their nightmares are mild, more like stress dreams. they complain about them loudly to anyone who's willing to listen, and go on ignoring the fact that they're a sign they need to practice some self care. their most intense nightmares feature a great monster hunting them, usually in labyrinthine basements or attics. 

tess: had violent night terrors as a child. still suffers from night paralysis. she talks about it pretty freely. most of the time it's classic hat man or teeth falling out shit. sometimes being pinned down is a feature, and she's a bit more unwilling to get detailed about those.

sam: sorrowful dreams that she wakes up from crying. taking some time to grieve again for a moment, and doing something comforting like drink a cup of tea helps. she talks about them with trusted friends, but usually only when asked. the hardest one is where she's present for an event she actually had learned about way after the fact. that nightmare is the only time she's afraid of heights.

leskel: doesn't sleep. cannot sleep. it will be there. and he won't be able to hide.

[reitziluz]

wishing u well!!! hope ur days r filled with skelly friends and migraine free days and restful evening naps!!!!

thank you!!

i'm actually pain free still, fingers crossed that won't change! i have also found more skelly friends to put in my queue. i don't really do naps, but i am going to force myself to have a full night's sleep if need be.

i am also planning to write a little, like a couple sentences, to start shaking off the rust. might be shit-all, might be an oc scene, might be some fun trash just for me. but if the migraine is just silent instead of averted and it has, as usual, destroyed my ability to words, well. there's juliaborn and mompiece to catch up with!

[reitziluz]

I don't have any handy skeletons but I do have my floof cat lounging dramatically after dinner. And hmmm random headcanon query!! How do your favorite characters sleep?

lounging floof! decadence!

hmm, let's see if i'll be able to remember who my faves even are...

i guess reigen could be a surprisingly heavy sleeper, once he actually manages to put himself to bed. serizawa i could see being prone to sleeping too much, or alternating between anxiety all-nighters and and sleeping through the day. he's surely working on it, though.

i enjoy the fanon that papyrus Does Not Sleep. that he needs less sleep and also has an interesting sleep schedule.

i have other faves, but i don't think i've especially thought about their sleep before, and nothing came to me now either. but luckily my ocs are also my favorite characters! putting them under the readmore so i can go ham hehe

kimon sleeps very lightly, wakes up a lot during the night, and p much always wakes up earlier than he'd want. part of it is his hypervigilance. another part is his whole physiological situation re: having animated himself and technically being undead. his power nap game is unreal tho, and he has fallen asleep standing up with his eyes open more than once.

vaal can go without sleep way longer than humans can, but e purposefully sleeps every night. e curls up in the middle of so many pillows and blankets and hot water bottles. sleeping for a long time leaves em kinda cold and stiff, and then it takes a while for em to warm up and wake up.

arin has a really regular sleep schedule despite the whole chaotic inventor thing. they get cranky if they can't do their whole sleepy time routine. a big part of it is about just. dealing with their prosthetics and other supportive magic shit. can't sleep comfortably with them on and running. sleeps on their back, sleep mask on.

sam can fall asleep anywhere, and often crashes right to bed when she finally gets home. she sleeps pretty well, but often doesn't have time to sleep quite enough. doesn't dream, or at least couldn't tell you a single time she did. prefers to sleep naked.

tess has a hard time falling asleep, both because she often gets absorbed in something around bedtime, and because it's hard for her to turn off her brain and fall asleep once in bed. this leads to lots of reading in bed. their bed is a princess four-poster deal. i don't know if body pillows are a thing in the setting, but she def hugs something when she sleeps.

... leskel doesn't sleep unless he involuntarily passes out. he should sleep more. someone needs to pin him down with like five weighted blankets and keep them on for like a full day, and maybe it would fix him.

[reitziluz]

Re: "it might just not be for you". You're so right about that! I would LOVE to watch knives out, because I've heard many people praise it! However, i have severe emetophobia, and my sister told me i would NOT have a good time watching that movie. And just because *I* would love there to be a vomit-free version, doesn't mean others don't prefer it the way it is. So it's just not for me. And that's okay! It's not like there aren't other movies I can watch!

i am all for making things work for you. doesn't matter if others prefer another version as long as both exist, yanno? it's good that there's games with colorblind or arachnophobia toggles, with story modes. it's good to respect other people's creative vision and the fact that everything takes work to be made, but it's not like a lot of creators simply aren't aware of p low effort stuff they could do, or aren't fucking shitty about it. deviation from the intended standard experience of the work isn't bad, it's just different.

where i'm losing my mind is the equivalent of someone doing a deep dive video essay on knives out only to spend a fifth of the runtime on whether or not it's problematic that it includes a murder. compulsively interrogating if it's Artistically Valuable enough to be justified. because the default assumption is that it's gratuitous, just there for shock value, that the creators are being deliberately insensitive for tackling a topic that's so dark and terrible. certainly there's no reason for there to be just tons of knives out! such a shame that the other more valuable content outside the murder isn't accessible to more people. and so on and so on, and the essay never gets into what the murder really means and brings into the narrative, if it manages to put together a cohesive picture outside a drawn out summary at all.

this should be obviously bonkers, right?

like. a murder mystery story cannot exist without murder. or outside of murder, i mean, it can always turn out that the victim faked their death. but a murder mystery is still always connected to the topic of murder.

murder isn't a question of accessibility in a murder mystery, it's a question of genre.

...

absolutely nothing about this changes if it's instead sexual themes in erotic horror.

the choice of subject matter is neutral. it's a foregone conclusion when you sit down to analyze a work. you can and should get into what the work actually DOES with the subject matter, that's the part that matters and is actually interesting. that's where things no longer are neutral, and you should wrestle with the whys and hows, not the least because it's plain fun!

[reitziluz]

whats ur ocs fighting styles like? even the ones that dont how would u imagine them go down?

ahh damn this is interesting to consider. i've been kinda intentionally de-emphasizing the fighty bits, because i've recently been rather sick of fighting scenes and duels interrupting, or worse yet, taking over the fun stories i'm trying to read.

that being said. over half of them have actual training and experience. and for one of them, i keep hallucinating elaborate fight choreographies...

kimon: sort of military background (it's complicated) as he was sort of a field healer for a while. as a kid, he was taught a martial art focused on magic knives that can do the evil healing trick of "congrats, you've been akira'd to shreds." he actually can do it with just his hands now, if he manages to touch bare skin, but has a very strict code against doing that. smart and cool-headed, very focused on Getting The Fuck Out.

vaal: hooooooooo boy, the surprise soulsborne boss!! literally the main character concept for em is "former living weapon." the twist is that e was deployed against abominations. like going solo against a dragon. imagine one of them slender, super fast mechs doing shadow of the colossus battle, with something like a lance loaded up with magic bullshit. so specifically a living guided missile system...? (this all is still very much under construction and as stated, i'm not super into specifics in fighting, so bear with me.)

but i've also talked about how e would work in more one on one type of fights with a friend, and we landed on something in the general direction of boreal outrider knight and artorias from dark souls. i bet there's good matches in bloodborne too, but i'm not as familiar with its bosses. e also absolutely Delights in the hunt, despite everything.

arin: absolutely not a fighter. chaotic flailing. could sneak up on someone focused on someone else and bonk them in the head. they would be able to do the in-world equivalent of macing someone, like they would carry it and know how to use it.

tess: not a fighter either. she has it in her to be a commander type, but with her experience etc, it manifests mostly as her knowing how not to endanger herself or others more than they already are. a part of their very formal upbringing was probably something equivalent to like, fencing as a sport.

sam: she works/has worked as a (security) guard. all about keeping things under control, de-escalating, stopping fights before they start. owns a mace/staff/thing with a tazer sleep spell incorporated. she does a martial art also as a hobby, but i haven't landed on the exact style yet. think of like, olden time-y boxing or wrestling matches. she feels a bit more of a wrestling sort of gal, but pugilist is such a good word, i'm torn!

leskel: very much has other people do the fighting for him. also if you tried to bonk him, you'd get fifty magic traps blowing up in your face. but then he'd surprise you again and go pontiff sulyvahn on your ass. the combination of formal dance and heavy swings, i just vibe with it so much. though he's still probably relying on some supernatural stuff to greatly boost his capabilities.

[reitziluz]

wishing u well!!! i hope ur dreams are filled w skelly friends to cheer u up and dispel migraine hell!! ur great!!!

thank you!!

truly the migraine has overstayed its welcome. i can deal with pain and pain meds have been taking it away for a good chunk of hours at a time, but man. the other symptoms kick my ass and those haven't been going away.

but a friend helped me out so at least i got food and more pain relief so! here's to hoping i'll only have a migraine hangover instead of a migraine tomorrow

[reitziluz]

shit-all shuffle? :D

you got kanzaki iori's hug!! [fansubbed vid here]

The autumn winds have already gone past The wounds from that day have long rotted off (...) Although I'm scared, Hug me before I blurt it all out Just for now, just for now Forgive it all. Smile. Hug me Blame it on the season

NOW we're talking! i could paste p much any chunk of the lyrics at random and i'd be able to talk about how it relates to the fic! what i get from the song is fear of vulnerability, avoidance, self-consciousness, and unbearable yearning. and it all breaks into the decision to be dumb, at least get the hug, even if there's still things they're not facing, things that haven't been said. relief and guilt, over and over again.

i vibe this p equally for both reigen and serizawa. something about wanting to pretend past regrets aren't there n all... they both would be familiar with the feelings the song evokes. maybe i'm leaning a bit more towards reigen, but well, that's because i'm biased for him anyway lol!

i got several songs from kanzaki iori on the playlist, and all of them are partially there because they're nice and fast in a way that helps me stay focused and slap down words.

(send me SHUFFLE to get a song from a writing playlist!)

[reitziluz]

Crossing my fingers for something Angsty- SHUFFLE!

you got ewe's untake from the shit-all playlist!

an extremely rare pure instrumental! it has a great, kinda frantic energy. something... desperate? resolute? lots of fun movement. the title and the empty suit are a Vibe.

i associate this song loosely with reigen, but mostly it's just good listening while writing a bit more action-y scenes.

(send me SHUFFLE to get a song from a writing playlist!)

[reitziluz]

What's your favorite comfort food? Like you're at your house after a meh day but you know what will feel just right :)

i tend to have a Favored Meal for some stretch of time before i move to the next one. currently it's the mega burger meal from a burger place nearby. i've... i've eaten it so many times that their bonus program gives me complimentary coffee and soft serve ice cream...

for purely at home stuff, any kind of pasta, but broad noodles with sesame sauce and butter spaghetti specifically

on the treat side, specific brand of chocolate and salt and vinegar chips

[reitziluz]

https://catasters.tumblr.com/image/188761459318 (it's a skeleton pic)

thank you! this will be me next week, when i go over and mom's cat will demand attention.

(i queued up the actual post)