#incredibly niche post but it was made only for me

[sweetly-yours-and-mine]

rip henry winter i dont think you would have survived the computer science for non computer science majors obligatory course every liberal arts major has to do nowadays

[todayisafridaynight]

People really never talk about katase like i genuinely feel bad for her😭 would love to see a katase centered fic abt her thoughts on minedai or smthing like that or just more of her would be so nice. I know you have some fan arts and thank you for that they’re wonderful!!!

everyone got that niche rgg npc they fixate on and katase is my best friend ever i love her so much idc if most of her character lives in my brain she's perfect to me

[efflorescencesims]

→ t-shirts with a bunch of random things i enjoy! ☆ new mesh, bgc ☆ 11 swatches + 2 bonus swatches ☆ feminine frame / teen-elder ☆ custom thumbnail ☆ disabled for random please lmk if there are any issues, since this is my first real piece of cc!!

*ೃ༄ download (sfs)

since this is a thank-you gift, you will find the thank-you notes under the cut (quite cheesy + long)

first of all: thank you so much for 100 followers!!

i especially want to thank all my mutuals for being such amazing people, hyping me up every time i post and blessing my feed with their incredible talent. i don't normally like singling people out because of my fear of leaving people out but i wanted to give a special special shoutout to @miralure and @simulatd because they are literally the sweetest people ever!!

my page is almost a year old but i've only been consistently active since october and if you look at my earlier posts you can definitely tell my edits have gone through a few transformations. even now i’m not entirely sure what my niche is. i wanted to thank you guys for supporting me even when i give you whiplash while trying to figure out what i want my page to be!

i feel a little proud with the progress i’ve made last year, or rather in the last few months. i’ve started learning how to use blender (which i never thought i’d do) and honestly it’s the most fun i’ve had in a while!! it allows me to realize my silly ideas and has almost no limitations. i’m still very new to it, but i’m looking forward to the this year and to all the progress i’ll make.

as for cc making, i have so much respect for cc creators and what they're able to do. going into this with no experience and time to practice (because i gave myself a stupid time limit) was definitely not my smartest move. these shirts honestly don't look the best, which is a little disappointing but if you don't want them, just ignore them and look at the preview instead (which kind of sucks as well) !!

if you read all of this: thank you!! and if you didn't: thank you still!!

i know i'm a little late but nevertheless i wish everyone a happy new year!! i'm so excited to see what this year has in store for us <33 much love & see you soon (because i do need a short break after this...)

[rottenshotgungames]

Alright, let’s start with discourse, shall we?

Gatekeeping Combat

Three days ago, the Gorgon Bones blog made this post about fighters in TTRPGs (particularly the OSR): https://gorgonbones.blogspot.com/2024/02/choosing-fighter-means-choosing-violence.html?m=1

I recommend reading the post, it’s fun (and the comments are hilarious). But, for those who don’t have the time or attention span (trust me, I’m lacking in spoons right now too), this is a relatively short joke that suggests protecting the Fighter class’ niche by making it the only class able to participate in combat. This, on its face, seems like an inherently silly idea—because it is—but people have been interacting with it as a serious suggestion. This comedic concept has spawned a legitimately interesting design discussion. So, let’s engage with it as a thought experiment. How would one make this function in a fun and reasonable way? The simple answer is that you have to start with conflict.

Conflict in RPGs, particularly in Dragon Game derivatives (such as the OSR), is often violent in nature. This presents the first hurdle: How do we centralize combat to 1 class when it’s a major source of conflict, conflict that people inherently want to engage in? As I see it, there are two approaches:

Decentralize Combat.

Redefine “Engaging in Combat.”

Decentralizing combat is kinda just what it says on the tin; make combat a less important source of conflict and means of resolving it. The two biggest examples of this—to me—are Investigative Horror Games and Stealth Games, both of which rely on central conceits that CAN involve violence but don’t necessarily rely upon it. A non-OSR example would be John Harper’s Blades in The Dark, in which combat is resolved the exact same way as every other conflict: through a series of dice rolls that result in ticking and unticking a clock (with possible complications).

Redefining what it means to “engage” requires a bit more definition than the prior approach. “Redefining” can be subcategorized into two somewhat disparate techniques: Redefining goals and redefining interactions.

In any TTRPG combat, the party tends to have a list of goals that exist in a hierarchy of priority. For example, in a traditional D&D or Lancer combat the hierarchy of party goals might look like this:

The Contest (express martial superiority, wipe out the opposition, or otherwise win the combat)

The End State (survive the combat and prevent as much harm to yourself or other party members as possible)

The Barrier (achieve the exploration or narrative goal that’s being hindered or prevented by the combat)

“Redefining” these goals is more accurately described as a re-ordering of their hierarchy based upon whether you are or aren’t the Fighter, usually through gameplay incentives. An incredible example exists in the form of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk 2020, in which the Solo role (through virtue of acting first and being generally able to specialize heavily into combat) can almost singlehandedly decide the outcome of any fight in which they are present. If there is one Solo on the field, their side is probably going to receive a swift victory; your job, as the non-Solo, is simply to not die and accomplish what you actually came here to do. If there are two Solos on opposing sides of the combat, their goals change to winning their private fight; your job, as the non-Solo, is to survive the surrounding combat until the Solo is free again (or to run if they lose). In almost every combat, the Solo will prioritize the Contest while the rest of the party will prioritize either the End State or the Barrier, something aided by Cyberpunk’s lethality and its nature as a heist game.

“Redefining combat interaction” is . . . actually found everywhere. This is your basic class differentiation taken to a greater extreme than you may find in most tactical RPGs. For example, let’s look at the Combat relevant difference between the Thief/Rogue/Mercenary and the Fighter in a majority of games that use such classes:

The Fighter - Deals a lot of damage with consistently accurate attacks (sometimes also makes multiple attacks on their turn). Has high health.

The Thief - Deals a lot of damage with one really powerful attack made from stealth, sneaky (sometimes good at dodging). Has low health.

The differentiation is there, but it’s not really significant (for the purposes of this thought experiment). Both classes focus on damage output, but one makes multiple attacks and one makes a strong attack that requires setup. Let’s try to take this difference and expand it (with a little help from our dear friend Tolkien), particularly by focusing on what makes the Thief unique in comparison to the Fighter:

The Fighter - Deals a lot of damage with consistently accurate attacks (sometimes also makes multiple attacks on their turn). Has high health.

The Thief - Subverts direct combat through the use of trickery and cunning, plays support for the Fighter (sometimes good at dodging). Has low health.

“Subversion,” in this context, simply means fighting dirty. The Thief shouldn’t be engaging in a head-on fight, they’re a Thief. Their interaction with hostile entities should always be tinged by deceit, their goal should always be to throw their enemy off balance, to create openings for others and themselves to use. If your Thief isn’t constantly throwing pocket sand and disarming opponents and knocking chandeliers on top of them and pulling cloaks over their eyes and poisoning them and . . . are they really living out the Thief fantasy? By strengthening the Thief’s core identity, leaning fully into the trickster aspect, we have redefined how both classes interact with Combat in such a way that has made direct, head-on-head violence the apparent specialty of the Fighter.

Conclusion

As much as the original Gorgon Bones blog post is a joke, Jenx does point out a real issue that’s plagued class-based games for a while: a weak niche makes a weak class. Not necessarily mechanically weak (although that can also happen, looking at you CP2020 Cop), but weak in the sense of fundamental design. Strong niches, even if every class has the ability to participate in combat, are born of purposefully and carefully built interactions with the conflicts presented by a game’s rules and environment. If combat is too great of a focus, everyone is going to want to be able to play the guy who’s good at combat; if winning combat is the sole goal of any given encounter, everyone’s going to play the guy that’s good at winning combats; if every class gets good tools for dealing damage . . . well, I don’t really have to spell that one out, do I?

If you’re designing a tactical, class based game: don’t make the Fighter the only class able to engage in combats. It’s lazy, it’s silly, and it won’t be fun for very long. You may notice that, while the two games mentioned here have classes that EXCEL at direct combat, neither of them fully limit it. Instead, the proper lesson of this thought experiment is a far more common one in our field: keep in mind the incentives you’re building into both your game and your classes, and be aware of how all these moving parts interact with and affect each other. After all, the Solo wouldn’t be nearly as good if Cyberpunk wasn’t so lethal, and the Cutter would be far more ubiquitous if Blades in The Dark had a dedicated combat chapter.

Self Promo

Hey! Thanks for reading. Sorry to leave ya with Baby’s First Game Design Lesson, but I hope ya enjoyed the journey there. If you’d like to see my recent attempt at a class based fantasy game, you can click here to check out Hollow Halls. Otherwise, I hope y’all have a great night and a great day!

[osakanone]

"How realistic are mecha, really?": They aren't, but not for the reason you're thinking of or the one adjacent to it. Trust me.

Crossposted from reddit, since people seemed to like it. Like in the thread, I am very happy to answer questions about any esoteric weirdness.

Hold my beer. Again

They're not becoming a possibility. Yes. I know. This sucks. But stick around. Its not for the reasons you think. Well it is, but it also isn't. You'll see.

The robot needs the technology more than the technology needs a robot.

the technologies which the robot needs will improve and alter the doctrine of every other platform

This creates a doctrinal lock-in where the potential functional space for them to exist is unmet -- that they are so far ahead, that nothing new can emerge that isn't just other platforms becoming more generalized (eg, a post-stall recovery aircraft, or a helicopter with high impact landing-gear and a rigid rotor/jet engine design to act as a surface-fighter -- a tank which walks or manoeuvres like a robot is just flat out of the question: Tanks are made to be simple-as-fuck boxes which tank hits, and shoot and acquire asap and rumours of their deaths as a doctrinal weapon are exaggerated by recent events where obsolete weapons which aren't maintained properly who's crews aren't adequately trained were fighting very clever civilians with drones)

What you consider "realistic" (5th/6th) is just as if not more unrealistic than other gens purely because of their smaller size and very bizarre relationship with the environment -- they're just both too big, and too small to make sense, sitting in a size niche which is just very weird

If such a vehicle does exist, its going to be defined by its functions rather than a humanoid appearance

we know this because specialized platforms tend to beat specialized platforms historically until specialized platforms mature and become generalized

thus, the closest you're probably going to get is some weird variation of DARPA's Ground X Vehicle Project meeting with Gravity Industry' style mobility in limited cases, hybridized with smaller robots and wingsuits, which mix manoeuvring operation styles, with some rocker-boogie mechanism elements for terrain handling: It won't be humanoid, whatever it is.

This is assuming you can magically solve the square-cube law of volume-mass which is partially negatable with certain custom topologies exceeding graphene but actually manufacturing them would be miserable work probably not even be something you can make without microgravity

Energy flat out isn't solvable with what we know about right now. Nothing with that energy density can exist that isn't going to simultaneously make for an incredible fragile, dangerous and problematic source of power given the forces involved. Cooling is also a horrifyingly unsolvable problem on this scale, as is radiation management: You can't just dump molten tungsten in emergency cooling mode - you'll not only proceed to alert everybody who has even the vaguest IRST capacity to your position, but you'll also probably set fire to the environment and cook off your own ammunition. *

Motors aren't well suited to the tasks of such bodies (its like trying to make a slingshot out of dental floss), and we don't have an effective way to turn electricity into a form of motion which corresponds with the shock absorbing and motion control qualities which are actually desirable yet

Even if we did, the actual means of ensuring it doesn't fragment every time it moves don't exist. Every time an A10C fires its main gun, the fuel lines micro-fracture and have to be replaced after it lands. Metal, when you subject it to high physical forces ends up feeling and behaving closer to how you would think of glass. You'd need a material capable of repairing itself too, atop the quasicrystalline property which again, just isn't doable, let alone simultaneously.

So in terms of our mindset going into this?

Its... Probably not happening barring a very, VERY extreme change to how we understand physics to function, or some really kick ass (and actually entirely possible) changes in how engineering achieves outcomes (which could happen if the greatest threat to the mecha didn't exist)

Combat is moving towards information dominance. 

That's drone swarms, and role modularized long range travel, and the idea of fighter beyond-visual-range combat extending out to infared search and track systems which are networked to one another, which we're already seeing in singleton weapons and their mounting strategies even on the personal scale, which DARPA is currently investigating which everybody wants to mate with the gravity industries gear for boarding ops so the most likely avenue is to scale up from people, rather than scale down from vehicles as the development pathway -- but there's probably going to be multiple pathways with competing niches once the technology becomes cheap enough.

Costing

Ultimately its down to "how much money do I have to spend to defeat something more expensive than myself?" -- because our current structure of war is defined by cost, and by making the other guys surrender by using economic, and military violence (private, and publicly funded) instead of convincing them that we (NATO members, etc) have good opinions purely because of the natural benefits of "doing as we say" (which we see with basically any conflict in the last 70 years, which are usually feigned as ideological but pretty much always about disrupting market competition, dominating markets, or controlling a pressure position in another country to achieve those two things).

This isn't because they're particularly excellent weapons, but because they're cheap relative to the strength they offer, and how we define cheap is very different to how we defined cheap 100 years ago -- both in good, and terrible ways (such is the way of history).

Mecha are kinda the ultimate boondoggle. They are very very expensive, and just don't make sense.

They're cool as hell, yes.

But they don't make sense.

DISCLAIMER: If you're prone to depression, are dealing with a lot right now, or don't want your day ruining, you should stop reading NOW. What comes next is a psychosocial hazard and could be very bad for your mental health. LAST CHANCE . . .

The "real" reasons

If conflict some how became a meritocracy of leading by excellence rather than intimidation, and about human outcomes instead of cost outcomes, then things could change, but we don't live in that world.

Remember, violence exists to end human conflict (not to be confused with military conflict, which violence is the primary instrument of): Human conflict is when two parties oppose one another and communicate about what their goals and intentions are. Violence happens when communication stops. Communication stops, because parties cannot come to terms, or because nobody wants to be reasonable because the inherent request is unreasonable to the interests of the other party.

I'd love to say physics is the greatest threat, or maybe our concept of conflict but its not: * Its economics.

The concept of private-equity (not to be confused with venture-capital investment) is kiiiind of the dominant economic system on the face of the planet which dictates the interest of every nuclear power's actions against every non-nuclear power) is functionally dissolved, and investment models as we know them magically become better regulated OR a better economic system comes along which totally undermines private equity.

Its an economic finger-trap where most of the money that would be reinvested into people and technologies to push the world forward ends up getting swallowed up.

It also has private armies) and simulates the economy and political events in order to control them for maximum profitability. Yeah.)

We already live in Armored Core, folks.

And that economic system knows that if it gave free agents like ravens any kind of military power, it would functionally undermine itself, which is why it will never happen.

Private equity benefits from not having technology change, because its primary goal is wealth extraction. It leads to the collapse of every business you've ever seen go under, its why products undergo enshittification, which is coming for everything.

Its why the housing crisis happened, why the banking collapse happened, and its why there's an incentive to continue industrializing diseases like insulin instead of curing them.

tl;dr:

The one thing AC gets super wrong is you can either have the depressing relatable low-saturation late-stage hyper-capitalist dystopia where life is cheap on planet earth and everything terrible about South Korea times a thousand covers the whole world, and you need to have your own organs brought from you and leased back to you to lock you in to a lifetime of debt the same way everything else works...

OR

you can have the robot;

You can't have both.

e: I'd pick the robot any day

--

Apologies for any inaccuracies, I haven't edited this and I threw the original together in the space of around 40 minutes. Questions very welcome: I enjoy giving long detailed and substantiated answers.

If you enjoyed this, please consider reading my other work on the theoretical design factors of mecha, their control systems, and my fictional writing in mechposting.

[wutheringmights]

Chapter 27: The Holy Lament & The Good Night Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Additional Tags: Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Alternate Universe, Character Study, War, world building, Trauma, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Political Intrigue, Found Family, Angst and Humor, Warriors is a very complicated person, Warriors also does not know Time is Mask, Warriors (Linked Universe)-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Angst, Manipulation, Morally Ambiguous Character, Please read content warnings before each chapter, Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Physical Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, Power Imbalance, Implied/Referenced Torture, Blood and Injury, Disabled Character, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat Summary: “You are going to hear a lot of terrible things about me. Most of it is going to be true.” Being the hero who saved Hyrule from a bloody war was a thankless job that left Warriors with more regrets than he cared to remember. He only started to heal after meeting his fellow heroes from across time and joining them on their quest to defeat the black-blooded monsters. But when his time-hopping journey takes him back home, he finds his kingdom on the brink of war once more. This war threatens to ensnare not only Warriors, but his newfound family as well. Warriors will do whatever it takes to keep them safe, even if that means becoming a traitor to the kingdom he gave up everything to save. But the harder Warriors works to protect his family, the more the secrets of his dark past come to life. Who is Captain Link Walton, the Hero of Warriors? What happened to the two other heroes he had once fought alongside all those years ago? When this is over, will Warriors even have a family left to save or is he doomed to repeat his past mistakes? (Once, there were three brothers: the captain, the engineer, and the child. Their story did not have a happy ending.)

If I didn't force myself to post this now, I don't think I ever will. I have not been so nervous about a chapter in a very long time.

Does that bode well for me? No. But I will march on nonetheless. Insert joke about this chapter is already over half a million words long and all the rights it gives me to do whatever the hell I want at this point.

In this chapter of--and I cannot stress this enough--my incredibly niche fanfiction:

Link has a fun night out on what is totally not the Hylian equivalent of Halloween

Ganondorf is here, and you know what that means! Keeping Up With the Harkinians is back!

And... uh... what I can only describe as the stupidest decision I have ever made (yay)

>> Read it here >>

[trans-cuchulainn]

pretty much the only good thing about having a lot of followers is that you can use it to boost posts that otherwise have like 2 notes. like you see your friend's niche art and boop, fifty notes for you. or someone's made a good joke about your incredibly specific interests: cool, i know exactly how to get that in front of its target audience -- i have dug years-old ulster cycle posts out of tags and taken them from <10 notes to >100 in a few hours

almost everything else about it is honestly a pain in the arse and makes it really hard to just Be A Guy On The Internet because that boost happens to everything. and when i say a lot i mean 3000+ followers so god knows how people with 10k+ cope

i guess having 3k followers when you're an incredibly niche blogger means a lot of those followers are more actively invested and perhaps have the interaction levels of a larger group but honestly it's more about the speed at which circulate to non-followers that makes it bothersome, bc the people who actually follow me usually have a vague idea of where i'm coming from and what i was trying to say in a post, but it feels like every other post these days is "escaping containment" as they say and whew it's tiring

[spicymotte]

How fandom culture killed my creativity

hi. I have some thoughts about my time in a huge fandom and how it changed me:

First of all, I would like to say that these are my personal experiences in a large anime fandom. I have made very good friends with whom I am still in contact today - and I was exposed to a kind of brain rot that has changed the way I deal with art forever. However, this does not apply to every fandom/every person.

this - essay? - is way longer than I thought it would be. More under the cut:

In 2020, after a long break, I was able to get excited about One Piece again. Until then, I had always considered art important to me and I had never been able to do it professionally. (maybe someday...!)

The One Piece fandom is huge. There are now over 1000 manga chapters and anime episodes, which is gigantic; and the fandom itself is just as huge: millions of fans love this manga/anime and exchange ideas about it on the internet. I was previously very limited to tumblr, but then I ventured into OPtwt, the One Piece community on Twitter. There is a lot of fan art, fan fiction and small cliques that like the same character. There is something for everyone. It was great! I had a hyperfixation phase on OP before, in 2017. Now it came back - so violently that I realized very quickly that I could hardly think of anything else but One Piece.

Hyperfixations involve two major factors: an intense obsession with a character (or theme/media/whatever), which often brings with it a bottomless well of inspiration and motivation for artists – and a strange influence on brain chemistry. Neurodivergent people are prone to difficulties with the release of happiness and rewarding hormones anyway, and even though I am in no way qualified to make grand statements, as a person living with AuDHD, hyperfixations are both a blessing and a curse.

Often, the neurodivergent niches in the fandom communities are very lively. On extremely interactive social media like Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, you are flooded with posts of fan art, discussions and also escalation. It quickly becomes stressful for the brain to keep up with it - especially if you manage to accumulate a large number of followers. (also a blessing and a curse!)

I started posting fanart and OC x canon in 2020. I spent most of the last three years on Twitter and I have to say that it set me back in some ways. At first, I was slow to get to know people through fanart, but then I got to know people very quickly: fellow artists that I am still good friends with today and, unfortunately, people who have also succumbed to an incredible, destructive brainrot. I had chosen a character (or rather, my brain did) who plays almost no role in One Piece. All the better, so I pretty much had him to myself and I could do whatever I wanted. The OC x canon community is generally very friendly and respectful, so I found quite a few people who liked what I drew. Cool!

And then it started. With fanart and a small fan club for my OCs, I got more followers and more likes. More retweets and comments, more notifications. The algorithm started to like me and the growth increased steadily. My fandom (OP) account grew, as did my reach.

I checked Twitter more and more. Every free second I took my smartphone in my hand and checked my notifications. I reloaded the page until I had a new notification. I repeated this on Instagram and tumblr. Sometimes I catch myself doing it today, even though I haven't been active in this fandom for over a year!

Likes were good, retweets better. Every notification of an interaction with my art was a push on the feel-good button in my brain. It's very addictive, even if I talked myself out of it at first. The pandemic was at its peak and the internet was the only way to meet friends anyway. All this shit was fast food for my brain.

Then I started drawing fanarts, even though I didn't feel like it. But the likes had to come from somewhere, didn't they? I drew favorites from manga, characters that I didn't even like that much myself. But they were popular, so that promised likes and reach! Every single day, really every day, I drew fanarts. I was disappointed with myself if I didn't.

As of today, my two One Piece art folders have 80GB of data in it! what the fuck!! That's not normal!

I learned a lot during that time and was able to develop my art. I was able to participate in projects, to draw for several zines and also had a lot of fun – but I treated it like a job. Making fan art your job is very difficult – and has a lot of consequences. If you run a merch shop (as I did for a short time), you always have to follow the hype and draw what's in style. You switch fandoms because the hype has just burned out and the next new thing is already in style. If you're one of the first to offer keychains and stickers - or plushies - you make the big money. That brings profit, but in my opinion you can very quickly step on the wrong foot in this jumping around and slip into burnout. (Or stagnate to such an extent that you lose all motivation to refine your artistic skills and become better at your craft.)

I see friends of mine, many of them, who are trying to live off of fandom merch. They all have one thing in common: their skills in art have remained absolutely the same over the past few years or have even declined. If you have to churn out a new batch of merchandise every week, you have to cut corners. There is no time for experiments and crazy studies when you can hardly live and have to produce merch/fan art that sells 100% well.

I don't mean to offend anyone - it's just that I've been thinking a lot about my own setbacks as an artist since I've been dealing with them so intimately. And I've definitely made some setbacks!

In 2021-2023, fandom life continued and got worse and worse. Checking my smartphone, drawing something every day to post it - just so that the algorithm doesn't sort me out. Posting daily is the number one rule on all Social Media, unfortunately. But I did it, no matter how burned out I felt.

And then there were the dramas on Twitter: internet puritans, antis and proshippers were screaming at each other and tearing each other to shreds (a trap I almost fell into myself! anti and pro are the biggest bullshit ever and I'm lucky enough to have reached a point where I can say: I don't give a shit lol). Callout posts, vague tweeting and aggression instead of simply blocking and moving on. Harassment that I myself experienced: I blocked a few people because I found them strange and unpleasant. They posted explicit things that I did not want to see on my timeline. This triggered a wave of harassment that was simply disgusting. These are people who hate their own lives so much that they can't do anything but feel miserable and stalk strangers online. Admittedly, this made me paranoid: a group of people had chosen me as a target. They passed around screenshots of many of my tweets and made fun of me, copying and stealing my art 1:1. They lied and cheated to make me look like an asshole – and this went on for years. It made me paranoid and was the first step away from fandoms, as it escalated more and more.

So, I was successfully bullied out of the fandom and my hyperfixation was over. It left a terrible void that I am still trying to fill today. Neurodivergence sucks, I'll tell you.

That's when I honestly asked myself for the first time: What the fuck am I doing here? When did I become a content machine for strangers on the internet? Why the hell do I feel so bad when I don't draw for a day? And why do I care what strangers think about me?!

Then I realized that I can't draw anymore.

Without references or the 3D models from Clip Studio Paint, I'm lost. When I try to draw something without any help, I sit in front of an empty canvas. My hands don't do what they're supposed to do and my brain blocks the thought of how drawing even works. My eyes only see the mistakes I make. Everything I draw looks bad to me.

I realized I have a problem.

So I try again and learn it all again from scratch: Anatomy, perspective, color theory, everything. But every time I sit down and try to put something on paper, there's nothing there. I've been drawing things every day for the last four years. Now my hyperfixation on this character and this manga is over and there's nothing left. I've been burning the candle at both ends and I've broken something in the process. Art is no longer something I enjoy. I need art to live and breathe, no doubt, but… the barrel now has a bottom again and it's empty to the last drop.

The little motivation I can muster goes into my webcomic, which is my everything. It's just mine, not a fandom. I feel honored that so many people read this comic. At the same time, I'm afraid that it's not enough; in my eyes, my art doesn't look good. Being surrounded by perfect illustrations on social media all day long distorts one's own perception of art, like the beauty industry that gives you body dysmorphia. On top of that, I haven't had any financial success with my comics in recent years, none at all. The dream of being an independent comic artist has receded so far into the distance that I can no longer see it. Bummer.

The constant stream of content that I gave during my fandom days has set me back incredibly. I can no longer enjoy the process of art, but my brain constantly pushes me to finish it, to have a finished product - because then I can post the drawing and get the virtual handshake that my weird brain likes so much.

Social media detox, of course, is the first thing that comes to mind. It's actually bullshit that we're all so addicted to these apps, but here we are. It's uncomfortable for me to admit, but I have hardly any friends in real life. I'm very introverted and many people find my autism very unpleasant (I can't blame them, I often come across as rude), so I only have 1-2 friends. I would like to have more friends, but maintaining social contact is terribly exhausting. It's hard enough to reply to my mutuals in the DMs (sorryyyyy if I forget sometimes………).

And what if I just take a break for a while and don't draw so much? Recharge my batteries? Right now I'm taking a 6-week break, partly because my jaw surgery is coming up soon. I'll be sick anyway, so why not put the webcomic on hiatus and take a break for a while? I don't know if it will work out, but I have a hunch that it won't, because I always have the fast-paced internet in the back of my mind. How can I be a freelancer if I don't do fanart? How can I make money with it to help my partner, who is currently financing our lives, financially? How can I, as a disabled person, find a job that I can do and at the same time build my career as an artist? As an independent comic artist, I have to do the job of so many people (artist, author, manager, taxes, work organization), how am I supposed to do that?

I have no answers to these questions. Original works don't go nearly as well as fanart! So you have to work ten times as hard and play by the vague rules of the algorithms, which is exhausting enough. Nowadays, you can only be lucky and ride the viral wave if it falls into your lap.

But reflecting on my time in a huge fandom has made me realize that I was going down a very wrong path and am now experiencing the consequences. I'm completely burnt out and no longer know why I'm even making art anymore. I don't know if I want to make art much longer. (I think shit-life-syndrome plays a big role here, but not exclusively.)

As I said, I don't have any answers - but I would at least like to warn those who are having difficulties with distancing themselves from the internet and are quickly losing themselves in this maelstrom of social media.

I have since deleted Twitter from my smartphone and, fortunately, have hardly ever used TikTok (dodged a bullet there!). I try to get back into traditional art and get away from my computer. I am all the more grateful to the people, my community, so to speak, who do nonsense with me on tumblr. They read my comics and are extremely nice to me, which I really appreciate. Thank you!

I don't know yet if and how it will continue, but I would like to finish Berserkir in the next few years. I'd love to find a way to finish all the short comics I want to make, even though it's just me and not a whole team. Maybe I'll find a way, maybe I don't. Anyways, thanks for sticking around!

[pastafossa]

Charlie Cox experience at Philly Fan Expo 2023

So LET”S TALK ABOUT ME MEETING CHARLIE. I’m actually going to make two posts - this one just about my experiences with Charlie, because they were incredibly meaningful and deserve their own post, and then another one about the rest of the con!

I’m going to talk about Charlie first, because of how amazing the experience was, one of the best I’ve had, especially at the autograph table. I’ve done photos, gotten autographs and such before from other celebs - from niche voice actors I loved to people like David Tennant - but this felt Really Really Big. Obviously, I was nervous as all hell because holy shit Charlie Cox, my favorite actor whose work altered the course of my life. I won’t lie - I’d been practicing what to say to him in case I freaked out, but I’m happy to say that everyone who reassured me it would go great, because he was so, so genuine and kind, were right.

The photo op happened first (and thank you to everyone on tumblr guiding me where to go, cause I was LOST about where that was happening), and that went fast. By that point in the con hall, I’d already ditched my Jessica Jones jacket and gloves cause holy shit it’s hot and I am a creature of snow and ice, and my hair was a mess, but honestly I didn’t care, cause there he is. You don’t get long, but he made the most of it and he was SO sweet. Ya’ll, he asked my name, said my name as he shook my hand, and called me ‘my dear’ in that beautiful voice.

I was literally on the moon, but it was time for the big question:

Will he hold the red thread from TRT?

So in a quiet, nervous, soft author voice, I asked, ‘would you be ok with holding this end of the thread?’

HE FUCKING DID.

HE HELD IT.

HE HELD. THE. RED. THREAD.

I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know about the fic at this point - he wasn’t sure where to hold it until I told him, but he loved that it lit up! AND THEN HE PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME AND I GOT TO PUT MY ARM AROUND HIM BACK.

I’m fairly certain I’m dead in the photo. My soul had left my body. I had ascended. I saw Jesus and he looked like Charlie. I had achieved fic author heights never imagined. My brain filled with enough serotonin and dopamine to sink a ship. I didn’t care that I was hot and sweaty or that my hair was messy or that my cosplay didn’t work out like I’d planned. I had been blessed.

also look at that forearm holy shit

I floated outta that gd room ya’ll. I’m pretty sure @wonderlandmind4​ did the same. WE FROLICKED OUT OF THAT HALL LIKE

But things got even better at the autograph table, and I had one of the most touching experiences ever.

not me tearing up thinking about it.

That line was long, but I kept getting glimpses of him and I could already tell he was enjoying interacting with people, and he was making sure everyone got their bit of time with him instead of letting anyone rush people through. He was so happy looking, laughing and grinning, high fives and fist bumps for kids, chatting with fans. Which made me feel a little more confident.

I know some people wondered if I’d tell him about TRT, and I’d already decided I wasn’t going to. Instead, I really, really wanted just a second to tell him what his work as Daredevil had meant for me, as someone who became disabled around the same time Matt did as a kid, and who related to... a lot of what Matt went through in the show. I’d practiced it over and over again, and there was only a fifty percent chance I wouldn’t start crying while telling him, and I wasn’t even sure I’d have time to tell him depending on how much time we had.

He made time.

I got up to him with my art print holy shit he’s even more beautiful in person and his eyes are STUNNING. He said hi, and asked my name so he could personalize the autograph if I wanted (DUH, YES PLEASE), and he apologized about the line after we shook hands. I jokingly told him it was fine since I’d driven hours to get here. A little time in line wasn’t a bother. He even loved one of the buttons on my lanyard - the button of Matt wearing a heart crown specifically! And as he was writing, I knew this was my chance to tell him. He was still signing, so I just decided to go for it in case I ran out of time.

“I just wanted to tell you,” I said quietly, “as someone who became disabled as a kid around the same age as Matt did—”

And then he did something I didn’t expect, something I’d rarely seen anyone do, famous or not, and something I’d never had an actor or artist do for me.

He immediately set down the pen, leaned in close over the table, and made direct eye contact, while giving me the most genuine, gentle, encouraging smile I’d ever seen.

In that moment, I knew everything in him was listening, that he cared about what I was about to say and recognized that this was important to me, and that he’d closed the distance to make this conversation just... us. It felt personal in a way I’ve never experienced at a con or signing.  

Just like that, I wasn’t afraid to tell him what I’d wanted to.

“And as someone who related to... a lot of what Matt went through, his struggles in the show, and especially the dark parts of season 3,” I said, more confidently now, “I wanted you to know that all the work you put in, the way you played it, the way you played Matt and treated it seriously, seeing that helped me process and heal from a lot of my own trauma and pain over what I’ve gone through with my illnesses. What you did was important and it really helped me. So I wanted you to know that, how much that meant to me, and to say thank you.”

The whole time I spoke to him, he kept direct eye contact, and didn’t look away once. He didn’t get antsy, or look like he wanted me to hurry up (which I’d have understood, cause damn, these are long days for him). He listened, fully engaged and leaning in, his eyes warm and soft and kind but incredibly serious. I’m not sure how often he’s been told something like this—a lot, I expect; his portrayal was just that good, and I know it was important to a lot of fans—but what I was trying to tell him clearly meant something to him. I felt heard, seen, and understood.

Charlie really does care about his fans. It isn’t an act. I’m sure of it now.

“Thank you, truly,” he said, just as quietly but with that honest smile, eye crinkles and all, and seeing it in person, that close up, I swear the room felt ten times brighter. “Thank you for coming to tell me that. It means a lot, the idea that something I did meant so much and that it could help you. I’m so grateful that you were able to come visit and tell me.”

We shook hands after that. He wished me a good day and I told him thank you again, and that was that. The interaction only lasted maybe a minute, but it meant the absolute world to me, as did what he’s done as Daredevil. And now he knows that.

[slaingelo]

pride headcanons and boy do I have a fuckin lot so take your pic ig, (oh yea they’re all transmasc hcs ofc so I’ll just list it)

transmasc Ruto, Botw paya and Zelda, Cia

oh also Botw Zelda and Link are Transmasc for Transmasc, they are very gay and very in love

feel free to draw which one you wanna or not one at all you don’t have to answer this!

this might've made me go a bit insane ok. first thoughts upon seeing this; LACE UP BINDERS T4T BOTW ZELINK HELPING EACH OTHER LACE THEM UP PROPERLY. gotta draw that, might come back to do those other ones though bc boy do I have thoughts about those also !

second thoughts. holy Fucking shit this gives me an excuse to go off about trans masc zelda and how inherently interesting that can be to the entire narrative. and then realizing how amazingly it could mesh with botw zelda's story specifically into a queer retelling.

THANKS ANON THIS ALONE MADE ME ACTUALLY LIKE BOTW ZELINK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME

zelda's role is to take up the powers of hylia. zelda has always been a girl, a woman. of course all of them would be. hylia is a goddess. the first zelda was hylia's personal vessel.

botw zelda [ going to call him zel here on out in this post for clarity lol ] would have to come to terms with how his feelings don't align with his self-perceived role. at first, he thinks his yearning to be a boy is more to do with hating his responsibilities. i think his relationship with both his gender and his role in destiny is an incredible complicated one because of all of this.

meeting link, the other destined one, probably really fucks him up more. link being a trans boy himself, on a surface level, one might think would bring zel relief; someone like him, so close to him. but it does the opposite. link has always been a boy. this link, being assigned female at birth, is a boy as well. to zel, this reaffirms his thoughts that destiny has locked their genders into place.

in general, i don't think transphobia is a huge thing in the loz universe. it's like, a very niche kind of bigotry thankfully. it's MY childhood fantasy games and i get to mostly poof it out. i think the big exception to this would be those associated with destiny, prophecies, and of course, the reincarnation cycle.

zel is pressured to not only be a good daughter and princess, but to take on the powers that should be blessed to him by the goddess herself. everything just drives him further into hating everything, including link early on.

a big part of zel being able to actually unlock his powers would be both what i think happens in game [ desperation to protect ] as well as acceptance of himself. zel's inner turmoil over his own identity, where his duty as holder of the triforce of wisdom starts and right to be himself ends.

of course, there's no actual reason for the holder of wisdom to be a woman; as there is none for the holder of courage or power to be a man. it just so happens that it tends to be like that.

i think a retelling like this could add such a strong layer onto zel's character arc. it's so good. augh. thank yuo i hope any of this is somewhat coherent. they kiss in the end

btw i think generally trans masc zeldas go for the name sheik [ thank you OOT sheik you walked so the other tran masc zeldas could run ] but botw zelda specifically would take the scientific name of like, a small critter or plant, and alter it so it sounds kind of like a hylian name. OR just go by 'zel'. or both ! idk.

[canmom]

NieR Orchestra Concert 12024 [the end of data] (London, 15/2/2024)

NieR concert was incredible just as expected. Honestly, from the moment I got there - the cosplayers, the general atmosphere, it was just a good place to be surrounded by NieR nerds lmao. So many people happy to chat with the stranger next to them, kind of a con vibe.

But of course we were there for the music! And it was fuckin amazing. The emi evans/j'nique nicole duets😭These were special orchestral arrangements specifically for this concert, and the way the sound of the orchestra fills the space, how you can see a phrase physically ripple across the orchestra... I don't get to go to a lot of concerts but I really should try to go more often, because it's something else to hear orchestral music.

below: further comments on the concert, lots of cosplay photos.

The multimedia elements also worked really well - every piece was accompanied with backing videos using either demosceney abstract visuals or images from the games, along with text that told a short story over the course of the concert, with some segments voice acted by the English voices of 2B and 9S (Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley, who have previously made their own performances of the original Japan-only concert readings). I won't spoil the story in this post since there are still concerts to come, but it was... not that substantial I'll admit, but sweet, and a nice framing device to create a flow through the songs and various moments from the games.

Hearing J'nique Nicole's voice live though, that was incredible. Emi Evans was there just as last time, and just as amazing as always - but this time we had both of them on stage together, and it was absolutely sublime. We all went wild. They performed duets in several songs, with the standouts naturally being A Beautiful Song, Ashes of Dreams, and of course Weight of the World. I think we all thought that was the end because we gave it a standing ovation but then Emi came back out to perform Kainé. After that we got into the groove of standing up and stood up again like three more times lol.

Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito showed up at the end and made a bunch of rapidfire jokes in Japanese that the translator couldn't keep up with, bless her. But we got to give them like the fourth standing ovation of the night, and made a lot of noise when Yoko Taro suggested it would persuade the president of Squeenix to fund a sequel. I'm sure they appreciated it lmao. I think it must be so weird for Yoko Taro to go from someone with a career of niche, unsuccessful games to being internationally renowned to the point that a massive auditorium full of people in multiple countries will go absolutely nuts just to hear him speak a language we mostly don't speak.

Good mix of people who were at a NieR concert for the first time and people who'd been to the last one. There was a guy near me who had apparently been to the Berlin concert just a few days before, and snagged a ticket for this one literally yesterday just to get it again with better acoustics. I respect it lol. Everyone I spoke to was remarkably friendly - last time I went to one of these things I felt really nervous about approaching anyone but it seems I've gotten better about that kind of thing in the last few years. Anyway, people had come from all over - I chatted with a pair of Americans from Boston all the way down the merch line.

Here are some pictures, mostly of cosplayers. I am still getting used to shooting with the DSLR my friend gave me, so not all of these came out perfectly steady and some of them the exposure wasn't right,, but there are some nice ones in here...

bokeeeeehhhhhhhhh... I spoke a bit to the owner of this 9S doll. Her mum was there too, and it turns out she's a haberdasher who makes cosplays for her daughters and has now done over 70. That's a legendary mum right there.

The 9S cosplayer here gave me his instagram. he's a pro photographer so I feel a little embarassed at the quality of the photos I took of him ^^'

I got some merch too, since I understand it's the main way events like this support themselves.

That Kainé thing isn't a print, it's a vinyl record with a few arrangements of Kainé. Though I was totally prepared to buy it as a print because it's a lovely drawing. I don't actually own a record player, but one day I'll surely listen to it ^^'

I was too fatigued to make a cosplay this time, but I'm sure there will be another concert and next time, for sure, I will go as Devola or Popola. Unless Yoko Taro comes up with another redhead character in the meantime lmao.

[kivaember]

Not sure if anyone's asked you this yet but PLEASE drop the walt/mich essay!!!

OKAY i went crazy and did an actual essay. im not joking this fucker is long. i'd open the read more in another tab, just to warn you.

ALSO ALSO! This was just me sitting down and rambling about things. It's a summarisation of my thoughts, and I pared it down since it was hitting 5k (it's about 4.4k words long lmao). If this essay has you thinking of specific questions and the like, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them!

Now without further ado, my ramblings below:

THE WALTER/MICHIGAN SHIP ESSAY!

INTRO

That's right baby, I'm giving this an intro and everything. Alright, this essay is all about exploring and explaining my version of the Walter/Michigan ship using the characterisation I gave them for the APV verse. First I'm going to drill down into the individual characters, what makes them tick, their backstory, etc, before finally going into detail about how they mesh together as a ship and why they're both good yet terrible for each other.

THE WORLD LORE

To understand Michigan and Walter, we need to understand the type of world they were born into. Furlong Dynamics is a major powerhouse on the Jupiter colonies, owning several shipyards and carving a specific niche for themselves as the weapon-dealer for interstellar craft. They may not be as well-known or successful as Arquebus or Balam in the defence industry in terms of MTs or ACs, but if you're arming an interstellar craft, you sure as shit are going to use Furlong Dynamics weaponry.

Problem is in post-Fires age, that corner of the market is stagnating due to a lack of new interstellar craft being built. Prior to the discovery of Coral as an energy source, humanity had to do long-stasis and slow-walking their way across the galaxy, which meant trade and the like was incredibly limited between extrasolar colonies. With Coral, however, they were able to make tremendous technological shortcuts to create what they called the "C-Wave Drive". It functions a lot like the hypothetical Alcubierre Drive, with Coral producing the insane amounts of energy required and running the equally insane amounts of calculations needed to ensure the craft doesn't crush itself into a singularity (also, Coral has a very strange relationship with spacetime, the scientists found...). An added bonus as well was that these "C-Wave Drives" required no refuelling.

The interstellar craft needed crude fuel for sublight travel and other functionalities on the ship, but as for long-distance travel? There was no need to make pitstops or set aside cargo space for fuel, so many ships got used to just carrying a small amount that would allow them to travel as needed locally, as it would be easy to refuel when arriving at their destination as and when was needed.

Post-Fires changed this landscape drastically. Overnight, the interstellar craft market was rocked by the realisation that the previously thought limitless and abundant miracle substance that made FTL travel easy and convenient was now extremely finite had them all scrambling. The UEG openly seized every single galactic store of Coral from the corporations, citing "galactic security", and all orders for new interstellar craft - amongst other Coral technologies - instantly halted.

By Young Jupiter time (ten years post-Fires), Furlong Dynamics is beginning to feel the strain. They built their empire on focusing predominantly on interstellar craft - their designs, their weaponry, their engines - and their frantic R&D into solving the energy problem the Coral had shortcutted wasn't going very well. All that could be done was continue to maintain the existing ships that existed, as theoretically the C-Wave Drives could run indefinitely until some sort of mechanical failure happened due to wear and tear. As for new ships, the only ones being built were those utilising the old "slow-walker" engines, which meant bigger, bulkier, slower ships, with less room for ammunition fabrication and storage, and more for stasis compartment and fuel storage. Corporations that had specialised mostly in stasis technologies enjoyed an unexpected windfall, while those like Furlong Dynamic began to languish.

But as they say, shit rolls downhill. With the Corporations struggling to adjust to the Coral shortage and the UEG viciously hording the few galactic stores that remained, the working class found their workload increasing - heavily.

Factories that had benefited from the automation of Coral technologies found themselves in the position where they needed heavy reliance of human productive power. Yet they didn't want their productivity to lower thanks to human limitations, and neither did they want their profits to dent by either hiring too many workers, or paying the few higher wages to make up for the harder work. The few worker protections that had been steadily built up over the past few decades were immediately torn down and rescinded, and the working class were forced to work to maintain the corporations' and the UEG's productivity in their factories and fabrication facilities on basically starvation wages.

So, we have a world that has suffered from a fatal blow to the comfortable status quo. Furlong Dynamics is desperate to try and stem the bleed from their profits that the Coral shortage had started, and the boot has never been heavier on the working class's neck. It's an atmosphere that creates considerable tension within the various stratas of society, and the Jupiter colonies especially - known as the industrial powerhouse of the solar system - have become a bubbling pot. Any socialist talk or gatherings are viciously cracked down on by the corporate and government forces, and the workers are becoming increasingly frustrated and antagonised.

So it makes sense why Walter and Michigan initially have a bit of a rocky start, coming from these polar opposites of society. Michigan, the son of a Furlong Dynamic's director, and Walter, a Rubiconian refugee clawing his way out of the slums.

But alright, world context has been laid down, it's time for the character context. First up:

MICHIGAN - THE PRINCE WHO WANTS TO BE A PAUPER

So, Michigan. G1. Hell On Four Legs. Where did he come from, and who is he? To answer that, we need to look at his family... and Furlong Dynamics' leadership.

Every corporation is unique in its structure and the way it handles leadership. For example, Balam is well-known for its unusual meritocratic selection process for its CEO, though that hasn't exactly escaped the nepotism that pervades the upper echeleons of corporate society. Those with advantageous beginnings normally win the meritocratic race: they just have to work a little harder than most. Furlong Dynamics, however, are upfront about their leadership roles being hereditary.

Five families sit on the board for Furlong with one presiding as a CEO, a role that rotates every five years in a set pattern between the five families. This is a system that has worked for almost as long as Furlong Dynamics had existed (almost 300 years by this point), and needless to say that those five families were old money. They're the equivalent of an aristocracy in a hypercapitalistic galaxy.

One of these families is Rivera, which Michigan was born into as Gabriel Rivera. It was expected of him to succeed his father and sit on Furlong Dynamics' board as a director, so from a very young age he was prepped for this eventuality. His father dictated everything in his life, from his hobbies to what he wore and right down to what he ate. He was drilled in everything to do with business, politics and the interstellar industry, as his father was keen for Michigan to be ready and prepped for when he succeeded him, especially as Furlong Dynamics was entering a critical slump for the first time in its long history due to the Coral shortage. He didn't want his son to be the weak link.

Michigan despised this. He hated the people his father forced him to interact with, he hated the two-faced communication and backstabbing schemes he was encouraged to learn and inflict on others, he hated how boring yet stressful this kind of life was. Contrary to his personality later in life, Michigan was reclusive and anti-social when he was young - a direct result of his father's overbearing and relentless micromanaging - and when possible would hole himself up in his room and escape by watching classical films.

Classical films being... war films and action movies.

Though plenty of media had been lost when Earth suffered from ecological devastation, many had been salvaged throughout the centuries. It had begun from Michigan pilfering from his father's collection, something to put on display and boast about possessing rather than watching, and found himself hooked.

Brave soldiers heroically saving their comrades, taking charge of their destinies, denying fate, overcoming the odds, starting from the gutter and rising to the top from their own merits, making fire-forged friends that were genuine and not shallow transactional facades... this type of fantasy entranced Michigan, giving him a craving that he couldn't quite itch with his luxurious yet empty life. He desperately wished he had been born as some poor bastard whose only option was to join one of the corporate militaries, and distinguish himself by commiting acts of heroism, have people awed by him because of his own merits, and not because he is a Rivera and surrounded by brown-nosing sychophants.

It was a delusional dream driven by an intense desire to escape and forge a genuine connection with anyone, and after years of burying himself deeper and deeper in the propaganda belched out by these old action films (the message of 'war is hell' from the more solemn ones flying miles above his head), Michigan decided: he was going to disown himself and become an MT pilot.

Which he managed. To cut a long story short, Gabriel Rivera became just Michigan, the Rivera name used sparingly and only for legal reasons. He left behind the comfortable executive life to start at the very bottom of the pilot ranks, working his way up with grit and determination, denying any advantages or opportunities that came his way due to his blood or name. He wanted to emulate those heroes that he had watched in those films, he wanted to start with nothing and become something, all with his own efforts, and leave behind the Rivera name and reputation for good.

He started acting more like those gunslinger heroes, loud voice, boisterous personality, easy-going nature and possessing a masculine charm. He's always seeking that big, heroic event, that euphoric moment of victory and achieving the impossible against the odds... but he never really found it. Even after abandoning Furlong Dynamics entirely to jump ship to Balam, he realised that it was just more of the same, his battles against downtrodden workers protesting against their inhumane treatment, or furthering corporate interests over some useless moon in the middle of nowhere. There was no glory or higher purpose - just the company's bottom line.

Michigan started his piloting career as a rich kid craving adventure, naive to the true gritty nature of the galaxy. After decades of piloting under his belt and with an intimiate insight on both sides of the corporate ladder - both at the bottom and the top - to say Michigan was jaded by the time he landed on Rubicon would be an understatement.

He learned that there's no such thing as big damn heroes in this shitty galaxy. All the titles and medals he earned were just window dressings to whatever shitty advertisement his corporate master touted to bolster its reputation or sales. He hated his "Hero of Jupiter" title, and he took great pleasure in launching his "medals" off a cliff and into the ocean like they were frisbees. He hated that in the end his father had been right, that becoming a pilot wouldn't let him run away from the corporate lifestyle, it'd just throw him down to the very bottom and get him trampled

In short, Michigan's a man who tried to forge his own destiny by following a childish dream. His naivety resulted in him being trapped in a life that only had one escape - crawling back to his father and retaking the name Gabriel Rivera - and he viewed that worse than being a corporate attack dog with no real freedom. He'd rather die in some shitty hole in a random ditch somewhere over some pointless resource that meant nothing to him. Was it pride by that point, or stubbornness? He really didn't know.

He just knew that he was just another guy suckered in by the corporations' glitzy and false promises.

WALTER - THE AVENGER WHO KNOWS HE'S DIGGING A GRAVE FOR MILLIONS

Walter, meanwhile, was born to a privileged family of a different sort.

A good few decades before the Fires, Rubicon had done the unthinkable in human history: it had broken away from the UEG and declared independence, becoming a self-sustaining colony with a distinct identity - and able to negotiate with the fuming UEG on equal footing due to its sole access to Coral and its development of the C-weapons. The UEG couldn't take Rubicon or its resources by force (though it surely contemplated it from time to time), and so begrudgingly dealt with them as a peer, legitimising Rubicon as an independent colony and allowing it to forge its own desinty on the galactic stage.

While UEG and its many colonies functioned as a hypercapitalist ogligarchy, Rubicon became a technocracy, with the Rubicon Research Institute having considerable sway over the Rubiconian central government - to the point where it was understood that despite the elected 'president', it really was the Institute that was in charge. This gave rise to the 'intellectual elite', the scientists and academics who ran the Institute - the class that Walter belonged to before the Fires.

His parents were both scientists that worked on the Xylem and lived on-site. They were passionate about their work with the Coral and highly respected within their community, but while they clearly loved Walter, he was always second priority to their research and ambitions. Walter was the only child growing up in the labs (at least, the only one that wasn't a test subject of some kind), and only ever interacted with adults - all of whom were scientists or the security staff. He had never left the Xylem either, his concept of the 'outside world' being the small, sanitised courtyard with the lone tree, and the street he could see past the bars of the labratory's secure and gated exit. While he had some freedom of movement within the facility, there were areas he was barred from entering due to sensitive experiments, or to minimise his interaction with detained test subjects.

As a result, Walter became scarily self-sufficient from a young age, and came across as taciturn or emotionally stunted. He spoke like an adult but struggled to navigate social situations in general, unable to sugarcoat his words and coming across as rude or abrasive when speaking to others. While he found himself occasionally curious about interacting with people who weren't harried scientists that barely tolerated his prolonged presence, Walter genuinely found himself unbothered about his isolation. He was lonely, yes, but he occupied himself well enough, and filled the long stretches of time in furthering his education - determined to become a scientist like his parents and continuing on their work, as what was expected of him.

Then his father began the augmentations and everything went terribly wrong.

His mother volunteered to be Gen Zero, the prototype used to present to the Institute to have the augmentation project greenlighted. Initially, things went well. His mother suffered no significant drawbacks, and demonstrated an incredible boost in mental acuity and calculation power that current neural implants couldn't even begin to compare to. Once the Gen Ones were well underway, however, with a significant death rate at that, his mother began to rapidly degrade, physically and mentally. Walter's last memory of his mother was her unable to recognise him and talking to people who weren't there, knowing that it was the Coral's fault somehow.

His father was driven to perfect the augmentations to ensure his wife's sacrifice wasn't in vain. In Walter's words, he began a carnival of horrors within his labs, killing and mutiliating hundreds within his labs in his pursuit of the refining the augmentation process, with the Institute pumping unlimited resources, funding and test subjects into the project. The glimpse of the future Gen Zero showed them had them eager to achieve that perfection, no matter how many bodies they had to stack up.

It disgusted Walter. While he had never been emotionally close with his parents, he had still respected them, and to see his mother reduced to a crazed husk of herself before dying and his father turning into a monster, destroyed the pedastal he'd put them on. Walter found himself fostering a near irrational hatred for the Coral, rationalising that none of this would've happened if Coral had never been discovered - if it had never existed. He wished, vehemently, for it to disappear.

He got his wish with the Fires.

While the augmentations had made Walter view the Coral with a negative lens, seeing the damage it could do in the wrong hands, the Fires cinched it as a traumatic avatar of destruction in Walter's mind. The Coral was too dangerous to exist in their galaxy, not with how greedy humans could be, and blind to the dangers in pursuit of power. But his motivations weren't noble: he absolutely despised the legacy it represented, how he couldn't hear the word 'Coral' without thinking of his father, his mother, and how everything was robbed from him. It seeded in him an obsession, a hateful, vengeful obsession, because focusing on that, on gunning for a tangible entity that you've vowed to destroy, is far easier to stomach than processing the fact that your life was utterly ruined by selfish ambitions and a freak accident.

Overnight Walter went from part of the very prestigious intellectual elite on Rubicon, to a penniless refugee on one of Jupiter's colonies: Ganymede. It was a shock to the system to find himself in a world where food wasn't simply there whenever he desired it, that shelter wasn't a given, and that clinical cleanliness was a privilege, not a right. He fortunately had Carla with him, though, and while the first few years were rocky, they managed to find their footing by creating a scrapping service in the Ganymede slums, Carla using her previous experience in R&D at the Institute, and Walter his education, to repurpose old tech and mechs or salvage somewhat valuable tech to sell on.

From there, they began to plot, to focus their shared hatred and distrust of the Coral to really make sure it was gone for good, that it wouldn't come back. In the filthy slums beneath Ganymede, with a promise made between two emotionally exhausted yet furious Rubiconian refugees, Overseer was born.

But that's its own story.

Walter's endless conga line of misfortune did well to harden him and make him adaptable to unpleasant surprises. He always expects shit to go wrong at the most inconvenient times, he doesn't trust a single person to do the right thing even if he's known them for years (Carla, who all but raised him, he only trusts to a certain extent), and he realised how hypocritical most people could be. Though he was born as one of the intellectual elite, witnessing and experiencing first hand the oppression and indignity the working class suffered in UEG territories genuinely sickened him - and cemented in his mind that this galaxy couldn't be trusted with the Coral at all.

He had to destroy it for good. He had to make sure it could never come back and hurt anyone else. He had to erase every drop of legacy his shit-for-brains father had built and let history bury him forever. Walter, for all of his outwardly cold and emotionless masks, feels deeply and intently, and all of it is bitter rage.

Walter just doesn't know how to process his emotions well - he was never taught, and he missed those vital milestones with his lonely childhood, locked away in an ivory tower filled with nothing but scientists and test subjects. He feels so much over his father, the Fires, the Coral, but has no idea how to sort through it all. So he stuffs it away. He keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon where his mission to destroy the Coral hangs. He tells himself that once he destroys it for good, it'll all go away: these incomprehensible, heavy and painful emotions. The source of them all will be gone.

Imagine that: condeming millions to death because of crippling, unaddressed daddy issues.

THE SHIP ITSELF

Right, with all that context given, onto the part people really care about: so, why does the Walter/Michigan ship pair well? Or at least, why does APV Walter/Michigan pair well.

Michigan's POV:

From Michigan's side, he's fascinated with Walter. Everything about him just doesn't make sense. He's a 'sewer rat', a working class drone that managed to claw their way out of the muck and elevate his social standing through stubborn grit and determination - but his demeanour belies that. Walter demonstrates a level of education and sophistication that the working class just don't have. Michigan has grown up on Ganymede, and despite the high-ranking executives living in their gated communities and busying themselves with the day-to-day running of their businesses, they do keep an eye on what the working class are up to.

The corporations have perfected subjugation and propaganda to an artform. They can only achieve this if they know their target audience. Michigan knows, as any self-respecting Rivera knows, how the working class tick, their current worries and desires, the statistical trends of their few purchases and which style of propaganda they're most receptive to. Walter fits none of the established norms for Ganymede working class - he doesn't even have a recognisable Jupiter colony accent - so he already presents himself as an interesting puzzle for Michigan to break down.

There's also some genuine respect there too. Michigan acknowledges that Water had to work hard to get where he was, and he appreciates that Walter doesn't mince his words or beat around the bush. He's blunt, direct and isn't in the business of brown-nosing or fawning to ingratiate himself. You always knew where you stood with Walter, or so Michigan felt, and admittedly, Walter reminded him a lot of a certain character achetype in his precious films: the underdog, the guy you ended up rooting for just because he worked so fucking hard for what he wanted.

So, to Michigan, Walter's interesting, he's mysterious, and he's a representation of what Michigan wanted for himself. He wants to be like Walter: a poor as shit refugee making something of himself, with a whole future to distinguish himself and build his own reputation, to forge himself in fire! Michigan is mildly envious, but thinks as well that if he sticks close to him, he'll be able to live vicariously through him, to get a taste of dream he really wanted to achieve...

And because he's so fascinated with Walter, he starts to learn all of his tics and mannerisms too. He begins to understand the minute shifts of Walter's expressions, what he leaves unsaid and knowing when Walter is feeling but just doesn't know how to express or word himself. Michigan is the more emotionally intelligent of the two, and very perceptive despite how he acts. Combined with his easy-going nature and his respect for Walter's hardworking nature and competency, this helped him break through a few of Walter's walls - despite Walter doing his best to rebuild them as fast as possible.

Not to say they don't butt heads: they butt heads a lot. Arguing is their favourite pasttime. They challenge each other, and Michigan knows that he can say whatever and Walter can dish it out right back. Walter doesn't give a shit about any potential ties Michigan may have to the Rivera family - he just gives a shit about Michigan waking him up at 6am and asking him to go running with him. He snaps at him, argues with him, insults him... he treats him as Michigan, and this is what Michigan cares about the most.

Walter's POV:

Meanwhile, Walter's feelings towards Michigan are very complicated. He's irritated by what he sees as Michigan's nosiness towards his private affairs, and he doesn't appreciate him trying to figure him out. Mostly because he doesn't want him figuring out his true identity. Walter wanted to sever any and all ties between him and his father's legacy, and he and Carla took great pains to have no one realise that he was the famous Dr Kohler's son. And the disowned heir of the Rivera family? Definitely in the best position to connect the dots.

But Michigan's also the first person to ever just... treat him normally and roll with his verbal punches. People are usually scared away by Walter's cold attitude and sharp words, but Michigan gave as good as he got, and always shrugged off Walter's meaner comments. It left Walter at a bit of a loss, and after a while he slowly desensitised to Michigan's presence. He rationalised that it's just pointless wasting energy trying to chase off Michigan, but the fact was he... ended up liking his company. He had no idea socialising could be so enjoyable, once you learned to tolerate their more aggravating parts.

There's also a colder and more pragmatic side too: Michigan is useful to him, as a son of an executive, disgraced or not. Walter is aware enough to acknowledge that a small chunk of his tolerance is proportional to Michigan's use for him, but in his mind he sees it as an expected part of their relationship. It's transactional, what they share (or so he tells himself). He offers entertainment to Michigan, who in turns offers the same - and lets Walter take advantage of the few perks being "friends" with an executive's son offers.

He tells himself he can't get attached - he has his mission after all - but by this point Walter's good at ignoring his feelings and burying himself under six feet of concrete denial. He clings to the rationalisation that they're just "friends with benefits" for years, that from the beginning they were only making use of each other - there wasn't really anything there. Even to him that sounded hollow when he finally cut ties and left, to pursue his hopeless and doomed mission. He never really stopped thinking about Michigan, the what-ifs.

He hated it.

...

Also they both share a hatred of their respective fathers, so they Get That. They're part of the Dads Suck club.

CONCLUSION

So basically........ they're gay, your honour.

[sky-kiss]

hello <3 I’ve been lurking around the raphael tag little niche and I see that a fairly popular concept is tav/durge duchess (love the concept love the energy, very big fan of it in your fic as well) and I was wondering, since raphael struggles with sort of minimising how much his mortal side is perceived in favour of appearing as much as possible as a devil with a capital D (see his celebratory paintings being all about his devil form), whether that by itself would be a peculiar choice to take a mortal as a consort. or if you think he sort of did the math and went well tav/durge is a very effective asset he can keep close and its sort of worth it take the loss of sort exposing himself to other archdevils being judgemental over it (especially since the hells seem very much like a only devils can sit at the grown up table lmao)

/Stares at you. Sighs. Sips scotch/

So, I see. You're finally here to kill me, anon.

Alright. Let's get into it. If we're being entirely honest, I do not believe that Raphael would offer Tav/Durge a place as his consort. I genuinely don't. Especially not directly after they've given him the Crown. I've done it a few times recently, mostly because it's the only place to conveniently put it. And it works for short-form posts.

But if we are talking about genuine Raphael, it's my opinion that he would not offer. He may be fond of you, but his version of fondness would translate more to like...how fond you are of a good dog, or a subcontractor who put in great work. You aren't equals. "Friends," but not equals. Raphael's interest in Tav/Durge stems from what they can provide him. Once he has the Crown, he sees himself as having succeeded. You might meet for drinks like he's promised, but he has no reason to continue the relationship.

However, there is something to be said for an adventurer's soul. And Tav/Durge would be a massive catch further down the line. By the endgame, the TadFools are a bunch of freaks if we're power scaling. They're only level 12, but the games mechanics and the psycho gear they acquire allows them to punch well above their weight class. With their stat blocks, their party of four could probably fight Zariel. And on that note, because of game mechanics, Raphael could probably take Zariel (based on her 5E statblock) in a cage match, even without the Crown. He'd at least make it close. That's how powerful the crew is by the end. So, they would be a crazy powerful asset to acquire.

To the point of offering them the role of consort: no. I don't think he'd do it. Not right after the Crown, at least. And it's something I wish I'd made clearer in my long fic. I'd clarify it in a rewrite. Raphael never actually offers Joi/Durge the role of consort. Haarlep moves for her to be in that role. Haarlep informs Mephistopheles that she's his new consort. Meph is the first one to actually state it and does this in front of Dispater to discredit his son. Raphael then plays along with it in order to build his influence with the succubi/incubi. It's self-preservation, power, and arrogance that motivates the decision, not affection.

So uh...yeah. Sorry. I don't....I don't think he'd take Tav/Durge as his consort. Maybe after he's had his assbeat for a while? And they crusade and prove themselves to be incredibly useful?

But we lie to ourselves for fiction. Sorry for the longpost.

[choicesficwriterscreations]

December Creator of the Month: Oh-So-Youre-a-Nerd

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is @oh-so-youre-a-nerd . We're very excited because Ascindio is our very first artist to be highlighted! We hope you will enjoy learning more about them and their work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Instagram

How do you want to be known on Tumblr? 

Ascindio 

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played? 

I started playing in 2016, I can't remember if I read Endless Summer or Rules of Engagement first, but I ended up deleting the app after like 2 weeks cause I couldn't stop buying diamonds 😅🤦

I re-downloaded it about, ohh idk 2 years ago?

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the Fandom specifically on Tumblr and specifically for It Lives Within, which happened to come out right after I read the first two books 

3- How did you pick your blog name? 

I always try to seem cool and mysterious when I meet people irl, and then as soon as I open my mouth, I ruin it with some niche trivia or something, and they say,  “Oh, so you're a nerd.” 😂 Can't tell you how many times this exact phrase has been uttered to me. 

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!  

This is the first Choices related post I made 😂 I was just thinking about the concept of what if characters make terrible decisions cause they're controlled by a player who is out of diamonds lol I was going to do a whole series of them (next was going to be lotr “fly on eagles to mordor?” *30 diamonds* or “simply walk”) but got lazy lol

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both? 

Only art. God, I  WISH  I wrote too. I've thought about trying cause I have so many ideas floating around in my head, but at the end of the day, I'd rather spend my free time drawing. 

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

For Choices, since early 2022

For other fandoms, since well, forever, but I only started posting around 2017/18

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Favorite Choices book is probably It Lives in the Woods. All of the characters were so interesting, I never got bored reading it, and it had an incredible twist that made sense but I still didn't see coming. 

Favorite to create for is probably Blades of Light and Shadow though because I am such a sucker for the fantasy aesthetic.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?.

This isn't the first Choices art I made, but it IS the first I actually shared

And honestly, I DO still like it because I still remember the way I felt absolutely POSSESSED while drawing it (I hadn't drawn anything for *months*). I would definitely change the background, though. Those trees look like shit, and they're not even the correct type for the kind of forest they're in. 

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created? 

My favorite Choices art I've done is probably this piece. 

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I definitely didn't expect this one to do well at all as it was so hastily drawn

And I was sad this piece didn't get more love, it was such a dope scene and I was so excited about how the sword turned out

11- If you could only draw one style or type of art for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the question right, but if I had to pick like a specific type of art, it would be digital, and I would want to do fan art. I have a hard time painting anything that I don't already have a deep connection with (so original art with no story behind it is usually a chore for me), and digital art is just so incredibly convenient and not messy and so so versatile. 

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Because I use fiction as a way to safely process trauma/ grief/ other big emotions, each MC I make has a small part of me, whichever part I feel the need to explore at the time.

There's an amazing quote by Patrick Rothfuss that I feel explains it perfectly. 

It's from Wise Man's Fear

“These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea’s trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha’penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case.”

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

I have a very difficult time making the poses seem natural and flowing. My all time favorite art is Baroque/Renaissance style and how fluid the poses are, how soft the skin looks, how delicately it's all done. Obviously, I will always have my own style, but those are things that I so want to incorporate but never seem to get quite right, and it drives me crazy 😂

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

Not really. I mean, I have a ton of unfinished work, but as soon as the window of inspiration passes, I just can't get myself to care enough about it to finish it (insert Jake the Dog, “now it's gone, and I don't care about it anymore!” )

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first? 

I would, and have.  I typically show them whatever most rendered recent picture from my Instagram because I don't post any nsfw there and usually try to post only my prettier work for this specific reason haha. (As opposed to here, I post everything here, ain't NO ONE from real life invited to see my tumblr 😂)

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Writers: Brandon Sanderson, for sure. He's the reason I got back into art back in 2017 ish. His stories are just so emotional they push me to create. Same with @saibug1022, there is always at least one scene from every story he shares that I desperately want to draw to try to capture the emotions. 

Artists: God, sooo many, here are just like my top 3 favorites and their instagrams.

Audra Auclair

Obsessed with her unique style, and specifically the way she draws eyelids and noses

f3lc4t

The way they draw those dripping, glowing wisps. I stare at their pieces for hours (no lie) trying to dissect them stroke by stroke to figure out how they do it.

Miho Hirano

Their art has a delicate whimsy-ness I would SELL MY SOUL to achieve 

17- Which one of your creations would you like to see a fiction written about? 

JC, this is the shit I DREAM of.

Definitely this one. 

So this is love.

This little comic means a lot to me. 

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art? 

Very rarely, but I do, every so often. This is my favorite original piece.

20-  What other hobbies do you have?

Gaming, singing, walking through the Cemetary with my wee daughter, reading, that's about it 🤷

21 - What’s your favorite emoji? 

🙇

22: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

I really wanted to say that I don't believe in “good” art and “bad” art (just ethical vs non-ethical). That being said, I know what it's like to hate your art, like soooo intimately. If you ever are feeling shit about your art, you can ABSOLUTELY message me (I don't care if we're mutuals or not, I don't care if we've never interacted before) and just say, “I am feeling shit about my art” and I will go through your art and tell you every specific thing I love about it and why it's wonderful. I am not joking; I am so so serious rn. 💗💗💗💗 

[lopez-richter-fangirl]

Starkid innit: the most magical experience

It took me a full day to even begin to know where to start with this post and then took me all day yesterday to type out. Normally to do one of these posts after a show I frantically note down everything I can remember in the interval and as soon as I can afterwards, but I was too overwhelmed by this show to even do that. And thank god so many people filmed so much of the show so I don’t have to rely on memory for all the little things. This will be kind of stream of consciousness thought dump of everything that made this experience so incredible, feat. a lot of Feelings. It’s much too long! Over 2500 words - you’ve been warned!

Looking at all the pictures and videos from the show, it feels surreal that I was there in a way that I don’t think any other shows I’ve gone to have. Maybe because I can’t believe we finally got a full UK Starkid show. Maybe because it was Starkid selling out the fucking London Palladium, twice (and the added production value that came with that). Maybe because we got the concert premiere of new stuff alongside iconic moments included from previous concerts that I’ve watched a hundred times and now got to see live. Whatever it was, I still can’t quite believe it and I’m so grateful I got to be there. And my GOD was luck on my side getting a front row centre seat in that ticket hell 🙏😭

Right from the staple sing-along outside the theatre before the show the excitement was as palpable as you’d expect from a crowd where so many people had been waiting such a long time to see these people live. And I think a lot of Starkid fans but especially international fans have had the feeling of isolation that comes with being a fan of a relatively “niche” group (though their popularity is only growing), so to get to be in a room full of people who understand the references and scream as soon as the opening notes of a song play is the best thing

Starting with tgwdlm feels like an excellent choice being from the show that created a new wave of fans while still catching some of the people who might not be caught up with the newest shows. And I know we had it at jangle ball too but love love getting to see Brian and Meredith be part of the hatchetfield stuff

And having NPMD songs performed live for the first time was just as exciting and special as I was expecting!! Was not expecting HSIKM WITH some OG choreo but I am grateful for it. Jaime messing up the Literal Monster lyrics at the matinee is 100% understandable and I thank her for that because Lauren cracking up at the complete nonsense lyrics she made up was too good. Love the OG choreo there including Lauren grabbing Joey for no reason whatsoever 😌 Slay of Lauren to bring out the Ruth voice too. Jeff gave a killer performance of NPMD and we understood the assignment with the Richie part

And Together 😭 TOGETHER 😭😭 I said that was a song I’d absolutely love but was definitely not at all expecting them to play so I got UNBELIEVABLY excited seeing it on Mere’s playlist and it was EVEN better than I imagined 😭 Angelic!!!! I love women!!!! Seeing their friendship shine through on stage is so special and Lauren supporting Mere through the lyric mess up in the matinee and also her laugh were the cutest things. And then from the front row at the evening show I don’t think I even breathed. They sounded amazing in the OG show but EVEN better now and I truly could not be more grateful to them for putting that on the setlist. A literal dream that I will be thinking about for the rest of my life. I still can’t believe it. AHHHHHH!!!!!!

Happy we got Our Doors are Open cause I love that song!

Jaime singing Harry but dedicated to Nori was very cute and making that a flashlight moment is one of the sillier things we’ve done

So glad Clark got his moment with I Was where we all sat in enraptured silence listening to his magical voice and some never before heard lyrics

I will be so honest and say there was the tiiiiiiiiiniest part of me sad when Joey started introducing Sidekick because I knew that meant my Status Quo hopes were dashed. However had I not seen it at homecoming I probably would have been rooting for Sidekick because it is the better *performance* for Joey, he absolutely owns the stage and it was still a delight to hear it again, and with his continued vocal improvement. Audience participation on point too of course. And when I saw Lauren standing in the wings before he started I knew I could not let myself keep looking over there but shoutout to everyone who did get footage of her being the proudest wife there is

Oh lordddd the Rogues Medley update we’ve been praying for (even if not in the way I expected). I had a feeling that’s what was coming when they started Not Over Yet based on the interview Brian did but to hear that transition into Feast or Famine was crazyyyyyy. Rogues Medley is such an iconic piece of Starkid history and it’s so cool that they gave us that. Fucking of course Brian fucked up the verses in Not Over Yet but he is a master at styling it out and him making Lauren laugh with that song feels like time honoured tradition (okay I’m just thinking of that leaky 2017 performance). First Feast or Famine in concert was so good although Joey and Lauren leaning on each other at EVERY little duet bit… relax babes. And Rogues, I knew if we got it we’d have Lauren doing the harlots and the hussies bit and I still did not adequately prepare myself

Brian calling Meredith wifey in We Got Work to Do was gold. SO so so happy to hear climate change, they did that because I stopped myself from spending a stupid amount of money to go to jangle ball. Still obsessed with Lauren’s little riff. And her moves? HOT. And we LOVE Meredith’s music getting so much love as it SHOULD

The forgotten songs section was hilarious but could have been about 20% shorter Brian was not wrong about them milking that bit Biggest of shout outs to the person who yelled Boy Toy for Lauren to respond “don’t make me do that” and I believe the same person who yelled fucking Airport 4 Birds and had her momentarily stunned. Her rendition of Hideous Creatures was heavenly no joke. Brian doing his soundcheck song did not read so well at the matinee lmao but I personally thought it was perfect. And Lauren joked about the open vibe but genuinely I love that they were confident enough they could do some obscure songs and not have an absolutely dead audience. Can’t believe we got TWO MAMD songs although they really should have let Joey sing Even Though (I know it wouldn’t have been *funny* okay)

What did not need to be even one second shorter was the shirt bit. No notes. Especially Brian trolling Lauren with “roll on the floor like Draco”

Back on top was amazing, they all sounded so good and again, love to see the Ani music getting recognition. And at the evening show I was watching Lauren do the choreo in the wings which was absolutely adorable

What if I now write the entire length of this post just about Granger Danger lol. Didn’t even realise until this post that they had the two OG Starkid couples back to back (at least I’m going off the order of the setlist I saw on twitter I do not actually remember the order lmao) Their whole “brand new song” bit was everything to me, I really could watch them riff off each other for hours. And honestly it was the perfect thing to do KNOWING what the reaction would be to the two of them coming out because what fucking else would they be singing. Apart from the person who genuinely thought we were getting Priceless because they forgot Granger Danger existed, you know who you are. As in my other post, I had said I wouldn’t mind if, as long as I got to see one married Granger Danger live (which I then did), they stopped singing Granger Danger, but that was only if they were getting sick of it and on the condition they did in fact replace it with Priceless. But I will NEVER get sick of watching them do it (even if the heart eyes on stage continue to make me a little sick) and I love that they do still have fun with it. The universal excitement with those opening notes is the best thing. Continuing to say “it gets different” was funnier than it should have been, they are comedians. And how far back she leaned on him at that evening show was truly insane and I thank them for giving me one of my new favourite pics (even if Lauren laughing and Joey’s hand going back to make sure she wouldn’t fall made me want to sobbbbb). 15 years of this song and it’s still getting more iconic and you all know how deeply special it is to me and I’m so happy to have gotten to see it again. King and queen of Starkid for real for real

Corey Show Stoppin Number was CRAZY he killed it

Jaime’s speech before Not Alone was incredibly special and I think Darren would agree that the song actually ended up exactly where it needed to be. But her saying she’s been singing it for 15 years of course had me thinking about the same thing for granger danger which is absolutely not something I was emotionally strong enough for in that moment!!! But blessed to get the beautiful harmonies and as always the audience singing Darren’s parts is the best

Superfriends is ofc so fun and Jeff nailed the Robin parts (unlike someone else there might have done (sorry Joey)). And again, there’s something so nostalgic about seeing it with that classic choreo too

And mashing it up with WANNABE oh my god. I did see someone say they didn’t know why they did that song and I’m like,, do you know how to have fun?? I get it we’re there to hear Starkid songs but this isn’t like a once in a lifetime situation (love that performance but it was a song for them not the audience and they knew it lmao), it’s actually perfect for Starkid. “Friendship never ends” you’re fucking right it doesn’t, 15 years of making stuff with your friends. And I’m being so serious when I say it’s one of my favourite performances they’ve ever done. I also might never get it out of my head and I’m fine with that. The accents? The boys in the back? The dancing? Brian? And then Brian and Joey?? (and ofc the evening performance where Lauren was touching Joey after “if you wanna be my lover” and where he put his hand on her back as she was stepping up on the stage and I once again wanted to sob) It was JOYFUL

And then GBTH as the encore we all knew was coming because no way were they leaving without singing that one. Whatever some people might have to say about it, it is SUCH a special song to hear in a room full of Starkid fans, and especially this version where we sang the beginning. No doubt they couldn’t have imagined performing that song on a stage like this when they were singing it in Studio 1, but it’s so deserved because they’re all absolute superstars. And their friendship and the fun they have onstage together has remained so integral to what makes them work and it never gets any less special to witness. I love that after over a decade of singing this song they STILL get the words wrong and it doesn’t even matter because we’re singing it so loudly. I love the sheer power Lauren radiates every time she sings her part and her happiness when we scream ours. And then I watched her smile looking out at the audience during the train part and I’m just so proud we were part of making this show so incredible for them and proud of them for doing it 😭 Singing happy birthday to Jeff in the middle was really cute too

Also, can’t believe we got to witness the most INSANE shirt pic happen live??!!? A shirt pic in front of a crowd of 2000 people, I keep looking at it and I’m like how is that not photoshopped?? But it’s real!! I was there!! And it’s honestly the most Starkid move of all time to perform their sold out Palladium concerts in matching pyjama shirts. Ngl there was a tiny part of me that didn’t want the matching shirts because I wanted to see the Concert Fits but I didn’t even need to worry because Lauren still came to serve. Hottest girl I’ve ever seen but also just the cutest human. And her hair looked so good too. (Jaime was also serving with the sparkly tights and cowboy boots)

Clearly they’re such a well oiled machine and the show ran SO smoothly that they were ahead of schedule and ended up doing a little more vamping in the evening than at the matinee. Why they chose Together (Lauren and Meredith are “too old” to want solos), Clark’s explanation of I Was originally being a solo (thank god because I felt insane at the matinee thinking ‘I’ve never heard these lyrics before’), even more references to Brian’s lack of solos. But the fuck ups in spite of that rehearsal really are just part of the Starkid charm. We love it, they know we love it, there’s no pressure to make it perfect which means all of us are just having *fun* together. But none of that takes away from how genuinely talented each and every one of them is

I do also think there’s something to be said for Brian and Lauren being the producers. They’ve really been through it all with the company and they know what works and how to serve people’s strengths. And of course we can trust Clark to put together an incredible setlist (yes there was a distinct lack of certain shows but I do think all the songs they did were a really good showcase for them and everyone had an opportunity to shine)

And Lauren of COURSE nailed the choreo for the whole show, it would be impossible for her not to. Honestly cannot reiterate enough how much of a queen she was in every aspect of this show. So fucking proud of her!!!!!!!!!!

And because this post wouldn’t be complete without mention of the M&G, Joey remembering my nameeee bearing in mind this is only the second time I’ve met him in person where he’d actually know me and yes the first time was only 7 months ago but I still don’t know how he recognised me there either. He seemed so proud to remember it too. And I knowww it’s not special to me he just has a good memory for that but the fact is he DOES make you feel special and I love him!! The best man. And I’m glad I got to give them the bracelets I made, Lauren’s reaction to seeing hers said precious angel was the sweetest and I really am trying to be normal about Joey only wearing the one from me (but it said Diane’s dad and was in michigan colours so… I think I nailed it) It was the sweetest thing seeing how many bracelets some of them were wearing during the show though

All this to say I fucking love Starkid and I love the community they’ve created. As soon as I saw the crowd outside the theatre (which was phenomenal!!) I knew it was just gonna be one of those days it was too overwhelming to talk to many people and while the people I did talk to were lovely I think I gave out a grand total of 8 bracelets which is my second biggest regret. But @pazazzalil and @laurenlpz, meeting up with you was like being with old friends even though we hadn’t met in person in 5/6 years. Love you both (and maybe we can actually get seats together next time)

And as one last little note, while it did feel extra special having people who have been with the company for all/the majority of these last 15 years, I have loved seeing the newer Starkids being so proud of their friends 🥺

I don’t know how I’m ever getting over this show. There was no way it was going to be bad with how highly anticipated a UK show was but it went way beyond my expectations. Pure magic. And I really do believe that after that it won’t be long before they’re back here, and I can’t wait

[psychoticallytrans]

I'm going to preface this post with that this is a pretty niche intracommunity issue, but it's been bugging me a while.

The right to define yourself as a queer person includes not only the right to claim labels that feel correct, but the right to reject labels that don't fit. That's a huge part of the whole point. However, some people seem to feel like being queer just means that we've made some different identity boxes to sort people into, and that sorting yourself wrongly means you need correction.

I, personally, am a GNC man. I wear skirts because they're comfy and trap heat in winter and long hair because I'm extremely vain about my hair. Someone once spent the better part of three hours arguing that I need to "at least" identify as a nonbinary man. Which is... not how anything works? I've identified as nonbinary in the past, but eventually realized that just wasn't correct for me, and moved into identifying as a binary man. I strongly support nonbinary people, but I don't happen to be nonbinary in any way. More commonly, people will decide that I'm "fem" or "femme", which... also not really? Those are loaded community words and I don't happen to identify with them. I'm GNC. That's not the same thing.

I also see this happen a lot with sexuality. It's one thing to look at someone going "I'm straight but sometimes... I wonder..." and introduce them to the incredible variety of mspec identities to see if anything strikes a chord. It's entirely another for someone to go "I'm pansexual." and some dick to roll up and start telling them they're biphobic for not saying they're bisexual, or for someone saying "I'm bisexual, and I'm not attracted to women." to have people telling them that they're not really bisexual. "Two or more" does not necessarily have to include both binary genders, or either of them.

Deciding someone else's personal labels based on what you think they should identify as is just plain rude, and insisting on them after they've objected is even more rude. Don't do it.