#like good for you!! genuinely!! but I'm not kidding when I say my worst months on all fronts are may/june - august/september

[queerofthedagger]

it's 7am and already getting light out and it's getting darker later and later each day and I know for most people that's great and I'm happy for y'all but my health/mental health genuinely is best in autumn and winter and I'm watching the increasing light/threat of increasing temperatures like a feral cat hissing at being disturbed I do not fucking want this pls leave me in peace

[weebsinstash]

(Thank you for reminding me bc this post was literally starting to get buried in my drafts. I gotta finish some of the posts piling up in here lol, I started this months ago)

Ok ok ok ok ok so like. I'm on my "unwilling red string of fate" shit so fucking hard right now and I thought of a story concept that really hits all my buttons for drama and jealousy and just, tension!

but god wouldn't Velvette GENUINELY be one of the worst people to be stuck with, especially if you're older than her? Like as a woman, being older than her? I've been imagining scenarios for the past several days and this bitch would have me FUMING and I gotta emphasize now that this is like, a sadistic bullying yandere kinda scenario

You've been in Hell for just a few months, managing to get a job, being lucky enough to find a roommate to help with bills, and one day, you finally get your red string of fate when you're out at work. Oh gosh, you work kind of a demeaning job though, whether it be fast food or retail,and you start feeling anxious. Oh gosh, what if your soulmate doesn't like you? You're at work and you're kind of sweaty and... and...

THE Velvette of the Vees, a fucking OVERLORD, is clicking her heels right up to you and giving you a very obvious look up and down that's so BITING that you already want to cry. She just steps uncomfortably close to you and examining your every pore with obvious distaste, "you've GOT to be kidding me. YOU'RE my soulmate?!!"

Like for real, I would immediately shift gears, "ok well I guess we're both disappointed because I was hoping for a man with a REAL job" like, for real I know she's an Overlord and actually very very successful in her career but in this scenario she's several years younger than you and probably shorter too and like. I'm a bottom. That's such a turn off. Like I'm sorry, you're insulting me and calling me old and I'm like not even 10 years older than you? OK you fucking iPad baby, get your sticky fingers and short attention span out of my fucking space

Can you imagine HER AUDACITY to insult you immediately upon meeting you, criticizing your skin, your hair, your body, but she's still rolling her eyes, "ugh, well, come on, I've got better things to do than mill about here" "what?" "Did I stutter or are you hard of hearing at your age? I've got things to do and I'm not leaving you here. Clock out and get your shit or whatever and let's go"

I would just. Immediately tell her fuck you to her face. The second her disrespect comes out, that's it. Ok honey, go back to playing dress up and playing on your phone. I have a truck to help unload--

and she's calling her security goons to MANHANDLE YOU OUTTA THERE. Personal agency, you're almost 30, what's all that? She doesn't give a FUCK. You're her soulmate and she doesn't want other people or YOU getting into any weird shit and she maybe just maybe despite her absolutely nasty attitude is actually quite pleased to meet you and thinks how huffy and upset you're getting is just SO CUTE, like this bitch is PROUDLY suddenly intruding on your personal space to take a selfish with both of your hands in it showing the red string and upload it to her social media, "found my #redstringsoulmate! She's a fixer-uppet but I like a good challenge 💅" like BITCH I'LL KILL YOU? ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE?

She absolutely weaponizes her influence and position of power over you. You disappear? She has a group chat of people who roam the city looking for the latest hot goss and one of them just so happens to be in the bar you ran off to. Does she think you're getting a little too attached to another person? She absolutely destroys their reputation, and I mean that. She will bully you to goddamn tears and be borderline panting in the exhilaration of making you cry, but then she sees you sneaking off to secretly seek comfort in someone else? Velvette overhears one of her models saying that you're way too nice to be stuck with someone like Velvette? She hears someone imply that YOU are too good for HER? She gets them fired and punished in a huge public incident that she makes sure you're there to witness to conpletely destroy your bond with them. Wouldn't it be like soooooo funny and coincidental if that person turned out to have a secret SMS account where they bully and shit on you? Velvette will have Vox plant that shit if she has to

She'll spend time negging you and breaking you down so she can fix you up in her image. She'll have your old clothes BURNED "because they're too fucking ugly and cheap, you'll make me look bad" amd starts to completely control your wardrobe. She insists on having your makeup done when you go out, often applied by her own hand, meaning she's always in your face, looking st you uncomfortably close. You could just be in your room applying your own skincare with you own money and she'll look over your collection with intrigue and say something along the lines "you could've been a mildly popular skincare influencer if you had died before forming all those ugly wrinkles" and you just hit her with "and you'd be mildly fuckable if you were a few years older" WHICH ACTUALLY GETS TO HER BTW, SHE CAN'T STAND IT WHEN YOU POINT OUT HER "FAULTS" OR ANYTHING YOU DON'T LIKE THAT SHE CAN'T CHANGE

I just. Ok. Listen. Listen. IMAGINE HER PIVOTING BECAUSE YOU PUT YOUR HANDS ON HER AND SHE'S INTO IT??? like one day she's really pushing you and grabs you by your wrist when you try to leave and you SNAP, you're older, you're bigger, and you were working manual labor so you're STRONGER. You just push her back against the nearest wall and have her by the throat, squeezing, towering over her, "don't you EVER put your hands on me, you disrespectful NASTY little girl!!" Tearing into her verbally before you let her go once you realize, hey you're kinda choking her, and she's. Into it. You're completely overpowering her and face to face with her with such fierceness in your eyes that it's awakening something in her. She's breaking out in a sweat and watches you storm off where previously she might have chased after you to continue the argument.

Like honestly... fucking bully bottom yandere Velvette who turns from a sadist into a masochist and starts actually really liking when you dig into her and even causing fights or confrontations so you talk down to her or even hurt her. Bully yandere Velvette who watches you actually stand up for her and one hit KO some creep who was aggressively coming onto her and getting really scary about it while the two of you are out and, oh what's this, she suddenly wants to design a new line of clothing, suddenly more, functional, a little masculine even. She watches you pulverize a guy twice your size and reveal you have like Uber Strength and later that week she's coincidentally having you try on a leather jacket "that was totally supposed to be tried on by another model but that bitch didn't show up today so you'll have to do" and it surprisingly fits you absolutely perfectly and... it's actually.... to your tastes???

You're beating up some fucking guy because even if you hate this bitch, you see a younger smaller woman having a grown ass man come up with the intention of hurting her and it just activates your protector instincts, and at some point you wonder why she's not yelling at you for creating some sort of massive scene in public and she's just. Sitting there holding her phone horizontally, "what? You can keep going. I won't stop you" and biting her lip as you proceed to pulverize the guy

Of course, she IS the co-creator of the love potion, so obviously I can't help but think of a Velvette who isn't so patient that you're 'holding out on her and playing hard to get' and decides she needs to 'get you in the mood'. Or, on the other hand, she knows you're tougher than her and needs to get you kinda doped up anyways and you're just coming to all tied up and completely helpless and at her mercy. I just. See so many potential dynamics. Her being taller than you, you being taller, her being the older one, but, in general I just see her being into artistic types of bondage like shibari and forcing you to model different things for her (even if you hate the style or its forced fem or anything like that) including lingerie and even the really really horny kinds 😳

she's always taking photos that you're never sure whether she's saving for her private collection or if she's taking things to use for blackmail, although she's never posted anything of you In That Way so far. Too jealous to share those kinds of pics, perhaps? (She will threaten you with it though. God do you think she could. Ask Vox to stage some kind of hoax or fake app where it looks like to you certain things of you are leaked and Velvette makes you beg and promise to be good for her to take them down and they're, fake, never even up to begin with. She's punking you.)

I guess as a final note, did any of you ever play, what was it, dressupgamesforgirls when you were growing up? I like the idea of a Reader who, to match Velvette's powers, can pull up an "inventory" or "wardrobe" and you can mix and match and swap out your outfits and makeup with magic. Of course, this will only fuel Velvette's already OVERWHELMING constant urge to dress you up and style you, but even if you try to keep things a secret, she's got such a close eye on you that you'll never keep anything from her for very long. Velvette may be the one who's an actual doll but YOU'RE the one who's gonna wind up played with like a toy

[chaifootsteps]

idk i just feel like there's something particularly cruel about having a solid episode concept like "verosika hosts a fuck you party for blitz and everyone else he's fucked over," because its a great way to show a pattern of behavior in blitz and the effect he has on others he's been with and hurt!

then.. they put stolas there. stolas, "you have sex with me every month or your I.M.P is going under without my book you need, no exceptions until i legally gave you an asmodean crystal a year later, for your work", goetia, or whatever the fuck his last name is.

this episode is trying so hard to make stolas on equal levels to verosika and the other imps dumped by blitz, but if any of these hellborn actually knew how he got into a "relationship" with blitz to begin with, and how blitz never even had a choice in whether or not he wants to be with stolas, (even when they were kids!) i really doubt theyd want anything to do with him. stolas never explains that their relationship wasnt a relationship, just a transactional monthly hookup to literally keep blitz's business afloat. he doesn't, because he STILL doesn't fully understand what he did wrong, but understands it enough to know he had to be the one to break off the deal he made. i doubt he'll ever actually explain what the deal was to any outsiders who ask, because then stolas would be forced to actually be held accountable for his own actions, and we cant possibly have that! /sar

i think one of the worst lines from stolas in this episode, aside from most of them because i think hes annoying, was when blitz expressed he didnt know why anyone would care about him, stolas responds that this party, dedicated to blitz, because they hate him so much, shows how much they ""care."" and that might have some kind of point coming out of verosikas mouth- implying that these people genuinely cared for him at one point and he pushed them away- but absolutely not stolas's. so its no wonder that blitz responds by self deprecating himself, saying, "i dont even know why youd want to be with me." followed by stolas admitting that what he really wants is someone to care about him.

and honestly, thats another thing too. i cant believe that after everything, after everything stolas has claimed about wanting blitz because he loves and respects him, when blitz then asks WHY stolas wants him, stolas responds, "you know what i want? i want to know what its like to not be alone. i want to be someone's someone. i want someone to care about me." because it shouldve been his moment to explain to blitz what he sees in him, and why he fell in love with him to begin with the more they slept together. but it wasnt.

not only is it unbelievably selfish of stolas to make blitz go through all of this for almost a year, to not only have NO reason as to why he has/had feelings for blitz, (basically confirming to me that stolas never really cared about blitz or his feelings, still doesn't, and just needed to have an adult relationship someone who didn't outwardly hate his guts like stella did, because were 2 and a half fucking seasons into this show and still dont know why the love interest romantically wants the main character, and die hard viv stans still think the stoliz insta posts count as canon because they're on copium,) but to ignore the one good thing in his life that he insists that he genuinely loves, octavia, in favor of him acting as if he'll die alone completely if he doesn't have a partner..

y'know that one scene in adventure time where jake is like, "dude.. let's kill the horse."? thats how i feel towards stolas right now.

Let's kill the owl.

I'm so tired, Anon.

[hamliet]

Anon who talked about book 7 of TGCF here! I unfortunately will only have book 8 available this February :') once I get my hands on it I will review it here like I did for the last books if you don't mind! Meanwhile, I still have a lot of thoughts on TGCF, and I hope I don't bother you with how long this ask is 😅

I've seen an interpretation online of the bamboo-hat scene in book 6 in which it says that XL would've never ended up as White No-Face's successor even if the bamboo hat guy didn't appear, because it isn't in XL's nature to do something so destructive and evil. Is it bad that I think think this interpretation diminishes the impact the bamboo-hat scene has for me? Because to me what made that scene so great was the fact that kindness was indeed able to change someone at their worst and by consequence bring out their best self. Hell, what makes the conflict between JW and XL so interesting to me is because XL could've indeed become like him had he not received kindness in his darkest moments, and by consequence JW could've been like XL under the right circumstances. "XL is just naturally gooder™ than JW" is not exactly an interpretation I like, and I think it may even contradict the message of other character arcs in the story as well. HC was saved by the kindness he received from XL, and thus became devoted to him. When HX chose his revenge over his friendship with SQX, it didn't satisfy him, and it even made him more miserable, as he lost his only friend in the process. Guzi, by loving QR unconditionally and genuinely as his son, ended up bringing up to the surface a side of QR that perhaps not even QR knew he had, and it moved his heart enough that he ended up sacrificing himself to save Guzi in turn. QYZ became attached to YY because he showed him compassion when everyone else dismissed him and thought of him as nothing more than a brute. I could go on and on. In other MXTX's books there's also a big emphasis on the impact kindness and genuine connection can have on people. WWX could've easily become a XY or a JGY had he been raised in different circumstances. Hell, the constrast between Bingmei and Bingge hinges on the fact that Bingmei was shown kindness while Bingge wasn't, and the difference between them is of day and night.

Usually they mention the quote "What matters is 'you' and not the state of you.", and that part where HC knew XL wasn't the one who did the guilded banquet Massacre, but I didn't exactly interpret these quotes to mean that XL is naturally good™ in a way that he's able to do no big evil, but rather that he's naturally good in a sense that evil isn't something natural to him, even if he participates in it, which is a theme that can also be seen in characters like JW, HX and QR, who became who they are due to the circumstances in their life shaping them into who they became. It's even highlighted that QR used to be a shy and sweet kid until his environment raised him into a monster. Evil isn't natural but rather something slowly molded by circumstances is how I interpreted it. And as for the Guilded Massacre, it's more that HC saw XL rejecting cursing Yong'an after the bamboo-hat scene and thus rejecting White No-Face's philosophy precisely because it was proven wrong in his eyes, and therefore it would make no sense for XL to be responsible for the guilded banquet massacre later on.

Of course I could be completely wrong in my interpretation, but this is what I picked up while reading the novel. Maybe it's my bias against the immobility of the self? Once again I'm sorry for the wall of text, it's just that I have a lot of thoughts about the way MXTX's books handle the impact that kindness and connection have on the self. I also really like your theories and interpretations not only on MXTX's novels, but for other works as well (I'll only be able to read the ones on JW next month in order to avoid spoilers unfortunately)!

No, I completely agree with you. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that's misreading the story, and the ending--without spoilers--makes this textually explicit. Like, it literally says, not symbolically but directly, that the point is that Xie Lian could have become just like Jun Wu.

So, they're not just misinterpreting, they're misreading. I'm guessing theses are the same kinds of people who think MDZS's message is WWX=good JGY=bad, honestly, when again that means that you're missing the point of the story. (Good point about Luo Binghe, as well!)

To return to TGCF, Hua Cheng's "what matters is you and not the state of you" has nothing at all to do with Xie Lian being a "good" person. In fact, Hua Cheng is pretty explicitly amoral. He's loyal to Xie Lian because Xie Lian was kind to him and he fell in love with him. It does not matter to him whether Xie Lian does good or does bad; that's the point of Wu Ming. It only matters to him that he is Xie Lian, and Xie Lian told him he mattered and did not deserve to be treated as he was being treated.

Of course, one could counter that love itself is a moral virtue, so thereby it saves Hua Cheng and the whole world, but that's for another time haha.

And, of course, please do continue to share your thoughts!!

[piosplayhouse]

Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

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

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

Part I. The Backstory

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

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

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

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

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

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

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

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

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

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

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

Part II. The Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

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

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

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

(My original post)³

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

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

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

Part III. The Ban, The Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part IV. The Backlash

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

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

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

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

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

Part V. Conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

[cy-cyborg]

I'm seeing a lot of people here and on other platforms getting angry at people who have come from Tik Tok (and youtube to a lesser extent) who refuse to say words like death, racism and anything relating to heavy topics. Sometimes they won't even say the names of minorities either.

Any I get why this is frustrating and just not a good practice. The people criticising these folks are absolutely right, we need to get comfortable saying these words and discussing these topics. Not to mention the fact that self-censorship can cause issues for people who are legitimatly triggered by those topics (e.g. due to trauma), But as someone who spent a lot of time on Tik Tok and youtube before coming here, I think there's some vital context missing here.

I'd say a good 75% of the people on tik tok, and by extention, people who have moved elsewhere from Tik Tok, using words like "unalive," "r#pe," "sewerslide" or whatever else aren't using it because they're uncomfortable with the topic. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They want to talk about it, but Tik Tok's content moderation is so wildly strict that they can't. Even saying the words would get you flagged by the algorithm, ESPECIALLY if you had captions enabled or the actual word written in text from the in-app editor. This was especially true for people from minorities trying to talk about issues affecting their community or even just themselves (hence the hesitation to even say the minorities name sometimes).

This isn't just some conspiracy theory either. Tik Tok staff admitted to doing this intentionally on several occasions as a way to "keep the peace". I remeber when I first joined, it came out that they intentionally limited views on videos of visibly disabled people, both to prevent bullying but also because "some users find that content disturbung." I couldn't even show my stumps in videos without my videos getting stuck on 0 views at best or account warnings for "inappropriate content" at worst. I got DMs from several people after my video about disability pride month in July asking why their comments wishing me a happy disability pride month got removed, when I went into check the filtered comments, they'd all been hidden for "bullying". The same thing was happening with people commenting and saying the word "autism." And that's just the disabled community. I know similar stuff was happening in other communities too.

Most of the time, you had to speak in coded language to get your point out there. It's not that they're uncomfortable with it, it's because the videos would be dead in the water if they didn't. Getting the message out using these "toned down" replacements was better than not getting it out at all.

"OK, but this isnt tik tok, they shouldn't do that here" yeah, I agree, but for a lot of kids, Tik Tok was their first real experiance with social media, it makes sense that they're going to assume other platforms will be the same. YouTube is just as bad, if not worse, in some respects. Tumblr even has its fair share of censorship issues, too (e.g. queer people's posts being flagged as mature for seemingly no reason). It's not a stretch to make the assumption they'd need to continue the practice of self-censorship here, too.

This isn't to say that NO ONE is using the censored words to avoid hard topics/because it makes them uncomfy, but in my experiance, those people assume this is the best thing to do because everyone else was using it. They don't stop to ask why. They just repeat it, which in turn contributes to making them umcomfey with the real word.

I'm not saying don't pick people up on this stuff. We NEED those words, and we need to be more comfortable with them so stuff like the above situation doesn't happen and become a self-perpetuating cycle. But it started from a real, genuine need to censor ourselves to even get the message out, and I think it's important to keep that in mind. It's not just kids being "too sensitive."

[greetings-inferiors]

give me manga reccommendations (please)

i think i'm gonna start reading again

i'll start with the classics like tokyo ghoul and black butler and death note because i did already read the first few volumes of them (like 2 yrs ago tho so ill have to reread)

but i want reccommendations :3

Why are you awake at 3am

Anyway my actual recommendations -

Tokyo ghoul and death note are GREAT starting points, two of the best mangas ever written.

The middle of death note does drag a bit, but the ending makes up for it imo. And obviously the first half is some of the best manga ever written. It’s also really short so you may as well, you won’t regret it.

Tokyo ghoul is fantastic, and I really recommend it, ESPECIALLY if you haven’t watched the anime. I wish I read the manga first every day. One of the most beautiful manga I’ve ever read.

I’ve never read black butler but I’ve heard good things.

Now, for my new recommendations (from least to most recommended)

One punch man is gut achingly funny, though I haven’t been keeping up with it

If you get into one piece you won’t run out of entertainment for months, what I’ve read it pretty good and apparently it just keeps getting better.

Spy x family is similarly gut achingly funny, but with a fantastic and gripping plot, especially the newest chapters. It’s one of two mangas I still keep up with for every chapter.

Assassination classroom is hilarious, but heart wrenchingly sad. It’s fantastic. It was my favourite manga for a long time.

And, of course, the big one. Jojo’s bizzare adventure is my favourite manga of all time. It’s one of my favourite pieces of media ever made. There’s genuinely nothing like it. Every part is completely unique, from the martial arts of part 1, to the murder mystery of part 4, to the heists of part 9. I am not kidding when I say that every part is its own genre. It’s also all really good. There’s an argument for all parts to be the best. And the title isn’t lying. In fact, it may be lying by omission. It’s not just bizzare - it’s batshit. In the best possible way. The only problem is that part 1 drags a bit, even though it’s short and imo still really good, so it’s a bit difficult to get into (and you are NOT part skipping, I WILL DISOWN YOU). It’s better than the anime though, so if you’re going to do jojo it’s best to start with the manga (the first three parts are MUCH better as mangas). But once you get to the end of part 1, it’s non stop PEAK. The ending to part 1 is phenomenal. Part 2 has one of the best jojos. Part 3 is a great journey and villain of the week format (along with having the best fight in the entire series). Part 4 is some of the best slice of life I’ve ever read??? Part 5 is basically an anime of the godfather and it’s brilliant. Part 6 is a jailbreak movie, with one of the best endings to anything ever. Part 7 is out of nowhere a literary masterpiece, unironically one of the greatest works of art I’ve ever read (it’s the second highest rated manga of all time for a reason). Part 8 is the pinnacle of Araki as a writer, storyteller, and artist, with a great coming of age (I guess lmao) story. And part 9 is thrilling heists with (imo) the best jojo in the series. The worst part is really fucking good, and the best part is one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written. I truly cannot recommend it enough. It’s not everyone’s thing - the title is NOT lying, it is weird, at times nonsensical, but never uninteresting. Give it a shot, at least the first 3 parts, they’re not long and if you’re not interested by then you’re not human I think (/j). Once you get to 4 and onwards they keep getting longer, and while they do keep getting better and better, if you’re not into the vibe and stands then you don’t want to read 800 ish chapters more. Oh yeah it is long tbf, the first 3 parts aren’t that long, the next 3 parts are decently sized, then the next 2 alone are longer than a lot of the other manga I’ve recommended lmao. But that’s kinda what happens when you release a manga without any major hiatuses for 30+ years. He only started releasing it monthly in about 2008, so it would be way longer lmao. But the monthly releases are worth it, it instantly gets wayyyyyyy better. You’ll notice it in steel ball run (part 7). And once you’re finished you’ll be able to wait with me for part 9, which has been FANTASTIC so far, and I’m really excited to see more.

The only problem is: how do you read it? Answer: I don’t know. Probably mangadex? Don’t read the official translations, they change almost every name in the series due to copyright (every stand and a lot of characters are named after songs and bands) and it a.) works way less and b.) will make communicating with other jojo fans really difficult. I read the first 8 parts using Jojo’s coloured adventure (though I don’t recommend the coloured manga, the black and white is much better), which was an all in one place fan translation, but I don’t think it exists anymore. I recommend researching which translations are the best and then reading them on mangadex. The thing about it is that the translations I read are only for the newly released chapters I’m pretty sure, so giving you their names wouldn’t help at all. I’ve read a few chapters of phantom blood on mangadex and like… it’s alright. The phrasing is a bit clunky, but overall it’s good.

Some last things: the early parts are a bit sexist at times, the women are still really well written like erina, Lisa Lisa, and suzi q, but the first 3 parts have the odd “beaten by a mere woman!!?” And stuff. But even then there’s a lot of subversions of sexism, like Lisa Lisa being really fucking strong (and even then Araki regrets having not written her as more of a main character). But once you get past part 3 it basically stops. Araki is really progressive with his writing, he wanted part 5 to have a female jojo, but his editors didn’t let him, but once part 6 came around he put his foot down and made half of the cast women (and even then he still was forced to change someone to a man). I’m pretty sure he even said the quote “the fact that readers don’t want the jojo to be a woman is exactly why she needs to be a woman” or something similar. Part 8’s best written character is a woman, and in part 9 we’ve got a weird genderqueer thing (I love dragona but it’s really hard to say whether they’re trans or not lmao. Imo they are, but obviously you shouldn’t assume. At the very least they aren’t out yet. Tho they take hrt. Lmao). Basically what I’m saying is it gets a lot better.

Once you’ve caught up I really recommend the anime! The first 3 parts are a downgrade imo (especially part 3, yikes they completely massacred it. The beginning is great and the last fight is phenomenally done though), but part 4 is an upgrade, especially since they had the hindsight of the villain (Araki originally wanted 3 to be the end, so part 4 didn’t really have a plan for the first half of its story) and could sprinkle him throughout. I haven’t watched 5 or 6 yet, but apparently 5 is fantastic and 6 is really good. But I’d definitely recommend reading it first, and then watching it once you’re obsessed.

If anything you should read the first 6 parts as homework for steel ball run. I love the first 6 parts to death, but 7,8, and 9 are so so so good, and steel ball run is, like, a classic manga. It’s the fucking great gatsby of manga. Or maybe to kill a mockingbird? Idk.

Anyway I’m sorry this is long I really really really like Jojo. Like I said, it’s my favourite manga of all time, and one of my favourite media franchises in general. I could gush about it for hours (and I guess I just did whoops lmao).

Also if you read it you’ll get the jojo references (important)

[skyfcx]

I was doing some thinking and got super reflective and now I kinda wanna just ramble about it for a second.

Was thinking about s t e a k c a k e again and how I've been writing on this site for upwards of eight years now. It wasn't all consistent, there are definitely points where I fall off the face of the planet for months at a time, so we could honestly round down to seven years of writing as a whole and that'd probably be more accurate.

But when it comes to simply existing as an entity that resides on this website? Yeah, I've been here for eight years. Started my first blog in mid-to-late December in 2015. So basically 2016 y'know.

And... the writing on that blog? I gotta say, it's honestly?? not?? that bad??? Like it's not the greatest and the presentation of the blog as a whole is god-awful. Jesus kid why do you fucking scream in all caps in the tags in literally every single post, please calm down. But! I clearly had a grasp on what made good words to put on a page! When it came to the meat and potatoes of writing, it seemed like I knew what I was doing!

Now, granted, before Tumblr I did write short stories on my own, but those were....... those were bad. those were flat-out bad and i still have access to them and i actually cannot read them because they terrify me that badly. But for my stuff on Tumblr? It's genuinely not the worst stuff in the world, looking back.

That realization made the little goblin in my brain go "mwah-ha-ha, have you even gotten better in all those years? i can't believe you peaked in middle school you cringe ass little nae nae boy" but. I think the nicer way to look at it is that I was always pretty good at this writing stuff, even if I didn't think it back then. And that is just a nice thought to hold onto.

And since then, there are other aspects that I've gotten better at for sure! I've gotten better at presentation, making the text actually engaging to look at since I worry about reader retention. And I break up my super long paragraphs way better, that's something I hate a whole bunch. There's nothing more ugly than one super big paragraph, blegh. Like, imagine this paragraph and the one before it as one big chunk. Too much, it's just ugly.

With that, my pacing of things had to evolve! If you're gonna break paragraphs up more, gotta figure out when to cut them off. Can't just press the enter button wherever you want and call it a day. But... yeah, all of this is just to say that I hope younger me knows that he's not half bad at writing. I'm happy he stuck around with it for so long.

[hellsbellschime]

So I'm really at the end of my rope, bitching and moaning under the cut

So for those of you who haven't been around since the stone age or just aren't in the know, my mom is bipolar. Her doctors in their infinite wisdom decided to test taking her off lithium, and shock of all shockers she is now manic as fuck. Like I just got an email from my landlords threatening possible eviction if her erratic behavior doesn't stop even though we haven't even been here for six months level manic.

So, given that she's literally mentally ill and is a selfish, manipulative, uncaring asshole even when she's medicated, she took my brand new car (it literally doesn't even have 1k miles on it yet) probably like 17 hours ago at this point (I have a time-stamped DM about it from like 13 hours ago), did something to damage it enough to need one of the tires replaced (and she says it's fine but somehow doubting it) EARLY YESTERDAY AFTERNOON and she still hasn't come home. I have called repeatedly, she has occasionally answered, and even giving her the biggest benefit of the doubt in the world it should have taken her about 20 minutes to get home when I called two hours ago.

Honestly my level of stress is just unreal, not only has she managed to abscond with and fuck up the most valuable thing I have ever owned in my life that is brand new and was a pretty huge thing for me to even get in the first place, but as you can imagine, this is not my first rodeo so the childhood trauma triggering is A LOT. And I just can't help but hate myself for not disengaging from this mess, deadass I moved to California as soon as I graduated from college specifically so this would not have to be my life anymore, and now here I am going through this same shit years later and never fully being able to enjoy my life and accomplishments because I have to wrangle a literal crazy person who has no one else.

It just sucks, I never asked for this, and unsurprisingly every other person in her life has tapped out over the years because it's too much and she's just too unkind for anyone to power through it for her so-called good times. She has said many times that she would have literally died at some point if it weren't for me, and while I obviously don't want her dead, that is an ENORMOUS amount of responsibility that I never asked for, and it is a responsibility that has drained a lot of good out of my life. I know everyone has to deal with shit, but having to deal with a mentally ill person who just takes and takes and takes and will tell you you're an asshole every time you try to genuinely help them just completely sucks the life out of you. At this point I wish she would just go off and live her dream crackhead life and leave me out of it, FFS we've been living in our new apartment for 5 months and she hasn't given me rent money once so at least I know I can do it on my own if necessary, and I'm just so fucking SPENT. For god's sake, I just called her again in the process of writing this damn post and she started yelling at me as if I'M the asshole in this scenario.

I just want to sit and cry and have the biggest pity party in the world and more than that I JUST WANT THIS FUCKING SHIT TO END and I want to feel like I can have a full life rather than trying to play cleanup crew for a person who treats me this way. I never dislike myself more than I do when I'm around her, and I hate that pity for someone who is frankly a complete asshole even on the best day has kept me trapped in a situation where I always feel like I'm my worst, saddest, meanest self. I'm just so fucking over it and don't want the responsibility of holding someone's life together when it feels like all I've done and dealt with since I was a kid. So all of you mfers better send all of your pity feels my way because literally no one on planet earth has a more difficult life than I do!

[wildernessuntothemselves]

At this point I would rather OC just confess her feelings to Beomgyu and be vulnerable, rather than keep hiding and going along with Yeonjun.

Like oh my god it’s so frustrating!! What’s the worst that could happen? You get rejected…sure she might lose a friendship but I feel like her getting more friends and interacting with more human beings is for the better because maybe if she had one other person to talk to, she would get some perspective on the situation realise what needs to change.

She’s acting like she’s gonna drop dead if he rejects her, like it’s the end of the world.

At this point she’d rather get married to Yeonjun and live a life of fake happiness, wishing and dreaming about ‘what could’ve been’ instead of actually pursuing who she wants. And that’s not fair to anyone it’s a lose-lose situation, Yeonjun won’t be happy, she won’t be happy…who knows about Beomgyu (although he probably wouldn’t be happy either) nobody is benefiting from it so I say confess to him get your heart ripped out of your chest and fed to you on a platter and then move on because this is not the vibe.

Honestly, I kind of just wish someone would take some action. Nobody is happy, and no one’s doing anything about it and it’s just growing and snowballing. Now we’re thinking of moving in with each other but nobody wants that and everyone just fights and it’s the same thing over and over…don’t get me wrong I love the story but yeah…

OC is kidding herself if she thinks her relationship with Yeonjun is helping her get over Beomgyu 😭 and no one is telling her! And she doesn’t have enough self-awareness to realise.

Keep up the good work tho, can’t remember the last time the fanfic made me feel like this 💗

As someone kind of in her situation in a way, it's not easy to just get more friends and other opportunities. I've moved away some 8 months ago and I'm still very much alone in a way. Oc depended a lot on gyu for comfort and safety and emotional support and it's very hard to replace that. She won't just be losing the man she loves but also her best friend. It's hard.

But also while she's still not over gyu, that doesn't mean her feelings for Yeonjun aren't genuine. She does like him and wants to make it work.

"No one is doing anything about it" we'll see about that 😉

Thanks babe. I love when people have strong opinions about the characters even if they're dissing them 😂 it means they story is making them feel something.

[brokenwiingss]

Task: 001

001. what is your full name?

Sasha Romero

002. what is your parents names? (what was their occupation?)

My dad's name is Marcelo Romero. He was construction worker. My mother? Don't know, don't care.

003. do you have any allergies, diseases or other physical weaknesses?

Nope, im as healthy as a horse

004. write a full physical description of yourself. you might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks.

Im about 5'5 and 125 pounds. I'm half Mexican, half Irish. I've got dark brown hair and eyes. My style would be cute casual i guess? I have one minimalist tattoo on my ribs of two hands holding onto each other. It represents my dad and i.

005. to which social class did you belong in before the outbreak?

working class

006. are you right- or left-handed?

right

007. what does your voice sound like?

Uh not sure how i would decribe it.

008. what words and/or phrases do you use very frequently?

I use fuck a lot. babe here and there too. Oh and stop being a little bitch and grow a pair.

009. what was your first kiss like and with who?

not good, and someone from my sophomore year of high school.

010. do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? are you in love right now?

I did until i got screwed over. I am not in love, dont think i will be anytime soon.

011. how do you feel about marriage?

Was against it at first, then met someone who changed my mind and now im not sure.

012. who are / is your best friend? what do you like about them?

Maverick is my best friend. He's open, honest and hilarious. @collapseqz

013. when was the last time you were hurt? who did it?

A few months ago when i got shot in the leg but a fucking idiot of a soldier. Unless we are talking about heart break, dont even get me started.

014. talk about one person you've met recently and what did you think of them?

I met a woman named Thalia. She's gorgeous and knows how to have fun.

015. would you say that you're more of a leader or a follower?

hmmm it depends on the situation i guess.

016. when was the moment you really realized that the outbreak wasn't going away? that your life was completely changed? if you were a kid, when do you think you realized you grew up?

When more and more people got infected, i knew it wasn't ending any time soon. My life changed when i had to leave home without a choice so i could survive. When i had to start taking care of myself more.

017. what's your weapon of choice?

A gun, its good to keep a distance between you and whoever you're up against.

018. what do you look for in a partner? or describe what your dream partner would be like? what do they look like? what color is their hair? how tall are they? what's their attitude like? be descriptive.

Why do questions about my love life keep coming up? I guess my dream partner would be someone whose funny, easy to get along with. Genuine and kind, someone who knows what they want. Looks? They'd be tall with a great body. i dont really care about hair color but if i had to choose, dark hair. I'd like someone taller than me. Taller than 5'8 is preferred. And their attitude, positive, calm. Kind of the opposite of me because im already a lot.

019. what are you afraid of? tangible and unavoidable? (tangible: spiders, ghosts, snakes / unavoidable: aging, dying)

Tangible, i dont like rats. Unavoidable, i guess dying alone. I would like to spend my last moments with someone.

020. what is your worst memory?

Finding my dad dead in his bed.

021. What is your favorite memory?

Backpacking through Europe. Got to explore so much, meet new people and try new foods.

022. what’s your reputation with the people around you. do they like you? dislike you? why?

Uh i guess it's good. Im very social so its not hard to befriend people. I would hope they like me though. If anyone doesn't like me, then fuck them.

023. if you could relive one memory, one last time which would it be?

My dad and I on Christmas morning, making cookies, opening gifts then going to see the Christmas lights.

024. when you were a kid were you bullied or teased? for what?

I wasn't because i wouldn't let anyone bully or tease me. I fought a lot when i was younger.

025. if you could tell your younger self something, what would it be?

That'll be okay and youre gonna be such a boss ass bitch. That there is nothing to be afraid of.

026. what is a goal you want to accomplish before you die?

To be honest, i dont know if i have a goal. I use to say to have a family. married with a child so i could give them a better life but im not bringing a child into this fucked up world.

027. if you could pick anyone in town to tell your life story, who would it be and why?

Hmm Sebastian for sure. He's kind and i know he'd be a great listener. He also has something about him that puts you at ease and makes you feel...safe i guess i would put it. @instinctsqz

028. do you believe there is or could be a cure to be made? and do you think that it could restore humanity?

if there was, it would've been done by now and maybe it could restore humanity but i'm not holding my breath.

029. if the outbreak never happened, what would you have wanted to do for a living?

I'd probably be a detective.

[queenofbaws]

Fanfic asks 19 and 21

ohohoh don't mind if i DO!!! ;)c

19. Do you read mostly angst, fluff, smut, or some combination of them?

when it comes to reading fic, i'm really, really, really, really, REALLLLLLLLLY more of an angst person in general. i don't shy away from fluffy, shippy stuff, don't get me wrong! but by far and away, i'm probably quicker to hop on board if i see angst tagged than if it's not...and my ultimate green flag is if horror is tagged, lbr hehehe

i want to hurt when i'm reading >:)

21. What are your top three fics you’ve written and why are they your favorites? 

oh the impossible choice of picking a favorite child...the impossible, impossible choice of - just kidding, here are the ones that i continue to be very obsessed with

-the (almost)s, until dawn, jossam/chrashley/gen, m, ~660k. my lawyer has advised me that i've already said all i'm allowed to say about this fic in the more than 600,000 words contained therein, so. just know that it's my baby, my child, my sweet, precious bundle of joy, and i miss writing it every single day :')

-the durellion affair, dragon age, fhawke/varric, t+, ~80k. this was my first go at writing a murder mystery, and just...it was so much fun. it was so. much. FUN!!! part of that fun was that it came to me almost fully formed??? so there was just a month(ish) where i sat and furiously wrote nonstop for days on end, and when it was all done, i got the EXTREME joy of being able to post chapters on a regular schedule and...ugh, just...when i think about having FUN writing a fic, this is the #1 that pops up in my head. plus it's ALL hawke and varric banter, hidden thigh daggers, and poisoned wine, like...just a good time. just a good, good time. i love it, and i kind of want to write more silly murder mysteries in this vein in the future!!!

-alone time, until dawn, gen, m, ~5k. i don't talk about this fic a whole lot, and it's not one of my more popular ones, but genuinely it's one of my favorite things that i've written in the past few years. honestly i think it comes down to the formatting (it's sort of a choose your own adventure in the worst possible way) that let me experiment more with the traditional narrative structure. i would love, love, LOVE to do more experimental stuff like this in the future, i'm just not entirely sure how or when at the moment. but being able to explore hannah's story in this way, making choices but...not really making choices, it just hit me a certain way, and i will freely admit i go back to it on occasion and reread it and grin like a fool the whole way through.

writing asks!

[what-if-nct]

wait- why’s everyone turning 30 all of a sudden? ARIANA GRANDE IS TURNING 30? SELENA GOMEZ IS 30? YOONGI IS 30????? WHAT THE FUCKING HELL? I THOUGHT THEY WERE IN THEIR 20S!!!!

no please don’t tell me johnny is turning 30- it would be a nightmare to see a guy like that turn into a dilf- 😭

breaking news, wonho is 30. WHAT THE FUCK GUYS? EVEN TAEMIN IS TURNING 30! WILL YOU GUYS STOP TURNING 30 AND TURN ANOTHER AGE LIKE- idk 69 or 420- oooooh that’s a sick number! i wish i could turn 420 and then smoke wee- OK THAT’S ENOUGH OF THAT!

oh yeah we’re dying on jaehyun’s birthday in 2046. everyone blame it on jaehyun because it’s his fault. also, 2020 was 3 years ago?

Yeah, 93 babies turn to be 30, Then next year Taeil will be 30, and Sehun and Kai. Also my best friend and sister are like anticipating my 30th birthday more than me cause next year they're turning 30 and I'm like passing the 29 torch to them. Especially my sister cause we'll be 29 the same time for two months till my birthday. 30 is no different than 25. It's not a big deal. It just feels like dude I'm like an adult adult, I'm close to Carrie Miranda and Charlotte's ages in sex in the city. Which if you watched Sex in the city you'd know Carrie was still an absolute mess in her 30's. I honestly thought they were in their 20s and Samantha was 30. till they mentioned their age, then when they flash back to the 80s when they were 20 and Sam was 30, they looked like kids and their teen mom. Our perception of age is so skewed.

Time isn't real, it's made up. I am just trying to heal from everything in my 20s. Cause I do feel like I wasted most of my 20s cause I had to take care of my aunt since I was 25, and I do hold some resentment not gonna lie cause she treated me horribly but I was the only one able to help her, I honestly still hate I had to move in with her at 23, I don't know why my uncle thought that was a good idea. I'm sorry but that woman is genuinely evil. She told me and my sister we were the reason my grandma died and stood behind it when my sister called it out. She did not care. We were children when she passed. How can you blame children. You have no idea how much I wanted to just move out without saying a word. But rent is so high right now,

But I really started acting out at 24 just to have some resemblance of "fun' in my 20s. Which just led to me developing so much trauma I still haven't processed properly especially since the worst of it is only a few months fresh. And I just want to try to heal and I'm sure I'm playing catch up compared to people age I'm honestly just happy to make it this far. And that's what really matters every birthday you made it no matter the scars you brought with you, you made it. But at least I have a better sense of who I am. I did think I didn't know who I was had a whole breakdown. But it was just I thought who I am just isn't good enough and I have to be someone better.

So I'm trying to learn who I am is good enough and outside validation doesn't matter. Loving your body is easy, that's nothing been there for years. but loving who you are that is the hard part especially when you think you're not enough or you think you're too much and everyone hates you and you need to mold to a likeable version of yourself. And everytime I think what is wrong with me, I've always been made to feel who I was, was the problem and no one is ever going to love me but I hear with age you care less about what other people think and I really hope it is true. Happy 30th birthday all the 93 babies, you're doing just fine no matter where you are, no need to rush take your time.

[paperboy-pb]

i just wanted to say that i’m so incredibly happy to see a comic that talks about special ed, i spend my entire late childhood to preteen-hood in the sped department, most of the staff members who would follow me around would physically and emotionally abuse me, i ended up having to be homeschooled and developed all sorts of mental issues as a result, and it took me years to heal from everything, i’m still working through my mental health, and knowing that i’m not the only person who went through this makes me super happy

...Makes me happy too :]

I wish you the best! It's true-- we really aren't alone. Even when it seems it. When I was a kid in the 2010s, I used to google "help, special ed makes me feel bad" or "special ed makes me sad" and I wouldn't be able to find anything except articles about how 'wonderful' of an environment it is, & why you should put your kids in there if you can. I thought I was going nuts for a while.

Kid-me felt so alone, I actually started Paperboy *as a child*, as a last-ditch way to cope. Summer between sixth and seventh grade, I would draw out all the terrible things that happened to my peers & I, but with different names and faces. In a little blue notebook. And I never stopped. Thank God other people are more vocal about it today, though. I don't want to be the only person who talks about this.

‼️[Heads up-- vague discussion of ableist abuse against a child & SA going onward!]‼️

I was in it for K-8, so ages 4-13. I was never hit by adults, but the emotional abuse & isolation ran so rampant that by 5, I was asking teachers, "Am I *good enough* to play with other kids yet? :D"

Needless to say, I was always noted to have self-esteem issues. (And staff had the audacity to wonder why?)

I'm so sorry, anon. Kids like you & me went through way too much. I remember it all: the screaming, the following, intimidation, condescension, EXTREME public humiliation, force-feeding, isolation, disabled kids bullying each other, botched education, violent situations, some times where I genuinely almost died, and then... well. I was sexually abused while I was in there, to say the least. And nobody would let me separate from the people who did it because the school insisted on keeping all their "special little things" together, away from everybody else. So I had to just... stay there. And take it. For months on end.

An adult even saw it one day. You could tell I was in trouble, I even screamed, "HELP ME!" at the top of my lungs. She looked right at me, straight-up eye contact, but... she turned her back. To talk to some General Ed kids on the other end of the recess yard.

Normal talk, too. She didn't send the girls to get help or anything. They had a pleasant little chat while I had the worst moment of my life.

I haven't healed up fully, but I'm doing... better? Working on Paperboy helps! My family wouldn't help me, but I did well enough that I got to be transferred out into General Ed at 13. And I got a therapist helping me out now at 19. But that environment genuinely took my entire childhood away from me; and that sucks! 4 is pretty much a toddler. 13 is a teenager already.

I will never understand why people think disabled students are to be treated like nothing. Special Ed & many of the people involved in it have some serious reform to do.

[chickencrackerlover]

realized i might be gay and idk what to do with myself

posting this on my secret tumblr so no one ik irl finds it.

I grew up and live in the bible belt, so the fact I didn't realize this until 22 should be shocking to no one lmao. I've more identified as ace since i was like 13, but something just always "felt wrong". I genuinely could not figure out why. It wasn't until the past summer that the little switchboard in my noggin clicked all the right buttons.

This was honestly one of the worst summers of my life for several reasons. All of my friends joked that i must have pissed off a witch or something with all the random unfortunate circumstances I kept encountering.

During this summer, I ended up meeting a guy at a bar. We went hiking a few weeks later and all my friends got so excited seeing me, the chronically bitter and single friend, going on a date. "It wasn't a date" I would say everytime. "Yes it was" they would insist. I stopped arguing. They always get a little too invested in my romantic interests which is why I normaly wait so long to tell them if I ever see someone I like. Everyone is always so obsessed with me finding someone, and they never hesitate to insert their opinion about how "one day you'll find someone. Asexual or not, one day you'll look at them and think about how much you just want to start a family with them".

The conversation of not saying things like that to me has been had many times with almost all my friends. "Despite what you may think. It really isn't that I'm just so nervous around men that I don't want children." I would say. "I think it is." they would reply. "Stop. I'm being serious." I would say, more frustrated this time. This always tipped them off that they should shut up and listen. I'm really not one to ever get mad at my friends.

"I don't want biological kids. That much will always be true. But it isn't because I'm scared of sex or whatever. I'm scared of pregnancy. I don't know where that fear came from, but it makes me nauseous. I cannot stomach the idea of being pregnant. Not to mention by a man. Something about that irks me."

They never quite understood, but I appreciated their willingness to cut it with the psychoanalyzing.

Back to the guy. "He was nice" was about all i could say. When asked what I liked about him, I really couldn't give an answer. He had a great job, clean background, lived in a nice part of the city, seemed to have a healthy realtionship with his parents. Picture perfect. No mention of his looks, his body, his personality. Just "he was nice. good job, cool hobbies". They still ask if i've texted him since. Eventually, I got irritated by the constant need for an update and just started saying I lost interest. They all lectured me "you have to give guys a chance!". It fell on deaf ears to be sure.

So what was wrong? Nothing. It just felt wrong. Just like my ace label - which I had a habit of dropping when I became to confused about my own interests - it just felt wrong. After my summer from Hell finally ended, i walked into therapy one day and went over the details from the summer with her, venting out the bad air that was the past two months. Like I usually end up doing, I ended the session with a doorknob confession

"Also I think I may just be gay."

This was news to her because, while she did know I liked girls, she was also rooting for the mytery man. I spent the last 10 minutes of the session giving the summary of why i thought this, and she mentioned we should use the next session to go through it in detail. This was not the first time i had held this sentiment, and this time, she said, I seemed way more bothered by it.

Anyways, all this to say, the feeling hasn't gone away. I'm still constantly spacing out, making connections in my head I always thought were just coincidences. I feel like I've just seen something in the mirror I'd never noticed before and now my reflection looks different. I'm not sure what to do now. Do I start talking to girls? I never talked to anyone before.

My friends still don't believe me for some reason. They love to make the joke that I'm probably a lesbian and just refuse to admit it until I finally agree with them. "Well we don't know." "Why can't you just be bi? You don't have to be a 100% lesbian." "Well I don't know. What about when you were obsessed with [celebrity/ fictional character]? They're a man.]

I don't really care whether they do or not. Again, I live in the bible belt. Home of antioch, fire and brimstone gospel. I'm used to a sheer lack of support. I guess I'm more writing this post because I'm thinking a lot and don't know what to do with the thoughts. We'll see how it goes, maybe. I'll write more later.

(side note: finding wlw content is literally the most abyssmal thing ever. Why is every theme surrounding wlw relationships based on the whole "turning her gay" trope or "they are both straight. They just want to try it out".)

[eleanorroseaxoxo]

I Was A Father, And Now I'm A Monster

Heavily based on the Hayley and Elijah scene in The Originals [Season 2, Episode 01], credits to the lines used from that episode in this fic go to the writers.

Hopper had killed him. Hopper had killed the monster that had made him into the monster, his worst nightmare.

Hopper doesn’t really have any problems with vampires... okay, Hargrove and his humanity (or lack of) was a pain in his ass, and you do get the odd outsider who’s unfamiliar with his rules about vampires. But if you had told Jim Hopper 4 years ago that not all vampires are evil, he would’ve called bullshit. Jonathan was an eye-opener, the poor kid didn’t know what was happening to him, but as majority of them do, he succumb to the bloodlust.

Hopper wasn’t an exception, he drained a poor inmate dry when he first transitioned back in July ’85.

Hopper has been angry ever since; angry that he’s practically a walking-talking corpse, angry that he’s a bloodsucker that can’t stop drinking blood, angry that he had been torn away from Joyce.

If he was honest, Hopper was close from switching it off all together... and that’s when he was reunited with her.

After finally killing the Demogorgon, Hopper went on a Ripper spree in the prison. Let’s just say, there were a lot of fatalities.

Which brings us to now, Hopper smashing everything in sight with his fists, he feels completely overwhelmed by all of his emotions: anger, pain, sadness, and relief that this nightmare was over.

Joyce rushes into the room, witnessing Hopper’s rampage. She tries to intervene, hoping to calm him down.

‘Hop! Hop, what’s going on?” Joyce yells, concerned for Hopper’s wellbeing.

Hopper throws the crowbar that he’s been using to smash everything on the ground, completely exhausted. Joyce notices the look in Hopper’s eyes, she saw the same look on his face when he saw a bunch of corpses that had been mauled by a wolf a few years back; disgust.

“I killed him.” Hopper explains, Joyce just looks confused, not knowing who he’s talking about. “The doctor, that person, looked me in the eye and begged me for his life as I tore his throat out” Hopper scoffs at himself, both angry and annoyed. “But I don't feel better! I don't feel peace! I don't feel anything!”

Joyce shakes her head and looks at Hopper with soft eyes.

“I went through this with Jonathan, it-it’s perfectly natural given what you’ve experienced...”

“Nothing about what I am, Joyce, is natural!” Hopper yells at the top of his lungs.

Joyce, seeing how distraught Hopper is, tries to calm him down.

“Jonathan told me that as a vampire, you experience feelings with a greater intensity.” Joyce explains to him, she nurtured Jonathan during his first few months as a vampire, she’ll do the same for Hopper. “It will take time to control it.”

Hopper, on the verge of tears, shakes his head in denial and frustration.

“I don't want to live like this, Joyce. I hate it!” Hopper admits, openly crying.

It breaks Joyce’s heart to see him like this. Joyce remembers how people like Jonathan and Robin openly accepted their transition and learnt to adjust to it, maybe because Hopper didn’t have a good support system, it’s taking him more time to cope. Either that, or he genuinely hates being a vampire.

“When I first became a rookie and eventually a hunter, I finally understood the purity of being human. I knew my role in life, defend the defenceless from those monsters, to protect the people of Hawkins.”

Hopper smiles, reminiscing on his time in Hawkins; meeting Joyce, meeting and raising El, being viewed a hero in many eyes. Hopper takes a breath, before looking Joyce in the eye.

“I killed six inmates tonight before I got to the doc.” Hopper shakes his head in disgust. “Six of my own people. What's kind of hero does that? I acted no better than a...”

“Than a vampire?” Joyce stated, feeling a little hurt that Hopper is still prejudice against vampires.

Hopper steps towards Joyce.

“Everything has changed since July 4th, Joyce.” Hopper looks down. “And not just for me.” Hopper composes himself before continuing, “I saw the way you looked at me before. And, I see the way you look at me now.”

Joyce shakes her head, knowing it’s not true. Joyce will always love Hop, vampire or human.

“I was a cop, a protector, a dad...” Hopper cries harder. “...and now I'm a monster.”

Joyce moves towards Hopper to comfort him, but he is in no mood to be comforted.

Hopper just looks at the exit and storms towards it, but not before turning back to look at Joyce.

“Things are different now. You can't tell me that they're not. Now, let’s just get out of this hellhole.”