#like there's a lot of oversights and weird interactions

[vonaegiremblem]

The real question for me with regards to the TTYD Remake is whether or not they're going to make any balance changes. Like are they going to fix Yoshi's Stampede so that it works as intended? Are they going to make Ms. Mowz and Bobbery actually decent? Are they going to reduce the cost of Sweet Feast and raise the cost of Showstopper? Are they going to make Tornado Jump usable?

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for posting unspecified fetish content?

I'll try to keep the exposition short. I draw and post sweat fetish content on Twitter. My account has NSFW/"adult only" warnings and I block any minors that I see. Recently, I posted a drawing of two characters exercising together; there were no explicit genitals or anything, but it still had obvious kink elements. I don't usually tag my kink art with any content warnings as it was pretty run-of-the-mill for what I post on that account. Something worth nothing is I tend to draw for one main fandom. It's a family friendly media with a good chunk of it's online fanbase being kids. The characters I draw are adults.

When I checked my notifications a while after it was posted, I noticed one of my drawings got more interactions than usual. I usually get around 100-200 likes on my art, and this one had around 400 when i checked. I saw a lot of new accounts in my notifications, too. I went through the likes on the post and, unfortunately for me, the post had breached containment and entered normie territory. At first I thought it was funny, but as I looked a bit further I saw there were minors interacting and retweeting my art onto their main, SFW accounts. Obviously not good.

So, I posted about what happened in a NSFW fandom discord server in a sort of "this weird thing happened to me and I don't know how to feel about it" way. It ended up starting a bit of an argument in there, with some people laughing it off as normies just not knowing better and others viewing it as an oversight on my end.

Anyways, after a bit of back and forth (I was just kind of watching people talk about it), a server member K replied to my original message with a multiple paragraph long message saying that what I did was dangerous. He said that hiding fetishes in SFW art is a breach of consent (which, for the record, is a sentiment I generally agree with) and claimed that what I did is the same thing groomers do to desensitize kids to sexual content. I responded by saying that I posted my fetish content to a fetish account and one glance at my profile makes it clear my art is not meant to be viewed by kids. He responded to me saying that if I was truly worried about preventing grooming, I would've taken the post down. The argument stopped there because that's when the mods stepped in, asking people to take it to DMs. I did end up deleting and reposting the drawing, but not before I saw K vagueposting about fetish mining in the fandom we're both in.

Should I be more clear when it comes to posting fetish content that isn't explicitly sexual? I honestly feel like it's an overreaction on K's part, but I do understand the anxiety around being accused of grooming. And, unfortunately, trying to "trick" people into making fetish content isn't uncommon online either, so I do get where he's coming from there. Overall, I just want to make sure I didn't do anything predatory on accident.

What are these acronyms?

[leiflitter]

Re: canon Felix not remembering to tell Ollie about the formalwear, I think it's his self-centeredness making him shortsighted and oblivious but also maybe subconsciously giving himself another chance at playing white knight (just like taking Ollie home because his mother "sounded sober") and feeling good about himself.

(In an alternate universe where Felix is slightly more thoughtful, he doesn't mention the clothes precisely because he knows there's no way Oliver owns or can afford them. Why give him something to worry about when Felix can pretend an oversight and then wave the problem away in seconds rather than put him in the uncomfortable position of having to either reject the invitation or ask for a handout? (double saviour points!) ... But in that universe Felix may have also realized it was weird that Oliver didn't need a summer job)

Okay so I wrote a lot then I deleted it to be more coherent but okay. OKAY.

Felix as Philanthropist. Felix as the hand of God, lifting people from mundanity. Felix as the Knight Who Saves The Princess.

Felix is none of these things, despite wanting to be, because Felix doesn't understand the nature of true kindness. Not really.

What Felix wants is to be universally adored. He mostly is, too, because he's a bombshell hottie-hot rich boy, but the problem is that it's too fucking easy. Everything has diminishing returns to Felix. He gets what he wants, when he wants- and that will make you numb. It's like a callous; Felix has probably only felt actual, deep emotions fleetingly, and even then... He tells Oliver he threw a stone for his dog but...

He doesn't say his dog's name. He loved the dog enough to go through the family ritual for death, but now the dog is nameless.

(I have named the dog Barney, btw, because all pups deserve a name)

Oliver, unlike everyone else, puts up a resistance to Felix's Will. Even Farleigh comes with the begging bowl.

"It's an awful faff to wheel it back to campus" "oh, you want me to..."

Their first proper interaction and Oliver makes him self-conscious. You can see it- he breaks his Felix Eye Contact and goes all hand-wavey and awkward, before Oliver says he will.

That establishes the pattern. Felix wants. Oliver denies. Felix has to try harder. Oliver gives in. Felix likes it.

Oliver is proud despite his apparent circumstances, and despite everything Felix could hold over him, Oliver refuses to just get on the floor and lick his boots and worship him the way everyone else does. Oliver does this because he knows that Felix gets bored when things are too easy, but also because he wants Felix to actually care about him. If Felix stops trying, it means Felix no longer cares, so Oliver makes him demonstrate his affection. To paraphrase-

"Come to Saltburn" - accept my glory and benevolence. Make me feel good. Let me save you.

"It's too much of an imposition." - prove to me that you want me there. Prove to me you care about me. Prove to me that I am more to you than the others.

"You'll save my sanity, really." - I need you to give in so I can actually feel good about myself. Please.

Now, the Hot Argument is a reversal of this. Oliver wants. Felix says no. Oliver tries harder. Felix does not like it.

Then Oliver comes back, with a new chapter of tragedy, which is Oliver Giving In, which Felix Likes.

Now the Dinner Jacket and the Birthday Trip are, actually, both the same thing. Felix has learned the pattern, you see, and he wants to skip straight to Felix Likes It without the initial pushback. He's on his home turf- and look.

Felix knows Oliver doesn't Get It. Felix absolutely knows. His family know all about Oliver’s Sad Circumstances- even if he Told Them In Confidence, that just means they don't talk about it in front of Oliver. He has probably been absolutely writhing about how NICE he's being while waiting for Oliver to arrive, the same as he was in the Was It Awful scene. He's been watching for Oliver to arrive (it's a big house- he pops up maybe 5 seconds after Ollie's come in), seen him be absolutely cowed by Duncan and swooped in to Save Him in his see-throughish white shirt.

Given him the grand tour.

And it starts- not with the jacket, but with the razor.

Felix is dripfeeding Oliver information because then he can bypass the whole Oliver says No part of their little dance. He probably doesn't know it, but that's what he's doing.

"Oh and you need to shave."

"Oh and the maids tell mum everything."

"Oh and you need to dress for dinner."

He doesn't warn Oliver about The Help opening the windows. Or the Henry party. Or the field. He lets Oliver get to the cusp of Something, then Oliver has to give in.

The Birthday Trip is the culmination of it.

Oliver doesn't fight Felix about the trip. About wearing something nice. He doesn't ask and Felix doesn't tell him, because Felix wants him captive.

If Felix actually thought about it for longer than 20 seconds, he might have realised that there's no way this would go well. He hid Oliver's mum's phonecall for a week. A week.

He probably wouldn't have even told Oliver if he could avoid it. I bet he'd have blindfolded him if it was a short trip. Because Felix wants to Be The Hero and roll up to the shack that he assumes Oliver grew up in and rain money on the problem to make it go away.

And what would have happened if it WAS as bad as Oliver described? Oliver would have been humiliated just as badly as he was by the lie coming out. Felix would realise that he is out of his depth, and... am I going to need to write my version of this? Maybe. Oops.

We see Felix through the lens of Oliver's love, but once again:

They're both idiot kids. They're 19/20, immature, off their faces on Saltburn and being young and the weird dynamic between them. It was never going to go well.

[heyheydidjaknow]

Maybe it's just fuelled by bias, but I never interpreted L as a virgin or completely inept when it comes to physical affection. i mean i agree with the idea that he's not the most experienced, but idk i always held the notion that he would view sex, arousal, etc as [within the context of not having a partner] just an bodily inconvenience that could be ignored until it couldn't, or even just a way of stress relief that he'd either take care of himself, or resort to a one night stand (under a different alias, in an impersonal setting and most likely never contact them again).

i think in terms of physically affection he'd understand it phonetically - for lack of a better word; like when children are learning to talk, and instead of understanding the right pronunciation and meaning of words, they just know what it sounds like and know roughly how to use the word. L understands what affection looks like, he knows usually when it's expected and how to mimic and adapt to his partner's wants, etc. but he doesn't understand fully (either from his childhood, or his analytical nature) that physical affection is just a common thing that happens for the sake of it, and instead thinks it happens because x and happens in the context of y. if that makes any sense what so ever.

idk. this isn't a slight against you btw, i like the way you write him and i think you're the best person to dump interpretations of him if thats ok.

I agree with aspects of this but I’m still going to argue because it’s fun to do that. Obviously this is a perfectly valid way of interpreting the text but what’s the point of sharing opposing viewpoints if not to discuss and contrast them?

I’m going to mark his whole thing with Misa as one of my biggest points for L being somewhat into sex. We see him enjoying her hypersexual ads, he responds to her kiss on the cheek like someone who understands and is somewhat comfortable with physical contact and when he’s confronted about the obvious ickiness that is his restraining Misa he does seem genuinely off-put when Misa calls him a perv, which means he at the very least seems to understand how it could be construed that way. I agree with your point to an extent that in practical terms all things sexual would become something like a chore but I think that would just be the way that a lot of things would get if your mind is singularly focused on a task for extended periods. He just does not have a lot of time to take time to enjoy that sort of thing the same way he does not have time to enjoy eating a proper meal without working.

I agree with the general physical affection thing to an extent— that he would be naturally inclined to make it a bit more clinical and follow more linear reasoning— but I don’t imagine that a person whose job it is to watch and understand people would not also put together that physical affection is just a social need that people typically have. To not be able to understand that much— that touching someone can and is a mean in it of itself— seems like a huge oversight on his part if that is the case. And, again, he does respond positively to physical affection, so I don’t think he’s necessarily unfamiliar with it; even going beyond the cheek kiss, he has no issue holding hands with Light and Misa in their circle thing, and doesn’t react negatively or as if he’s startled when Aizawa grabs his shoulder during the whole Sakura TV incident. This leads me to believe that he has enough practical experience with being physically touched to not be weirded out by it or not know how to respond to it, which is why I’ve always hinted at the idea that his childhood did have a lot of normal person on person interaction in it to explain this discrepancy.

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

Spoiler-Free KEY Review

Alright. I finished KEY. I'm going to play it again with my sister and then probably do a more in depth review of it, but for now I've got a just-finished-it review, and we'll see how this one compares to my second review after a second playthrough.

Plot:

The plot wasn't too bad! A bit linear compared to other games but I did enjoy it. It wasn't as visual novel-y as MID but wasn't as interactive as some other games. But overall it was fun and entertaining!

Characters:

The characters were enjoyable. I liked having some characters there being only barely involved when others were SUPER involved, so we have a lot more range with suspects and suspicions. I definitely would have liked digging deeper into the characters, like in CUR and GTH and SAW and such. Although, I'll admit, in most of the other games we didn't get super deep backgrounds either. There weren't a lot of dialogue options, so maybe in the future we can get more dialogue and character deep dives! I want more substance!

The only part about the characters I actively didn't like was a certain character's hair (bro, that's some Assassin's Creed Caterina Sforza hair, Sims hair, idk but it wasn't good enough), and the random unimportant NPCs. The NPCs were a bit distracting and did take me out of the game if I paid too much attention to them, so that's my take on that. In the future, I want to random unimportant NPCs to be completely gone and I want to VEN sound design back. That was immersive without needing the actual people standing around.

Now the phone characters were almost useless, only there to push the plot forward with barely any fun shit. In the future, I NEED more interaction with them. Less texting, more actual conversations. And they don't even need to be strictly about the game, give me conversations like what we had with Savannah Woodham. Not just a phone call here or there for only the purpose of moving forward in the plot. I need weird phone calls where they're like "hello! what do you want!" and the only dialogue option is "bye!" so then you hang up. I also want to actually be able to call them, because if there isn't a plot reason for it, you can't call them. So. Yeah. Oversight from the game devs.

Controls:

This game I feel was not designed with point and click in mind. I feel like it was added as a second option while favoring the "modern" controls of free roam stuff. However, I enjoyed the free roam! Maybe this is because I play a lot of other video games that aren't point and click, but I ended up really liking it. Other than that, the controls CAN be a bit clunky to get used to, but that happens with every video game with new controls you don't know yet (when I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I punched my horse so many times because I couldn't get used to the controls and I felt so bad). I think they could definitely work on it more, but it is WAY better than Midnight in Salem. Way WAY better.

Music:

While not as iconic at the Kevin Manthei tracks I am in love with, I did like the music! It was pretty good, with some tracks standing above the others. I will say though that the track that plays in the tech store is my least favorite as it just sounds... meh. In every sense of the word.

Puzzles and Minigames:

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. There are actually puzzles!!!! After all, what, two puzzles in Midnight in Salem, we actually get REAL PUZZLES! They have some new puzzles, some recycled puzzles (THAT I WANT MORE OF), some pretty puzzles, some clunky but fine puzzles, and just a good variety of them. They also offer hints if you are struggling.

I think my favorite puzzle is... Well, I don't want to spoil it, but there are a few contending for the top place. (Although fuck math, all my homies hate math.)

As for the minigames, the coffee making is fun, although a bit daunting with the instructions. I recommend making your own notes aside from the in-game recipe books. The latte art can be irritating but eventually you get the hang of it. Not quite as bad as the SAW calligraphy but nowhere near the delight I got from the SPY cookies minigame.

Glitches and Issues:

I did catch a few typos and a few glitches, but they weren't the norm. Just look at the HeR site for what to look out for, and make sure your PC can handle the game. I didn't need to look out for that since I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and my laptop is running that fine (on low graphics lol). Way less messed up than MID, worse than some of the other games, but hey, it's not like we've never had bugs in the games before (there have been a few times the games have crashed on me because of bugs). And this time we have autosaves to help out with that.

Overall Impression:

It's a solid game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the UI and controls are still similar to MID, the game itself is a step in the right direction where I want the Nancy Drew games to go. It isn't perfect, I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Nancy Drew game, but it's good enough for me.

I'm happy with it. I got to have the joy of a new Nancy Drew game, which is something I haven't had since Midnight in Salem, and we know how that went. I got to find new clues, see new places, meet new characters, complete puzzles that were both new and recycled, and enjoy a new mystery. It brought a smile to my face multiple times and made me squeal in delight when I solved something. I haven't had a good new Nancy Drew game experience since I played SEA when it came out.

So I'm happy. Is it my favorite? No. But do I think it's bad? Also no. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but that's okay. These games make me happy, and I hope we get more so they can continue my happiness in the future.

Tentative rating: 7/10

[rainbowolfe]

A Deep Observation of the Daycare Attendant

Because I am very, very normal about them.

Were you saddened or otherwise put off by sassy, mean Sun? Then rejoice, you're gonna like this post.

Because as funny as it is, it's a sharp turn for this character to make. Even the cookbook calls out how "nice and helpful" Sun is (according to Freddy). While we don't know when it is, I think if Sun was super impatient and a perfectionist deep down, even with years of training him to tolerate children, it would still show subtly.

TLDR: The Sun we interact with in the Arts and Crafts section isn't "Sun" at all. It's Moon.

Overall

It's interesting how much Help Wanted 2 goes out of its way not to acknowledge Moon. And it's unlikely to be an oversight on Steel Wool's end, this game was being made at the same time as the Ruin DLC. Really, it's so blatant it has to be intentional.

The Carousel levels make no mention of how to keep him at bay in the tutorial. And in the Arts and Crafts Loft tutorial, the instructions are just "Use the flashlight if it gets too scary." When on every other level, it's upfront about what threats you'll encounter and how to handle them.

Speech Pattern

Half of Moon's dialogue in every game he's been in so far has been laughter. So we know he's a giggly, goofy little guy. But one of his new lines is captioned: "The merry-go-round broke down. (snickers)"

Which, not only reads like he's the one who caused it to break down (he doesn't bother you until you touch it after all), but that little snicker dotting the end of his sentence is a verbal quirk Sun's never had before. And yet, we hear it constantly during Arts and Crafts.

Something we also get to hear is his beloved "You're gonna get us in trouble" line. I wouldn't expect the exact same delivery, but it's significantly different. Gregory going behind the security desk is a far more severe infraction than eating crafts, and yet "Sun" sounds far less flustered. Nervous, because it actually is against the rules (and he physically can't go back there if something were to happen) but not so worked up he's stumbling over his words.

Body Language

A lot of thought is put into the movement of all the animatronics, not just Sun and Moon. And they each have a distinct way of moving.

Of the two of them, Moon has always been the acrobatic one. And when he's not doing flips or swimming through the air, he's contorting himself (like that weird helicopter thing he does) or miming.

Even the little details. Sun's limbs tend to flow together in big fluid motions. Moon's movements are jerky and fast (unless he's in the air). And his body parts move more erratically. His fingers twitch. His knees, waist, and elbows all bounce at different times like a cascade. He also spins his head completely around, something Sun almost never does.

Many of Moon's animations were cut, but you can see them all here.

Now, what's the first thing 'Sun' does when you do Arts and Crafts for the first time? The mfer cartwheels in.

Designs

The in-game models we're awarded give us a good look at the differences between Sun and Moon. Most notably is their eyes. Sun has completely white eyes without pupil-holes (they seem almost glassy). Moon not only has pupils, but has one white eye and one black eye (and both glow red).

When you trigger darkness too many times, naturally you're jumpscared by Moon. But when you simply run out of time, Sun jumpscares you... but he has Moon's eyes. Suspicious? Very.

Another odd detail is that in the Artist's Loft level, Sun is there in their Eclipse form. But when the lights go off, they fully transform into Moon.

Jumpscares

Honestly, Steel Wool made it easy for me. If I had started with this, it would've been the only evidence I needed! But alas, I already wrote the above when I noticed this. In Security Breach, Moon's jumpscare is the "menacing tickle-fingers". Sun doesn't have a jumpscare. Moon will do the same jumpscare whether in the daycare or doing the top-of-the-hour shutdowns.

[The mechanism of how these two actually switch is a bit unclear, so this covers my bases if there actually are two physical Daycare Attendant bodies]

In Help Wanted, he keeps this jumpscare, even when he's ruined. 'Sun' with Moon's eyes also does this jumpscare. Their jumpscare doesn't become an actual attack until the Cinder Carousel level with Jack-O-Moon. It's very similar to the way he attacks Cassie in Ruin.

Personality

Sun only has one rule. And it's to keep the lights on. (And to stay out of restricted areas). So he's the type to do whatever will keep the kids entertained. He even encourages chaotic, hyper behavior right off the bat, suggesting they "drink Fizzy Faz until we explode". A hyper child isn't a child that's going to sit still and perfectly do crafts.

But during Arts and Crafts, there are clearly a lot of rules. Do the Paint-By-Numbers in order. Do it exactly as the guidelines say. Don't eat the crafts. Don't move. Don't shoot him with the dart gun. Don't throw things at him. Don't make mistakes. Don't come into his loft while he's malfunctioning. Be creative on your own time. The rules are endless!

So why would Moon be averse to nap time/the lights being off? Well, he actually tells us outright. "You'll... hurt your eyes." Be it an intentional feature or a bug, but when Moon is the one in control of the body, being in the dark makes them hypersensitive to light. And it hurts. As we see in Ruin, enough exposure will make them lock up.

Plus if Sun is still in there (I suspect he's not during the first Arts and Crafts), it could just be that Moon doesn't want to switch at all. Something fucky had to have happened for him to suddenly be the one active during the day. That's probably why they're attempting to train him using Arts and Crafts. It clearly didn't work out and he lost speaking rights. Plus "switching" seems to forcibly put the inactive one to sleep (aka "in a nap").

It seems like the way they're programmed, one of them gets to use the "Sun" voice and one of them gets to use the "Moon" voice, and they can't just swap back and forth.

And that's my post! Can you believe I'm not even done? Next time I'll talk about how Eclipse isn't the combination of Sun and Moon, but the combination of Moon and Jack-O-Moon.

[dwcmarshalarts]

more questions!

Why is major vespira’s uniform slightly different to that of the rest of the navy when it’s been shown before that naval marines dress the same as sailors (that piece showing off the marines & terizikan ground forces) and is it just an accidental oversight or similar to how USMC officers have different uniforms than enlisted marines?

2. It’s really weird to say “can I be your friend” however I was wondering what your thoughts were on more casual world-building discussion were, because you have inspired me with some aspects, like the civil war piece you made regarding how quickly the fancy parade uniforms of the us army went downhill during the civil war & the realities of who’d actually be wearing it, and it’d be great to have a kinda forum you’d be okay with to discuss various ideas and topics, especially because I’ve recently been trying to get into civil war related mythos, especially with the union

3. Damek critou, as far as I know dames is a character owned by another person yet is the main character of one of your side stories? if so that’s cool and I’d love to hear how that came about, aswell as I’d love to hear a little bit more about what’s actually happening in that story, as I’ve gotten the basic premise of cute traumatised lil blue fox gets whisked away by a dashing rebel officer after getting bored of Rafans 6am meetings (not exactly but that’s the gist of it I presume :pp)

4. Not really a question, but I sent a few more asks in but accidentally turned on incognito, one of them was about your characters (Xever’s unit) and what they were like to interact with as people, in a civilian and military setting with subordinates and strangers (because asking if they accepts hugs is kinda boring) because they all seem pretty interesting (also who’s the lieutenant? :pp)

1. Naval Marines and Voidmen (non-Marine soldiers on the Circuit’s ships) do have the same fatigues, but they don’t dress the same overall. The NM are a unique subdivision of the Navy which have their own internal command structure, they just happen to share some resources, and ultimately answer to their Naval Commanders- most often the folks in charge of their ship or squadron. As such, NM get their own dress uniforms.

2. My take on worldbuilding generally is that I think it is a fundamental aspect of writing stories, and I’m thankful that as of the recent couple years, plenty of people are interested in jumping aboard and doing their own. That said, I think there is a tendency with “going too far” into it, and people get very lost in the sauce. I used to be the consummate worldbuilder back when I was working on my In the Red series, but after a while I kind of noticed that a lot of the world-building that I was doing at the time was just a rote regurgitation of what I knew about real world history. This was also a trend with a lot of what I was seeing from contemporaries, no shade meant, but that was just what I was seeing. I stopped, as a result, and spent a while focusing mainly on the characters in my other series, which would become the flagship “Percivals” stories. I would only really start worldbuilding again after I had a clear idea for the character development and arcs, as well as how they, in conjunction to the world around us, would be relatable to a reader. That way, I could pull not from the rote history, but from what *drives* developments.

Not to mention, I’ve begun growing a little less patient with the worldbuilding-forward story aspects, as it can end up making a story feel less “real” or “lived in,” and break some of the immersion. A good worldbuild is one where you don’t think about the worldbuild. There’s this great line about dialogue in films where characters shouldn’t state information that they should already know, just because the audience needs to be let in on some exposition. This is true about worldbuilding as well. Take from our real world too: how often do people think about the Seven Year’s War? How many people drive past the Winfield Scott Hancock statue in Washington DC and consciously thinking about his role in commanding US Forces at Gettysburg? How many people think about the makeup of a fleet of ships-of-the-line when they pass by Nelson’s Column? The answer is- most people don’t even think about it. They don’t bat an eye and keep going about their lives- and- yes, these historical events have shaped the course of history. But more goes on than just those big events- I haven’t even mentioned mundane, bureaucratic processes that reshape neighborhoods, or public constructions that alter a landscape. Oftentimes, those things get overlooked for flashy, “historical” events, when in many cases, boring legislation or changes in regulation end up being far more wide reaching in scope, both in their immediate effect, and later down the line.

The truth behind the matter is that the key to good, “lived in” worldbuilding is restraint. Restraint of putting everything out there, restraint of not giving every single detail to a reader/viewer. Yes, worldbuild, yes, write about the logistics system in x nation, but have the restraint to keep it in the background as yet another mundane thing. Once you treat a world as having been naturally evolved as opposed to artificially developed, with highlights and whatnot, that’ll be when it’ll feel properly lived in.

As for any further discussion- I’m a little busy a lot of the time haha. If you have any more questions, I can always answer them, or get around to answering them through my inbox. Thank you for your interest!

3. I’ve known Damek for a little bit, and as we’re both interested in sci fi, we’ve had conversations about theoretical placement of his character in the Percivals for a bit. I did a piece for him a while ago that was a commission and I set that in-universe. As an idea, it was kind of just sitting there for a while. In the mean time, I had started another stand-alone story with Ezo (another person’s character who I’m chill with) and built up the antagonist for that story, an ICC Admiral Rafan Spex. Back then, he was a mustache-twirling villain who was unambiguously sinister. Andor, the Star Wars show, did a lot to give me an idea for what Critou could be like. After doing some thinking, I rewrote the Spex character, and connected it to Damek to bridge the two stories, and serve as the basis for a three-arc, eleven chapter story. I’ve written the synopses for every chapter except 11, but I won’t be releasing that widely any time soon to avoid overt spoilers.

4. The officers in Xever’s unit are pretty chill, for the most part. Maybe with the exception of Wynn. Now, I’ll admit, this is a pretty broad question, and one that I wouldn’t be able to reasonably or concisely answer in a single post, but I’ll go over Xever to start with. Xever has had a very rigid, and turbulent upbringing. His father was, for most of his crucial, developing years, a broken man with dead career prospects whose own father was also harsh and austere military patriarch. Xever only really ever connected with his brother, whose death early on in his military career robbed him of companionship, and turned his mother into a fish-out-of-water shut-in, too hurt by the loss to be too active. Despite Xever finding some peace with Tycho for a short while, Xever’s lack of broader social interaction made him socially awkward, ripe for bullying during the Academy. His interests, mainly music and introspective, vulnerable ideas were simply not the same as his peers, and that along with being gay, compounded his insecurities. He’d eventually get through the Academy (not without hiccups) but as he quickly rose through the ranks (largely by family connections), he was still largely socially awkward and masked that by talking to his coworkers in Ground Forces with very by-the-book, stock-standard speech. He’d been to explore himself more off-work, especially in the company of Tycho, and be more loose, particularly in areas where his father would be unlikely to know about. This would have made him more sociable and chill in the long run, but due to events in the story, that would be cut short.

Knowing this, we can tell a couple things: without support from others, or the comfort of well-rehearsed, by the book answers, Xever can be quite socially awkward, both to professional comrades and civilians.

Good question though, I’ll likely make more structured, separate posts about the other characters in time! Likely next will be about Ewan Figes, followed by Tycho, then Wynn, Rodriguez, and Dyer.

[bleachbleachbleach]

I hope this doesn't come off as rude or weird, and you are doing well! I'm dipping my toes into Bleach fanfiction and I have a question that might be more world-building-ish. We know there are prosthetics in Seiretei; do you think there are other assistive technologies (e.g. hearing aids) there? I mean, Mayuri seems to have...misplaced his ears and given himself a set of prosthetics/implants instead. Who do you think would be the go-to department for those things? I hope you have a good day!

Not rude or weird at all! I hope the amount of time it’s taken us to respond didn’t feel rude or weird; we are just… always on this strugglebus. 😅

I’m excited to hear you’re dipping your toes into Bleach fanfic! There is never enough fanfic on this website. <3 And WORLDBUILDING is involved? Say no more! And I love how much work the word "misplaced" is doing in your description. XDD Love it.

I do not have the canon citations for this handy, but it seems like a lot of the major bodywork in Soul Society is more the purview of the 12th than 4th. We know that Kira’s rebar job, and whatever else was required to anchor his being (more or less), happened at the 12th. If you want to be de-zombified, that’s the 12th. (Though in fairness, by that point Unohana was dead and Isane had more than enough to handle without also taking on special projects.) And Hinamori also had dealings with the 12th post-Winter War (which I’m sure was a gr8 environment for her mental health)*—but anyway!

You’ve already seen our post about accessibility/disability studies and the Gotei 13, which gets a little bit into my thinking re: 4th vs. 12th, so I’ll skip over that and say that in the present-day Gotei, the 12th is going to be your go-to for assistive technologies or body modifications.

But what does that mean for the availability of, research direction of, and cultural response to these things?

* Speaking truthfully, though, I think that maybe it… could have been? I mean, not interacting *with Mayuri* if ever she did, but other people in 12th.

I’ll share some of the directions I’d think in, if I needed this for fic. I’d love to hear about your own worldbuilding around this as well!

Availability/Usage Notes

Mostly whenever the Gotei needs something from the 12th, they just have it, because of course they do. Or Mayuri works some mojo and several episodes later they have it. So we could make the argument that if you need an arm, or new ears, or an eyeball, then the 12th can make that happen.

But what if it’s not that simple? Because the 12th also seems like the kind of place where people are… working on stuff, but might be driven more by curiosity than the desire to enact public good, or offer a viable service. Most of that stuff is probably prototype-only, and all of the time and materials and actual working samples may be few and far between. It’s ~artisanal~

And probably fairly dangerous! Or at best, not without risk, and perhaps not without a lot of other factors to need to consider and/or accept/deal with. We know that stuff from the 12th does… get tested, and it’s not like they don’t have the time/lifespans to be collecting longitudinal data, but I’m positive they do not have the kind of oversight and ethnics boards that we do, and it’s not as though our human history (and contemporary lived experienced) isn’t already populated with some pretty heinous intrusions of bodily autonomy/informed consent/etc., even with all that.

I’d be interested to know:

how hard it might be to get the materials required to create any form of assistive technology at the 12th, or to replicate a successful result.

how much risk one takes on, in accepting such a technology from the 12th.

what it’s like to then live with this tech

You might have a "simple" prosthetic like Kuukaku’s, or you might have a whole new arm, like Soi Fon.

Do you get a new arm and never look back?

Do those neural pathways require a different kind of maintenance than the original?

Are there treatments to keep the body from rejecting the new limb? Are there medications?

Are Mayuri’s implants the same as the ears his body came with, or do they function differently? Is sound still an interpretation of vibrations or is here now something else involved? Does sound sound like sound in the way that it does to others?

Research Direction

Kind of going off that, I think the impetus for the research that’s happening would also have a huge impact on how these technologies functioned and what they are intended to do for the user. 

Again, this is something that continues to be complicated (and often frustrating) in our world. You probably know this too well! But in general, a lot of the assistive technologies in our world have been developed for the express purpose of making X thing more accessible, in a world that is otherwise largely designed for some normative, abled prototype of a person.

I am…not convinced that is always, or even often, the case at the 12th. I’m sure they have many labs that do feel a focused direction to their research (military applications), but I don’t think altruism, quality of life, accessibility, or disability justice likely factor in all that often. So what does that mean for the forms of technologies that are available? What does it mean for the potential divide between theory and praxis?

I'm not saying the 12th approach is all bad (okay, some of it involves the completely ubiquitous, unremarked upon death and/or abuse of their research subjects, which seems Bad)--some of it is about genuine curiosity, and some of that curiosity is about understandings things that exist in ways different than oneself, and/or in understanding oneself as different from others. And I do think it's valuable for a lot of these guys to not be trying to "fix" some specific thing (more on that in the next section).

I think there’s a lot of potential here for different labs to have very different approaches to and visions for their research.

How many of them were given a problem that they’re supposed to solve practically?

How many of them observed a phenomena, and are working on stuff that will help them observe it better, or break open some new vantage point from which to observe it (replicate it?  harness it? destroy it)?

How many of them have a fetish they’re exploring?

How much slippage is there between these things, within and across labs?

Cultural Response

One thing I enjoy about Bleach is that while we don’t necessarily see a lot of visibly disabled characters, or see different ways of being highlighted in the narrative, we do see many different choices characters have made about their lives. And sure, maybe it’s not always an element of choice—maybe Kyouraku’s eyeball was seared into oblivion so bad there was no hope of any form of prosthetic or eyeball transplant or some other more magic-forward alternative.

But limb replacement seems fairly straightforward (and again, maybe it’s really not, and Soi Fon and Hacchi and Hitsugaya and anyone else who’s ever lost a limb just doesn’t talk about it); we know Kuukaku has all the money and connections anyone could ever possibly need in Soul Society, yet she has (chose?) a basic prosthetic. Tousen remains blind. And uh, this does get a bit weird at the end of the winter war with the bug-ifying and the exploding, but before things got Complicated, he spent centuries living life as a blind man, where his other senses took center stage and meaningfully shaped his experiences and way of being in the world. Atau doesn’t seem to have any visible hearing aids, but we do know that he signs, and that forms of communication other than vocalized speech are his primary. One would also hope that that means Soul Society has a signing Deaf community of which he is a part, as well.

In Soul Society, there’s a bunch of magic that can "fix" someone, but doing so isn’t a foregone conclusion, and there doesn’t seem to really be a prescription for what root someone would need to take. (Minus Yhwach telling Yamamoto he should’ve gotten a new arm.) There are characters who choose to make use of this technology or that, and characters who choose otherwise. These are all potential ways of being, each with their own considerations, both practical and persona. And it seems like there’s a lot more allowance for that than in many spaces in our world (the military, for instance).

At the same time, like that other post of ours points out, there’s not a lot of thought given to accessibility or support, so this has its limitations. XD And maybe those limitations come out of things similar to what I was talking about with regard to research directions—is there a goal of accessibility being foregrounded, or is it a bunch of dudes (who may or may not be part of the target audience for their tech, if there is a target audience at all) making/breaking shit? It might also have to do with the ways that shinigami bodies, even as they do seem important and not entirely afterthought, are not as critical to their existence as ours are. Shinigami are not as anchored to the body. Maybe this gives them a freer sense of the strictures that "must" govern it/relationship to it; maybe it also supercharges the forgetting, of the ways that it does materially impact ways of being in the world.

As far as what cultural responses to using or not using assistive technologies might be, I imagine a lot of shinigami don’t actually think about it that much, because it hasn’t occurred to them to think about it. Everyone probably thinks Mayuri is a weirdo, but probably not nearly as much as Mayuri would like, and probably not because he replaced his ears. There’s so much other stuff going on with that man. XD He probably wishes he got more of a reaction out of his "hmm… okay then" co-workers! But I like the idea that a shinigami’s sense of what is "normative" is relatively broad. At least where the body—the just-the-organs body—is concerned.

Since that’s not at all the cultural response to other forms of "deviation," like Hollowfication, for instance. Which is certainly a bodily change/non-normative way of being, but which is treated in an absolutely different way. THAT’S a deformity; that’s the grotesque; that’s incompatible with life in the Soul Society. That’s the line.

Anyway, that sure is a whole Post, but those are some directions and questions I personally find invigorating. I hope it was also useful to your own brainstorming, as a jumping off point or as counterpoint to the ways you want to explore things. I’d love to hear your own thoughts as well, and definitely feel free to tag us in any worldbuilding headcanons you choose to share! :)

[cutiecrates]

Game Review: Nyakori's Rabbit Doll (no/minor spoilers, minor blood)

I wanted to start my "cute game review" series with a disclaimer. I play a wide range of video games, and games that appeal to me usually have a cute aesthetic/appearance, and what I view as cute might not not be viewed the same way as others. I want to talk about cute games, but I'd like to also like about some other games too now and then.

For example, I decided to make my first review on an rpgmaker horror I saw while browsing Steam. There's a handful of people I watch who play these types of games on Youtube and they never played or even mentioned this one, so I gave it a shot because it looked too cute to pass up!

"One evening, Nyarutoru wakes up to find Nyakori and her rabbit doll have gone missing. While searching for her sister, Toru is led to a mysterious home. She runs into Kori, but someone has stolen her rabbit doll, forcing the two girls to go deeper into the large building to reclaim it. Along the way, Toru realizes that Kori isn't acting like herself…"

Nyakori's Rabbit Doll plays like a typical Rpgmaker/point and click game (you can even play it like one, this game offers mouse and touch control). The goal is to get from point A to point Z by interacting with the environment to look for new items, clues or puzzles while keeping Toru out of harm's way.

The majority of the game takes place inside this building, with one section late-game taking place outside of it. However, the locations all vary and this game features all sorts of "flavor text" that make it a lot of fun to click on everything and see what it says. Some of it is obvious (like a basket might just say "basket"), but others might lead to a remark from the character. There is also text for inventory items, some of which provide hints or alludes to something else:

Dialogue/Text

You might have noticed on the Steam page or the corner of my images, the game's title is written in Chinese. Well, that's because this game was originally Chinese, which is probably evident with the grammar and spelling being all over the place.

I noticed at the beginning of the game it's fine, and there are a lot of places where the text is good. But then it seems like as the game continues, it starts to become more apparent.

Expect to see the word "wired" a few times. It's supposed to be weird, which they do spell right a few times, which further confused me...

There is this also glaring example, which pops up a lot:

You'll see it every time you get a new item. I want to assume this was just an oversight, but they translated the item names so I don't know what to make of it.

Even the Steam page is full of grammar issues, but I will say that it's not enough to hinder the game. It's still clear enough to figure out what to do or what was going on.

Difficulty

It's not really difficult at all.

It offers several save points and an autosave feature (optional), the 3 "mini-games" have an easy option if you fail it once and beats it for you (and this doesn't penalize you at all). There are also tips and hints in the form of text throughout the game, either provided by talking to Kori, observation, looking at items in the inventory or using the "cursed cat food". Supposedly, using it too many times does something? I don't know what because I kept using it in a separate file and nothing happened. But I didn't feel like replaying the game through a fourth time in a short time span, so I stopped after a half hour.

This game is extremely forgiving if you let it be. Any death I triggered was basically because of my own curiosity, it was very rarely due to messing up. There are a couple of cheap deaths but they weren't abundant, so I didn't really feel annoyed by them.

There was only one, real thing that I got stuck with during the game:

At an early point you come across this mirror that depicts a number. A few rooms later, a box asks for it. To some people the numbers might obviously be 8010. But for me... it went like this:

"I clearly see the 0... is the first number an 8? It looks like an 8 but it kinda looks like it could be a weird 5...or an S? That makes no sense. That third number looks like a 4... is that last number a 0 or 9?"

I kept getting it wrong. I tried entering all sorts of combinations and even flipping the number order. I couldn't get it, the numbers were too hard for me to make out. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I had to look it up.

I'm not even sure if the puzzle was necessary to get the true ending. It just led to some extra scene and dialogue.

Horror

This game feels like a light-horror.

It provides a creepy atmosphere which brought to mind The Witches House while I played it, but the music itself isn't scary, even when it stops and switches to general ambience. It overall made me feel lonely, not scared or on edge.

The blood and gore is there (at times liberally), but it never came off as being "too much/forced/shoe-horned in for the sake of a cheap scare". The game doesn't even load with a warning screen like some of the others do, nor were there anyway noisy, in-your-face jump scares.

There were things that startled me because they were unexpected, but I never felt scared playing this.

What I disliked

There was very few things I disliked about this game, but I believe that these are smaller issues based on my own thought process that won't interfere with everyone's experience.

One being the mini-games I mentioned. All 3 are themed around controlling Toru a certain way until you beat it. But each one plays differently. They were short and sweet and didn't overstay their welcome, which I like.

My problem with them is that the game doesn't necessarily tell you what to do. You're thrown into a mini-game and you got seconds to figure it out before you get killed and have to restart. There is a little bit of vague text around each game, but I couldn't tell what they wanted from me without some trial-and-error.

What negates the issue with this, as I mentioned is that the game offers to help you. I had to have the game beat the 2nd one for me because I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I understood what to do after watching the game do it for me, but it too me 3 and 1/2 play-throughs of this game to finally beat it.

The only other thing I felt worth mentioning was the Kori interaction sections. You have to keep watching and talking to her until you can move on. You can't do certain things until she's in a specific spot/room, and the only way you would know this is if you just happen to see her do something, or opened the "cursed cat food".

This isn't really a big deal, I like talking to NPC in games so I tend to talk to everyone multiple times out of habit now. But it did get me stuck when I first played the game because I didn't realize it was a necessity- and I know there are people who don't care much for chatting up NPCs or playing the waiting game. These areas didn't last long though, which kept it from being a chore.

Oh, there was also the "developers room" after you beat the game. I love learning about unique trivia related to the game or what the makers of it went through. But here it felt kind of pointless. There wasn't anything to really look at, and you only learn one or two things.

What I liked

The art style! It's so cute and there are a lot of pretty scenes. This game has a lot of unique elements to it, it doesn't feel like the older rpgmaker games that featured generic text boxes and images, character rpg stats, etc (not that I'm saying those are bad). From head-to-toe, they fully embraced making this game as cute as could be!

Another thing I liked about the game is that the rooms are all unique and look really nice. They feel like they should be there. They aren't empty or pointless, nearly every room serves a purpose.

One of my favorite things is taking the time to backtrack to past areas. Some of them have trivial changes (or added death scenes), or feature additional content you may not have seen the first time. For example, here's one room during my first visit:

This is the same room after I returned a while later, notice the paintbrush on the floor and tilted picture (the one canvas gets knocked over too, but I came back too early for that when I was getting the picture). There is also a death you can trigger, but if you possess a specific item, you can avoid it.

There are also some extra cutscenes/dialogue you can find by observing certain things repeatedly. Playing as Kori also changes certain events, as does having her in the room with you when you observe certain things as Toru. There are a few items both girls can obtain too, and they have different dialogue for it. You can even skip one puzzle entirely by activating a hidden room you can find if you backtrack to a specific spot.

I love these additional elements x3 they show that the game has more depth to it than what's on the surface. Its beneficial to seek these things out because they offer more insight to the plot and characters.

Ending

In terms of endings, there are 4. The true ending, the normal ending, and 2 bad endings. According to Steam, the 2nd bad ending is the least obtained one, while the True Ending was the second least. But honestly, I got the true ending on my first playthrough. I'm not good at these games (I got the Platinum ending in Pocket Mirror), so I'm convinced it was just dumb luck that I happened to do the right things.

I replayed the game twice more to knowingly make the wrong decisions to get the 2nd bad and Normal endings. The 1st bad ending is the one everyone probably sees at least once, because it occurs earlier in the game and it's more like an extended death scene. You aren't locked out of getting the other endings or finishing the game if you trigger it. On top of that, I think you're required to go into the room it occurs (under certain conditions) to reach the True Ending.

I want to avoid saying anything too spoilery, so I didn't want to exactly go over everything to get said endings. But I liked each one, they gave good exposition to the overall plot and felt like they made sense.

Other Stuff

The length of the game on average is probably a couple of hours. Even when I replayed it knowing what to do, where to take shortcuts, it still took me around the same length of time.

There are 7 achievements in total for the game. 4 are in the base game, while the other 3 (one of which is a hidden achievement) is in the DLC story.

You probably noticed it in the very first image, but there is separate, purchasable DLC for this game! It's an after-story that offers more insight to the story, 2 more endings and some alternative gameplay.

I don't have it yet, because while I did buy this game a year or so ago, I only just recently replayed and beat the entire thing. I do plan on buying it though, and I'll probably make a separate post on it.

Conclusion

I really, really like this game. The art makes it a pleasing experience to the eye while the characters and mystery of the plot encourage you to keep guiding Toru to the end to find out what's going on. It's a fun and forgiving game, perfect for people who want a more relaxed, horror rpgmaker experience. I think it'd be a good choice for someone whose new to these types of games and wants to build their way up to the scarier/harder/more intense ones.

The more I played this game, the more it reminded me a lot of The Witches House. Numerous things made me think about it, like the room match puzzle, and how Toru's menu image changed after I triggered a specific death (I thought THAT was the cat food curse, until I realized why I couldn't progress at that specific part). This game is newer, so it might have taken inspiration from that one. I know a lot of rpgmaker games draw comparisons and influence in other ones.

I'm really glad I gave this game a chance, especially because I didn't know what to expect going in. I love a lot about it and even the things that I didn't like never made me want to quit playing. It's also very cheap, as is the DLC. You can even buy them in a bundle.

It is lacking in polish, but I'm willing to overlook it when the game itself plays very well and I enjoyed the experience.

Um.... thanks for listening to me ramble for a while. I hope if anything this review encourages you to check it out, here's a link to the Steam page if you're interested.

I'd love to do more of these, and I do have an idea for my next 2 reviews, but if you have any sort of recommendations for a cute game, or even rpgmaker games, feel free to let me know.

Until next time~

[renaultmograine]

i think you might have a bug, companions are supposed to stop romantic interactions after one no and pick up friendly route. It's how it is for me, some people actually complain that they now have no romance lmao because there is no option to pick this back up (an oversight imo) I'm with you on the lack of middle ground options though (instead of a strict 'no' going right for 'let's just be friends').

For anon I'd recommend waiting for the first patch, hotfixes have addressed a lot of problems, but this kind of thing will probably only be fixed in a patch. Like I said, I don't have this problem at all, but some people do complain about companions insisting on romance after rejection which is not supposed to happen.

Alternatively, pirate the game to see if it's for you. There are no serious anti-piracy protections in place, so I think the devs are fine with it.

Well that wouldn't be a surprise, if it is a bug on my end. Would still enjoy it if the other NPCs stopped harassing me though. Feels goddamn weird.

[joshuaalbert]

Geordi if no one else has asked already, Deanna if you've answered for Geordi already

favorite thing about them 

he’s literally so good at friendship that he introduced an android and a borg to the concept of friendship. like that’s essentially two entire races that didn’t have an understanding of friendship until they interacted with geordi. I love that while he’s busy holding the ship together all the time, and while he’s an engineer and engineers are. not typically known for being outgoing, he’s still so good at relating to people and making them feel comfortable that ro laren, who has trouble opening up to anyone, straight up hugs him

that said, from a character building perspective, I also really like that it has limits and oversights. guinan has to tell him to take a different approach with barclay because just pushing him harder isn’t working (we’re ignoring for them moment the exact nature of what barclay is doing in the holodeck because they don’t know that yet). he immediately adapts and is successful in making that connection, but I think it’s really interesting to see that it isn’t always pure instinct and sometimes takes more deliberate effort. in tng lower decks, I definitely don’t think he comes off as the worst commanding officer, but it’s a different light than we’re used to seeing him in. it’s a critical situation, taurik is just one crew member among many, and I think it would ultimately feel out of place for him to be super friendly under these conditions even if we’ve seen him reach out to help/reassure subordinates before (ex. sonya gomez).

and these examples make sense in that, as kind and patient as he is capable of being, he IS still the guy trying to hold the ship together and who needs his crew to just do their jobs and you can’t always do that and be 100% unfailingly friendly. sometimes you are going to brush someone off or say something wrong to someone, so I feel like they hit a really satisfying balance there

least favorite thing about them

this isn't really about him it's about the show but he got some of the worst individual/focus episodes. like. in other people’s episodes he’s a cool funny smart guy and then in a lot of his it’s either like “haha geordi can’t talk to women” as though women aren’t, like, people and as though geordi is not really good with people or just kinda mediocre redos of other scifi media (although that said I was kinda fond of the manchurian candidate inspired one). they also just kind of tend to feel Weird in a way I can’t really explain. disconnected? idk. other people have talked about the intersection of racism and ableism in the ways aspects of this character were handled, particularly the romantic plotlines, and I definitely think that’s evident across a lot of his focus episodes. on one hand I wanna do a scene rewrite like I did for remember me for one of his episodes, but on the other, a lot of times it’s the entire episode concept that’s rough.

brOTP

im very fond of the geordi/data/wesley engineering trio that pops up a lot i think they're fun and i also LOVE his friendship with ro laren in the next phase. i wish they'd drawn on that more going forward because it was two characters who hadn't had much of a reason to spend time with each other before so i think it would've been really cool to see them spending free time together willingly even just in the background of other episodes

OTP

i do think he and data are effectively married i do love their dynamic and i was surprised how clear it was that the troy and abed dynamic in community is a direct descendant. that said, i hate that like. all geordi content is in the context of this ship. the couple times I have gone into the geordi la forge tag to see geordi la forge who is my friend it’s basically all ship content

nOTP

I don’t know that he’s commonly shipped with anyone else tbh? I’ll talk more about the leah brahms plotline later in a general sense but I do resent any implications the series tries to make that they would ultimately end up together just because she’s the one woman he had a significant connection with in the series. it’s one thing if like we knew she got divorced and saw them really reconnecting or something but you know they’re literally just namedropping her bc she’s the only woman they could think of that fits that category

random headcanon

I think it is geordi’s god given right as one of the only characters with a sibling let alone one that he was 1) aware of, 2) raised with, and 3) is on good terms with to have a series of completely incomprehensible jokes with his sister. she visits the enterprise and one of them says the absolute stupidest most contextless series of words and they’re both laughing about it and everyone’s just like. uh. okay. for comparison my most recent one with my sister is “you can cut a hot dog up into 16 pieces” so that’s the kind of energy I want here.

unpopular opinion

idk how unpopular this is here but I used to read imdb reviews for episodes before I finally developed some self control and stopped doing that but people on there acted like geordi was the creepiest person alive for the leah brahms plotline and I somehow suspect that opinion represents a racist double standard. I’ve said this before i think but I wonder how many of them were okay with barclay. like as far as I can recall, in booby trap he ran this program literally to try to save the ship, and he gets caught up beyond that as he’s working. it’s a high stress situation, this version of her is someone that he’s really clicking with, and even if he crosses some lines he never set out to do so. this is not a hollow pursuits situation where he created a simulation of a real person with the specific intent to have sex with her. in the followup episode, the real leah brahms chews him out for the program, he’s sorry for it, and he develops a genuine friendship with the actual version of her. I feel like this is a reasonable way for this plotline to be handled! it’s fair to think mistakes were made especially in the beginning since he was kind of specifically looking for a woman when that wasn’t necessary, and he did get hung up on a fake version of a real person to the degree that it impacted his relationship with that real person, but i feel like the intent wasn’t malicious, and those mistakes were apologized for and handled and there doesn’t ultimately seem to be any lasting harm. to me that doesn’t say “wow this guy is so creepy,” it says that he made some mistakes regarding boundaries but ultimately made amends.

song i associate with them

hmm I don’t think I have one? I don’t have one for most star trek characters tbh I was just lucky on the last two. that said electric feel by mgmt did just appear unbidden in my head so maybe it’s a sign.

favorite picture of them

[sttheorycraft]

I agree with you that Byler is probably not happening at this point, but I would love to hear your 10% reasons why it still might. I don't think you should be afraid of giving out false hope because 100k people in the Byler tag are already doing that anyway lol. It's okay if you don't want to share, though. I'm just curious to hear what you think.

I'm not sure that logic holds (about false hope) but hey, why not.

I've already said that S4 proved (through Hopper's survival) that the writers will ignore inconsistencies if it lets them tell the story they want to tell. This makes it really hard to theorize about what could come next, but also means everything is still on the table. If Byler is a story they want to tell, they'll tell it.

Their forgetting Will's birthday suggests they're not paying attention to small details, which calls into question a LOT of Byler "evidence." But there's still a little hope if we step back and look at some probable facts about the production. They seem quite pro-LGBT both from their social media activity and from scenes from the show. For example, Mike standing up for Will in S1, and how well they handled Robin's coming out scene. They have voiced a concern for protecting the little guy (I'm thinking of Harbour's acceptance speech) and one of the show's major themes is about "normal" being overrated and "different" being okay (and "different" is strongly tied to homosexuality in the show).

All of that is to say: I don't think they would want to queerbait fans on purpose. They knew Byler shippers existed at least by S3, if not S2 which is I think when it started (I wasn't around then). They were interacting with us on Twitter while writing S4. After a certain point, if you're not planning on Byler endgame you kinda have a responsibility to your fans to signal this unambiguously in the show, as early as possible. You could argue that Byler shippers are so creative in reading into things that it would be impossible for them to accept a non-Byler endgame until the end, if even then. But the writers definitely didn't shut the door firmly in S3, and while I can see signs I could interpret as shutting the door in S4 (most notably the speech), it really should've been done less ambiguously if that was the intent. Even people on Reddit were getting wind of an old-school queerbait in Vol 1.

Just some questions in S4 that could be nothing but why are they even questions if they're trying not to queerbait:

Why is there a one-way sign in Mike's room pointing to an open closet in S4E1? If that was accidental it was a huge oversight

When Mike meets El in the airport, he picked his clothes because she liked those colors. I get Mike is supposed to be awkward but Mike's views on their relationship sound incredibly juvenile. Compare to Lumax throughout the season, or El's complaint to Mike about never saying "Love." Or even Mike and Will's conversations, it's not like Mike can't have mature conversations

Why does Mike act so weird when greeting Will at the airport? Could be to emphasize Will's emotions, but it's still odd

Why does Mike get weird with El after the roller skate incident? Serves the plot but seems out of character and is unnecessary Mileven tension

The El/Superhero thing. Mike really does refer to El primarily as a superheroine throughout the season. Including to Dustin when Dustin is bragging on his girlfriend. He's never really that romantic

It's clear why Will's eyes get shimmery during Mike's apology but why do Mike's? It seems a little over the top if nothing is going on there

Why is Will so practically psychic with Mike? And a little bit in reverse but Mike is oblivious sometimes too. Selectively, it feels like

When Mike confesses his "feelings" to El, it's spurred on directly by Will (it's almost peer pressure) and it comes out juvenile/awkward again. Could be Mike's personality, but again he's demonstrated he can do better. (I do need to rewatch this, have only watched Vol 2 once through)

Robin and Vickie (not sure if I've stated publicly but I see Vickie as bi from a million miles away) getting together at the end could be foreshadowing apparently hopeless relationships coming to be??

Other things that I can't forget:

Will's favorite song is "Should I Stay or Should I Go" which is about a push-pull relationship, much like Will is experiencing with Mike

The whole "keep the door open 3 inches" meme from S3

Unfortunately, all the above doesn't add up to anything ironclad. I think it's important to test your beliefs. I came up with a couple of checks before S4 came out, basically how could I tell if they were trying to shoot down Byler:

Attempts to define the relationship with Byler. Mike does twice: as best friends.

Strengthening Mileven. Mike arguably does in his speech.

These are both surface-level and handled poorly, but unfortunately since both came true I'm left with 90% likely that they're trying in good faith to avoid queerbaiting but just not handling it very well (underestimating Byler shippers' ability to rationalize basically). Or a 10% chance that they're still up to something based on the above.

Hope this helps and doesn't give anyone TOO much hope. I really want to emphasize: it's not queerbaiting if your fans are so adept at reading into things that anything you do is construed as evidence for their ship. But at the same time if Mileven endgame was the plan they really should've shut things down harder than they did.

[rwdestuffs]

*Looks around*

Is the volume over? Are we done here?

Okay, 1: If that whole thing was basically a prolonged therapy session for Ruby, then they shouldn't have done that whole allegory in the first place. That was stupid as hell, and it was unnecessarily realistic to the point that I want _WBYJ to outright NEVER let Ruby out of their sight again for the rest of the next Volume out of a fear of her doing that again. At least, until they feel like they can trust her to not redo that whole thing. If they could also add a small PSA at the end of that episode with hotlines to prevent that, it would have been better. Speaking of, here's a link to the list of various hotlines in the states: http://www.suicide.org/suicide-hotlines.html And here's a link to the ones that are outside of the US: http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

Stay safe out there.

2: The Ruby therapy session was good… By RT standards, I suppose. They didn't fall into a good majority of pitfalls like "It's selfish to take your own life" and all that, so that's a good thing, but it was kinda over pretty quickly, and I feel like there could have been an extra five or ten minutes spent on it.

3: Whew. Jaune survived. That means I don't have to buy a shirt. But on the other hand, DAMMIT, jaune survived. Now he's inevitably going to steal screen time from characters who need it.

Waitaminute… Volume's over… That means I can complain about jaune again!

Okay. After Ruby pulled that whole thing that made her part of the tree, putting emotional focus on jaune was very jarring. Who gives a crap about the guy who only ended up at Beacon because he wanted the thrill of being a hero but didn't want to put in any actual work into getting to that point? Ruby had basically offed herself, but the priority is comforting jaune? Miles might be able to combat the self-insert accusations, but he's most certainly not going to combat the creator's pet accusations anytime soon.

The character pretty much said that he only protected the Paper Pleasers to feel like a hero instead of actually being a hero. He wanted the rush, and that wasn't criticized. Seriously. Jaune's whole thing about only wanting to have the rush without the work needs to be addressed. The guy basically confided them to that town just so he could play hero. That's messed up.

Him also getting his youth back was a… Weird choice to say the least. Not going to elaborate on that too much though, that's probably a post for another day. Maybe.

And with that… I think that's all the negatives out of the way. About the show anyways. Obviously, the company still needs to improve by a lot.

Onto the positives.

For starters, this volume is actually pretty good. All the character interactions and development were really great, and the action was pretty good too. I still would have much preferred the Cat to be a neutral party, with the world and Neo being the main threats, but I guess what we got was pretty good too. Betrayal being a major factor. I don't see why Lewis couldn't take the Cat with him to Remnant though, seems like a bit of an oversight.

Like I said, the character interaction is great, and on-point. Were there moments where I feel like some things could have been a bit different?- Yes. I would have preferred Yang trying to get Ruby to direct her anger at her to get her attention, and I would have preferred _WBYJ trying to stop Ruby from drinking that tea, but the show did a good job of conveying the despair that the characters felt, and it did feel like they were trying to rationalize Ruby's condition, at least for a little bit. Boy were they lucky that their rationalizations turned out to be right.

Blang being canon is also a major plus. There's something inherently funny about the idea that even the Ever After was sick and tired of them dancing around their feelings that it pushed them together.

And Neo's development from a randomly thrown-in whim to a more fleshed out character was really good. I gotta give credit where it's due, that was a really great moment of her just taking a rest to find herself.

Also: Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions. Raven and Summer interactions.

Can you tell that I'm excited about Raven and Summer interacting?

All in all: Good Volume. There are some things that irked me, and there was definitely some questionable writing decisions, but I was overall satisfied with the improvements to the writing, action, and character development.

Now if only the company could do the same.

[mercy-misrule]

kinnporsche thoughts

ok, so this is some conjecture and questions about vegas and his state of mind re Porsche, nothing particularly spicy discussed, just thinking about how Vegas has reacted in the past, and wondering what he will do in the future

I’ve been thinking about...what does Vegas think of Porsche? And like, we all know that we’ve been presented the ‘Vegas was chasing down Porsche obsessively to get to Kinn’ but I’d like to propose a secondary angle

Vegas has been fixating on Porsche because of his father. Vegas has been trying the carrot and stick approach with Porsche, rather then whatever fucked mindgames he got Tawan with, because there’s a weird sort of envy towards Porsche. Because Kan wants something out of Porsche that clearly isn’t just information.

They had a mole, a successful one! Porsche wasn’t giving them any real advantage if they got him under their thumb, even if they were dating at the time and they weren’t dating properly until midway through the series.

But Kan says to watch Porsche. Kan wants more care and oversight given to Porsche, this seemingly random bodyguard than to, for example, Macau, his own child.

And Vegas is a predator, therefore his “attention“ paid to Porsche becomes predatory. He’s not an observer, he’s interacting with Porsche a lot, trying to develop whatever relationship he can, a friend, an employer, a lover.

I personally do not think Vegas would have tried as hard, even knowing Kinn is Porsche’s lover, and Vegas wants to possess everything Kinn has, but I don’t think he would have tried as hard if Kan wasn’t interested in Porsche.

And we know Porsche is important because Kan hits Vegas about it. Not about his failed Tawan maneuver, not about losing face with the major family.  No, its hurting Porsche that gets him in trouble.

novel wise, I know why, but show wise I cannot wait to see the reasoning behind watching Porsche.

also, Pete is only with him because of Porsche. Pete’s entire motivation for risking himself was to prove Porsche’s innocence.

All these important people to Vegas, and their connection to him is so heavily influenced by Porsche.

It’s gotta be a weird place in his psyche. And like, if he had control of Porsche, it would be such a power move against Kinn, and he’d be convinced that he would have finally won his father’s approval.

I think having Pete with him will change all this up though. Aside from the fact that if he lays his hands on Porsche, Pete would kill him, maybe Vegas will learn to prioritise Pete’s needs over his own or his father’s.

[lookwhatilost]

i can’t sleep again, Shocker. but i’ve been on a bit of a kick with digging into the incelosphere in my free time. i think they’re an interesting group, so here’s my incel thought dump, that i’ve been periodically adding to since 3 this morning:

there’s clearly some weird shit with race going on with these guys. per self-reporting on a popular incel forum, a little under half of them are men of color, and it tracks when you consider the active users. south asian men are absolutely overrepresented on there. not to mention the memes, like “jbw” and “jba” – “just be white” and “just be [east] asian”, respectively. someone recently posted a meta-analysis on there about race mattering more to potential partners than height, appearance, or money, common incel/lookism touchstones.

mediocre data and lived experience can be a deadly combination. an abundance of good data can sometimes be worse when you’re biased. what’s troubling about the social sciences is that, unless you have a study that’s asking the correct questions, it’s very easy for a reader to project or extrapolate wild things from the raw numbers. to convert incel-ese into more neutral language, you can consider the “blue pill” as the just world fallacy, which is something i’m on board with. it reminds me a bit of the scene in the 2003 adaptation of fma where a homunculus tells the elric brothers that equivalent exchange is, to put it in zoomer terms, a cope. but there are many contours and grey areas, and this is hard to consider when you’re working within the structure of rigid categories.

“truth hurts” can be a form of confirmation bias. natalie wynn has one of the more competent analyses on incels, albeit not without its oversights and errors, and she uses the term “masochistic epistemology” for this. that is to say, whatever hurts is true. but there’s also a bit of conflict here. i read a thread that commented on “chadfishing” – incel talk for catfishing as a chad with the explicit purpose of data collection – and the original poster said something to the effect of “we don’t want it to be like this”, which i believe. but repeated rejection can have a traumatic effect, and trauma fucks with how you think. which brings me to my next two points...

we experience an unprecedented amount of rejection in the digital age. send 20 job applications out on linkedin. get zero responses. just keep trying. you, as a man, need to send a lot of messages on dating apps to get results. the fact that most people didn’t respond shouldn’t get to you. don’t let it get to you! we interact with more people than we can conceptualize, we make and lose internet friendships. as the old horse_ebooks proverb goes: everything happens so much. incels are likely an extreme extension of this

the popular conversation around trauma is really, really bad. do you ever get the sense that people treat mental illness and, by extension, trauma, as an abstract concept that’s ever-present, but, paradoxically, only has excusable behavioral effects? something to the tune of “i only sent 80 emails today instead of 100 :/″. it’s a conversation largely dominated by the worried well, and it shows. we constantly dance around the fact that trauma is more than capable of making us worse and more selfish people, and it genuinely makes me angry that people typically don’t have the guts to admit that. if the incels have anything going for them, it’s their willingness to admit that rejection and bullying related trauma did serious shit to their brains.

dating apps are terrible, but so is the data we have on them. i’ve written about this is the past, but tumblr’s search feature is busted and i can’t find my post. the basic gist is that an oft-cited study on men and dating apps only took android users into account, and men overrepresent android owners. and that’s setting aside the predation the companies let slide.

“the west” is deeply conflicted about sex. you could write an entire book on this one. there’s the strictly political angle, related to contraception and abortions, in spite of the fact that casual and premarital sex and living with your partner are far from a taboo. you also have uncritical sex positivity and how poorly realized a lot of its rhetoric was. i guess a good example is, if we want to imagine sex as impersonal and meaningless, then what about rape makes it especially heinous? consent isn’t a good answer, because being crimed on is never something anyone consents to. what differentiates sexual consent from other things you don’t want? i’m not sure how anyone could answer this question without conceding that sex is an incredibly personal act, one that many people can’t compartmentalize so easily. we also have trad zoomer influencers, more visible talk from ex sex-workers about how the industry hurt them, and the general idea that “cool girl” behavior of the 2010s has just fallen out of fashion in the same was skinny jeans have. (also, zoomer sex negativity is going to overwhelmingly break through soon. you should probably keep this in mind)

a lot of early 2010s feminism was legitimately just aimless bullying. this clip from “inside amy schumer” – gross – embodies what i mean. it’s hard to argue that this is punching up. an important part of improving feminism is taking an inventory of past trends, and analyzing what we got from them versus where they set us back. in my opinion, this shit was a huge mistake and no one benefitted anything from it. maybe enough time has passed that we can audit it with no feelings hurt, but i’m not sure.

entitlement is more the exception than the rule. another thing i wrote about recently, reflecting on my femcel days. we need love and it hurts when you don’t have it. it’s alienating. it hurts in a way that’s intangible – you know something is missing. i don’t think wanting love and not being able to figure that out is 1v1 comparable with entitlement. reading rodger’s manifesto, what stuck out to me as entitled was “i deserve women because i blew thousands of dollars on shit from neimann marcus”. me? i have only spent $100 at neimann marcus and it was on a pair of extremely out of season jimmy choo sneakers that i really loved. i still love those sneakers but they have absolutely not have gotten me love or sex. there’s a massive psychological difference between “i should get it” and “i don’t get it”. my sense from the incels is that they fall into the latter group and are trying to construct meaning onto that experience.

i don’t think you can square the fact that most violence against women happens at the hands of intimate partners when you treat virgin men as the “real” threat. this one is more or less self-explanatory.

i’m getting increasingly skeptical of the “internet radicalization” narrative. i think it’s dumb to argue that it never happens, but in this particular domain, these men seem very low inhibition. it’s also worth noting that they were incels before they found any forum about this, and what they personally bring to the table is wildly variant. the internet can provoke, but the physical world is where this baggage comes from. extreme radical political stuff is probably too complex for anyone to speak broadly on. it’s also probably worth noting here that the earliest discussions of internet radicalization were predicated on islamophobic panic, and this has likely weakened its foundation as an area of study.

that’s it for now but, like, chew on it

[chammtea]

❔ for @imprvdente & @hvbris (i cant remember if i've sent it already so if i have ignore this fjdsjkfsd)

send ❔ and i’ll list a couple muses that i’d like to throw at yours!

So, we haven’t actually discussed any potential threads or interactions between muses over here yet which is a MASSIVE oversight on my part because I’d love the chance for more threads with you! I’ll just toss out some dynamics off the top of my head, but you can always contact me privately to let me know which muses actually interest you, and which ones don’t. No hard feelings if you don’t vibe with the same ones I do! ✌️ 

ASTRO BOY — Don’t ask me to explain the logic behind this, because it’s... pretty much nonexistent, but I’d absolutely love to play him off Ava McGee, Fish, and Grace Crawford in particular. I’ve never had the opportunity to interact with the latter directly over on tempportal, but there’s just something about her that intrigues me a great deal, and I’d say Astro would be the best fit for her out of all my muses. And I just think Astro and Ava could be great friends, whereas Astro and Fish both come off as very adventurous and exuberant people, and it’d be fun to play around with that kind of energy.

HAYLEY STARK — You’ve got a lot of dark and intense muses to offer on your blog and, as an incredibly dark and unapologetically intense muse herself, I just can’t shake the sense that Hayley could easily work well with... pretty much all of them, to be honest. Absolute top choices would be Wednesday Addams, Morticia Addams, Dana Scully, Harley Quinn, Jill the Ripper, and Scarlett Wood, as I believe these particular women could match her energy very well.

DOLORES RAMIREZ — Just off the top of my head, it’d be super-cool to see her dynamic with Eleven, Viktor Hargreeves, Ava McGee, and April Becker! She’s got a lot in common with Ava and April, she’d adopt Eleven even quicker than Five, and she’d jump at the chance to meet Viktor, as he’s Five’s favorite sibling.

REGINALD HARGREEVES — For Eleven, because he has also performed brutal and inhumane experiments on young superpowered children, so I could certainly see him as a scientist in Hawkins Lab in the 1980s’, Viktor Hargreeves because they’ve got such a fantastic dynamic in canon, and Fox Mulder because... I think it would be absolutely hilarious to see the interaction between a card-carrying alien and a die-hard conspiracy theorist.

THE HANDLER — For Viktor! I don’t believe the two have ever had so much as a single face-to-face encounter on-screen — in fact, I’m not even entirely sure if Viktor is fully aware of the nature of the Commission, as he never comments on it, and the rest of the family tends to leave him a little out of the loop even on their best days. In addition, I think the Handler could also have a fun and interesting dynamic with Scarlett Wood!

EUDORA PATCH — For Eleven and Viktor! I’d love to throw Patch and Eleven together as I believe Patch would probably adopt her right along with Five and Dolores and, like the Handler, I don’t think Patch ever got an on-screen interaction with Viktor.

DAVID KATZ — For Viktor, of course! Now that he’s returned from the dead, it’s time to meet his future husband’s weird-ass family, and Viktor is the LEAST likely to scare him away right off the bat LMAO. And I think Dave and Viktor would be great bros!

SIMON BELLAMY — There’s definitely a lot of potential for a friendship with Eleven or Viktor, but I’d also love a thread with Scarlett Wood (fellow arsonists LMAO), April Becker (maybe a plot where they investigate Hawkins Lab together?), Deirdre Adams, or Fox Mulder! Just off the top of my head.

ALADDIN — With Captain Hook! Would it be pure, unfiltered chaos? Yes. Would it be funny as all hell? Also yes. I feel like there’s also a lot of potential in a dynamic between Aladdin and Fish!

Thank you so much for asking! I can’t wait for us to start up some interactions over here!