#really long ones on a computer if they don’t do the view post thing

[steddieas-shegoes]

in the nicest way possible, i’m begging you to use “read more”s for your longer, writing posts. i adore your writing and would love to reblog it (and also to continue to see it on my dash!) but tbh i’ve considered unfollowing and even blocking you simply because your posts are SO long and not put under a read more

Hi! Thank you!

I do usually put one when I’m posting from my computer, but I have no clue how to do so on the app which is how I post a lot of my stuff. If you know how to, please let me know! I just know they show up with a “view post” on my dash, which to me, feels like the same thing, though I do all of my scrolling on the app, too, and things are probably way different here in this particular hell.

I will certainly try to remember to do so in the future, and will try to go back through some of the longer ones to add one.

That being said, I totally get unfollowing or blocking to make your experience better. I’m sorry if that means not being here anymore, and I hope that doesn’t happen, but sometimes that’s just how it is.

[therosebud]

Welcome to Sims 4 Romance Reef Challenge!

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If you struggle to stay focused on legacy challenges or any grind-heavy tasks, this challenge is perfect for you. The aim here is to create drama and have fun!

This challenge is inspired by the TV show “Love Island” but with a twist and you do not have to have seen Love Island to enjoy this challenge. However, if you're curious, I recommend watching the Australian or UK versions, as they tend to be funnier and more unfiltered than the American one.

Thank you to the EA Creator Network for giving me early access to create content for you.

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Download the Notion Template on My Patreon

I've created a Patreon for those interested in downloading the Notion template to keep track of all your islanders and progress. Notion is an online organization tool with a Pinterest-like aesthetic. My template provides a layout of the rules and space to detail each Islander. It's not necessary, but it's here if you want it.

For fans of my throwback save file, I will also be re-uploading the save there as it’s more reliable than Sims Share. Thank you for your support over the years on my YouTube channel and other socials. I hope you all enjoy the challenge!

Villa Video Update: If you aren't a builder Don't worry because I will update this post when I upload my speed build of my own villa for you to use. In that video I will also talk about the challenge rules. In the meantime, feel free to build your own or use the gallery to update a villa.

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Initial Islanders: 4 female Sims and 4 male Sims ready to be placed in the villa. They can have any traits, likes, dislikes, turn-ons, and turn-offs, but no skills to keep it fair.

Bombshells: An extra 2 to 4 female Sims and 2 to 4 male Sims in a separate household. These "bombshells" are ready to join and shake things up when needed. They can have traits, likes, dislikes, turn-ons, and turn-offs, but no skills to keep it fair.

Optional Extra:

💡If you want to be extra, you can register all of them with the labor union and use that space to write out a bio for each Sim, but it isn’t necessary.

💡 If you really want to shake things up you could make each sim have a distinct style. For example, one can be cottagecore, sporty, old money, alternative, beachy, urban, witchy, academia, Barbie, outdoorsy, etc. Here’s a list for ideas.

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Bedroom: One large bedroom with 4 double beds for couples. (And a couple extra single beds if someone gets left out.)

Bathrooms: Multiple shower and bathroom stalls upstairs and additional bathrooms near the gym and pool.

Upper Balcony: Equipped with sun loungers and couches.

Kitchen and Sitting Area: Spacious kitchen and indoor sitting area.

Sundeck: Features a large couch and firepit for eliminations and coupling ceremonies.

Outdoor Kitchen: Includes a barbecue and large bar area.

Dance Floor: Designated area for dancing.

Gym and Yoga Area: Semi-outdoor/indoor setup for exercise and yoga.

Swimming Pool: Large pool area.

Hot Tub or Onsen: Relaxation area with a hot tub or onsen.

Skill Challenge Room: Empty space like a basement to host skill challenges.

Buffet Tables and Drink Trays: Available for parties and events.

Victor Suite: Locked except when won by a gameplay challenge winner. Includes high-end objects like a computer (the only one in the house), spa massage table, fancy tub, and bed.

Secluded Date Area: Gated area to control access for private dates.

Iconic Pathway: Long pathway for eviction ceremonies.

Extras: Poohoo bush, closets, woohoo blankets, and optionally a photo booth for added fun.

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You don’t have to play with mods, these are my recommendations.

UI Cheats: Allows you to view exact relationship points by clicking the "set relationship" button under each sim's romantic relationships.

First Impressions Mod: Provides detailed explanations of sims' initial impressions.

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Weather Settings: Turn off rain, thunderstorms, snow, and blizzards in the game menu. Set seasons to the longest possible duration. Start the game in summer for a Love Island vibe.

Aging: Pause aging to preserve the contestants' ages for post-challenge play.

Free Will: Keep free will turned on to allow sims autonomy in their actions. Micro-manage only for needs; let them pretty much choose their interactions, friendships, and rivalries. The exception of the rule is if you are trying to get everyone in one area to start a gameplay challenge. But make sure you turn it back on after everyone is on their gameplay station. I recommend giving them a few hours to complete the challenge depending on what it is of course. Keep track of the order of who finishes (or stopped) the quickest.

World's: I recommend playing in Sulani or Tartosa for this challenge but the new world Ciudad Emamorada would work too (beware the villa would have to be smaller in that world though.) However, feel free to do this in any world you want but it’s best to play it in the summer season.

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Utilize the in-game calendar system to structure your Love Island challenge. Each round typically spans 4-7 days, depending on your desired pace. Here are the key daily events to plan for:

Private Date Day: Select two or three couples to enjoy a private date in a special area of the villa or off-lot.

Gameplay Challenge Day: Determine the strongest and weakest islanders through skill challenges or quality assessments. The islander with the lowest quality item or skill percentage within a time limit of around 2- 4 in game hours, will risk elimination if they lack significant relationships.

Chaos Spin Day: Introduce random events to stir up drama and unpredictability among the contestants.

Coupling and Elimination Day: Held in the evening on the last day of each round. Contestants dress in formal or party wear for the ceremony. After the first elimination, the gender with numerical advantage chooses their partner first. Those without partners face elimination. Re-coupling may occur if islanders form closer bonds during the round.

"Bombshells": Introduce 4-8 additional sims (evenly split by gender) sporadically in each round to shake up dynamics. Morning of the date day in each round is ideal for their arrival, allowing them to participate in that day’s events.

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On the first day, your goal is to have everyone meet and interact in the villa. Here’s how to get started:

Equal Numbers: Begin with an even number of males and females to form 4 couples in total.

Numbering Sims: Number each sim from 1-8 for easy reference during wheel spins.

Lovestruck Expansion: If you have the Lovestruck expansion, observe the sentiments and dynamics as the islanders interact. Pair up those with stronger connections.

Initial Dates: Start the day with a few different dates. Roll for the number of current islanders to determine who goes on dates. If a new islander or “bombshell” is entering, they will get the date. Choose their date based on sentiments, attraction, and relationship levels.

Natural Relationships: Let relationships develop naturally. Avoid interfering, but you can offer slight encouragement if you notice two sims flirting. The challenge’s fun lies in the organic unfolding of relationships.

⭐️ Keep the first day focused on introductions and initial connections to set the stage for the rest of the challenge!

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Setting Up Private Dates

Use a number roller from 1-8 (or the current number of islanders). The chosen number gets to pick their date based on:

- Attraction system

- In-game sentiments/dynamics

- First interaction

Date Execution:

Unlock the gate for the couple to access the private date area, or teleport them in.

Bombshells:

When a new bombshell arrives, they get 1-2 dates to decide who they want to couple up with.

Limit the total number of dates to 3 per day. For example, a bombshell can have up to two dates, and you can still have one date among current islanders.

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Suggested Skills for Challenges:

- Candle Making

- Cooking

- Painting

- Cross Stitching

- Gemology

- Knitting

- Woodworking

- Flower Arranging

- Media Production

- Mixology

- Nectar Making

- Fitness

- Yoga

- Rock Climbing

- Fishing

- Guitar

- Violin

- Pipe organ

- Juice fizzing

Here’s a list to spin for skill competitions

Challenge Outcomes:

- Winner: The islander with the best quality item, highest skill, timed score (depending on the skill chosen or combo of those) wins a night in the victor suite. They can invite their partner or someone else for added drama. If an unpartnered sim wins, they get a chance to invite someone and potentially steal a partner.

- Loser: The islander with the lowest quality item or skill point is at risk of leaving if they don't form significant relationships by the coupling ceremony. If it comes down to two sims, the one who lost the challenge leaves.

Tips:

☑️ Place skill-related items around the house or in a special skill room to allow sims to use them autonomously. This ensures fairness when spinning for the next challenge.

☑️ Don’t force sims to gain skills; let them choose to do so on their own. Any skill points they gain is all fair game for when it’s time for a gameplay challenge.

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This day is just to keep you on your toes. The randomness will make your experience more customized and help you determine who is good with whom. I numbered these so you can use a number randomizer to determine which one you get for today.

⭐️ You do not have to read all 45 of them right now if you don’t want to. You may skip to the elimination section.

1. Use a number randomizer to determine which girls are getting into a fight today.

2. Use a number randomizer to determine which boys are going to fight today.

3. The couple with the lowest romance is fighting today.

4. The couple with the highest romance is fighting today.

5. Someone in the couple with the lowest romance is getting cheated on today.

6. Someone in the couple with the highest romance is getting cheated on today.

7. An old villager comes back for a day to cause some drama among a couple.

8. Get some activity tables; we’re doing a group puzzle.

9. Everyone gets on the yoga mats for a yoga class.

10. Throw a party of your choice; this can include villagers who have been voted out.

11. An islander of choice must get close with another islander outside their couple.

12. A massage therapist is hired for everyone today.

13. We get a slip and slide for today.

14. We get a couple of bowling alleys for today.

15. Tanning and beach combing day (if you are in Sulani or Tartosa).

16. Use a number randomizer (1-8) to give a sim 1+ skill points for free to use in the next challenge day.

17. Use a randomizer to determine who’s being messy today and woohooing with two different sims.

18. A couple of choice gets a date alone today; a couple with the lowest romance gets a chance to work on their relationship via a date alone.

19. A couple with the highest romance gets a date alone today.

20. Everyone plays a game of basketball.

21. Everyone has to skill up one point, but they each have to do a different skill from one another (and, of course, skills used for competitions).

22. The losers and winners of the last gameplay challenge day go head-to-head in a redo of the competition.

23. A new bromance occurs today.

24. It’s just me and the girls. Two girls get to be friends today.

25. A friendship occurs between a male and female who aren’t attracted to each other.

26. Everyone makes a friendship bracelet.

27. Throw a house party.

28. Throw a dance party.

29. Throw a pool party.

30. A sudden death occurs. You must kill off a sim; roll from 1-8 to determine who dies.

31. An engagement?! Roll 1-8 to see who’s getting engaged with their current coupled-up partner.

32. Tanning! Everyone just works on their tan today. (Maybe an enemy sabotages someone’s tan.)

33. Get a photo studio; let’s take some pictures for the house.

34. Everyone plays a card game.

35. We take everyone to another lot.

36. Take all of the girls to another lot.

37. Take all of the boys to another lot.

38. A double elimination occurs. The two people with the lowest gameplay challenge score go home.

39. They’re back! A female player that was voted out comes back for the next round.

40. They’re back! A male player that was voted out comes back for the next round.

41. Drama! Three islanders go on a date together in hopes of two coupling up.

42. Use the woohoo blanket.

43. Everyone plays darts or foosball.

44. Use a number randomizer to determine who’s getting a secret lover on Cupid’s corner outside of the household.

45. Throw a costume party and have everyone wear a random outfit from the costume trunk.

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The first elimination is based purely on the islander who loses the initial challenge, because not everyone might of made a romantic connection yet.

All other eliminations will be based on who has the lowest relationship(s) and ranking in gameplay challenge.

Set up challenge stations in a large room, like a basement.

Randomize the gameplay challenges for a fun and unpredictable experience. Choose skills that produce items with a quality rating or judge by the highest skill points achieved in a set time.

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Observing Interactions:

Pay attention to Sims naturally interacting, especially if they're already coupled but start talking or flirting with others.

If two Sims start being flirty around each other alone often, you can nudge the relationship by having them flirt once or twice to see if they will keep it going.

Recoupling:

A Sim might choose to recouple if their bond with another Sim grows stronger.

In a love triangle, the Sim that has the least connections (romantic and friend wise) and ranked the lowest among in the gameplay challenges, is the one that will be eliminated.

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Let Cheating Happen: If a Sim cheats, let it play out naturally. Don't intervene in saving Sims if they die; it's part of the challenge. Butlers or maids can be hired to manage the cleaning.

No Careers at the start: None of the Sims should have a career initially. However, you can write them a bio if desired.

Adapt as Needed: If you don’t have a certain pack for a skill or activity, replace it with something you do have.

Managing Needs: Assign a bedtime to ensure needs are met. In the morning, control them to shower and eat. The first Sim up makes breakfast unless you have a hired butler or maid.

Encourage Flirting: It's okay to make Sims flirt or chat generally whenever you like, but for new romances, only initiate flirting once or twice to get things started. Do this only if you notice Sims getting flirty around each other often, as Sims usually won't start a romance autonomously without a mod. After that, don't intervene. If the romance doesn't progress, it wasn't meant to be. Follow their social cues and wants to let you know who they like.

Unlimited Funds: This challenge isn’t about money, so feel free to use the "rosebud" cheat as much as you like. 😉

Rewards: The winners could win the villa and you can renovate it in their style. Alternatively, use them in another challenge.

Questions and Feedback: If you need any clarifications, feel free to ask. If you try out this challenge, tag me! Use the #ts4romanticreef

Sul sul! 🌹

YouTube, Pateron and other socials

[barnesafterglow]

she lives in daydreams with me

summary: your best friends thinks she has a solution to your problem

pairing: wanda maximoff x fem!reader

word count: 1.4k

warnings: college au, reader is bisexual, another cameo bc apparently that's my niche, phone/facetime sex, f masturbation (duh), soft dom!wanda, mommy kink question mark, praise, this is not based off real life unless it is ykwim

a/n: hi this is my first time writing wlw smut so please go easy on me. i'm almost done with my kinktober prompts! i hope you all have enjoyed them, and reblog and comments are very appreciated!

you can follow @theafterglowlibrary to stay updated on when i post 🤍

kinktober masterlist ─ main masterlist

“I think you just need to get laid, you know?”

You rolled your eyes, entirely unamused with her suggestion. Of course you needed to get laid, but she didn’t have to say it out loud. She saw the eye roll clearly through the computer screen, which sent her into a fit of laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks for that,” was your response. “Any suggestions for that? Because the entire population of New York City seems to think I’m a leper who can’t be touched.”

“Have you even tried?”

“I downloaded Tinder.”

“Did you make a profile?”

“Well, no.”

“Okay then.”

The two of you had this conversation every handful of months, after you had broken things off with another “friends with benefits” situation and were sick of not getting off whenever you wanted.

“I’m just saying, babe,” she started off gently, which you knew was a load of bullshit, “you always know where you can go for help.”

“I’m not hooking up with Barnes again.” She was forever trying to get you to go out with your neighbor - who you had already spent the night with on more than one occasion. “We’re better off as friends.”

“You can’t be just friends with a man like that. I mean from what you told me about his -”

“Okay!” you said, cutting her off. “We were talking about your terrible suggestion and how there’s no solution?”

“I just think you need someone who knows. Someone you know would be good to you.”

“Yeah? Like who?”

“Like me.”

You had been taking a sip of the water, and it took every ounce of self control you had to keep from spewing it all over your laptop.

It’s not that it had never crossed your mind. Wanda was beautiful and was definitely good in bed - you had shared an apartment with her long enough, before she decided to study abroad, to know that she kept her girlfriends satisfied. She had also been your best friend since you were in diapers and you’d never wanted to jeopardize that.

But the way she was looking at you now, you could see the darkness in her green eyes even through the screen, and suddenly you had never wanted anyone more.

“I - really?” You expected her to laugh and say just kidding! and you would move on like nothing happened, but instead she just bit her lip and nodded.

Well fuck.

“You’re halfway across the world, Wan.” She was in Vienna at the moment, studying art culture or whatever it is that went on in her brain. “I can’t wait until you get back.”

“Who says you have to wait?” And oh wasn’t that something. “Do you trust me?”

Your answer was immediate. “Of course.”

“Then why don’t you take your clothes off and go sit on your bed?”

It felt like your heart was pounding out of your chest. You couldn’t believe this was your Wanda. Your Wanda. Maybe she would be after tonight.

You turned your head back towards your bed; the way your laptop was placed on your desk, there would be a perfect view of you from the camera. Like you were putting on a show.

For a moment, you hesitated. Were you really going to cross this line? Was it worth the risk?

And, yeah, Wanda was worth anything.

So you stood up, slowly pushing your desk chair in and setting gingerly on the end of your bed. You took your shorts off first, exposing the pink panties with a little bow on the front. Call it fate, but Wanda had always said they made your ass look fantastic.

You spread your legs just a little, enough to be seductive but not enough to show anything - yet.

Then you played with the hem of your shirt, teasing it up to show the skin of your stomach before dropping the material. Just as you were about the material over your head, her voice came through the speakers.

“Don’t tease, baby. Let me see you.”

Your core was molten lava. She had called you a lot of nicknames over the years, some affectionate, some funny, and some that were so off the wall you would never know where they came from. But baby was new. Baby had you squeezing your thighs together. Baby would be the only thing you ever responded to for the rest of your life.

The shirt came off, flying to some corner of your room, and your chest was bare to her. Her intake of breath served to make you self conscious and confident at the same time. It wasn’t the first time she had seen you naked - and you were sure it wouldn’t be the last - but those times had always been a platonic sense, at least mostly. 

But now she was staring at you like she wanted to eat you alive, and you had never wanted her to be home more than you did in that moment.

You slipped your hands under the waistband of your underwear, ready to expose yourself in an entirely new way, when you looked up to see her completely stripped down. You could feel the puddle forming in your panties immediately.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you have all the fun, did you?” She had a cheshire smile on her face, laced with lust and love and wonder, and suddenly you weren’t nervous anymore. 

Your panties came off and the two of you took a moment just to soak in the sight of the other.

Wanda was beautiful - perfect tits topped with rosy pink nipples, smooth skin all the way down to her core, and the prettiest pussy you had ever seen.

Her hands wandered and your eyes followed, dumbstruck, as they settled on her inner thighs. Your gaze flicked up to her face, where she seemed to be waiting patiently.

It was like you had forgotten you even had a body, you were so mesmerized by her that even the thought of anything else was a far off dreamland.

But you knew what she wanted, so you slipped your underwear and spread your legs wide, mirroring her movements.

“Now let me see you open yourself for me. Start with one finger, let me see how tight you are.”

Following her words were like second nature, and you leaned back on one elbow on your bed, the other hand circling your clit, before sinking one finger into yourself, starting to move slowly. When you looked up, you saw Wanda was doing the same.

It ripped a moan from your body, a noise you had never made before, and she smiled wickedly.

“Yeah, baby, you like that? You’re doing such a good job. Why don’t you add another finger for me?”

You did as she asked, letting another finger join the first while you pumped in and out of yourself. When she asked you for another, you quickly obliged, then doing the same when she told you to lay back and use the other hand to play with your clit.

And every move you made, you moaned at the sight of Wanda doing the same, until the only noises were breathy moans and the wetness of your bodies. 

It was almost instinct to ask for permission once you felt the coil in your stomach on the verge of snapping.

“Mo- Wanda, please, let me come.”

She wasn’t in the mood to tease you, it seemed, because she gasped a yes and followed you over the edge.

Once you came down, you sat up, taking in her flushed face and the redness that spread all the way down to her chest, then looked her right in the eyes and sucked your own juices from your fingers.

She smiled, pleased, and you again mirrored her. There was no awkwardness, you didn’t think there ever could be with her, and you searched for your t-shirt, slipping it on as you sat down in your desk chair.

Lucky for you, she didn’t follow suit, and you were allowed a closer look at her perky tits.

“Wan, I need you to come home ASAP.”

“Don’t worry baby, I already bought a plane ticket.”

kinktober taglist *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

@treatbuckywkisses @sgt-barnesveins @bucky-barmes @opheliastark @sweetascanbee @writing-for-marvel @christywantspizza @hi-sarahh @highlyintelligentblonde @jjbunny14 @buckysfavoritereader

[kelcemenow]

Touchdown - Chapter 4.

Pairing Travis Kelce x Reader

Words 1083

Warnings No real warnings here. But I fell in love with him even more when writing this chapter. Just imagine those eyes on you.

CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 4.

As you typed the final few words of your latest post, your eyes fell onto the photo that was at the bottom of the screen. Travis was celebrating in the endzone, his face animated through his helmet, fists clenched down by his side. You caught yourself gazing at his eyes, bright and wide. Just as you were about to send the post, an internal email alert flashed up in the bottom corner. ‘London Games’. You looked back to your post and sent it out to the social media accounts. Before you could look back to the alert, Hannah rushed to your side. 

“So, are you up for it?” 

You stared up at her, your eyes blank. 

Hannah’s wide eyes changed instantly to confusion, “You haven’t read it have you?” 

“Read what?” 

Hannah grumbled some incoherent words and she grabbed the mouse of your computer and opened the email. Your eyes scanned across the many wordy paragraphs before you spied your own name, next to Hannah’s, hiding in amongst a long list of others. 

You pointed to the screen, “Why are we-?” 

“We’re going to Wembley! They want us to go to the London Games and report for the social medias!” 

You felt a small burst of excitement mixed with apprehension, “What? Really?” You turned to Hannah with a guilty expression, “I don’t think I’m ready for anything like that. I’m still very new to all of this.” You waved an arm, gesturing towards the room. 

Hannah’s mouth twisted, “Don’t be silly! I’ll be with you; I can do most of the talking if you want?” 

You paused. 

“It’s a weekend in a hotel, taking photos and whatnot. Simple!” 

If only to shut Hannah up, you nodded your head. She turned on her heels, satisfied that she had convinced you, and bounced back to her desk. Your eyes flickered back over the email and you searched for the playing teams, so you could prepare some information. 

‘Seattle Seahawks & Kansas City Chiefs’ 

_______________________________________________

“Well, this is exciting!” Jess’s eyes were wide and animated, putting her book face down and shuffling across the bed to make more space for you.    

You continued leaning on her doorframe, “I know. I’ve been hating sitting at that desk so often. I won’t actually be doing any reporting, so to speak, but at least I’ll get out of the office.”    

Jess patted the space on the bed next to her, “What are you going to wear?”    

“That’s hardly important.”     

“Y/N, are you joking?” Jess leaned back in horror, “You might end up on the telly!”    

You snort a laugh, “Yeah sure, the new girl who doesn’t know the first thing about American Football is front and centre on ITV.”    

Jess shrugged her shoulders, “…in the background, maybe?”    

You slowly walked over to the bed and fell down backwards onto it. As you stared up to the ceiling, Jess' face appeared into your view, “Wanna watch a movie and fall asleep?” 

You smiled gently, “You read my mind.”     

_______________________________________________

Wembley Stadium is huge. And you could only fully experience it's sheer size once you were in the centre of the pitch. As your head was starting to become dizzy from looking around at the thousands of empty seats, a few colleagues were making their way towards you.

“Y/N, we’re going to head to our viewing box now.” Richard, one of the stations managers gave you a wave, “I think Hannah was going to go out to the entrance to take some photos for the social media pages, you wanna go with her?”    

“Yeah sure, thanks.” 

Richard was a heavy-set man, with a very closely shaved head. He always wore dark jeans and a black polo shirt. With him was Pete, a tall, thin man with rounded glasses who always seemed to be on his phone. There was a woman with them who you had seen only a handful of times around the office. She was very beautiful with long, straight blonde hair and a slightly sour facial expression. Richard nodded and smiled warmly before turning away with the rest.

Taking one last look around and a deep breath, you started heading to where you assumed the entrance was. Each corridor looked vast and empty, it was early in the morning and the spectators weren’t permitted into the stadium yet. There was a press office that you had seen earlier to collect your pass but aside from that, you were exploring the building blindly. Your head turned quickly whilst you searched for the door but all you could see were bars and toilets. Slightly ahead of you on the left was a set of large blue double doors with a shiny plaque across each of them.

‘No Spectator Access’.  

You paused for a second.  

You weren’t exactly a spectator in the literal sense. The door pushed open easily with a quiet squeak. The corridor ahead of you was narrow, a stark difference from the wide spaces on the other side of the door. You meandered your way through the blank walls and endless doors hearing muffled noises behind each one on your way.  

Suddenly, there was a deep laughter from behind you as one of the doors opened quickly. Half a dozen large men spilled from the room, all chatting loudly between themselves. You pressed your back against the cold wall so they could move past you when one of the men caught your eye. He was tall and broad, with short buzzed dark hair and a hint of a beard that had been recently trimmed. His light eyes almost twinkled as he laughed and his smile was wide that it made his eyes crease to almost nothing.  

It was Travis Kelce.  

As he moved passed you, his eyes locked with yours and you could feel your heart stop for a second. A short breath escaped your dry lips as they moved into a half smile. Travis glanced towards his companions quickly before turning back to you. He winked, cheekily. Your tongue darted out of your open mouth to moisten your lips and you could swear his stare moved down. Your chest seemed to be rising and falling slowly and your knees slightly weakened. Feeling for the painted brick wall behind you to ensure you didn’t lose your balance, he almost looked as if he was about to say something before his head whipped back around and he disappeared around a corner, leaving only the sound of laughter and excited chatter.    

_______________________________________________

I hope everyone is enjoying where this is going! New chapters will be posted soon, and a quick heads up, there's lots coming! If you want to be in my taglist so you get a notification for the next chapter, let me know!

Taglist @rd14 @dandelionwrites @keiva1000 @fantasywritersstuff @caelipartem

[rhyselinn]

In Defense of Toby Fox’s Halloween Hack

Twitter is all in a tizzy about the Halloween Hack as of late. The apparent reason for this is because the Halloween Hack uses a word commonly used as a homophobic slur, not taking into account that the hack was created in 2008 (when the internet was a different place) and that 2008 was 14+ years ago (and people are known to grow and change over this time). There appears to be some amount of discussion over whether Toby Fox should be “cancelled” for this.

I’ve seen a fair bit of banter from both sides on this, but what I haven’t seen people on the internet talk about is the CONTEXT of the game in which this word is used. And while I don’t spend a lot of time talking about HH due to Toby’s stated embarrassment when people draw attention to it, if the internet’s gonna go dig up old drama for some reason, then by golly, I’m going to go dig up my old love for this game.

So if you want to come take a wild ride through some internet history and literary analysis, then go buckle your seatbelt and click the Readmore.

(content warning: discussion of homophobic slurs)

A quick bit about me: I am an adult on the internet, and I fall into the original Halloween Hack (hereafter abbreviated as HH)’s target demographic: teenagers who existed on Starmen.net, an Earthbound fan website, in 2008. I am also a current admin for Starmen.net, which puts me in a good position to comment on the history and culture of the site as a whole, and how that ties into the reception of HH.

Starmen.net has a long and rich tradition of events called Funfests, in which the site staff run a combination art/writing/music/etc contest for the site members, usually coalescing around a theme such as “Earthbound”, or sometimes “Winter” or “Halloween”. These events offer prizes such as forum avatar/rank privileges, and historically they sometimes even offered physical prizes. The 2008 Halloween funfest had an entire website made for it, which you can view here. Toby Fox submitted HH to this 2008 Halloween Funfest under the internet handle Radiation.

This is the context of HH: a passion project made by a teenager for a fan website full of other teenagers/twenty-somethings. If you go to a high school science fair, you could rightfully lambast every project for being undeserving of a Nobel Prize, but that’s not why we host high school science fairs OR Starmen.net Funfests. These events are an opportunity for teens to show what they are capable of and receive commendation from both their peers and a panel of judges selected specifically for this age demographic and venue.

For perspective, here’s what one of the hosts of the 2008 Funfest had to say about HH:

“Radiation nearly outclassed himself with this effort of skill labour and love. What a lot of fun. Despite getting repeatedly killed in the sewers this was one thoroughly enjoyabe hack. I Think I’ll go and play it again!”

HH won an award in the 2008 funfest-- a #1 in the “Most Effort” category. For some perspective, few people on Starmen.net go to the lengths of creating an entire game for a Funfest (and HH has a playtime of roughly 5-6 hours!). Of those who do, most of the resulting games are consistent with the output you would expect from a teenage userbase, since it’s not fair to expect teenagers to produce professional-quality work. That said, I can say with confidence that HH is a standout in the areas of both effort and quality.

Another thing that needs to be said of HH is that it is not a standalone game made in today’s modern game engines-- it is a hack of a preexisting game. Earthbound's codebase is notoriously complicated, and a lot of the tools that modern Earthbound hackers use to make their jobs easier (eg Coilsnake, Ebmused) didn’t exist in 2008. Toby had to do a lot of manual coding grunt-work to make HH, up to and including manually typing hexadecimal values into his computer in order to compose Megalovania. (Source: Toby wrote a really in-depth post about the process he used to make HH way back when, which I’m referring to here, but it’s unfortunately been deleted since then.)

I can imagine a hypothetical objection at this point: “ok but high effort homophobia is still homophobia”. In this post, I am also going to argue that Toby’s usage of this word can be considered artistic merit when taken in context, but you’ll have to bear with me for a bit while I explain that context. I’ll also talk about some of the cool and neat things this game does along the way because I think they’re worth talking about.

HH is, at its core, a derivative fan work of the video game Earthbound. And while I love Earthbound deeply, I also recognize that it’s a cult classic that not everyone has played. So while I encourage people to play the game I love deeply, I’ll also sum up a few relevant plot beats here so folks can understand the source material HH draws from:

--Ness, a thirteen year-old boy, meets a creature named Buzz Buzz from ten years in the future who tells him that an alien named Giygas has destroyed the world (direct quote: “All is devastation”). As such, Ness and his friends must save the world.

--One of Ness’s friends is a shy boy named Jeff with a penchant for shooting bottle rockets at enemies

--Jeff’s dad is an odd character named Dr. Andonuts. Dr. Andonuts is a reclusive scientist who lives in a snowy region called Winters who sent his son off to boarding school at a very young age. Andonuts’s lab includes no other signs of life, certainly not any indications of a wife/Jeff’s mother. Andonuts ends his conversation with Jeff by saying “Let’s get together in another ten years or so.”

--Towards the end of the game, Dr. Andonuts uses a device he created called a Phase Distorter to send Ness and his friends to the venue for the final battle. This is very clearly telegraphed as a one-way trip, as the kids’ brains are described in text as needing to be transplanted into robots to get there, but the kids go along with it anyway because the world is at stake.

--The kids go on to fight the final boss in a spectacle that words can’t do justice to here. All I’ll say is that after a long-fought battle, in the grace of an unexplained Deus Ex Machina, the souls of the four kids are impossibly returned to their bodies so they can enjoy their happy ending.

These are all canonical events that happen in the base game of Earthbound. Earthbound’s sequel, Mother 3, was released in 2006, two years prior to HH, although the English fan translation wasn’t released until around the time of the 2008 funfest, interestingly enough. Mother 3 does develop Dr. Andonuts’s canonical character somewhat, but I won’t discuss it in further detail here other than to say it mostly re-emphasizes his odd, solitary nature and his overly cavalier attitude towards his science experiments.

It’s also worth noting that in an oddball game like Earthbound, there are a lot of weird and funny idiosyncrasies to theorize on. There are pencil-shaped statues that block your way, which need to be removed with a device called a “pencil eraser.” Ness and his friends fight robots, aliens, and Krakens, but they also fight handbag-wielding ladies and walking mushrooms. Dr. Andonuts’s character oddities, while strange, fit nicely into the evenly distributed mesh of oddities that comprise Earthbound’s world.

Derivative works, particularly fan works, exist in conversation with the source material. They answer questions posed by the source, interpolate details left out of the original, and otherwise build on the world of the original in a collaborative way. This conversation sometimes happens in a one-on-one manner, between fan and original creator, but it also happens in conjunction with the fan community as a whole. When a theory takes traction, it will begin to appear in more and more fan works, growing in popularity and notoriety until it is “accepted” as the most common interpretation of canon’s strange idiosyncrasies. Newer or more fringe theories are less likely to be taken as a “default” interpretation, but they are more likely to be taken as “fresh” or “interesting” until/unless they, too, begin to gain traction.

HH exists in a few conversations: one with the source material, one with the fan community of Starmen.net (and the broader Earthbound community as a whole, although there was much more overlap between the two back in 2008), and one with Starmen.net’s Funfest culture. In order for HH to be well received by the Funfest judges, it would need to be aware of the community sensibilities as well as push the boundaries of the fan conversation with Earthbound as a whole-- a careful balancing act of being both interesting but also recognizable.

So, the fundamental fan question that HH tries to answer is “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THAT?”

This is an absolutely fair question, and Toby was certainly not the first to ask it, although his answer in the form of HH is one of the most high profile now.

HH is set in the world of Earthbound a few months after the final boss fight in autumn, but one where Ness and his friends did not magically return after their one-way trip to the final boss. Word has it that Dr. Andonuts has turned evil and must be defeated. On its surface, this is standard fare for a throwaway plot for a Funfest submission, but the magic of HH is that it does not treat this premise as a throwaway plot. It sets out to earnestly discuss why this happened by delving into Andonuts’s psyche.

Coming back to the idea of derivative works existing in conversation with the source material and interpolating unexplained details: Earthbound does not explain why Dr. Andonuts lives in solitude, nor does it give any hint as to the identity of Jeff’s mother. It also gives no indication as to why Andonuts didn’t seem to have bonded well with his son other than the handwavey explanation that Andonuts is just “like that”. HH initially poses the question of “why did Andonuts turn evil”, but leaves the reader to puzzle that out while battling monsters in Earthbound’s RPG engine.

At first, Toby offers a partial explanation: in HH, Dr. Andonuts is portrayed as feeling immense guilt at having sent his son into what he perceived as a death trap.  (quote from the game: “The world is dead, and I’ve become senile with guilt and rage.” He also says stuff like “what’s the point in living without them”.) As such, he turned evil and created zombies to storm the world of Winters, causing a surge in refugees and desperate survivors. This is why the main character was sent to kill him.

(image transcription: a picture of a menu with the text “What do you do!?” followed with a single option: “Kill him”)

But in order to see the depth of this explanation, the true answer to the question “why is Dr. Andonuts LIKE THIS”, the player must hit “B” to cancel out of a menu at the correct moment, something Earthbound players tend to learn by habit from closing the equipment menu so many times, but never used as a plot-relevant mechanic in the base game. HH takes this subconscious muscle memory and turns it into a mechanic gating off half the game if you don’t “spare” the enemy, a precursor to the “spare” mechanic that would debut seven years later in Undertale.

When the player does this, they enter Dr. Andonuts’s “Magicant,” a dream-construct representing his inner psyche, with his hopes and dreams and fears all laid bare. The main character is tasked with finding Dr. Andonuts’s lost Courage. In the base game, Ness enters his own Magicant, so this feels familiar to a veteran player, but it also gives Toby the chance to more closely examine Dr. Andonuts’s character than he otherwise might be able to do.

Over the course of the rest of the game in Dr. Andonuts’s Magicant, the player continues to control the main character, a bounty hunter named Varik, but the NPCs in the game often mistakenly treat Varik as Andonuts. The dialogue we see from these NPCs reflects memories from Andonuts’s own life. We see a lot more characters try to make connections with Dr. Andonuts (”hey don’t you want to play baseball instead of doing math?”), but these are apparently rebuffed througout Andonuts’s life. One NPC guarding the entrance to the path leading to this lost Courage advises “Be careful. Be yourself.” We see memories of Dr. Andonuts’s presumed wife/Jeff’s mom, who is an OC Toby created for this work to answer the questions posed by canon.

Varik is tasked with fighting three “demons” behind three doors, where each demon is said to be stronger than the next. Since this segment takes place inside Andonuts’s mind, these are unsubtly implied to be Andonuts’s inner demons. The second and third doors represent Andonuts’s relationship with his son and his guilt over getting people killed; the first door is relevant to this post, so I’ll talk about it in more detail. 

Inside the first door, Varik sees Andonuts’s memories of something called “Remember Me,” who despite being faced in a battle, is friendly and affectionate and causes no damage apart from being “hard to think about.” This enemy has a stock overworld sprite of a male NPC from the base game.

(image transcript: a smiling purple sprite in an Earthbound-style battle. The text box says “The Remember Me? was a little hard to think about again”)

At the end of this map, we see a cutscene in which it’s implied that Dr. Andonuts felt disconnected from his wife, perceiving her as an incessant insect. She says things like “Lately, you’ve been acting kind of... disinterested in me. Is there something wrong with me?” She asks if Dr. Andonuts has been hiding something from her, which triggers the following battle:

(image description: an Earthbound-esque battle against three enemies, each a sprite depicting a closeup of a man’s muscular body: a bicep, a chest, and a swimsuit-clothed groin area)

All three of these enemies are named NO. The music that plays in the background is deliberately unsettling, and their battle moves consist mostly of “flexing in a masculine way”, “slapping their buddies in a masculine fashion”, and “being hard to think about again”. After three turns, these enemies deliver a series of un-dodgeable moves that kill the player before it’s possible to defeat them, ending the game. The only way to proceed in the game is to select the Flee option in the menu.

To summarize the themes being presented here, Dr. Andonuts is gay and repressed his homosexuality to try to preserve his relationship with his wife due to his lack of courage. From a game design and literary merit standpoint, this NO battle is actually a really poignant way of portraying Andonuts’s mindset and all of the fears that kept him in the closet, portraying men’s bodies as an enemy that he must fight, or in failing to do so, must run from. Remember that Earthbound takes place in 199X-- none of the 1990′s were known for being especially tolerant of gay men, nor was 2008 when Toby made this hack; 2008 was the same year that California passed a bill intended to ban gay marriage. In another since-deleted web page, Toby said that one of his motivations for creating HH was “the lack of non-stereotypical, major homosexual characters in media”. With that in mind, this is a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of the pains of repressing one’s sexuality, especially from a teenager.

Toby also portrays some complexity in Andonuts’s relationship with his son Jeff, making the case that Andonuts helped Jeff in his fight against Giygas as a way of living vicariously through him to feel like less of a monster. From this standpoint, it’s easy to see that Andonuts’s abrasive language might be a defense mechanism for his own self esteem issues, calling others monsters to deflect from the fact he sees HIMSELF as a monster.

(image transcription: a screenshot of the main character fighting Andonuts from the end of the game. The text in the textbox from Andonuts says “you idiots. look at your decaying, frostbitten bodies”)

(and just as a side note, I think the reminiscence of this dialogue to Flowey’s dialogue in Undertale is funny and interesting)

Dr. Andonuts says the following: "If I can't live with myself, why should anybody else? Ergo, nobody will live. Then, everybody will understand all the pain I went through. When everyone understands me... They'll cherish me so." This isn’t the expression of a healthy mind, but it is a portrayal of someone who’s experiencing some serious pain. I’d also argue that it’s a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of a character who is clearly in a crisis.

Another Andonuts quote: “you’re going to kill me, because that’s what a hero does. he has to kill that monster, right? even in this form, i am shaking with fear. i don’t want to die. leave me alone”

The second-to-last fight in the game is against an enemy called Id. In Freudian psychology, the Id is the representation of one’s most base desires, in contrast to the Superego who restrains a person from operating on these desires. The game up until this point does a good job at portraying Dr. Andonuts’s Superego-centric repression strategies, so getting to see his underlying base desires directly is a novel development. The enemy Id consistently reiterates a desire to be left alone and for the main character to not kill it. At the end, it apologizes for not being much of a fight. Only then does Varik fight Dr. Andonuts proper, and without the Id, all that’s left is the Superego-fueled repression, labeled in-game as “hatred”.

Andonuts’s villain monologue starts as such: “I know what this feeling is. It’s hatred for the person who came so far just to destroy an old man. My mind is gone. All that is left is pure hatred.

YOU SEE THIS BURNING, BLOODY UNIVERSE. YOU SEE THIS ULTIMATE, UNLIMITED POWER? Varik. I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT. you little fuckers are going to have your bodies ripped in half. i’ll shove your asses so far down your throats that when you crap, you’ll sing fucking beethoven.”

This monologue is the precursor to the infamous line:

(image transcript: a screenshot from the final battle, in which Andonuts says the words “tl;dr: eat shit, faggots”)

As established earlier, this is a line uttered by a gay character who is in a tremendous amount of pain, which would make it an act of slur reclamation. We could argue about whether Toby Fox is in a position to justify this usage, but I refuse to have that conversation because I don’t think real life queer people should have to out themselves in order to justify the art they make. Whether Toby Fox is actually queer or not is, I would argue, immaterial to the story he’s trying to tell here, which is nuanced in a way that a homophobe would be unlikely to write.

We can also have the conversation of whether this word choice is a good decision or not-- and there are, I would argue, a lot of parts of this game that a storyteller with more experience and maturity would have handled better. There are some parts that come across heavy-handed and needlessly edgy, and there are parts that could have been handled with more grace. We can discuss whether “bury our gays” stories were stale by 2008, or whether stories of queer pain had fallen out of vogue for stories of queer joy. But again, this is a work made by a 16-year old, and being needlessly critical of a fangame made by a teenager for a community of predominantly teenagers feels needlessly meanspirited. Just because the game has been unforeseeably thrust into the public light like this doesn’t mean we need to eviscerate it from a 2023 lens. It’s not fair to Toby Fox, neither the original 16-year old creator nor the adult celebrity today.

So I’m not going to do that. What I am going to say is that a queer reading of this work would indicate that this word usage may very well have been a decision made with artistic intent, and a death-of-the-author reading of this work might indicate that this word has artistic merit anyways. If a gay character sees gayness as bad and uses a slur associated with gayness to demean his opponent, that does fundamentally say something about this character, and in this case it reinforces the existing themes that Toby had put in place. I wouldn’t recommend people in 2023 take this approach in storytelling lightly, but I can see and appreciate the spirit in which the game and this word choice appear to have been made.

In the end, Varik does defeat Dr. Andonuts and kill him.

(image transcript: Varik standing above the machine containing Dr. Andonuts’s dead body, not depicted onscreen. The text box reads “You feel a little like this situation could have been avoided.”)

This is one of the last text boxes of the game, and I think it’s a good ending note for this work-- saying that queer lives do NOT need to go this way, that we do not need to bury our gays, that this genuine pain that Dr. Andonuts experienced is not an inevitability.

In conclusion, I do love Halloween Hack for what it is, imperfections and all. It was very clearly a labor of love made by a very earnest and well-meaning teen, and a lot of the things that would later go on to make Undertale so popular are present in their nascent forms here. HH has some genuinely interesting things to say about Earthbound, from both a plot and a character standpoint, and it’s clearly a good-faith attempt at grappling with queer and psychological subject matter. If people on the internet were to engage sincerely with it rather than judging it (and its creator) based on one out-of-context screenshot, I think they might find a diamond-in-the-rough that still manages to be an absolute gem of a fangame.

[fights4users]

More assorted system headcanons

I’ve been doing a lot of individual post ones lately, slightly larger than these but not enough for an essay. I haven’t really had big post ideas lately but these are fun and I like to use them in writing (and anyone can for anything I put out btw)

Here’s some more after this one [ Sleep | drink ]

Encom system has (or used not to) no currency system, it’s more efficient to just let everyone about their way to do what they need to do. It keeps everything productive and less complicated… that was until paywalls went up. When the company got more greedy and secure things went a bit sour. Now you have to pay to travel to certain domains and it’s a hastle. Some know how to jump or get around paywalls others have a card from their users that gives them permission (basically a in world translation for paying to access a site)

However the Grid had currency from the start both as users were intended to eventually come in and they needed something to do with so long without purpose, they have their entirely own system that’s mainly made up but they ahear to. Clu doesn’t regulate it- mainly because it keeps the masses busy

Encom still utilizes physical buttons, keyboards and switches alongside some touch screen- while The grid is purely touch or holo screen (mainly for aesthetic, that’s the way most of it was built)

Another way to recuperate energy would be to plug in/charge sort of like a phone. Computers themselves are constantly plugged in and most of the time programs get energy simply through functioning but this is a more direct way, that also helps to skip a sleep cycle which takes much longer.

Similar to all programs using it/it’s interchangeably with gendered pronouns I can see them having open and undefined relationships. There’s not exactly jealousy as Counterparts are a bond that goes well beyond the way we view relationships, i don’t know if this makes sense

There’s a fate worse than Deresolution or deletion for programs …  obsolescence. You’re not dead but you’re also not running, not being used and you haven’t for a really long time. Existing but not, installed but the users and soon those you know forget you’re still there. Sort of a living-dead situation. (At least being derezzed your energy is recycled back into the system, not just wasted)

Coming from the Encom system Tron mourns buttons and the physicality of everything- it’s his “old man yells at cloud moment”. Whatever the digital version of ‘grandpa’ would be that’s what the betas (teens??) call him. “What was it like when the computer was invented?” *punts child* he’s two years older than the grid itself don’t do this to him

Encom is very abstract in everything, more often than not furniture is more of a low-resolution 3D abstract than a actual chair (if you’ve seen CGI from the. 80s- that) it’s much less representative of our world beyond programs reflecting users. There’s never ending horrors if you step just outside of where you’re supposed to.

Pac-Man is a “Grid eater” as described in the novelization. (Sark 100% put some poor soul in the Pac-Man maze,) types like him can be contained there’s others that are like worms and destroy-all viruses that you better just derezz— however sometimes they’re just sort of lumbering deep beneath out lands not hurting anyone so it’s 🤷‍♀️ Go there at your own risk

[glitterypopcorn]

introduction

haii!! i’m glitter!!!! you can also call me katya if you want !!!!!!!

i go by any pronouns :3 he/she/they preferred, no pref between the three >_<

click this link for additional info!

^^ best viewed on ipad as that is what i used to create it. some things are a bit weird on phone and im not sure how it looks on any computers :3

if u know what pafl is id really like you to treat me how you'd treat katya it'd just make me really happy >_> cuz i am kt after all

i'm a katya fictionkin :,3 i mention this later but if you're a double plz dni and block me, it's not personal but that sorta thing makes me feel super super bad

i edited my pfp but @/nopanamaman drew it! lmk if you want any icon edits there's a chance i'll make one

more stuff below the cut!!

CANDYLAND LINK

I AM A MINOR!!!!! please don’t be weird ^_^

i have autism and adhd (both diagnosed)

possible bpd although it is currently undiagnosed

CANDYLAND ASK BLOG @ask-candyland

i have another account that was a basil omori ask blog but i don't use it so it's just. there @glittersendsasks

KATYA PAFL RP ACC @katyas-cool-account405

ANYA PAFL RP ACC @beletskanya69

i have an omori au called the prism au! info can be found here :3 @omori-prism-au also not active there, and the au has been basically discontinued although i may come back to state what the ending was supposed to be,

i am fictionhearted with basil (omori), sydney o sargent (camp here and there), katya/kt (parties are for losers) and anya (parties are for losers)!! i relate to them a lot!!! when i say "me" under art, i don't mean it literally >_< someone else talking about how they relate to the character makes me uncomfortable (i get jealous over a lot of things easily) so if you do it too much i may unfollow you . please please don't take it personally, youre allowed to relate to characters, this is just so i dont feel super shitty all the time,,

sorry bros i dont do copypastas dont take it personally

if i ever make you uncomfortable in ANY WAY please dm me! i won't get mad i promise ^_^ i'm always looking to better myself but i do make mistakes and forget things sometimes and im sorry about that

likes: parties are for losers, omori, the post-traumatic manifesto, welcome to night vale, camp here and there, in stars and time, evidentlyfresh, ferry, cotton candy flavored stuff, candy + other sweet foods, drawing, singing, bugs, isopods, and cosplaying!!!!! n my favorite color is pink

here's a link to music i like because i don't want to make this post too long!! i will probably forget to update this so it will likely be outdated if you're looking at it a month or more after it's posted

please don’t call me pookie, thank you <3

rbs > likes but do whatever you want lol idc !!

hearts meaning:

🩷 : romantic. if i use it with you and i don't know you irl, i accidentally clicked it. i will probably notice this though

💚🩷 : platonic.

💚 : platonic. only used when i want to send a single heart.

<3 : depends. if we're not partners, it's platonic.

(o*・ω<)oﾟ.+:｡ﾟ.+

no dni i just block <3

EXCEPT for doubles it makes me uncomfortable im sorry

by the way i’m burnt out currently and may not respond to asks/do things i said i would do. don’t take it personally ^_^

also. i can only speak english </3 i'll use google translate if spoken to in another language so things i say might sound weird

i LOVE following people even if they've interacted with my posts once !!!

profile picture by ferry! @.nopanamaman (people tag her in fanart n stuff but this . isn't that )

[ragnarokhound]

the what time stamp from sit, stay, speak 👀👀 i ate that fic up i need to know all extras about it

fjsldkajf Ok. When I wrote those tags this timestamp was PURELY HYPOTHETICAL. BUT WHELP.

Cross-posting it to AO3 too lmao

“Wait, wait, wait. I can’t be hearing this right. You were a dog? For a week?”

Tim sighs. He looks over at Dick before returning to the surveillance clips he’s sorting through.

“Yes.”

“And Jason didn’t know.”

“No.”

“Jason took care of you. For a whole week. Thinking you were just a normal dog. Jason.”

“Yes, Dick,” Tim says, long-suffering. 

And how long he has suffered.

Ever since Babs let it slip to Dick that Tim had been AWOL for a week and could use some help getting his cases in order, he’s been subjected to grilling from everyone. Even Cass texted him, demanding he spill it all. (She sent a single dog emoji, followed by an eyes emoji. Her methods of interrogation are as effective as they are inscrutable.) He’s had to explain the entire thing at least four times now, and it always comes back to the same ribbing questions.

“Wait. So does that mean— you actually ate dog food?” He stares at Tim with wide eyes, equal parts aghast and intrigued.

Tim wishes he were surprised.

“What— yes, Dick, I was a dog. Jason bought dog food and wouldn’t really feed me other stuff. So I ate dog food.”

“What did it taste like?”

“I don’t— like it smells? I don’t know, Dick, dogs have less oral sensory receptors than humans do. It was food. I was hungry. I ate it. It didn’t smell as good as the eggs or bacon did, but—”

“Todd fed you bacon,” Damian interrupts, eyes narrowing. 

Tim glances at him, not sure what to do about the weird note in his voice. 

It’s the first thing Damian’s said about the whole affair other than to roll his eyes and mutter a scathing ‘typical’ under his breath. He couldn’t have projected ‘I don’t care about your incompetencies’  any harder; but he also didn’t leave the room when Dick finally cornered Tim into explaining it all in detail.

And he’s here in the first place, in Tim’s Nest, helping with the mess. So.

“...Yes? A few times.”

Damian’s face twists into a dark scowl. “Tch. Idiot. There’s far too much salt in bacon, was he trying to kill you?”

Tim stares.

“Humans can eat a much wider range of foods than many animals,” Damian sniffs. “Most of what we eat should either be considered a treat or not eaten at all. This is basic. A child would know this.”

Tim doesn’t say anything about getting this unprompted lecture from a teenager.

“If Todd couldn’t be bothered to do even a basic internet search, I loathe to think of that man ever owning a real dog.”

“Who’s getting a real dog?”

Jason comes clomping down the stairs from the apartment with a grocery bag in hand. Tim’s heart does something he didn’t tell it to when he comes into view, holding a pack of Tim’s favorite energy drinks tucked under his arm. Jason doesn’t even drink those. He says they taste like death and chemicals, and he should know. Tim might swoon.

“No one,” Tim says at the same time as Damian says, “Not you.”

Jason frowns. “I could get a real dog, why can’t I get a real dog?”

Damian immediately rounds on Jason. “Please. You’re lucky it was Drake you were caring for and not an actual animal. You would have killed it!”

Jason scoffs as he crosses the walkway to lean casually against Tim’s computer desk. “Oh, come on. No way I would have killed it. Dogs are bouncier than that.”

Damian sputters, before launching into a tirade about proper animal care. Jason smiles serenely, always ready to wind up Damian as Dick looks on, partly amused and partly concerned, and Tim tries to bite down on his snickering. 

Jason sets down the six pack and pulls one off, handing it to Tim. Their fingers brush over the cool, wet metal, and Jason winks at him. Tim nearly fumbles the can.

“Maybe I should get a dog,” Jason muses, interrupting Damian’s rant before he can get started on the importance of socializing. He slants a grin at Tim. “What do you think, Timmy? How would you rate the Jason Todd experience?”

Tim’s thoughts go briefly X-rated before he gets ahold of himself. 

“Zero out of ten,” he says flatly, cracking the tab on his drink. “Would not recommend.”

Jason’s grin turns sharp. It's an expression that clearly says 'that's not what you were saying last night'.

“Oh?”

Tim makes a face at him around the can as he takes a swig. He hopes Jason reads it as ‘shut the fuck up, Dick and Damian are right here’ and not a challenge to see how far he can push it.

Thankfully he’s saved by Dick. First Robin, best Robin.

“You here to help out too?” Dick asks, clearly excited at the idea and trying not to show it, in fear of scaring Jason off.

“Nah,” Jason says, not unkindly. “Just swingin’ by. I had a suspicion that Timbit’s fridge would be about as empty as the last time I saw it.”

Tim squints at his screen, thinking back to lunch and trying to remember if he can defend himself honestly, but he’s pretty sure he just ate a snack bar from the pantry. He doesn’t think he’s so much as looked in the fridge since the morning he turned back into a human. He’d watched Jason make them breakfast from his place seated on the counter; Jason nearly burned the bacon, then blamed Tim for being…distracting.

(He maintains that the spell simply wore off after seven days. Significant numbers are also a thing in magic. Or was it nine days? It doesn’t matter. It was not true love’s kiss. Jason kissed him on the head the night before he changed back, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t.)

Anyway.

Dick and Jason are chatting idly while Damian sulks in his corner. They seem to be comparing notes on Tim— and Damian’s— bad habits, but at least they’ve stopped asking him about the dog thing. Jason’s timing couldn’t have been better.

Gratitude for Jason swells in his chest. Tim watches him with a growing flutter in his stomach, and when Jason glances his way, caught, he smiles at Tim. It’s soft, conspiring. It rivals the moon.

“Alright,” Jason announces. “It’s about time I headed off.” From his corner, Damian grumbles something that sounds like ‘finally’.

“Thanks for coming by, Jay,” Dick says, clasping his arm. “Always good to see you.”

Jason ducks his head. “Yeah, yeah.”

He turns to Tim. “Try not to die of starvation while I’m gone, princess,” Jason says, ruffling Tim’s hair with a heavy hand.

Tim’s cheeks pink up. Princess? He’s about to— protest, surely, but Jason leans down over his chair, leaning in close.

“I’ll see you later?” He asks quietly, looking hopeful, his hand still warm on Tim’s neck. Tim can’t help how shy his answering smile is. In his periphery, Dick’s eyebrows shoot way up, and the tips of Tim’s ears go red-hot.

“Y-Yeah,” he says, super smoothly. “I’ll be here.”

“Good.”

All hope of playing it off to Dick and Damian goes right out the window when Jason leans in and pecks his mouth with a short kiss. And then a not so short kiss. 

Tim untangles his fingers from the lapels of Jason’s jacket reluctantly, opening his eyes in time to see Jason’s pink face and self-satisfied smirk before he’s turning around and hustling back up the stairs to the apartment. Presumably he’s putting the groceries away before going on his own patrol. Dick and Damian stare after him.

Tim can’t even be mad at Jason for dropping that little bomb and then escaping. He’d have done the same if their positions were reversed.

Of course, the second Jason disappears, Dick and Damian whip their heads around to look at Tim with big-eyed stares, one maliciously gleeful, one truly disgusted. Then they start talking over each other. Loudly.

“Timothy Drake-Wayne, explain yourself immediately—”

“I need bleach for my eyes, Drake—” 

Okay. He can be a little mad.

[lauvra]

Not to give “protecting my energy” but (kinda) because I was born in the mid nineties, the common forms of technology in my life (if we’re not being pedantic about the word) were pretty restricted to one TV set in the living room (flat screens didn’t exist, if you had a big screen the housing was just as cubically wide behind and heavier than a motherfucker), one home phone attached at the wall, a school calculator (5318008), a Super Nintendo, VCR, dads Walkman and a bulky desktop computer (used to type on Word documents and fight with my dad over whose turn it was to play The Sims 2). There were also the bulky desktop computers in select classrooms at school, but as for at home we didn’t have an internet connection until I was a teenager. People in their forties/fifties/sixties will laugh at this and have so much funnier and more wholesome accounts of their decades of experience with/out the technologies we’ve come to take for granted but all this to say, I forget that finding my mind overstimulated all the time comes not from a personal failure on my part to adapt, but rather from the reality that modern life as a human being has become all around ridiculous, rendering it perfectly sane to become insane. People you don’t even necessarily care to see or speak to can message you anytime of the day and know whether or not you’ve viewed their attempts, it’s really easy to forget that you have a choice in it. When I open Facebook up, the first posts I see are ones that work against my sense of wonder and openness to the magic I know exists in the world. Unfollow. Leave group. It’s a choice. I miss the solid clink of spare change in a public pay phone. Do you know how cool it was to play one CD in your Walkman, to have to play the whole thing through? To release a concept album in 2024 is such a 90’s move in a time we have the attention span of 1.3 seconds. I miss seeing people in one designated place and having no way to contact them to cancel. I want a return to that as it encourages a consistency we’ve been trained out of. Finding events and community groups that run weekly is really helpful for me right now, consistency is the only way I’ll change and it’s something I’ve been avoiding a long time. It’s 2am, my brain is a bit all over the place, sorry if my thoughts were hard to follow. I need to touch grass.

[jjunieworld]

Hihi, I'm not sure if you're comfortable in sharing , but how do you have your fonts in different colors apart from the colors that tumblr alr provides? They are so pretty and I wanna incorporate them to my short stories too . Thanku!

hii!! of course i can share! the process i use is actually pretty easy, so i hope this helps :)) if you have more questions feel free to send another ask!!

i did this on my phone (iphone so sorry if this is different for android users!) but you can also do this on your computer and the steps are exactly the same! this tutorial is kinda long haha so the full thing will be under the cut! ♡

1. create a draft (it doesn’t matter what you write in it since it will be deleted!)

2. go to this website (http://patorjk.com/text-color-fader/)

3. delete all of the text in the message box and type whatever you want to have the custom color. for this example, i just chose “message example!”

4. choose the number of colors you what in the drop down menu under “# of colors” i recommend not going above 4 colors. the color presents don’t really matter if your choosing your own colors, so you can skip that!

5. where it says “colors” there will be various boxes with different colors. this is where you will import your hex codes. to get a certain color from a particular picture, go to this website. (https://redketchup.io/color-picker)

6. click where it says “browse” and choose whichever photo you want. scroll down to your imported picture and run your finger along the picture to whichever color you want. for this example i’m using the red color of zac efron’s shirt lmao. copy the hex code (hashtag looking thing).

if you want to use a gradient, repeat this step for however many colors you want to use!

7. return back to the text color fader website. input your hex codes where the color boxes are under “colors” by replacing the hex code that’s already there. once you’ve done that, click “choose”.

8. once you done that for all your colors, make sure you choose your “fade type” to be horizontal line by line. this will make sure each line of text has your colors spread evenly.

if you want one solid color, you’ll have to choose 2 colors and paste the same hex code in each box! for some reason this website doesn’t have the option to choose one color :(

9. click “generate color faded text” for your results.

10. in order to see what your colors will look like on a white background (i recommend doing this to see if your colors aren’t too light for those who use light mode), click the black box where it says “view against background”. change this color to white (#fff).

11. where it says “color code” copy the entire coding in the box. make sure you copy all of it, or else some of your text will be missing!

12. return back to your tumblr draft. click edit and then click the cogwheel in the top right. scroll down to where it says “text editor” and change the drop down menu from rich text to HTML.

13. delete the previous coding that is there after exiting the cogwheel menu. paste the coding you just copied in it’s place. after it should look something like the picture below. in order to see how it all looks, press “preview”.

14. save your draft and then you’re finished! after you can add whatever else you like to the post, such as more text or pictures!

for custom fonts that aren’t able to be used with the website, refer to this ask!

i really hoped this helped!! again, feel free to send another ask on anything you’re confused about! i’m kinda bad at tutorials so i hope this wasn’t super confusing haha ♡

[script-a-world]

Is tumblr an ok-ish place to just like, info dump about my world and it’s lore, or is there a better place I could do it?

Tex: You can put anything on tumblr so long as you don’t violate the Terms of Service - I’ve seen moodboards, essays, sketches, stories, bullet point lists, gif sets, audio clip compilations, and pretty much anything that the various posting formats can support.

It’s not necessarily something like a catch-all or one-size-fits-all, but I think it helps to think of various websites as boxes with different utilities, much in the same theme as scrapbooking parts. For example, tumblr supports images well, Archive of Our Own (AO3) supports text well, and have the shared similarity of ability to tag posts or works for organizational purposes.

The internet is one, very useful, format to worldbuild, because it has the ability to utilize tools such as hyperlinking and digital archiving. In a previous post, there is a detail about how to organize a digital file structure for one’s worldbuilding to keep track of things, available here. One practice I have noticed among some worldbuilders is the blend of digital and physical spaces; or rather, online and offline.

Offline digital worldbuilding is such things as word documents, saved images, and programs that perform the function of notebooks that don’t require internet access and/or an internet browser. This is frequently supplemented by personal archiving habits, such as a dedicated peripheral drive like a USB, and regularly copying over digital files onto that device whenever significant changes are made or else on a schedule. This is useful for happenstance events like computer failure, websites going defunct, or related issues.

Offline physical worldbuilding is such things as notebooks, drawings or paintings, boxes of ephemera, scrapbooks, and physical copies of the canon media (if the worldbuilding has its roots in fandom). This can include CDs, DVDs, photos, and craft items such as textiles or sculptures. For people that have had difficulties in maintaining digital records in particular, physical copies are often a good method of maintaining linearity of thought - i.e. printing out a Google Doc and putting that into a folder.

Because there’s so many different medias and platforms you can use for worldbuilding, it’s more a matter of which suits you best and for which purpose. Tumblr is a useful component of a worldbuilding methodology portfolio because of its capability to create dedicated posts that can be mixed media, tagged, and archived if one wishes it. As of this time of posting, users cannot currently download an individual post, but it’s impossible to predict a website’s roadmap as it adapts to the changing needs of digital spaces.

One thing I would note is that tumblr need not be engagement driven, in the same way other online spaces tend to be (e.g. twitter). You can make a blog, add restrictions in the form of locking viewing to only logged-in users or adding a password to view the blog, and with the recent update (as of this posting), users can also toggle preferences on how public a post is and also ability for others to reblog a post.

If you’re looking for engagement, this is fuelled by reblogs, which generally depends on the blogs that you follow and interact with, usually by reblogging their posts and also by talking to them. That is, however, a subject of micro-cultures and subcultures therein, which becomes a little bit off-subject to your question and not really within our domain.

[radiantlyrey]

TRON Fic: A sort-of sequel AU thing... (Part Three)

Part One Part Two

Continuing on with the "Flynn brings Alan and Lora to the Grid" AU. Sorry this took so long to post; one of the scenes here kind of got long, and then I got distracted by other ideas to write and yeah. It happens~~ At any rate, here are the next 2500 (!!!) words of the story... (next part may be a while coming, jsyk)

~~~

Well, at least one of us is having a good time, Alan thinks as Tron drives them through the city. Lora called shotgun, and she’s looking out the windows in obvious wonder, asking Flynn and Tron a flurry of questions. Alan can tell just by listening to her that she’s in full-on scientific observation mode, and more than once, she’s bemoaned the fact that she didn’t bring along the legal pad to take notes. He hasn’t seen her like this since… well, since she was still working at Encom. In a way, it’s not surprising she’s so excited; this place is the culmination of her work on the laser, work she might have been able to finish if things had gone differently at Encom.

Alan looks out the narrow backseat window. The city looks the same as it did where they arrived, all bright lines and stark black shapes, but the streets are busier, crowded with people (or programs, he supposes) and vehicles going places he can’t begin to guess. He tried counting the programs at first, but lost count somewhere in the mid-seventies. It’s all so much—so much city, so many programs. He turns away from the window and takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

Flynn, sitting to his left in the other back row seat, notices. “You feeling all right, Alan?”

“I’m fine,” Alan says, though he’s not sure that he is. “Just… overwhelmed.”

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Flynn glances out his window, then back at Alan. “But it’s really something else, don’t you think?”

“I mean…” He shrugs. “We’re having this conversation inside a computer, Flynn. You tell me.”

Flynn chuckles. “It is pretty damn crazy.”

Alan snorts. “It’s something.” He eyes the window and the world outside again. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“The admin tower,” Flynn replies. “We’ll be able to get an aircraft there, really give you guys the bird’s-eye view of everything. Plus, you and Lora need discs, and we can take care of that there, too.”

“Discs?” Alan asks, his brow furrowing.

Flynn reaches over his shoulder and pulls something off his back. It’s a black ring, with a thin line of light running over the center of it, almost extending the whole way around. “Identity discs,” he says, showing it to Alan. “It’s basically a functional ID—it records everything you see and do, and it’s handy as a weapon, too.” Flynn adjusts his grip on the disc and for a moment, the whole outside edge lights up, hissing like a high-powered saw. He turns the effect off with another change in his grip. “Cool, right? Not that we’re gonna run into any trouble tonight, but—better safe than sorry.”

“Right,” Alan says. “You said it records everything you see? How does it do that?”

Flynn shrugs. “Hell if I know. Look…” He holds the disc flat and touches the inside rim with his thumbs. Almost at once, a holographic portrait of Flynn appears over the open center of the disc, rotating slowly. Flynn reaches a hand up and taps the image, which changes, resolving into a shimmering picture of Alan sitting in the lightrunner. “This is my memory access. I can rewind it—” He runs a finger along the disc’s inner edge, and the image reverses itself like a video running backwards. “It even has the stuff I do at home saved,” Flynn adds, and indeed, the hologram soon shows Alan and Lora in the arcade basement. “Don’t have a clue why it works, only that it does. Which is honestly par for the course for everything in here.” With another tap of his finger, the image vanishes completely. He leans forward and hooks the disc back where it was. “Of course, discs also have a program’s permissions and things like that. What accesses they have, what kind of commands they can create.”

“Sounds interesting,” Alan says, feeling more lost than ever.

“Sounds to me like something worth looking into,” Lora comments from the front seat, Evidently she’s been listening. “Nothing happens for no reason, Flynn, especially in science.”

“Well, you are the PhD in the car, so I’ll defer to your judgement,” Flynn says with a grin.

Lora grins back, and then Alan notices the lightrunner slowing to a stop. “Are we here?” he asks, looking around.

“We are,” Tron says. “Welcome to the admin tower.”

~~~

The admin tower is never very busy, but it seems to Tron that every program who works there is lurking in the halls tonight. They pass a dozen programs (many of them openly staring) before they even reached the lobby elevator. As annoyed as he is, Tron can’t exactly blame them. Alan_1 and Lora_B are the first Users to come to this system besides Flynn himself. Flynn’s talked for cycles about opening the Grid up to Users; now that promise seems to be coming to fruition. Many programs will want to say they were there, when the first Users arrived, that they got to see them with their own eyes.

Still, they could stand to be a little more discreet. He shoots a glare at a couple of staring programs; they immediately turn and resume their work. Flynn’s already reached the elevator, and he holds the door as Tron lengthens his stride to catch up. “I take it word got around?” Flynn asks.

“Clu probably disseminated your message to the tower staff when we left,” Tron replies. “There’s certainly more programs hanging around than usual this millicycle.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Alan_1 asks, looking concerned.

Tron shakes his head. “No,” he replies. “Most of them are just curious, I think.”

“About us?” Alan_1 gestures to include Lora_B in his question.

“Well, you guys are the first new Users the Grid has seen since yours truly built the place,” Flynn points out.

“And what does that mean?” Alan_1 asks, glancing between Flynn and Tron for an answer.

“It means,” Tron say, “that something greater than ourselves has come to see us. To help us build this new system. On the old system, your Encom system, our Users were… apart from us. Reachable, through the I/O towers, but only just. And then Flynn came,” he continues, “and changed everything for us. We were right that our Users existed, but wrong about how much we thought they knew.”

“And now we’ve got this new system,” Flynn says. “Where everything’s gonna be open, between programs, and Users, and… At least that’s what I hope we’re gonna do.” He smiled. “And you two are welcome to help us out.”

“More than happy to help,” Lora_B replies.

Alan_1 is about to answer as well, but then the elevator comes to a stop, and the doors open to reveal the administrative suite.

The suite takes up the entire top floor of the building, with most of the space given over to workstations keeping track of activity in every part of the Grid. There’s also a few office spaces for Flynn, Clu, and Tron himself, though Tron hardly ever uses his. He’s always found it easier to deal with the Grid’s security issues from the ground up, while Flynn and especially Clu prefer to take a top-down view of things.

The half-dozen programs who normally work this millicycle are all present, and all thankfully at their workstations. A few of them look up as Tron and the Users file out of the elevator, but only one actually comes up to greet them: Ashe, the program in charge of operations when Clu and Tron aren’t here. She cuts the same severe-yet-stylish figure as always, with her white hair pulled back in a tight bun, and light splashes of eye makeup to accentuate her dark skin. She wears a data interface over her right eye, and her suit’s light lines only cover the lapels of her jacket. Her low heels clack on the floor as she approaches, and she stops just in front of Tron and smiles politely.

“Tron, Creator,” she says, nodding to them both. “Welcome back. And Users.” Her gaze falls on Alan_1 and Lora_B. “Greetings. Welcome to the Grid.”

“Uh. Thank you?” says Alan_1.

“Of course. My name is Ashe, and I would be delighted, if there is time, to show you some of the work we do here to improve this system.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Lora_B says. “I’m Lora, and this is Alan. We’re delighted to be here.”

“Thank you for the welcome, Ashe,” Flynn says, stepping forward. “We’re gonna need a couple of blank discs, and disc mounts, if you could call downstairs—”

“There’s no need for that, Creator,” Ashe replies. “Clu explained everything when he called in for a Recognizer. The discs and mounts are waiting in your office.”

“Oh…kay. Thank you again, Ashe.” He glances at Alan_1 and Lora_B. “If you’ll follow me…” He waves them on, and begins crossing the suite floor to the center office.

Tron watches them go for a moment, then turns briefly to Ashe. “Clu happen to say where he was going in that Recognizer?”

Ashe doesn’t bat an eye. “The Isomorph annex, I believe. He said he needed to oversee construction there.”

Tron represses a sigh with difficulty. “All right. Thank you.” He nods at Ashe in acknowledgement, and she returns to her workstation as he heads over to Flynn’s office.

As the doors open to admit him, he hears Flynn’s laughter. “All right, I admit it,” he’s saying when Tron walks in, “it is a bit of an ego booster. Don’t worry too much about it, though. Between Clu and Tron I get regular head deflations.”

“That conversation with Clu didn’t look like it went too well for you,” Alan_1 comments with a chuckle.

“For example, yes. And it did not, thanks for the painful reminder.” Flynn walks over to his desk, where two discs and disc mounts sit on the smooth black surface. “Anyway, discs! Come here, you two. Hey, Tron, you wanna lend a hand?”

Tron follows Alan_1 and Lora_B to Flynn. “What do you need, Flynn?”

He hands him one of the discs and its mount. “Get Alan set up. I’ll do Lora.”

Alan_1 glances at him. “What do you need me to—?”

Tron meets his eyes again, just briefly. “Stand with your back to me,” he says, and Alan_1 complies. Tron activates the disc mount for placement with one hand. “I’m applying the disc mount to your back now,” he explains. “It will latch onto your clothing, and you might feel a slight pulse.” Alan_1 nods as Tron does this, and only flinches a little as the mount settles itself.

He turns the disc over in his hands. “I am now giving you your identity disc. Everything you do or learn on this system will be imprinted on this disc. It is your first defense in an emergency. Guard it as closely as you can. Do you understand?”

Alan_1 takes a moment to answer, but when he says “Yes,” his voice is confident and clear.

“Then here is your disc, Alan_1. It will activate and synchronize when I place it on the mount.” He hooks the disc onto the mount and locks it gently into place. A slight shudder runs through Alan_1, and then the disc’s inner ring of light illuminates. The disc is live and synchronized.

“That was—something else,” Alan_1 says, turning around. “But—thank you for your help, Tron.”

Tron nods. “It was my honor, Alan_1.”

He rubs the back of his neck with one hand, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You can just call me Alan, you know. Lora, too. If it’s easier for you, that is.”

“I—” Tron stares for half a micro, it seems, then blinks and recovers himself. “That would be—thank you. Alan.” The name without its unique designator feels strange in his mouth; he tries not to let his discomfort show on his face. But Alan has already turned his attention back to Lora, whom Flynn is currently outfitting with her disc.

As Flynn locks her disc into place, the same small shudder runs through her, and Tron sees the telltale blue flash in her eyes that indicates synchronization. She blinks, then turns to Flynn. “Is it supposed to feel that strange?” she asks.

“A little bit,” Flynn replies. “It’s the sync with your disc that you’re feeling. From now on, it’ll happen every time you enter the system, but I’ve found the feeling tends to get lost in the disorientation of digitization.”

Alan sighs. “Is it weird that I was almost able to follow all that?”

“Not in the slightest,” Flynn tells him with a grin.

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Alan rubs his forehead with one hand. “So when’s this grand tour of yours supposed to start?”

“We can head up to the roof in a minute, but before I forget—I need to update your permissions, both of you.”

“What does that mean?” Lora asks.

“Well,” Flynn says, “right now, you guys are just designated in the system as basic Users. You can access pretty much any code on the Grid, but the kinds of changes you can make are limited. Turn around, please, Alan.” Alan turns, and Flynn taps the center of his disc, opening a limited readout of Alan’s data. “If y’all are gonna be helping me build stuff in here, you’re gonna need more access than that.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Alan asks.

“I’m making you both sub-admins,” Flynn replies. “You’ll be on the same kind of level as Clu and Tron, except with a User’s permissions instead of a program’s.” He taps a few things in Alan’s disc, then closes it out. “Done. Lora, you next.”

As Flynn makes the necessary changes to Lora’s disc, Alan frowns, then glances at Tron. “Is all of this as weird for you as it is for me?”

Tron considers the question, then answers, “I will admit, I was… startled by Flynn’s message. I didn’t expect him to bring Users to the Grid so soon. But if he wants you both here, and wants you to help, then I imagine he had a good reason for doing what he did.” Alan’s expression is still troubled, though. Tron continues, “It is—strange, meeting you. Alan… my User. But… I cannot say that I regret meeting you, as strange as it is.”

A smile crooks up the corner of Alan’s mouth. “I can’t say I regret meeting you, either, Tron. Thank you.”

And then Flynn finishes altering Lora’s disc, and calls for them to follow him up to the roof, where they should be able to get hold of an aircraft and begin the tour of the Grid. Tron and Alan exchange a glance, and Tron feels a sort of understanding pass between them. They’re doing this for their friend, Flynn, for all that it is in many ways a flight of fancy. As Tron follows Alan up the stairs to the roof access, he feels a blossoming hope within himself. This is the start of something new, and he can’t wait to see what this future with Alan and Lora will lead to.

[crowned-ladybug]

Additional context stuff for hopeless, for the lil parenthesis dialogues, mainly who's saying what and a lil bit of why

(If you're seeing this when I'm posting it, I'll only be posting a usual link post later but the fic is There i promise)

Arada: You know that that’s not really what an anagram is though, right? Murderbot: You’re overestimating my willingness to care. Overse: Ooh, you walked right into that one-

This is 100% just good natured, friendly bullying. Murderbot is enjoying itself immensely and so are its friends

Amena: Does that mean you can see in the dark? Murderbot: Define dark. Amena: Like, if I shut you in the closet- Murderbot: I’m not going in the fucking closet. Someone laughs, bright, high pitched. I cannot place it. I should be able to place it.

Also just fun teasing, the laughter is also Amena ofc. Also followed up by some joke about "I don't know how second mum would feel if she knew how much you swear around me"

Ratthi: How are you just fine with this? Murderbot: How are you not? It’s not meant to be rude, maybe. (It genuinely isn't, Murderbot is just like this, it's just asking) A pause. Ratthi: Well, the thing with humans- our inner ears- hold on, let me sit down…

Set sometime during the survey that Network Effect opens on. Getting around on a boat for whatever reason and the water is a bit choppy. Ratthi isn't sea sick but it's more than his balance can handle whereas Murderbot's systems for balancing work completely differently and are much more finely tuned so it's doing fine

Ratthi gets to be distracted by giving a mini lecture on the topic that Murderbot pays a bit more attention to than if another human was giving it

Murderbot: That’s not what it is. Gurathin: Mm-hm. Murderbot: I’m not taking pictures. I’m saving individual frames of my camera inputs. It’s different. Gurathin: And the end result is different how exactly?

Some sort of survey or excursion or whatever, peace times and a pretty view, and Murderbot is taking pictures of said view for keeping and also bc it thinks Mensah would like them maybe. The interaction with Gurathin is genuinely not mean spirited at this point, they just usually communicate by being contrary assholes anyway

Mensah: I thought you liked unrealistic stories. Murderbot: I’m- yeah, but this is just dumb! Mensah: What would make it better then? I can’t tell if that’s bait. I don’t think it is. It’s not her style. ...her? The episode rests paused between us for over two hours. We make up a better story.

Not much about this, Mensah and Murderbot are just watching something together that neither of them have huge emotional stakes in so they get distracted just talking to each other bc it's more fun

Murderbot: And you’re calling me immature. ART: My desire to know how this arc ends is not immature. In fact, my emotional investment is the exact opposite- Murderbot: Do you even hear yourself right now? I start the next episode anyway. The weight over me abruptly stops complaining.

Just your regular "Murderbot and ART arguing over media" stuff, only thing of note is that this is ofc happening over the feed, I just had to keep with quotation marks for the sake of consistency

The actual purpose of these was 100% just vibes but the dead author who is very alive says that while the nightmare itself came entirely from organic brain bits, these flashes came from inorganic long term memory trying to contribute/course correct and completely failing to establish a proper, coherent connection due to the Oh God Everything Is Fucked And Nothing Computes nature of a nightmare

[adultswim2021]

The Venture Bros. #39: “Orb” | August 10, 2008 - 11:30PM | S03E11

A particularly lore-heavy episode that I honestly find pretty overstuffed and difficult to enjoy. It’s basically a prelude to the upcoming two-parter, which is excellent from what I remember. I'm probably going to leave various things out of this write-up because I really don’t think I can replace the customary “listen to the commentary/read the wiki” one ought to be compelled to do after watching a Venture episode.*

*an aside: if you’re viewing the season for the first time alternating episodes and commentary is NOT a good idea, because Doc Hammer gleefully spoils the end of season three in early commentary track.

This one has multiple people embarking on mystery-solving sessions in order to find the mysterious ORB, a silver sphere with decorative etchings. What ORB does or what anyone would want with it is not disclosed in this episode, though people have theories. ORB is said to have been worked on by many great men from history. A long segment of this show is dedicated to the “Gilded Age”, where Dr. Venture and Phantom Limb’s great-great grandfathers are in an elite group of super-scientists. The flashback we watch is the beginning of them splintering off into bad guys and good guys, kickstarting the world Venture currently exists in. These are the roots of the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

This group consists of real-life characters who were kicking around in the late-19th century, like Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley. The most obscure among them is Sandow, a real-life celebrity body-builder turned chocolatier. They possess the ORB and are split on how to deal with it. The flashback is told via gramophone cylinders that were found digging up Brock’s herb garden. Brock’s devotion to yard care has been a runner in the series, and the commentary track for the episode seems to  imply that this was intentional, making this the payoff (it's explained that Brock is as much guarding the patch of land Billy aims to dig up as he is guarding the Venture family). 

This treasure is dug up is because Billy Quizboy has been obsessively looking for coded clues in the old Rusty Venture cartoon show, which we actually see a snippet of. It’s shockingly violent for a 70s kids show, which isn’t really what I envision whenever they talk about this show. They dig up a chest that is addressed to “Venture Bodyguard” which contains instructions for Brock to protect the ORB at all costs. When he realizes the chest seems to be missing a second gramophone cylinder it sends him on a quest to go find it. The following things happen to him during this quest: 

Brock’s car turns on him after he fails to swiftly enter a security code to gain information from its talking onboard computer, requiring him to escape his car as it attempts to kill him while he’s inside. This loose thread results in the post-credits cliff-hanger. 

Brock meets up with Hunter Gathers. I had to look this up to confirm this, but this is their formal re-introduction to one another. Hunter has appeared in flashbacks and hallucinations, but this is the first time they’ve met up since the season two episode where Brock is assigned to kill Hunter, only to discover they’ve undergone a sex-change operation. Hunter is a stripper now, at Brock’s club of choice no less, and Brock admits that he’s spotted Hunter dancing before this meeting. Hunter reveals that Operation Rusty’s Blanket (aka Brock's current body guarding assignment) is a sly abbreviation for ORB, and that his assignment had way more to do with protecting ORB than it is about protecting Dr. Venture and his family.

Brock meets up with Kano, who breaks his vow of silence to give Brock info, as well as produce the second cylinder for him to listen to. The second cylinder makes it clear that he needs to do whatever is necessary to make sure ORB doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, as it seems to tell the story of Sandow killing the 19th century Dr. Venture. Brock might need to kill Rusty to prevent him from harnessing Orb’s power. To prepare himself, he asks Kano if he killed Dr. Jonas Venture Sr. He neither confirms or denies that he did, but he looks away sheepishly. We find out the answer to this question in season seven, which I won’t reveal here. But Kano does indeed know something.

Meanwhile, Venture and Billy go on a quest to find the ORB, and they eventually do. By the time they find it, Brock has found them and is trailing them. He’s ready to kill Dr. Venture and Billy, but he overhears Dr. Venture having a perhaps out-of-character moment of clarity, deciding to keep ORB hidden, divining that there must be an important reason for it’s seclusion. Brock leaves quietly, satisfied that Doc's doing the right thing. When he gets back to the compound, his car is there, waiting for him. It goes to run Brock down. TO BE CONTINUED. 

Pretty solid story on this one, and I am impressed with how tight a lot of it is. It took me a few viewings (and commentary-listenings and wiki-readings) to really grasp all of it. But the fact is ORB is a mysterious macguffin, and was designed to be that way from the start, so when nothing really happens with it at the end of the episode, it’s a bit of a letdown. Orb does weigh into the upcoming two-part finale, though, so not all is lost. The humor takes a backseat on this one, and some of it is fairly tepid. These are the basic problems of season three, though.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Coming Home: Part 3

...

*Akeru investigates the rest of the house until she comes across a set of stairs that lead downwards into the basement. With nowhere else on the floor to investigate, she starts to head down.

Wha...What the...!?

*Upon going down, she is immediately greeted with a horrifying sight. In the center of the room is a bed with messy covers that appear to be stained in blood. Lining the room are several sharp tools and surgical equipment, alongside a bunch of computer parts and technology Akeru doesn’t recognize.

This is bad...this is reminding me of the basement in my birth mother’s mansion...Is everyone else seeing this?

...Guys?

Guys...!? Guys!? Where are you!?

*Akeru begins to panic. She tries talking into the earpiece, but hears nothing in response.

Wh-Where did you all go!? D-Don’t leave me down here!

???: Akeru! Calm down!

Wha-! Who are-!?

Wait...404?

404: Yes, it’s me. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Going down into the basement briefly cut the connection to the earpiece. It’s too dark and musty down there to establish a secure connection.

Wh-What do I do then?

404: Relax, I’ve already sorted it out. I reorganized the connection so that everyone can get a clear-enough view of what you’re seeing and hearing. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to hear them, but trust me when I say everyone’s listening.

I...Ok...I trust you.

But...is this what you wanted me to find? This horrible place?

404: To be honest, I actually hacked into the earpiece and have been watching you the whole time. I see you already encountered poor Lara. It was brave of you to do what you did.

Thanks but...just level with me...Does it get worse?

404: Why don’t you find out? I left a file on the table. After Seishi does one more reconstruction for you, you’ll know the full truth.

...Is it a truth I want to know?

404: Do you want justice?

...

Seishi, begin reconstruction.

C-Ceeeertainly...

*Seishi’s AI, glitching out like mad, begins another extremely buggy reconstruction. The two figures from before, Zen Katagiri and Seishi Yodogawa, appear once again. Zen examines the utensils on the table, while Seishi lies in a bed. Seishi appears to be in a terrible state.

Ah...here it is...

No...No drugs...

...

*Zen doesn’t hesitate to fill Seishi with the sedative he picks up.

How...dare you...

See? That wasn’t hard, was it?

How dare you...

Sssh...go to sleep old friend...

*The brief recording cuts off.

There is a second-second-second-second-second part to this recon-construction. Would you like to view it-it-it?

Something’s really going on with this Alter Ego.

404: Forget him, just say yes!

Ok! Yes! Please!

*The digital reconstruction glitches and shifts. Seishi’s hologram continues to lie in the bed, but this time, barely even moves. The hologram silhouette of Katagiri sits next to him, writing on a clipboard.

*sigh*

...

What’s going on?

*Akeru takes a closer look at Seishi lying on the bed.

...

Wait...is he...!?

“Neural mapping procedure ended at 14:29pm...”

Huh!?

“Subject passed away at 14:31pm...”

!!!???

“That is...a two minute...post-scan...deterioration...Which is a significant improvement...on the early days...”

*Katagiri gets up and starts unplugging the machines hooked up to Seishi’s body and the bed he lies on.

Consider yourself lucky my old friend...

*He writes one last thing on his notepad...

“Subject ready for...Neural Deletion...”

*...and the hologram ends there.

No...It can’t be...! Seishi Yodogawa is-!?

404: I’m afraid so...I’m sorry Akeru but...Seishi Yodogawa has been long gone for years now. He...succumbed to his illness.

But...wait! If Seishi Yodogawa is dead, then...WHO’s the current CEO of LegionTech!?

404: ...I think you and I already know the identity of our true mastermind, don’t you?

...

...Zen Katagiri...! HE’S the one leading the AETHER!

404: And he’s posing as Seishi to do it. That alone is unforgivable, but...

???: Ake...ru...

!!??

*Akeru hears someone call her name and turns around quickly.

...

Seishi...?

...Video...playing...please...playing...

Playing...?

*Seishi’s hologram points to a computer and the switch required to activate it.

Are you...trying to...talk to me?

404: That IS peculiar...It looks like there’s a sliver of conscience left in him after all...

...

404...This hologram...it’s not an Alter Ego, is it?

404: Why don’t you do as he asked and find out?

...

*Akeru goes over to the computer. She activates it, the AI beside her automatically logging her in.

Select Folder...XX/YY/ZZZZ - XX/YY/ZZZZ

Alright...

*Akeru selects the folder and she sees a set of prerecorded videos on the computer screen. 

What is this?

*The video loads and shows a small projector in the room she is currently. Akeru cannot see anyone in the video, but she hears Zen Katagiri’s voice in the background.

Katagiri: I am Zen Katagiri, and this is the first day and first recording of the Neural Deletion process. Subject is one Seishi Yodogawa...

...

*The camera pans to focus on Seishi’s corpse.

Katagiri: Right...activating...now.

*The projector starts to illuminate, and from the ground up, a figure begins to...

...

Huh? Where am...I?

!!??

...

Wha...What is...going on...!?

*The hologramic Yodogawa reaches out, attempting to grab the untensils on the table, only for his hand to phase through.

Katagiri: Excellent...Subjects lucidity appears to be exactly what was registered in the code...the neural map is intact and fully functioning.

Zen! What is-!? WHAT IS THAT!?

...

*The hologram suddenly lays eyes on Seishi’s corpse and begins to panic.

Is that...me!? What did you-!?

Katagiri: Beginning deleting lines of code now.

You...! Oh my god...You son of a bitch, you actually did it!

Katagiri: I’m glad you’re impressed Seishi...See now that you were a fool to have doubts about me...And unfortunately, I must make you pay the price for it.

Zen, please, don’t do this to me...! Please...I should be dead...Let me die in peace!

Katagiri: Day 3 of the process...I spent basically all of yesterday having to delete my old friend’s ability to scream. He tried to attack me, but obviously he’s as a ghost now. I am currently in the process of deleting the motor strip, because I deem in unnecessary.

*Though he cannot be seen, Seishi’s hologram can be heard crying in the background.

Katagiri: I’ve also decided to reserve the limbic code for now. The emotional responses I’m getting are...fascinating. 

Katagiri: Day 6...Moving onto the frontal lobe. Chances are I may end up erasing most of the essential data. After all...my house’s new security system won’t have any need to think for itself.

...

Katagiri: Hm...No rants and raves about me being a psychopath today, huh? Looks like I really did turn you into a working computer.

Zen, please...If you only knew the pain...

Katagiri: Day 10...This should be the last day of the experiment...All I need to do now is delete the limbic code...And...Let’s see. Seishi?

Good morning Zen. What do you require of me?

Katagiri: Turn off the lights, please.

Certainly.

*Seishi’s “AI” turns off the lights.

Katagiri: Good...Now...play some music...You know what I like...

Got it. Playing Michael Bublé’s “Cry Me A River.”

*The song starts playing over the surround sound speakers in each corner of the house.

Katagiri: Hahahaha...Good...Good...This new arrangement will work nicely...

*The video’s end there. Akeru takes a step back from the computer.

...

*inhale*

HRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!!

*SMAAASSHH!*

*In a totally blind rage, Akeru reels back and with a single punch, smashes the computer into oblivion.

I can’t BELIEVE this! I thought my mother was the worst person ever when she was microchipping people, but THIS!? This is clearly NOT! FUCKING! OK!

I can’t believe he...he...DID this to you!

...

Ah...!

*Akeru instinctively runs to hug Seishi, but she goes straight through him.

...

You knew this whole time, didn’t you?

You knew from the moment I entered the house that I wasn’t Zen Katagiri. You let me in so I could see all of this.

Seishi Yodogawa...Relationship Status: Unmarried. Previous relationships include...Shinitani Yozora...

Facial recognition...Confirmed...Akeru Yozora. Daughter of Shinitani Yozora and...Seishi Yodogawa.

So it’s true...

Vocabulary is...limited. My apologies.

Scan-Scan complete...Blood temperature rising. Your current mood appears to be...angry.

Yeah...I’m angry...I knew I would be feeling somewhat angry when we finally met. I couldn’t understand why it was that you abandoned me for that woman for so many years of my life. She told me you had been killed.

But...Now that I’m here, I’m not mad at you. Because I know what you’ve gone through is way WAY worse than anything that happened to me.

You are: 14 years old-old.

Children...should not...pain.

...Adults shouldn’t have to pain either...

And you...you’re in a lot of pain right now, aren’t you?

Eternal...pain...

I figured.

Listen, I don’t want to treat you like a security system anymore, but you NEED to tell me where the guy that did this to you is. I will make sure he receives justice for what he did!

Yes...I need...Your...Help...I don’t want to...Live like this...Zen...is...“Twisted”

“Zen, please...If you only knew the pain...”

...

...I get it. You don’t need to worry about my feelings. 

The truth is...you want me to put you out of your misery like I did Lara, right? You want me to end your suffering.

Yes... “Please...I should be dead...Let me die in peace!”

But...You...

Because I’m your daughter, I shouldn’t be forced to do this? I get it. No girl should be tasked with ending her own father’s life.

But like you said, you should have died a long time ago. And I would rather end your suffering than leave you like this.

404: If you’re really going to do this, you can do it from that maintenance panel on the side of the room. Deactivating security for the entire house will shut Seishi down...permanently.

Alright.

404: You really want to do this?

Of course I don’t! He’s...my dad! I’ve been waiting so long to meet him!

But THIS is SCREWED UP! If I leave him, he’ll be trapped here as a house servant forever! Death is a far more graceful fate!

404: I understand...it’s your call.

...

*404 cuts off and Akeru reaches for the shutdown switch. She holds her hand on it, turning one last time to look back at Seishi.

...

...

I had so many things I wanted to say to you...So many questions I wanted to ask...But right here and now, I only have one thing in my mind...

...Thank you.

...

...DRGH!

*Akeru yanks the switch. The lights in the house immediately go down, and Seishi’s hologram disappears.

...

*She falls to her knees and rests her head against the panel.

Thank you...Daddy...

*WHAM!*

Ah...!?

...!

*Akeru is caught off guard when she suddenly hears a loud noise and quick footsteps coming down the stairs. She turns around to see Komaru standing in the stairway.

Komaru...-!

!!!

*Komaru doesn’t hesitate. She runs at Akeru and yanks her into a tight hug.

It’s ok...Mommy’s got you...It’s over now...

M-Mom...I...*sniff* I...Yeah...It’s over...*sob*

W...WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!

...

*Akeru finally succumbs to the pressure and breaks down, balling in Komaru’s arms. Komaru refuses to let her go, crying with her.

Akeru...I am SO...proud of you...You’ve done so many things kids your age could never handle. 

Ngh...mrgh...*sniff*

I was 5 years older than you when I was thrown into the Demon Hunting Game, and I barely handled that all the way through.

You do not deserve to suffer like this.

???: I wholeheartedly agree.

...!?

...!?

*Komaru and Akeru suddenly hear another live, but familiar voice from the stairway. Someone begins walking down the stairs until they finally stand up straight in front of the mother and daughter.

You’ve done more than enough for the operation Akeru. I think it’s high time us adults took responsibility, right Komaru?

That voice...Agent 404..!?

Hehehe...

In the flesh~

[eptck]

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birdhouse system ( aka guys in my head ) :

> spencer " spency " | he/it | trans guy ( human )

> len | he/him | trans guy ( human ) | blog ( this is specifically a vent blog . if you're gonna be a dick go somewhere else )

> corvid " cor " | they/he/ve | bird guy/angsty teen

> crow | he/hit/hits | like corvid but littler !!! & less gwumpyyy 3:(

> ku | it/its | angel dogthing

> angel | it/its | angel

> beast | it/its | dog

> donkitty " don " | it/he | kitty cat !!! miau !!!!!!

> mary | he/him | mareep little | blog

> jeff | he/she/any | cool beer dyke/deadbeat aunt vibes ( human )

> joe | he/him | jeff's husband ( dyke )/aunt figure

> kirito " kiri " | she/her | trans girl ( human/digitalgirl ) kittygirl | blog

> miku ( yes THAT miku ) | she/her | girlfag digitalgirl kittygirl

> zyga ( nickname ) | it/its | alien ( looks like a zygarde fragment )

> k | she/her/??? | human | dormant/dead source

some tags we use on this blog ( i'm not editing every single thing here 2 b accurate 2 plurality . jst deal w it ) :

- #vetted - any vetted campaigns relating to liberation struggles in palestine , DRC , sudan , etc. go here !!! check this tag if you want to donate !!!!!!!

- #i reblog every bear i see - bears here

- #long reads - this tag is for posts that are long and may take more mental energy to read

- #long reads ( no paragraph breaks ) - not necessarily a long post , but due to formatting , one that may take some time to get through

- #q - queue

- #saving this for later - for saving posts to look back in later when it’s pertinent

- #self-reblog tag - sometimes i reblog from my other blogs . mostly my art blog . reblog my art, cowards

- #i don’t go here - for when i reblog shit from fandoms i’m not a part of . the individual post is funny but don’t expect more content from that fandom

- #fagdyke hours - anything gender fucky , but mostly those posts talking about “i’m a boy who is a girl” and shit like that . also p much anything that uses the word fag

- #gender envy or something - posts that talk about being a cringe failson pathetic meow meow boy or whatever . posts that talk about being a guy but in the most pathetic way possible . i really wonder what sort of image this paints about me . i hope it makes you want to study me for science

- #this bird speaks - my original text posts go here . i dont do those often tho lol

- #disabledposting - me talking about being physically disabled . i don’t currently have a tag for mental disability

- #hope for the future posts - this tag is for posts that make me feel ok about humanity and the state of things . browse through here if you need some hope

- #important - any information that i believe is important to share / for people to know . this tag overlaps with long reads a lot

- #little magics - posts that make me feel good about the world ! shit doesn’t always suck . i suspect this tag will be a lot of nature and animal posts . look through here if you want for your heart to feel full !

- #corvidsstuff - stuff about corvids . funky little men

- #the human condition ( positive ) - stuff that to me seems fundamentally human . stuff that aliens would view as a hallmark of the species . only the positive stuff tho bc sometimes i like being happy

- #the human condition - same as above but not necessarily positive . not necessarily negative either tho !

- #kill maim bite - grrrrrrr baf baf * bitse you * ( fleshcore / meatcore )

- #blasphemous jokes - jokes about christianity / christian views that defy god

- #serotonin video - good vibes only . will probably mostly be cats tbh

- #My Mechanical Girlfriend - computer4computer . computer sex

- #BEASTLY - sometimes being trans is about killing yourself to the eyes of god and the people who said they loved you and being a monster and being a fallen angel and being evil and being so so so so holy

- #batty !!! - goth shit !!! prob mostly gonna b outfits & moody vibes

- i do my best to tag potential triggers but i forget sometimes / don’t realize someone would b triggered by it, so please lmk if i missed something !

this is an ongoing list which will be updated in future , and most of these tags are relatively new , so many of my older posts will not be tagged according to this list . also i forget to tag things sometimes , so not everything i post will be tagged appropriately

also if anyone knows how to do the thing people do where they underline text n it links to the tag or whatever pls lmk i’m confuse