#see doing this on tumblr is fun because i get to RAMBLE and also throw pictures in better

[shivasdarknight]

what was your WoL’s love interest’s first impression of them?  What about the second time they met?  How long was it between their meeting and their first date?  First kiss?

THIS IS GENUINELY SO FUNNY WHEN YOU LOOK AT THEN VS NOW BUT LIKE

Ooohh god I’m just going to break it down by partner in chronological order of meeting them, and hitting every point with each person.

Which means first up is:

Estinien

Surkukteni is a canon dragoon, so she and Estinien met first.  And genuinely the funniest out of these, because he didn’t think much of her and the absolute most was she was obnoxious.  There is an 8 year age difference between them - 24 vs 32 in ARR - and it’s a 30yo guy dealing with a plucky, obnoxious and power hungry 20-something.  But it wasn’t just that it was a 20-something, Surkukteni’s canon has two potential candidates for that title: Lillith, as well!  It was really unsure who would get the eye, so the two worked together and he just saw them as sort of a joint headache.

But the more it became clear that the Eye chose Surkukteni, the more it forced them to deal with each other.  A few times during the timeline of DRG30-50, Surkukteni actually tried to reach out to him a few times because despite having her own allies in the other eventual Warriors of Light, she’s without many connections and really wayward.  Her allies are Eorzeans, she’s Othardian. So even if it was yet another Eorzean, she still wanted to at least try to make that connection - especially because if she could make it a good one, she’d at least have someone powerful in Ishgard that wouldn’t go after her the way the See went after the Orl.  He’s one of the first people she even tells about her auri nature, as this was when she was running around in that hyuran glamour of hers.  And I have a fic about that exact exchange!  But basically, it was just the start of a slow building friendship and rivalry that took a while to figure out the back and forth with.

So with that in mind, the timespan between first meeting and first date (technically) was almost five years.  None of this happened until Post-Shadowbringers.  Part of that is because they had a major falling out in Heavensward because of how he is during that, and they didn’t reconcile until the DRG70 quests in Stormblood, but at that point they were already in a friends-with-benefits arrangement!  They didn’t start properly seeing each other until literally right before the Seat of Sacrifice.  First kiss was during Stormblood, so two-three years, something like that.  And that was a drunk kiss while traveling together which....also happened to be their first time because fucking oops.  That’s a draft I’m working on, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

But I need you to understand that since DRG50, Estinien has had major feelings for Surkukteni.  The whole fucking time.  So even though it took them until Stormblood to get touchy-feely, and Post-Shadowbringers to get feelsy - he had it bad the whole time.  And he was in major denial over it because this was the first time he’d had strong feelings for a woman as he’s really masc-leaning and had only ever been interested in men prior to that.  Traveling together helped nothing, and he just wound up completely head over heels and a fucking mess.  Yet, he refused to say anything unless she said something first due to the severe trauma she has around this kind of thing.  So, he resolved himself to stay quiet until she confessed in 5.3.

Ysayle

This one’s also funny because they started off as enemies.  Truly, a wonderful enemies-to-lovers outcome.  It’s the canon stuff of course, but Ysayle was always kind of intrigued by the Warriors of Light - Surkukteni, especially.  Part of this is because Ysayle knew about the tragedy of the Orl tribe and wondered why a Xaela would willingly ally herself not only with the Eorzean Alliance, but the See as well?  And so far as to become an Azure Dragoon?  It was curious to say the least, but it did leave her extremely interested - especially after the confrontation at Akh Afah.  But she’d be lying if she denied the fact that her interest came from the fact that Surkukteni was and still remains a very vocal supporter of the Eorzean tribes and frequently took matters into her own hands when it concerned the fair treatment of the many peoples of Aldenard, and were it not for her affiliation with Ishgard, Ysayle got the (correct) idea that the two would be aligned ideologically and was interested in swaying her to her side.

And that actually happens.  Not just in this heretic AU I have (lmfao i love that one), but once the two re-meet during Heavensward!  The more the two talked, the closer they got - and more and more of Ysayle’s suspicions were correct, but she also found herself quickly falling for Surkukteni.  They were history buffs and deeply invested in what was right - a strong morality even in spite of forces that’d try to stop them.  Ysayle found herself falling for Surkukteni - her voice, her mannerisms, her convictions - and was really hoping to convince her to abandon her plight with the Alliance and Ishgard to work with her.

And then 3.0 happened.

It wasn’t until the end of 5.3 that the two were reunited, feelings left unspoken.  For Ysayle, it was a perilous recovery process.  For Surkukteni, it was four years of grieving and heartache.  And wouldn’t you know it, I wrote about this reunion :)  Their first kiss technically happens in a dream during Shadowbringers, but their first in person kiss is right after that reunion scene in Mor Dhona - which is outlined in that fic.  And immediately after is technically their first date - Surkukteni showing Ysayle around Kugane - which is another draft I’m working on.  The two were inevitably going to be together though, because they’re literally soulmates who are destined to run into each other one way or another and fall for each other - yet they’re the first cycle in many years to break the trend of tragedy they were immersed in, and just barely.

Aymeric

I genuinely think he’s the most normal out of the bunch, and that alone is very funny to me considering the circumstances.  When the two first met, this was during Post-ARR and post “Surkukteni discarding the hyuran glamour now that no one could touch her”.  He’d heard about her from Estinien and obvious word about the defacto leader of the Warriors of Light, but to meet her during political talks was surprising, to say the least.  He could see the cockiness and pridefulness Estinien had described, yet he didn’t expect her to be intimidatingly quiet - that is, until the matter of the tribes came up and she immediately interrupted Alphinaud to assert her position on the matter.  Needless to say, Aymeric was extremely intrigued and excited to see what would come of this.  Working with her felt like an inevitability - as a Warrior of Light, and Azure Dragoon - but the true circumstances would eventually morph.

Their meetings were mostly professional at first, but he soon discovered that she was the one to take up the mantle of the new Dark Knight.  But he also knew that if he played his hand too soon, she’d get skittish and stop trusting him.  So began the long game of a back and forth through vague, cryptic letters to ascertain a working relationship where Surkukteni would act as a hitman for him - dealing with problematic Temple Knights that had time and time again evaded punishment for their awful behavior despite his repeated orders to have something done with them thanks to meddling down the chain of command.  ...And transphobes.  She killed a lot of transphobes for him.

I’d say their “second meeting” is not so much literal second, but when he properly invites her to his house to discuss the job in more frank detail in person.  And now that she was honest with herself - and importantly, alone - it gave him a better idea of who she was and that just was all the more enticing and exciting.  Not necessarily enticing in a sexual way, just the prospect of working with someone such as her and getting to know her as layer after layer of nonsense decorum was peeled off and he got to see her for herself.  The dry wit, the sarcasm, an intelligence she kept reined in from too many folks belittling her.  It was definitely a newfound respect that was earned, and the absolute beginnings of feelings he’d develop later.

Their first kiss would happen soon after he confessed, but it wasn’t really a nice one.  Him confessing right after his attempted assassination and Ysayle’s seeming death set Surkukteni into a panic attack - as she was convinced she was cursed to have bad things happen to those she cared about.  To be with Aymeric, she felt, was to sentence him to a fate similar to Ysayle’s.  While she did show that she reciprocated his feelings - hence the kiss - it was more begging him to give her time to think on it and sort through her issues.  She didn’t want to be with him considering how fucked up she was, and wanted time to work on herself before committing to anything.  And to his credit, Aymeric was very graceful in letting her have the time that she needed.  The two still met up to talk and do stuff together - that undercurrent of mutual feelings coloring everything - and....well, maybe stuff happens, but it’s not until 5.4 that they actually get together.  And that also ropes in him and Estinien, so that’s fun.  She’s definitely ripped him out of the office countless times before they were together as sort-of dates, but it was nothing super official as they didn’t want to risk hurting her again and reopening that trauma.

Venat

And this one’s funny because it’s totally backwards in the XIV game timeline.  So Surkukteni meeting Venat for the first time isn’t the first time Venat’s met Surkukteni.  So let’s just start with Elpis.

Beyond the fact it’s just Elpis, there were many things that struck Venat about Surkukteni upon meeting her - most notably, how much Surkukteni was like her then-partner, Charon.  There was that fire, there was that passion - yet it tempered less in the sardonic fashion like Charon, and more tempered from repeated hurt.  Even through all the turmoil that was clearly held within her, Venat still found it fascinating that Surkukteni kept going.  More fascinating to find out that Surkukteni was Charon, just them reincarnated.

And then, everything.  Venat - as Hydaelyn - watched for thousands of years as Charon’s soul (and Khione’s, by the way - her other lover) reincarnated over, and over, and over again - each time meeting worse and worse fates.  The tipping point, truly, was Allag when they were known as Ammut, and Khione was known as Macchi.  To watch those two suffer at the hands of the Empire, executed so cruelly by Ammut’s brother, Amon (worse: Charon and Hermes were siblings), it spurred Venat to do something the next time around.  She kept the souls of them both with her for 3,000 years until the anger that fueled them finally died down, letting them reincarnate into Surkukteni and Ysayle.  And it was then that it struck Venat that things would only grow worse - as this was the woman she’d met all those years ago, who carried such terrible burdens and grief.  And even though Charon’s soul was split in twain - into Surkukteni and Katsuro - Venat would still do what she could to protect them and Khione.  Thus, Surkukteni and Ysayle had her traveler’s sigil placed upon them in an attempt to keep the both of them safe (Katsuro got his by accident, as he and Surkukteni are Literally two halves of the same person).

It’s only until after Endwalker while Venat is slowly recovering from everything - as her soul was fucked nearly beyond repair, placed into an auracite, and had a body built around it by the Great Work alchemists - that the two actually pursue anything.  There is a lot of reconciling the fact that Surkukteni is not Charon - as much as Venat misses them - but among the first things they do is something Surkukteni promised her during their fight: to personally show her around the world she fought so hard to protect.  That gap between 6.0 and 6.1 is mostly that, as they’re both recovering from 6.0 and need a break.  And it’s during this that things begin to build between Surkukteni and Venat - and Ysayle! - and they establish a relationship based on the present and not who they were formerly.  First kiss?  6.2.  Venat went to see the group off as they headed to the Void and gave Surkukteni a conjured scythe for her to use while in there (as this is the start of her shift to RPR).  Completely taken aback and unsure how to thank her with words, Surkukteni surprises everyone - including Venat - by grabbing her and kissing her deeply.  Estinien and Y’shtola don’t let her live that down.

[ween-kitchens]

can't remember if I ever posted this to tumblr so have a silly little snippet from an au me and stiff came up with!

the premise is that every hermit is some kind of hybrid, but is worried about sharing this fact because they all think they're the only hybrid on hermitcraft. empires on the other hand immediately clocks them all as hybrids and assumes the fact they’re hiding it is some kind of lore

jimmy can’t help grinning as scar tries to get him to ‘accept himself’ for the fifth time this afternoon. man, these hermitcraft people are fantastic at sticking to the bit—jimmy knows he would have cracked up way before now if it was him.

“you gotta accept it as part of you!” scar is practically begging him as jimmy leads him to the tavern. “you’ll never get anywhere if you’re left hating something like that about you, tim!”

jimmy turns to look at him. he keeps throwing his hat in the air and catching it again—that’s allay behaviour if he’s ever seen it.

“scar,” jimmy says, dropping the ‘oh no i’m so tormented’ act for a moment. “you do know i’m not actually a toy, don’t you?”

scar blinks at him. “you- no, you are. aren’t you?”

“no!” jimmy laughs at the look on scar’s face. “i’m a cow, scar, have you seen me?”

“wait- but what’s all that about then!” scar exclaims, gesturing in the direction of stratos. “with the ‘little toy man’ and- and the revealing potion!”

“oh that’s just for fun!” jimmy grins. “none of it’s true: the ‘revealing potion’ just makes you short, and joel knows i’m not a toy.”

“gosh, you empires people are odd.” scar says. “why do something that’s not true?”

“well, first of all, it’s funny.” jimmy says. “and second of all, it makes for a cool story! you being human isn’t real, but it-“

“not human?” scar interrupts, looking nervous all of a sudden. “i don’t- I have no clue what you mean! ‘not human’,” scar laughs to himself, unconvincingly offhand. “ah, you never fail to amuse me, jimmy.”

jimmy blinks at him. “is that- do you guys-“ 

and something clicks. the shiftiness of tango, the wide-eyed gazes at their hybrid features that all the hermitcraftians had enacted, almost like-

almost like they didn’t know they were all hybrids.

jimmy suppresses a laugh. wow, okay. now that’s a story.

“scar, I know you’re an allay.” jimmy says. “or a vex? somewhere in between?”

“somewhere in between.” scar clarifies. “how- how did you know?”

“I hate to tell you, but you’re not very subtle about it.” jimmy grins. oh gosh, he’s going to have to tell everyone when he has the time. no wonder all the hermits looked so surprised to see them.

“not subt- how am I not subtle?” scar asks. “I do everything humans do!”

“you’re counting your fellow hermits as humans?” jimmy asks.

“well of course.” scar says. ah, that’s where he’s gone wrong, jimmy thinks. “sure, we’re all a little weird over there, but i’m the only hybrid. and no one has noticed yet, so i think i’m doing quite well actually.”

“must be ‘cause i’m used to hybrids then.” jimmy settles on, because whilst he doesn’t want to reveal the secrets of.. pretty much everyone except the guy in the doom outfit, he also really wants to see how this plays out.

“oh yes.” scar agrees quickly. “must be that.”

“now, I do believe I was showing you the saloon!” jimmy says, putting on his silly accent for the last word, and scar seems to register that he’s back in character.

“yeah, the saloon!” scar exclaims, ever the enthusiast.

as scar starts to ramble about how he doesn’t think you can be classified as a cowboy unless you have your own saloon (which jimmy agrees with wholeheartedly), jimmy smiles to himself as he anticipates the reactions of his server-mates when he breaks the news. 

.. and also he might be smiling at the way scar’s face lights up as he speaks. but that’s a matter for another time.

[doppel-doodles]

It's doodling time fellas

I wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge so I decided to draw the ocs of a few people here on tumblr, with the added challenge of doing it fast-

Minimal erasing and redoing, basically whatever is slapped on the page first sticks whether I like it or not. And there is a little time limit on how much I can spent on each character so that I don't get distracted as easily.

Just a little exercise so that hopefully it'll get easier for me to throw down a sketch using few lines and not taking literal hours-w-" I know everyone has their own pace but I would like to be a faster artist.

Anyway my yapping aside and without further delay: The girlies💚💗💜❤

Now to who these lovely gals belong to:

Haiyang: @riptide-pools

Nawa: @auburnitzy

Suki: @peachy-puddin-cup

An he: @lumidotexe

For anyone interested I'll include some thoughts on each of these below the cut:>

Haiyang

The first one I did and I think it shows>~> I was basically more focused on just figuring out how I wanted to do this so I spent less time and energy on how I wanted the character to look in my style. In the end I settled on doing the basic shapes in pencil and then switching to colored fine liners for details.

With the colors also matches the way I draw digitally just a tiny bit more! Buuuut if I end up doing this again I definitely wanna redraw her, I wanna do this gorgeous character justice after all!/'w'/

Suki

Suuuuukiiii! I did draw her before so I decided to do this version, which I believe to be just her shadow form! While drawing I didn't actually give myself time to look it up cause ya know, no distractions which is why there is a question mark-

But my stupidity aside- here is where I started drawing a lot faster, I was in the zone if you will, so I spent what time I had left adding some variation to the line art. I do like this one and honestly she would probably be so much fun to render digitally so I'll see if I can if there is time:>

Nawa

NOW THIS IS WHERE THE FUN REALLY BEGAN-

Nawa just was such a blast honestly, probably because I was getting really comfortable at this point and let myself play around more with how I stylise the characters! I love me some funky eyes, its probably the most recognisable part of my style.

Also granted I don't know much on Nawa yet(fake fan I'm sorry-/j) I only recently followed the creator so I need to find time to just really browse through their blog and consume all the knowledge there is, but once I do I'll be unstoppable!>:D

An He

Last but certainly not least we finish with An He, who was a just a chill and nice lil drawing perfect to round out this doodle session-w- now I have actually read ERHS(shameless plug, read it it's so good- just need to find my attention span as I haven't caught up with it SOBS) so I have more knowledge on her.

For that reason I attempted to do a slimmer face shape, i wanted her built overall to read as visibly more thin and petite. Along side that I went for rings in her eyes as an allusion to sound waves as I didnt just wanna drop in a music note and call it a day.

however maybe I'll experiment more another time because I just dont think it reads that well:'<

That concludes my silly ramblings! Thanks for sticking around and if any of the creators of these lovely ladies see this- YOU HAVE AMAZING CHARACTERS AND I HOPE I DID THEM JUSTICE!- ahem.

If I do this again I'll definitely go for some male ocs as well for the sake of variety, it was a happy accident that I only drew girls here.

[nadianova]

How much time do you spend planning some of your visual novels? At least going by some of them being jam submissions, it feels like you go from pre-production to a finished build very quickly, and it's amazing how you can manage that while still having an awesome story and so many assets.

Also, what is like, the process of planning a story out for you, if there's any vague or concrete similarities that you've noticed?

i think the important context here is that if i get bored/have nothing to do i jhust immediately get really suicidal its like ridiculous how bad it gets(ITS FINE DONT WORRY ABOUT IT IVE HAD 5 YEARS OF THERAPY). so i hate being bored and want to occupy my time wit something fun whatever that is. if i have a project to focus on but especially if I'm working for a game jam i have a deadline and i just decide to myself okay i will release a game now.

because ive made a decent amount of games i roughly have an idea on my capabilities, i can estimate how long it takes for me to write a story so and so long and how long it takes for me to draw stuff i need and how long it takes for me to throw stuff in renpy. these are estimates like as in I'm not accurate with it but still enough that i generally know where to start cutting ideas since the most important part is just having something to submit. i also know to plan around my brain wanting to slam my head into a wall an my hands suddenly giving up on being able to draw.

i think thats the beauty of game jams it forces you to just go for it and release something. releasing a 'bad' game is better than no game at all. experience only comes over time and i think just going for it is the best approach there is. like its literally 2 weeks 1 month whatever of your life. if you have the time and motivation go for it. make it work or fuck it up it wont matter in the grand scheme of things

im not sure what is the motivation behind the question but i do want to point out that this is just my method (if you can even call it a method) and the only way to figure out what works for you is to just try until you find something that actually works for you

idk not everyone will find it doable/fun to plan around spending two weeks gamedev 10 hours a day just cause i wanted to fit in 100 cgs for a jam game but apparently i can do that when i cheat my stupid adhd brain into hyperfocus with adhd meds

READMORE BECAUSE I CANT STOP RAMBLING

as for planning tho i think ideas on their own are worthless and its always about execution in the end. a great idea or a meh idea are the same for me but i do still enjoy the planning process so i keep notes

like i see a great tumblr post or i see some art or visual novel has some scene that inspires me: i save that shit for myself

having a big collection of random floating ideas like that helps me easily pick from especially during a jam type duration. right now i have like 4-5 half-baked project skeletons, some are literally like 3 pictures and some like naomida are a hundred hours worth of me writing world building about how the toilets work in a city with no plumbing cause its -30celcius(i love bringing this up)=

i dont normally plan that much, i tend to just wing it. like for malmaid i seriously just had some rough ideas and just went along as i wrote

same thing for dddeviance i had a handful of scenes that i really wanted to make and knew what kind of start and end it was meant to have and just figured out how to fill the in between. a lot of plot points changed vastly like halfway through i realised my devil + angel combination was stupid and i should just go for fallen angel + angel.

i think there really is no simple answer tho (as evident from the long as hell post) i don't really have a 'process' because every single game has been worked on has come with different type of planning since I'm always trying new stuff to try and distract me from boredom. like I've been using obsidian for naomida while previously I've just used a empty discord serve as my notes app for malmaid and dddeviance

and tbh with naomida I'm running to a new problem where I'm definitely planning too much. like I'm spending too much time fidgeting with details in chapter 4 even when i haven't finished writing chapter 1 just cause its so easy to get in the loop of "oh ill just change this one line" and boom 20 mins spent playing with my notes that didn't really progress my game since by the time i reach this point the whole scene might have shifted to something else

.

but if i had to squeeze an answer itd be something like everything related to my art or writing or games is just like "oooooo that seems fun i should remember this for later" and then i just string 10-100 of those into a story

i tend to write my stories in a format of

character A does this and that

this happens here

puppy play ryona piss orgasm

new day and then this happens here

sad thing happens

more piss orgasm

the end

and just like start filling in more details and working on my story in a nonlinear fashion until i feel like i have a strong enough skeleton that i can start writing my scenes. i hop around a lot, often preferring to write the fun scenes first like ero stuff or the ones I'm the most interested in and then the rest is just filling the blanks and stringing the cool scenes together

[loveteruko]

my predictions (bingo?) for drdt, chapter 2 culprit and also everything beyond, because i'm hyped, and why not!!

the original version of this post was too long and i was yapping. it felt like i was saying everything there is to say, but also nothing of real importance, so i decided to throw everything here, without all my overcomplicated rambling (some stayed though), and hope for the best that this will satisfy the fixated monster in me that needs to get my thoughts out there. also it will be fun to see in the future what was right or wrong.

so, for all of these predictions, please assume that my reasoning is either:

theorists made such well put together points that i checked the evidence on my own while also overanalysing the heck out of it and now i'm convinced

there's not much concrete proof but i think it would make narrative sense, or it would be a great direction for some character's development from what we've already seen of them

i don't even know but sometimes we just vibe and sometimes things are real in our hearts

funny thing is that i find drdt so interesting with how it handles its themes, how it foreshadows, establishes, and resolves, that i'm not actually certain about any of these. my mind wants to analyse it like it's a standard danganronpa game, like it's easy to predict smaller plot points because of the obvious bigger picture, but the special thing about drdt is that i have no idea what the whole bigger picture really is. all i know is that we're focused on trust and distrust, and we will surely follow that path, but i actually have no idea what else is in store. and i'm rambling again but bear with me. point is: i like the writing for drdt and i know i'm not prepared for whatever will be happening later down the line.

so now, for my small predictions bingo:

as most of the community on tumblr thinks, eden and levi are culprit and possible accomplice. that's the part i'm almost sure of, one of them is getting executed. i, however, am not sure who played which role. i'd like to think levi is the one who came up with most of the plan to help eden win the trial, and he's the one with the secret of killing before the killing game (which arei got), but i can't tell why exactly eden would kill arei. eden is not secretly evil. logically there should be some trick here, or it was an accident, but the eden thing to do would be to immediately admit she did it. unless that's where levi comes into play, and he's the one who pulled even more strings, not only setting up the crime scene, but also getting eden to play along. which makes me think eden would still be the one qualified as the blackened, then levi gets to blame himself and gets sick development or whatever. and maybe he lives to try to kill or at least beat the shit out of ace but ace will not die. let's say i'm going with that. eden is the culprit

whit has some special role. he's either the mastermind, or traitor, or key to ending the game, or whatever you want to call it. there's something off about whit with how he seems to know too much

rose sleeps a lot so i think there must be a point in time where someone uses that to accuse or even frame her for murder. although i don't think she will ever get killed when sleeping. i think she's going to be a survivor

ace won't be a victim, and he doesn't seem like a culprit either, so by process of elimination he needs to survive the game

david is not evil or malicious at heart, it's his depression talking. we're dealing with someone burnt out from keeping up his optimistic persona. all this act is self-sabotage and self-deprecation. he cared for arei and now he's spiraling. he will get better though, trust

i know i already talked about chapter 2 culprit but quick hu mention: she is not the culprit simply because i have no idea what her character really is yet. all i know is she is morally grey and she will not die yet because she needs to interact with nico, david, and others some more

arturo is not going to make friends with anyone other than maybe veronica, because everyone hates him, BUT he will not die that soon. i can feel him surviving at least one more chapter just out of spite. if he dies, it's not earlier than chapter four

j will not kill and she will not survive to the end. she will be a victim. my guess is chapter 3, for no particular reason.

contrary to the two points above, there's an alternate scenario i have in mind, with arturo dying next chapter and j being accused, but still innocent. and she would still become a victim later in the game, probably chapter four

veronica is too much of a wild card but if i were to predict something regarding her role... IF she was a blackened (and i can't tell if she will be), she wouldn't be all that happy or excited about it. there would be some reflection on her part. some subtle commentary on how enjoyment of darker media doesn't, or shouldn't, equal supporting or resorting to real violence. also basically everyone in the fandom agrees her secret is the one about harming herself just to feel something. this ties to what i said, i think. maybe she would kill to test herself, but taking a life will not bring her contentment

teruko will trust less before she learns to trust more (especially if eden really will die), but if there's someone she will learn to trust first, it's going to be charles. if she gets a "pep talk" about trust, it's somehow going to be from david. one asshole to another type of conversation where he's trying to help because he does genuinely care for his classmates

nico will not try to kill anyone again, but they also won't survive

this is probably all, i don't know because i wrote this at night and fell asleep. if anyone other than me stayed to read this, thank you for coming to my ted talk

[smaller-comfort]

So how do you imagine snail love darts and necrontyr working/combining? Cause I am interested~

Aksjdhsk ahahaha oh god okay here we go

(Tumblr crashed on me three times while I tried to write this, but I will not let that stop me from rambling at length about snail sex, speculative xenobiology, and various ways that necrontyr get to be fucked up little guys.)

Okay. Some assumptions/general thoughts: necrontyr do not have "dual-use" reproductive/waste elimination systems (inferred from Trazyn's hilarious disgust at the idea, but honestly it would be entirely believable for him to have completely lost any and all memories of necrontyr biology). Most higher order animals do (they're efficient!), but you start to see ones that don't when you get down to bugs and marine creatures, so that's what kicked off this train of thought.

I'm assuming also there is relatively little sexual dimorphism among necrontyr (not for any particular reason, although my understanding is that actual female necrons are a relatively new thing in wh40k lore, so that fits). And finally, everyone constantly dying of turbo cancer has led to a 'throw everything but the kitchen sink at it' evolutionary approach to reproductive strategies.

Okay, now snails: they use the darts during courtship to deliver hormones that increase the likelihood of fertilizing their partner's eggs; after the several-hours-long mating dance, they'll exchange spermatophores. (Fun fact, the penis, copulatory canal, and dart sac are all located inside the genital pore, on the snail's head. Mating dances can involve a lot of biting.) Snails have bad aim, but it's not uncommon for both snails to end up getting stabbed during courtship.

"Copulatory canal" is a deeply unsexy phrase, btw. So are most words we use when talking about sex, unfortunately. *sigh*

Anyway. While many necrontyr do only have one set of functional reproductive organs by the time they reach adulthood (either because the other set was always vestigial or because it gets removed to reduce the spread of cancer), both sets are usually present in some fashion. Sterility would be fairly common, but medical technology is able to mitigate some of that; the lower classes, at least, need to be able to breed like rabbits to feed the war machine. Gender is mostly divorced from reproductive role by the time biotransference happens; in addition to male and female, there would have been at least one other normative gender, possibly two (to account for both null and multimodal genders). Gender fluidity would have been common and largely unremarkable for necrontyr. (It's still largely unremarkable for necrons, but it's not particularly common; they're mostly fixed with whatever gender they had at biotransference.)

Okay, so, love darts. Pretty much only ever used by nobles/the military, because in the upper classes of society, sex isn't about reproduction, it's about reinforcing social hierarchies. And necrontyr social hierarchies tend to be inherently about violence in one way or another. Sexual dominance is generally more about who gets stabbed with the dart than it is about which penis is going where. (That's still a factor, but it's secondary, since genital configurations/functionality can be a bit of a wildcard.) Snails take an egalitarian approach to sex; necrontyr categorically do not. Both parties consenting to be darted would be considered weird and perverted.

Kind of going off ancient greek/roman sexual mores here; it would be entirely unthinkable, for example, for Obyron to be the penetrative partner in either sense with Zahndrekh. (Then again, Zahndrekh is a shameless pervert.) Sex between two social equals is generally accompanied by an agreement- sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit- about not using the darts. Doing so would be an overt act of aggression. Often, to prevent any potential misunderstandings, they'll voluntarily empty their dart sacs ahead of time.

Forcing someone to empty their dart sac prior to sex is a pretty common form of sexual humiliation. When done voluntarily, it's a sign of submission or respect. (Darts usually have a refractory period of a few days, depending on the person's overall health. Single-chambered dart sacs are typical, but multiples aren't unheard of. Leads to occasional 'surprise! You thought I was submitting to you but now you're getting fucked instead' situations.)

The dart sac would be located in their mouths, under the tongue; it's meant to be ejected into the soft tissue of the mouth, but it's sharp enough to pierce the skin anywhere. (This does mean kissing can be Complicated, or at least somewhat subversive, depending on everyone's social standing.) Normally it gets broken down and absorbed by the recipient's body; pulling one out tends to be extremely uncomfortable/painful.

The exact cocktail of hormones and neurochemicals it injects the other person with would vary somewhat between individuals, but can potentially vary widely between dynasties or social classes due to genetic/geographic/cultural differences. Some might include a mild paralytic agent; some sort of euphoric effect is also common. (This is all in addition to the original function, which, uh. Is to make the recipient more likely to get pregnant.) The shape of the dart varies in a similar fashion, ranging from a straight, smooth bone spike to something more elaborate with barbs or fluting.

(A bloody mouth can signify a lot of things to necrontyr- in addition to violence or illness, it's also inherently erotic. Necrons who remember this try very, very hard not to think about it when confronted with Flayed Ones.)

(Yenekh: *very sexily smearing his mouth with blood and draping himself all over Oltyx*

Oltyx: *oblivious, can't stop thinking about how pretty Yenekh is*

The rest of the flayed ones: *still not sure why their king and his consort haven't fucked nasty in a pile of carrion yet. Maybe they need a bigger pile of carrion? Yes, that's probably it. They will take care of this for their beloved king.*)

Crypteks have their own social hierarchies within their conclaves, but they're usually not as concerned with sexual politics as nobles and the military tend to be. Most people believe that crypteks all lace their love darts with poison, and the crypteks don't try to discourage that assumption. Some of them probably do, tbh.

Necrons, of course, don't have genitalia, but they can still stab each other with love dart analogues- this ranges from things like executive buffer override packages sent via interstitial channel, to actually physically jamming a spike of necrodermis into a neural input node. (From a purely aesthetic/romantic standpoint I also like the idea of love darts constructed out of crystallized core flux. The first time Zahndrekh does that to Obyron he goes into complete cascade failure and takes several hours to reboot.)

If Orikan and Trazyn did have sex pre-biotransference, one of them would have darted the other without permission (probably accidentally, being that they are both intensely nerdy losers and thus Bad At Sex by necrontyr standards), setting off a sixty-five million year hate-sex feud that neither of them can even remember the origin of. Orikan would've gone after Trazyn's mouth with a pair of pliers at some point; joke's on him, Trazyn's into that.

(Trazyn does have a collection of necrontyr love darts in the archives- all of them ones he collected personally when he was alive. He has no absolutely no memory of slutting it up back in the day, though, and probably doesn't even realize what they are. Sannet, unfortunately, does remember, and wishes he didn't. He has had to put up with so, so much over the years.)

[farmerbebop]

The sun was shining too bright for me to be worrying about my deadline so I guess I'll use this rare occasion to make a pinned post.

When I started blorbo posting it was simply because "If even I, who knows next to nothing about British and American TV series, can see that Patrick McGoohan was criminally underrated, then maybe this blog has a reason to exist."

The only thing I ever learned about blorbo posting is from the Columbo fandom. They have fun, and they love their blorbo. As the kids say: Love and peace on planet earth.

But McGoohan is a challenge and will never stop being one. His public image, both in front and behind of the camera, isn't that of someone who would be pleased with blorbo posting. I don't know how other blorbo bloggers feel, but I just wish I can hold a conversation with my blorbo that doesn't bore him to death or anger him to the point of throwing me out of the room.

Judging someone who talked about his nervous breakdown like it was just a cold isn't something I like to do, especially online. So if I have to talk about McGoohan, I always get quite nervous. I can only say that I regret we didn't get to know him as much as we would like to and I really wish he was still here with us.

I know many of the decisions he made, he made it for future generations. It's my privilege to say that my blorbo's gift to the three-year-old running this blog has been her greatest pride as a blorbo blogger. And her hardest and most honourable task is not to mess it up.

I actually didn't create this blog to please McGoohan (the ladies can testify to that, lol). And I think I make fun of him more than I should. But I hope he knows that life as a blorbo blogger isn't easy when your blorbo is Patrick McGoohan and maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't be too hard on me.

And just in case anyone is wondering what the hell I'm doing on here, here's a short guide to my blog.

my stupid vid My McGoohan fancams are what I personally consider the funniest part of my blog. But they can be somewhat serious too, I think.

my lousy photoshopping This can mean just about anything. McGoohan as The Little Prince. McGoohan in Ingmar Bergman's films. Anything that I made with photoshop. So I have some more tags to categorize it.

mcgoohan at the museum What I love to do the most in photoshop is putting McGoohan into paintings. I don't know why. Maybe because it easily hides my lousy photoshopping skills. Or maybe because my blorbo is as beautiful as a painting.

mcgoohan album covers What can I say? “But you don't really care for music, do you?”

mcgoohan fashion Let's be honest, don't you love a beautiful blorbo?

mcgoohan posters I sometimes try not to misinterpret McGoohan's works, I don't know if I succeed though.

no context mcgoohan Mostly just McGoohan sitting or standing somewhere. But I love it nonetheless.

mcgoohan for kids and mcgoohan anime Well, it's exactly what you would expect it to be.

mcgoohan arthouse One day I'll retire from blorbo posting and go back to watching arthouse films.

mcgoohan stickers They are not as cute as cat or bunny stickers, but they stick all right.

the prisoner redux or anything redux means my lousy photoshopping for that particular series/movie. But when there are so many McGoohans in one post I get tired of tagging and I just give up.

I think that's enough of my lousy photoshopping.

wild mcgoohan in his natural habitat McGoohan as God intended him. Trying to not give away too much information in interviews.

mcgoohan lore McGoohan in someone else's words, including his daughter's. Needless to say, my words should not be trusted. You'll know them when you see them.

my gif McGoohan gifs, mostly for losing tumblr polls. Also for making this blog popular with the ladies on here.

village poetry If there's one thing that McGoohan might like about this blog, this is probably it.

village soundcloud Blorbos and song lyrics go hand in hand - Tumblr proverb.

mcgoogoo and me Just me rambling about my McGoohan dreams and my hard life as a blorbo blogger.

my lousy shitposting It has something to do with McGoohan I'm afraid. But it's fun.

I know this blog has become quite predictable and it's filled with half of my life's story. But if McGoohan was really who I think he was, that would be the least of his problems with my blog.

And finally, my hiatus is a running joke that I'm getting worse at, I hope.

[cosmicdream222]

have you entered the void before?

I'm asking cause I've seen you post about it a bunch times with different methods to enter

Also, thank you for introducing me to the phase method! I'm using it and another method (one I created) to enter

Hey! Glad to hear the Phase has been helpful for you! Happy to answer your question, but it’s a bit more complicated than a yes/no answer and I’m feeling rambly today so you’re gonna get a whole backstory on how this blog came to be 😂

Backstory about me & this blog

I’d been in the personal development manifestation community since around 2016, and it was my life for a long time. But the kind of manifesting these people taught was basically like… wake up at 5am, work out, journal, meditate, shadow work, tarot cards, affirmations, cold showers, start a business, post no less than 10 times a day across your 5+ social media channels, and maybe if you hustle hard enough and cleared enough past life karma and Mercury isn’t retrograde, then the universe might grant your wishes... (if you don’t die of exhaustion first. 😅)

It really was a mess and realize now despite the facade of positive thinking and good vibes, the whole community really just keeps themselves identifying with lack & victim mentality so the coaches at the top profit off everyone else’s misery.

I believed in manifesting and had faith I would achieve my goals, but despite years of trying a million different things, only saw small or short-term successes and never seemed to get anywhere. I was feeling pretty burnt out and miserable, so summer 2023 I decided to stop trying so hard and just spend some time focused on myself and what I wanted. I went back to the two methods that I’ve always loved and had success with: affirmations and tapping.

I tapped every day and started making affirmation art and lockscreen wallpaper for fun. I posted the affirmations on Pinterest, which eventually lead me to finding affirmations pinned from tumblr. I think it was a screenshot from blushydior I saw at first, but her blog was deactivated by then. So I started stumbling around tumblr (around Aug-Sept 2023 at this point), where I eventually came across loa, the void, and shifting.

I was surprised because despite my extreme research into all things personal development & spiritual, I’d never heard of it. Although I’d read about quantum physics and more supernatural things, every coach/teacher had major limits. “Manifesting” only meant getting logical earth things like making 6 figures in your business through hard work and hustle so you can afford to travel and buy luxury cars & Chanel bags. Stuff like changing the past, waking up with all your desires, etc was absolutely impossible and not even talked about except “you can’t change the past”.

So having only heard about these incredible overnight life-changing manifestations from tumblr, I was skeptical and wanted more information. I basically started this blog to collect information from outside tumblr to prove it to myself and share with others. Which of course sent me down a rabbit hole of research and overconsumption and overcomplicating the void 😅

I did get kinda obsessed and throw myself into trying every shifting & void method I saw right away, which just left me frustrated with “failed” attempts. But I see now I was just repeating the same victim mentality from the old community - that everything had to be hard and a struggle, that I was a victim of circumstance and limited by a higher power. (This is also a really commonly held limiting belief in religion and society in general that affects many people.)

It took me more than a few months to realize, but I’m finally switching my default programming to that of a creator instead of a victim. Because I don’t want to be obsessed and put the void on a pedestal, I’m currently just working on my self concept that I am in control of my reality and can manifest whatever I want - with or without the void. I still do want to experience it of course, just want to make sure I’m going at it with a healthy mindset.

However!

About a week or two ago I read someone’s void success story that triggered a memory from many years ago: I realized I actually did wake up in the void and manifested something, long before I even knew what manifesting or the void was 😭 Because I’d always believed in supernatural things, I thought I had a “psychic dream” but now I know it was the void! (If anyone wants storytime I can make another post with more detail).

And since at the time, I entered without even knowing about the void’s existence, I realize we here or tumblr really do overcomplicate it. Like the video I posted where the void is described as the midway point between wake and sleep - it really is that simple!

I’ve noticed now that whenever I wake up naturally (not getting woken up by an alarm, outside noise, or cat jumping on me) I do always seem to wake up in the void. It’s the same kind of experience, and I don’t hear anything, but my first natural instinct when I wake up is to wonder where the sounds of my environment are. So I end up tuning in to my room and snapping out of the void.

I guess I just have to train myself to make my first thought an affirmation for my desires instead of just wondering where the sounds are 😅 But regardless, now I know it’s absolutely real and possible for me, I know it’s only a matter of time until I figure it out!

[togament]

Hi Bibi, i just want to say you’re doing amazing and your post are literally ADDICTING. I was a little worried because I didn’t know if Wind Breaker would get a lot of attention on Tumblr yk? (Just because it’s new) AND YOU CAME AND SAVED ME. I love you, your brain, and your page. Please keep going and I WOULD LOVE to hear your thoughts on new episodes/chapters (only if you want). Thank you for feeding my delulu brain. Hugs 🫂

OH YOU SWEETHEART COME HERE YOU!!!! 🫂 I’M NOT CRYING I SWEAR.

thank you for the kind words dhdjkd i don’t know if i’m worthy of such praise too like—everyone leaving cute (and unhinged ofc) stuff in the tags and in my inbox gets me all giddy and blushy and!!!!!! Seeing you guys enjoying my stupid ramblings means the absolute world to me (i see you guys in the tags and i read every single one. Love you you freaks 😏) fun fact, I only started writing fics on this account and only for windbreaker so all the interactions and thirsty feedback I get genuinely, genuinely makes my heart do the boom boom. So smooches to every one of you!!!!!! (only if you want them. you could exchange it for a headpat if you want ig)

ok enough of the sappy stuff. WINDBREAKER TIME!

windbreaker blowing up on tumblr is so so so well deserved. i was genuinely shocked because it took a little bit for the hype to catch on???? the seiyuus are literal legends (in my eyes hehe), the animation’s SO FUCKING GOOD LIKE HELLO!??, the op and ending song aren’t ass??????? I’m super excited for what’s to come for our fandom and the anime. ALSO fun fact, I have the fattest crush on Umehara Yuichiro so him voicing Togame literally brought me to my god damn knees, bro. I’m expecting Eguchi Takuya to secure a character too bc ofjfkdkd his voice would be perfect for a villain.

also may or may not have picked windbreaker up bc I saw a character named Kiryu and an eyepatched character and I 😮👈😮👈 YAKUZA REFERENCE!!!!! (probably not but the coincidence is silly to me)

I’m not super caught up on the anime (on episode 7 atm!) I wanna savor every episode and binge them back to back (also bc my hubby’s got so much screentime I wanna savor that him EVEN MORE YUM YUM YUMMY). Caught up on the manga though and I Have Thoughts.

(spoilers under the cut)

the endo fight’s scaring me, man. also super fucking worried about ume bc WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIM FOR SO LONG??? the chair throw spooked me. also worried about ume’s vegetable garden. I know it’s getting trampled to shit. also very worried about sakura. he’s getting all banged up by endo, his nose is probably broken now wtf he was bleeding SO MUCH.

chika’s scary too. both him and endo. i honestly don’t know what’s gonna happen next like, they’re both so unpredictable and unhinged that my butthole’s clenching in sheer terror.

I’m also very concerned about suo. WHY HAVE WE NOT SEEN HIM EATING (or maybe I’ve missed a panel lol) but with every food offer he’s ever been given, he turns them down. also the fact that we only know him on a surface’s surface level even when he’s one of the main boys is scaring me. we’re 140+ chapters deep and not one single suo morsel for us to nibble on. I don’t want a betrayal thing happening ok lol that would be my tipping point i fear.

OKAY I WAS RAMBLING TOO MUCH AHDHSHAHHA

if you guys want me to yap about a chapter or an episode or potential seiyuus for other characters or if you just want my thoughts on things (i am a Certified Yapper), i am directing you to the askbox! This was super fun!! Extremely forgetful too so this could help me remember all the stuff that’s happened so far.

thank you so much again for sending over an askkskfnnxnx heaven knows i needed a little pick me up today. you delivered and made my entire day, sweetheart!!!!! Ily!!!!!!! 🥹

[leonenjoyer69]

hey do you know abt the drama magicalmo is causing rn abt u?

I'm sorry for u, stay strong! Internet drama is a total bitch tbh don't let it get to you.

Yes, sadly despite having him blocked I'm quite aware. I've mainly just been ignoring him hoping that he'd get burnt out on his little hate crusade but the accusations he keeps pushing are genuinely fucking sick and disgusting.

Reminder to never pity him guys! Made that mistake myself, let him on my server as a second chance thing because I knew he was so widely hated, and guess who made everyone on there wildly uncomfortable and got himself banned after exploding at two of the members? Not to mention the fact that he had a mole on my server after getting banned to get that "damning evidence", so fun times guys.

That NSFW channel he keeps yapping about has been long gone, and nothing worse than that spoilered smut concept (you know, the one screenshot he keeps sharing, where the worst word is bloody "arousal"), on the optional channel, was ever shared. Truly it was my mistake, I had felt horrible making that category in the first place, but some of the other members requested it, so. I suppose I also made the mistake of seeing a public discord server as something akin to Tumblr, since literally everyone on there followed me on here anyways, and I know damn well have seen and shared worse things on here. But, alas, apparently discord is a different breed, and that I now know.

And the rest of his yapping? Fucking disgusting. The fact that he keeps implying that I have or would do such vile things is literally sickening, and I know every single person on that server would come to my defense because I've done fucking nothing wrong. The genuine defamation is literally crazy. All I wanted was a community and friends, and that's what I have- great friends, who are supportive and kind, and friends is all they are.

Okay, ranting over, thank you for your kind words :3 it does mean a lot to know that so many people are supporting me and defending me. Honestly, i am slightly glad it's me taking the hits over some of the other folks he's had stupid beef with in the past, none of my friends deserve to be dragged into stupid fake drama, and based on their reactions to all of this, apparently I take it far more calmly than them lmao.

I just don't want issues man, just wanna share my silly stories and characters and have people enjoy and talk about them to me. And thankfully I do still have that, I just have one persistent little hater throwing rocks at me from the corner, which is ironic when you compare what he's done to the genuine mistake I did, but hey, an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind, Ill be the better person.

Apologies for dragging my blog down with this, but rest assured more art and rambles will bring it back up soon, thank you again for the ask and you're kind words :3

[one-squash-one-end]

once again rambling about Adam Parrish

Hi! This still belongs to my big Raven Cycle analysis, click here for the masterpost.

For most of the characters I obviously read a lot into subtext and speculate about how they're absolutely not straight, but lucky for us, we do get canon queer characters!

So let this be me talking about Adam as bi representation and also throwing in (other people's) gender headcanons. As always, please tell me your thoughts in the notes <3

c) Adam Parrish

Sadly, I cannot speculate too much about Adam’s sexuality, as he is canonically the mean, witchy (and bitchy) bisexual.

There isn’t much I can say, really. Throughout the book series he displays interest in both Blue and Ronan. And also Greenmantle, but I would like all of us to ignore that because I want to believe Adam has good taste. Blue and Ronan as his love interests are essentially seen as equal. While I would say he had already had some repressed attraction for Ronan (see: him calling the swearing melodic, black-painted poetry- you normally wouldn’t feel like that for someone who just called you a motherfucker) in book one while dating Blue. Yet it becomes very much clear that he did have romantic feelings for Blue. Yes, the two of them were doomed from the start (but still pretty cute I’d say! Until things went to shit, that is), however, Blue is not treated by the narrative as some mistake before Adam figures out he’s actually gay (looking at you judgingly here, Rainbow Rowell). Neither was Ronan a quick, silly thing to see how it would feel to kiss the same gender. That is, like, very much very obvious, through the last five books. They are boyfriends, your honor.

At this point I would also like to give a shout-out to Adam Parrish and the Crying Club (which would make for a fire band name, just saying). This little group of queer people Adam collects at uni (in Call Down The Hawk) has my whole heart and I so wish we would have seen more of them, I am forever mourning their potential of silly, reoccurring side characters. What I’m trying to say though is this: The fact that Adam builds a group of queer people around himself (another one apart from the Gangsey) proves his sexuality even more, because we all know queer people flock towards each other.

Either way, canon bisexual, we love that. Moving on.

Honorary mention to the transmasc Adam headcanon that Tumblr user @barbaricpoetic compiles especially well in a post. I personally do not follow that headcanon, like of course I do not think Blue is supposed to be written as genderfluid in the books, but somehow I believe even less in trans Adam, but either way I do agree there is a lot of strong source material to support that headcanon. Check out the original post for a lot more detail, I don’t want to plagiarize all of that here either way, but here’s two especially solid hints: First of all, he does everything to appear more masculine, like working in typically male-dominated fields and dressing accordingly to that, while orientating his behavior on Ronan and Gansey, who, ironically, do not try as hard as him. Secondly, there’s physical descriptions, Adam being a lot more “elegant” and delicate than the other (Raven) boys Blue knows, with unusual features, and “blue eyes pretty enough for a girl”. Yeah, might be a coincidence, might be solid, queer truth.

This would all make so much sense, even within the books and all, there is just one, considerably big thing, that would not add up with this in canon. Adam’s rural-conservative shitbag of a father would never use the correct name and pronouns for his ftm child.

Either way, there might still be something fun going on with his gender that defies the binaries. Why do I think so? Well, Gansey says a very interesting thing. “Henry was a boy. Adam was a─ Gansey didn’t know.” I wish he would have told us what makes them different. What is it that Adam was? A man? A demiboy? A nonbinary person? A dinosaur in disguise? Please do enlighten us, Gansey. I’m assuming it’s got something to do with Adam being more mature than Henry (he definitely is), but like with Blue and the 300 Fox Way Women, it might be a gender thing, at least you can very easily lay it out to be that way.

To conclude as I will conclude every character part, I think Adam might possibly wear a crop top (might take him a while to accept masculinity is everything you want it to be and not just a certain aesthetic standard though), but absolutely not regularly and not around strangers or his parents.

[kanerallels]

📓Which of this year’s theme/s are you most drawn to?

🖍️Which of this year's theme/s do you find most challenging/least likely to try and incorporate?

📖 If you’ve previously participated, have you ever been disappointed by which team you’ve ended up on?

📚 If you’ve previously participated, have you ever been excited by which team you’ve ended up on?

📘 If you’ve written multiple stories (finished or not) for the challenges, which is your favourite?

📙 If you’ve written multiple stories (finished or not) for the challenges, which is your least favourite?

💾 Have you read any of the challenge stories that have really stuck with you? (Any stories you still think about/go back and read)

💛 Have you made any friends through reading someone’s story? (In/related through the challenge)

📓: Which of this year's theme/s are you most drawn to? Hmm I'd say counsel the doubtful is up there, but also forgive all injuries. I am a sucker for forgiveness as a theme, because it's so hecking important

🖍️: Which of this year's theme/s do you find most challenging/least likely to try and incorporate? Probably pray for the living and the dead? But also admonish the sinner. That said, I'd love to see how some people write those!

📖: If you’ve previously participated, have you ever been disappointed by which team you’ve ended up on? I've only participated one time before, and while I was initially a little sad that I didn't get Chesterton, I got excited about being on team Lewis really quickly lol!

📚: If you’ve previously participated, have you ever been excited by which team you’ve ended up on? I won't lie. The dorky side of me got very excited to see that some Tumblr people that I thought were really cool were also on team Lewis last year lol. So yes!

📘: If you’ve written multiple stories (finished or not) for the challenges, which is your favourite? Thankfully, I've only ever written one story, so I can't answer this! Because it would be really hard (but I do love The Waystation a lot)

📙: If you’ve written multiple stories (finished or not) for the challenges, which is your least favourite? See above! For now anyway lol

💾: Have you read any of the challenge stories that have really stuck with you? (Any stories you still think about/go back and read) As I said in the other ask, yes LOADS of them. "The Last Immortal of Evitra" by @taleweaver-ramblings was a super good one! It had my favorite trope of all time. Found family my BELOVED. Also, because I don't know if I'll get this ask again and I love talking about the Inklings stories, I'll throw out one more: "The Silver Stars" by @confetti-cat was just. So hecking good. Absolutely amazing story, I should reread it again

💛: Have you made any friends through reading someone’s story? (In/related through the challenge) edit: whoops got so excited about talking about the stories that I forgot this last one. Truthfully, I don't know? I feel like the answer might be yes but I always get so hecking nervous about if someone considers themself my friend or not and if I'm calling them a friend and they don't think I'm a friend, that kind of thing. So I don't really know. I do know that I had a lot of fun reading and commenting on people's stories, and got some very nice replies!

[masquayla-the-splendid]

(Not) small ramble.

This is why I love Tumblr, I can make text posts that aren’t on Twitter.

This whole situation with the Talbert files and the Pinkypills thing made me realize how immature the fnaf fandom has become. Like I thought I felt something change by the time Security Breach came out, but it became glaringly obvious when the Scott Doxx happened a while ago.

As soon as that happened, people were more quick to be angry at Scott's decisions that should not be public in the first place, than at the person who leaked that info "for the lolz." Like okay I understand if you're concerned where your money's going after knowing that, but then that should be the case for all transactions ever.

Then, the "in regards to whether the books are canon or not, yes." And then people got mad at him for not answering directly, or it just went over their heads and now they think the books are canon. Like guys, he's a troll, that's how he always is.

And in 2023, we had all the Fanverse drama, and people getting way too heated over different theories.

The Movie hate I have a theory for.

If you were in the fandom around 2015/2016, you might remember how often fnaf got generalized 'for kids' online, or that a large portion of the fandom were kids, so therefore it was cringe. (This is at cringe culture's peak btw.) Years later, the "fnaf vhs horror" videos introduced a more mature portrayal than the source material. I don't have tiktok, but I imagine clips of these got reposted like crazy. This lead to fans that left a while ago and 'cringe haters' to be like "oOOh what did I miss?👀" They are now in a state of "SEE, FNAF ISNT FOR KIDS, SEE?? SEE???" Cringe denial. Then, when the movie came out, they had their expectations ramped up for a gore fest in a similar style, but failed to realize Fnaf was always campy with little to no gore. This is why the table fort scene is "so controversial." Then, some other people who liked the movie, just not that scene, were coping with, "THEYRE JUST KIDS" or "THEY TRYING TO TRICK ABBY INTO TRUSTING HER." The former is more believable, but you can easily just chalk it up to, "They're entertainer robots. They're built to have fun. The murdery is the twist."

Then VR2 happened, which like a bottle of soda pop, went flat really fast. We were still doing things in VR1 longer when that came out.

And now we're at our second drought. The first one was in 2017 before fnaf 6. And again, people are throwing a fit about Scott "defending" pinkypills, and not at the person pretending to be Scott. It's not as bad as the first time, but it's notable. Which by the way, the way he handles these types of situations is very serious and mature from any other content creator. However, I feel like he just doesn't know where to draw the "okay what in tarnation??" line, because he fired the other artist for doing the same things.

Overall, the fandom has become really whiney about every little thing recently. I think it's because from 2014-2016, we were very centered with fan-creativity, and now, since there is too much content to digest at once for newcomers, we have become very centered with theories and lil blues clues. It also doesn't help that there isn't any new content to dwell on, so we're all stuck with eachother.

Twice in Dawkos interview, Scott says something along the lines of no matter the lore, all he cares about is that is characters are enjoyed.

[cozylittleartblog]

Oop, hello there! ^^ I remember you from DA, still think your art is so cool!! Still fond of the vintage characters and the world of Tessa n' Val! I'm currently testing the waters on Tumblr lol, hoping to get around a different vibe for documenting my projects n' chatting about stuff I like, and wanted to ask: as someone who's been on Tumblr for a while, what are your main tips for a starting artist in the platform? Wish ya a great day! Stay artful n' creative :]

HI!!!! i remember you too, i always get really excited when artists i like come here. tumblr is the only website i really use for myself and not just to post art, so it means i get to follow them and interact with their art 🥺 i ditched deviantart for everything that isn't posting art and bitching about the website via status updates lmfao, the new inbox and watched deviants tabs are so... out of the way and counter intuitive. hate it there.

anyway, I've written a general tumblr how-to post because there's been so many exoduses (exodi??) from other platforms over the last few years, but I don't think I've ever written one for artists? or at least I can't find it if I did. so here are some hot tips 😎👉👉

NUMBER ONE BIGGEST RULE: if you're an artist and you want to actively gain a following and curate your art, please have a separate art blog where you post exclusively or near exclusively art. it's ok to reblog a post here or there, but tumblr is a website About curating and having specific blogs! it's not that people don't want to see or hear about the artist behind the work, but they don't want 43289 unrelated memes and posts for fandoms they're not in 😅 admittedly i have skipped following some good artists here because their reblogs completely drown out their art and clog my dashboard. people really like curated blogs, almost every artist has a separate art blog 'round these parts. (it's completely fine to post WIPs and text posts discussing your art too, some people would like to see your process!)

speaking of curating: tags are your best friend! tumblr tracks the first 20 tags I believe, so use the first 20 tags to add your important search terms. this is where you put anything you'd want to turn up in the search. really you probably wont have more than 10 of these tags. after that you are welcome to ramble in the tags or use organizational tags for your specific blog.

not sure how to tag? search up what terms you'd use to try to find your own post if you were someone else, and see what tags popular posts in that tag used. you should ALWAYS use the #art and #artists on tumblr tags, as well as any relevant common trigger/content warning tags :D here's how i do it:

FOR FANDOM POSTS: where applicable, I tag Fandom, Fandom Acronym, Featured Characters, Featured Ships, and sometimes #[fandom] fanart and/or #[fandom acronym] fanart. FOR ORIGINAL POSTS: you can tag your art medium (digital art, traditional art, sculpting, etc), the general aesthetic or themes, time periods, and if it features your OCs you can use #oc and their names so if people want to see all your OC content they can find it. admittedly i mostly post fanart so i am very spontaneous with the tags i use on my original art posts lol

4. shorter captions seem to be preferred by the masses, I personally either dump my extra comments in the tags of the original post or I'll put them under a cut. unless it's extremely relevant to the post, like explaining ideas or headcanons

5. have all your handy links in your bio! you can use basic HTML coding to insert links with text and put in line breaks. you should have links to other socials (or something like a carrd that links them for you) and your support streams, like shops and tip jars and patreons. and ofc a little about you and what people can expect to see you draw!

6. have your inbox open! you don't have to take requests, but sometimes someone will throw a brilliant idea at you that you may Coincidentally be inclined to draw. it's also just fun to interact with people who like what you do! sweet comments go a long way

7. last one i can think of - do a seIf-reblog at some point in the day. people live in different timezones and not everybody finishes their dashboard. personally I schedule posts for 12 pm cst and then one seIf-reblog at 8 pm cst. it's also okay to reblog your older artworks for new followers to see, especially if you haven't posted in a while. TV airs re-runs and so can you B)

hope some of it helps!

[douglysium]

Episode 5 TMP Quick Thoughts

Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(​What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 4. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (TMP Quick Thoughts 4).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

Episode 5 “Personal Screening”

If you ask me, the statement in this episode is almost definitely Eye aligned and it’s one of the most Eye flavored statements I’ve seen in a while. But let’s try to slow down and walk through some bits of the episode. Like always it may be an act of hubris to view TMP through the lens of Smirke’s 14 (and potentially The Extinction if I feel it comes to it) but even if I’m wrong I still find this to be fun and the parallels interesting.

Like always, we are hearing the story of TMP from the perspective of something / someone listening in via device and the transcripts clarify that this time we are listening through a landline.

Sam enters Lena’s office to express his worry about Colin’s paranoia and says “Well, today I found him crawling along the corridor, yanking out wires and muttering to himself.” and points out that Colin has “added all those locks to his office door and he refuses to even go near a camera now…” I feel like this mirrors TMA in how we see a coworker becoming worried about another coworker's increasing paranoia. And, similar to Jon, Colin’s paranoia in part seems to be coming from the feeling that he is being watched or monitored by something. I maintain that if the Entities are present then the O.I.A.R. is at least partially connected to the Eye and we see Colin is even becoming afraid of being seen by cameras and the like.

I think it’s also interesting that Lena says this “Right. Well firstly, thank you for raising this with me Sam. It’s important we don’t keep secrets here.” which feels a lot like some ominous foreshadowing we don’t yet understand. The Eye is all about having no privacy and exposing secrets and Colin seems to indeed be keeping some sort of secret. Not only that, but considering what Gwen saw last episode Lena is also keeping at least one secret.

There actually seem to be a lot of parallels or allusions to TMA structurally or thematically. Many of the statements sure but also the roles certain characters play. Sam is too curious for his own good like Jon and may be here to look into a previous encounter with the supernatural, some have pointed out that Alice and Tim both seem to cope with jokes, and Lena is a shady boss like Elias / Jonah. Just to be clear I’m not saying these are 1-to-1 or are meant to be alternate versions of each other or something. Rather that either The Eye tends to attract certain people, that this is meant to be a reference (Sort of like how how Part 7 and onwards in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have many direct references and parallels to other characters even though they aren’t always the exact same person / personality or one-to-one), or we are going to end up with some extrapolation, divergence, and / or commentaries on these similarities (either directly or indirectly).

However, long story short, Lena dismisses these claims and basically tells Sam not to worry, schedule a meeting next time, and mind his own business before we cut to one of the computers Sam and / or Alice work at to catch the rest of the story. Alice mentions “Ah. Yeah, Lena isn’t exactly known for her diplomacy.” which points to the idea that Lena probably isn’t the nicest person, or at the very least doesn’t sugarcoat things. Sam finds that Alice left some papers on his desk and she explains “I had a nosey while you were in Lena’s office. Looks like it’s for your Response Department one to one.” One thing I mention a lot about The Eye is that it tends to attract people who are very curious and / or want to know things, such as “Nosy Rosie,” Jonah, Jon, etc.. This scene shows us that Alice might be more curious or nosy than she lets on in some aspects. Of course, in typical Alice fashion when Sam expresses worry about the paper and the Response Department she tells him to basically just ignore it and throw it away but Sam decides to fill start filling it out anyway.

I wonder if this is similar to the magically binding contract from TMA and if Sam just accidentally tied himself to something. Alice does also say “Just chuck it. I told you, I’m pretty sure the Response Department doesn't even exist anymore. It's just the system spitting out dead paperwork. Happens all the time.” so we can’t even be sure that this is coming from the Response Department. In fact the paperwork coming from the Response Department could be The Eye or some other Entity and / or supernatural occurrence. We also continue to have Sam’s curiosity hammered into us when he says “And I’m going to fill it in any way. See what happens.” Sam notes that the paperwork asks strange questions when he says “Uh huh… They want my last seven addresses. I don’t know if I’ve even had-” This could point to the idea of the paper wanting a suspicious amount of information since it not only wants to know where you currently live but the last seven places someone has lived.

(Probably rather luckily) Sam gets interrupted by a statement as Alice manages to convince him to stop as CHESTER gives us our statement for the episode.

This statement is about Tom and the blog he is running. On it he reviews horror movies and even says “Hey all you sick freaks out there, Tom here, your gruesome guide to the most twisted horror films of the world wide web!” He also says “I can’t believe this blog’s still up. Was looking for somewhere slightly less confrontational than social media to post my film thoughts, and I remembered starting this back in, what, 2009?” As I’ve mentioned before The Eye is the fear of being perceived and known which also involves the fear of being judged for things. To put it even more broadly, The Eye seems to be about the fear of knowledge in general. Not just the fear that someone / something might know too much about you (or a specific secret) or is just gathering information by watching you but also the fear that you yourself might know too much or have seen something you wish you hadn’t. In MAG 200 we are told in what order the Powers emerged and what led to their birth and for The Eye we are told it came from the fear of one’s eyes “showing them too much.” In essence, that they saw something they didn’t want to. A more direct example of this is Jonah being able to force information into the minds of other people like Martin and Melanie. Jonah mentions that this information has to be true and it points to the idea of forcing someone to know something against their will.

We also get “That first post... Fourteen years old and convinced I was the edgiest writer on the web. Might keep it up for posterity, god knows the kid went through enough” which implies a rough childhood. Considering what happens with the movie I would also like to point out that tying into The Eye’s whole “seeing too much” thing is the idea of being forced to remember or relive certain things you don’t want to. The most obvious form this took in TMA was the statements (as they were people recounting what happened to them) but Jon could also force people to give statements (forcing them to recall things against their will) and when Jon takes live statements both Jonah and Daisy point out that when this is done the victim will be forced to relive said statement every night via a dream in which Jon is watching. Sometimes, if there’s a monster involved, the victim sees things from the perspective of the monster (forcing them to watch their own suffering in a way).

Tom explains “I remember I was pretty lonely in those days. Ever since I was a child, making friends has always been kind of a struggle. My interests have always been seen as a little strange... While other kids my age at the time were looking up to football players and other celebrities, I was looking up to Pinhead and Freddy Krueger... It wasn’t in a psychopath kind of way or anything, I’ve just always been fascinated by horror. I can thank my dad for that, he showed me Puppet Master when I was six. ‘oh don’t worry, buddy! It’s just like Toy Story”... He had kind of a dark sense of humour like that.” before continuing to describe how he was really into horror and continues to have a fixation on it. This also implies that it’s possible the young Tom wasn’t always aware of what he was about to see and was tricked or lied to about what it was. Which could tie into the idea of seeing something you didn’t want to if we assume that this poor kid was expecting Toy Story only to get a scary movie. Funnily enough, someone judging and critiquing films on something like a blog could draw a connection to The Eye via the idea of judgment and the like.

Strangely, the next 3 reviews have been deleted. I wonder if they reminded Tom of something or if he just wanted to forget about it? But that would be kind of weird since he still leaves up the announcement that make mention of the terrifying film he watches later, “Voyeur.” It might also be a much weirder reasoning like someone or something wanting people to find this movie and / or post and making sure the post is preserved for a statement. It’s pretty clear Tom has at least some of the trademark Eye curiosity when it comes to horror movies since he seems to put in a lot of effort into finding this specific horror movie in order to watch it despite searches mostly just revealing what is presumably porn. However, in his search he comes across one thing- “The only thing I could find was another old blog with what must have been the shortest film review I have ever read. You can check the link, but I’ll save you some time: all it says is “Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The Scariest movie I have ever seen”.”

Of course, if you’ve gotten this far you can probably guess what I’m probably going to say. This is so obviously The Eye or some similar overlapping Entity trying to bait curious people into seeing something they will probably regret. In TMA Gertrude did mention that The Eye is also the drive to know and understand even if what you find might hurt you and we can see this in action. The drive to know and understand even if this movie could mentally scar you. Unfortunately, Tom doesn’t realize he’s in a horror podcast and this just makes him want to see it even more.

In the next blog post Tom mentions “Oh my God. I can’t believe one of you found it! Thank you SO MUCH Cinephobia12220 for the link!” Based on a quick google search I don’t think “cinephobia” is a real word (and if it is it’s super obscure). However, I can take a wild guess at what the username “cinephobia” means by looking at the root words involved. Cinephile basically means “movie lover” and phobia has to do with fear, so we can assume that the term cinephobia would probably mean something like “fear of movies”, “movie fear”, “phobia of movies”, etc. 

After doing a bit more digging I found the term “cinephobia” which according to a wikipedia page means “The fear or hatred of films and the cinema.” Whether or not you want to see this as credible is up to you and I’m proud of the logic I used originally so I’m keeping the previous paragraph since it was at least in the ballpark. Either way, this username is foreshadowing since their name literally means “fear / hatred of movies” (ie the fear of a media you would watch).

Tom manages to find a link and a contest that only asks for his name and he somehow wins said contest despite noting that the site hasn’t been updated in years. At this point it’s clear that all the blog posts not relating or leading up to the “Voyeur” have been deleted. What does voyeur even mean? According to google voyeur is defined as “a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity”... okaayyyyyy wait there’s a second definition “a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others.” Okay, I’m going to assume the second definition is what’s applicable here since this ties very heavily into The Eye and the idea of a sort of sadism or someone watching you suffer. Of course, this can also tie into statements as people like Jon gain power and strength from literally hearing about and or watching people suffer. So the movie’s title is yet more foreshadowing. The title might also have a double meaning since depending on why someone likes horror and to what extent you could describe them as a “voyeur” in the sense that they like seeing people suffer in movies. Tom is so desperate for horror he might be somewhat close to a voyeur in this sense but maybe I’m reading too much into that.

When Tom wins the contest he explains “I WON THE CONTEST! I can’t believe it! The invitation was waiting when I got home today, in a small black envelope. I don’t even remember giving them my address. The website must have logged my IP and looked it up or something... I’m really not sure how any of that works.” This is another red flag because The Eye is known to randomly give or find information it otherwise shouldn’t know. We see people like Jon had the ability to know things that they shouldn’t and Jonah was borderline omniscient and could know almost anything he actively put his mind towards.

The cinema “Voyeur” is being filmed at is a theater that Tom actually went to when he was a kid. “And I’ve actually been to this cinema before... I used to go all the time with my dad... they would play classic horror films midday every Saturday.” Considering that Tom probably had a rough childhood this could be The Eye setting up a situation where Tom is forced to remember his past (I mean besides watching the movie of course) and I wonder if this is the theater where his dad tricked him into watching a horror movie. We know that the movie seems to actually be about Tom himself and it’s being played in a place he remembers as a child. Also, Tom mentioning how he wants to give his thoughts on this movie could be likened to a statement and someone giving their accounts about various horrific encounters.

Tom of course is apparently live blogging the event and I think that usually The Eye wouldn’t have it any other way. The more people can witness the horrors another person is facing in real time the “better.” The outside of the theater seems like it’s in a sorry state but the inside is beautiful and clean. Tom asks about this while buying food from an employee and we get “I asked about the mess outside, trying not to be rude about it, but he just said “It’s what on the inside that matters”.” This could be foreshadowing to the idea that the movie is about Tom himself. So the “inside” that matters would be Tom’s own memory and / or experiences. Also, this employee is noted to be old and probably doing all the jobs around this theater. He is at least the one running the concession stand, and usher along with the other stuff. But Tom says that the man is in high spirits which makes me wonder if we’ll see him as a recurring character in TMP’s statements and / or in person (sort of like Simon Fairchild and the like).

Then the movie starts and based on Tom’s reaction he clearly recognizes what's being shown “ I can hear what sounds like... beeping. It sounds so familiar but I can’t quite place it. Medical equipment maybe? There’s something [UNINTELLIGIBLE] the screen... Looks like it might be a flashback or something, handheld… looks like it was filmed on an old camcorder... Wait. Is that...? I know that room…. How... How did they get [UNINTELLIGIBLE] This was after the accident. Mum wanted to to film it for my brothers... Dad... I... [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Wait. Who is that? In the corner of the screen, there’s... WHO THE HELL IS THAT?” and the final thing we hear from the blog is 

BLOG POST: FILM REVIEW: VOYEUR 

Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The scariest movie I have ever seen.

It seems like what happened is the movie was a video Tom’s mom had taken of a tragic even but there was something that shouldn’t have been there. This wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened with The Eye. In TMA MAG 193 (A Stern Look) we get an account from the original Elias that details how a friend named Allan Schrieber died from presumably reading some sort of book. Upon reading it Allan started to mentally break down and sob while saying things like “It has no eyes”, “so it has to feel its way towards me. But it knows. It knows!” before eventually dying with his eyes mysteriously missing. A lot of people immediately assume this means The Dark was at play but there are statements where someone / something aligned with The Beholding seems to be missing eyes or taking The Eyes of others. Sometimes the idea is that it’s scary that something can somehow still know where you are or see you and sometimes this is the whole “seeing too much thing.” It’s also mentioned “But he remembers so clearly what he was thinking as he looked at the what was left of Allan Schrieber: where are his eyes? What did they do with his eyes?” 

If you want a clearer example of seeing something you shouldn't, there's the hand mirror that appears in MAG 060 (Observer Effect). Upon looking into this mirror Rosa Meyers notices a dark figure in the night that only has its eyes visible and she feels like she is being watched / stalked even after dropping the mirror and breaking the glass. So The Eye definitely plays around with the idea of seeing something, noticing a figure that shouldn’t be there, and then things follow you before something happens. It wouldn’t completely surprise me if Tom was even replaced or had his mind and / or body taken over somehow (something that has a precedent with people like Jonah) which could explain why his review is eerily similar to the original one. Maybe the old man is body hopping like Jonah? That might explain the old man’s excitement and maybe the old man is in fact “Cinephobia12220.” Hmmm, such an assertion about body hopping with so little information is a bit of a stretch though since the man could just be happy to have a victim and it would be an oddly specific ability for some random new character (merely one iff background or otherwise) to have.

Obviously, Tom also expresses surprise at this theater having the footage and wonders how they could’ve gotten it which ties into The Eye and someone getting information they shouldn’t. Being forced to relive something like this is also comparable to a statement. 

Some Entities that overlap with some of the stuff happening in this statement are ones like The Spiral. I could see an argument for some of its themes with the idea of noticing something you missed before or thought wasn’t there as a sign of your senses being wrong. Maybe also The Stranger since Tom doesn’t seem to know what he’s seeing.

We then cut to CCTV audio and Alice talking on the phone before this conversation happens

GWEN 

“Do you remember the IT manager before Colin?”

ALICE 

“Who? Amelia? What about her?”

GWEN 

“No, before Amelia, before I joined. German guy. Lots of tattoos.”

ALICE 

“I mean, I think Amelia mentioned him once or twice maybe? Mostly I remember her complaining about his work, but he’d have been here well before my time. What’s this about?” 

GWEN

“Nothing. None of your business.” 

ALICE 

“What? Seriously?”

GWEN 

“(walking off). Yes.”

Once again, Gwen being cagey and weird but this time we have a better idea of why. There’s a chance that this German IT manager may in fact be Klaus. I wonder if being the O.I.A.R. IT manager comes with some sort of drawback or “curse?” Maybe even some weird agreement between whoever has the position and Lena? Who knows

Conclusion

Idk having a blast. Feel free to leave corrections and / or thoughts and I may respond to them and explain if I agree or disagree, or consider why it is or isn’t likely, etc.

[league-of-blorbos]

This is gonna be a long and weird post from me, and I don't know if it'll even be comprehensible in the end, but I just wanna put my thoughts out there about my feelings for Jhinhwei and why even as everyone else has fallen in love with this ship, I'm struggling to get into the idea of it.

(And to get this out of the way, this is all just my personal interpretation of these characters, I'm not gonna shame anyone for shipping something I don't or reading a character differently than I do. I'm doing this mostly cuz I just wanna voice my thoughts on this pair and maybe hear from people who think differently than I do. Also the other ships I tagged will make sense in a moment I PROMISE!)

It's not that I don't understand the appeal, oh no, this ship feels like it was handmade to appeal to Tumblr's love of darker, tension-filled, inherently toxic, homoerotic romance. It's LoL Hannigram, it's someone who's at least somewhat moral falling obsessively in love with a psychopath, and now they're at a cross roads of if they want to try to remain a decent person but abandon their love, or embrace the darkness within them and allow themselves to be in love with this horrible person. There's so much potential for drama and complex explorations of love and obsession that this ship should absolutely grip me.

But it doesn't, even as it's gripped others who like the same other pairings that I do.

My two other favorite ships (bear with me, I think understanding why I love these two helps rationalize why I don't ship Jhinhwei), the ones that have actually worked their way into every crevasse of my brain and I think about scenarios of them while trying to fall asleep is Kayn/Rhaast (big shock I know /s) and Simon/Betty from Adventure Time. They are also two pairings that delve into obsession and where neither partner is fully good (or in Petrigrof's case, more like good people with unintentionally toxic behavior).

Let's start with Rhaayn cuz I've rambled enough about that ship on here to fill a library (hehe voicelines references). Rhaayn is more of a classic enemies to friends to lovers with the Symbrock dynamic of Rhaast being a parasite that is fighting for control over Kayn's body being thrown in there for spice. The fun with this ship is seeing how their fight forces them to have to share moments of closeness and eventually bond with the other, and how through those moments, Kayn and Rhaast both find a perfect mirror for themselves. They find someone with the same level of bloodthirst and similar war-related trauma, but also someone who balances them as they are opposites and the same in so many ways.

Petrigrof (spoilers for both Adventure Time and Fiona And Cake) is sorta the opposite of Rhaayn in that a lot of Rhaayn focuses on how they fall in love, while Petrigrof's main story starts after already being together. The other way they're different is that while I very much SHIP Rhaayn, I'm kinda lying when I say I SHIP Simon and Betty as my favorite part is that they don't stay together in the end. The Youtuber Sarcastic Chorus has already done an amazing analysis of this ship that matches a lot of my feelings on them, but to sum up, how Petrigrof ended is all due to Betty and Simon's mistakes. They loved each other so much that Betty was willing to throw so much of herself away for Simon, while he was blinded to how much she was doing for him, and even in the moments where he did recognize Betty was doing too much, he let her keep trying as he thought it would undermine their relationship if he didn't. And I love that their story is a lesson in how even well-meaning obsession can be toxic and that you need to know when to walk away and move on, even when it hurts you and the person you love.

Simon is just as madly in love as Betty is and vice versa, and they're both equally responsible for the way they ended up. While with Rhaayn, both crave each other's company because they've found someone who is just as violent and fucked up in all the same ways as they are.

But compared to those two pairs, Jhinhwei feels too unbalanced, and not just due to the power imbalance. To summarize it, my other ships feel like two people who ruin each other (or heal each other, or both!), while Jhinhwei mostly feels like Jhin trying to ruin Hwei and the main draw is Hwei choosing to accept the ruin and his internal struggle about it. The story of them, as I read it, focuses almost solely on Hwei's arc and you could theoretically have him effect Jhin just as much, but first, any attempts for Hwei to "fix" Jhin would just recreate the issue for me in the other direction, where it's now about Jhin's internal struggle with Hwei trying to heal him. Second, I have a hard time reading that as anything other than drastically changing Jhin's character to the point where you might as well make an OC.

That last point is definitely more of a personal problem as I have way more trouble getting into Jhin's headspace than I do with Hwei or Kayn or even Rhaast. But to me, Jhin is almost more of a force of madness than a character I can dive into the complex mind of, and I'm kinda ok with that. A lot of people love trying to figure out how these characters' brains work and why they are who they are, but just like how Riot never wanted to unmask Jhin (until that goddamn concept art came out!), I'm ok with leaving the mask on and letting some things about Jhin remain mysterious, even at the cost of Jhinhwei not meeting a lot of the criteria to be a ship that I really fall in love with.