#so long as there's interest of course

[paternoster-secretsanta]

Twelve hours until reveal!

First of all, Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate, whether that be Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

In twelve hours, at 8pm GMT, all the gifts will be revealed. The authors will remain anonymous until 31st December, so if you still want to write treats for people, you can do so and still remain a veil of mystery about who you are.

I hope you've enjoyed writing for the secret santa, and I look forward to reading the wonderful fics you all wrote!

[violetsorengail]

She doesn’t like anyone but Xaden, and she only tolerates me, though I’m growing on her. Like a tumor.

fourth wing - ch. 36

iron flame - ch. 65

onyx storm - ch. 62

[selfimposedhell]

There was this dumbass project we did at school a few months back (I’m studying media & graphic design & printing & layouts stuff) where we got to make mini magazines about a hobby/ interest of our choice (I obviously chose Baldur’s Gate of all things because I’m normal) and we did all the layouts and photo editing and all of that. I’m super cool and took an extra like 13 hours to illustrate the cover & one of the ads by hand

We printed and cut the actual magazines and made digital publications. I’d show you the whole magazine but its actually kind of embarrassing and theres a lot of mistakes in there and I dont want anyone to actually read it because the text is slop that I just vomited out of my head. The teacher actually encouraged using AI to write the articles but I didn’t I just rambled about the game

I want to emphasize how the actual contents of the magazine really did not matter which is why they let me do it in english & talk about NOTHING for ten pages. This was purely a layout & graphic design excercise. Some people used lorem ipsum for their entire thing

Here’s proof that it exists though and i can touch it with my little fingies

All the teachers thought this was Super Cool & Awesome and I got a lot of compliments :3

[crow-caller]

Yewchubing upd8s etc:

-I am working on my modelland review and it will be a substantial video because there is So Much to talk about in modelland

-I am still working on a fallen london video but it's been on/off. I wanna get it done so badly

-Life Events Keep Happening to me and it's hard to hope they'll ever stop

-after modelland idk, will take a Read Book For Fun break as I'm trying to do and then.... House of Night is a huge undertaking I still want to one day do. I still want to read All For The Game but I'm quite intimidated by its fandom. That YA trio about an alien zoo is still winning out in my heart and calling to me.

-I really want to do a "tier listing every special interest I've ever had' video bc i think that'd be very fun, but would involve me admitting to a middle school hetalia phase among others

[bellshazes]

i don't think the life series is "about" anything at all. it's not about survival or winning or player dynamics, or any theme. however i do think that the entire series - third life to present - is unified by a game design philosophy where all mechanics are engineered to disrupt the game as it has been played.

third life was initially pitched as "a[n ...] experiment" and its opening question was fundamentally how long can this last, which scar quickly proved was not long at all. it's easy to forget that it was not always a given that seasons would last approximately eight weeks and how the breakpoints of red/yellow violence would fall.

last life attempted to disrupt the established social norms by a) attempting to ban acting based on prior season's events and more importantly b) introducing social deduction mechanics which destabilized all alliances by default. similarly, although the ban on continuity never returned, double life's gimmick at its core is just another disruption of social dynamics. limited life iterates on last life's boogeyman dynamic while applying a different kind of time-limited pressure; secret and wild life are carousels of disruption to social play and "regular" or survival gameplay.

nevertheless players have defined the real rules of the game - the game-as-played which gives the series continuity - through their playing of it. both in spite of and because of the mechanical disruptions, conventions around sportsmanship and acceptable behavior are deeply entrenched. kills that are "illegal" by the written rules matter less than the player perception of them; the desire to invent social punishments for explicit infractions died with etho in the third life firing squad. players judge kill attempts as acceptable/impermissible by their relative status of reds vs. yellows, as the rudeness of ending someone's series early far outweighs the obvious strategic benefit of eliminating reds first. history persists, only as much as a given set of players negotiates it should. everyone should be along for the ride for as long as possible, but it will end.

ultimately life seasons are designed to make it difficult to play as you always have, and the players derive fun and drama from balancing their leaning into the gimmicks or into their habits. unfortunately this tension is deeply compelling and leads to wildly divergent opinions on what is "good" or "authentic" about a season or gimmick or episode because where the "good" tension is depends on the viewer, the point of view, the episode, etc.

[the-fiddlesticks-affair]

the summit-five affair completely rocked me what a fucking episode. heres my absolute favorite bit from the whole thing if i must absolutely be forced to choose

[galactic-rhea]

there's tons of twisted and delicious anidala angst in my head of the likes you can't imagine,,,,,

[thechy-fychannel]

y'all ever think abt how it was julie having the affair and it is even said multiple times that she was the one who left him, yet wilson was still the one who left their home and moved in with house. like. he couldn't bear to stay in their home alone. he immediately ran to house and stayed on his couch for weeks. suffered through his pranks and his laziness and his manipulation. telling him he wants him gone while sabotaging his attempts to leave. and he only left once he got a girlfriend again.

[faunandfloraas]

The Nobleman or 양반 (yangban): The smiling face represents the bluff and composure that an aristocrat is often known to have. The chin is a separate piece from the top of the mask, and the actors can lean forward and back to make the mask smile or frown as needed.

This monk who abandons his doctrines, or 취발이 (chwibari): Chwibari was originally a monk, but he had no intention of joining the monastic order, so he came down to the world and wanders. Represented with a forehead full of wrinkles and spots.

The widow or, 부네 (Punae/bune): represented to be a widow, or a kisaeng ( a woman who sang, danced, or played an instrument to provide entertainment for company at a drinking party), or a mistress of the Yangban. She has a very small mouth, round cheeks and forehead- giving a general look of happiness good-humor.

[saltyspecs]

I've been thinking some binggeyuan Thoughts.

So, people usually write any binggeyuan as after the bingge vs bingmei extra which is super valid and narratively makes a lot of sense, but I've been thinking about dropping a bingge from earlier in the PIDW timeline into Shen Yuan's world. I'm talking like. Reverse transmigration straight from the abyss.

He finds Xin Mo, his seal gets fully broken, but instead of getting out of the abyss to get his revenge plans started he gets yeeted into modern day China, nothing but the clothes on his back and a system to guide him through it. He's bitter but he's also been fighting tooth and nail to survive for *checks watch* five years. He's like. 3/4 black lotus. Xin Mo hasn't quite had the time to sink its claws in.

I really do just have the mental image of Shen Yuan picking him up from out of an alley cause he looks like he got mugged. like a dirty kitten.

[syn0vial]

funniest part about the bounty hunter wars by K.W jeter is how palpatine thinks he's screwing boba fett over by hiring him to take down the bounty hunters' guild, completely ignorant to the fact that boba is a sicko who thinks making himself public enemy #1 of every bounty hunter in the galaxy sounds like the most fun he's had in ages.

it's literally like,

palpatine: that fool boba fett doesn't know that he is but a pawn in my nefarious plot to sow desperation and discord among the bounty hunters of the galaxy. he will be completely unprepared for the torrent of violence and retribution he is about to unleash upon himself. how wonderful it is to make a creature complicit in the workings of its own destruction! >:) boba, like 2 pages later: i can't wait to sow desperation and discord among the bounty hunters of the galaxy 😊 it's going to be sooo fun when my actions unleash a torrent of violence and retribution against me 😃 can't wait!

[oldmanpusspuss]

paul mccartney you're gay and that's final

for legal/ethical/moral/psychological/spiritual reasons this is a joke

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[krotiation]

i'll genuinely never stop thinking about codependency in rhack and how it's mostly coming from jack's side. both jack and rhys treat their relationship like rhys is the one who needs jack to not just survive but also thrive, but it's really the opposite and i think that REALLY adds to how much jack twists the narrative to make it seem like rhys can't do anything without him just to keep giving rhys a reason to keep him around and trust him

[wardingshout]

Ravio anon again!

Shyly asking,, would you be comfortable with "fanart" of your own depictions? The way you draw and interpret your Links, ESPECIALLY Past, brings me incredible joy and every time you post, it makes my entire day. You're like my favorite LoZ artist, and I would love to draw your designs and takes ;w; ofc with credit/ping so you can see! Thank you for your time.

THERE WOULD BE NOTHING MORE EXCITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! ;v; aaaaah and I'm genuinly giddy with how much joy this brings me!!! that I can bring joy to others with my art;; this ask had me in the happiest tears!!!!

have a little guy !!!!

[aurorangen]

Act cool Oscar, the words kept repeating in his head while making his introduction and during their hike. He felt unusually calm with Suzume's company and grinned like an idiot every time they talked! As with Suzume, she kept stealing glances at him, oh he's so handsome. She loved learning about him and his life sounded so exciting: he is definitely a cool guy! It was all going well but...