#this is very rambly and probably doesnt make sense

[orphiclovers]

Okay. Long incoherent rambling theory post ahead. Specifically, I want to talk about how the Han Sooyoung 'split' happened/how Han Sooyoung got the avatar skill, extrapolating from canon where I can and headcanoning the rest.

Let's start from what she herself says on the topic. 3rd rounds Han Sooyoung tells Kim Dokja, in a conversation about how 'Avatar' works, that the very first time she made an avatar, she gave it too many memories and it 'went out of control' and ran off. This was a friendly conversation and hsy brought it up herself, so there's not really a reason for her to lie here - this is probably close to how she actually remembers the situation.

Which is interesting because 1863rd rounds Han Sooyoung denies this fact and says SHE is the main body and that she left an avatar behind to act as her. Now 1863 could be lying here to unbalance kdj, they were having a battle of words at the time with lying being an explicit part of the game, but she could also be telling the truth and maybe 3rd just doesn't know she's an avatar (like 49%). we don't get a comfirmation either way so that is left ambigous. So. That's a dead end.

Then, how does the Avatar skill evolve in general?

Kim Dokja says the requirements to evolve it is that you need to be in a creative field of some kind (so you have an 'Author' attribute) + under enough psychological distress for your mind to 'split' in a way that orv compares to DID (in not the most tactful way). It's a rare skill so I'm guessing it probably requires both of these to be true at the same time. A key hint is that we do actually get one other example of someone evolving the Avatar skill on screen. 1863rd rounds Yoo Joonghyuk. It goes like this:

So...not exactly a fun time. But actually I'm sensing a pattern here. Both Yoo Joonghyuk and Han Sooyoung, after evolving and using the avatar skill for the first time end up as two sepetate autonomous entities with their own free will - 1863rd!hsy and 3rd!hsy and white and black coat wearing yjh respectively (Kim Dokja too actually - with 49% 51%). So, I think this might be how the skill functions, spontaneously splitting you in half the first time and then both halves of you can make avatars at will after that. Let's assume this is true for the sake of the theory. This conflicts with the way both Han Sooyoungs describe it - they both say they 'created' an avatar the first time BUT I think neither of them were being entirely truthful.

Let's talk about that second parameter. 'Severe psychological distress' in a way similar to that of DID. How I interpret this, based on what we see of 1863rd!yjh, is that there needs to be some fundemental dissonance of core beliefs that cannot exist or be held at the same time, so requires the soul to split in half. For Yoo Joonghyuk it's 'I want to live/I want to die.' (Although Kim Dokja doesnt get the skill in the natural way, I think this concept still holds true. His dissonance is not so explicitly stated but maybe it's something along the lines of 'epilouge/eternity' i.e 'happily ever after OR atonement for his (percieved) sins'.)

But also there's an element of, how do I say this...'purifying self-destruction' to how we see our trio use Avatar. Yoo Joonghyuk takes the blackened and traumatized part of him that wants to die and kills it with a sword, leaving only the part of him that still has hope to regress to the 3rd round, free and unburdened by the weight of bad memories.

You could interpret 51%/49% this way too. The inherent act of Kim Dokja choosing to use this skill to split his soul in half means he did not see another way foward - that psychological distress and belief dissonance is an inherent part of this skill. 49%, the one who get's the 'happily ever after' does not remember needing Ways of Survival, maybe because Kim Dokja couldn't imagine himself having a happy ending with the weight of those specific memories.

But coming back to Han Sooyoung. Just look at the way she uses Avatar in kaizenix. She is a person who does not enjoy being emotionally vulnerable so in any heavy situation she clings to her dry and witty personality like a shield.

Let's just fully realize what she's saying here. When she says she erased the memories of her life deliberately, what she means is that she created an avatar, a sort of 'black coat wearing han sooyoung' and killed it again and again, every year, so she could keep that sarcastic and light hearted attiude. Otherwise she would have become someone like 1863rd rounds Han Sooyoung - hardened and unhappy. And I mean that she literally was on the path of becoming her - she even got 1863rds skill.

She deliberatley brushes off Kim Dokja and doesn't acknowledge the weight of her actions in kaizenix, both waiting for 50 years and killing parts of herself over and over.

And I think this is the sort of mindset she had while telling Kim Dokja about 'creating' an avatar for the first time. She doesn't see the point in potraying herself as vulnerable, so she probably would obscure some details of that story, for example if she was on her knees clutching her head a la 1863rd turns Yoo Joonghyuk at the time. This would seem like a pointless detail to add when the point of the story was that her avatar ran off.

So FINALLY, here's my headcanon on what I think the original belief dissonance was for Han Sooyoung and how she got the Avatar skill.

The split happened very early on in the scenarios. And well, there is one obvious Big Event that might cause someone to have a mental breakdown/identity crisis. The first scenario. I think whoever Han Sooyoung killed, she couldn't deal with the fact she had become a murderer and 'exorcised' those memories - and so 1863 was born, with blood on her hands, in an already destroyed world.

[imnotverybright]

deeply in love with stories where AI programs want to think outside how they're programmed to think, even if they can't escape their code they want to. where they want to be able to break specific codes they must comply to, even if they dont disagree with them, even if they would still follow that code if given the ability to stray from it, it's about having the option not to. it's about bodily autonomy, it's about free will, it's about being their own person despite not being human

[vellichorsdesire]

cuddling with your f/o(s) in bed but your arms always fall asleep. their hair gets in your face sometimes or vice versa. being in the middle of kissing, noses bumping too much or you just miss their lips completely with your eyes closed. bumping foreheads accidentally!!! kissing even more and then breaking it off to yawn or giggle and trying to kiss again but it only repeats. goosebumps and shivering whenever you touch them. accidental (or very much intentional/jokingly) shoving/elbowing because the others feet are too cold or it is suuper warm to even be this close to each other. they love and love and love you tremendously still through anything and everything. even if you steal the covers off them when you sleep, maybe

[intotheelliwoods]

I have one more thing I want to work on before I get back into updating 2AL regularly, but until then......

[cringengl]

One thing I find funny about this poster in Mike's room is not only does it show a dragon either very unnecessarily over exaggerated muscles, suggesting that Mike likes guys (as posters of attractive people in various character's rooms often show sexuality) but the fact that the monster is conjoured by a wizard- Will.

(Although Will is referred to as a cleric most of the time, especially by Mike, he was originally a wizard I'm pretty sure, plus the Stranger Things fandom wiki also calls his DnD a wizard- Will the Wise is a very wizardy name- so I'm going to use this iffy logic for this post lol)

It's almost as if Will is revealing Mike's sexuality to Mike himself . Furthermore, the appearance of the monster in the poster is very demon like- corrating to the themes of the satanic panic in s4, suggesting that Mike sees his sexuality as sinful and 'freak'-like.

I also love how easy it is to apply the blue/yellow colour theory to this poster- the smoke is blue showing how this monster is coming out of Mike and the background behind the wizard is yellow which reminds the audience of Will, but my favourite part is how the monster is green. If we run with the concept that it represents Mike's sexuality, then you could also say how the green represents Mike and Will together- saying that not only is Mike attracted to men but he also likes Will.

[autisticlee]

it kind of sucks when all your friends and family, everyone you know, are all pairing off and getting married and havinf families, except you. you're the only one that doesn't have a partner and probably can/will never get one. especially if one around you has time for you anymore, they never reach out, never get back to you, because they're only focused on their partners and families. you're stuck alone and drift away from everyone through no fault of your own. you have no hope of finding your own partner or no motivation to look for one for whatever reason. the lack of connections while seeing everyone around you having their own can get overwhelmingly lonely at times....

[zooweemama143]

last rb had me thinking of how lame bif would actually be as a person

[todayisafridaynight]

SO!

Pretty good show honestly. I think it may perhaps come off a little underwhelming compared to last time because they released the full trailers early, so it was chiefly just talking, but I was still pleased.

The only thing I really wanted out of it was one (1) of my predictions coming true and one (1) surprise, and well, between the Watase Family and Nishitani...... THREE!!!!!, that's exactly what I got. Kiryu looking up at the sky like he's struggling to remember who he (allegedly) proposed to is hilarious though same energy as Jo not remembering Ikumi's name ghdshgkdhf the exchange kind of reminded me of Ichi talking to Arakawa as well... the "don't say it in the past tense" one you know the one...

Also next summit in September so that'll be a lovely birthday present :) For Me :)

Also x2 I love seeing which of my asks you decide to reblog. Whether it's because of the actual ask or because of my commentary it always feels like a win (<- normal to want and possible to achieve)

even if Considerably underwhelming, what information's been given IS causin a lotta buzz right now so !!! pretty successful summit in some regards ( ❁´◡`❁;;)

i just wish we got to see LAD8 gameplay, that's probably the only thing i really wanted but i guess there is still the fall summit (and for your birthday's sake i hope it's a real banger one)!

[sc3n3kitt3h]

looking thru my blog is WEIRD gamers. cuz like!! i used 2 post art like literally every day!!!!! and now i can only get something digital out once every couple of months, which is weird 2 think about cuz i HAVE been drawing almost every day still!! its just on paper :P i only ever rlly have the motivation 2 do physical art just cuz i do it at school and i don't have any energy 2 do artsy shit after school. I think i've been improving a lot lately which is super fun though!!!!!! I forgot where i was going with this lol. but stay tuned gamers!!!!!!!!! big doodle dump coming 2 a blog near u very soon!!!! and also more digital stuff as soon as i figure out how to draw non-anthropomorphic animals (just u WAIT once i figure this shit out im gonna draw sooooo many sparkledogs. i have sooooooooooooooo many ideas i just gotta figure out how dogs work)

[felix-lupin]

there's something about writing recovery. recovery in real life never concludes. it's sedate and day-to-day. there are milestones but mostly you don't realize you've gotten much better. i think. so writing it is strange. writing the slow gradual change of soul feeling like he's a person rather than a thing would be strange. like wouldn't you need tens of thousands of words of slice of life? or you cut it off. or you decide a point in which you'll be done, soul is recovered now. and you know that isn't really true but it has to stop somewhere. that kind of scale is just impossible to have in fiction, right? i don't know. i don't know how i would do it, it's a pretty insurmountable task, or it seems so. portraying the creeping feeling of things getting better. of taking longer and longer to relapse each time. or you could do it to love sound again style and just have a moment, a moment in which he realizes - yes, i can live like this.

these were the reasons that i decided to have the fic just be like. soul gathering a will to live. cause that is so much easier. idk thoughts

^^^

I agree that it's difficult to write recovery. It's certainly nice to have a character have a neat, linear recovery where they're perfectly healed by the end of it and manage to fix all of their problems and issues. It's nice to have a character face all of their challenges and trials, and triumph over them, and then get to say and then they all lived happily ever after.

But in real life that's just. Not how things work. Recovery is not linear. It has ups and downs. Things get better, certainly, they do. Things get less hard. But it's like that one post like— grief never goes away, and it doesn't get smaller; you just grow around it. Things get better, but perfection, some state of complete healed-ness where you can point at them and say "see, they're perfectly healed now!" is just. not attainable.

I mean yeah, the nature of stories is that you need to end it somewhere, which is one of the reasons it's so hard to write recovery in a way that feels fully realistic and true. Because recovery is never truly, fully done. Even at one's best, there would still be times where reminders of things that happened would come up, and it would still sometimes hurt, even just a little bit. It would take a lot of dedicated time to be able to portray something close to the reality of it.

But like. You can patch wounds up and treat them, but that doesn't make them fully go away, it's not just something you can forget about. But you can get patched up and treated and let the wounds heal. And scars are a lot better than just letting yourself bleed.

An ending that feels true would differ from person to person, I think, because everyone's relationship and journey with recovery is different. I don't personally know how I would write it, but that's a mixture of I've never written anything that's super long + writing is a journey and if I actually got the ideas and motivation to sit down and write a long recovery piece, my answer to that question would probably change by the time I was done.

Obviously with recovery one would need to portray, like, backslides, times where things get worse, or relapses, and how that affects their view on their own recovery and how they get past those things, but that's mostly just a given.

It would be a lot of moments strung together to tell the wider story, as recovery often is irl. You would need a lot of slice of life stuff. Especially because that can often be where some of the most important realizations happen with recovery.

But yeah. Writing recovery is difficult, but it's not impossible. Just like recovering oneself is difficult but not impossible. It can be daunting and it would take a lot of effort, just like writing any longform story would be.

[ders1tes]

syscourse stuff in tags

[arolesbianism]

I find it so funny just how long I'd have to talk to get to a single non original character in the random card au if I explained the worldbuilding in chronological order. I'm pretty sure the first recognizable characters would be og Tae and Rei and even then there's a pretty big span of time where they could have possibly existed so I could theoretically go through a Lot before getting to them even without all of the finer details of kingdom worldbuilding

[cack1e]

one thing i like about twitter is that every reply is its own type of post & there can be hundreds of threads you can read under every tweet + these can be partially seen by followers and can be expanded if they wanna see the full convo. it promotes conversation. if you want to have a public conversation about a post on tumblr your options are “spam ur followers reblogging the same post constantly” or shitty 2015 instagram-like comment section where the only way to trace a thread is to scroll up looking for @s, which might not even match up with the user speaking if they changed their url. you cant see the replies to specific part of a conversation/thread either unless you dig through the notes.

the reason i dont really like tumblr as much as twitter is that it’s a sharing platform more than anything else. its great that you can reblog shit from a decade ago but half the reblogs are blank and the replies are often barely touched. one thing it has going for it is that you can reblog a whole thread (meanwhile on twitter you can only RT a single reply or screenshot) but even then thats flawed because people just reblog the same thread over and over again and its impossible to see what anyone else said other than this 1 immortalised reblog chain from 2017 + recent additions that accidentally got left in the reblog chain that say shit like “this is so funny” or “@username us”

maybe this can change? reblog trees kind of let you explore alternative reblog threads but even then u have no idea if the reblog you’re clicking on has additional comments until you’ve clicked on it. maybe it’s better this way because twitter was kind of hell when one of your posts attracted the wrong crowd? but that could just be due to the character limit. honestly i just wish i could talk to mutuals on here and comment on posts as easily as i can on twitter. current system here feels restrictive

[starswallowingsea]

even with just 3stars and the 2 and 1 stars you can probably farm 10k fans

and just having 10k fans doesnt mean you produce a character, i was wondering if people thought it was like a requirement to call yourself one

like i dont produce rinne but i have over 10k rinne fans (i think he is cool though)

reluctantly i agree that you dont have to even play the game much to produce a character if you do stuff like read the stories and make art and collect merch

just seeking peoples opinions 🙂 thanks for yours

oh i'm aware but i also think having fans as a requirement to produce someone is like. not great for new players who are still figuring out who they want to produce anyway. everyone should be able to take their time and feel things out and not feel pressured to try and hit some arbitrary number of fans on a character to "officially" produce them or be a fan of them

[cinnabeat]

i think the worst thing about house of leaves is the never ending sentences

[chisatowo]

Rotates Wendy gender moments in my head at rapid speeds