#though this stuff isn't actually new and i'm pretty sure i've mentioned some of it before

[sheyshen]

Something I want to build on with vincent at some point is how much the years of being an adventurer has taken a toll on him. he spent so long just being angry at the world but as he gets closer and closer to carteneau he does start recognizing how reckless he's been and the mistakes he's made over the years. friendships (especially with layla and nhea) helping him get a little closer to how he used to be before finally stopping and trying to do better for himself when he loses his leg. and the fact that guilt has really solidified in him to still make him push himself in his healing rather than combat (though sometimes still pushing himself too far) and how the years of treating himself like a weapon have taken a toll on his mind (he has terrible nightmares that only a select few have been able to help him through it)

[firestorm09890]

there's a part of canto vi I've been thinking about since it came out, and it doesn't actually have anything to do with Heathcliff.

this

She is bitter as fuck and as time goes on she's getting worse at keeping it down. Sinclair's the one who started it, by talking about how sad it is that they'd never get to see color, and Rodya starts to get a little irritated over it (yeah, sure, pity the Backstreets folk and their poor miserable little lives, privileged nest boy), but she's obviously trying not to straight up call Sinclair a privileged nest boy because she doesn't want to. But then Yi Sang and Ishmael join in on talking about how sad this place is with no color and she just can't keep her opinion down.

But that makes the atmosphere tense, and she hates a tense atmosphere, so she changes the subject and her tone, not giving a damn about how obvious it is. also, haha, ice and cold references.

And actually, this doesn't really have much evidence to support it, but I wonder if she holds a higher level of resentment for Sinclair in particular.

Canto II had some discussion about how Rodya wishes she was special (and while I think what Sonya said about her killing the tax collector just to feel special is absolute bullshit, I do also think there is some truth to her wanting to feel special), and introduced us to the concept of The Sign in a way that was vague and more like foreshadowing than actually introducing it. Then Canto III was all about The Sign, and how special Sinclair is, and since then we've had people talking about signs and stars and a new birth of the world and it's all stuff Rodya doesn't get to be part of.

I don't think she wants to hold resentment for Sinclair, and she especially never wants him to know, but going back after all this time and rereading this one interaction with him in Canto II felt pretty jarring.

the more important part of this is the way it feels like she's making a joke at Heathcliff's expense, for being poor, like even though she's also from the Backstreets she feels she's "above" it.

She absolutely does not feel this way.

On my way to find the first passage, I reread some other interesting stuff:

Once again, there's the harsh juxtaposition between casual, fun-loving Rodya, and tired, poor man's advocate Rodya. Almost everyone on the team speaks through the lens of a Nest dweller (I have to wonder if learning that Heathcliff was apparently raised in a mansion made her even more bitter), and the way she's so short with her mention of the Sweepers makes me think she's thinking about how painfully obvious it would have been to any other Backstreets dweller. And then, right after, dropping back into her casual voice, and Sinclair revealing that Rodya used the fucked up Backstreets creature to tease him...

Other obvious moments of Rodya being bitter as hell about rich people include this part of S.E.A.

and this part of her observation logs on Spiral of Contempt (actually, nearly everything in that log that isn't about the physical abnormality has to do with how much she hates how rich people look down upon the poor)

Hong Lu's canto comes after Don's, and then after his is Ryōshū's, who, based on her source material, probably served one of the most awful, contemptuous rich people the sinners have access to, and I really hope at some point here Rodya gets to snap in a big way

...hey so I wrote this entire post at 1 in the morning and then saved it to drafts because I didn't want to post something at 1 in the morning. the Timekilling Time trailer came out about two hours later, featuring both Rodya... and the long-awaited return of the Yurodiviye. so now it's past 3 in the morning for me but I'm posting it now anyway because ohohoho seeing the Yurodiviye again has given me SO much energy

I have a feeling all this is going to be very relevant extremely soon

[genericpuff]

How long do you plan making rekindled? I loved Lo at some point, But now I cant get enough of your version!! And I wanted to know how did you come up with the darker back stories for Rekindled?

I have a semi-detailed skeleton of the plot with basically every story beat planned out, but I can't definitively say how long it will be as I haven't actually scripted every single episode out yet.

Not to mention a lot of the time my scripts will change from their original versions, by the time I get to an episode I've planned ahead for I've either thought of new ways to do it or don't like how it's paced so I change it. Case in point, there was a specific scene I had planned for the next episode and then wound up not liking the pacing because it was too fast so I moved it to several episodes away and restructured everything on the fly, took a whole new text document and scrapping sketches to figure shit out LOL I actually do have up until Episode 70ish scripted out in my documents with like, actual notes and dialogue for each episode, but I already have sooo many of those crossed out now because of how much I've had to tweak and change as time has gone on. This is why I plan ahead well in advance though, so that if I do need to make those changes, I can make them long before the episodes are even due to be drawn (and believe me, they get changed during the sketching phases too LOL).

What I can confirm for certain is that the current 'arc' we're in right now is definitely the bulk of the story. And that's not to say there isn't any content afterwards, more like the pacing just gets completely turned on its head in the last 30-40% of it where shit gets N U T S and just can't go back to the same energy that it was in the beginning. Without spoiling, there's a certain 'turning point' in the plot and everything after it isn't quite as long as the stint of story we're in now. This is mostly because the arc we're currently in is still establishing a bunch of stuff like the Underworld Corp, Persephone's schooling, etc. and once that turning point hits, it's basically all character development and focusing on the consequences of everything setup in the first arc.

I guess if I had to illustrate it, the story progression in the end will look something like this?

It's basically just this slow and chill climb that, once it hits that sharp peak, doesn't ever return to normal levels LMAO So I guess enjoy this part of the story while you can because it's the chillest it'll ever be w(°ｏ°)w And boy, I am EXCITED for that peak, but we have a long way to go before we get there. As for how long, well, I'm hoping I'll be able to have Rekindled's story wrapped up in the next 2 years, tops. Just depends on how the update schedule goes, and assuming the plans I have put down for the plotting don't change in any major way. I don't have as much of the latter half of the story actually scripted out yet so for all I know it could wind up being way longer than anticipated, but right now I have a pretty good sense of how the story beats will play out in relation to each other.

So it's kind of a wait and see thing, at least until I have every episode scripted out, and even then I won't be 100% sure because things are always being tweaked and fixed and changed on the fly! I'm guessing it won't go much longer than 170 episodes, give or take, but that's a very very VERY rough estimate.

Regardless, Rekindled still has a lot more story to tell, and I'm hoping y'all enjoy the ride with me <3

As for the darker backstories, y'all don't even know yet. Like... I've got stuff planned. Stuff that even Banshriek (my BG assistant) doesn't know about. Stuff that I keep buried very deep in Rekindled's episode documents that won't see the light of day until they have to be ripped out of the deep dark trenches of the characters' own buried secrets, and by that point, the toothpaste will be out of the tube, there will be no going back. So, again... enjoy it while it lasts. Because I don't pull my punches. And maybe even you won't be able to look at me the same way again once the final blow has been dealt.

Sleep well.

:)

[chaos0pikachu]

Filmmaking? In My BL? - The Horror Influences of Dead Friend Forever

Okay off the bat I'ma say that this isn't me definitively saying these specific films or tv series are what inspired 100% DFF. I simply do not know what stuff the screenwriters were pulling from influence wise when writing the script, nor what the director was pulling from when directing the series, with 100% flawless certainty.

Rather, this is a chance to talk more about horror, from films, comics, visuals, and sub-genres and how these various mediums are what I see in the fabric of DFF's horror makeup. Also, general point, this post will be discussing minor spoilers of: Scream, DFF, and Girl from Nowhere. So like, be aware~~

This post is partially inspired by an ask from @italianpersonwithashippersheart in which the anon had mentioned Scream.

I couldn't really respond to this in detail before cause I hadn't watched the series, but I have now and I can say that the show is very thoroughly nothing at all like Scream. I'm not confident in much - other than my inability to reach the top shelf at the market - but I am confident in saying that lol

But this got me thinking, what type of horror IS DFF? I've seen a lot of folks say it's a slasher, and I both agree and disagree.

Horror as a genre is vast with sub-genres, it's probably one of the most universal and popular genres globally, and every culture has their own horror legends, cult classics, mainstays and shlock.

So that's what I'm going to talk about in this post, the slasher genre, why I don't think DFF 100% can be boxed into that sub-genre, what type of horror I think DFF is, and the influences I see in DFF's filmmaking and thematics.

So if we start anywhere, we gotta start with Scream (1996) since that's a comparison I've seen being made a lot.

The main reason I disagree in the comparisons to Scream is that Scream is considered a work of satire first and foremost. Through the power of capitalism and franchising, it's also consider a "whodunit" series.

“Scream” is the first movie of its kind to execute a satire genre within a horror movie, which is one of the most iconic and memorable elements of the film. The original movie makes many references to other well-known horror films and mocks them, while simultaneously leading the same plot points. [...] Although the following films in the “Scream” franchise do not follow as much of the same mockery of horror films, they are still considered to be satirical because of their use of mockery toward the movie franchise. “Scream 2” mocks film sequels and “Scream 3” mocks film trilogies." (source)

[sidenote one of my favorite examples of satirical meta horror is Wes Craven's New Nightmare]

DFF isn't satirizing anything in horror, it's almost entirely self-serious. Sure there's a couple of moments of hilarity - dick biting, and scooter snatchin' - but overall the show plays things pretty straight (gay sex notwithstanding). I've seen some folks claim it's subverting horror tropes, but I don't see that either (would be interested in discussing that tho cause I'm curious).

I get why people make this comparison though, Scream is a 27 yr old franchise, and probably the most relevant slasher franchise currently. The new Halloween movies were...cute but aside from the first Halloween (2018) the rest of the reboot franchise had diminishing returns; each film made less than the previous, and received lower critical scores.

However, Scream has actually grown as a franchise in the States in terms of box office draw. That said, Scream is actually not a huge earner overseas, Scream IV (2023) earned more than 60% of it's box office revenue domestically. In Thailand, according to reports, it only earned about 300,000 (compared to other international territories like Brazil where it earned around 4,600,000).

So I don't think DFF is pulling much from Scream in terms of setting, tone, or story. I do think the show most resembles Scream in directorial style, specifically in the imagery of the Killer's design and in the slow-crawl mask reveals that have happened so far.

[very obviously spoilers for all the scream films watch at your own risk etc, gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses]

So what is a slasher film or story?

"A slasher movie is a horror sub-genre that involves the murdering of a number of people by a psychopathic killer, typically via a knife or bladed tool (such as a scythe).

In general, the horror genre is known for its fear, violence and terror. It will typically feature a menacing villain, whether it be a monster or a supernatural evil spirit, for example." (source)

Other common but not inherent secondary characteristics of a slasher story will include: young adults as central characters, sex (typically as a means of punishment "sex gets you killed"), the killer is motivated by revenge, lots of gore and/or violent kills and a "final girl".

I point out common but not inherent because the main tenants of a slasher story is the overall body count, female protagonist and a mysterious (typically masked) killer.

For example, in Scream (96) Ghostface is motivated by revenge, however in Halloween (1978), Texas Chainsaw (1974), Prom Night (2008), You're Next (2011) and Wrong Turn (2003) the killers are not.

If there is a western horror franchise or film that the setting of DFF more closely aligns with, it's Friday the 13th (2009). Which was a sequel/reboot to the original Friday the 13th (1980) starring Tumblr's own Jared Padalecki as one of the leads (that was an interesting year as Jensen Ackles also starred in a remake of a classic 80s horror film My Blood Valentine).

In Friday (09) the bulk of the story takes place at a mansion styled cabin in the woods near Crystal Lake owned by one of the characters rich parents. Jason eventually hunts down each of the characters, killing them in various ways, and they even find his home with a shrine to his mother there. There's also like, a lot of sex and nudity in Friday (09) none of it fun or sexy as it's pretty, unfortunately, misogynistic.

Being in an isolated area, like the cabin in the woods in DFF and Friday (09) is also not a requirement within the slasher sub-genre.

Many slasher films, especially American classics during the genres 80s peak, actually take place more often in suburbia rather than in isolated locations like the woods. Which reflected real world anxieties from predominately white communities and a turn towards more conservative politics of that era in America.

"Those same well-kept neighborhoods and quiet backyards of my childhood were also the battlegrounds of the ’80s horror movie, a radical pivot in the genre’s history. The decade’s opening years were bracketed by the kidnappings of Etan Patz (which inspired the Missing Kids on a Milk Carton program) and Adam Walsh (which inspired his father John Walsh to later create the TV show "America’s Most Wanted"). Combined with the conservative turn in crime and punishment law brought on by the Reagan administration, horror appeared to turn from the supernatural curses of the decade before ("The Exorcist," "The Omen") to a homegrown product of our own sins. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger are psychotic loons but also human beings who come not from afar but from down the street. The possibility that one of them could be lurking just beyond the sliding back door of a sleepover birthday seems too darkly delicious to pass up, a fictional killer standing in for a warning your parents and society gave you about “stranger danger,” real-life evil lurking in the dark." (source)

Isolated settings, while can be a setting in slashers are more often found in psychological horror films: The Strangers (2008), When A Stranger Calls (1979, 2006), Hush (2016). Also the Evil Dead (1981, 1987, 2013).

[The latter has it's own interesting history of wanting to be psychological body horror, to horror comedy cult classic, back to psychological body horror. Honestly if any franchise has influenced the "horror set in a cabin in the woods" it's Evil Dead, which is paid major homage to in Cabin in the Woods (2011).]

Sooooo is DFF a slasher?

Hm, for me, yes and no. Slashers require a high body count and pretty gory deaths. So far we've only had 3 deaths, only two of which were even committed by the killer themselves and not even by their own hand (ie directly).

For me, the slasher elements of DFF exist in the directorial styling of the film, meant invoke a classic slasher film but that's not where the true horror of the story exists.

I'm a big slasher fan, so I'm not trying to discount the sub-genre at all, lots of slasher films are good, and when done well, they're truly scary. But they also tend to be straight forward in design, the fear comes from the feature of being stalked by an unseeable and unstoppable force infiltrating what should be a safe space (your home, your school, your neighborhood, your camp grounds etc).

Which is why slasher films are also the most common horror sub-genre to be parodied (Scary Movie franchise) or made into horror comedies like Freaky (2020), The Final Girls (2015), Happy Death Day (2017), and Totally Killer (2023).

[sidenote slashers have this in common with the zombie sub-genre of horror as zombie films in America have also tended in recent years to be horror comedies or horror action like: Little Monsters (2019), Cooties (2014), Zombieland (2009), Pride Prejudice and Zombies (2016)]

I'd argue that DFF is much more in line with psychological horror than slasher horror. Because it is anything but straightforward and also has a strong emphasis on relationships and isolation as does most psychological horror.

Films like: It Comes At Night (2017), Us (2019), Perfect Blue (1997), A Tale of Two Sisters (2004), The Forgotten (2017), Dark Water (2002) all have similar elements in terms of tone as DFF.

The isolated setting, the allure of the mundane normality being a veneer for the violence lurking beneath the surface, the existence of the paranormal, the use of drugs to increase fear, the unsettling paranoia, and slow burn crawl towards all the characters being unteathered from themselves, the growing distrust between them and their loved ones, the plot twists and turns, the emphasis on human relationships and the horror that comes from those.

The backstory with Non is what pushed the show past slasher horror to psychological horror for me. Because Non's "downfall" as it were, feels more akin to the slow burn psych horror rooted in a lot of Japanese, Thai films/tv shows, and modern A24 style horror films.

The horror of Midsommar (2019) doesn't come from jump scares, or violence, but in slowly watching the protagonist grow more and more unteathered, mistreated, gaslit, more and more with each passing moment, slowly inducted into a horrific cult and being able to do nothing to stop her descent.

A big influence I saw in DFF was Girl from Nowhere (2018); the school setting, the crimes committed by a group of students against a singular student, class exploration, structural violence, the exploration of retribution are all topics explored in the first season of Girl from Nowhere.

Even the series trailer for GFN and the pre-release trailer for DFF are similar in production design and tone:

Titled "BFF" the two-part finale from season 01, is about a high school reunion, where a group of now established adults come back together for a party (their reunion) only to be confronted by their past via Nanno (the shows protagonist for lack of a better term).

Through Nanno we learn about the chars past misdeeds in high school - bullying, physical assault, stealing, the works - and their current crimes as adults. As more and more layers of the truth, lies, and betrayal are revealed, the friend group begins to crack, fracture and turn against each other, growing more and more paranoid and angry.

Nanno tells the group that they've also all been drugged with poison and there's only one vial of antidote left, the "friends" all horrifically murder each other in order to get the antidote. In the end, no one survives. EXCEPT, it was all a mass hallucinate and the group wakes up, remembering everything, and quietly leave one-by-one. No longer friends, no longer not-friends, everyone forever changed by the experience.

It's an unsettling ending that leaves things open ended. This group of friends were responsible for the bullying and death of Nanno (she's fine she's like immortal or something I'm pretty sure GFN was partially influenced by Tomie by Junji Ito) and they simply refused to acknowledge what they did to her, nor talk about her, eventually forgetting she existed until forced too through a traumatic retribution by Nanno herself.

[Nanno from Girl from Nowhere, Tomie from Junji Ito's Tomie series]

DFF has a lot in common, from my perspective, with GFN in terms of tone, themes and even parts of it's story.

Nanno isn't doling out "justice" she doles out retributions, punishments, sometimes they're outright torturous. Whether the recipients "deserve" these punishments or not, is really up to the viewer. The show does a good job of showcasing a wide variety of characters who are unrepentant, sympathetic, and somewhere in between. The fears it plays upon are more slow burn, it boils the characters rather than setting them on fire like slashers do.

DFF is similar in this aspect, it boils the characters. Watching Non's story, you already know at the start it's nothing good. We know from the first flashback something bad has happened to Non, but it's not really something, it's many things - so many things - that have led to whatever tragedy the main group must pay for.

It's these compounding factors one after another that brings Non to a boil, and the same thing happens with Tan/New. The horror of DFF is more about getting under the skin, causing the characters discomfort by forcing them to confront the sins they've committed (is there anything more horrific than being seen? Especially if you ugly?).

I mentioned Junji Ito in reference to Girl from Nowhere, to say Ito has been influential on horror feels like an understatement. His series Tomie has been adapted into 7 different Japanese films, he's won 3 Eisner awards (the highest award you can win in America for comics publishing), along with a slew of awards in Japan, his series Uzumaki has been referenced in super popular anime like Jujustu Kaisen.

A big factor of Ito's work is body horror and psychological horror. His work unsettles, and is very visceral. Since Uzumaki was referenced in DFF I think rather than being influenced by specifically Uzumaki (which DFF doesn't have much in common with in regards to general story) I'd argue the show is more influenced by Ito's desire to unsettle.

[from Uzumaki], 1998]

Also potentially to take symbols of piety, faith and protection (the temple, the cross at the chars high school) and turn them into places of horror for the characters.

Like Ito did with the spiral motifs in Uzumaki, said Ito in an interview:

"The "spiral pattern" is not normally associated with horror fiction. Usually spiral patterns mark character’s cheeks in Japanese comedy cartoons, representing an effect of warmth. However, I thought it could be used in horror if I drew it a different way." (source)

[I am also begging y'all to check out Junji Ito's book Cat Diary it's hilarious, even more so b/c his style of art is so rooted in horror]

I think DFF is actually very Thai in it's exploration of what's unsettling and horrific to youth culture in Thailand currently. The feeling of haplessness, judgement, an inability to exert control over one's circumstances, mental health, consent, bullying, these were themes and topics explored in both seasons of GFN but also some of these were explored in The Whole Truth (2021) a Thai horror/mystery film.

There's a scene in The Whole Truth in which one of the protagonists school friends secretly films their younger sister getting undressed without her knowledge, and when caught, the classmate threatens to release the clip publicly and claim the sister is "a slut". One of the protagonists is also bullied at school - including by this disgusting classmate who they still consider "a friend" - but puts up with it in order to be in a friend group at all (this bullied char also has a physical disability which contributes to their mistreatment at school).

I think DFF is exploring a lot of these same topics but most of the characters are just gay this time around.

Okay I'm losing steam here a bit, this has gotten very long, but overall I'd argue that DFF is much more psychological horror than a slasher, in terms of it's tone, and story. Whilst invoking slasher imagery in it's directorial style.

That said it's much more in line with Thai and Japanese horror than American horror in regards to it's themes. If the series was going to be boiled down just to the basics, I'd quantify it as psychological horror mystery.

And those are my thoughts on DFF and horror, I guess lol I'm not 100% satisfied with this but god damn I'm tired this took forever lmao if y'all made it this far, bless and stay safe out there cause the ship wars are wildin out in these parts.

Check out other posts in the series:

Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes? | Trends in BL (Sorta): Genre Trends

[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 24 Thoughts: Teething Problems

Back to back guest writers. This time it's Alex C. Telander from both Ostium, and Circé. Which are, again, shows I have not yet listened to and so can't comment upon. A Norris episode too, sort of, been a very long time since we've had one of those. A really good episode though, if one thin on the ground for the sort of content I write about.

Spoilers for episode 24 below the cut.

Gwen and Lena's interaction wasn't exactly how I was imagining Gwen getting back in the good books going. I do wonder if this is going to be a marked shift in Gwen's characterisation going forward or if it's more of a one-off thing. Another mention of the minister does make me hope we'll meet them soon. I've seen a lot of people expecting this to be Elias but I'd rather it be a new character. Well, that Elias would be new but you understand my point. If it's anyone we've previously "met" I'm expecting it to be Peter Lukas more than Elias.

For the incident proper this is another that doesn't have an awful lot to dig into. I did really enjoy it but when its so explicit and straight forward I don't think there is a lot of value in me just stating what happened in it. The only interesting element of the incident to discuss would've been whether any of this was in her head but the heading does give that away. Other than that it's just the mention of Celia. That's only really interesting for two reasons. Firstly that no one mentioned it after the fact which you'd expect to happen but we also don't get an indication of who listened to this one. Secondly is that Rupert really seemed to like her. With a lot of this incident seemingly being a delusion I'm not actually sure there is much to talk about there either. There really might not be a whole lot wrong with Rupert here and so there isn't any reason to think that this is some sort of sign of anything. So, yeah, not much to say on that one but it was a well written and well performed episode. I really enjoyed it.

The post-incident stuff doesn't have a load to dig into either. The interaction with Sam, Celia, and Alice feels pretty explicit without a lot of subtext or ground for theory crafting. Celia continues to manipulate the whole staff, and Sam and Alice continue to butt heads about the sort of stuff that likely made them break up. Very little to say on Basira showing up either. I'm not really sure why she was in this episode. This one just felt like fan service to me in its current context. Which isn't bad exactly but it's not something that personally excites me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 1375 seems about right here.

CAT# Theory: Yeah, 1s are 1s. I'll do something with this once I'm not dying so much.

R# Theory: BC seems about inline with this. It seems a lot more in her head than it is in reality but there is also video evidence of it.

Header talk: Baby (demonic) -/- Delusion (Exhaustion) having this in "Delusion" is interesting in that it's fairly explicitly a statement that not everything she's experiencing is the truth. Given the reactions others in this episode it does sort of seem like very very little of it was.

[lilblucat]

Are there gonna be any major changes to the parent au now that ep 8 is out?

Ngl I don't think I'll be changing anything. There's a few easy tweaks I can make, but also some hard ones. Here's a list:

Khan and Nori are almost completely different between my fic and ep8 and I'm very attached to how I've written them to change that. Nori's presentation here is actually very important to the current arc and removing that removes a lot of the soul of it I feel

V's Sentinel would have to be added in

The explanation for why the Solver isn't around anymore could just be used as the reason why Uzi being its new main host isn't a thing in this fic. Eventually I figure she would've tried to purge it from her systems and it ended up fragmenting (somehow this makes every Solver user unable to access their Solver abilities)

Easy tweak but I mention at one point in the fic that V only lived because of Uzi and N doing... something? That could be an easy scrub

In light of episode 8, J's quest to eliminate the Solver fragments could be seen as her trying to amend things. That she was wrong in willingly working for the Solver. I was also writing J as if she didn't know she was working with Cyn and the Solver, so that's also a change

It's REALLY funny to me that the state we leave Uzi in is so resembling of the situation in the fic. 24 is canon what the fuck. And both situations feature Uzi eating something she shouldn't. Uzi gets extra flesh and a voice in her head that she doesn't like :)

Also it's lowkey funny to me that I accidentally just... wrote in the theme of the show into this fic? Episode 8 makes it clear that being genuine with others and yourself is kind of the theme here, and that's exactly what Uzi and N work through for the first arc of the fic. Trying to be people they really aren't and relapsing into who they actually are, even if that's not what others want of them. Like yeah, it's the same thing all over again basically lol.

Other stuff that's funny to me in light of episode 8:

A Sentinel rider was something I was cooking for this fic. It wasn't going to be V, though. I have concept art on this blog of the harness for this. Also you guys can take this since I've shared this crop elsewhere before lol

The tease with Doll still being alive works almost perfectly into an idea I've been trying to make work in this fic. Before episode 7, this was originally my plan with Nori's character

I wrote this fic with the idea that Uzi isn't in her original body? I'm pretty sure I made a few nods towards this probably being the case in the fic (at least, I remember keeping it in mind for the tail surgery chapter). I figured it would be destroyed in the finale and uhhhhh according to the final bit, Uzi is now a collection of cameras like Cyn. She's a hologram now... I was right that her body didn't last the finale

[spacecolonie]

i adore your paintings so muchhh would you happen to have any other tips or tutorials for your process? anything from thumbnailing all the way to final render

Thank you 😭♥ I appreciate that a lot!! To start with I've got my advice tag (both new and veeery old stuff lol), & my youtube has a couple of speedpaints on it, one with commentary including process, brushes etc

In terms of general stuff about how I approach painting, I tend to tailor the method to the desired outcome. I talk about it more in depth on this post here, I also link to some references & tutorials that I really enjoy/recommend!

Besides that though, I guess I can do a little walkthrough of the Whisper & Tangle painting I uploaded a few months ago, since I tried something new with it that I pseudo integrated into my workflow & could be fun to talk about? 🤔

SO yes, I do always thumbnail when I'm doing a bigger painting, and they're definitely not pretty LOL. I usually use the colour fill lasso just to block in basic shapes and values with a gradient map slapped on the top -- I ended up swapping the values around in the end because it let me use the fireflies as the sole light source, making it more character focused! Then it's the usual process of resketching it all & flatting in the base colours (I also added Whisper's wisps hehe), then adding shading:

This is how I usually approach it, w/ all the shading layers clipped to the original flats to preserve editing. Multiply, screen & overlay are the most common layer modes I use while doing this, and if I'm ever struggling I'll sometimes add a gradient map too in order to unify awkward colours etc. The new thing I tried for this painting was doing what's often nicknamed as a 'clown pass' -- which is using hard edged shapes to create an easily-accessible selection mask for each part:

It looks Super funny but I actually found it very helpful, and I ended up using it to select & cut out all of their body parts onto seperate layers, which were then alpha locked. It meant I could go ham w/ large or textured brushes, smudges etc without worrying about losing those edges, or accidentally over-rendering and screwing up the anatomy in the process!!

I've kept doing something similar since, though it's a bit more dialed back; mainly using the lasso select to chop it up directly and preserve specific/necessary edges, grouping up similar body parts on a single layer etc.

After doing all that, I sat down and started rendering. The background was all blocked in & detailed with a hard round brush and these amazing brushes from Devin Elle Kurtz. There isn't anything super insightful that I think I could type on how I render, but I do have that speedpaint I mentioned earlier that'll probably shed more light. It's just a lot of eyedropping & painting, rinse and repeat

When rendering is done I usually add a concoction of adjustment layers, as well as an overlay w/ a noise texture on it. I also sharpen it all after doing so! These are the ones that I ended up adding for this painting:

The dupe & blur is a fun thing that doesn't always work, but it looks super neat when the painting itself calls for it, especially when paired w/ that noise texture. It can make stuff look like an old/low quality photograph or recording -- here's another example w/ a shadow and amy doodle I posted a few months ago:

That's about it for this painting, the majority of the time spent on it was honestly me rendering those damn leaves 🥲 Very tedious but worth it & it was a really good learning experience. I'm not sure if any of this will prove useful but thank you so much for sending in the ask, & if you (or anyone else reading this) wants a similar breakdown for a different painting of mine, please do let me know and I'll try my best to do one!! 🥺💞

[wrongcaitlyn]

Do you have any headcanons for the canon pjoverse???

oh my GOD DO I?? I HAVE SO MANY it's hard to even keep track of them all bc tbh i forget which ones are canon or not canon

in general i've put a *lot* of my hc's into my fics, specifically my because i'm a mirrorball series which is basically my version of will's backstory (even though a large amount of it was disproved by tsats... i'm just ignoring that bc it's already engrained in my head even though i did enjoy tsats)

i also think i share quite a few of the popular hc's of the fandom, just because i'm actually pretty new to it (read the pjo series in like september of 2022 i think? and then hoo and toa immediately after) and i consume fandom content to an unhealthy extent

HOWEVER here are some things i feel very strongly about

will is a swiftie. i think this is canon bc rick mentioned it during the tsats book tour i think?? or maybe cotg?? not sure but i DO think he said it at some point

and also his favorite album is fearless like he's that album's number one stan im sorry there's no other answer

nico can cook like rlly well

LEO NICO AND WILL FRIENDSHIP i know that leo lives at the waystation now. but. BUT. i'd like to think that he'd visit chb every once in a while and they'd be pretty good friends

adding on to that, aroace leo. caleo what? nope. leo is aroace and he was in denial and i actually wrote a whole fic about it because i just feel very VERY strongly about this

i just love the idea that even before toa, apollo was more present in his kids' lives than other gods. like, showing up in dreams and stuff. even if it came from a different purpose, like wanting to show off his poetry or music or whatever, he wasn't completely absent from their lives

i very much like the idea of will and nico sort of stepping up to be the "leaders"-ish of chb once percabeth leave for new rome. i mean, will already sort of is one with him being the head medic and also having seniority over a lot of the campers, and nico being a child of the big three like percy

percabeth returning to chb to create a sort of new rome type place for older demigods to live!! so they do not feel like they're going to die young immediately when arriving!!! bc they are children!! and deserve to live long lives!!!

i have a *lot* of thoughts about will and his trauma, but one of the main things i believe about him is that his fatal flaw is putting others before him and overworking himself. i think that being pushed into the head medic position from such a young age sort of emphasized this, though i also think (from my ideas of his childhood) that he was kind of always taught to put other people and other jobs at a higher priority than himself

nico dies first. i know i was just talking about them living long lives and i think that ends up being true, but also nico is a demigod child of hades and i think around his 30s would already be way longer than anyone would expect. anyway, i think that he dies first, simply because i cannot put that boy through any more, and i know i could say the same thing about will after having lost so much as well, but i think that the idea of nico being right at the entrance of the underworld by the river styx to welcome will once he dies (bc nico's the ghost king/prince of the underworld and isn't confined to elysium) is a very comforting thought

those are the main things i can think of right now just off the top of my head, but if there's any specific parts of canonverse that you'd like my thoughts about, feel free to ask! this didn't really cover a lot of like the general pjo/hoo timeline and it was mainly solangelo centric but likeee these are just things i thought of first! thank u for the ask!!

[drachonia]

𝐭 𝐡 𝐞 𝐰 𝐚 𝐲 𝐢 𝐥 𝐨 𝐯 𝐞 𝐝 𝐲 𝐨 𝐮 .

Alfons Sylvatica x OC insert (Marguerite)

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: i was inspired by my friend fairylibe's alfons fic, please go check out all of her stuff, she does wonderful work and is an absolute sweetheart. <3

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: modern au, implied reincarnation, mention of dub-con (mind-altering curse used), oc insert, vague mention of workplace harrassment.

Long wheat-brown hair waved behind Marguerite as she walked briskly down the streets of the West End, brushing through her long bangs with slender fingers as she trotted home from practicing late into the evening. Loud, boisterous laughter made her involuntarily jolt, turning down an alleyway as she felt a familiar presence almost envelop her. Her eyes fell on a young man - a man probably a few years apart from herself - clad in a dark jacket, crouched next to an aged man who seemed vacant. She glimpsed a clouded, faintly happy look in the old man's eyes, noting how he almost looked past the younger. The sight was both heartwarming yet also chilled the brunette to the bone, watching as the young man slid a pair of short leather gloves back over his fingertips once he'd slipped the old man's eyes closed. Dark vacant eyes met a bright, almost suspicious pale blue.

A few heavy heartbeats passed before the man spoke, stepping closer, Marguerite stood stock still, fingers grasping her duffel strap tighter.

"Now, what is a pretty bluebird like yourself doing here?" He smiled in an eerily calm manner, almost as if he wasn't trying to appease a stranger after she witnessed the death of a man with him as the only suspect of foul play.

"Walking back from work." A few steps aside, she started to walk out of the alleyway. "Do you work around here, then?" The clunk of his shoes on the pavement behind her was oddly comforting despite the loud nighttime streets Soho was so well-known for. "Does it benefit you to know that, sir?" She continued, noticing how he'd fallen in step with her, arm ghosting behind her as they walked, almost as if to shield her from any passerby as they began to blend into the crowds walking up and down the streets. "Not particularly, I was just wondering if I'd found a comrade in arms." He raised his brows suggestively, lips curving up at the edges, though it wasn't a sickeningly sweet expression…she actually couldn't help but chuckle at it.

"And what kind of friends did you hope we would be?" She slowed her pace for a moment, looking up at him and sneaking a closer look at those smokey dark eyes of his. His teeth sank into his bottom lip before he pursed them in almost mock thought, "You could say I've had a hankering for some company, just like any companionship."

"You talk like you were born last century," she rolled her eyes, mildly concerned at how far he'd followed her already, "You're being awfully persistent if you just want company. My job isn't in this district, I commute through here to get home." She confessed, looking before crossing in front of a few cars, the dark-haired man just behind her, "I didn't assume, but I admit now I'm even more intrigued." He chuckled next to her, "I've got nowhere to be tonight." Marguerite internally groaned, not sure how she could get out of this without lashing out at a total stranger whom she had no idea what he was capable of.

She heard some familiar voices from work and quickened her pace, the steps behind her seeming to notice as she tensed further next to him, even pressing into his arm a bit. Eventually the busy night streets quieted as they led into the neighborhoods, the performer's anxious mind soothed by the quiet duo of footsteps on the pavement. "Was someone bothering you, by chance?" She almost jumped as her new 'friend' addressed her, "By the looks of it, you seemed to want to get away from there." brown waves shook along with her long hair as she shook her head, "It's not that I hate that part of town, I just stumble across some familar faces that…aren't so pleasant. Guilt by association, if you will." She shrugged, blue eyes downcast as a gloved hand brushed her arm gently, helping her regain her sanity as she walked the streets with him. Eventually, the sound of her humming started to fill the silence, quiet at first, but steadily growing as she kept her pace toward home without wavering a single step. Eventually, her feet stopped at the gate in front of her house, glancing over at the man, noticing his expression was a tad more contemplative than just empty.

"I appreciate you walking me home, mister…" "Alfons, Alfons Sylvatica." "Alfons, then. Excuse me." She turned to leave, only for a curious hand to catch her wrist, a mystical smile appearing on his lips, "That's quite the cold behavior, isn't it?" Her brow furrowed in confusion, only for his now-bare fingertips to brush the nape of her neck, shrouding her mind in a fog. "What exactly would make you spurn your boyfriend like that?"

lace headers by saradika.

[angelphonia]

Okay, I've been binge watching the Stop!!Hibari-kun anime and I've got some thoughts I need to let out.

Firstly, watching the anime makes me appreciate the Manga a hundred times more. Sure, the Manga had its problems, mostly the racism and the casual homophobia jokes and transphobia, but you could save stuff from it, like that even though there were homophobic jokes there was a gay woman who wasn't mocked because of her attraction to Hibari, or that despite the transphobia Hibari was never outright shown as being wrong by being herself.

Now, the anime does a lot of things I dislike. Firstly they make Kosaku's reactions be way more negative than in the Manga. While yes, he reacts negatively he is also seen blushing a lot when Hibari flirts with him. I may need to read the Manga for fourth time, but I also don't remember Kosaku constantly mentioning Hibari is a "guy" everytime she did anything.

There is a lot much more racism in the anime. There were problems with this in the Manga but it just feels way more present in the anime.

This one doesn't bother me too much, but I'm pretty sure the chapters do not align with the Manga, but again, this doesn't bother me.

I also noticed way more incest jokes, I don't care about them. Also the Seiji chapter where he falls in love with one of Hibari's bullies when she's 15 and Seiji is around 25/30 is very questionable. Again, this is a work of fiction so while I was like "why isn't this seen wrong?" I wasn't really uncomfortable. I do gotta say that in the Manga when the Japanese mob grown manchild son asked for Hibari's hand in marriage, it was inmediatly said he was 28 and Hibari was super taken aback. This doesn't happen in the anime, his age is NEVER mentioned. I can't quite remember, but I am sure Hibari also doesn't go on a date with him.

Oof, but here we go with the thing that has bothered me the most. The REALLY bad erasure of Jun's story. They absolutely took away her lesbianism, making it seem as if she was only interested in Hibari because of her volleyball abilities. They also totally changed the episode and made Jun be deeply ashamed of her family, that while in the Manga she was a bit embarassed it wasn't a main focus. In the Anime it was, even making her leave the volleyball club, which is crazy to me. Oh, and I'm NOT forgetting that they made Hibari enjoy getting gropped in the bus, when in the Manga she was clearly just disgusted by it.

I haven't finished it yet, may edit this post with more complains. Positive things? I'm sure Seiji and Sabu didn't have names in the Manga, so now they have identities. They try and give them more backstory, even adding an eye scar to Sabu, which was appreciated. Hibari's voice is absolutely the cutest. I liked the wrestling episode. Oh, the episode with Hibari's mother and her father was a delight, she didn't express this much emotion in the Manga, so actually seeing how she feels was great, and her end interaction with her father was adorable.

Can't remember anything more rn. As a side note, I've developed a little crush on Sabu and I'm gonna draw him. Hope you enjoyed my rambling!

EDIT:

Remembered the Honda thing. In the Anime he almost reaches his 1000 girls flirted with, but with one it is half a girl. In the Manga this was because he looked at a 5 year old by accident and she fell in love, while in the anime they made it so he flirted with a new half. For those who don't know, new half is an old Japanese term for transgender people, mostly trans women who were post op. In the subtitles this is translated as crossdresser, which I don't like. This isn't the first time this term is mentioned, in the spartan son episode, he calls Hibari a new half, which Kosaku tells him to not do. In another chapter there is a trans woman, and she refers to herself as New half, which again is incorrectly translated to crossdresser for some reason.

Even then there was some sort of minimal knowledge of trans people, not only with this, but in the Manga the addition of Genkijirou being a canonical trans man in hormones. Eguchi was aware and while his first idea was to make Hibari a feminine man, it obviously end up with her being a trans woman.

[rickie-the-storyteller]

Steph's Crew - Book 3 Summary

I was meant to post this last year to sort of close the Steph-related content and focus more on other projects. Actually, I was meant to post a lot of things last year...

Bretanie analysis (on here)

Season 1 of AU (on my second blog)

Jekyll and Hyde, but in the modern world (I've been working on that for fun on the side, and I've decided to post the full story on Wattpad)

Revealing the identity of the secret blogger (I'll probably do it in this post, since it is relevant to this part of the story as well)

I've been so busy, y'all. Sorry for the delays.

I just want to make sure I have time to do everything as best as I possibly can, so you can enjoy it. I think it was less pressure posting the Steph's Crew dialogues and snippets because they were old pieces of work, and since the time I first wrote them, I've neatened it up and made it considerably better than it was... I know that the stuff I've shared isn't the final product, so I don't feel the urge to make it perfect. At least not to the extent that I do with all these other projects lol.

Hopefully this can help make up for lost time. I'll get to the other posts mentioned on that list as soon as possible, but until then... here's a summary of the third and final instalment of Steph's Crew!

Enjoy!

Keep in mind that I'm still working on this one. It isn't finished yet, but I wanted to give you guys a rough idea of how it goes. And prepare for this, because it's pretty unhinged lol. I collaborated with my sister on some of the wackier ideas...

Book 3 is titled "Story of a Broken Thing." It picks up where Book 2 ends off, more or less (or at least, it fills us in on what went down since the end of Book 2). If you can't remember how UVC ended, then here's a link to that summary:

But to put it briefly, the crew have successfully solved the mystery, Brelise have split up again, Bret's gone on tour with his band, Dalice are together, Bephanie is over, and Stephanie got arrested... but then escaped from holding. Nobody knows where she could have gone.

Which leads us to Book 3. It is set a couple of years later (I think about 5 years after Book 2 ended), and a lot of stuff has happened in all that time...

Dylan and Alice have broken up. Wasn't meant to be, I guess. But don't worry - they're still friends, and there's no bad blood between them or anything.

Victor and Jen have unfortunately split up as well, leading to Jen moving back to Texas. Alice decides to go with her. She's doing alright - currently taking some classes at a local college, and helping out at her old dance studio in her spare time. She's also still making YouTube videos.

Bret's band is still doing well. They're not touring anymore at the moment, but they are super busy recording a new album, and filming music videos. Plus, they have been asked to perform at the Jingle Bell Ball towards the end of the year, which is very exciting. Even though he has moved back to the UK, because of the nature of Bret's job, he can't just stay in London with his aunt anymore like how he used to... but he still comes to visit her as often as possible. And he and Elise are still close friends, so that's cool. He's been seeing other people over the past couple of years, though.

Elise and Charlie are together. She decided to give him a chance. They're really happy together and they seem to have a pretty healthy, solid relationship for the most part (they've been together for two years straight by the time Book 3 has started). Charlie still harbours some degree of jealousy/wariness towards Bret, though, since she's still really good friends with him. He's never once brought it up to her, though. But it becomes a big deal in this part of the story... more on that later.

Ben isn't really in this part of the story... at least not until towards the end, when Stephanie randomly decides to call him for some reason. But he's doing fine. Moved back to his cooking job from Book 1 lol. It was good money, and now he doesn't have another person to share it with! Wait, that sad-

And by now, Dylan, Connor (who has finally moved on from Daisy! Thank God), Elise and Charlie have all finished their university courses. Yay!

In fact, this is what kickstarts the plot. Dylan's family (we get to see them again in this one! Specifically his mother, her new husband and his younger brother Sam. I feel like we didn't get enough of them last time) is very proud of him for finishing such a long, tough course (3 years, + 1 foundation year + 1 year of masters), and they decide to reward him with an epic summer trip to Australia. And it is during this holiday that he sees Steph again (she's not in Australia btw - he sees her when he goes with a family friend to the Samoan islands).

She fills him in on how she got there. I haven't neatly worked this part out... but basically, Reggie helped her leave the country (idk whether to make him a villain or some kind of loose cannon/antihero type of guy. Like, he's awful most of the time, but he's also one of Stephanie's oldest friends, and he can be genuinely nice when he wants to be. Especially to her. He needs to be in trouble tho lol. I think the thing about him is that he gets away with his awful behaviour easily, whereas Stephanie is kind of forced to be held accountable, even if she actively runs away from the consequences of her actions sometimes...)

After that, she was stuck on her own again for a while and needed a job. So she applied for a job at a local Natia hotel (Natia is a famous line of hotels... kind of like Hilton, to give a known real-life example). She didn't have enough money for a cab or bus, so she had to walk the whole way there through heavy rain. By the time she got there, she looked terrible lol. But when she arrived, she bumped into a handsome young man who kindly helped her out. He got her a room and some clothes to change into, which helped in making a good first impression and whatnot. She got the job!

Later, she found out that the guy's name was Jordan Natia. The son of the hotel line founder (he also owns the hotel she got a job at). She thanks him for her help, and he invites her for dinner... and the rest is history.

And by history, I mean she ends up marrying him lol. Dylan finds out that she now lives at the resort that he and his family friend are currently staying at. She also has a baby daughter named Mia (short for Miranda. Not suspicious at all). She loves her life so much right now. She's always prided herself on being a strong independent woman who can take care of herself, but she's surprised at how much she's enjoying being a stay-at-home mother and housewife lol. She loves spending time with her baby, and she loves her husband a lot, too. He takes good care of her. However, similar to Ben, he doesn't really know all that much about her (Jordan goes through a similar arc to Ben's in Book 2, where he finds out the truth about Stephanie, and it changes the way he sees her. Minus the cheating lol).

Dylan is shocked at how much Steph has changed since the last time he saw her, but he's happy for her at the same time. He can see that she's genuinely happy and seemingly at peace, which is great.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, Charlie has decided to propose to El. He's taking it VERY seriously - even asked for her family's blessing and everything. They all said yes... even Adam lol (he's grown to like Charles by now). One summer evening, he pops the question (in a truly beautiful and romantic way btw), and Elise says yes in the moment, but she doesn't know if she truly feels ready for marriage yet. Something about the situation feels wrong to her, but she doesn't know what it is. However, instead of communicating her mixed feelings to her now fiance, she decides to distract herself with hangouts with her family and friends, as well as getting into her work and other hobbies, preferring to think about anything other than her problems (man, does THIS sound familiar lol). Charlie starts noticing a change in El's behaviour and it begins to really upset him (especially since Bret is one of the people she starts spending more time with, and we all know how she feels about him), causing more strain in their relationship. It only gets worse when they find out about Stephanie's whereabouts...

Dylan messages the others about his trip everyday through a group chat. One night he reveals that he's reunited with an old friend of theirs and sends a picture of him and Stephanie hanging out. The others are shocked. Elise especially.

The situation started becoming somewhat of a controversy in the news... people started talking about it more online, many blogs and news websites (including The Looking Glass) started covering it. Alice made a video on YouTube talking about it (and it came from the unique angle of her knowing the person from school and being their friend and everything. She didn't mention Steph by name, though). It blew her channel up.

The story of Stephanie's escape was quickly resurfacing back into people's minds after being forgotten for such a long time. And this wasn't good for Steph lol. Especially after finally making a life for herself that she was genuinely truly happy in.

But that's not the end of the story.

I'll tell you the rest in part 2 of this summary!

[captainnait]

Go ahead, infodump about Bob from Headrush. No one is stopping you

3:11 pm, 5/20/2024

You will not believe how big of a smile I got when I first saw this ask 😭😭 Like I'm genuinely so happy to talk about him, thank you,,,

Anyway, you don't need to ask me twice 💥

(Yeah, a lot of rambling under the cut, hehe)

— One of my favorite canon facts about Bob is that he REALLY hates emoticons. He mentions it two times: one time in a question, where he refuses to read out loud the category name, that is just an emoticon, and instead just calls it "that. . . thing" or smth, and the other time is in the "Don't be afraid to express your emoticons" Headrush category, where he just straight up tells players to be cautious of people who use emoticons 😭

Either he had a terrible experience with someone who used emoticons. . . Or his old man brain just doesn't understand them. Or both idk.

— I don't know if it's just an Andy Poland thing or not (it's probably is, but still—), but I just really like the way he can change up his voices so quickly. My man can literally go from "uwu im so silly" type of voice to LITERALLY the most brutal and manliest voice imaginable in just a span of a few seconds, and I think that's INCREDIBLE.

If we talk about Bob specifically though, I really like how silly his voice sounds at the end of the round, when he says "bye-bye" or other similar to that lines. It just makes me giggle, okay,,

— I don't remember the full context behind this image and the question it is from, but. Yeah. Huh.

[For some reason Tumblr just doesn't let me put this image in, but it just a screenshot of the game with red words written on the screen, saying "Bob has a "thing" for Barney"]

It's also pretty funny, since a few rounds later I got another Barney question ("Even Purple Dinosaurs Have to Die... Someday"), and Bob didn't sound really amused by it lol

— There are a lot of lines in the game, where Bob jokes/admits that he feels pretty lonely and/or isolated, which is very interesting, considering that he doesn't seem as a very introverted person or someone who doesn't go outside much.

I don't have any specific speculations on why he is like that, but I think (headcanon, I guess) that it's something that he grow up feeling like and, perhaps, still haven't grown out of it.

— In "None of the Smoke & All of the Cancer", Bob says that he finds smoking to be "sexy". It isn't very clear whether if he meant it as a joke or not, so. Eh.

— A lot of people said it way before me, but. . . This man has major dog vibes. Like, I can't pin down specific things that make me think like that. It's— It's just the overall vibe I get from him lol

— I'm pretty sure I've seen someone already make a post about it (I'm not sure though), buuuut it's pretty fascinating to me how little sexual interest Bob shows in women (compare to other hosts in the series, at least) and how little he cares for "mushy" stuff in general, valuing friendship/platonic bonds a lot more.

This probably could stem from what type of game Headrush is, since it's aimed for a younger audience - teens, who probably don't really care about love in that young age. But yeah, just an interesting thing to thinking about while in a shower.

— His relationship with Old Man is pretty weird, because he both shows extreme violence and, yet, somehow, some type of respect towards him? Like, there are moments were he shouts, yells and doesn't mind kicking Old Man for his annoying shenanigans, maybe even having a way easier time with it than other hosts. But then there are a few rare moments, where he actually doesn't mind Old Man at all and would even listen to his stories with a genuine interest.

Of course it's not something completely new to the series, but it is also makes me fairly curious, since I feel like this is the game where we get to see a lot of Old Man's personality and how he influences those around him (in the case of this game (99% of it) - Bob lol)

. . . That's it, ig. For now, i feel satisfied)

I also would really like ranting about Milan and his weirdly homoerotic relationship with Bob, buuut I need to get all the TTwM clips first, so. Yeah. That'll have to wait 💥

[somerandomcryptid]

Ok so this isn't a for sure thing but I am seriously considering later down the line in Dreaming of Death have XD offer Cryptid a "boon"(quotation marks because it's XD, the boon would never be truly generous and like, you know, perfectly safe, he wouldn't give it if it's not entertaining)

But yeah, this would happen after Dream and Cryptid have that falling out I've mentioned before, the one that happens because Dream pressures Cryptid to kill Quackity and that's a line they can't cross for him and then they have a big fight

So basically in this senario XD would pop into Cryptid's heard during this -verbal- fight with Dream and try to get them to kill him (because Punz would revive Dream anyway, and he really just wants to make everyone suffer more, it's fun to watch everyone's mental state unravel)

They don't obviously. But XD just kinda decides he likes to make this child more miserable by whispering in their ear a lot. So he decides to just.. not stop.

Cryptid runs away from the artic commune (I guess I haven't really explained the whole living situation yet but I'll get to it at some point) that day after the fight, they leave no note, and tell no one, they take enough supplies to start a new life and they just run, they can't deal with any of this anymore, they can't deal with Dream's behavior, and they can't bring them self to tell anyone, so they run, they throw pearls till they run out and then they walk till the sun comes up, make camp before they pass out from exhaustion, and when they wake up in the afternoon they find a good spot nearby to make a home (That's something that's going to happen in canon regardless of if XD gets more mettly btw)

But anyway, in this idea, XD is hanging out while they do this, he's a bit disappointed that one of his favorite entertainment is refusing to play, he tries to convince them to tell Wren instead (the fight that would happen between Wren and Dream if they did would be so fun to him)

They don't. They don't cave. They know telling Wren and the Syndicate about this... They know they would support them.. but.... They can't do it. They just need to leave. But they can't leave the server, so they'll do as close to that as they can.

XD is.. annoyed, to say the least. But he can't directly punish them, they aren't his domain.

So, he offers them a "boon", I'm not sure what exactly it would be, but it's some sort of power, something destructive, he knows Cryptid is deeply empathetic. They don't truly want to hurt anyone, but sometimes... Sometimes they do really really want to break things.. they don't want to hurt anyone in any way, but they have a lot of pent up anger.

They still refuse the boon though, they don't want to be powerful, and they don't want to "fix" the server as XD puts it to entice them, they want the people on the server to work out their differences, war won't help, more hurt won't help, they can't rule with an iron fist and it actually be ok.

This just makes XD more annoyed, so he leaves them, he stops nattering in their head, they're fine with the aloneness for a day or two. But they get deeply lonely pretty quickly. They want to go back to the Syndicate, but going back to the Syndicate means going back to Dream (who is basically an unofficial member/close ally), and going back to Dream means going back to mood swings, the rules, the walking on eggshells, going back to Dream means having to look in his eyes after he asked them to kill someone, and kill someone slowly, to torture someone till their dead.

So they can't go back. But oh... they are so.. so lonely. So they do the unthinkable, they go to Sam, the one person no one would never think they'd go to.

Btw all of that beyond the XD stuff is definitely set in stone, but like, I feel like the XD stuff would add to it, but I haven't fully decided. Btw XD would probably pop up again in Cryptid's head after they go back to the smp, just to be annoying.

Look idk this is all just mush from my brain, I hope it makes sense

(Dreaming of death is an au of the wonderful fic Penpal by @calamari-minecraft-corner so keep that in mind and go read it :) )

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Got this comment on one of my posts, went to reply, found that I had more to say than I could fit into a comment, so I'm replying with a new post instead. Hope you don't mind, @properverse.

I might be wrong, but I think the Jimmy Carr situation has changed even in the few years since I've started following this stuff. When I first watched 8 Out of 10 Cats/Catsdown/Big Fat Quizzes in 2020, here's what I think the situation was: Jimmy Carr writes horrifyingly offensive one-liners and smashes them all together in stand-up shows, he also does a lot of autocue-reading TV hosting, it's a pretty soulless comedy career but he's a professional at what he does, seems to do it well (if you assume that "it" is tell a bunch of one-liners where the punchline is the fact that it's offensive, and look like a robot in robotic TV jobs), it's certainly worked for him, it's made him very rich. He's friends with a lot of other comedians, who all say he views comedy as a job that has nothing to do with his real personality, and in real life he's a very nice guy. That does track with how he comes across - a soulless comedy robot just punching the clock, not putting any of himself into his work, so I guess it's totally possible that he's very different when not on the job.

I made a lot of posts in the early days of this blog that talked about Jimmy Carr. When I think about my early posts on this blog, I have a better understanding of why comedians don't love having bootlegs of themselves out there; I love getting to hear what a comedian I like said in 2008 or whatever, but I also cringe at the thought that people can read some shit I wrote in 2020. I frequently cringe at the thought of stuff I wrote last week.

Anyway, I was very very into Catsdown in particular in those days (I still think it was a great show in its heyday, I just think that day was long over even before Sean Lock died and it should be done now), so Jimmy Carr cropped up in a lot of my posts. I didn't like him, but I did sort of respect some things about his weirdly cold professional approach to the job, and every once in a while I'd write some screed that would try to reconcile all the contradictions about him. And speculate on whether the laugh is real. I still think it might be, he might have just covered it up better earlier in his career. Most likely option seems to be that it started as an affectation and became real. I did mention, in some old post or other, that Jimmy Carr draws very clear dividing lines between his professional persona and his real life, he's never "himself" on stage or on screen. Which means the only thing we know for sure that Jimmy Carr did as a real person, as himself and not as the character at all, is avoid tax.

This seemed like a reasonable thing to discuss speculate about and consider complicated at the time, he was an example in what I think are some reasonable debates about how much offensive stuff it might be acceptable to say in the name of comedy (though he wasn't a great example because he isn't actually funny). I did find it interesting that all the other comedians seemed to like him so much.

That's where I think things were a few years ago, when I started this blog. But I don't think that's the case anymore. At some point in the last couple of years, he's gone from that, to someone where I will easily just say "that guy can fuck right off and so can anyone who thinks he's cool". It doesn't seem so complicated now.

I think the turning point was when that Holocaust joke he made got all over the tabloids and stuff. Which I did think was a bit ridiculous, tabloids reporting that Jimmy Carr told a racist joke. I'm not defending the joke at all, it was awful and racist. But it was about the same as all his other jokes, it was weird to single that one out. If you don't like racism, don't go to a Jimmy Carr gig. Ideally, no one would like racism and Jimmy Carr wouldn't have a career. But I guess there's always a market for it.

After that whole storm, Jimmy Carr doubled down hard, and since then he's become much more classically right-wing. Going on Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson's podcasts. He's appeared on a few right-wing panels and stuff. Railing against cancel culture and the woke PC mob in interviews, in "real life", when appearing as himself, sharing real views rather than just doing comedy. Pivoting in his stand-up from all the years spent just saying awful things, to saying awful things prefaced by "of course this will get me canceled by the wokes".

Basically, I feel like he's proven all the initial easy assumptions right. In earlier years, he made us think, okay, maybe it's possible that there is a weird contradiction where a really nice guy in real life can just say awful things because it's a job, just like any other person who might do things they don't believe in for the sake of their job, then he clocks off and he's a good person offstage. I thought the possibility of that contradiction was mildly interesting. But since 2022, he's pretty much said, "Nope, everything you'd assume about me from my comedy is correct, I'm just another right-wing stereotype in real life."

And I haven't heard quite as many other comedians talk about what a great guy he is within the last couple of years. Nish Kumar has a story in his latest stand-up show about getting in a fight with Jimmy Carr about this, getting angry at him for going on Jordan Peterson's podcast. That took place at Just For Laughs in 2022 (where I actually saw Nish Kumar live, and he did shout the words "Fuck you, Jimmy Carr!" during his set, and those words were not in that same show when I saw it a few months earlier in New York City, I didn't know until he started doing his current show that those words got added because he'd just had a fight with Jimmy Carr during the festival). They story makes it sound like he and Jimmy Carr were cool before that. Just a few months earlier he was hanging out with Jimmy Carr on Katherine Ryan's couch in her Backstage show. So clearly, at least in one comedian's mind, things were changing with him.

Since then, the only comedians I've heard talk about how great Jimmy Carr is are comedians where their veneration of him may be less "He doesn't really believe those shitty things", and more "I agree with the shitty things he believes" (Russell Howard, Katherine Ryan). And Sam Campbell. I'm hoping being a fan of Jimmy Carr is an anomaly in Sam Campbell's beliefs. That's a weird one that I can't explain. He's not even funny, Sam. What are you doing?

Anyway, that's what I think about Jimmy Carr. Not sure the whole "He's a great guy in real life!" holds up anymore. I also think I might have read at some point that he's said he won't do Taskmaster, I hope that's true. Though even if he's open to it, I think at this point he might be getting to be too controversial a figure for Taskmaster. Presumably the Taskmaster casting people know they'd alienate their audience if they brought in one of those "I hate the wokes" comedians, and Jimmy Carr has pretty well thrown his lot in with them.

All right, that is the last screed I write about Jimmy fucking Carr. I'm done with it now, I promise.

[carolina-nightjar]

Mostly done with Carolina's lore!! I don't wanna write anymore of it though so here it is!

(For the record I'm treating Jay as a nickname for Jessica)

Tw for mentions of animal cruelty & starving

Carolina's birth parents put her up for adoption when she was little for reasons no one knows. They left her letters, one from each of them for each of her birthdays until she turned eighteen. She was adopted by her two moms and lived a pretty normal life.

When Carolina graduated high school, her parents suggested that she spend a gap year in Jorvik cause one of her moms grew up there. So she goes, and she makes sure to write letters to her parents.

She gets her horse, Grace, from the Moorlands, moves into her mom's old house in Firgrove, and she gets a job from Ydris working as an acrobat. (She's probably a little concerned about his magic but just doesn't question it) I imagine that Carolina meets the Soul Riders the way it was before the riding camp update, but she'd still probably attend the camp because she's never ridden a horse before. Anne and Lisa just wouldn't be there.

The saving Lisa quest is where everything goes downhill for my girl

On the quest where they have to sneak onto the oil rig, Carolina meets Jay for the first time.

Carolina gets to the Life Warden and everything's normal but then Sabine attacks Grace, maiming him. Lisa arrives and scares Sabine off, and she tries to heal Grace, but her magic isn't as strong as it normally is because of how long she spent trapped in Pandoria. Grace is left with a limp and can't be ridden anymore.

Carolina, in her guilt, spends her days wandering around Jorvik. On one day, in the Mirror Marshes, she comes across a pink portal.

She goes through it, but the portal closes behind her.

She spends a month there, almost starving.

Ydris and Marai save her, and Marai becomes her new soul horse.

While she's recovering physically and mentally, her powers begin to manifest. She gains the ability to give and take energy from living things (if you've read Iron Flame, it's basically the siphon signet. Carolina can just do it without touching the thing)

She also starts plotting revenge on Sabine

The saving Anne quest was triggering for her, but she manages. For the most part.

It happens the same as it normally does, but before Darko gets thrown into the void, Carolina swears that if she sees him again, she will kill him.

At Fort Maria, Carolina meets Jay again and they exchange numbers and start hanging out. She also starts seeing the rest of the Dark Riders more. Being around them leads to her being more distrusting towards the druids, and thinking about what it is they really want.

What it is she really wants.

Until Mr. Sands "offers" her a proposition. And by offer I mean he threatened her.

Spy on the druids for Dark Core, and she might get paid.

She accepted it.

Most of the time it was just her listening to the Keepers talk about their plans, but sometimes she got to do actual mission impossible type stuff. And she got away with it! Until she didn't

One of Spymaster's squirrels caught her and she was put on surprise trial the next time she met with the Keepers. Instead of facing her punishment, Carolina decides to escape. By using the Void Circle. Aka Jessica's powers. And she renounced her job as the fifth Soul Rider.

Now the Keepers are really after her.

She ends up teleporting her and Marai to where the Dark Riders are at and they both pass out. Carolina has a dream where she talks to Aideen.

This is all I've got so far :)

I might edit it at some point so none of this is concrete yet

[his-tamine]

Can we know more about Eden's trauma? I'm so into their story

Good question, anon :] tbh I've been pretty reluctant to go into too much detail about Eden's past on here, since even though he's a fictional character, the stuff that happened to him is more along the lines of "realistic fiction" - meaning that the mentioned events *can* occur in real life - and therefore could trigger real people who might've experienced anything similar.

BUT I think it should be fine, so long as I add a trigger warning. // TW for talk of: physical abuse, domestic violence, verbal abuse, death while in labor, murder, alcoholism, & a brief mention of hypothetical miscarriage. If any of the things listed trigger you, maybe don't read this one to be safe, ight? The short & sweet version is that Eden's father and stepmother are some stank bitches. and Eden's sister, Forrest's mother, & Eden's adoptive grandma are queens.

If you stuck around, here we go. (This is SUPER long, so I'm sorry ab that) Eden Ash Harmon's birth - February 5th, 2000 - was a long, painful, & ultimately fatal one for his mother, Lauren May Harmon. various complications occurred, and she ended up not even surviving long enough to get to see him draw his first breath. His father, Troy Harmon, was devastated over his wife's passing, and overwhelmed by the prospect of not only becoming a new parent, but now becoming a single parent. He had to grieve, whilst trying to raise Eden. which was even harder, because he was born prematurely and of course, smaller and weaker than normal, so he required a lot of extra care. This took a serious toll on him, and Troy began to unfortunately rely on alcohol - a reliance which only got worse over time, and developed into just alcoholism. By the time Eden was just three years old, his father had grown to resent him, and blame him for all of the struggles he faced. and by the time Eden was 4, he'd unfortunately begun expressing his resentment aloud. He'd say really nasty things like how he wished Lauren had just miscarried instead of giving her life to birth Eden, because he'd rather have his wife back than have Eden. To Eden's face. Both drunk, and sober. Making sure Eden knew exactly how much of a "burden" he was. Which, of course, was really harmful. Troy was also physically abusive toward him, doing things such as putting out cigarettes on his skin - the burn scars of which Eden still has to this day, though they're now more faint. Then, one day Troy brought home a woman called Sharon, and introduced the two to each other. It wasn't uncommon for Troy to bring women home for one-night-stands, but come to find out, Troy and Sharon had actually been dating for around three months before this introduction. Eden, at first, was honestly excited. He thought this meant his father would be happy again, and he may get a mother.

The first part seemed true for a while. Troy was much calmer than he'd previously been, but that didn't last. because Sharon soon got pregnant. Now Sharon was originally indifferent towards kids for the most part, and because of this, didn't become too close with Eden at the time, but she found herself wanting to keep the baby. The news of the pregnancy triggered Troy, and sent him into a panic. all of the memories of the day Eden was born and he lost his first wife, came flooding back. He didn't know how to handle this properly, and started to behave aggressive towards Sharon too, as he had with Eden. He hadn't physically hurt her, but he was getting close to it (think, punching walls or throwing things - aggressive hand gestures, etc.) and it soon dawned on Sharon that the home was not safe anymore.

So, she planned to leave without telling him. Eden himself still isn't sure why, but she opted to take him with her. maybe it was pity, maybe it was newfound maternal instinct due to having her own baby on the way, who knows? well, not long after her baby - & Eden's younger half sister - Beatrice Harmon, was born, while Troy was out one evening, Sharon packed what she could of their belongings - only the important things & clothing - that she could fit in her purse, & made for her mother's house, maybe 2 hours away.

Sharon's mother, Susan, was - for lack of a better term - an angel. Though they weren't blood-related, she immediately welcomed Eden as her grandson, with open arms. She stayed with them every day while Sharon was at work, and actively engaged with and played with them. Eden even had his first birthday celebration there when he turned five. This was by far the best year of his entire life at the time.

Well, of course, that also didn't last. (Here's where things take an even darker turn, so if you need to, refer back to the tw.)

Troy found them. Susan was behind the corner, fixing lunch for Eden and Bea, when he showed up, and broke in. In broad daylight. Eden completely froze at first, unable to even believe that this was happening. Troy destroyed things, and stomped all throughout the small home, calling Sharon's name. But Sharon, ironically, wasn't even home - she was at work. Susan yelled for him to leave, and grabbed a kitchen knife in order to protect the kids, then dialed 9-1-1.

Troy flew into a rage, and injured her, very badly. She was only in her mid-sixties, but she was still an older woman. She kept screaming for Eden to take his sister and run to the neighbors, since the front door was still ajar, but Eden couldn't yet hear anything. His ears were ringing, and his body was completely paralyzed with fear. Troy injured one of her legs badly enough that she couldn't get up off of the ground, and then ended up knocking her unconscious.

when Eden could finally make his body move, all he could think was not to stop Troy. Stop him from hurting Susan any further, and not to let him lay a finger on his baby sister. So, he grabbed the kitchen knife and did what he had to. The end result wasn't immediate however, and - still pumped full of adrenaline - Troy ended up injuring Eden quiet badly as well. Then, he realized how badly injured he *himself* was, panicked, and promptly took off on foot.

Eden was unable to move due to his injuries, but still semi-conscious. Susan was gravely injured, and he wasn't sure whether or not she was even still alive. Bea ended up being completely physically unharmed. Neighbors came outside, found them, and dialed 9-1-1, successfully hitting 'call' this time. All three were rushed to the hospital to be examined & treated. The hospital also contacted Sharon, and she got there as fast as she could.

At first, Sharon was just so relieved that her mother and Eden were alive, and that Bea wasn't injured. But after a day & a half, authorities found Troy. Not alive. He'd failed to get medical attention for his own injuries, obviously for fear of going to prison. When Sharon found that out, she was - surprisingly - devastated. apparently at one point, she'd gotten it in her head that they could reconcile someday in the near future, and had - stupidly - given him strong hints as to where they were all staying.

and of course, now that he was dead, all those plans went up in smoke. So, who does she blame? If you said Eden, you win! :,]

Eden, still being a kid - and a severely traumatized one, at that - of course did the same thing he did the last time he was blamed for someone's death, and believed that it really was his fault. So now, in his mind, he'd killed *both* his parents (which of course was not the case - it was not his fault at all.)

Sharon took custody of he and Beatrice, as she was pretty much all they had left. And like last time, she let her resentment fester, and turn into physical and verbal abuse. Only toward Eden though. Bea grew up witnessing this, and since her older brother was literally nothing but nice to her - and practically raised her due to Sharon's neglect of both kids - she fortunately stood up for him whenever she got the opportunity.

Susan held on as long as she could - until Eden was eleven - but eventually succumbed to her internal injuries. Infections played a role. Eden was forbidden from attending her memorial service, by Sharon, because - in her words - "She wasn't even really your grandma." She forced Bea to attend with her, and left Eden home alone that day.

Fast forward, and Eden's sixteen. Sharon demands that he start paying rent, or else she'll kick him out. Eden's not stupid, so he at first refuses, stating the obvious - that she couldn't kick out a sixteen-year-old. but she does anyway. she kicks him out, then calls the cops, and reports him as a runaway. Making him out to be an unruly teenager, who just wears her out all the time, and runs away when asked to do simple house chores such as cleaning his room (lies, lies, lies.)

She did this multiple times, and every time, the cops believed her. Eden got sick of it, and finally agreed to get a job so that he could pay rent. He went to work at a shitty local coffee shop, as a barista. There, he met Forrest! :] Yes, we finally get to some GOOD news.

At first, they didn't talk much, but after a while, Forrest noticed Eden struggling with certain things, and that whenever he asked for help, he was either ignored or insulted for "not knowing how to do his job." So, he offered to help him, since he knew his way around the place by then. That's how their interactions started. Coworkers to friends to lovers, basically.

Eden began spending every lunch with Forrest, listening to him infodump. everyone else thought Forrest's constant yapping was "annoying," but Eden was just glad to have someone who wanted to talk to him. Especially someone his age, and especially someone friendly.

By the time Eden was 17, he'd already filled Forrest in briefly about his home life, and Forrest and his mother Margaret, had made it clear to Eden that if it came down to it, he was welcome to stay with them. Sharon was constantly ranting about how she couldn't wait for the day when she was no longer legally responsible for him anymore, so Eden prepared. He made sure Bea still had a way to keep in touch with him whenever she needed, and he packed one bag of essentials, and kept it hidden until his 18th birthday.

On his 18th, he was immediately kicked out. I'm talking 2 o'clock in the morning, woken up, and told to get out and never come back. So, he did. He went to stay with Forrest & Margaret, and stayed there for 3 years. During which he remained working with Forrest at the coffee shop, and offered to pay Margaret rent, to which she laughed and told him to save his money, and he didn't need to do that.

Margaret too is an angel, fr. Anyways, at 21, he and Forrest were dating and decided to move in together. And ofc, Beatrice later ended up moving out right away at 18 because she couldn't stand her mother. And the rest is history. :]

I always say, the silliest goose has the most fucked up backstory