#topic: vulnerability

[tayfabe75]

"I'm not gonna let them make me have a meltdown. But, I think, as a songwriter you lose your edge if you find a way to protect yourself from everything they're going to say about you. You lose touch with what made you vulnerable enough to connect with people in your songwriting. And that's not something I wanna do. So it's all about walking a tightrope between not being so fragile and breakable that they can level you with one blow and being raw enough to feel it and write about it when you feel it. And it's not just a celebrity-takedown culture. It's a takedown culture. I know it when I see these kids—they're gonna get tortured socially until they find their calling in life."

November 2014: Taylor describes the importance of remaining vulnerable in the face of "takedown culture". (source)

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[nicollekidman]

there’s something about the way the scoobies allow spike to partially integrate with them in buffy’s absence but only insofar as he’s being Useful and clearly only because they understand he wouldn’t allow it to be different. he can walk amongst them because he’s strong and he made a promise but they don’t actually view him as a man (not even as human, but as someone capable of grief), and as soon as they bring back buffy, he’s gone from their minds, relegated back to the shadows and not even considered. and how that aligns with how they think of buffy….. buffy is beloved unlike spike but she’s also Useful. her strength is there again so they don’t need his, she’s buffy so she’ll take care of everything, they just have to wait. she will say thank you!

but while the scoobies are waiting for buffy to Go Back To Normal, to take up her slayer mantle and do what they need her to do….. buffy (barely conscious, barely aware of her surroundings) goes to spike. and for as much as the season dives into the Darkness in their connection. it feels very important that when she comes back, the scoobies forget about spike and Other him again, meanwhile buffy instinctively understands that spike isn’t seeing and speaking to Old Buffy(tm), he isn’t watching her every move and reaction to compare it to how she used to be, he’s just. seeing her. and understanding her. both their hands are hurt. and….. she doesn’t have to lie. she can be alone with him there.

[wardensantoineandevka]

it is extremely funny and the best that Fjord dodges talking about his viscerally upsetting and horrific dream-vision by instead offering an opening into a conversation about his viscerally upsetting and horrific childhood

[spookyspeks]

Call me old and bitter but I think maybe fighting back against the system like we all want to do should also include making real attempts (to the best of your ability) to get back the attention span that social media and online content and the streaming industry has stolen from you, and I'm saying this as someone with ADHD.

[sanjarka]

one of the weirdest things about everyone thinking everlark aren’t horny for each other is of all the ya love interests at the time peeta is one of the ones with the least angst about getting close to katniss in a time of vampires and werewolves it was always ‘she loves me but we can never touch’. peeta was ready to touch and kiss katniss whenever she wanted. he was kissing her when he could in the first games. he was making out with her in his lap, and the only angst was he thought he should die. the least angsty part of the books is how much they enjoy touching each other. it’s just so nice to see a ya novel where physical intimacy isn’t treated as the actual forbidden dilemma, just a respite

oh absolutely but now you also got me thinking about the fact that actually peeta (and everlark) really does have a lot of angst it's just not done in a typical way. now maybe you don't agree with me and that's completely fine but the way that peeta makes sense to me is that, basically, he's been searching for the proof of love his entire life. waiting for his parents to be proven wrong. waiting for a sign that life doesn't have to be lived like that. so he's very much ready to be with katniss whenever she asks only he doesn't understand that he's not really ready to be loved himself. obviously i don't think any teenager is, but considering his upbringing i don't see him being comfortable with being seen. which is exactly what being loved means.

for example if i were to transfer peeta into a modern universe i could genuinely see him as someone who jumps from relationships, giving anyone a chance to love him because he's that desperate. but what he ends up doing instead, is self sabotaging by never allowing himself to open up in a significant way because it would involve acting like a flawed not perfect human being. to return to the canon world, for as much as both katniss and haymitch put him on a pedestal, he really makes it easy for them to do that in the first place. because he reads people well and he can tell what they need he's going to prioritize acting in the right, appropriate way over being honest.

whenever he's vulnerable (especially in the first book) he's using it to save katniss. or both of them. he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve because that's just who he is. it's on purpose. it's how he rebels.

/ in many ways i see the progression of his and katniss's relationship to be the first honest relationship he has. it's not perfect, it's a process but it still very much stands out from anyone else in his life. another reason as to why the hijacking works so well for his character arc eventually is because katniss still needs him. after everything, after he was forced to be the worst possible version of himself it's still only him for her. katniss still wants him. that has to be a start of a realization that he can open up, that he can wake katniss up after he had a nightmare. and it's still going to be hard. i still think it's something that katniss has to, at times, almost force out of him. but that it gets easier over time, or maybe just more possible. that they both end up in a relationship in which they understand that you need to allow someone to see love you. that it's not really possible without that permission. /

katniss on other hand knows exactly what love is. for her love was what almost killed her and prim. and i'm not trying to romanticize asterid's response to burdock's death because her depression very likely exists outside of him, but if she hadn't loved him as much as she did, it wouldn't have been a strong enough trigger. her parents loved each other in a way that no other parents are described doing in any hg story so far and they are punished for it (every love story is in one way or another. arlo and lil are hanged; the moment snow and lucy gray's relationship starts breaking is when the world they live in forces them to survive in any way possible even if it means killing people; lenore dove eats the gumdrops). and so what i'm trying to say is that katniss understands just how much love can hurt when it is lost and she doesn't want it but peeta wants to be hurt so he can prove it exists. so the angst is very much there but it's different to how it usually goes.

anyways... thanks for the ask 🌷

[dadvans]

made the mistake of briefly getting on non-tumblr social media and holy shit lmao no wonder oliver stark bailed on this fandom, yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes

[rauferes]

Hey fanfic writer friends, heads up that the latest round of spam bots on AO3 are generating truly cruel comments. If you see a really nasty one from a Guest that has labeled themselves with a username, don't think twice about deleting the comment. Consider turning off guest comments for a bit.

(How do I know these weren't legitimate comments? The ones that happened to me were on a meta work, acting as if it was about an actual story! And if you bother to look up the usernames... one of the people whose name was stolen doesn't even seem to be an Enlgish speaker. Neither of the ones I've got have clearly interacted with this fandom before.)

[laithraihan]

Ngl, I hate the way the MP100 fandom is treating artists, especially ones who dare drawing sensitive subject matters or anything deemed "controversial" by a specific (and rather annoying imo) subset.

I guess that is why I have been not much interacting with the fandom in general lately, and I am sorry for how others in this fandom have treated you.

I live by the famous quote that's set in golden letters on the outside of the "Wiener Seccession", a famous "clubhouse" of famous artists that fought against their art being censored (by our standards nowadays their art isn't even particularly outrageous): "Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit" (I am trying to freely translate this: "Each era its art, each art its freedom")

Like, ooohhh, I don't like Hermann Nitsch's blood paintings either, but I am an adult about them existing and being exhibited. I just don't look at them. I learned that as a child. To simply not look at stuff I don't want to see.

How do these people not learn such a basic and important principle?

Anyway, all the power to you and your awesome art ❤

Thank you for the kind message... I agree with everything you said. I do think some criticism I received was valid so I don't mean to dismiss that, but to be honest I didn't really look at most backlash I received to preserve my sanity lol (more specifically the sexual graphic ones) which... I believe is the right thing to do in general, to ignore the things that make you uncomfortable. To expect that everything must Never make us uncomfortable is a poor way of thinking & can easily lead to harm. Things have also been lacking creativity lately in general, because everything outside the norm is met with hostility, so I already found the fandom a bit boring for this reason. I usually abide by the mentality that it's ok to feel any emotion, but emotion shouldn't be a tool to control other people's content. Maybe it's because I deal with crazy religious parents so I can see the parallels between them & that subset of the fanbase, the need to have full control over an environment that clashes with a narrow worldview (not to mention the hypocrisy of what they allow & don't allow...) but rambling aside, I still have a pulse so I'm okay! I'm slowly recovering from other things & building my own site has been helping me express my thoughts more freely without fear, which I'm happy about.

[tayfabe75]

"You'll find that a lot of people who journal as an adult have been doing it since they were about twelve or thirteen. People will try and do it, but it'll drop off. The people who still do it kind of don't know why they do it, it's just part of their day. They feel weird if they don't. That's The 1975 for me. That's The 1975 for all of us. If I don't do that, it feels odd. It's a bit like therapy. You go into therapy and you say, 'I feel like this and the reason I feel like this is because of that'. And then a good therapist will go, 'Are you sure you don't feel like this, and are you sure that the reason you don't feel like this is because of that?' And you go, 'Oh my god'. That happens to me with songs all the time. I think I've written something about something and then some seventeen-year-old kid is like 'Oh yeah, you know how that song is about this,' and I'm like, whoa."

February 2, 2023: In an interview with Tom Power, Matty discusses journaling and how insightful fans can be when they interpret his songs. (source)

[userautumn]

I don't think actors should be forced / manipulated / cajoled / pushed into stories they don't want to do nor do I think they should have to give an explanation as to why they don't want to do it. I have a lot to say on this subject

[crunchyspaghetti]

Ok, as previously established, I very much enjoyed Thunderbolts*. This post is in no way trying to minimize the movie or its characters.

however

if I see one more person talking about how it was so groundbreaking to have a superhero on screen where their superpowers don’t magically fix all of their problems and actually give strength to making those problems worse, I am gonna riot I fear.

While I would argue it’s not necessarily groundbreaking to superhero stories, generally. It makes me mad when people say this bc it’s not even groundbreaking to the Marvel universe. This exact concept was literally done so well in Agents of Shield (multiple times!!!!), upwards of like 9+ years ago… like… please I’m in the trenches here

[yarrowleef-babbles]

been hearing rumors that the "i'm always straight" lines may have been cut from the GN and IF that is true, I expect everyone will be super mad about that--and ngl i'd mourn the loss of it too because it has become iconic to me

But. i can't believe i'm playing devils advocate for this, BUT it is not entirely unreasonable for an adaptation of this work to decide it does not want to reference Ronan's sexuality yet......coming to terms with his sexuality is (one) part of his arc in the 2nd book. Adam Parrish being ~the 2nd secret he doesn't want to admit to himself~ , Ronan's catholic guilt homoerotic nightmares and the like, all characterize his sexuality as something he might vaguely be aware of but seriously struggles to openly admit. I don't think he even uses the word gay or any other word to describe himself in the whole series? (unless I'm forgetting something?)

So, idk, it's not unreasonable to want the (hypothetical) audience to also not be aware of it until Ronan is forced to directly grapple with his identity next book.

i think this is one of those things that has become very dear to the fandom over time, but if i look at it objectively without my feelings, i just.....i do understand why someone could conceivably decide that this off-handed bitchy "he's gay btw" joke is not of dire importance for the sanctity of the story 😭 in the 'pros don't outweigh the cons' sort of way....

[dawnandstardust]

Xue Yang about being cared for and being known

Xue Yang is picky about the things he wants people to know about him. After the Chang clan massacre he isn’t trying to pretend to be innocent, he admits it pretty proudly, but if someone were to ask ’why did you kill them?’ I don’t think he would give an honest answer, probably just something along the lines of ’because it was funny’.

Afterwards in the Yi City I think there was something comfortable for him in the fact that both people he lived with were blind and didn’t know him, he had all the freedom to be whatever he wanted to be, and it’s interesting that when telling the story to Xiao Xingchen he decided to share something so vulnerable from his past when he coudl’ve just told a fictional story. There comes the deep yearning in all of us to *shudders* be known.

To Xue Yang it was probably funny that Xiao Xingchen cared for someone like him, and only after Xiao Xingchen and that care was gone did he realize that he genuenily was enjoying it, not just as a joke. Maybe for him it was also easier to imagine that Xiao Xingchen was giving this care to his namless friend and not Xue Yang specifically, and it would be interesting to see his reaction to recieving genuine care while someone knows exactly who he is. (Which I will be doing in my fanfic.)

When his identity is finally revealed he isn’t panicking, he’s unusually calm and reasonable, saying to Xiao Xingchen that he understands that the other is angry but that they can talk about it. Like where did that emotional maturity come from? (Probably from Xiao Xingchen himself.)

But then he shares the vulnerable story from his past and expects Xiao Xingchen to continue his kind behavior and to be finally heard and understood as himself, but of course Xiao Xingchen - who is also in a very emotional state and not in a place to have a conversation about someones childhood trauma - can’t condone a massacre no matter what trauma the other one has been through. That’s what sets Xue Yang off, he has shared the most painful memories of his life and is called disgusting in return. (Just to make it clear I don’t put any blame on Xiao Xingchen in this situation.)

Because there must be some sort of rule in his head about ’people don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they get something from it’ and so he resorts to threats and manipulation. And Xiao Xingchen wasn’t a rule for Xue Yang, he was an exception.

And that’s also why I don’t think Xue Yang would be satisfied with a commandable fierce corpse Xiao Xingchen because that would be just Xue Yang caring for himself through someone and not the same Xiao Xingchen being kind to him.

[hualianisms]

something i find tragic and messed up is how XL's worst trauma and HC's worst trauma are the same event - XL being stabbed 100 times. why that was traumatic for XL is self-explanatory. for HC, witnessing that was so traumatic that it single-handedly turned him into a supreme ghost king. it was the trauma of being powerless, watching his beloved go through hell unable to do a thing to stop it.

this trauma directly parallels HC's original childhood trauma, of being powerless as a child who couldn't defend himself from his bullies and abusers. he hates himself and judges himself very harshly for being "weak" as a child, blaming himself for his own trauma. just see the way he treats e'ming (who i believe represents the emotions of his child self), the way he drew himself in his mural, and the way he treated the statue of hong hong-er in the extras, and you can guess how HC views his child self.

HC's trauma response was to spend 800 years becoming the strongest possible, extremely wealthy and powerful so that he can protect and provide for his beloved the way he never could when he was a human kid or a small ghost. he also wanted to be as strong as possible so that he never has to feel like that "weak" child again. the trauma of powerlessness truly shapes so much of HC's personality

[son-of-avraham]

As I've gotten deeper in conversion, I have increasingly imagined jewish life throughout time. And what I mean by that is...

So when I looked at the Western Wall before this (maybe a few years ago), I just saw a wall. It held no deeper meaning than that. I imagined nothing when I saw that.

But now when I look at the wall or even when I'm praying idly, I'm imagining myself in the temple when it stood there. It's bright outside - a summer day so bright, I think the temple will blind me. A soft wind surrounds me. I'm stood in the middle of a huge crowd of people, simply observing. Women pass by me in small crowds, laughing and talking. Some of these women are wrangling their small children who keep running away, laughing like it's a game. And men walk by smelling of spices. The air is light, the city around bustling with people living fulfilling, meaningful jewish life. The wall now symbolizes that jewish life, and even though it's not just about the temple when I imagine it, it means something to me.

I think that's the result of seeing myself in judaism, turning the "you" into a "we," and I feel about this what I must imagine a married couple feels.