#which apparently doesn't mean much because they're very unreliable

[healingheartdogs]

It's so funny looking on my patient portal for my doctors and seeing "patient looks well nourished" on all my visit summaries when it is documented by my blood work that I am, in fact, very much NOT well nourished and have been prescribed multiple high dose supplements now to make up for how malnourished I actually am.

[bogkeep]

grousing about ai art stuff

every time i open twitter (my mistake) there's a new thread on how to spot ai art or ai photos by finding all the mistakes in it, and like obviously this is useful and it's good to watch out because they kEEP SHOWING UP EVERYWHERE AHHH HELL WORLD HELL WORLD, but it's also a little depressing that we're training ourselves to nitpick all kinds of details within a piece of art.

like even before the artifically generated image boom randos on twitter would reply to fully finished illustrations with the most asinine unsolicited advice possible. art's gonna be flawed sometimes! i'll draw someone in a weird pose because of vibes! i'll wing a hand! i don't fucking know what a house actually looks like!!! like yes of course the way a human artist creates flawed art is different from the way an algorithm doesn't actually know what anything looks like because it has no mind. it doesn't know shit. so it's not that it's UNRELIABLE but it's like. it's like... i've been telling myself and others every time i'm struggling to make something look Just Right that actually nobody i going to be staring as hard at my art as i am while making it. if i don't point it out people aren't likely to notice unless they are going through it with a fine toothed comb BUT NOW WE ARE DOING THAT APPARENTLY. WHICH IS ANYONE'S PEROGATIVE AND FAIR ENOUGH! PEOPLE CAN LOOK AT MY ART HOWEVER THEY WANT IT'S FINE

but it's ALSO so depressing to consider having to analyse every single piece of art you come across like that my goddddddd i just wanna enjoy it!! i wanna enjoy art!!!! i mean the main reason i finally stopped going on twitter regularly was during the NFT boom and i got so tired of having to vet every single artist i came across to make sure i wasnt retweeting nft stuff. like that really ruined my previously enjoyable experience of LOOKING AT NICE ART ON MY FEED WITHOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE.

god another thing that happened during the dark nft times was how certain art styles tended to be nfts. and i don't mean the ugly apes and stuff, like of course there's those, but there were a lot of artists who sold their souls to crypto and there was just a certain Vibe to a lot of those styles. like i got a sixth sense for it, i would see a piece of art by an unknown artists and when i checked - yep, that was a crypto guy now. and you know what!!!! i hated that!!!! i hate that it ruined entire art styles for me!! AND NOW ARTIFICIALLY GENERATED IMAGES ARE DOING THE SAME!!!!! like what tends to tip me off is less because i spotted some wonky hand or a weird flap but because the style is a popular one for the ai bros to imitate. you know what i mean right!!!!!! it's kind of how the ai photos look a bit too clean and crisp and smooth in an unsettling way. it just pings the brain a bit.

ULTIMATELY the absolute main method i have for filtering away ai images isn't so much looking for mistakes, but by checking sources. it's the same way i check that i'm not reblogging from reposting accounts Because That's A Thing I Care About Too - if there's no description or the description seems off and i don't recognise the OP, i check the original post/blog to see what's up. if the image gives me a weird vibe, i check where it comes from and who posted it. oftentimes the comments on posts with ai images will point it out - they're not always accurate and there's definitely been times where people are a little too trigger happy to accuse art of being AI... but it can be a good lead or confirm suspicions. on one hand, i don't want to do detective work while im having chill scrolling time, but on the other hand - i already had this habit for other reasons, so it's less disruptive to me than the alternative. it also helps that it's very rare for ai shit to turn up in my tumblr feed. i don't want to keep looking over my shoulder!!

(also for anyone who wants a little bit of optimism in the middle of all this, here's an episode of Better Offline podcast that outlines how it's very unlikely for generative ai to actually get much better. here's the part two also.)

[capn-twitchery]

hi this is @neathyingenue! your drawing of lt. grace and capt. twitchery was so dynamic and i would love to know more about their relationship if you'd like to share 👀

OHOHO rubs my hands together--you've activated my trap card >:3 (also thank you sm!! :D♥︎) SO-

short answer: their relationship is a complicated nightmare at best, and it changes a ton over time. they meet in weird circumstances, things stay weird for a long time, & they end up "together." what that means, i have no idea, bc i think they would die before they talked about it or said they were Actually Dating

long answer: they meet when twitch rescues a very nearly dead grace from the arctic. twitch thinks this poor guy looks very haunted, which is apparently interesting enough for them to reroute the entire ship so they have an extra couple months to hound him for secrets.

upon getting back to london, they want nothing more to do with eachother: twitch got all the secrets they could, grace wants to get far away from this weirdo, preferably as soon as possible, thanks

so they part ways, for a while. grace starts working with the constables (he thinks he can help people there. poor guy) they keep giving him the unwanted jobs: drag bodies back home, sort the paperwork, stand guard outside the cells because this new inmate is chatty and it's annoying everybody else and-oh, it's twitch. of course it is.

they get talking, since there's nothing else to do, and twitch is Very Persistent. they strike a deal: grace can use his connections to get twitch on the good side of the legal records, and in return, twitch will give him free zee trips when he needs it. twitch thinks this will be basically never, since grace has nothing going on, right? so they got the better end of this deal for sure-what do you mean he's on an unhinged revenge mission to murder a fucking master of the bazaar? oh, they have got to see this.

grace is too reluctant to zail himself, has no other contacts & doesn't know anything about the neath. twitch is his only real, consistent source, and they want to see & know everything about how it's going-- this is like the most interesting story in the world to them! so they're spending a lot of time together. a weird amount of time together, really, for two people who don't spend lots of time around any one person in particular.

and it's...kind of fun? sure, twitch is very unreliable, their weirdness is still offputting to grace, sometimes-- but less than it used to be. they're nicer than he gave them credit for, smarter, and their enthusiasm is infectious. and grace is very helpful, it turns out, and it's nice to have company in the captain's cabin, and making him smile instead of looking miserable all the time starts to feel kind of like an accomplishment, and- oh, no.

they both react to their feelings about as well as you would expect: ignore them! or in twitch's case, ask the ship's surgeon to surgically remove them (and get refused. cruel.) they both deny their feelings for a long time. it could never work anyway, right? they're far too different.

except, not really. grace later finishes nemesis, and after parting (somwhat bitterly) with twitch & a brief stint at the grand geode, he realises maybe the laws here fucking suck, actually--maybe he doesn't need to uphold them to help people. lucky for him, twitch has a hell of a rivalry with the admiralty & it's only a matter of time before they cross paths again. he deserts the admiralty in the midst of a naval battle, onto twitch's ship.

til i give either of them an ending, they stay together from that point--at least, as much as they want to. old habits die hard--twitch still likes zailing off to do weird shit, twitch is still a criminal, grace is very much not (more of a vigilante, i guess.) they still can't talk about what they are, they still clash sometimes. but they make it work! captain & (honorary) first mate.

(& twitch's crew breathe a sigh of relief. bc they've been waiting for their emotional brick wall of a captain to semi admit it for at least a year)

[prince-liest]

I have to say, I now crave the way you write unreliable narrators - where the reader doesn't know that the narrator is unreliable until its hitting them in face. Every limited narrator is unreliable (when done well) by virtue of them being a person, but its quite a treat to have a character gaslight themselves so hard they genuinely seem honest in their reasonings. Your way of getting into a characters head and viewing the world from their perspective is very apparent throughout your fics. I recently re-read your old atla and hawks-centric fics, and you have such a unique and recognizable flavor to your writing :)

I love your writing, been re-reading your stuff every so often since I first discovered you

Thank you so much! It is, firstly, an absolute delight to me that people are still dipping back and reading (rereading!!) things of mine that are a few years old now.

Secondly, I think the biggest part of writing an unreliable narrator is that, like... most people, no matter who they are or what they're doing, are generally convinced that they're doing the right thing on some level. Almost nobody is sitting there going, "I'm going to make a series of bad choices on purpose!" even if the choices are clearly awful from the outside. The way you describe my writing, where as a reader you're not quite hit in the face with what's been spiraling on until the character is - that's so lovely for me to hear, because that means I'm doing a good job convincingly writing that "I'm behaving in a way that makes sense to me" mindset!

Which is my favorite thing to do in writing, hahaha. Even in my fantroll RP days, all of my OCs were designed Like That (TM).

So I'm really glad that you're enjoying the ride! I had a lot of fun building the theme park with funhouse mirrors plastered everywhere. >:)

[elsaqueenofstress]

some djats fans are very very insufferable when it comes to the whole "unreliable narrator" aspect of the story. an unreliable narrator is a character who lacks complete credibility or accuracy in their retelling of the story, which is what you get in the book. however, it's not because Everyone Is Lying All The Time On Purpose: it's because they all have literally different perspectives on each moment. warren and graham are convinced that "the six" sounds like "the sex" because it's what they felt at the time, but billy and karen disagree. daisy and billy think that the aurora cover is gorgeous and iconic because it spotlights them, while everyone else rolls their eyes at how predictable it is. warren still believes, forty years later, that karen was hooking up with one of the roadies because graham and karen's relationship was a secret, so his stories are sometimes completely false. graham can't view karen's choice to get an abortion as hers, and emphasizes his own betrayal over the feelings she expressed to him because they hurt too much. things like that!

"unreliable narration" doesn't just mean lying all the time, and it gets a little lame to watch people (most of whom are d/b shippers) claim that's the case. the book's opening lines aren't "they could have been making this shit up!" – they're "some [interviewees] were more forthcoming than others...on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same events differ. the truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle." there were probably details that characters left out on purpose, but why would everyone, especially after having not spoken in years, have agreed to completely lie about everything? billy tells his grown, adult daughter about cheating on her mother repeatedly, about missing her birth during his addiction, about the deep attraction he felt for daisy. people are so desperate for their ship to have been physically canon that they disregard these details and claim that he was just protecting julia's feelings (again, she's like forty at this point??) or that he and daisy agreed to leave out their apparently torrid affair (which especially falls apart after tjr released the bonus pages, where camila explicitly tells daisy "don't try to sugarcoat anything on my behalf" and daisy promises to do so). it does a disservice to whatever shreds of nuance or subtlety the book had, all traces of which the show decided to throw out the window in favor of cw-level drama and clunky character arcs

anyway the show's reasoning that "this is what really happened!!!" technically doesn't even hold up bc they changed too many random details lmao. like no matter how strong whatever they were smoking during the seventies was, i don't think it was enough for them to mass hallucinate the twins and pete, collectively forget what month they played chicago stadium, and all pretend like graham and karen didn't tell them about their relationship...? loved the casting loved some of the songs loved simone's plot but that was Not a good show methinks

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi aj! Ive been rewatching gsr moments from csi Vegas and it just got me thinking about grissom and sara’s current relationships with the old members of the team. Brass is obviously there (love sara basically scolding him for not telling them about his condition in the beginning of the season) and they mention catherine often enough. There’s the fact that grissom and sara apparently are in california most of the time now, so it makes me wonder if they see nick now and then. And then there’s greg who I’ve always thought of as sara’s closest friend besides grissom. What do you think of their status now given that the show hasn’t really given us much?

hi, anon!

since the show doesn't really give us much information to go on besides the few implications that you mention, this issue is a matter of headcanon.

and i'll be honest with you: i don't really have a headcanon on this one.

the main reason why i don't is because the whole "grissom and sara ride off on a boat" ending is one that only comes about as a result the s13 divorce storyline, and the s13 divorce storyline is one i completely ignore in my own imaginings of the show, so i just haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the everyday ins-and-outs of the nautical lifestyle for grissom and sara.

i prefer to devote my brainpower to thinking up an au where the divorce never happened.

however, the other reason why i don't have a headcanon on this issue is because i don't really think the scenario lends itself to a happy outcome where "continued team contact" is concerned.

the reboot didn't actually specify that grissom and sara spend a lot of time in california—that's just where they happened to be at the time when they got called in on the hodges case.

while they may occasionally dock there, the impression i got was that they more often tend to move around, following the animals they're researching (like the jellyfish sara sends grissom to collect off the coast of panama in csi: vegas episode 01x01 "legacy").

and if it is the case that grissom and sara are truly "science nomads of the sea," then chances are they don't actually have a ton of contact with their friends.

the maximum distance for ship-to-shore calls is about 15-25 miles from shore, and cell service and wifi out at sea is often of poor quality/unreliable/prohibitively expensive, which means that unless they are close to the coast and/or in port, grissom and sara's options for making contact with their friends/family are likely fairly limited.

then, even when they are close to the coast and/or in port, logistics such as time zone differences, roaming charges, and the unpredictability of their travel schedule could further interfere with their communication with their old teammates.

it might be difficult for them to fit in more than a few facetime calls a year or an email or two every few months.

while nick lives in a coastal city (san diego) and might therefore be able to more easily meet up with grissom and sara when they sail his way, brass and presumably catherine are landlocked while living in vegas, as is greg living in chicago, so they might only very rarely get to catch up with grissom and sara in person.

personally, i don't much like the idea that the found family the team built during their 9+ years of working together completely dissolves once they all no longer are employed at the lab; however, any scenario where grissom and sara spend the majority of their time living on the open ocean seems to point toward that outcome.

hence, i just don't spend much time thinking in that direction.

i stay in my little au world, where team graveyard stays close for life, even after they start to move in different professional directions.

so.

all of the above said, if i have to bend my brain around the scenario canon presents us with, then i'm going to be stubborn about it.

and unrealistic.

i think sara—who already lost her bio family and isn't about to lose her found one, too—absolutely refuses to fall out of contact with catherine, nick, greg, and brass, seagoing lifestyle be damned.

she puts in the work and makes sure grissom does, too.

every time she and grissom dock somewhere, she's sending postcards and letters from both her and grissom by snail mail, firing off emails, making arrangements for phone calls—which she will stay up until ungodly hours to facilitate (depending on time zones).

she also arranges things so that she and grissom are in san diego no fewer than four times a year to see nick, and if she ever gets word that catherine or greg is attending a conference anywhere within 100 miles of a coastline, then she makes that place the ishmael's next port of call.

at least once a year—usually while the boat is being maintenanced—she and grissom make a trek inland. go on a "grand tour" for a couple of weeks at a time, visiting brass and catherine in vegas and greg in chicago, putting in quality "family time" while also running their "land errands" (like getting their driver's licenses and passports renewed, having their annual physicals and dental appointments, in her case completing continuing csi education certification courses, etc.).

she also will go out of her way to attend big events in her friends' lives—like when nick wins some big award from the city of san diego, she and grissom are there, front row, at the ceremony, cheering him on; and when greg graduates from his phd program, they show up to see him walk.

while grissom would perhaps be more naturally inclined to just let socialization fall by the wayside, she encourages him to make time to zoom with catherine and even—if you can believe it—keep up his correspondence with heather, and he (ultimately) is grateful that she does, because even though he tends toward reclusiveness, he does still love his people and realizes that staying in contact with them makes his life richer.

anyway.

it's not very realistic, given the actual logistics of their life, and neither is it very well thought-out, as, like i said, i don't spend a lot of time mentally inhabiting the post-s8 canon story world, but that's what i've got.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[thornfield13713]

Okay.

So, the Alvarez connection isn't quite as strong as previously thought, which might be good or bad depending on the rest of the situation. And 'the old man', whoever he is, seems significant. Maybe I've got this the wrong way around with the Hollow Ground situation - maybe she really is another, previous escapee from the Farm using some of the same genetic material.

But also - huh. Revelation becoming suddenly more interesting when Hollow Ground met her. I suspect that has something to do with Marlene's true identity and real face, and the likenesses between them. Not sure what, though.

And- okay, new hero upcoming. And Captain Blaze is apparently following up on those hints from his scrap with Revelation, that's definitely a good sign. Not sure about the rest of it, though.

It is depressing that all Marlene's efforts have boiled down to 'business as usual', though.

...I am going to go out on a limb and say that Vernon Browne knows a lot more about all of this than he's saying - the name Marlene Hepburn would ring a few warning bells for him if he knew enough to turn up at her funeral and confront her girlfriend then, and if he knows she's a Re-Gene...or possibly something about those records Ortega found that shouldn't exist...then there's got to be something interesting there.

...really not sure about the relevance of this one, but okay, Jake's okay. Though, he too appears to have questions that might be useful in future games.

So, Captain Blaze definitely has some questions. That's a good sign. And he seems determined to keep digging. Also, the Guardians appear to be a heroes-for-hire type outfit, based on that line about the payout, which- might make them unreliable in future. Definitely needs watching, that.

Okaaay, that's...vague. Interesting, but vague. What is she up to? And- wait, she was at the auction? Definitely going to want answers to this one.

Holy shit, that's who Owl married? I mean, they're neither exactly major characters, but still- did not see that coming. And I do wonder what's going on in San Francisco that they've got interested in, and whether it's going to come up in future installments.

Also - okay, they're both working with Argent. That might be a problem if the secret gets out.

Okay. Rahim is also doing his digging, but this concern about his colleagues suddenly 'changing their minds' even when it doesn't make sense, and the attacks he's having - epilepsy or similar, I'm assuming - are...ominous, to say the least.

I do hope I get to make more use of this particular alliance in future - no sense having a public official on-side if you're not going to use him.

...hm. That's ominous. Project Director - but for what Project? Locus is established as a telepath - is this the Farm? And if so-

Well, that 'prize project' is probably Marlene. That's...not going to end well. Shit.

...okay, at least Ortega still has some conflicted feelings about this. Thank you very much for the defence, but I was sort of hoping for a longer epilogue.

This is, however, probably going to be bad for the Rangers as a team. And they weren't doing great before.

Ohhhfuck.

Herald. Daniel, as it turns out. I hadn't thought- But of course it would hit hard, and he's the one person Marlene hasn't had a chance to talk to about this yet. Hasn't had a chance to say that- yes, she regrets it. She resented him then, but she was wrong, she wishes she could take it back - not the museum attack, but how she dealt with him during it.

No idea if she's going to get that chance again, but...I sort of wish I could.

Ohholyfuck.

Wasn't expecting a repeat, but- The love of her life. Damn. And the way she can't even be angry in the face of how terrified Marlene is, and how certain that this is the end. I just- I am so invested in this, you have no idea.

...or?

I was sort of expecting that to be it.

You have no idea what a temptation the 'joining the bad guys' line was, because villain girlfriends is a hell of an idea even if that's probably not what happening, but- Marlene really isn't in any state for it.

Also - holy shit, I did not see this one coming.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

There's hope for them yet!

Admittedly, Marlene is going to be hunted, and if anyone finds out what Ortega's done here, probably so will she, but-

Still. It's a hell of a nice gesture.

[wonderneverlandsystem]

RWBY VOLUME 8 CHAPTER 8 SPOILERS | TW: Talk of suicide.

——————————————————————————

First off. Whoever is in charge of the warnings on the episodes? Fuck you. And despite what I am about to say about some writing choices for this episode, Thank you Miles for acknowledging that the warning wasn't enough and saying that it should be better and that ur sorry even though you have no control over it. At the VERY LEAST, it should've gotten the same warning as the episode Penny died in, if not a full warning for suicide. SPOILERS. DO NOT MATTER. WHEN SOMETHING IS THAT TRIGGERING.

*inhales* Now. Let's talk about the writing and how fucking angry I am in regards to how they did the cat. Not only as someone who is a fan of RWBY and writing in general, but as a writer myself, and also, and I'm being serious here, probably one of the biggest fans of Lewis' original works as well as the many different interpretations people have made for them. *exhales*

Why.

The fuck.

Did y'all do that?

There are not a whole lot of times where I've been all that upset with RWBY's writing. And I was much more upset the day the episode came out because I had so much other shit going on, but I've since calmed down, and I'm still pissed about it.

First off, let's start with the fact that he is supposed to be a stand-in for the Cheshire Cat. And before anyone comes at me, yes, I know they're not all gonna be exactly like the characters they stand in for. But they should at least be close, and for character's like the Herbalist and the Red Prince, y'all got that pretty fuckin on point. AND YOU EVEN DID THAT RIGHT FOR THE CURIOUS CAT UNTIL THIS EPISODE. But like SO* FUCKING MANY PEOPLE HAVE, for some fucking reason, y'all made them a villain. And I'm tired of seeing people make their Cheshire Cat characters evil or have malicious goals.

I wouldn't be *as mad if you guys didn't make it come out of basically fucking nowhere. But you did. You guys actually made me excited with how you were portraying him, especially with making him and Jaune unreliable narrators. The Cheshire Cat at his core is supposed to be a nonsensical and Mad guide who asks a bunch of equally nonsensical and Mad questions in seek of knowledge. Which you guys did. SO WELL. He doesn't have any motive to do much of anything other than cause some mischief while simultaneously actually helping and be annoying, like a cat or a kid.

The Curious Cat was* just that. They shared a bit of their heart with the Red Prince to calm him down momentarily so they could get team RWBY out safely*. Then he asked some questions, figuring out what they were doing, what they were, and where they're going. Something of note that a lot of people seem to keep forgetting is that he didn't wanna go to the tree. He told team RWBY that when they asked him to take 'em there' because he'd been there before, "So, why would I ever want to go back?"

They had to, in Blake's own words, "Just because they don't want to go back to the tree doesn't mean we can't lure them there." He knew they were tricking him into going to the tree, but his purpose, his very soul, wanted information more than his want to not* go back to the tree. So he guided them anyway in trade. THEY WARNED TEAM RWBY TO NOT GO TALKING TO STRANGERS WITHOUT HIM BEING THERE! The moment they did, they ended up in a situation where Ruby, specifically, was in danger of losing their purpose.

If he wanted to "wear her down" so he could take over her body, like he has now done with Neo and told Ruby he wanted to do to her, why would they warn team RWBY, and why would they interrupt the vision she was having. If they had let it go on just a bit longer, she probably would've been in prime position for body snatching. And it's not like the Herbalist or the rest of team RWBY were in any position to stop them from doing so. WBY was still tiny, and the Herbalist doesn't seem like they'd be much of a fighter. And they already had all the information they "apparently needed".

But no. They stop Ruby's vision thingy and then continue with their purpose. They give a bit of heart to the Herbalist, so he's himself enough to ascend. Then he continues the rest of his job and continues to guide RWBY, helping them get back to their normal size (where they could much more easily attack him if he went after Ruby). When the group finds Ruby presumably talking to herself, he looks visibly confused and concerned, then surprised when Ruby gives up her emblem that "carries a mother's promise." No one in the group was paying attention to him in that moment.

So if he had the intentions that he now claims to have, why wouldn't he look pleased, happy, content, etc.? And you can't say "Oh well it's to not tip of the viewers." That's not how that works. Unless you wanna throw in some bullshit where he breaks the fourth wall and they know we're watching. You specifically had a shot where it showed his reaction to that, where no one was paying attention to them because y'know PEOPLE WERE BEING ATTACKED, so his reaction had to have been genuine. It doesn't make sense for it to not be.

Moving on. Team RWBY gets attacked by the Jabberwocker, and he goes to the bird boi and changes his purpose momentarily to help protect them, and once WBY ia full size, he makes sure to get Ruby out of harms way as she doesn't have a weapon or way of defending herself ("oh but he just needs her to not die so he can take her body", again. He has already had a chance to do that, a much easier one at that. He also could've taken that as a chance to do so because WBY was distracted. Then, one more jabberwockers comes, and he sends them all on their way, telling them he'll stay back with the bird boi to fight off the rest.

Now. Episode 6. The cat finds them, as well as Jaune & Juniper, and seems happy, if anything, to see Jaune. Of course, Jaune doesn't trust them and throws out accusations, which, from his perspective, seem fair to make. The cat is visibly hurt a couple of times this episode. When Jaune talks about them like he does, he is visibly hurt, and he eventually starts to talk back to Jaune in an antagonizing way yes, but most people when they get accused of shit, get defensive. Whether you did it or not. Then there's the Punderstorm, Jaune talks about his side of the story a bit. But his memory is indeed messed up, which is not his fault, but it can't be trusted, and definitely shouldn't be treated as the gospel truth.

He yet again was visibly saddened and hurt when remembering how he was tricked by Alyx in almost the same way he was by RWBY, except they didn't promise to take him with them, and this time he knew he was being tricked. I don't know about you guys, but if I had the goals he now claims to have, I wouldn't look sad when remembering what Alyx did, I'd be angry. And considering how Alyx has been described to the Ruby and Weiss, as well as how Jaune thinks of her, the cat being angry wouldn't tip them off to jack shit, they know (think) she was "selfish and cruel". When he realizes that they aren't gonna trust or listen to him over Jaune, he leaves. Thanking them for the lesson and walking their lil' cat butt away, ending the Punderstorm.

Now. Chapter 8..... He gets Neo away from Ruby and keeps her from drinking the tea and ascending. Then, they take a full 180. They climb up on her and knead some dangerous kitty biscuits, saying, "I have been trying to wear you down for so long." and that their purpose is, "... when a poor little heart is broken, I can fill it with mine."

The only thing they've done that would suggest that MAYBE* they were trying to wear down Ruby's mental health was mentioning the fact that Salem was close to winning and the lil look over the shoulder he gave? But literally, nothing else supports that fact. In fact, everything else actively goes against that, even things, as I've explained, that didn't need to happen as no one was paying attention.

And as for his purpose and him being "cursed with curiosity."? He gives bits of his heart to ppl to help get them back on the right path, or if necessary he can do that to help guide them into doing a different purpose for a time like with Hawker (bird boi). And sure, that could cause him to be bitter, trust me as someone who has had to put others before myself my entire life, I know. And that coupled with the gods leaving them in the Ever After to PRESUMABLY* go make Remnant as he was going to say before getting cut off by Little, makes sense for him to be bitter and angry. I would be, too. My problem isn't with that. It's with how it was executed and also the fact that he's supposed to be a Cheshire Cat character, and they aren't supposed to be malicious, evil, have ill-intent, etc.

There was damn near no evidence of anything he revealed in this episode. There were loads going against it even, I don't care how fucking evil or manipulative you are, there should've been something to point towards this. Even Salem was pretty damn obvious about how she felt and was treating things when Ozma was with her after being revived. It just took him too long to realize because he loved her.

Had there been more than a one-off comment and funny look, followed by MULTIPLE TIMES PROVING THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE SAYS IS HIS GOAL, I wouldn't be nearly as upset. I would never not be upset at all because, as I have stated, I am fucking tired of seeing people interpreting the Cheshire Cat as evil and making him a villain. (Alice In Madness is excluded because that made everyone different evil, and also I try to ignore its existence anyway because of the antisemitic charactures) But had you guys done it properly, I wouldn't be nearly as pissed off as I am.

Sincerely, a very tired and "distressed" fan. (Jace)

p.s. If you aren't also a writer as well as a fan of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, don't try and argue with me. I don't have the energy. (not talking like read it once or twice for class or whatever, I mean an actual proper fan)

[neonghostcat]

Checking in. 👋

It should not take me being checked on by a reader to log into to Tumblr, but when I get busy at work/with life, Tumblr becomes the first thing cut.

(Sorry about that. D: I feel particularly bad as people have been super lovely while I've been in hiatus and I'm horrified at not telling them they're lovely immediately!)

A little update on me and what I'm working on under the cut!

I actually have a (minor!) shoulder injury. I'm fine, but it's enough to put me on reduced work load, which normally would mean more writing time, but as the injury means worse sleep (+ some days where computer time is very uncomfortable), my focus is crap and it amounts to around the same in the end. More time for reading through my AO3 backlog, I guess!

Enough on that!

👻 GHOST MONTH AHEAD. 👻

And you know what that means?

My pretend-birthday awaits! Huzzah! I think I may be more excited about my pretend birthday than my real one. 😁

I'm still on track to release a chapter on August 8th! This unfortunately means I've had to set a reminder on my desktop calendar since, y'know, Thursdays are my update day, not Mondays. But it'd feel weird to update on a Monday and then skip a Thursday to wait until the Thursday next, so Mondays it is.

The story will be 4 chapters unless chapter 4 runs longer than expected and I need to split it into two parts - so that means all of Ghost Month gets a bit of LiuShen for ya!

I can't remember if this story idea sparked my thoughts on giving myself a fake birthday or if my fake birthday planning made me start working on a fic idea for it, but either way, I've been sitting on the idea for a fair while. (It's on my Tumblr WIP list as "unnamed ghost fic".)

👻 The Guardian Ghost and the Bookish Fairy 🧚‍♂️

This story has gone through about three working titles, but I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with this one.

----

Summary: LQG survives his qi deviation... in the form of a ghost. Having nothing better to do and no desire to be exorcised, he follows after SQQ and decides to haunt him for the hell of it.

It doesn't take him long to realize that not only is this not the SQQ he knew, but there is more going on. And apparently SQH is involved too? Ah! He understands now - they're immortal fairies given a grand mission to thwart a dark prophesy of the sect's collapse. Well. He can help with that. And how better than to protect the bookish fairy that's taken SQQ's place?

There are no ulterior motives. Why think such foolish things???

TL;DR: What happens if SY transmigrates a little later and the events of PIDW continue until after Ling Xi Caves?

----

You know me - I love my LQG POV, so be prepared for that. And he's an even more unreliable narrator than ever. 🙈

I have also spent far too much time researching weiqi/go just so I could write a single scene. Thankfully I realized pretty quickly that I didn't need to actually dig too deep into how the game was played to write the scene or else I'd feel even more foolish. One day I'll write a scene with weiqi/go from SY's POV so I can work in a reference to Hikaru no Go. But this day is not the day. (Even though the set-up would have been perfect for it. Alas.)

I did not do any research into Chinese ghost or fairy folklore (because I knew what I wanted for this story and knew if I researched it and something came up that contradicted what I wanted, I'd second guess myself), so I'm going to have to tag or note that I'm running with a more Western take on ghosts with the bits and pieces I've picked up over the years from Eastern folklore, especially re: "fairies". I don't want people to "Well, actually" me over it because they were expecting something different.

re: Cultivate

Still working on it! Work + injury = surprisingly more difficult to work on a long story than a short one. More moving parts to keep track of and my brain just isn't up to it.

I'm hopeful for sometime in September, but I'm not making promises. I'll know better by the time the last chapter of Ghost is posted, though.

This post is already tl;dr, so not much to say other than I'll see those of you on the 8th who drop by to read! 💖💖💖

[kyurilin]

Writing ask game: all of them bc I’m genuinely interested!

Gabby you're a menace and I mean that with all the love in my heart

notebook: I have two regular sized notebooks, and then two half sized ones where I will occasionally still write out notes for stuff. Since I switched over to using Google docs exclusively none of my notebooks get used as much anymore

pencil: I honestly love Calibri which is the fucking default font for like Microsoft word. Which is funny because I could use that for my Google docs horde but instead I'm apparently typing in arial

paper: the living room couch is honestly the best place, I can just curl up and type my atrocities to man

docs: so I'm not exactly sure what the exact longest thing I've written is because for one story I only know the page count, but my handwriting is also huge so it would likely be far shorter if it were typed. So my two contenders for longest are Truth Is Golden, the FNAF AU I never finished writing at I believe 290 pages (or close to that) and Present Mic's Totally Bullshit Life at 54k words and a printed copy of 140-ish pages. If I ever type up Truth is Golden maybe it'll be less

nano: I have not mostly because I can't make myself write daily I'm terrible at that

computer: Google Docs, gotta say it's just super nice since I can now just infodump onto an app on my phone rather than pulling out my bag of pens and a notebook and having to make sure my handwriting doesn't look substandard to me that day

genre: I'm 90% sure that now my favorite genre to write is Hurt/Comfort and that I am just as much of a sucker for reading it as I am for writing it. Hey Gabby remember when my favorite genre to write was Action/Adventure and I was terrible at it? I've really grown as a person, now I just emotionally damage my characters

tropes: Childhood Friends to Lovers, I am just absolutely weak for that even if it's not like a main part of the story

tw: I think the darkest theme is actually a part of the character building from my matching tattoos au wip where a character has a history of suicidal thoughts and an attempted suicide.

characters: every character I make no matter the universe loves the hit Pixar franchise Cars and has nothing bad to say about it, they're all Lightning McQueen's #1 fan, I need this to be known. Okay, more seriously though, I think I accidentally dump my own personality into every character a little and I don't mean to which is why I get attached to some in particular. And if they're not like a major OC in a story, their name or personality or look is from a character in something else.

wip: so just to give myself backstory for the current chapter story that I'm very slowly working on, I started a side doc that leads up to the events in that. For anyone reading crumbled rooftops, yes, there is legally a doc out there about Shouta and Hizashi that goes from chapter 298 until the start of the story that will probably never be put out because I wanted to more firmly establish what their relationship was going through since crumbled rooftops has Oboro's perspective and he's a bit of an unreliable narrator at the moment. Gabby I'm so sorry that means nothing to you

coffee: it's the same thing I drink continuously and that is diet Dr pepper at this point my blood is probably diet Dr pepper

personal: I love to slip in hints of stuff that would be fun to write by itself. My favorite part of writing has always been having this whole expanded lore in my mind and being able to incorporate tidbits into other things. I just really love to write and it's fun to share it with people even if I don't share nearly as much as I used to.

playlist: Spotify at some point is going to fucking break into my home and beg me to please chill on the character/story specific playlists I make because I usually find stuff that fits the right sound for a character and it also fits for like three story ideas. I have so many playlists I don't listen to and the mood wildly changes with each one. I have playlists for Cars OCs I have only thought about in passing. I have playlists for stories that never got started. I have a playlist for a character that still, 2 years later, only has one song on it. I cannot be stopped.

[egg-emperor]

Have you mentally prepared yourself that Eggman is going to have a new voice actor for Sonic Prime? I gotta be honest it’s going to be really weird hearing it when the show comes on.

No :'((( Mike Pollock is my favorite actor of all time and having him replaced in my favorite role of many is really sad. It was amazing how he was the only one to play Eggman in English at all for 16 years and I was already sad when that streak was broken with carrey in live action in 2020. Then I was like well at least we'll still be coming up to a 20 year milestone with him being the only one to voice animated Eggman but here we are. Of course, I'm glad he's not gone forever and we still have him for Frontiers but I'm in love with his voice as much as the character and it's still sad that it has to change at all as long as the replaced actor is still down with playing the character.

Deem Bristow and Mike Pollock had the only two voices that I feel brought something so special and unique and really helped define his English voice. Deem Bristow was a fantastic first game voice and can also be partly credited for how we eventually got Mike Pollock's Eggman, as he started as a sound alike and turned into his own thing. Since then, he's brought such great talent that they kept him this whole time for a reason and it's damn near impossible to imagine modern day animated Eggman with a new different English voice. Mike Pollock's acting for him became so unique and impressive that not only is it difficult to replicate but also difficult to capture at least the essence it gives the character in English.

The Jiminy Glick inspired peaks and valleys in his voice, the certain type of gruffness that I haven't heard anyone manage to replicate accurately which makes it all the more unique and impressive... They're things that make Mike Pollock's Eggman voice so iconic, lively, and charming and I don't want to hear that change, I'll miss it so much. :') At this time, I can only imagine other English voices sounding pretty bland or flat in comparison, or trying too hard if they do try to put emphasis on energy in it. I mean, no hate to whoever ends up voicing him and obviously I'm not going to judge before we even know and hear it but that's all I can imagine right now. Plus, I do feel that way about carrey (I know he's a live action not voice guy but I do still think his talking for jimbotnik isn't interesting at all in comparison.)

While this is sadly very negative of me, I don't really know what more to think at the moment, aside from being a bit sad and disappointed as it's very important to me. But to be fair, there's not much to go off of right now so it's a good thing to not be too positive and hopeful. I also won't be able to process it fully until we get the official cast list with the characters actually put to the names (IMDB is heavily unreliable) and then it can sink in, I guess. And I won't judge until we can hear however it turns out but I can't say I'm happy with the fact it's changing at all right now.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to bring this up since I'm the only one that remembers it lol:

He tweeted this October last year when everyone was saying the game voice cast couldn't be in the show because of the Canadian labor laws (I think that was the term?) Yes, he was being intentionally vague and it doesn't confirm or deny anything but I really want to know what this was supposed to mean because of the timing. Maybe it was just to promote and remind people that he has actually been involved with voice work for Caillou as a WildBrain production like Prime is and that's all, or he was just hinting at a willingness to be involved if possible, or maybe something else but it's intentionally vague and I'm not saying that it does or doesn't imply anything more.

But I keep wondering what he meant here whenever people bring up how it's apparently impossible for them to have gotten non Canadian actors for the cast. And I'm aware that apparently all the confirmed cast for Prime are in Canada, at least that's what my brother told me. But then it just makes me wonder how Mike Pollock was previously involved with them and why he can't be for this, if such is true. Just something to think about so I'm not the only one scratching my head at this. Like is it not actually impossible but just rather a preference for the production because it's complicated? If someone understands this law stuff and already knows the answer for how it was possible for one thing but not the other then please let me know because I'm a dummy lol