#yeah sure i'll maintag that.

[erstwhilesparrow]

might make a longer post later about more details from the video, but have been thinking especially about how delighted i am at the ways characters are categorizing and drawing lines around things in owen's newest new life ep? careful about the cut; there's spoilers in there.

i think... in other series, or watching videos created by other ccs, if someone monologued at the audience about how they think the mechanics of the world work, i would just take that at face-value and move on? this is a thing people do. minecraft is pretty open-ended -- the things that happen in it and the mechanics players interact with can have many interpretations, and probably the person holding the camera is telling you their interpretation so we have The Intended Way To Understand The Rest Of The Video. or at the very least, those interpretations don't tend to be characterizingly wrong? i'm thinking of pixlriffs in empires season two, who posits a theory in-character about how dreams connect different worlds. i'm thinking about scott literally in his most recent new life video saying to us, "oh, that bolt of lightning must be my light snare, one of my powers." these things tell us more about the world and its mechanics, smoothing over the gap between game and interpretation, than about the people sharing those understandings.

so it's. really really fun to me that owen is playing with that? sparrow newlife is just straight up wrong about a bunch of things, but he also has a really obvious stake in maintaining the distinctions and categorizations he's had in place so far. i'm thinking particularly about how long he goes on insisting that the sculk is good and the warden is bad -- it's something he's been saying some variation on since he first became sculk, and it's also increasingly evident that it's just not true! sure, it's in the warden's mind that he find the otherside and the memories therein, but those flashes of memory are about the sculk spreading. he's been saying himself that the sculk wants to spread! and at the end of the episode, sparrow, despite insisting he's a sculk hybrid, hears scott's heartbeat and literally sniffs him out like a warden. there's not really a perfect separation between sculk and warden even on the level of sparrow's hybrid abilities, but he's so lonely and scared, and he's been so convinced for so long that being a hybrid is the best or only way to be wanted and liked -- he needs the sculk to be benevolent, to have welcomed him into the fold because it wants him just for being him. thinking about his final monologue: he's so deeply hurt that, specifically, the sculk used him! he hasn't been upset about being sculk; he's upset that it didn't ultimately mean anything!

and speaking of self-interested drawing of lines, i'm also delighted that scott in his perspective of this episode's encounter does this thing too? as he runs away from sparrow, he mutters to himself something like, "i don't think [sculk sparrow] is the sparrow i used to know." it's... not completely wild to interpret that as scott telling us the viewers that sculk sparrow is genuinely A Different Entity and that this is something that is now just true about the world, but i like thinking of it as scott, the lightmancer, the character, terrified (that heartbeat sparrow hears is going so fast??) and frantically trying to reconcile the image of sparrow covered in sculk and pulling a knife on him with the pilot he befriended all that time ago. it complicates sparrow in interesting ways! it complicates scott in interesting ways! there's a mismatch, on both sides of this falling out, between who each person thinks the other is, and who that other person actually is, and scott saying this gives us a glimpse of another angle to that mismatch. the sculk is deeply a part of sparrow, yes, and is affecting him, but that well of incredible insecurity in sparrow has been here this whole time. he's always had that tendency to curiosity-cruelty and he's always been holding onto the belief that being a hybrid would make him worth something. this whole encounter is more interesting to me if Yeah, It Is In Fact The Same Guy In There. struggling against something terrible, for sure, but still the same guy! sparrow did that. he burned down those structures. he pointed a crossbow at that villager. he, hurting in a million different ways but still doing it, jumped into scott's head and killed him.

[royal-songbird]

youknow what i'll share these here too. trying to figure out a loop design for my fic two sides of the same coin while i work on chapter 4 :D !!

it is. a bit of a struggle to get them Loop features while still looking like siffrin . but i thinkk ive done a fairly good job? idk i'll probably mess around with it more later

[quaranmine]

mumbo fans. is there anything specific yall with yall saw more often with his character in fanfiction? themes? traumas? specific backstories? stuff he's done in videos that never gets addressed or should be addressed more? does not have to be angst

[leavingautumn13]

steven stoned

[thegreatyin]

caeru patch notes:

accidentally went missing for a month

it's long hair swag time

[possessable]

captain underpants villain-of-the-week-sona

you see my evil backstory is that i went to a talent show to do my Cool New Comedy Routine featuring me simultaneously puppeterring a marionette with one hand and voicing a ventriloquist puppet on the other while wearing my trusty Possession Hat for good luck , but i Fucked Up the performance and everyone booed me offstage so i Ran Away Dejected in the rain still trying to practice my routine to see where i went wrong and i got so distracted that i walked directly into a manhole and fell into a giant vat of radioactive waste that was there for some reason and now i'm The Vengeful John Posseasesion

[cemetery-irises]

ANDREW WATCH OU-

[gilfodile]

do you guys think odile has a dumptruck ass

[random-autie-fangirl]

Sorry, for giving geno run Charisk romantic subtext, it will happen again...

The jokes you can make calling them "LOVEsick" or "LOVEstruck"

The codependency that comes when you've killed literally everyone else you could have had a connection with. (...It also means there's more time for the two to be alone together)

"we'll be together forever, won't we?"

...and they were partners (oh my god they were partners)

Also you know the trope of Frisk/Chara taking Papyrus's scarf, well here? it's Chara who picks it up but specifically tells Frisk that it's a gift for them, a gift for their beloved partner for doing so well so far...I think they might do the same with Asgore's cape or Sans's hoodie

I also also like the idea that the Sans fight takes so long that they have to go back the inn (or Asgore's house) to stay the night (almost definitely Frisk's idea, Chara's always like surely you can continue a little longer despite not being the one actually fighting), or breaking into another rando's house to get an actual proper meal

[railway-lands]

Ronan Lynch is not my favourite but sometimes I understand just what he felt like (esp in cdth / td3 as a whole) because I am sitting in a classroom and time is dragging on and I feel like I'm full of potential energy ready to explode when there's sunshine outside and wind and trees and I think I need to see the ocean again. and my form of dreaming and creation comes in art and I want to be home and drawing and painting and quiet. you are made of dreams and this world is not for you and I understand why he felt this way

[astralfandoms]

Your fic was so good I got angry I couldn’t leave multiple kudos it’s so cute!!!

Just. Override and chip learning to cohabitate and get to know each other for real this time without any interference from the program put into them. Cathal’s behavior and intelligence actually being a main part of the story!!! Fluctuating empathy realness!!!

Also love bomb’s existence was peak I liked it. PLUS THE CANON USE OF NEOS THANK YOU THANK YOU IT WAS A JOY TO READ

thank you!!!

i haven't read too many stories with chip (we are extremely picky about characterization) but the ones that we've read always treat the override as an obstacle at best and something that needs to be destroyed at worse so we decided to throw our hat in the ring as a system ourselves and write them learning to learn to cohabitate

honestly as a cathal fan it's SO frustrating when people just narrow him down to "soft boy who can do no wrong" or "fat boy who only enjoys eating" so we were like "no he's smart we KNOW he's smart from his dialogue!! he just doesn't fucking use it!!"

also we have fluctuating empathy so projecting that onto characters for the win <3

honestly i love love bomb and i want to write a story talking about them and mint chip (partner's oc) at some point because *holds them up* we think their dynamic is neat

also yeah we use neos so we always give the characters we write neos, unless there is like a character reason why (ex. prester exclusively using he/him because of personal reasons)

also adding neos always helps us write better because personally our brain gets too confused if we have too many of the same pronoun used

honestly this is making me very hyped to post the next fic we're working on, which doesn't focus on chip or cathal but i think you might find fun (hint: it takes place in the brrgh)

thanks again for the sweet comments!!

[residentialsinyomakai]

Say csndy and ronnie have you seen them yet. Ooo but theyre so spaced oht. B-b-b-bennie and the jets

[sp1resong]

my one hope for silksong is that it releases on the day someone important dies

[tea-of-destiny]

26. let's stick Clive and Descole on an elevator

Hi sorry this is so late the issue is I'm a terrible person

26. What [Clive] would do if stuck in an elevator with [Descole]

My initial thought was that Clive would be disinclined to take Descole seriously about anything because of the surplus of theatrics. Which is not to say that Clive isn't full of drama himself--I just feel like he's kind of Like That in his manner and really prefers to get straight to the point of action, whereas the Descole persona involves more deliberate over-acting in the part of the villain.

So, on the other hand, I guess Descole would think Clive is just some sassy know-it-all kid getting in the way and also not want to take him seriously. They might be too busy turning their noses up at each other to actually think if there's some way they can work together to resolve the matter of the elevator being stuck.

Though, I do also think if they were going to be stuck for a long time and they could get past their egos, there is a small chance that they would get to talking about their traumatic pasts and villainous ambitions. Then maybe they would develop some sort of sympathetic respect for one another.

But I really do think the chance of that is small. Like, they would more likely just be way more pissed off by the circumstances after being around the other person than if they were just stuck on the elevator alone.

[spectreofthevalley]

an inexplicable sentence that will make any psych fan burst into tears: "since i met you, i've been thinking about getting a car"