virtual-ground - Tumblr blog

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Normal things happening in normal 2003 Australia.

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i was looking for gifs of the animations of clippy from windows 98 and i couldn’t find any, so i made this ones! 

(part 1)

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Need you all to know this is the current on-repeat music obsession.

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Gateway 2000 (1995)

The Golden Age of Beige

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‘Enchanted Objects’ by: Hanne Zaruma

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a wikipedia poem on software entropy

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Made a little animatic, just for fun. Wanted to test adding audio and visual effects to this comic strip.

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Play the Goddamned Part

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characters recognising a doppelganger/evil twin/shapeshifting imposter because they know the original so well is such a good trope

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I'm choosing 16 and 17 for both Roy and O'Byrne, which is to say I'm choosing violence. 16. What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head? 17. What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

You want violence I'll give you violence!

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

16) What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

O'Byrne has arguments with a fake Roy in her head, that never happen. Because he perpetually surprises her with how completely disconnected he is and despite her best efforts, she cannot piss him off when she actively tries to.

So when he does snap at her it's a complete shock and she's unprepared for it - very funny. She crumbles to dust each time.

Roy I don't think is much of an internal-argument predictor, but he does it with himself. He'll argue internally over his situation, talks to himself, has a lot of mirror pep talks, or working through a problem verbally by himself. This can be an argument, made up, as he tries to tackle a problem from multiple angles especially if he's conflicted about it (which is often)

17) What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Themselves and others, both: their height,

Themselves: what they've each lost.

I'll give you a hint at what I mean by that 2nd bit:

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For the questions, how about #41?

41) What phrases, pronunciations, or mannerisms did they pick up from someone / somewhere else?

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

O'Byrne picks up things from TV and film - she spent a lot of time effectively on house arrest before she was let out to do field work, and watching shows and films let her completely unhealthily deal with the fact she lost a few years of her life.

Catchphrases, one-liners, jokes and a general cocky attitude she ripped straight from her favourite shows - mostly conspiracy theory, crime drama, and ghost hunting.

"C'mon Scully it'll be fun." (X files)

"Bastard" (American accent, too much american TV)

"Bite me." (Buffy, among other things.)

She often starts to sing the opening few lines of the "Round the Twist" theme song, when appropriate. (AUSTRALIANS KNOW)

Roy is a bit more straightforward. He doesn't reference things as much. However. He picks stuff up off the people around him.

Notably O'Byrne.

He starts copying some of her regular mannerisms. Sort of mirroring her unconsciously. The way she stands, carries herself. He starts to match her without realising.

It's fun when he starts saying "Bite me." after spending a few months with her.

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13. When do they fake a smile? How often? 31. When do they feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it? 32. If they committed one petty crime / misdemeanor, what would it be? Why? 54. What’s their instinct in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn situation? For both of them. Most of these are angst lmao. Save for the crime one, that one I just think is fun.

BOY HOWDY

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

13) When do they fake a smile? How often?

O'Byrne does this all the time. She's notorious. It's her go-to facial expression. When she first meets Roy she's very genuine, but as soon as she realises how hostile she is, she quickly stops trying to be nice. It's all sarcasm from there. Coffee shop? Real smile. Co-worker who's being a bit too nosy about how she's one of the few people who got to first hand witness a Virtual Ground Event and she was there to witness Roy jump realities?

Fake smile. Get away from me. I may bite.

Roy is a serial resting bitch face of a human. He doesn't realise this. He does not intend to look so flat most of the time. He almost never smiles especially around O'Byrne. He lives in a perpetual state of torment orbiting around her, unwillingly.

He forces a smile at the coffee shop, out of politeness. He smiles genuinely when he's in his peaceful zone (reading, alone, making a new sweater, listening to Joy Division by himself)

Despite this he's better at genuinely emotionally connecting with strangers than O'Byrne is.

31) When do they feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it?

O'Byrne - when she looks at Roy and see's what he's lost.

Roy - When he see's the way O'Byrne looks at him when she think's he doesn't notice it.

32) If they committed one petty crime / misdemeanor, what would it be? Why?

Oh I mean they actively commit crimes in the story. I'm not going to tell you what, or how bad, but it gets bad.

I WILL tell you the most common one that they both do on the regular: trespassing.

O'Byrne always instigates it, Roy follows her begrudgingly complaining the whole time.

"I'm not going to wait around for something to go wrong and people to get hurt, Roy."

"Yeah but we don't even know if there is anything weird going on in that apartment, you can't just decide you have the right to barge in!"

54) What’s their instinct in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn situation?

They both have a tendency to freeze, but O'Byrne resorts to violence a lot faster than Roy does. She'll go straight into punching or hitting whatever's in front of her with whatever solid object she can get her hands on to hit it with.

Roy tends to stumble and panic - back up in a more defensive way.

Depending on the circumstance, however, they both have the potential to just completely shut down.

What are you supposed to do when your own corpse sits up and reaches out to touch you?

How do you respond when the violent tug on your mind returns after a year of absence and you can't resist its command?

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Question 7, what would you have to yell to get their attention in a crowd

7) What would you (mun) yell in the middle of a crowd to find them? What would their best friend and/or romantic partner yell?

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

Ok so they both respond to their names, respectively. However.

It's far more interesting what they call each other when they're trying to get the others attention.

"That's not my name."

"May as well be."

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Do Roy and O'Byrne have any hobbies they do in their off time, if they have off time, that is?

4) What’s a hobby they used to have that they miss?

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

Oh Yeah they do

O'Byrne is a tinkerer and does hobby electronics projects, mostly modifying existing things and breadboard stuff. She has a small work station at her apartment, pretty cheap soldering iron and enough bits and bobs to adjust existing things for fun.

Come's in handy when technology flips out around you - during the story she starts custom modifying her own tools kind of like ghost hunting, but unlike ghosts the shit she's hunting is real, and slapping together your own geiger counter isn't as difficult as you think it is! Her knowledge is rudimentary but enough to get buy jigging together EMF readers out of shit she found at an op shop. But you already knew that.

(Thanks Supernatural, she's just a slightly less sleazy version of Dean. Slightly.)

Roy loves reading, that's at least the hobby he tells you he does, because everyone drops the subject after he start's talking about classical literature and they leave him alone.

What he really enjoys is knitting/crochet. He makes clothes mostly, but other stuff too. The tactility and peacefulness of it is soothing for him, and he likes being able to have more control over thing's in his life, especially post-reality transfer. He does not tell anyone this.

He is self conscious. It's 2003.

The story is set in Melbourne and it gets real fucking cold here by Australian standards, so while O'Byrne is in struggle city Roy's running around with the cosiest wool sweaters and scarfs.

He makes her one as a peace offering after they've dealt with each other for a few months and they start to mellow out (does not tell her he made it, he's afraid of her bullying him. She knows he made it. She gets very good at reading him after a while of working together)

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Tonight's warmup shitposts are brought to you by the Supernatural episode "Ghostfacers"

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Today's warmup drawings are once again brought to you by me realising the dialogue in Supernatural fits Roy and O'Byrne a little too well.