#< again. dunno who has this blocked in 2024

[miiversian]

them launching the Death Note Social Deduction (amogus) video game on L's death anniversary is the funniest shit ever. we will be there

[celerydays]

Hi! I have been following you for some time and I notice you draw more and more Sebastian and Ominis doing stuff that makes me... uncomfortable.....

Sebastian and Ominis are best friends, why people are obsessed with drawing them into weird gay stuff? Seriously.... Why can't be friends.... without all Sebinis... Just stop it...

Normally I would delete messages or simply ignore the things that make me feel uncomfortable–

But, you're on anon and this is my ask inbox, so I can only assume you want an actual, public response. So alright. Fine.

Like I said: normally I would just remove odd, uncomfortable, or even outright rude messages without making a whole thing of it. I curate my own online experience and I try my best to live by that rule.

However, I've now gotten multiple unsolicited DMs over the course of a couple of months expressing the exact same sentiment (and nearly word-for-word as this ask, so I highly suspect I already know who you are). I have duly ignored or glossed over them hoping that the person/people would take the hint to simply stop engaging with the same message over and over again. But an anon ask is my last straw, I guess.

So if you are the same person as in my DMs, I'm finally giving you a response (and if you're not the same person – which I highly doubt – then I'm speaking to both of you).

Firstly, I want to say that I am sorry that your worldview is so limited that this is your stance and feelings on gay/queer ship content for Sebastian and Ominis.

Next, I ask that you please:

Don't make your homophobia anyone else's issue but your own. Don't come into DMs/ask inboxes/comments to make your discomfort with the content I create my problem. I don't know what you hoped to accomplish by sending this message but it's unlikely that you'll find the same feelings or sympathy from the person who is actively creating queer/sebinis content.

Curate your own online experience. Once again, do not make your content consumption anyone else's problem but your own. The "unfollow" button is there. Tumblr has a tag filtering system and I try to tag my art and content as accurately as possible. If you do not like something/it makes you uncomfortable, then do not continue to consume it. And if you still decide to stick around for whatever reason, then please keep your thoughts/opinions on this matter to yourself because I can promise that I don't actually care why you would continue to be here and looking at my art if it makes you unhappy.

Widen your worldview and try to reframe your perspective. Consider that Sebastian x Ominis is just as canon as Sebastian x f!MC or Ominis x f!MC. As much as we like to ship our various MCs with the canon characters, MC never actually amounts to canonically being confirmed as anything but being just friends with everyone. Using the "they are just best friends" / "why can't they just be portrayed only as friends" could literally be applied to just about any other non-canon/non-confirmed ship between friends regardless of gender. If even one of them, Ominis or Sebastian, was portrayed as cis female in canon, I would suspect that you would better "understand" why a ship between these two "friends" may exist. Then also consider a cis male MC; it's possible you may suddenly reframe all the interactions between Ominis x m!MC or Sebastian x m!MC in your head to be "totally platonic/friendly". Your issue is certainly not with their canon relationship vs. fandom portrayal (but I think we both know that).

Educate yourself. Go outside and meet and talk to people, I dunno. It is 2024 my dude. I don't even know how you're on Tumblr – the most queer-friendly social media site – with those kind of narrowed views and stigma.

I would like to finish by saying: I don't wish you the best. What I do wish is for you to learn, grow, and be better than this.

And also please stop sending me messages of this nature, because the next ask or DM I get like this, we're moving on to blocking at this point. And if your purpose was to get me to stop, I can tell you that these messages have only fueled the explicit sebinis smut maker in me. 😤

[baronaliswritingcorner]

Tales of Symphonia Stray Thoughts #11: Meltokio Sewer/Sybak Again/Gaoracchia Forest

-Zelos: ..."Well, in the end, we're of the same lot, really.

Genis: What do you mean?

Zelos: No one wanted us to be born."

There's so much to be said here. Despite having a hand in every faction, Zelos is clearly apathetic in whoever's the winning side so long as they serve his interests -- enough to even swallow his own prejudices. Cynicism born from four millennia-long theocracies will do that to you.

-Those knights at the gate are real bros.

-“I used these to sneak back home.”

...hmm, but Meltokio's a gated community. Where was he sneaking back from? I know we all use our headcanons to imaigne towns and inns populated across the landscape, but "sex clubs littered across Tethe'alla" is territory I'd rather not traverse.

-Colette stop casting judgement on those snakes. they're snakes. save that tp.

Also listen to those low-quality hissing effects HISSISHSISHSISSHSISHISS

-“…I guess so.” Isn’t a very Presea line.

-“Now I can do this and that without anyone finding out it’s me…”

Sexual harassment! Also another one of those weird vague, low-context lines they don't bother cleaning up for silent dialogue.

-man it sure is convenient how those spider webs keep popping up just in time to help solve the block puzzle huh gang

-sneaking into the mouse holes while you're tiny is a clever gimmick but uh

who's stuffing these weapons into tiny bags and shoving them into mouse holes

-That shot with the group's feet is good. Tales of Symphonia is hardly known for its chorography, but there's some good shots now and then.

-Any digs at Zelloyd aside, Zelos’s queer-coding is pretty, well, evident. You got the pink outfit, Masaya Onosaka's flamboyant performance in the JP version, annnnnd him randomly hugging Lloyd at random intervals (As seen here.)

Combined with all the women hungry for his status and good looks, and you got a classic recipe for repressed homosexuality. Not exactly a wonder that's Symphonia's most popular boy's love pairing.

-Regal’s theme is gooooooooood. Listen to that sax. Damn!

-Love how nonchalant Sebastian is about everything -- guy just doesn't give a fuq his master's wanted. Almost like that's not the first time. (Hmm...)

I channeled this quality for my Colloyd Week 2024 fic to fun results.

-Speaking of queer-coding, “bud” is good localization for “hunny.”

-"You’re pr-pr-pretty." is peak relatable. Poor Genis!

Well, then again, I guess most of us haven't tried to put the moves on victims of Exsphere parasitism.

-This is where the game does this weird habit of pointless gags/scenes with Colette, although her crickking her neck in her sleep's pretty funny.

-Man-made summon spirits…geez don’t tell me they ended with up eldritch FMA abominations lol. "Shee...na..."

-Geez, the half-elves're stuck down there too. There’s a door in the side of the lobby – at least they have beds there, right? Right? Racist bastards.

-“I thought Kuchinawa had talked to you about it, but I guess he didn’t.”

lol don’t tell me he tried to steal the freakin' EC

-Okay wait did he lock the gate at the bridge too lol that’s like the pettiest plan ever. “Yeah this’ll stop them!”

-“Are those decoration things Exspheres?”

how do these things even work. Are they like containers or something. namco pls

-Raine says the EC was a land vehicle but I dunno how that could be anything but a boat. Sheena and Zelos complain about it too but, I dunno, it looks like

-So do wing packs work like hoipoi capsules in Dragon Ball? At any rate, love the Sylvarant teen trio losing their minds over it. Such child-like innocence.

-I've mentioned before how the HD ports remove ellipses, but Presea's "...Professor?" here has the "professor" removed as opposed to said ellipses. Weird.

-The EC music is so purty. Trying to remember why I’d always get stuck here though since the port’s straight ahead LOL

-So you know those optional cutscenes where Kratos's travelling around Tethe'alla to find ingredients for the Eternal Ring? I know I've seen the Ozette one numerous times before, but while the script/descriptions for the others sound familiar, I'm not sure I ever watched them in-game? Hmm.

Anyway, uh, interesting they just had a broken machine from the Ancient War lying around the academy.

-“It seems monsters existed in the prehistoric era too”

yo then why’d you imply cruxis made them

The guy’s second line here references criminals – I could’ve found out more if I talked to him sooner. I'm dying for some lore here, man!

-“Was the warrant put out for you because you were using strange chemicals?”

what

-“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m talking about rune bottles.”

what

-“It’s not a mistake for humans, who are unable to use magic, to pursue magitechnology.”

This guy repeating history aside, they never explicitly mention magic works in the main story, do they? As in, the whole "Kratos and Zelos can only use magic thanks to Aionis" deal. You'd thiiiiiiiiiiiink that'd catch attention sooner.

“If we capture some of the monsters that have reappeared and force them to continuously use magic, we may be able to confirm the effects of pushing the limits of magic-usage”

lady

chill

-Zelos: "Hello, hunny."

Girl: “Hehe, here you go.” GIVES ME EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS.

...y'know, as fun as this gag is, I wonder if it's aged well, lol.

-The Gaoracchia Forest opens with...Colette apologizing for being too cheery. Um, okay.

-“Zelos, you are in the way of the pope.”

“Heh, I’ve known that since I was a kid.”

Hmm, how so? I demand to know the history here.

-THE BOXER IRIIIIIIIS

I could discuss Tales of Symphonia's enemy variety, but I know some of you are curious about this particular baddie following my Colloyd Week fic -- as it happens, I never had any particular affinity for them until recently when @frayed-symphony's illustration of all the Gaoracchia Forest monsters was reposted before Colloyd Week.

Somehow, my eyes fell upon the Boxer Iris with its big weepy eyeball and bulbous boppers and I just went, "...you know, that's a really fun enemy design. I gotta use that critter somehow." How that morphed into "non-verbal mugger", I dunno, but it became one of my favorite details. Now I feel kinda bad slicing it up.

Anyway, she's now living happily with Fred in one of those thorn bushes, I'm sure. They'll be back.

-Ugh I swear shining the light on those bushes drives me crazy. Y'all know what I'm talking about? why you gotta come at them from different direction

-Colette’s one-armed strength…is that how angelic senses work? Housework must be a breeze for her -- imagine her just lifting furniture around. There's a fic here!

-Ya’ll, have I ever mentioned how much I love the Recover/Resurrection sound. So heavenly. Mmm.

...Oh yeah, I didn't discuss any of the Presea and Regal stuff, huh? We'll get to that next time. Lots of ground to cover.

[talltoontales]

Don't Tapping the Glass!

Prompt: ANGER

Prompt by: Me

Started Writing: 05/31/2024

[WARNING: Heavy Feelings]

|| || || || || || || || || ||

Another one of those days.

I pull into the driveway after another long day at my minimum-wage job. Stuff left unfinished, customers & co-workers left pissed, and so many more problems left to solve.

“Put it behind you.” “Leave work at work.”

If I could, I would have by now, but…I dunno. I’m just not built like that. I pull out my phone and open up the manager's group chat. Where I spend the next thirty minutes texting, reliving the horribly eventful day in several large text blocks. Making sure the opening crew has a chance for a better morning. I look back on my day with a microscope to make sure I didn’t overlook any missed task, irate customer, or time-consuming task. Surprise! Surprise! This doesn’t make me feel any better.

You’d think after I’d send the text it would be over, heh. Nope, now I have to look at tomorrow and plan for all the problems that it’ll bring. I end up just slumped in my car, going through all of the worst possible futures and how to prevent them.

“Why do you work so hard for a terrible job?” “They don’t deserve real estate in your head.”

On my better days, I’d joke, saying something like, “I gotta switch, not a dial. It’s either one hundred percent or zero.” But I haven’t had too many “better” days for a while now. In all honesty, when I go to work, I go to work, I feel bad getting paid to just stand around and do nothing, even if I barely get paid. Plus, my associates deserve at least one good boss or one who tries to be good. I finally drag myself out of my car and make my way to the front door.

-Doctor’s appointments, car payments, school, family, friends (or lack thereof), groceries-

It’s amazing how, in the span of just under a minute, the human mind can speed-run through all of my problems, worries, and frustrations.

I get to the dimly lit front door, and I just stare at it.

-Laundry, cooking, dishes, self-care, all those shows I wanted to watch, reading, writing, having a proper sleep schedule-

Just more problems that other people don’t see as problems. I go inside, hang up my keys, grab another canned meal, and eat while watching a video on my phone—until I get a call from my mom.

Give her credit, she knows her son. Always calling just to make sure I’m ok, and like always, I lie and say I’m fine. She knows I’m lying, but what can she do? She talks about her day, and my brain does its job.

-She’s overworking herself, family problems, dad in his own world…again. I should spend more time with them-

The call never lasts too long unless I make it, and I never do. I can’t, I have to be back at work soon.

Teeth brushed, face washed, don’t smell, time for…lying awake in silence and being left alone with my thoughts.

// // // // // // // // // //

I don’t know, or I can’t really remember the last time I was happy. Like I said, I had better days, and I’ll probably have better days in the future, but I want to be happy. I don’t want to feel like I have to survive the next day, and I don’t want to see just all the problems I can't fix. I think back through my life, trying to find where I went wrong.

Maybe it wasn’t my fault, maybe I could have fixed it, had a better life, a life that would have made me happy. A life where I could deal with my problems like a functioning adult. A life where I don’t feel alone even in a room full of people who love me and want me to succeed.

But I know there’s nothing I can do now, just like there was nothing I could have done then. All I’m doing is fixing problems that were never meant to be fixed. Then why am I doing it? Why do I keep going through life, past, present, and future, looking for problems? Why do I keep doing this to myself?

\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\

For the past few years, anytime I get angry, and I mean “nearing the breaking point,” angry, I have what I can only describe as a waking dream.

I’m walking down concrete steps into a cold, dark, basement-type room. Once I reach the bottom, a light turns on revealing a glass wall splitting the room in half. On the other side of the wall, is dim light. The other side of the room is covered in shredded paper with writing on it, the walls have deep scratches in them, and the glass is covered in smudges as if someone was wiping their hands against it.

There’s no one on the other side of the glass, no doors or windows to enter or escape from, just me. I look along the glass, seeing cracks in the wall where it meets the glass. I put a hand on the glass, it feels hot. Not enough to be painful but far from comfortable. I look closer at the paper on the ground, and some of it looks scrunched up like it was covered in water at some point. Both lights flicker off for a second. Once they’re back on, the smudges on the glass move, now looking like someone was dragging their hand towards me.

It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s behind the glass or what IT wants. It doesn’t care whose fault it is or why I’m here, it just wants to be free to do its job. But it knows I won’t let it. it knows that I fear what it could become if I let it out. I felt the glass push against my hand as if pressure was building on the other side, but it doesn’t phase me. As I walk away, I hear frantic thumping as it wails on the glass. Once, I get to the stairs I turn around for one last look, and scratched into the walls hundreds of times over is the same word:

!!!YELL!!!

It’s not a threat or an order. It’s a plea. It took me years and one mental breakdown to understand what I’ve done and what I still do to this day. Maybe I should give myself more credit. Maybe it would be okay if only for a while. Maybe it was always my fault I felt this way. But then, what would happen to me if I let it out? Could I forgive myself for what I’ve done?

...

I walk up the stairs. The banging continues but fades as I leave, only the faint sound of crying can be heard as I reach the final steps. At the end of all of that, I wake up. I don’t feel better, I just feel numb, but it’s better than walking around angry.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hey... So, peek behind the curtain time. If you haven't guessed, I'm not in the best place emotionally. If it helps, I'm not as bad as I used to be. So, progress! I've never felt in control of my life, and what little I do have control over never feels like it matters. Some days I just feel like I'm just floating through life, never making an impact on anyone or anything. Does wonders for my self-worth. And before anyone says anything, I know packing that stuff down is not even slightly healthy for me, but I've just never felt like I was in a safe enough space to unpack any of it. But I wanted to try anyway. so I wrote this. Didn't feel great putting my emotional baggage out on the curb for anyone to look at, but...I'm just tired of all of this just being in my head.

Aaaaaaaaanyway, Thanks for reading, and I hope you...enjoyed the story. If you have any comments, critiques, or criticisms, please don't be afraid to let me hear 'em (as long as they're constructive). Also, if you have some spare time, check out my blog for more stories like the one above. Stay safe, drink plenty of water, and, now more than ever, be kind to yourself and others. We all could use more kindness in the world. See you next time.

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony's Stupid Daily Blog (665): Thu 11th Jan 2024

Up for another surfing lesson this morning. Before we headed out into the water one of the other surfers offered to take a picture of me with the board then send it to me via Bluetooth which I was happy about because I wanted a picture but always feel awkward asking people for stuff like that. They say the camera adds ten pounds but the giant rubber wetsuit I was wearing physically weighs ten pounds so that's why I look about two stones heavier than I actually look in the photograph. It also didn't help that this surfing school is one of about five on this particular section of beach and we were constantly having to spread out so that we wouldn't crash into each other which kept eating into the time that was already being eaten into by having to walk back out into the water with giant waves crashing on top of us. I think this summer I’ll book private lessons so I don’t have to risk crashing into some other cunt. The South Shields surf school hires out equipment so I’ll just go down there and learn how to surf by trial and error. Shinsuke Nakamura has been an avid surfer for twenty years he says that he never took lessons he just learned by wiping out again and again and again until eventually he managed to stay up on the board. When I'd gotten changed I assumed the guy who'd brought me here in the van was going to take me back but he said he needed to go to pick other surfers up so he gave me back twenty Euros from the forty I'd paid him for the lesson and told me to just get a taxi. If this is what he normally has to do then I can't imaging how this school is managing to stay open. Unless he's a millionaire or something and he just teaches people as a hobby. Or maybe the surf school is a front for the famous Gran Canarian Mafia. Once I got back I spent a lovely afternoon working on my tan by the pool and reading more of Mr Mercedes. I should've just gone to the beach and tanned there because the way this hotel is situated there's an approximate four hour block where the sun comes up from behind the hotel and then disappears behind the left side of it. Later this evening the hotel was putting on a rock music-themed interactive quiz and while I normally despise taking part in fun activities with other people I was still wide awake and had nowhere else to go so I went downstairs and gave it a watch. There were two beautiful crew members and one of them who looked a bit like Helen Flannigan asked me if I'd like to by a ticket for the raffle and I decided to give it a go and I only went and fucking won it (though I think I was one of about twelve to actually buy a damn ticket). I won and got called up onto the stage by "Helena Flannigano" but the prize was a bottle of champagne so I asked if there was anyone in the audience who wanted it and a couple with a small baby immediately put their hands up so I gave it away to them and got a high five from both of them. Next up was the rock quiz where the hosts gave us clues to the identity of a rock star and if we knew the answer we had to run up to a chair they'd placed in front of the stage and say it into the mic (Dunno why they couldn't just give us some cards to stick in the air if we knew it and then bring the mic over to us the lazy fuckers). I knew a few of the answers but didn't want to get involved but when no-one got up after the host's clue that the performer in question's real name was William Bruce Bailey I got up to give the answer Axl Rose. Then later on when he said that the next rockstar was born in Melborne, Florida, well I really shouldn't be getting a portrait of Jim Morrison tattooed on me if I cant even be bothered to give his name as the answer to a fucking quiz now should I? I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. I'm normally too self concious to participate in stuff like this. I always have been shy about doing stuff publically but now with the rise of mobile phones with cameras I'm even more nervous about being filmed doing something stupid and then having it put online for all to gawk at but tonight was one of my rare nights off from paranoia.