#-a different subject)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[harbek]

Get ready for a Game Changer!

I̴̫͈͖͠'̸̘̺͛ͅv̸̲̰̦͛e̵̬̪͊ ̸̧̬̤͂b̸̼̰͊͒͜e̵͇͎͐ẽ̶̟ṉ̷̯̪͗͂͒ ̵̭̑̓h̸̬̾̄ḛ̴̛̹̪̿r̸̮̊e̴̖͆̒ ̵̣̬̲̽͝t̴̳̫̔̇ḣ̴͓e̸̥͕̎ ̴̡̧͉̔̒̏w̶̲͑̀͐ĥ̶̖o̴��̙̻ļ̷̍e̵̫͇̅ ̸͍̓͂̕t̷̗̗̼̂̅i̴̟̞̍̒̈́m̵̲̠̃ͅë̶̡̳͇́͒͐!̵̹̦͌͠

Drawn in Photoshop, animated in Spine Pro. The final art piece I made for my bachelor thesis on GIF as a medium for art.

I've been researching digital art in the context of modern folk art, outside institutional or commercial art. I analysed almost 500 art GIFs across Tumblr, Artstation and GIPHY.

There's almost no academic research on art GIFs, so it was important to me to examine and document it. I also examined the optimisation of GIFs and how it relates to web sustainability.

And because the bachelor program was focused on art practice, I then created my own art GIFs, and it seemed only right that I should do it through fanart of something I've been really into lately. Thanks @samreich and the rest of Dropout for giving me some unhinged content as inspiration. Watch 'Game Changer' everyone, it's great.

[dokupine]

peach

[bebsi-cola]

disability is natural. disability is normal. a person born with a face difference is more natural than perfectly straight, white teeth. we don't have an instinctive fear of disabled people, especially visibly disabled persons. we have been trained year in year out to view disability and visible difference as scary. and to be honest the way to fix that is to just practice. look up people with face differences. there are people out there willingly promoting the visibility of people like them to help change the stigma around face differences. go to changingfaces (dot) org (dot) uk and click on the real stories page. people are reaching out, doing the work, willing to put themselves out there, sharing their stories, for better representation. for other people to start treating them like the human beings that they are, and less like a spectacle. do the bare minimum, and go look.

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[tainbocuailnge]

a character can be as perceptive and insightful and intellectually curious as you can possibly imagine the fucking second they show signs of being a little rowdy or boisterous or just generally being cheerful and physically fit they instantly get slapped with the “dumbass” stamp because the faceless masses of general fandom trends still haven’t progressed beyond the immovable jock vs nerd dichotomy i guess

[suntails]

accolade

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Out of sight, out of - wait.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[catholic-on-main]

A misconception about the Christian faith that a lot of people (including Christians!) really struggle with is that forgiveness = no consequences for your sins. That's what people think Christianity preaches, and it is a major hurdle for them. They think that if a serial killer genuinely repents, that means that Christianity says they are able to get off scot-free with their crimes, or that it means they should be let out of jail, etc.

That is not true.

There are quite a few figures in the Bible who committed acts of evil, and repented for it. And God heard them! But oftentimes, their sins caused catastrophic damage to those around them, and they had to live (and die) with what they caused. The entirety of the Old Testament is a domino-effect of this happening over and over.

If someone genuinely repents before God, the forgiveness they receive from God is a perfect forgiveness. But we live in a fallen world affected by sin. Sin has consequences. Other people are often hurt by our sins, even if we aren't aware of it.

We have to live with the consequences of our actions in this world. Part of repentance requires accepting those consequences, otherwise it's not genuine.

[sm-baby]

anyway, you guys should vote for [REDACTED FOR VOTE BIAS]

[ceilidhtransing]

If you hear Republicans speak to other Republicans, you'll hear a lot of them say that they really don't like Trump for whatever reason (many of them aren't fans of the felony convictions, his personal manner, his business dealings, his family life, or whatever else) but that they'll still be voting for him because he'll get them closer to what they ultimately want. They're pragmatic; they don't demand purity in their candidate. They recognise him as their strategic choice so they'll set aside the issues they have with him and vote as a bloc. That's what makes them effective at getting their way. That's how they win elections.

And boy I wish we had more of that attitude on the left. Imagine what we could get done.

[grison-in-space]

you know what else fucks me up about the US election? one of the things that has left me reeling in bewilderment and grief this month?

I'm a scientist, y'all.

That means that I am, like most American research scientists, a federal contractor. (Possibly employee. It's confusing, and it fucks with my taxes being a postdoctoral researcher.) I get paid because someone, in the long run ideally me, makes a really, really detailed pitch to one of several federal grant agencies that the nation would really be missing out if I couldn't follow up on these thoughts and find concrete evidence about whether or not I'm right.

Currently, my personal salary is dependent on a whole department of scientists convincing one of the largest and most powerful granting agencies that they have a program that is really good at training scientists that can think deeply about the priorities of the agency. Those priorities are defined by the guy who runs the agency, and he gets to hire whatever qualified people he wants. That guy? The Presidential Administration picks that one. That's how federal agencies get staffed: the President's administration nominates them.

All of the heads of these agencies are personally nominated by the president and their administration. They are people of enormous power whose job is to administer million-dollar grants to the scientists competing urgently for limited funds. A million dollars often doesn't go farther than a couple of years when it's intended to pay for absolutely everything to do with a particular pitch, including salaries of your trainees, all materials, travel expenses, promoting the work among other researchers, all of it—so most smart American researchers are working fervently on grants all the time.

The next director of the NIH will be a Trump appointee, if he notices and thinks to appoint one. NSF, too; that's the group that funds your ecology and your astroscience and your experimental mathematics and physics and chemistry, the stuff that doesn't have industry funding and industry priorities. USDA. DOE, that's who does a lot of the climate change mitigation and renewable energy source research, they'll just be lucky if they can do anything again because Trump nigh gutted them last time.

Right now, I am working on the very tail end of a grant's funding and I am scurrying to make sure I stay employed. So I'm thinking very closely about federal agency priorities, okay? And I'm thinking that the funding climate for science is going to get a lot fucking leaner. I'm seeing what the American people think of scientists, and about whether my job is worth doing. It's been a lean twelve years in this gig, okay? Every time the federal government gets fucked up, that impacts my job, it means that I have to hustle even harder to get grants in that let me support myself—and, if I have any trainees, their budding careers as well!—to patch over the lean times as much as we can.

So I've been reeling this week thinking about how funding agency priorities are going to change. I work on sex differences in motivation, so let me tell you, the politics reading this one for my next pitch are going to be fun. I'm working on a submission for an explicitly DEI-oriented five year grant with a cycle ending in February, so that's going to be an exercise in hoping that the agency employees at the middle levels (the ones that know how to get things done which can't be replaced immediately with yes men) can buffer the decisions of those big bosses long enough to let that program continue to exist a little while longer.

Ah, Christ, he promised Health & Human Services (which houses the NIH) to RFK, didn't he? We'll see how that pans out.

I keep seeing people calling for more governmental shutdowns on the left now, and it makes me want to scream. The government being gridlocked means the funding that researchers like me need doesn't come, okay? When the DOE can't say fucking "climate change," when the USDA hemorrhages its workers when the agency is dragged halfway across the country, when I watch a major Texan House rep stake his career on trying to destroy the NSF, I think: this is what you people think of us. I think: how little scientists are valued as public workers. Why am I working this hard again?

This is why I described voting as harm reduction. Even if two candidates are "the same" on one thing you care about, they probably aren't the same level of bad on everything. Your task is to figure out the best person to do the job. It's not about a fucking tribalist horse race. A vote is your opinion on a job interview, you fucks. We have to work with this person.

Anyway, I'm probably going to go back to shaking quietly in despair for a little longer and then pick myself up and hit the grind again. If I'm fast, I might still get the grant in this miserable climate if I run, and I might get to actually keep on what I'm trying to do, which is bring research on sex differences, neurodivergence and energy balance as informed by non-binary gender perspectives and disability theory to neuroscience.

Fuck.

[miscellaneousrenaissant]

Thinking about how Chilchuck and Laios started adventuring at around the same relative time in their lives

There are a bunch of similarities to their backstories - leaving home at a young age (14, 12), starting careers in exploring dungeons as young adults (19, 22), developing a complex about the first monster that killed them (Mimics, Living Armor), getting scammed or taken advantage of by other adventurers (succubus-hunting party, gold-peelers) - that they give me "past and future" vibes

Chilchuck is the older mentor to the less-experienced Laios. He joined Laios' party when Laios had only been exploring the dungeon for a year, and Chilchuck regularly gives advice based on his own 10 years of experience in an effort to support Laios as leader. There are several occasions of Chilchuck either teaching or wishing Laios would learn something in particular that he thinks would help with the job

Laios is a reflection of Chilchuck's past from when he was just starting out as a naive adventurer, while Chilchuck is an example of the future that Laios is striving towards as a seasoned dungeon explorer and leader

But also, they can represent missed opportunities and paths not taken for each other

An example for Chilchuck is that he isn't treated with the same respect as a tall-man because he is a half-foot. He can lead a union of half-foots, but leading a party of other races, many of whom would infantilize him, is unlikely. There are limitations to what he can do (physically and socially) compared to Laios simply because of how each were born, and it's partly why he's so hard on Laios to make him a good leader and not waste the opportunities afforded to him

Meanwhile as an example for Laios, who left his family and fiancée behind when going out on his own at 12 years old, who wasn't shocked that Chilchuck became a father at 13, and who even mentioned that some tall-men get married at 13, too...

If Laios had never left home, would he, at 13, have married someone from his childhood and also become a father of three?

[artilite]

i keep forgetting to post when i draw OOPS so here's a doodle dump !!!!

[gingerswagfreckles]

It's become extremely obvious over the past 15 months that the only reason much of the Western world ever basically agreed that the Holocaust was bad and was willing to teach about it is because for a brief period of time, Jews and gentiles in most of Europe + America had a common enemy in the Nazis. But this acknowledgement of Nazi antisemitism was only ever the same kind of acknowledgement of antisemitism that we get right now, where people are only willing to acknowledge the antisemitism of the people they already had a completely separate reason to dislike or fear. Antisemitism in this worldview is just a tool, a secondary accusation one can lodge at someone who is already for different reasons an enemy. It is never acknowledged as a form of bigotry in and of itself, that exists on its own and not as a follow up to another "more serious" form of oppression or bigotry against gentiles.

Obviously any Holocaust education we do get in Europe and the US has very much been the result efforts by Jews and our allies in a practical sense, but it is undeniable that there was a brief 70 or so year period where the white Western consciousness found it valuable (or at least politically convenient) to recognize antisemitism as wrong and the Holocaust as horrific. As true, original-brand Nazism fades, though, we see opposition to antisemitism and the Holocaust becoming less and less valuable to the white Western identity, as actual threat of Nazi occupation fades to historical memory. Newer, rebranded neo-Nazis and leftist Hamas supporters pose little to no threat to white Western gentiles. And thus, we see now not only a growing acceptance of antisemitism, but also a growing hostility towards the idea that we should study or condemn the Holocaust as anything particularly terrible. The Holocaust no longer represents a way for gentiles to additionally condemn an ideology that also threatened them, that also killed their families, that also resulted in their own countries and communities being occupied or destroyed by foreign fascist governments. It no longer represents to them an ideology that is in any way a threat to their own safety or way of life.

This is why we see such a massive rise in Holocaust denial among Gen Z, and, even more broadly than overt Holocaust denial, the rejection of the idea that the Holocaust should be particularly studied or condemned. More and more, we see people "questioning" the "propaganda" of The Jews Crying Victim All The Time, we see young people wondering why they are so cruelly forced to acknowledge on very rare occasion the suffering that the Jewish people went through in their own homes and towns. Often this is framed not only as intellectual bravery but moral bravery, as if this new generation rejecting Holocaust education is somehow fighting back against the unfair valuing of Jewish tragedy above gentile tragedy. What they don't understand, of course, and what many Jews up until now didn't understand either, is that no one ever valued the Holocaust because it WAS a uniquely horrific event in history, because it WAS the first and only industrialized genocide that gassed millions to death on a scale we can only pray the world will never see again, because it WAS only 70 years ago and is still a living part of the history of many Western countries. No. The Holocaust was only ever given the acknowledgement it was because it represented, at one time, an ideological threat that also included gentiles, though less overtly than it targeted Jews.

That ideological threat against Jews has not gone anywhere, and is in fact is seeing a new glory day dawning with the rise of fascism worldwide and the normalization/glorification of antisemitism on the left. But this new form of antisemitic hatred, be it neo-Nazism or support for Hamas, does not represent a threat to white Western gentiles, their way of life, or the integrity of their governments. And so we as we see the decoupling of the Holocaust from something that also incidentally threatens gentiles, we see standing against the Holocaust and antisemitism as a symbol of white Western identity disappearing as fast as it came.

[royalarchivist]

Bad: I don’t think people understand the effect QSMP had on some of the streamers in terms of like… The real raw mental impact, so I’m gonna set the stage for you. [...] Imagine that you were given a friend to play Minecraft with — like your best friend — BUT if this person dies, if they die in the game, you never get to talk to them again. Can you imagine what that’s like?

Bad: If you did not live through the QSMP, if you did not live through that, it almost sounds like, crazy. But I don’t think people realize how much of a joyous experience the Eggs were. They were SO awesome! They were literally so awesome to just hang out with and spend time with.

Bad: I’m not saying I regret it. To this day, I loved the experience. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Even knowing how everything went, I would still do it all over again. [...] I would still do it all over again, because — even knowing like, all the trauma and suffering and stuff like that — because it was just… It was just that fun, it was just that fun.

Earlier today during his stream, Bad shared his experience and thoughts about the Eggs and the significant emotional (and traumatic) impact they had on him and his fellow QSMP members.

This clip a very edited-down version since his commentary was ~13 minutes long, so I highly recommend checking out Bad's VOD if you have the time. (Timestamp: 47:36 - 1:00:14)

[ Full Transcript ↓ ]

———

Bad: To be fair Chat, I really think the QSMP... I don't think anyone really can relate to it, Chat. It's something that's so... I've told people this before, like– but it's hard to understand. Right? Like...

Where was I? Sorry Chat, I'm losing my train of thought. Look, let me explain Chat– here's the dealio, ok? Here's the dealio, and this is what I mean when I say like, it's important to keep this in mind, Chat. Ok? It's important to keep this in mind:

I don’t think people understand the effect that the QSMP had on like, some of the streamers, in terms of like… The real raw mental impact, so I’m gonna set the stage for you. This is the analogy I’ve given to every person who I’ve like, shared this with. Imagine you meet somebody– [He hears a strange noise] What the fudge was that? Did you hear that?

Anyway– Chip! The story I was just relaying to Chat, Chip, was this: I was sharing this story with them, I said–  I was giving them an analogy. 

Imagine Chat, for example, imagine that you were… playing Minecraft, with like– you were given a friend to play Minecraft with, Chat, like your best friend, and [unintelligible] were like, “Hey, you get to play Minecraft with this person, right? BUT if this person dies – they’re currently your best friend, Chip – but if they die in the game, you never get to talk to them again. Ever again.” Can you imagine what that’s like, Chip?

I don’t think a lot of people understand like, what that does, right? I’m not gonna say that like, it creates this situation, Chip, that like, messes with your head, but it– Chip – but it totally, totally does, Chip. It messes with your head! It literally puts you in a position where you’re second-guessing and thinking about everything, Chip! You’re thinking about EVERYTHING Chip! Ok? And that’s the problem, Chip– is you turn into a paranoid monster because of it, Chip! Like, you don’t understand Chip– I was- I was so afraid of every dirt block, I used to carry a shovel with me Chip, and I would specifically right-click dirt blocks that looked suspicious because mines, Chip– mines could not be shoveled! Like, I was crazy, Chip! But here’s the problem, Chip: that craziness is still there. I’m genuinely like–

I remember thinking Chip, that I would one day– I was like, “I’m going to move past–” here, let’s go up here, Chip. I remember thinking one day Chip, I was like, “I’m gonna move past the underground base, one of these days. You know, one of these days, I feel like I’ll be able to grow and achieve the desire to build a base that doesn’t have to be underground.” But I don’t think it’s possible now Chip, because I think… I just don’t know. I feel like the paranoia– there’s still like, residual leftover trauma from that situation, Chip.

But here’s the problem Chip: I don’t think I don’t think– I don’t think people understand it. Like, I just really don’t. But I also don’t blame them Chip, ‘cuz I don’t think it’s possible to fully understand it if you haven’t lived through it. Like, if you did not live through the QSMP… I’m talking about the QSMP, I don’t- I don’t know if that was obvious– if you did not live through that, it almost sounds like, crazy. But I don’t think people realize how much of a joyous experience like, the Eggs were. Right? I don’t think people realize it. Like, they were SO awesome! They were literally so awesome to just hang out with and spend time with, Chip. So, it’s just one of those things that–

[He’s interrupted by a loud rumble of thunder above them]

Did lightning just strike here? Is it thunderstorming out…? But anyway, Chip. That’s the food for thought.

But that’s the problem– Like, every time it rains in Minecraft, I have to like, look at the sky, and I get this weird, like, second--hand vibe because of the trauma. The trauma, Chip! The trauma is real! But that’s the point– I’m not saying I regret it. I, to this day Chip, I loved the experience. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Even knowing how everything went, I would still do it all over again. 

[He falls down] Dangit, don’t come over here Chip, ‘cuz I’m coming back up! Ok.

I would still do it all over again, because — even knowing like, all the trauma and suffering  and stuff like that — because it was just… It was just that fun, Chip, it was just that fun. I really wi– I don’t think it’s ever gonna be possible, Chip, to give people that same energy, like that same experience. You know what I mean, Chip? I don’t think it’s ever gonna be possible again. Like, EVER.

Because… because like, one: I will say on one level Chip, I will say on one level, like– it’s sort of emotionally like… It’s emotionally devastating, and I think to actually go through that– and this is where like, if I ever do end up going to a– see a therapist, if I ever do end up going to see a therapist at any point, I’ll talk it over with them and be like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Because I genuinely think on one level, like– it’s created this fear of forming attachments because of like, how things can go. You know what I mean? Like, the fear of getting attached to something and then potentially losing it. Like, it’s- it’s a genuine thing. I think people forget about that.

Like, at the end of the day, everything was RP, right? On the server. You know what I mean? Like, everything was RP, Chip. BUT at the same point, even though it was RP Chip, it was still like– there the reality of you were still playing like, with another person, and you were still getting that experience, and it felt like you were genuinely attached to someone and you didn’t want anything bad to happen to them. It was GENUINELY stressful, Chip.

But at the same point, I don’t regret it, and I don’t think it was a bad experience. I’m– 

Sometimes in life Chip, you go through stuff, and maybe you have a certain amount of like, things that like, can happen, that you’re like, “You know what, maybe this wasn’t a good thing that this happened,” but at the same point, you still aren’t necessarily upset about it, because… it’s like growing as a person, right? Here’s the thing Chip; even bad situations, Chip, can lead to an overall good outcome. Like–

Even if you’re going through something bad Chip, just because a bad thing happens doesn’t mean that only bad things have to come from that. That’s one of the things I tell people all the time, Chip, is that if you go through a bad situation, you can learn from it, and you can use your experience to help others. And you can be that– you can be, at the worst-case scenario, you can be someone for other people who are going through that same experience to lean on when they go through that.I think there’s a certain amount of comfort that comes from that; from knowing no matter how bad your situation is, you’re not the only person who’s experienced it. You know what I mean?