#...kinda?This is highly OUT of the context

[ryemackerel]

Me infodumping about my headcanons of musical themes for the Eddsworld gang, specifically the ships!!

Get ready for me to go absolutely silly over TomMatt’s music because AGAHHAHhh I love them so much.

For context! This is based on my TomMatt Spotify playlist @starrixle helped out with!

Pictured above: Two gay guys, who are very stupid silly, take a selfie together, circa 2017. Original post!

First things first: This goes for all of my character playlists, but I always go by a certain genre, mood, and/or instrument I associate with each of them!

For example: I see Edd with a lot of songs from the mid to late-20th century! He loves artists such as The Smiths, Tears For Fears, and Beach Boys. Outside of that, he even loves a lot of Indie genres, like Mac DeMarco and Vacations. I generally describe his music taste to be very calm and easygoing like his personality, and a lot of guitar or keyboard songs, since those are the instruments I generally see him playing.

In this case, for Tom and Matt as individuals:

Matt’s songs are very lightweight, romantic, and daydreamy. A sort of echoey, floating feeling amidst the clouds. He’s the kind of guy who expresses his love upfront to the people he adores and cares about, and a good amount of his playlist has songs with the main theme being love and romance. Some of his songs can be rougher and louder, reflecting more of his love for rock when he was a teenager, but as he got older, he’s generally more lighthearted. I associate a lot of his songs with guitar since he’s the guitarist for The Creatures, and the guitar fit his personality a lot to me. :-] He has a good amount of Soul and R&B. His playlist has artists including Thee Sacred Souls, Common Saints, Steve Lacy, Ginger Root, Frank Ocean, and TV Girl.

Tom’s songs are generally heavier, rougher, louder, and harsher, with a lot of metal, rock, and grunge genres, though with the occasional ska, which shows more of his sillier side, and hip-hop and rap. Tom is usually very concealed and closed off when it comes to expressing his true emotions, but compared to his playlist, his music is very loud and outspoken; either it’s a weighed down feeling in your shoulders, or calmer and more relaxed, yet rough. I highly associate Tom with the bass (also a bassist for Creatures), and there are a good amount of bass-heavy songs in his playlist. I associate him with artists like Deftones, Whirr, Alice In Chains, Type O Negative, SOAD, ATCQ, MF DOOM, and Radiohead. (THANK YOU STAR for introducing me to Deftones and Whirr LOL)

Tom and Matt are almost opposites of each other, with Matt being more upfront and lighter, and Tom being concealed and heavier. And it’s clear that, yeah, evene though their personalities contrast each other, and their main music tastes are different, I still LOVE seeing how this works thematically, and specifically how they get along in the first place.

Tom and Matt together:

A TomMatt song I associate with this segment :) Listening to it right now as I’m typing this!

I associate a lot of what TomMatt is with harmony. This warm, soft embrace, quieter and calmer, but full of rhythm and energy. You feel like flying into space, and the guitar echoes and sustains throughout the air, flying skyhigh, but the bass settles it down, keeps it grounded to make sure it doesn’t fly too far away. They both play together, a melody of highs and lows, both intertwined into one.

Tom and Matt have kinda almost this harmonious relationship with each other, where one of them helps the other realize their own qualities that they never realized before, and helps one other realize things that the other loves about them. They love each other dearly, and as they’ve grown older, they’ve learned to love themselves.

Tom doesn’t open about his issues a lot and closes them off out of fear of burdening others. He insists he’s able to manage these issues on his own without anybody’s help. He doesn’t see himself as anything special, a nobody or “just another problem for someone to deal with.” Especially as he’s grown into his 20s and started taking on harmful coping habits, he’s constantly beaten himself up.

And you can imagine how Matt would react knowing all of this. He never saw Tom as a burden, a nobody, or a problem, but someone that he just genuinely loves to be around. He sees Tom as his whole entire world, and constantly expresses it multiple times, over and over again.

“You’re everything to me, Tom, and you mean so much to me. I just want you to remember that, okay? I love you.”

Tom doesn’t always express his happiness out loud, but being around Matt has helped him realize that “Hey, maybe there’s some good things about me that people love about me. Maybe shit isn’t all so bad.”

Sometimes, there’s moments where Tom slips back into that mindset. Sometimes, he doesn’t understand why Matt would love him for simply “being himself.” The things he hates about himself feel so much more amplified than the things people appreciate him for. Tom sees Matt, who loves every single part of him, and he asks Matt, “Why do you love me so much? Don’t I just stress you out more?”

“Well, you feel hurt, right? I can’t just leave you be when you feel hurt all on your own.”

“You should be spending time with else. Don’t put all of your energy just on me, man. Go with Edd or Tord, maybe they’ll make you happier.”

“But what if I want to spend time with you? You make me happier.”

“…

Do what you want.”

Sometimes, Tom never understands Matt. He sometimes accidentally says things that hurt her, and he sometimes stresses her out with his issues, so why would she want to spend more time with him? But you know, no matter what, he appreciates how much someone is willing to stick around and never give up on him.

Even Matt has her own shit. She can be really fun to be around and loves talking to other people as much as she can, but there’s times where being out overwhelms her. Whenever she’s out in public, her anxiety can skyrocket. She picks up on every little conversation others say around her, and she constantly thinks about what others feel about her. She can have a good day, but as soon as she feels like her surroundings overwhelm her, she shuts down.

Tom doesn’t always know how to help or what to say, since he isn’t someone who uses a lot of words to help others. But during those quiet moments, the best he knows what to do is take Matt into his arms, and embrace him, so so tightly.

“(Hugging Matt) …Had a bad day today?”

“…”

“Hey, hey… It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. Just breathe.”

“Today could’ve been a good day.”

“It’s okay to have a bad day. We all get those sometimes.”

“I missed you a lot.”

“(Hugging her tighter) I missed you a lot, too.”

I love how well the guitar and bass work together, just like Tom and Matt together. A lot of their music I associate with Steve Lacy, BADBADNOTGOOD, Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, and Piero Piccioni. Some of the songs I’ll list below shows a lot of bass and guitar, and also some orchestra, which I associate with Matt. :)

Some by Steve Lacy was the very first song I thought about when I imagined what Tom and Matt's duo theme would sound like. A lot of Steve's discography is what I see being TomMatt's genres :-) Lots of bassline and very funky guitar tunes. Again, very lightweight and enthusiastic, but also relaxed and calm. I imagine them playing together in almost all of these kinda songs. <3

Some other songs I absolutely ABSOLUTELY love and associate with TomMatt:

I'll end off this post for now because I don't want to make it TOO long HAHAGAA But this is just a little insight to my TomMatt brain! This is solely based on just my headcanons and roleplays of them with the help of my partner. Been wanting to talk about my thought processes behind all my other Eddsworld playlists, so hope you enjoyed this super long one! GAHHA

[greenbirdtrash]

RHRN OUT OF CONTEXT SPOILERS AHEAD

It was too funny.

Me texting that one friend who makes a hella bad job at hiding their amusement with feet. It's a running joke at this point

[violinist-rachel]

why'd you stop playing the violin?

"It isn't as though I've stopped playing altogether..."

Rachel brushes her hair aside.

"I'm just tired of performing onstage. I've been playing the violin since I was a child, but it has almost always been for others."

"I think I just need a break from it so that I can focus on myself. There's more to life than playing at concerts, after all."

[todayisafridaynight]

Morning! I'm here to harass you. 🤭

Hangover status?

And how vivid is the memory of stream? 🤣

GOOD MORNING STARS you could never harass me 😤

and LIKE I SAID DURING STREAM i never get hangovers !!!!!!! ive also been awake since like. 4AM so even if i did get one i'd prob be fine by now LOL

and trust. i remember. Everything from stream.

[lazaruspiss]

so the good news is that yes a lot of people can wrap their brain around the concept of there being different rules for childrens content and 18+ fanfiction. the bad news is that there is a weird amount of people who need to read more ie: the definition of media and the articles that they assume agree with them based off of title.

People know that the whole "don't portray [harmful action] because viewers might recreate it" thing is a rule for children's shows right? It's supposed to be shit like "don't show peppa pig playing with fire so we don't get sued if a kid watches it and burns their house down." Not like, fanfiction for adults.

Edit: this was me venting about fandom cops. not me making some nuanced hot take. don't be weird in my comments.

[spirngakawening]

Sometimes when reblogging I think "it's been a while since I've posted anything Spring Awakening-related, people might be surprised to see it on my blog" then I remember what my blog name is

[sexybritishllama]

in further neopets discord news, oh boy is there drama in my awful virtual pet game website today. strap in if you want way too much information on neopets’ broken economy

for some context, an event has just launched called the faerie festival. this is the first event to be run by the ‘new’ TNT (aka. the neopets team aka. the staff) since the leadership change, and they've said in recent editorials that this year’s faerie festival is going to be a combo of two previous popular events:

the faerie quest event, wherein people can get a free quest from a faerie every day in exchange for a reward (something that’s normally limited to random special events and therefore quite rare)

the charity corner, a highly requested event that hasn’t run since 2020, where you can donate random items to get points that can then be exchanged in a prize shop

there’s a LOT of ultimately worthless items on neopets that people gather from doing dailies and things, but charity corner actually gave a use to hoarding all of these, so people have wanted it back for ages. people have been going out of their way to hoard extra junk items for like 2 months now, after TNT teased the event in an editorial

this event was originally meant to start on 20th august, but got delayed 2 weeks, presumably because of issues behind the scenes. people were generally a bit disappointed but relieved if this meant they were going to get a proper, well prepared event without bugs

flash forward to 2nd october, the actual start of the event. nothing actually opens up for several hours on the day- that’s somewhat waved off by the fact that staff presumably need to be in the office to launch everything, a midnight launch isn’t expected

but, eventually, it opens!

well… kinda. there’s one page with one dialogue scene available and a link to an event page for spending neocash (the premium currency that costs irl money). the faerie quest page is giving out free daily quests, which is nice, but literally just the same as they did back in 2020. where’s the item recycling part? did this really need 2 weeks of delay?

the next day, the FAQ page for the event is published neopets support site (but not announced via news). still no sign of the actual event starting- seems like that might not be until moday?

as well as multiple grammatical errors, the FAQ had a few… concerning elements. most notably:

only 10 items could be donated per day

points would be awarded based on the rarity of the item, with the maximum rarity being r200-500, worth 15 points each

this meant people's hoarding of junk items for months was... essentially useless

r200-500 items basically means either hidden tower items (rare, expensive items that can only be bought in an account age locked shop with a purchase limit of 1 per day) orrrr….. neocash items. In other words, players could either spend an exorbinate amount of their in-game currency to buy up items to donate, or they could just hand over their credit card and pay to win

people were Not Happy about this

not long after info spread and the outcry started (and a sizeable number of people cancelled their premium membership in protest), the FAQ was quietly updated to remove mention of donating neocash items. that took away to pay to win element at least

however, now there was a new problem. a tombola man problem.

i mentioned already that the highest rarity items are pretty rare and expensive. one of the least expensive of these is an item called the Squeezy Tombola Guy Toy. you can probably see where this is going already

because you can only buy a maximum of one tombola guy per day from the hidden tower, your only option if you want to buy more than that in a day is to go to user shops. however, in light of the event, people had already started buying and hoarding tombola guy toys. equally, others were buying them purely to sell at a profit. this made the perfect storm and caused the price of the tombola guy toy, which was normally 110k NP, to explode up to 500k, 600k, even 700k within just one day

BUT THEN THE FAQ GOT UPDATED AGAIN. surprise, you can now donate 30 items per day! also they just got rid of the highest rarity tier altogether. the maximum you can get for an item is now 8 points, for rarity r102-r179.

this has now made the squeezy tombola guy toys useless. unless you’re a collector they don’t serve any function beyond that of a normal neopets toy (of which there’s thousands of much cheaper options). the price has now plummeted down to BELOW what it originally was and many users now have piles and piles of the dolls sitting in their inventory, mocking them

so what now? well, because no one ever learns, everyone is now flocking to what is now the cheapest high-rarity item eligible for donation. most are going for omelettes, which have a few different options at r102+. these have also inflated by like 400% from before the event, but unlike the squeeze tombola guys, these are only worth a few thousand neopoints, so not as bad a potential loss in comparison

it’s worth noting that while all this is going on in preparation for the recycling event, neopets is also experiencing insane inflation in a lot of other items right now, including those required for people to complete faerie quests. for example, a Griefer, which cost 5000 np just last week, is now worth selling for 1 MILLION

So yeah. 3 days into the event and that’s where we are so far. who knows what tomorrow might bring

[valeriehalla]

I have gotten a lot of messages saying that they really love the presentation of CURSE/KISS/CUTE. Often the commenter in question can’t say what exactly it is about the formatting that they appreciate, but that it just reads well and looks good. Well!!! Allow me to bare my wealth of secret knowledge for you once and for all:

I sorta just did some research into book typography...?

Here’s something you should know about web development, alright: typography on the web is really, really bad. The tools we have at our disposal—HTML and CSS—are incredibly powerful, but they are set up to fight you every step of the way towards Good Typography. When you know what you’re looking for, you can fix all the common issues quickly and easily. But it’s not easy to know what to look for, because

problematic typography is overwhelmingly the norm on the web, and

good typography is invisible.

Here’s a screenshot from CURSE/KISS/CUTE episode 0:

Now, I don’t want this post to come across as prescriptive. It is not my intention to tell you, “This is what good typography looks like, so follow my lead exactly.” I made a lot of choices with the typography of my web novel: many of those choices would not make sense in other contexts. What I want to convey to you is what those choices are, so that you will know they’re available to be made.

I mentioned that the web “fights you” when it comes to good typography. What do I mean by that? Well, check this out:

This is how that passage of text renders “by default.” In other words, this is how a web browser would render that text without any input from me about what styles to apply. It kind of sucks ass! But it also looks pretty familiar, right? This is not that far off from how a lot of websites—even websites full of prose (looking at you, AO3)—render text.

I think the most illustrative thing to do here would be to walk you through my thought process and show you, step by step, what decisions I made to turn this unstyled text into the styled version you see in the novel.

So, first things first:

1. We have got to shrink that text column.

Computer monitors... are wide. They are wider than they are tall. They are so wide, and they have so many pixels. This means you can fit a lot of characters on them. If you wanted, you could just have a wall of characters from the left side of the screen all the way to the right side. Talk about efficient!!

You should never, ever, ever do this.

This is one choice that I actually will make a prescriptive statement about, because it’s supported by quite a lot of research: fairly narrow text columns are more legible. Specifically, research seems to support the idea that a width in the range of 50 to 70 characters per line is the most comfortable for people to read*. Every font is different, so it takes a little doing to turn that “characters” figure into a pixel measurement; I went with 512 CSS pixels for the maximum width of my text column:

Isn’t that just so much nicer to read already?

*A commenter reminds me that I’d be remiss not to point out that the research on column width legibility isn’t completely conclusive. You do want to limit the width of your text columns, but going over the 70 character-per-line recommendation isn’t necessarily the end of the world, and you might have good reasons to do so. I did not: as mentioned, one of my goals was to mimic book-style typography, and books by nature have fairly restrained column widths, on account of they’re books.

2. Picking a font.

I’m not going to give you the blow-by-blow on how I decided what font to use. The short story is that I asked some designers, and one of the recommendations I got was the free font Crimson Pro, which I took a liking to immediately:

It’s just an all-around attractive serif font, but one thing I really like about it for use in a novel is its highly-visible quotation marks. They’re just kinda jumbo! They’re real big! Easy to see! In a novel, those things aren’t just ornamentation. It makes a great deal of practical sense for them to stand out just a bit. It also has a fairly large x-height, unlike a lot of the more traditional options, which is good for legibility on a computer screen.

3. Adjusting the line-height

Web browsers default to a line-height of about 1.2em, which, as you can probably tell, is quite cramped. If you go and Google “optimal line height for legibility”, you’ll get a number of results right off the bat suggesting 1.5em. Sounds good! Let’s do that:

Well... hmm. That’s definitely an improvement, but between you and me, it actually looks a bit too spacey to my eyes. I wonder why?

I’ll cut to the chase: the 1.5em recommendation makes some assumptions about the font you’re using. In Arial, the letter “A” is about 0.6em tall; in Crimson Pro, it’s about 0.5em. That means that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to spacing your lines, because different fonts have different amounts of empty space baked in. How annoying!

Let me tell you something about the kind of nerd I am. When I had this realization, I grabbed some books off my shelf and pulled out a literal micrometer. I started measuring the line-heights against various font features to see if there were any patterns I could spot in professional typesetting. Here’s what I found:

Almost every book on my shelf spaces lines such that the distance between one baseline and the next is about three times the x-height. How cool is that? I clapped my hands like a seal when I put this together.

Adjusting the line-height to match what I observed in the wild gives us this:

It’s a subtle difference, but to my eyes it feels just right. It’s almost like magic!

4. Paragraph spacing...

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Probably the most controversial choice I made with CURSE/KISS/CUTE’s typography was to opt for book-style paragraph indentation rather than web-style paragraph spacing—like so:

I did this for a few reasons:

It’s what I’m used to. I’ve read a lot of books, and this is just the way that books are formatted. I think for something aspiring to the title of “novel”, there’s value in making it look the way a reader probably expects a novel to look.

A novel has a lot of paragraph breaks in it. A paragraph in, say, an encyclopedia entry might go on for half a page or more; whereas it is unusual for a paragraph in a modern work of narrative prose to run for more than a handful of sentences, especially in any scene with dialogue. Because paragraph breaks are so common, spacing between paragraphs in a novel results in a lot of wasted space. Also, subjectively speaking, the additional space seems to me to lend an undue amount of weight to paragraph breaks. I’m just starting a new thought; there’s no need for a 21-gun salute, you know?

Having said that, here are some good reasons you might decide not to do paragraph indentation anyway:

Doing it right requires a bit of extra legwork. Notice how the very first paragraph in the image above has no indentation. That’s because it’s the start of a new section, and the first paragraph in a section traditionally goes unindented. This is an easy detail to miss, and it can be difficult to wrangle CSS into doing it for you automatically.

Web users don’t expect it. For the first decade of the web’s existence, there was no good way to do paragraph indentation; by the time CSS rolled around and made it easy, paragraph spacing had already become the norm. And while CURSE/KISS/CUTE may be a novel, it is also, specifically, a web novel!

But it’s my house and I get to make the rules, so I went with indentation. Incidentally, there seems to be a dire lack of research into the question of whether indentation or spacing is more legible for readers—but the data that does exist appears inconclusive at best. So, the choice really does come down to vibes.

5. The tragedy of justification.

You’ll note that one way in which I did not make my web novel look like a paper novel is the text alignment. It’s un-justified: the right margin is ripsaw-ragged.

This is because it is not possible to justify text on the web.

Oh, you can try. Look right here: there’s a CSS property for it and everything. Just turn on “text-align: justify” and...

Nightmare! The interword spacing on that first line is almost as wide as the indentation!

Reader, I’m afraid that your web browser is simply too dumb. That’s not the browser’s fault: robust algorithms for justifying text without creating these distractingly huge gaps between words have existed for many decades, and modern computers are powerful enough to run them in real time with little performance impact. It’s just, uh—nobody has ever bothered to implement them into web browsers. It is the damnedest thing.

I tried, I really did. You can mitigate this problem a bit if you enable automatic hyphenation, but browsers are unfortunately also kind of dumb at hyphenating. Firefox, for example, will refuse to hyphenate any word containing a capital letter, so any sentence with a lot of proper nouns in it is a lost cause. I tried manually inserting soft hyphens with a text preprocessor I wrote myself, but still these overjustified lines plagued me: when the text column narrows, for example on a phone, even hyphens can’t save you. The line-breaking algorithm is simply too naïve to optimize for well-justified text, and that’s not something you can fix as a web developer.

As a result, my heavy-hearted recommendation is to never use text justification. It’s just too distracting.

6. And then some extra stuff just for me

I added drop-caps because it looks neat and I made the ellipses spacier because I think it looks good when it, uh, when they are spacier. I think that looks pretty good that’s just my opinion though.

That’s all! Hope you learned something bye!!!

[starcrossedandstupid]

@mystical-cinnamoon !!!

anti rpf people are so funny they're always like "how would you feel if people shipped you with your friend" i don't know how to break it to you but if i was famous and no one was writing fanfiction about me i would be devastated. i wouldn't feel like i made it until i could search my name on ao3 and find 10k+ explicit results. peace and love though

[o-sunny-day]

oh….. the THINGS i would give for a @forgettable-au movie……..

gang- okay…

The vision of Papyrus and Gaster at Wingdings’ funeral…. was so vivid in my head. And now its going to be there forever. and i have 0 complaints.

Dunno if any of you have played Omori, but SPOILERS!

the context to this is kinda like the Blackspace segment. Papyrus is in his head sorting out the shit he needs to sort out through metaphors n such. But Gaster is also there because he can do that because theyre the same person (IT MAKES SENSE)

I imagine that whole thing happens right after Papyrus regains all his wingdings memories like he gets knocked out or something- IM MAKING A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS HERE LIKE HE MIGHT NOT EVEN REMEMBER, EVER!!! I REALLY HOPE HE DOES!!! BUT!!!

Just let me have my silly fanfics…

After a lot of fighting and agony over the question of WHO IS PAPYRUS? ESPECIALLY AFTER HE’S LEARNED TOO MUCH?

it ends with a somber scene of putting Wingdings to rest, letting his 2 halves live their own lives.

Papyrus asks “Why did you do this?” as in… Why did you bring me here? and why did you do what you did? throwing yourself into the void?

Gaster has the same answer for both of those questions

Thats my theory, I think a lot of Gaster/Wingdings’ ambition, in game and in comic, is just curiosity

TIME FOR SOME FUN LITTLE EASTER EGGS!!!

In the first frame, theres a raindrop in front of Papyrus’ eye socket, meant to allude to Wingdings’ eye lights.

Also the field is filled with Echo and Golden flowers. Echo represents Wingdings, and Golden represents Papyrus. Gaster is just Gaster, don’t worry about him

I also had fun making the save point star look sorta like a cross from the distance…cause yknow…heaven….TEEHEE

I got emotional putting “dearest brother” on the grave cause I couldnt put any more stuff like “closest friend” or “dear son”….Sans was kinda all he had…

and lastly heres some bonus behind the scenes stuff because I have enough room for it

some sketches, and a speedpaint with the best instrumental song ever made from the best liveaction movie ever made that has absolutely nothing to do with the forgettable au (Little Miss Sunshine - “THE WINNER IS”)

Highly recommend, 100/10, makes me UGLY SOB, think the undertale gang would like it (especially Papyrus and Undyne)

[pearwaldorf]

I know I've reblogged it before but I cannot recommend F.D. Signifier's video on the Kendrick/Drake beef highly enough. This is extremely good analysis of a subculture from an expert and enthusiast that's accessible to a layperson, with the necessary historical context.

Also he dunks on Drake fans in a hilarious but mean way and I respect that. But he also has enough critical distance to step back and acknowledge some of the kinda shitty ways Drake's been treated, while keeping in mind that Drake just fucking sucks.

It's well worth your time and I'll be checking out his other stuff.

[samuraionyourmom]

Been watching BSD with Japanese audio recently. More specifically, Wan and some of the audio dramas (highly recommend checking these out! This is the playlist I watched.) I find the difference between the way Chuuya and Dazai speak very interesting to me. This may be some base level observations to a native Japanese speaker, but I'd thought I'd share what I noticed. I'm not an expert by any means, so correct me if you see any mistakes!

So, first of all, Chuuya. He has a very masculine and vulgar way of speaking. He refers to himself as "Ore" (俺), which is typically used among teenage boys and is considered masculine and informal. Macho man kind of stuff. On top of that, he rolls his r's a lot, which is also considered very masculine and improper, similar to how a delinquent would talk. I don't necessarily think Chuuya is being overtly manly to the point of toxic masculinity, more so just him trying to be cool and assertive while he was with the Sheep, and then it just kinda stuck. You have to keep in mind that he grew up on the streets, and as the Sheep's leader and protector, it was his job to come across as powerful to keep them safe, so he may have spoke like that to try and intimidate their enemies. Overall, Chuuya's speech is very brash, aggressive, and masculine.

Dazai, on the other hand, is quite formal when he speaks. He refers to himself as "Watashi" (わたし) which is used in formal situations and could be considered slightly feminine. There is something to be said about gender here and how Dazai might identify, but that's another topic for another time. For now, I'm focusing on what this tells us about Dazai's personality, not his gender identity (though I am a huge fan of gender-fuckery Dazai). It's a more passive way of referring to oneself, like Dazai is taking a backseat in the conversation and wanting to seem harmless. Maybe a way of subtly manipulating the situation, maybe he simply doesn't want to exist or be perceived in this world, maybe a bit of both.

Another interesting thing is the way they refer to each other. Chuuya often calls Dazai "Temee" (手前) which is a very vulgar way of saying "you." It could equate to calling someone "bastard." Very, very rude, but that makes sense because Chuuya does NOT like Dazai. He also uses this on other people when they're being idiots, (ahem, Kajii), but it's usually reserved for Dazai. You would definitely never hear him use it for Kouyou, that's for sure. (Whom he calls Ane-san, btw! It's a formal way of saying "big sister," but it's also a common way of referring to a woman of power/ female superior in the mafia).

With Dazai, it's a little more complicated. In Japan, it's considered rude to refer to some as "you" so directly, similar to how it's considered rude to point at someone. So, usually, people will refer to someone as their name with some kind of honorific (-kun or -san, for some examples) that matches their status or by a title. Dazai does this with Kunikida by calling him "Kunikida-kun" or with Fukuzawa by calling him "Shachou" (meaning president in this context).

But with Chuuya, it's simply "Chuuya." Not "Chuuya-san" or even "Chuuya-kun." ("Chuuya-kun" happens a couple times, I believe, but it's rare). Dazai is purposely choosing to leave out any honorific here just to be disrespectful. It's not vulgar by any means like Chuuya's "Temee." Dazai isn't a very vulgar person, as seen by the fact he rarely swears, but he is going out of his way to choose the least polite option for the formal type of speech that he uses. He won't swear at Chuuya, but he will imply that he is somehow not worthy of having an honorific attached to his name when Dazai is speaking to him.

I just thought this was fascinating. Even their way of referring to themselves or others tells you a lot about their personalities. Chuuya isn't afraid to speak his mind, even if it's considered improper or aggressive, and it even gives a nod towards his upbringing on the streets. Dazai, on the other hand, is very purposeful with his language, and every word he uses has meaning. But he also can't resist being a little shit when it comes to Chuuya, doing whatever he can to tease him.

Again, I'm not fluent in Japanese in any way, so if a person who knows a little more about this sees something wrong with what I said, feel free to let me know! Or even add your own observations! I'd love to chat about this.

[beansprean]

WHAT WE CLUE IN THE SHADOWS: A FINALE CONSPIRACY BOARD

So. WWDITS may have the actual balls to do this to us. and I for one am INCREDIBLY excited for the possibility. If you're a WWDITS fan and haven't seen Clue (1985), I highly recommend taking 95 minutes to do so before the finale. Just in case.

Clue is my favorite movie, I have probably seen it upwards of 100 times for real, and I can recite it from memory with 90% accuracy. I also have the pleasure of owning and playing the WWDITS-themed Clue game, which is centered around finding out who stole the witch's skin hat and where in the house they hid it. I don't know if that will play into the finale at all, but it's something to think about.

The thing about Clue (the film), if you aren't aware, is that there are three different endings. On the vhs/dvd, you see all three in a row between 'that's how it could have happened, but what about this?' title cards. In theaters, there were three versions of the movie (labeled A, B, and C) that were dispersed to different theaters, so depending on where and when you went to see it you would see one of 3 endings. (It's kinda unclear which letter corresponded to which originally, so my labels will be assuming a 1:1 comparison between the order of the home version of Clue and the airing order of the WWDITS episodes.) The Clue endings are not all made equal, and on the home version, the final ending is announced as 'what really happened.'

So allow me to take a moment to talk about how the different endings work in context to each other and the film, and how that could translate to three different endings for WWDITS.

CLUE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT (for real, go watch it)

(last chance to watch Clue go)

Ending#1: "Communism is just a red herring"

In this ending, the first one that plays in the home version, Miss Scarlet is revealed to be the murderer. She is a snarky, sarcastic madam who runs a "hotel and telephone service to provide men with the company of a young lady for a short while" and has policemen on her payroll. This is what I would consider the expected ending, the one that makes sense for most viewers. It's not shocking, but it's funny and well acted and it makes the most sense. Miss Scarlet has the right personality for murder, was in the most convenient area of the house to commit them, and had Yvette (the maid, formerly one of Miss Scarlet's call girls) committing some of the murders at her direction, so she had enough alibis to not make her too obvious. Many people watching this movie for the first time will have her high on their suspect list.

This ending also dismisses the idea of 'dangerous communism' that had been a thread throughout the film (as it is set in 1953 during the second Red Scare) as a misdirection. Miss Scarlet isn't stealing government secrets to betray the US; she's doing it to make money. The real danger all along was capitalism, something that s6 of WWDITS has said repeatedly.

So, to recap, this is the Standard Ending. The Second Best ending. Version B.

Ending #2: "Mrs. Peacock did it all."

This one, played second in the home version, is in my opinion the weakest ending. It reveals Mrs. Peacock, the neurotic, hysterical, and allegedly politically corrupt wife of a senator, as the murderer. She's hilarious and fantastic to watch throughout the whole film and I love her, but this charm drops after the reveal and she becomes cold and drab as she threatens her way to safety. She committed all the murders herself, which would be very difficult to achieve with the tight timing and her position in the basement during the search.

She ends up being caught outside the house by a police inspector, who had earlier shown up disguised as an evangelist telling her to "repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Interestingly, they originally filmed him immediately shooting her dead without provocation, but they thought that was too dark and edited it into an arrest instead (which is why there is such a quick cut after he pulls his gun, and we only hear her rather than see her after that). This is the 'repent for your sins' ending. You do bad things, bad things happen to you.

The obligatory "it's always who you least expect" ending. The Still-Good-But-Not-The-Best Ending. Version C.

Ending #3: "You're Mr. Boddy!"

This is "how it really happened" - the twist ending! The hero was the villain, the villain was just a pawn, and everyone committed a murder in the house to cover their own asses. Prof Plum killed the fake Mr. Boddy, Miss Scarlet killed the cop, Mrs. Peacock killed Mrs. Ho (the cook), Mrs. White killed Yvette, Colonel Mustard killed the motorist, and Wadsworth/Mr. Boddy killed the singing telegram girl.

Mr. Green, who reveals he works for the FBI, kills Wadsworth/Mr. Boddy and arrests the rest of the cast. Understandably the best and most exciting ending (though not without some plot holes) that everyone loves. We get a surprising reveal from two of our main characters that not only changes the context with how you view them, but informs aspects of their character that have been there throughout the film! Now we understand why Wadsworth retained control of the house and the timeline of events, why he was so familiar with the house, and why this entire thing was orchestrated in the first place. We also understand why the cowardly and clumsy Mr. Green was consistently the first to jump to help and defend the other characters, even when it meant putting himself if physical danger. Unfortunately this ending also suggests that he was only pretending to be gay (wouldn't that be a twist for Guillermo lol), but he could also just be in a lavender marriage which is what I choose to believe.

This ending also has the iconic 'flames on the side of my face' scene and repeats 'communism is a red herring', this time in the context of Mr. Boddy's intention to continue blackmailing them all now that they have taken care of anyone who could have pointed the finger at him.

This is the True Ending. The twist you didn't expect but are delighted to find. The 'nothing was as it seemed' endng. The ending that is the most intentional and complete, where everyone gets to shine. Version A.

So what will we be doing in those shadows?

We can assume that e11 will not revolve around finding a murderer, but it does, from what we've seen in the trailer, revolve around making a wife for the monster. Do we get three different wives? Three different actors to play her? Three different superhero identities for Nandor and Guillermo? Three different levels of nandermo: one with a handshake, one with a hug, one with a kiss? Three different explanations for the origin and/or purpose of the documentary? (this is my personal favorite) Or is each ending entirely divorced from the other? Only time will tell.

What I'm leaning toward is that each episode will come up to the same turning point - a decision, a reveal, etc. The first two versions will have reasonable possibilities, the first less surprising but more enjoyable than the second, and the third... The third will be what really happened, and pull a twist no one saw coming. Perhaps even a character will reveal a hidden identity. Maybe, just maybe...we get Simon the Devious.

I only hope the order of the episodes doesn't change between channels or time zones because that will make things very confusing when liveblogging it in the group chat lmao.

[hazbinwhoree]

Adam and Lute with a very powerful overlord reader who is doing multiple jobs at once and is obviously tired and overworked, and is just like, "I'm done, I'm too tired to deal with your bullshit." She kinda has the same personality as Aizawa from mha (Reader may or may not have an addiction to coffee, tea, and energy drinks. I can see them meeting when Charlie drags her to her meeting with adam and Lute. Charlie:(y/n)? When was the last time you slept? (Y/N): What the fuck is sleep? *drinks 10 gallons of coffee in one sitting*)

An Angel & An Overlord

A/N: I had fun writing this and hope it’s what you wanted! I don’t know who Aizawa is so I did my best based on context clues. Disclaimer, there will not be a part 2, I’m drowning in requests.

Adam was already bored of this meeting with Lucifer and Lilith’s daughter. She and her associates were pleading their case to let sinners go to Heaven (ha!) while he chowed down on some ribs. Then the door swung open.

A demon came stumbling in, an energy drink in each hand, looking disheveled and tired. But fuck, she was hot.

“(Name)!” Charlie exclaimed. “Thank you for coming! I know you’re busy.” Adam and (Name) had made prolonged eye contact. “What? Oh, yeah, no problem, Char.” She tore her eyes away, looking at the ribs he was eating. “Fuck those look good. Now I’m hungry.”

“And who’s this hottie?” Adam smirked, slumping back in his seat. The demon rolled her eyes, slamming one of her drinks on the table. “She said my name already, asshole. And put some respect on it, I’m highly ranked down here.”

“Whatever you say, tits.”

She hissed at him. Adam felt a small thrill at the action.

“Eat shit.”

“Um, (Name), maybe don’t fight with Adam, we need him to approve the plan-” “I’m not going to approve the plan,” Adam laughed. “Sinners? In Heaven? As if.”

(Name) sighed, patting Charlie’s back. “Looks like my services are pointless.” She made to leave, but Adam stopped her. “Well wait, what was your role in this little presentation?” He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want her leaving yet. “I have statistics from asking sinners if they would take the Hazbin Hotel seriously if Heaven approved it.”

Adam pretended to think on that. “Interesting, but Heaven will never approve.”

She flipped him off.

“Right back at you, bitch.”

Despite the annoyed face he put on, Adam liked this demon much more than the sunshine and rainbows princess. She spoke his language.

(Name) pounded back the energy drink she was still holding while the room watched on, Charlie and Vaggie looking vaguely concerned. “(Name), did you sleep last night?” “Who needs sleep?” The overlord crushed the drink can. “Aight, I’m out.” She saluted the room and left.

(Name) woke up the next morning to an invitation outside her door. To her shock, it was from Adam. He requested they meet, listing coordinates and a time for when he would open a portal to Heaven. Curious, (Name) decided to go.

At the time allotted, she stood at the spot, nursing a coffee. A portal opened in front of her, and apprehensively, (Name) stepped through it. “You actually came.” Adam looked surprised to see her. “Curiosity killed the cat,” (Name) replied. Adam smirked. “Well welcome to Heaven, hottie.”

They were stood outside what looked like an apartment building. Adam turned to enter it. “Coming, sugar tits?” “Don’t call me that.” Still, she followed him. They rode an elevator up to the very top of the building, and the doors opened to reveal a penthouse.

“Is this where you live?” (Name) asked, stepping out and beginning to look around. “Yeah.”

Adam was unusually quiet, watching (Name) anxiously. “I made more ribs,” he spoke up. “If you want some.” He sounded unsure of himself. (Name) almost found it endearing. “Sure.” She followed Adam into the kitchen and sat down at the table, and Adam placed a plate of ribs in front of her.

(Name) wanted to ask what this was about, but she had forgotten to eat yesterday, and hadn’t had time to eat today, so she was absolutely ravenous. She dug into the ribs with vigor, ignoring Adam’s eyes on her. He took a seat across from her at the table, picking at his own plate of ribs.

“Damn, girlie, you can really put it away. One would think you’re starving. When’s the last time you ate?” “Mm, don’t remember,” (Name) answered through a full mouth. “You really don’t give a shit about yourself.” (Name) frowned. “I do, I’m just… I’m so busy. Overlord duties and shit, y’know?”

“I don’t, actually,” Adam replied as (Name) polished off the last of the ribs. He took two off his plate and put them on hers. “Tell me about it.”

(Name) realized, suddenly, that this felt a lot like a date. But these ribs were really good and Adam was being strangely sweet (he wasn’t bad looking either), so (Name) didn’t say anything about it.

“Well the other overlords have been holding a lot more meetings recently because Carmilla and Velvette are fighting, not that those names mean anything to you.” “What are they fighting about?” “I can’t disclose that.” To her surprise, Adam didn’t push. She continued.

“On top of that, I’ve got all these new contracts, I definitely took on too many deals recently, but the more souls I own, the more powerful I am.”

“I can respect that. I guess Lute isn’t the only Danger Tits I know.”

(Name) rolled her eyes. “Stop talking about tits.” “Aw, but yours are so nice, babe.” (Name) found herself actually flustered by the comment, but didn’t let it show on her face.

Her tail swished, giving away the fact she was flustered, but luckily Adam didn’t know her well enough yet to realize her tell. (Name) noticed vaguely that she’d thought yet.

Like she was going to let Adam get to know her better. Although, she supposed she already was.

They talked for a while longer, discussing (Name)’s life in Hell as an overlord, and occasionally things about Adam. But she noted he let her do most of the talking. When the conversation came to a natural conclusion, (Name) realized she’d been there for almost two hours.

“Fuck, I have to go,” she said, and Adam stood. Wordlessly, he made a portal in the middle of his living room. Before (Name) stepped through it, he spoke. “Maybe we can do this again?”

(Name) smiled to herself.

“Yeah. Maybe we can.”

[lagomorphique]

TF2 in Historical Context: Spy's Background

It goes without saying that Spy is incredibly mysterious and we know fuck all about him, other than that he at some point had an affair with Scout's mother, and Scout was the product of that. However, I think we can extrapolate some stuff about his backstory nonetheless

Firstly, we learn in Comic 6, which takes place in 1972, that Scout is 26-27 years old. This puts his birth year at 1945 or 1946, right after the end of WWII. I say '26' bc uh. Babies gotta grow yk

This puts Spy's latest possible birth year at around 1927. Probably a little (but not much) earlier, for reasons we'll get into. It is fair to assume that Spy was already a spy by the time he met Ma, because there's no other reason for him to have been in Boston in 1945 really

I can't be the only one who was kinda surprised that Spy looks much younger than I expected without his mask - he's less noticeaby greying than Heavy and Medic too. He's either got an insane botox routine (which wouldn't be ooc lol), or he's younger than the two of them.

In my last post I concluded Heavy was around 52 in 1972, and 59 in 1979. If Spy is slightly younger, that would make him in his mid 40s in game, late 40s in Comic 6 and early to mid 50s in Comic 7.

So. Given Scout is 27, that means that Spy would have met Ma when he was in his early 20s. On a related note, given she already had 6 children before they met, she's also probably quite a bit older than him lol. Seems like both he and Scout have a thing for Moms

All this to say, I think 1924ish is a good approximate birth year for Spy. This would make him 15 years old when WWII broke out and just 16 when Germany invaded France in 1940.

Onto historical context: France was the first modern nation in Western Europe to introduce universal military conscription, which wasn't phased out until 2001. Conscription did take place during WWII (and WWI), but Spy was almost definitely too young to be drafted.

We don't know which region of France Spy is from, so we don't know whether he grew up in the zone libre, which was free from Nazi occupation, or in Vichy France, the puppet state headed by Maréchal Philippe Pétain established by the German occupying force.

Given Spy's age and the context of the Nazi occupation of France, I think it's most likely he entered the world of espionage by joining the French Resistance. Resistance fighters were highly diverse and came from different sections of society, but young people were esp useful.

After the war, a national myth arose in France that overplayed the size and breadth of the Resistance forces, whilst underplaying or ignoring the degree of collaboration of some parts of the country with the Nazi occupation. This came to be known as Résistancialisme.

Something I always think about with the European mercs is the question of how they ended up in the USA in the first place. Given Scout was born around ~1945, Spy must have left France after it was liberated in September 1944.

I feel like if Spy were a member of the Resistance, this shift in the collective memory of the resistance in France may have been one of the reasons he left the country. Either that or he found himself good at working undercover and fell into working internationally.

[blackstar-liveblogs]

Last time I did this it was a year ago, but a cubito has reached blorbo status after so long + he's barely talked about on the maintag along most of the Teal Titans. Here I come with blue faction rep.

It's time for a tr!Scott BIG ramble, more under the cut.

I got myself on a mission recently, the mission to watch Scott's POV of The Realm, and I just got done with all the available VODs today (if he was present in-character on more VODs from other streamers while off-stream, I have no clue which ones specifically).

From the get go, tr!Scott's lore is very interesting. He was established as someone who just spawned in, as a giant snail, and according to his own words (paraphrased): ''It's all very cloudy, I know that I felt a strong will to kill you, but strangely the need to distract you with baby sensory games at the same time.''

The three hours of scuffed snail fight with the Teal Titans were applied into his first memories. They bonded over that and he acted upon that since.

Plus, the entire cloudy and mixed feelings/wills during this fight sparked the headcanon/theory of mine that goes: The Keepers brought the people that fought as the snails to the Realm and applied some sort of magic that turned them hostile and willing to kill their opponents. But Scott was able to kinda get through some of that magic, for reasons unknown, which allowed him to bond while that will to murder was not 100% disappearing.

Again, this is not canon nor confirmed, it's my interpretation until proven differently by the lore, if this ever gets brought up again at all. It's a theory based off the books tr!Bekyamon found too and I highly recommend to read them.

Back to Scott, he was automatically sorted to the Hostile Faction aka the Reds. But from his very first day after the snail fight, he was making very clear statements that he had no allegiances at all with the red faction and he felt more comfortable with the blue faction thanks to those hours of bonding they went through. He did not care if people called him unloyal to the Reds or if they pointed out that he spent most of his time with the Teal Titans, because he knew all of this very well himself and was not bothered at all by it.

''In everything but the tab list, I'm blue,'' he repeated many times.

He heard some stuff about the people around him during those first days. When he first met Pili, he pointed out that he committed many murders and crimes, but not in a judgamental way. Scott clarified right there that he only said it as an observation and facts, and Pili did not deny it was true after that.

I noticed that Scott tends to go after the facts of what happened and what people did, instead of buying the first biases he receives at face value. There was some discussion in the game chat back when Krow stole the Kingdom's bell and was killed; people said that Scott was antagonizing his own faction members then (when he still was Red), but I looked at it now and I think: Not really? In the sense of, the intention was not to antagonize specifically?

He wasn't saying stuff out of malice, he was staying the facts as he perceived them: A very important bell was stolen, Krow got killed as a consequence and now responsability was refused to be taken. Scott had no interest in taking the Kingdom's side, as he said himself during this: ''I didn't say anything that wasn't true.''

Of course, stating that someone is not taking responsability for their actions and that the consequences were expected to come with the context provided can come out as antagonizing, so any perception like that is also valid. I only want to point out that the way Scott perceives it it's very interesting.

To add to this, later he heard criticism about the Kingdom having an object that important right there in the open, ready to be stolen, and he agreed to it. At the same time, he didn't understand why other factions cared so much about the Kingdom's bussines, because he doesn't care himself to get involved in those dramas.

Scott wanted to be part of the blue faction and follow his Supreme Leader. Those were his own words. That was the only thing he actually cared about.

The Teal Titans had no trouble to treat him as one of them either. Scott was called an honorary Blue and even participated in their faction-only meetings days before they knew if he was even able to switch.

At the time, Tubbo was not around during those meetings. There was one when Aimsey announced that he was going to arrange a way to invite Scott to the faction, and even a Keeper was involved.

Tubbo wasn't there until the day many Keepers surrounded Scott and gave him a mission to get a Conduit on his own to join Blue.

The chaos of this day was hilarious on his POV:

He could finally switch factions. One person that does not show up often from the faction shows discontent for reasons that he didn't know at all, so he was just confused while Aimsey reassured him to ''not listen to the voices in the back.'' He went all chill on his own to find a map, find the Heart of the Sea, come back and fish. He saw Tubbo and Bad with TNT Minecarts in the distance, tried to eavesdrop, but they were in a group, so he backed away to fish. Both him and CPK decided to go together to see what was up once Tubbo and Bad called everyone over, Tubbo was under his own TNT trap calling for an ultimatum and talking about stuff Scott had no idea about. He watched the situation unfold, until CPK ended up exploding Tubbo and both with Bekyamon went to tell Aimsey what happened. Scott remained very confused.

Back to fishing. He got to make the Conduit, waited with Aimsey for the Keepers and then succesfully joined the Teal Titans.

This day had the positives of showing more sides of Scott's character. He usually acted unsurprised but polite around the Keepers, which started a pattern of him saying that from the moment he spawned in as a giant snail, nothing surprised him anymore and did not want to understand all the unusual things, just go along with the fact that they exist.

He also was trying to read Tubbo's reasonings and emotions to reach the conclusion that he didn't feel him specifically joining the faction was the issue, but that there were a lot of underlying issues that were brought up with this whole situation. In other words, Scott did not feel resentful towards Tubbo, he was trying to make sense of his actions, with other suggestions like maybe Tubbo did not care about his inclusion until it was a potential problem for himself, among others.

Scott got what he wanted, he was part of the Teal Titans. Now he was able to build and chill, or so he thought.

Stuff kept happening on the server, which brought up more about him and his deal.

First, the Pili vs Clown fight. I was interested to watch this from Scott's POV, since I remember reading a lot that Pangi was claiming Scott was making fun of Pili during it, and therefore, wanted to kill him. I had all this previous information of Scott not caring to get involved in the other factions' dramas, not having any intention to pick sides related to that, and only wanted to watch with everyone else. With that context, Scott making fun of Pili, the same way Kingdom members did, did not make sense to me.

Then, I watched how Scott was joking around with everyone else that the fight was taking too long. After the extra hour of waiting for Pili to show up, most of the audience was not willing to take the fight itself seriously past the 30 minutes (and more) it kept going for. Scott did not see anything wrong with this, because everyone else was doing it and he was not making fun of either fighter, but fun of the fight itself taking so long to be done.

In fact, the last words Scott said to Pili were genuine praise for his resilience and that he would have not done what he did himself, which he pointed out as something impressive in a positive way. Pili even thanked him.

He also showed disapproval at the fact that people looted Pili's stuff once he died. Stating that only Fit doing it he would let it pass since he is homeless. Then, quickly decided to leave before any drama could potentially happen after the fight.

He's truly a drama between factions that are not his own avoider. He is not getting in the middle of them.

Then imagine his confusion upon finding a sign with a threat inside his house next time he logged on. He joked around interpreting ''count your days'' literally and questioning how much he had to count, but he overall was very confused and asking what the heck did he do.

I noticed he used to talk with Owen more out of other Kingdom members. Owen acted relatively normal from this POV, up until a certain point.

The day after, Aimsey died and Scott got the intel from Owen, but a very incomplete version + Owen's slip ups allowed him to notice his red flags and did not take his words as the facts until doing some questioning and investigation.

Owen almost said ''anyone who doesn't worship Foolish'' instead of ''serve under him'', and Scott made an uncomfortable/disapproving sound for a second, which is telling of his own opinions about this kind of mindsets + one of the red flags he noticed during the conversation. This kind of opinion is very on-brand of Teal Titans members, he truly fits in.

He questioned how Owen stated his assumption that Ros killed Aimsey, so he went to check the cementary, where all blue members register their deaths, and thanks to Ros, it said that they died by a Keeper of the Realm.

And exactly there a Keeper appeared behind him, jumpscare style. He immediately wanted to ask about it, but the Keeper disappeared before he had a chance.

All of these interactions reflect the pattern of Scott wanting to have the facts of what happened and what people did before reaching his own conclusions. And he holds those facts in a way that he perceives himself as an unbiased party and states the truth of the situations.

Speaking of Aimsey, once he knew, he said to himself that he did not know how to feel about it. On one hand, he had only met Aimsey three weeks ago, on the other, they were a big factor of why he could join blue.

I'm sure there was a bit more there. Scott interacted with Aimsey the most those days and seemed to get along really well. But, at the same time, Scott is a cubito that recently spawned in with no memories prior to giant snail. As CC!Scott said (paraphrased): ''tr!Scott is a very laid back guy. Not in an evil or malicious way, but more like a chill way and slow to make any emotional attachments, since he showed up one day suddenly, like someone being born as an adult.''

The character himself accepted there was nothing he could do about it and it was only a matter of waiting for Aimsey to revive.

If I remember correctly, this same day, Scott was the first one to see the giant eye replacing the moon! And the Observers teleporting around him too! The cubito tries to avoid the horrors, but the horrors find him.

The Observers and the Eye Moon actually got him nervous. First, he made fun of the giant eye, since he could just sleep to get rid of it for the day, but eventually, with the Observers constantly on him, he either tried to ignore them (while being clearly on-edge) or he snapped at them once or twice.

''What do you want?! Make me go crazy?! Is that what you want to do?!''

It was the first time I saw this character react this way, instead of brushing off the situation or acting indifferent. Scott was trying really hard to ignore it and it wasn't working.

Good to know the character is not immune to get affected by the horrors 👍.

A bit after, Scott found Tubbo again, and despite the tension he was displaying, Scott ignored it for the sake of keeping Tubbo company and check the tasks together. He was even joking around with him, and again, was not resentful for what happened before.

Tubbo was surprised that Scott was genuinely helping to complete one of the tasks before he had to be absent for a couple of weeks. Scott made it more than clear that he always had the intention to help the faction with the tasks, and with that Tubbo seemingly accepted him, or at least was chill with his company. To the point of agreeing that, while Scott did not understand why the other factions were so adamant to mess with the Kingdom's stuff, Tubbo replied that the Kingdom has that kind of retaliation coming for them, and Scott gave him the point.

Aimsey returned that day too, and Scott received him in a very positive note, not treating them any differently. But he wasn't oblivious to the changes in behaviour, as proven when later he talked with Ros and admitted that Aimsey was acting more cheerful than usual. Also agreed to keep an eye on him just in case.

Scott did not point it out then, but he did tell himself that he also noticed Ros was very sad during that conversation, which made Owen's statement not add-up even more. So another point for this cube's ability to read people's emotions and actions.

Aimsey confirmed his suspicions that Owen was not telling the truth and Ros did not kill them. Then, Scott moved on to help with the task.

With all of this, it's worth to mention, Scott admitted to himself that he was not willing to grind levels like everyone else to get stronger. Instead, he wants to play the social game, so people are no interested in killing him.

He showed these social skills rather recently, when Freddie showed up to his house, talked about plans to steal from everyone, then found out quickly that his fastest horse was stolen.

Before finding out about the stolen horse, Scott pitched the idea that Freddie could pretend to ''find'' the stolen stuff and return it, instead of stealing it and give more bad fame to the Reds than they already have. He phrased it as a way to get more points in everyone's books by doing something ''good.''

When Freddie left, Scott admitted that he was manipulating him so everyone got their stuff back. He noticed that Freddie was trying to manipulate *him*, but Scott basically uno reverse'd.

Shortly, he realized his horse was stolen.

Scott sneaked around and listened to Freddie saying that, indeed, the horse was there.

Scott went around the Kingdom's chest and his own faction's chests, all to find an Invis potion to steal and get his horse back. He did take a Swift potion, which he quickly used once he realized Freddie was at the tavern to steal from Tubbo, so it was his chance to get his horse back. That mission was succesfull and he went back to building.

The last thing to point out, it's that Scott has a soft spot, or at least a will to help, the people who were giant snails like him. He emphatizes with them, to a degree, but does call them ''giant snail buddies'' with a bit of affection. As shown previously, this does not make him biased towards them, but it does make him find himself assisting them once and again.

What does this left us about tr!Scott as a character so far?

Most of the time he's chill and very laid back, but not with malicious intent. He's slow to make emotional attachments as result of having no memory prior to him spawning into the Realm. He does his best to look for the facts of a situation and a person's actions/emotions, which he uses these truths to remain unbiased or state them as they are.

He's only not unbiased regarding his own faction and if it's involved. Scott is loyal to the Teal Titans, spends most of his time with them and does his best to help them and make them feel comfortable, while also wanting help from them (with items stuff) if he needs it. There's care for them, but has yet to develop deep attachments.

He plays the social game instead of the violence game, this mainly for the sake of survival. His morals are not beyond manipulation to get to the outcome he thinks it would be best or to steal to get what he wants. He does draw the line at some other actions or mindsets that he's not personally comfortable with or approving of.

He's not immune to the horrors, the horrors will find him and he will be unsettled and nervous about them. There will be attempts to ignore them and shut them down.

He's good at reading people whenever he needs it and acts accordingly.

There's a little soft spot for the people who were giant snails like him and he can help them if he's able to.

Most of the time, he's either vibing building or very confused.

In short: He's a complicated cube! And I sure do love those.

This is why he has reached blorbo status, and I wanted to publish this before CC!Scott's subbathon starts and there's more Realm content. Plus, I'm very interested to see if Aimsey's lore gets to affect him in any way.

He does not worry about the beef between the other factions and does not want to be involved, but he can get concerned about the horrors that can affect everyone and himself. I'm very very interested to see how this character will develop from here and if he ever will grow those emotional attachments, and what would he do in that case.

In other news, I finish with more tr!Scott pics.