Flashing gifs // @trueblood825 Wishing you a very happy birthday, and a wonderful year to come. Although we have only been friends for a relatively short time I’m very glad we are as you are a truly lovely person, and sweet Alex fan, who is an absolute pleasure to know. Tanjoubi Omedetou Mia, love Suzanne 🥰🥳💐🎁🎂🎈🤗💕💚
Musicas do Chaves #12 – Puff Along (Tony Hymas) Giovani e Eduardo – Giovani Dal Mas
Giovani Dal Mas: Caixa e Baixo
Eduardo Dal Mas: Teclados
Tony Hymas – Puff Along (1979). Renata Blomer – 2019 23 de jun.
John Charles Fiddy (Londres, 1944 — 24 de dezembro de 2017) foi um compositor e arranjador de músicas britânico. Ganhou notoriedade por ser o arranjador da maioria das BGM (músicas de fundo)…
i was thinking about how the people who got into homestuck after it ended—whose interactions with the comic are in a static, archived state, not an ongoing thing—missed out on information that was more common knowledge in the fandom at that time. i don’t know if this is true since i’m not on tiktok, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was. the fandom certainly isn’t the same as it was before.
ive found that many people reading homestuck now simply do not understand things in homestuck that were common knowledge back in the day, with calls for “homestuck literacy classes to become mandatory” in response to baffling takes because so many people just now seem to have glazed over the comic without absorbing important plot points, and i think i know why this may be. i ended up writing a post reflecting on my time with the comic, my perspective and how ive seen this change. i still think and write about homestuck because it still fascinates me. earlier i quote retweeted that call in my thread talking about the temporal relativity of dave and rose’s god tier ascension in the green sun, saying “my homestuck literacy is 100% so guess im doing my part as a teacher by pointing out whatever i think is really cool about it”. this post im writing now started out as a reply to this tweet i got in response.
i joined the fandom in 2013. i was 11. i had been aware of it since at least late 2011, early 2012 when my friend ryan in fifth grade told me to read it but i couldn’t get past the first few pages. i remember writing a journal on deviantart around this time (late 2011-early 2012) that was mocking people who typed like gamzee, which ironically was very karkat of me. and i remember someone on flipnote hatena i was following was making flipnotes with the alpha kids.
i dont know what caused me to flip the switch into reading it but 2013. i got into it somewhere between april (i think closer to april—i remember it being quite a span of time between the last update before HOMOSUCK dropped.) this was the most recent page the comic, meaning there was no > [S] ACT 6 ACT 6 at the bottom.
i got into it during a pause in updates, which looking into it, was the year 4 megapause. i wasn’t sure of the month until seeing the news post detailing the reason for the hiatus and the status report of the comic’s development at that time. pretty cool i could narrow it down by referencing the dates of those updates and the news post to correspond with the pause!
according to readmspa, the year 4 megapause was a 59 day hiatus from Apr 14, 2013 ==> (EOA6A5) running to 12 Jun 2013, [S] ACT 6 ACT 6. then for a few months there were the first updates that i was apart of the fandom for.
and what an exciting time during the story get into the webcomic! when the updates resumed in june, part 4 of homestuck had begun. here was a glimpse of the updates in that span of time before the next hiatus began in october.
that hiatus was none other than the gigapause, the longest hiatus in the comic, which started october 2013 and lasted for a YEAR, and i already posted about what happened on the date of return.
but here were the main events happening in the story at the time i first actually got interested in it. i wasn’t aware of the full context of them then like i am now, but i was looking at the most recent updates anyway with interest:
the alpha kids just emerged as god tiers from their slabs in derse and prospit, blown up by the condesce and caliborn / lil cal-possessed b2 jack noir.
the journey to the new session started 24 hours after jack called an early reckoning in descend—for context that was about when dave entered around midnight central time and before jade even entered. it’s pretty easy to forget that side 1 of homestuck basically happens within the span of a single day—and at this point in the story, the 3 year journey (which was also 3 real life years) had just ended. john and jade emerged from the other side of the yellow yard through the fenestrated plane on LOMAX. john’s real body was asleep upon arrival in the new session, while his dreaming projection out in the dream bubbles came across vriska’s ghost ship to learn lord english lore with vriska and aranea, and go on the treasure hunt where they found the ultimate weapon at the X mark out in in the furthest ring. in the dream john stuck his hand in the juju, started warping all over canon which removed his real body from the ship on LOMAX. he zapped around for a while but eventually zapped back to LOMAX, now awake, completely out of the loop of what everyone else is up to, and bored as fuck. what was everyone else getting up to while john was asleep?
jade was now once again within the domain of the green sun. im pretty sure her space god doggy essence comes with the power to sense what was anywhere within the domain of the session since her face looks like she arrived at that spot with intent (and she literally has jack noir’s exact powers from bec’s prototyping. also this panel). she immediately dispatched b2 jack to the edge of the incinisphere, defending the newly god-tiered jane and jake. i think even if they weren’t in any danger, she would have warped to them instantly anyway because she COULD now, and i can imagine she wouldve been sooooo eager to meet everyone. even davesprite comments about her rapid departure.
the pre-scratch refugees arrived during the only time serious shit ever went down in the nobles’ months-long inert void session. the condesce used her freak psychic bronze-cerulean powers to commune with jade’s bestial side and mind controlled her, which is super dangerous as someone with the powers of a first guardian. she then used jade’s powers to corrupt jane with the tiaratop. no funtime meetup allowed!
the trolls’ meteor with rose, dave, and the remaining trolls was pulling up into the new session with no way to slow it down. grimbark jade warped there once it was in the incinisphere and took active control. she warped everyone off the trolls’ meteor and sent them to LOMAX.
as john was losing his mind on LOMAX waiting for everyone, the meteor crew warped in. after 3 years he finally reunited with rose and dave, and at least saw the trolls in person. close curtains, end of A6A5. this was the newest [S] flash page at the time, one of my first impressions of this comic, and still one of my favorite flashes. knowing the context of the flash in the story only enhances the retrospective joy i have at getting into the comic at the time i did because it’s such an anticipated moment in the story for everyone, while for someone with no context of the story it was still enjoyable.
so that’s what was going on plotwise when i joined the fandom.
from this time, through those few months of updates and through the gigapause, i was familarizing myself with the characters in the story and overseeing the state of fanbase, getting myself acquainted with the story and wrapping my head around everything.
at that time i found that a new-ish group called colab HQ who were producing a let’s read homestuck series on youtube. hearing the voices and the pacing of it like that really, really eased me into it (maybe it was my adhd that gave me trouble actually starting it?). i caught up to a certain point using lets read homestuck and from that point was able to continue with the comic on my own, and by the time the gigapause came to a close i was fully caught up. i remember the rebranding of colab hq into voxus about a year and a half after i discovered them.
but.. back to the main point of my post. even these posts from hussie’s tumblr exist in archived states. how many new fans know about hussie’s old tumblr? i don’t know, unless theyre a new fan that must scour the internet for more deep more dives on homestuck and its fandom as a whole. but since hussie deleted his tumblr (it exists archived now on homestuck.net which, alongside from the unofficial homestuck collection, has nearly singlehandedly kept the most important relics of the fandom and lore archived), that page is not an active part of the fandom now, because it’s gone. it’s a pile of bones. it’s not living and breathing. it’s in an archived state. the whole thing is already there. homestuck and its fandom history is something you now binge instead of slowly consume and meld with as it comes out. it’s now this rapid information intake that you might forget about if you read it now instead of engaged alongside it. you’re not surrounded by people actively talking and theorizing about developments anymore. the ability to have those sorts of conversations during the ongoing development of the story reinforced concepts, ideas, and lore over and over as we tried to make sense of it.
being in a fandom when the author is still delivering the story is like nothing else. it allows you grow alongside the characters and engage meaningfully with the media and people in the fandom space around you. it feels like you’re participating IN the media itself, especially if you’re interfacing with the creator. it’s in always having something to theorize or talk about and speculate. and people become very aware of these sorts of forgotten story facts because they were applying the logic of the newest official post from hussie into making their sburb ocs or something and share resources and discussion posts about “what just happened in this update?? recap????” it was this cultural osmosis thing. i think this is why homestuck literacy is now at an all time low, at least from what i can see on twitter.
reading homestuck then vs now is like the difference between serialized shows with spaces between episodes to discuss stuff and time to reflect and learn and become attached to the story, narrative, worldbuilding and its characters, vs the netflix model where it’s all dropped all at once and people forget about it after binging.
at this point in time im getting the sense that “homestuck elders” now are no longer just people who were there since 2009-2010, but now also people who were there while it was still updating, probably stretching into 2014-2015. there are many sources of lore that were common knowledge in the fandom at the time that, since becoming susceptible to the deletion of content and link rot, and with the thanosing of mspaforums, are no longer accessible at the source. and a lot of people moved on after it ended, especially following the epilogues, the kate drama, and the whatpumpkin-sarah z drama, leaving a void of information behind if not for archivists and people such as me who continue to keep old facts relevant in discussions. my friend has called me a fandom scholar before and seeing this post i think i get what they mean.
EDIT: there is a series of video essays ive watched multiple times (because theyre that good) and they are exactly what modern fans need to see more of. they really help contextualize the comic and the themes present in it help you appreciate the basic fabric of homestuck a hell of a lot more. i highly recommend them and encourage any fan of homestuck to watch them, or someone considering getting into homestuck to watch the first one.
i think this is arguably as close to the “mandatory literacy class for homestuck” that person was talking about as you can get, especially the first video.
additionally, there is also the website https://rafe.name/homestuck which is essentially a sparknotes for homestuck and can help you follow developments in the comic itself.
SYNOPSIS. ━━━━━ Yn finds out that her whole relationship has been a bet. To get over her heartache her best friend Sunwoo convinces her to take revenge.
How you might ask? By breaking the culprits heart right back of course!
10jun23 | st. 31/12/23 ━ fn. 01/07/24
pairing. ━━━━━ Best Friend! Kim Sunwoo x Fem! reader (x Choi Yeonjun)
featuring. ━━━━━ the boyz members, kim chaewon, txt members + mentions of other idols
genre. ━━━━━ smau + written: humor/crack / fluff / angst / suggestive / childhood friends to lovers / college au / revenge relationship / relationship based on bet / slight slow burn
warnings. ━━━━━ timestamps/sm numbers/hair colors mean nothing, sexism/slutshaming, crude humor (kys jokes), mentions of & illusions to of food/sex/drugs/alcohol/cheating/mental illness, use of pictures of yn but only for reference, yn is a sone (snsd fan). more thorough warnings in the actual chapters, please let me know if missed something. this story doesn’t describe the idols in real life and is written with a dark skinned poc in mind!
notes. ━━━━━ the taglist is open, send an ask to be added. spam likes are fine but consider reblogging with comments of ur thoughts (not only on my work but on other authors work too! credits to the rightful owners of all the graphics. i’m not a native english speaker! and thank you to @ari-shipping-stuff for being my beta reader / writer <3
( please give this story lots of love & check out my masterlist )
PROFILES. ━━━━━ SONES INCORPORATED ᜊ DA HOMIEZ ᜊ MORE COOL KIDS ᜊ THE PLAYLIST
STEP 1. GET OVER HIM ›
ᝰ CH 000. prologue: THE NEXT BET
ᝰ CH 001. I H8 MEN
ᝰ CH 002. DON’T BREAK UP WITH THAT LOSER
ᝰ CH 003. THE PLAN
ᝰ CH 004. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
ᝰ CH 005. *INSERT EVIL LAUGHTER*
ᝰ CH 006. ANNOYING BRAT FOR SALE
ᝰ CH 007. DON'T WORRY YOUR PRETTY BIG HEAD
ᝰ CH 008. NOT OVER HIM
ᝰ CH 009. CLASSIC SUNWOO-YN-BFF-DATE
ᝰ CH 010. THE NERVE AND THE AUDACITY
STEP 2. MAKE HIM FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU ›
ᝰ CH 011. STEP UP MY GAME
ᝰ CH 012. SASSY CAT EMOJI
ᝰ CH 013. A NIGHT ON THE TOWN W/ YN & WOO
ᝰ CH 014. GOOD NIGHT
ᝰ CH 015. HOBBIES FOR SUNWOO
ᝰ CH 016. GRAND DISCOVERY (YN HAS AN IDEA)
ᝰ CH 017. JUNS UNAPPROACHABLE AND COLD GF
ᝰ CH 018. HANGING OUT WITH MY BFS FRIENDS
ᝰ CH 019. BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF
ᝰ CH 020. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME
STEP 3. BREAK HIS HEART ›
ᝰ CH 021. CODE ORANGE
ᝰ CH 022. I FUCKED UP
ᝰ CH 023. HITCH IN THE ROAD
ᝰ CH 024. CONSIDER AND MAKE SURE
ᝰ CH 025. WHAT MAKES THE HEART GROW WHAT?
ᝰ CH 026. BALLOON FLOWERS
ᝰ CH 027. REJECTION + ANEURYSM = WENT WELL
ᝰ CH 028. MAKEUP
ᝰ CH 029. BALLOON FLOWERS VERSUS ROSES
ᝰ CH 030. MINE (HIS)
ᝰ CH 00I. epilogue: A PEAK IN SUNYN’S LOVE
ᝰ CH 0II. ASK THEM ANYTHING EVENT
ᝰ AFTER WORD
special thanks (& follow these awesome ppl). ━━━━━ to @yuyusuyu @kodzumo @tocupid @leo-seonghwa @seonghwaddict @felixsramen : i have to give you six an extra special thanks because you all motivated and supported me so much while i was stressing and being annoying, just so you know guys are my motivation! (the other message is also to you all ofc)
and to @yunstarz @nyukyujs @rieuvie @thelargefrye @i-luvsang @cybrsan @gyumibear @pocketjoong @jaehunnyy @nebulousbrainsoup @justhere4kpop @xpixie @atinycafe @brrrkdslek @phantom-webber @a1sh1teruu @starryunho @aestheticsluut @end0rchans @yourfatherlucifer @alixnsuperstxr @girls4cheol @cheollipop @mintgki @aoi-turtle @renstears @42e15 @alixnsuperstxr @mrowwww @hwaightme @paradiqms @starrysvn @tubatu-wari-wari @kitten4sannie @chokchokk @hee0soo @joong-of-gold @armysantiny @evilsailorsenshi @mundayoonimnida @aapplepii @juhakutie : first of all i don’t expect you to read or interact with this fic, you might not even stan the boyz or like this sorta thing but i tagged you all because of one reason and one reason only; to tell you that you all make tumblr such a lovely and inspirational place for me, whenever i see ur accs it brightens my day because i know what great ppl are behind them, i just wanted to say that i think that you are amazing and i want to use this post to thank you! happy new years and i love you everyone (and you who’s reading this)
On this Yom Ha'Zikaron Le'Chalalei Ma'rachot Yisrael (Memorial Day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims), I figured it's important to remember that Israeli victims did not exist solely on Oct 7. We have lost loved ones before and since. Here's a list with just one random victim to represent each year. Please scroll down the list to see how far back it goes.
(part 1/5, all parts in the reblogs)
2024: On Jan 7, we lost 19 years old Shai Garmai
2023: On Oct 7, we lost 28 years old Osama abu Madiam
2022: On Nov 23, we lost 18 years old Tiran Faro
2021: On May 12, we lost 5 years old Ido Avigal
2020: On Aug 26, we lost 39 years old Shai Ochayon
2019: On May 5, we lost 49 years old Zaid al-Chamamda
2018: On Dec 12, we lost Amiad Israel Yish Ran, who was murdered in his mother's womb
2017: On Nov 22, we lost 21 years old Hodaya Nechama Assoulin
2016: On Oct 25, we lost 14 years old Rami Namer abu Amar
2015: On Feb 17, we lost 4 years old Adelle Biton
2014: On Oct 22, we lost 2.5 months old Chaya Zissel Brown
2013: On Dec 24, we lost 22 years old Salech al-Din abu al-Atayef
2012: On Jul 18, we lost 28 years old Yitzchak Idan Kolangi
2011: On Apr 17, we lost 16 years old Daniel Aryeh Viplich
2010: On Feb 26, we lost 52 years old Netta Blatt Sorek
2009: On Apr 2, we lost 13 years old Shlomo Nativ
2008: On Mar 6, we lost 26 years old Doron Trunach Mahareta
2007: On Jun 17, we lost 85 years old Meir Cohen
2006: On Aug 10, we lost 4 years old Fatchi Assdi
2005: On Jul 12, we lost 16 years old Nofar Horvitz
2004: On Sep 29, we lost 2 years old Dorit Massarat Binsan
2003: On Sep 9, we lost 20 years old Naava Appelbom
2002: On Nov 10, we lost 4 years old Noam Levi Ochayon
2001: On Dec 12, we lost 42 years old Ester Avraham
2000: On Nov 21, we lost 19 years old Itamar Yefet
1999: On Jun 24, we lost 34 years old Tony Eliyahu Zanna
1998: On Dec 2, we lost 41 years old Osama Moussa abu Aisha
1997: On Mar 13, we lost 13 years old Natali Alkalai
1996: On Feb 25, we lost 57 years old Yitzchak Elbaz
1995: On Jul 24, we lost 60 years old Zehava Oren
As Tumblr limits a post to 30 images... part 1/5 - the next parts will be posted in the reblogs momentarily. Please check out the full list.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
From the same artform that brought you Coraline and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, comes three stories that evoke the existential fear of art.
Original Music by Molly Noise
Bibliography below
Atrocity Guide. “The Animators Who’ve Spent 40 Years on a Single Film.” YouTube, 9 Oct. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hip3pz0Xs&pp=ygUMdGhlIG92ZXJjb2F0. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Brubaker, Charles. “The Japanese Studios of Rankin/Bass.” Cartoon Research, Jerry Beck, 14 Apr. 2014, cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-japanese-studios-of-rankinbass/.
Bute, Paris. “Introduction to “a Rankin/Bass Retrospective from a New Perspective.”” Citizen Jane, Stephens College, 19 Nov. 2021, www.citizenjane.org/home/cwwicd2ucb2fvs64kgfaocfykjhaum. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Harold Halibut. Directed by Onat Hekimoğlu, Slow Bros., 16 Apr. 2024.
Hekimoglu, Onat, and Gabriel Schmitz. “Unite Berlin 2018 - Harold Halibut and Making a Stop Motion Game.” Unity, YouTube, 6 Aug. 2018, youtu.be/9usssSQc0wQ. Accessed 6 May 2023.
Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke. “The Making of Harold Halibut.” XboxEra, YouTube, 21 Mar. 2024, youtu.be/WMyxM9t3o7A. Accessed 19 June 2024.
LAIKA Studios. “Sweater and Gloves: Knitting Coraline by Hand.” YouTube, 11 July 2017, youtu.be/zUvkfcGR-7U. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Mad God Productions. “Phil Tippett’s “Mad God.”” Kickstarter, 17 May 2012, www.kickstarter.com/projects/madgod/phil-tippetts-mad-god/posts.
Olson, Mathew. “Report: Michel Ancel Accused of Abusive, Disruptive Practices on beyond Good & Evil 2.” VG247, 25 Sept. 2020, www.vg247.com/report-michel-ancel-accused-of-abusive-disruptive-practices-on-beyond-good-evil-2. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Ono, Kosei. “Tadahito Mochinaga: The Japanese Animator Who Lived in Two Worlds.” Animation World Network, AWN, Inc, 1 Dec. 1999, www.awn.com/animationworld/tadahito-mochinaga-japanese-animator-who-lived-two-worlds.
Orland, Kyle. “Claptrap Voice Actor Accuses Gearbox CEO of Assault, Underpayment.” Ars Technica, 7 May 2019, arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/claptrap-voice-actor-accuses-gearbox-ceo-of-assault-underpayment/. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Pilling, Jayne. A Reader In Animation Studies. Indiana University Press, 1998. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/40033.
Prehistoric Beast. Directed by Phil Tippett, Tippett Studios, 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlaXIRTjNfo
Randles, Jonathan. “VFX Studio with Star Wars, Jurassic Park Credits Goes Bankrupt.” Bloomberg Law, 1 May 2024, news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/vfx-studio-with-star-wars-jurassic-park-credits-goes-bankrupt. Accessed 19 June 2024.
Shanley, Patrick. “Gearbox Software CEO Accused of Contempt in Latest Filing.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Aug. 2019, www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/gearbox-software-ceo-accused-contempt-latest-filing-1235064/. Accessed 19 June 2024.
The Making of “Jurassic Park.” Directed by John Schultz, Amblin Entertainment, 1995. https://youtu.be/8r01mk6F_Pk
The Making of Mad God. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2021. https://youtu.be/sfUOHh0xmwc
The Tale of the Fox. Directed by Irene Starewicz and Ladislas Starevich, UFA GmbH, 10 Apr. 1941. https://youtu.be/Us_Pn6Q1dBQ
Wikipedia contributors. "List of films with longest production time." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.
Wikipedia contributors. "List of media notable for being in development hell." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.
Wikipedia contributors. "List of Rankin/Bass Productions films." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.
Wikipedia contributors. "Tadahito Mochinaga." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Nov. 2023. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.
Wilson, Josh. “Phil Tippett: 24 Frames per Second < the Fabulist Words & Art.” The Fabulist Words & Art, 5 Nov. 2021, fabulistmagazine.com/24-frames-per-second-the-phil-tippett-interview/.
Worse than the Demon. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2013. https://youtu.be/ghKqvDNRe4c
02 MAR '24: Rob and Steve are the first guests formally announced on the BHR website.
06 MAR '24: Alex McKenna is on board!
07 MAR '24: Benjamin is ready to party!
10 MAR '24: Red Harlow himself, actor Robert Bogue, will once again join the gang!
11 MAR '24: Peter and Mick are joining the fun once again!
12 MAR '24: Another big update! Jim Santangeli, and for the very first time, Howard Pinhasik will join the rest of the gang at Deadwood.
13 MAR '24: Ms Grimshaw and Ms. Jackson will be meeting up with the rest of the gang!
15 MAR '24: Arthur's favorite father figure and the Spaghetti villain have joined the fun.
16 MAR '24: THE BOAH is coming to Deadwood!
18 MAR '24: The final two camp ladies will be at Deadwood!
23 MAR '24: Everyone's favorite Bandito is coming to Deadwood!
25 MAR '24: For the first time. Ms Molly herself, Penny O'Brien will be at the 2nd annual RDR Event! Also, photos have been rearranged to place the newest announcements on top.
30 MAR '24: The talent behind Agent Milton will be joining the rest of the gang at Deadwood!
21 APR '24: Sophia Marzocchi, the og Abigail Marston, will maker her first appearance at the 2nd annual Red Dead event!
06 JUN '24: Matt Walton, who played everyone's favorite photographer, Albert Mason, will also make his first ever appearance at the event.
14 JUN '24: Gabriel Sloyer cancelled his appearance at the event
minghao knows he’s in a mood again, but frankly, he couldn’t care less.
his whole day had just been wrong, and he’d set about it with a frown marring his features and a biting undertone to everything he’d said. it just happened sometimes — one of those bad, awful days where nothing goes right and it feels like everything’s against you.
it was when he snapped at jun that he finally gave in, retired to moping in his bedroom. his roommate had said he understood — jun had plenty of his own bad days, after all — but minghao still feels awful about it. he’s still too irritated to apologise — he will do it, though, he promises himself.
for now, he’s thrown himself on the covers of his bed, staring at the ceiling listlessly, and blasting music through his earphones — loud, but not so loud that he doesn’t catch the soft sound of the doorknob when you twist it, and slide yourself into the room.
you do it almost apologetically, a regretful smile directed towards him. you don’t even speak, just make your way over to his side.
minghao wishes he could be annoyed, but he never can be, at you. you’re his best friend, and maybe something more that he’s not quite willing to accept yet. it’s lurking, though, at the bottom of his chest, and it pushes up every so often — like now, as you take a seat on the edge of the bed, almost as if you’re unsure; uncertain if you’re welcome here or not.
you always are, but he doesn’t quite know how to say that yet.
instead he thinks about how he knows jun must have called you, just as he knows you, too good for this world, dropped whatever you were doing to come and talk to him.
not that you’re doing much of that — talking, he means. you’ve only flopped beside him on the white duvet; and yet it’s enough to relax a little of the tension in his limbs.
it’s so easy to be around you.
it’s so easy to offer you an earbud without even looking. it’s so easy to close his eyes, slip his hand into yours. it’s so easy to interlace his fingers with yours too, squeeze gently, keep his eyes shut, pretend.
and then suddenly it gets hard. when you shift slightly, card a hand through his dark hair like you’ve always been doing it — you’ve never done it before, he hopes you do it forever — and you blur the lines even more. that makes it harder, harder to breathe with your careful hand against his cheek, the smell of your conditioner against his lips, he can’t breathe, he thinks he loves you.
you move back slightly. the moment is gone, he can breathe, but the lines are still blurred and you can’t unblur them. god knows he doesn’t want to redraw them.
your hand slips back into his, and squeezes. his eyes flutter open — yours are shut — your breath catches — minghao realises, then.
“oh,” he whispers softly. and it’s his turn to brush your cheek with slender fingers, but he’s always been the braver of you two — he leans, he brushes his lips against your cheek too.
you might not be able to call it a kiss, but maybe you could call it a confession.
an / guys i think this might be one of my fav things i’ve ever written which is so annoying because it starts off kind of badly 😭 but also it’s 12:17am and i’ve slept like 4 hours max in the last 24 hours so my judgement may be misguided. idk. possible deletion when i wake up ⁉️
I don't like how the birthdays from stardew valley are set up in the real world. Like most of December is in the fall according to the solstice but Sebastian's birthday is winter 10 and we've decided it's December 10th.
Nah, let's give all the characters accurate birthdays in accordance with the seasons.
I'll set it up 2 ways:
1. Taking the earliest dates of each solstice and equinox that defines the seasons and dividing that by 28 (number of days in a stardew valley season) then multiplied that number by the NPC's bday (I'll explain the math later)
2. Taking the average amount of days in-between each IRL season and dividing that by 28
Earliest dates are as follows:
Spring March 19
Summer June 20
Autumn September 21
Winter December 20
The length of each season in this method is
91 days for spring
93 days for summer
90 days for fall
90 days for winter
The average days in between is 91.5 days.
Dividing by 28 we get
3.25 Spring
3.32142857 Summer
3.2142857 Autumn / Winter
3.267857142857143 Average
These numbers are the difference between our real world dates and stardew valley dates
Our season are about 90 days long, their's are 28 days so
1 day for stardew players is about 3 days for us.
Now that we have these numbers let's find out how each day correlates to each villager.
It will be in order of earliest birthday to latest and will follow this format
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
My next novel is The Bezzle, a high-tech ice-cold revenge thriller starring Marty Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant, as he takes on the sleaziest scams of the first two decades of the 2000s, from hamburger-themed Ponzis to the unbelievably sleazy and evil prison-tech industry:
I'm taking Marty on the road! I'll be visiting eighteen cities between now and June, and I hope you'll come out and say hello, visit a beloved local bookseller, and maybe get a book (or two)!
21 Feb: Weller Bookworks, Salt Lake City, 1830h:
https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm
22 Feb: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 19h:
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow
24 Feb: Vroman's, Pasadena, 17h, with Adam Conover (!!)
https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle
26 Feb: Third Place Books, Seattle, 19h, with Neal Stephenson (!!!)
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow