#Also yes this concept is in a state where literally every random character is named EXCEPT for the main character

[loveletterworm]

some things i drew yesterday and today of things from that game i was making a few months ago (that i stopped making because i got too intimidated by the ordeal of figuring out how to make enemies attack and have bullet hell patterns and whatever and now it’s been too long and i forgot how to read my own code...but i still like the stupid characters i made for it so sometimes i just draw them anyways for no reason.  My shameful existence as nothing more than a “idea guy” can never be redeemed)

the first picture is the player character who has been seen here before in tiny sprite form and...the second picture was supposed to be of all the boss-fight-y characters i had come up with but then i realized that only two of them had final-enough designs so it’s extremely unimpressive and i didn��t really want to post it at all...but fine i guess you can just look at the tiny cowboy made of dust and the “dollar-store-shadow-the-hedgehog”-type rival character.  Oftentimes i become sad that the world will most likely never get to know how lame cole is because she’s very funny to me.  If i explain anything though this caption will be even longer than it already is

[iamindifferenttolamp]

Jesus.

Okay hear me out:

When I was a kid, sometime in elementary school - I must've been at least 7 or 8 I think - I was in "vacation bible school" that was literally at some random neighbor's house.

That neighbor had a son who played the drums and I thought that was really cool.

Fifth grade was when we got to choose if we wanted to be in band class and if so which instrument to play. We only had four options though: flute, clarinet, trumpet, or trombone. We couldn't choose anything else - including percussion - until sixth grade. So I chose clarinet because it was the easiest of the four, fully intending to switch to percussion the next year.

Except I never actually voiced this plan and my parents bought a clarinet outright instead of renting it through the school the way most other kids did.

This was 2009, so the recession had just hit and money was on all adults' minds, even if my parents denied it, and therefore those worries seeped down to me (plus my parents' general frugality) and so I felt like it would be a terrible waste of money to switch from the clarinet I now owned to percussion and I stuck with it.

The middle school held a band summer camp every year. I don't think it was mandatory, maybe it was, but it was fun enough that I went regardless. I sat down randomly with the rest of the rising sixth grade clarinets, coming in from a few different elementary schools. The director had us all introduce ourselves and I happened to be sitting between two girls named Rach(a)el and so I made an offhand joke about it. (Since I wasn't playing the drums I clearly hadn't become cool.)

One of the Rach(a)els actually laughed at my joke and we became best friends. At this point in the story, I should mention that I basically never had any friends at school before this point. (Sorry Kellie, but also you spent several years at Catholic school.) So I really wanted to keep this one. So as middle school progresses, she shows me that she likes to write stories for fun. I, math-minded and loathing the lack of definite answers a writing prompt implies, found this to be a novel concept. But if Rachael liked writing, then it must be fun and I should try it too so that we have yet another shared interest (and she stays my friend).

This was also about the time that my parents got the internet at home, which meant writing didn't have to be the tedious process of scribbling in a notebook. It could instead be the tedious process of hunt-and-pecking on a keyboard - and, most importantly, posted publicly to bring fame and fortune or whatever.

And this is what led me to Protagonize, a now-defunct website that was built around a really cool choose-your-own-adventure-esque branching story concept (although you could create a standard linear story by just only adding one option to proceed) and that detail actually isn't relevant to the story at hand.

I hated writing, but the coolness of Protagonize drew me in and I used it (not a lot but I was there) for at least three years. In this time, I had perhaps my first encounter with fanfiction. Well, besides Rachael's Aquamarine fanfic in her notebook. I vaguely remember a fic about the Marvel villain Kingpin, but the other fic I remember running into (yes it was literally just two don't worry about it) was a self-insert Doctor Who fic. I think it was only the first page/chapter, too, but between the fun that the characters seemed to be having and the author's enthusiasm for the series, this "Doctor Who" thing stuck in my brain.

Move forward a couple years to high school. I'm still playing clarinet in band, I'm actually friends with Kellie now, and I have an ipod touch and a Facebook account. (And undiagnosed adhd.) And Facebook is filled with meme pages, where when you click on a shared meme, you can then scroll through all of the images that page has posted. (This is where the adhd comes in.)

Well two things keep coming up in my - what's a word for doomscrolling when it has nothing to do with the state of the world, it just makes you feel bad because you feel like you can't stop and know you should be doing something else because you don't know what adhd is yet? - perusal of these memes: 1. A gosh darn lot of them came from Tumblr, and 2. Doctor Who looked like a lot of fun (and David Tennant hot).

"But Lamp," you cry, "if you were seeing these things shared on Facebook, then this doesn't actually connect to Jesus! The whole story could start here instead!"

Aha! Good catch, reader - but there are two things I haven't told you yet. One is that Rachael moved away after seventh grade. I tried to keep in touch with her by email, but eventually she told me that she really only communicates by Facebook anymore. This is what led to me creating my secret-because-parents-said-I-couldn't Facebook account in the first place. And secondly, I mentioned that I still played clarinet in band. This is how I met my second ever best friend, who also played clarinet and who got into all of superwholock.

So as you see, reader, this still ties back to the clarinet which was chosen because it was easiest because the real goal was drums because Chip played the drums and when I met Chip at VBS he seemed so cool to three-years-younger me. It still all comes back to Jesus.

So I start watching Doctor Who. I'm all caught up by fall of 2013 and decide to take the plunge into Tumblr so I can be on the cutting edge of the memes and gifs and takes and analyses and fanarts and all that good fandom stuff for the 50th anniversary episode.

Well, Tumblr isn't just full of fandoms making memes. It's also full of gay people. And one of my classmates was both into similar fandoms and a hardcore feminist (shout-out to Lauren even though she's not on Tumblr anymore). So I suddenly found myself being confronted with a lot of ideas about gender and its place in the world, including in interpersonal relationships, in a space that was mostly fun and very easy to lurk in, coming from friends I respected and admired.

It may sound like a very 2014 tumblrina take but honestly a lot of my unlearning my conservative upbringing and realizing my own repressed queerness is thanks to Tumblr.

And in conclusion, if it weren't for Jesus I wouldn't be queer today.

"why are you lgbt wrong answers only " to be quite honest the girls always made me be the dog when we played house

[letsperaltiago]

ok time to break my silence caused by the fact that i spent all day making this lol too many feels 

so.. palm springs thoughts !! and there are manyyyy so buckle up and feeel free to hit me up with either matching or contradicting thoughts or whateveer!! i would LOVE to nerd out about this movie with someone:’)

here comes thoughts and pictures!! 

we basically start off with a mr. samberg sex-scene okAYYYYY the mood is set. we love the view

nyles aka. mr. samberg is the most gorgeous man alive and it was a true pleasure to admire him for 90 minutes straight 

CURLS!!????! THEY ARE UNREAL. i shall dedicate an entire post to them

Cristin Milioti is perfect for her role. her acting? *chef’s kiss* I love that she’s not the stereotypical female rom-com lead.

Her chemistry with Andy? Gosh.. Can’t believe Nyles x Sarah is my new main movie-ship!! They play off of each other SO. WELL. Their characters are equally stone cold and bitter, but then again not really, and they both portray it so well!!

“You don’t ned a leg up.” *moans* “Hold my leg up!” i SCREAMED

“Don’t you kiss me.” “Don’t you tell me what to do.” hoW DARE THEY!

Ok ur basically on love already stop it

The fact that they were just gonna fuck on a blanket on top OF ROCKS?!

but then again in this movie’s already insane universe it’s prob pretty normal:)

The overall dark, existential humor?? This is what I live and breathe for on a daily basis. Basiaclly both main characters are a BIG MOOD

Nyles not giving a shit vs. Sarah severely freaking out in the beginning is an iconic dynamic

“I am the antichrist” and then the rock falling? For a hot sec I literally thought the movie was gonna take a turn with Nyles being some magical/scientific creature that’d created the timeloop or something idkkk ahhha

Nyles in the suit... ridiculous(ly hot)

The torture methods Roy uses on Nyles and the fact that he’s not mentally scarred?? How?? 

On that note I love that Nyles and Sarah keep their memories even if the day starts over. Would’ve been a completely different concept if they had to “meet each other for the first time” every day and it wouldn’t’ve allowed their relationship arc to evolve as it did 

Darla is the fucking shit 

Nyles in the baseball cap, amirite?

THE BARTENDER TALKING ABOUT HITTING A GUY WITH THE CAR SHE’S CURRENTLY GIVING NYLES A HANDJOB IN IS COMEDIC GOLD 

“You fucked Jerry Schlieffen?” “Well he fucked me.” Yes SIR. Andy Samberg’s characters are all bottoms and we’re here for it

Sarah’s tongue click and “nice try” when Nyles asks her about her sex life?? 

IDK WHY BUT SO GOD

Randy is hella annoying. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

THIS ENTIRE SCENE:

the fact that they both start waking up smiling because now at least they have each other 🥺😭🤯

uhm i love a good ship that’s like... best friends to lovers and the montage of them basically becoming besties killed me 

this outfit Y E S: 

sarah falling off the car and nyles laughing it off is relationship goals

the crashing plane I LOL’ED

okay so... big moment... the DANCING AND MATCHING OUTFITS? THEY ARE MY DREAM TEAM. Also how excited they are running away from the bar 🥺

IM POSITIVE THIS IS THE MOMENT NYLES KNOWS! LIKE HE DOESN’T ADMIT IT TO HIMSELF COMPLETELY BUT HE KNOWS 

the bomb in the cake and french pirate-skit? so fucking random but i lovee it because it’s so them

*DRUM ROLL* PERHAPS MY FAVORITE MOMENT IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE: 

STORYLINE WISE AND VISUALLY A++++

the deep talks by the fire were SO well written. they were actually deep and genuine, allowing the characters to grow and opening up to us as viewers but also remained fun and witty

sarah trying to get nyles to admit he cares for her and him joking it off??? the flirtinggg

really wish we’d gotten to know more about what nyles meant with “it drifts away: just like they all do.” because it really seemed to trigger something within him. Like WHO “They”???

the dinosaurs lmao no comment but at least they got a cute cuddly moment

from the very first millisecond inside the tent you can CLEARLY tell Sarah is just dying to do something about them!!!

 the disbelief on nyles’ face when sarah says “lets just get it over with” because she’d clearly stated he didn’t want to and even though he obviously did he’s respected it and not done anything further about it oh babey

we love some good making out:’))) 

NYLES HALTING TO TAKE IN THE MOMENT EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO SCREAM INTO THE VOID 

i will die for a post-sexy timez cuddle and how sarah is trying to staying awake to be besides him is just *explosion* 

this has to be *the moment* she realises 

and they’re both sooooo fucking happy when they wake up after damn love me like that pls

THE GROOM BOOO FUCK OFF CAN’T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO REMEMBER HIS NAME CHEATING SCUM 

THIS FACE:

Baby is trying so hard and is so cute and nervous about it. SARAH LISTEN TO HIM HE LOVES YOU.

HE FELT GOOD WAKING UP BECAUSE OF YOUUUU, GIRL. DO NOT CALL IT “FUN”, SARAH 

“Going to bed maybe just got a little better” 😭😭😭😭

The entire cop scene is just pure insanity, very Lonely Island and I’m here for it even though I just want Sarah to rEALLY LISTEN TO WHAT NYLES IS TRYING TO SAY 

“Pain is real” oh babey that means SO MANY THINGS 🥺💔

“I followed you into that cave because I liked you!” like jake would say: don’t love how we got here but we’re going where i want

“pretentious sad boy” me

not shocked that they’ve hooked up before because c h e m i s t r y but don’t like how it got out :)))

why is nyles’ one sleeve shirt rolled up? im triggered

drinking pure vodka? oh babey its gonna be okay 

WE LOVE A SMART BOI WHO RECOGNIZES HIS GIRL’S PERFUME 

Sarah’s parents singing:)) i would cry too, nyles

"I love her.” “I see... That’s interesting” lmao savage

I actually really love Roy’s character. It turns out to be very humble actually and he has some insightful and lowkey poetic that lines i love. Besides that he’s hilarious. 

SO the whole time i was wondering how they’d get out of the whole “same day forever”-thing, if they were to. and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that they had such a logical way out of it: science. Not anything cheesy like “a true love’s kiss” or “you learned your lesson”. Pure logic and Sarah’s hard work to get there. Huge fan of this. 

I will never get over how good Nyles looks waking up and Sarah is xtra pretty in that scene:’) 

Nyles just wants to stay in a loop forever because it means for sure that he gets to stay with Sarah forever and I’m lowkey into it but also like lowkey LISTEN TO HER AND GO WITH HER PLAN, NYLES

“I wanna stay with you” *sniffles*

“I love you. How about that?” PRETTY FUCKING GOOD 

I love Nyles’ character development. He started off so nonchalant and cold, closed off and by this point he’s the softest, smiliest in love fool I’ve ever seen and Andy does it so good. SAMBERG HEART EYES!!

“Nothing is real in here” YES SARAH UR LOVE IS

I’m taking Sarah’s asking Nyles to believe in her and leave with her as her first “I love you” because it’s very clear that she wants to leave with him rather than without. 

just- this entire scene i ugh <3 <3 <3 <3

BREAKING. UP. WITH. MISTY ! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

glass of wine filled to the brim? sarah’s my type of gal

the speech was really beautiful and sweet without being too cheesy and kudos to cristin for really delivering it like a pro! especially her “abe, don’t fuck this up” like yes girl kill him, chop him to pieces with your eyes!!! also camila is such really pretty bride

nyles looks like a cockatoo here :

nyles taking the shot and smashing the glass into the ground got me 🤭😵😏🥵

“I’m your son” I SCREAM

GIVE THE MAN A WHITE HORSE DAMNIT

Gotta admit Sarah looks like a bomb (lol nu pun intended) ass super hero in her bridesmaid dress and C4-gettup 

The sentence ending up being total grammatical gibberish but Nyles trying so. damn. hard is the sweetest thing ever and should and will go down in rom-com history. It’s super romantic but also well-balanced by humor and I just.. so good. This is the kind of characters and relationships I love and wanna write myself 

“you’re my favorite person that i’ve ever met” 🥺🥺🥺

“i’d rather die with you than live in this world without you” WHY AM I SO SINGLE SOMEONE LOVEE ME LIKE THIS 

okay so idk but “what if we get sick of each other?” “we’re already sick of each other. it’s the best.” is so so so soft, the way nyles says it like it doesn’t matter and is honestly another key moment for me: they’ve experienced basically everything imaginable during their time in the box/loop. they’ve liked, disliked, loved, hated each other and still: he loves her. the fact that nyles knows no matter what happens it won’t stop that because it’s them?? ouch my heart. 

this chaotic mess of a pairing?MESSY BOMB BRIDESMAID AND CURLY-HAIR HAWAII SHIRT-BOI!! MY OTp

Them dissing Nyles’ mom on their way into potential death? that’s love, baby 

the fUCKING KISSSSSSS MANNNNNNNNNN!!!! SO ICONIC AND THE EXPLOSION IN THE BACKGROUND AND JUST WE DESERVE THIS THEY DESERVE THIS EVERYONE DESERVES THISSSS!!! 

NEVER OVEER THIS EVER FOREVER NEVER

Ok so I was SURE that when it faded to black that it was done and I grew super ficking frustrated because it would leave us with this “the ending is up to whatever you chose”-kinda thing kinda a la Celeste and Jesse where it just feels unresolved and I WASN’T OKAY WITH THAT. So I’m so happy we got to know that it worked and the bebes will live happuilly ever after with Nyles’ shaggy dog:’) 

Their hands on each other’s knee >>>>>

all in all 100000/10 

[ghostmartyr]

So if you, like me, have nothing to do but wonder about the state of my inbox, you might rightfully be wondering how I plan to deal with the obscene backlog I have spent so many years failing to deal with.

If you have never wondered that, fear not, that doesn’t exclude you from finding out.

Today we’re just going to go through my entire slew of unanswered asks, and instead of answering them, I am going to provide excuses for why I didn’t do anything with them.

For added fun, several of the asks were in my Drafts.

I will not be cutting out the comments I started to make.

I will no doubt regret this.

Let’s have a time, shall we?

I don’t even know what year this is from. If I remember correctly, I didn’t get back to you because I thought about trying to reason out who would legitimately win, and there were too many points for both sides. I kept intending to come up with a proper answer, then time went by and this got buried.

Though the actual answer is probably “it depends on who gets the main character sticker at the time.”

...

..

.

Well.

I can tell you this is multiple years old.

We, as humans, aren’t equipped for time travel.

I didn’t answer this one because I didn’t feel like it was asking for one, and I’m only reproducing it here because it is really, really funny now.

Two years old. Plus change.

I think the entire reason I never replied to this one is that it cheered me up whenever I scrolled down enough to see it, so thank you.

You know, I entered the link at the time. Really, I did. But then came trying to come up with a comment and what can you really follow that with?

(Click the link.)

Okay then.

I still feel no need to respond to this, so that’s probably why I didn’t to start with.

Historia and literally anyone.

I don’t remember why I didn’t answer this, which usually means some combination of feeling tired and not being in the mood to scroll down to where it was.

Oops.

The thing is, this crosses dangerously close to being a fic idea. Fic ideas take time and effort. You can imagine the absolute dread I felt at having to engage with either concept.

It would have been a lot of fun to do, though. Hats off.

See, again. This is a very interesting concept that requires thought. I can tell you when I received it I was in no mood for anything that required anything of the sort.

I wrote a fic that is possibly never going to see the light of day now where they hang out in a kitchen with hot chocolate together and bond through unstated trauma and Frieda attempting to make things better.

That probably contributed to interfering with imagining how they would actually get along.

Anyway, I ship them slightly in that fic AU. Don’t @ me.

Oh dang. I remember this.

I actually really wanted to answer it, but the problem is that I wanted to come up with a good answer. Every character, tiered by their chances. A full Hunger Games edition of what went down and who killed who.

Then I didn’t.

Anyway, turns out the answer is that no one feels the need to chop of rocking chairs in a hurry, so she’d last a long time!

I didn’t answer this because I try to avoid responding with, “I don’t know.” My secondary answer would probably have been, “By being killed.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with those answers, but unless there’s been a tonal trend in asks, I assume that pithy answers that don’t actually have any meat behind them would not be appreciated.

I would stick to him probably being killed, though. But some signs do point to him being relatively immortal.

Hm.

Hmm.

I don’t know why I didn’t answer this, but I would guess it had something to do with me caring very little about Ymir’s thoughts on anything outside of her little clutch of people. And ongoing trauma of repeated dead/alive Ymir commentary killing off my desire to come up with a good answer.

Sorry?

I... have no idea why I didn’t answer this? Maybe I didn’t see it?

Anyway, yes.

There’s a longer version behind that yes, and I’m sure that might have contributed to never getting around to answering this. ...Assuming a past where I did actually see this one.

I have a confession.

I don’t really like crossovers.

There’s a sliding scale of degree, but that’s basically why this didn’t get a response.

Ah, we’ve landed on a recurring theme.

Sometimes, answers involve me thinking about the entire cast.

The usual consequence of that is I don’t have the energy for that, so nothing ever happens with these.

Oh, this one’s easy.

I had no fucking clue.

No ideas, head empty.

That didn’t seem like a good answer, so here we are, probably around a year later. I still have no clue. If I were forced to write a singing duo AU, I would probably just put some adjectives and nouns into a blender and flip a coin.

Names are hard.

I think I didn’t answer this one because I felt like I’d answered similar asks before. And I’m not really sure when this is from, but it’s possible canon complicated coming up with an answer that wasn’t distressed screeching.

Something something give Connie and Mikasa hugs, not partial about where they get them from.

Apparently not. Oops.

I can’t remember why I didn’t respond to this one. It’s possible the oodles of bad parenting proved too distracting to formulate such a post.

Sometimes I get an ask, and my immediate, gut reaction is, how the fuck should I know?

If I can move past that, the ask is answered.

If I can’t, the ask continues its descent through scroll hell.

I am sorry. There are no answers here.

Yeah, this is just the same as the above, just with I have no idea.

It’d probably be a Madoka Magic deal.

Huh. I don’t remember passing this one over. If I were to guess a timeline, I was probably too bitter over potential post-timeskip looks that I never got to be interested in focusing on the characters lucky enough to get good ones.

Go Connie for being less short, I suppose.

This clearly belonged to something that I was doing, but time has eroded the context, so I am simply left with failure and disappointment on all sides. Sorry.

Aw, we’re getting into the boring part of the inbox now, I think. Not because of the questions; you guys are always great. But I can’t think of a reason why I wouldn’t have answered this, which leads me to think that the reason was I was too tired to put words together.

That’s a boring reason, so maybe I should go into Drafts for the next few...

Yeah, still unfairly prejudiced against crossovers. I am no fun, etc. etc.

I have no memory of it, but I feel like I didn’t answer this because there was no way I could match this kindly anon’s enthusiasm.

You go, random internet person.

You have good ideas.

Oh no.

Uh.

See.

I know exactly why I didn’t answer this one.

I am so sorry, Anon.

I really didn’t care.

I am filled with affection for you because you clearly do, but uh.

...I basically put this on Read.

This has a very simple, ie boring, explanation. Any time someone asks about the cast as a whole, I want to think about the cast as a whole, and that takes a lot more thought than most of the asks I get. Cue putting it off. Cue it getting lost in scroll hell. On and on we go until we end up here.

Anything that opens with kilometers is something that requires more brain power than I have had in the past year.

Also I think I got this during a spoiler week, so I saw it, but I was trying not to look at it, and then it got lost in the post-chapter asks.

That happens a lot.

We might see it more soon.

If I can’t come up with words more than “-shrug-” I try not to answer.

...Good news, though!

The manga did my job for me!

I feel like I answered some variation of this. That might be why I didn’t answer this specific one.

The wiki does a better job keeping track of the timeline than I ever have. I probably didn’t answer this because it would involve trying to remember which volume actually name-dropped a number of weeks or months. Searching for lines I know a character said is pretty easy, but searching out lines I have a vague feeling of someone providing? That tends to hit the frustration button with the force of a truck.

But yeah, if you ever want to know how long something took, the wiki is absolutely your friend. They do good work.

Consider: “What if” questions are hard, and I am lazy.

This is actually one I really did mean to get to, sorry. It’s an interesting thought, and I miss Sasha.

...I clearly did a magnificent job answering your asks, friend.

Prediction asks are hard for me; I feel like I’m throwing darts randomly into the air and the dartboard is still deciding if it’s going to show up. So uh. I guess I just kept putting this off until it didn’t get answered.

This post is going to have so many apologies. Implied and otherwise.

I continue to be the No Fun Police who accidentally-on-purpose avoids crossover commentary.

I feel like I didn’t answer this one entirely because seeing it in my inbox gave me far too much joy to have it lost in a sea of posts.

This is what my inbox was made for.

I have no idea when this was from, but I see your emotions and appreciate them, Anon.

...Did I not see this one?

Hey, Anon who probably doesn’t remember sending this: This is a good ask and deserved some good attention, and I’m sorry I missed my shot at it. Good thoughts.

I didn’t answer this one entirely because I knew I couldn’t match the energy of it, and responding with anything less felt heretical.

That is one hell of a mood, Anon.

This is definitely from the era of, “Can’t think, brain empty.” Sorry about not getting back to you, I just really couldn’t organize my thoughts well enough to come up with an answer.

I feel like I didn’t know what this was continuing from and was too exhausted to ask.

LOOK YOU CAN SEE I WANTED TO ANSWER THIS BECAUSE IT’S A DRAFT.

Too many things, Anon.

I liked so many things about all of that. Trying to turn that enthusiasm into words wasn’t agreeing with me, so I put it in Drafts and told myself one day I’d do the most awesome post detailing everything.

Intentions, huh?

Every time I tried to take a normal screenshot with formatting Tumblr just laughed at me, so that might have been a contributing factor.

Dang, I’m really sorry. This is another one of those cases where I wanted to take my time with a response, and I took too long.

I, uh.

Am guilty of not being too interested in pondering Ymir’s thoughts on Levi or Erwin.

That’s it, that’s the explanation.

Yeah, I just couldn’t come up with an answer here? Or someone else asked? Or several of my friends decided to be annoying about lists on Discord? I don’t even know.

Presumably there could be a list.

There is not.

Honestly, I just couldn’t figure out how to follow that starting sentence up. A thought exercise on Armin, Historia, gender, and themes sounded really interesting, and I put it in Drafts so as not to forget it being interesting.

Then, you know. This post sort of paints the picture.

Ah.

Man, I really was looking forward to putting some proper thought into this. That’s the problem with having so many things I love in one place, I guess. Symbolism? Historia and Ymir? Mikasa? So many good things! Where do I start!

With paralyzing indecision that results in not a lot. Sorry, Anon. This really did light up my day when I got it.

Here’s the thing about me and writing:

I often fail to.

(I love both these ideas, though.)

Yes.

Do I know why I didn’t get around to answering this?

Absolutely not.

But yes, I’d agree with that.

GOOD NEWS!

The manga actually gave us some of them together in the future.

I occasionally giggled over their shared distaste.

It was a good time.

And this is another one I just do not know why I didn’t answer, whoops.

This never got answered because I couldn’t come up with an answer.

Broad questions are scary because they can go just about anywhere and I didn’t know how to handle that level of commitment.

I think I didn’t answer this one, A), because words are hard, and B), because mostly I just wanted to listen to more of your wondering and less of mine.

I probably could have answered this by saying I don’t have any, but that seemed rude, so I didn’t respond to it at all.

Yep.

Frieda is worthy of my time and effort.

Landing this in Drafts instead of my inbox.

Where the lighting makes it more obvious that hope has gone there to die.

I think about it so much too.

I find the answers fundamentally upsetting.

That is probably why I did not provide an answer here.

That is a lot of kids to make up headcanons for.

So I didn’t.

She’s eaten by dogs before she develops a personality.

Since that seemed like the wrong thing to say, I said nothing, and into Drafts this went.

‘I have no earthly clue’ seemed similarly unhelpful.

At this point, we understand that there is no mystery to my backlog.

This one hurts.

-sees the 112 reference-

Wow does it hurt.

As I hope is obvious, I really, really loved this question, and kept meaning to carve out time to work on it specifically. What went sideways was trying to put words to how EMA functions. I knew the feel of what I wanted to express, but every time I tried to write it, it came out wonky.

I’m very sorry I couldn’t do anything for this, because I was thrilled to spend time with it.

I didn’t answer this because Fuck Marley.

It’s nothing against you. At the time, I simply wasn’t in any mood to consider any version of Marley. Even the canon version was too much for me, so giving it my time in a roleswap AU had me hissing.

Roleswaps in general are amazing, and I love them a lot. A dedicated person could make a fantastic one based around Marley and Paradis. I think it would probably be cool af.

But I was so tired of Marley when I got this, I just couldn’t make myself think about it. Sorry. It’s a fun idea.

I didn’t answer this one because I kept trying to extend my response past, “I think he just really likes baseball.”

I think he just really likes baseball.

My feelings on that as a quality answer are derogatory.

Mm. The ones where I actually tried to get something started hurts.

Ultimately, this ask was a larger demand than I could make my brain work through at the time. I made sure to write down the tl;dr version of Sasha’s, because I found that desperately important, and not something that people talk about much, but the additional weight of trying to think of themes for multiple characters made it hard to progress.

Me, looking at the prompts: Hi my brain left me.

Sorry, Anon. Too many gears were moving for me to get a proper feel for what I wanted to do with this one, so I ended up ditching it. ...I was planning to finish it, though. Eventually. See, I even put the quote in the Draft version as a reminder of what I was doing, so I could get back to it right away.

Yeeeeah, this is just one more to the “I will give this wonderful thing all the time it deserves!” pile.

The pile is stored in the Failure Corner.

Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.

You guys really like crossovers.

I love that for you.

-spends two years ignoring you-

I mean, I just didn’t know what to do with the rainbows.

They sure are there.

They sure are pretty.

I sure couldn’t come up with a comment to add.

...I don’t know why I didn’t answer this. Possibly because I think it’s fine? I’m not too attached to it, and spent the whole manga period wanting to watch an anime version instead, then we got an anime version.

I’d guess that my general “meh” feelings interfered with responding here.

No idea why I didn’t answer this.

Yes, and good for you.

I support all thoughts on giving the Reiss kiddos personalities.

I think I didn’t get back to you on this because I wasn’t sure how to encourage you to keep going so I just sat awkwardly on my hands and felt weird about not saying anything.

...Thanks for sharing!

I love how it’s the little things that date these.

Unfortunately, we’re now at the point where 90% of the reason I didn’t answer was because I was too sick to muster up anything approaching enthusiasm.

Or because I’d just finished answering a bunch of chapter-specific things and was burnt out.

This felt pretty self-explanatory to me, so I felt like that gave me permission to ignore it.

Also, it mentions Marley.

I might be slightly petty.

Really though, I think what stopped me from giving a proper answer is that the question of what an author is trying to say throws me off a little. I work better thinking of it in terms of what the story is saying, with the author just happening to be the hands that wrote it all down.

I don’t know. This was probably another case of feeling like I should give this more of my time than I was able.

I couldn’t decide.

That’s it.

That’s the reason.

Everyone needs to give Mikasa a hug.

My blog title for a hug.

-the crossover snake hisses and consumes another-

I am so sorry.

This is fun.

I probably should have just gone with posting and saying so, because I am genuinely charmed by this. I tend to feel like I have to add something to asks to justify the post. That policy maybe didn’t need to be a thing.

I love my anons.

I want that to be clear.

Really, I do.

I especially love their willingness to embrace my crackpot logic.

Still.

Sometimes, the only response one can have to Schrodinger’s Ymir is to ignore its existence, find a pillow, and scream into it for the rest of time.

This replaces typing.

-looks at Armin-

-looks at Eren-

Yeah, don’t know why I didn’t answer this one, either. I blame tiredness? Sorry about that.

I feel like I didn’t answer this one because it felt like work.

This is where I start considering that making this post was a mistake.

I could have just agreed with you and gone about my day.

Probably should have.

Did not.

Another one for that, “had nothing to add so I just left it in a corner, abandoned and unloved,” pile.

There is an apology section at the end, but we’re not there yet.

This one I don’t think I noticed.

Alternatively, I did notice, and wasn’t sure “Yes,” would pass as a good enough answer.

--------------------------------------

Okay, time to really just get into it: I think for the remainder of my inbox, I didn’t answer because physically, I was just too damn exhausted, and I kept waiting for a point in time where I’d feel better. Sorry to put a limit on the personalization, but in the end, that’s all there was to it, and rephrasing it a dozen times will make me crazy.

And here we are.

Well.

Good grief, do you guys even have any clue how much I like all of you?

Obviously there’s a lot of guilt in the above, because I can’t tell you how much I wanted, each time, to give a great answer that would make you thrilled you messaged me. I am so sorry to all of these I didn’t get to. There were days when the alerts in my inbox were the best thing to happen to me, and I never wanted to let any of them go without acknowledgment.

I try to say thank you as often as I can in my responses, because that’s as close as I can get to reminding you all, constantly, that I am grateful for your participation. The only times I don’t say it is when I worry that it’ll look like it’s being done out of habit, not genuine gratitude. Or when I think you might take it the wrong way if I say thanks for a basic conversation. Because you provide me content and make me interested in things I might not normally look twice at.

There are so many instances of people saying hi, and thank you, and wishing everyone well here.

I haven’t been active in the larger fandom in two years, but I have always been so happy that you guys kept dropping by my space anyway.

You are a pleasure and light in my life, no matter how much snark I might throw about.

Thank you all.

[luvdsc]

tag games ;

tagging :: @eggyukhei ; @jaemericano ; @aqiaquas ; @forehead-enthusiast ; @choerrypuffs ; @latetaektalk ; @winetae ; @taeyongtime ; @nochanchu 🌼

—

TAG GAME ONE

tagged by :: @njmin thank you, lovebug! ✨

— tell me the first song that made you stan your current fave group and why did your faves attract you so much?

omg ok it was april 2014, and I was procrastinating on homework and scrolling through youtube. shinee’s lucifer mv was recommended for some reason, and I was intrigued, so I clicked on it. From there, it just spiraled out of control. I was blown away like there’s this one dance move where they all lined up and taemin does this hand motion so fluidly and I was like “this is it.” More shinee mvs were recommended after I clicked that one, so I kept going and watching all the other ones until I watched them all. Their music is just so different and unique, like even after all this time, I can’t find another kpop group who mimics the music style of shinee. and all their solos are absolutely god tier, too!!! they really are gonna be my first and last kpop group. shinee withstood through my stan eras for other groups. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being their fan.

I also found snsd through shinee because their mvs were recommended after I clicked lucifer too. the first one I saw is the iconic gee. taeyeon stood out to me in those mvs. her voice is so distinct, and I’ve been a fan of her ever since. She didn’t have a solo then, but I searched up all her drama osts, song features, everything because I loved her voice so much even back then. so yeah, taeyeon and shinee will forever be my faves, and I love them a lot 💓

TAG GAME TWO

tagged by :: @latetaektalk thank you, linh !! 💖

rule :: answer the ten questions and write your own!

— how are you today?

I’m doing really good! I’m enjoying my summer, and my day is pretty lax. I’ve been facetiming friends, watching chopped, making banh bao with my mom, and doing my daily cardio ✨

— what book has had the biggest impact on your life?

the princess knight by cornelia funke. my elementary school did this thing where your parents can buy a book to donate to the school library under your name for your birthday. this was the book my sister chose for me when I was in kindergarten. I loved that book; I borrowed it so many times and kept rereading it. It’s a children’s picture book about a princess who secretly learns how to joust. the king tries to give her hand in marriage to the knight who wins the competition, but she defeats them all and chooses to marry the gardener’s son who she loves 💕

— what is something you think everybody should have done once in their life?

Travel. There’s just something so wonderful about going to a new place, whether that’s halfway across the world or just the town a few states over. It’s a lovely feeling embarking on an adventure to a place unknown to you where you can meet new people, try new foods even if it’s just a random dish at a restaurant you’ve never been to, and make memories with strangers that no one back home ever has to know about. There’s just something intriguing about being able to go somewhere else and be someone else for an hour or a day or a week before you return back home.

— what story are you the most proud of and why?

on my previous blog, I wrote a fic called the universe of us, and it’s 21k+ wc. I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into that fic, and although I can’t read it now without cringing, I really am super proud of myself for pulling through and writing that. The concept of it was unique, in my opinion, and I would love to rewrite it someday! 💫

on this blog, I am most proud of the dumbing down of love. that fic is personal to me because it is literally comprised of my college experiences in written format and the characters embody my friends. I wrote that over the span of 3-4 nights, and that’s the fastest I’ve ever written a fic of that length. the words just flowed so easily for that fic, and the quesadilla scene was the first thing I wrote, and I’m quite proud of that scene!! 💓

— what has made you really happy recently?

I graduated uni!!!!! 💛💛

— what is the first thing you want to do after this whole pandemic is over and it’s safe to go out again?

I want to eat sushi LOL I haven’t had it in four months, and I’m craving it so badly.... I also want to go out with my friends again! I miss being able to see them everyday and our late night shenanigans ):

— if you had to make a soundtrack/playlist based on your life, how would you call it and which songs would you include?

honestly, these are just a bunch of my favorite songs throughout my entire life. some of them don’t relate to me personally, but I remember listening them on repeat, and I still know all the lyrics to them 💘

title: cue the soundtrack of my life

songs: complicated ⋆ avril lavigne ⋮ check yes, juliet ⋆ we the kings ⋮ the way i loved you ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ a daydream away ⋆ all time low ⋮ that’s what you get ⋆ paramore ⋮ i won’t give up ⋆ jason mraz ⋮ holy ground ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ lucifer ⋆ shinee ⋮ don’t go ⋆ exo m ⋮ 1000 years ⋆ shinee ⋮ breathe ⋆ taeyeon & jonghyun ⋮ coffee ⋆ bts ⋮ you are in love ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ walk you home ⋆ nct dream ⋮ i ⋆ taeyeon ⋮ tell me what to do ⋆ shinee ⋮ mad city ⋆ nct 127 ⋮ gravity ⋆ taeyeon ⋮ blueprint ⋆ stray kids

— what is your favourite breakfast food?

omg it’s this one dish that I order every time I go to the diner near my university, and it’s a smoked salmon eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce and hash browns 🤩🤩

— how did you get into writing and is it something you would like to do as your job?

I’ve always enjoyed writing, and my teachers sent me to the young authors’ faire every year from kindergarten to 8th grade. You don’t really get to write creative stories in class when you’re older though, and I stumbled upon fanfiction, and here we are. It’s not something I want to do as my job though. Writing is simply a fun pastime and hobby for me!! If I was forced to write or profit off of it, then that’d take fun out of it ):

— did you remember to drink enough water today?

yes, I did!! I make sure to drink 6-8 large cups of water a day :’) stay hydrated!!! 🤍

my questions for you:

what’s your favorite jelly bean flavor?

if you hated your child, what name would you give them?

do you pour cereal first or milk first?

do you like pineapple on your pizza?

if you could be a celebrity for the day, who would you be and why?

what are three dealbreakers for you in a relationship?

what’s your favorite word and why?

would you rather punch your ult bias in the face full force or lick the porta potty that hasn’t been cleaned after Coachella weekend?

which song(s) would you cut out from nct’s discography?

what’s the most unique/interesting food you’ve ever eaten?

TAG GAME THREE

tagged by :: @pwarkhans ty, sweetpea! 🌸

rule :: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR ༉⋆͙̈

i have small hands / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE ༉⋆͙̈

i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

WATER ༉⋆͙̈

i wear bracelets on my wrists / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i rewatch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH ༉⋆͙̈

i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued advisor to my friends / i believe in true love / i love this chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER ༉⋆͙̈

i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder / i can love unconditionally

[ruthfeiertag]

Random Ruminations on Depression

Preamble:

I want to take back the word ruminate. The Online Etymology Dictionary explains that the word “ruminate (v.)” dating from the 1530s, means “'to turn over in the mind,’ also ‘to chew cud’ (1540s), from Latin ruminatus, past participle of ruminare ‘to chew the cud; turn over in the mind,' from rumen (genitive ruminis) ‘gullet,’ of uncertain origin.” Merriam-Webster Online Gives the definition of ruminate as

transitive verb

1: to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly 2: to chew repeatedly for an extended period

intransitive verb

1: to chew again what has been chewed slightly and swallowed : chew the cud 2: to engage in contemplation : REFLECT

https://pixabay.com/photos/pensive-female-woman-window-staring-580611/

But psychology — and in general I have real respect and genuine gratitude for the healing and support psychology and psychotherapists provide; if I kept a gratitude journal, my therapist’s name would be on every page — has come near to ruining this apt word that perfectly expresses the way many of us need or choose to take the time to ponder and deliberate rather than hasten to judge or get embroiled in the consequences of an ill-considered decision. Psychology, as a field, has decided ruminate should mean obsessively thinking about whatever is bothering one, over and over and over… 

I think one of the reasons this definition has become popular, not only among psychologists, but in the general public as well, is that we have such short attention spans and have come to prize speed over all else. We rush to embrace technology that robs us of our privacy, we don’t stay to watch the credits after a movie (unless there’s an added scene), we expect to know the results of every election before the votes are all counted. Take a breath, people. Being ruminative used to be a positive attribute, one that indicated one was a careful, thoughtful person, not inclined to fling one’s self pell-mell off a cliff. Now it is a weakness, a character flaw that indicates one brings one’s misfortunes upon one’s self because one can’t control one’s thoughts. 

Join me in my mission. Let’s rescue ruminate. Start using it in its proper sense. Fling it with abandon into your philosophical conversations: “I was ruminating upon the meaning of life the other day and wondering just what 42 really has to do with it.” If someone tries to push you into making a snap decision, say, “You know, in order to give you the thoughtful answer you deserve, I need to ruminate on that for a day or two.” When next asked to describe yourself, pause for a moment,  then declare, “I am an attentive, measured sort of person with a ruminative cast to my mind.” (Just don’t tell anyone you’re a ruminant. That will totally undermine our goal.) 

And after we save ruminate, we’re coming back for you, enable.

*****************************

Every so often, the New Yorker slips a suggestion for an archived article into the Inbox of my e-mail. That how I came across Andrew Solomon’s article, “Anatomy of Melancholy,” that appeared in New Yorker’s January 12, 1998 issue. It’s a pretty harrowing description of the depths down to which depression can pull person, and of the biases that still pertain when it comes to admitting to others or to ourselves that we have a mental illness and, worse, might be so “weak” as to need chemical (or electrical) interventions. As I moved through the essay, I can upon this proffered bit of wisdom:

Accuracy of perception is not an evolutionary priority. Too optimistic a world view results in foolish risk-taking, but moderate optimism gives you a strong selective advantage. “Normal human thought and perception,“ Shelley Taylor writes in her 1989 book, Positive Illusions, “is marked not by accuracy but by positive self-enhancing illusions about the self, the world, and the future. Moreover…these illusions are not merely characteristic of human thought; they appear actually to be adaptive.” As she notes, “The mildly depressed appear to have more accurate views of themselves, the world, and the future than normal people. [They] clearly lack the illusions that in normal people promote mental health and buffer them against setbacks.”

hulki-okan-tabak-SKadYI4E7OM-unsplash-scaled

So — why are those of us with depression and accurate perceptions the ones who are mentally ill, while the “normies” with their illusions are the ones who are considered sane? Why are we the ones who are seen as less evolved? Am I the only one who thinks this assessment is a little bit off?

************************************

  In a recent car commercial, actor and apparent guru Matthew McConaughey ruminates (see how easy it is to just slip the word right into a sentence?) out loud about the process of identity formation. He muses 

“Knowin’ who we are is hard — it’s hard. Eliminatin’ who you are are not, first, and you’re gonna find yourself where ya need to be.”

OK: first, shouldn’t the logic of the first sentence — the search for identity — lead to a statement about finding out who one is rather than where one is? I guess that’s what happens when one infuses manufactured sagacity into an advert for a vehicle. And never mind the lack of parallel structure in the second sentence.

But what I keep thinking is, “What if we, as is recommended by Mr. McConaughey, eliminate all the people we are not, only to realize there’s no one left?” That’s kind of who-where I keep finding myself.

*********************************

An ethical dilemma: At the recommendation of a friend, I picked up Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by Daniel G. Amen. M.D. I haven’t read very far into it, but so far there are some sensible observations about the practicality of having one’s brain scanned for damage so one knows whether medical or psychotherapeutic remedies are most likely to be beneficial. However, on page twenty-nine, our friend the doctor discusses thing that hurt the brain and things that help the brain. Under malign influences, Dr. Amen notes that “even spending time with unhealthy people [is] bad for the brain.” OK: I can see how that can work.

In the next paragraph, Dr. Amen lists things that can boost the brain. This list includes the point that “In many ways, the best thing you can do for your brain is to spend time with healthy people. As we will see, they are contagious. I often say the fastest way to get healthy is to find the healthiest person you can stand and then spend as much time around him or her as possible.” That also makes sense.

BUT — and you may already see the problem here — let’s say I’m a healthy person. I know an unhealthy person, someone with, say, depression, someone who would immensely benefit from spending time with me. Yet if I do spend time with that person, I’ll be engaged in an activity that will be detrimental to my own grey matter. On the other hand, if I choose to protect myself by shunning the depressed person, I’m selfishly depriving her or him of my beneficial “contagion” and preventing that person from attaining the flourishing cerebrum she or he deserves. (Unless, of course, that person has been ruminating. In that case, she or he deserves all the melancholy that infests her or his soul. [That’s an example how NOT to use the word ruminating.]) I’m either allowing harm to come to myself or withholding aid from another, which makes me a pretty lousy human being, and knowing that I’m a pretty lousy human will depress me.

Now let’s imagine that I am the unhealthy person, and I know a tremendously healthy person, in whose salubrious presence I never fail to rally. I have a lot of time on my hands. I easily could spend days with this person and notably sharpen my dulled mental functions and ameliorate my debilitating mood. However, by latching on to this bloom-imparting individual, I will be causing harm to that person’s well-being and will likely disrupt her or his equilibrium. That would make me an insensitive parasite, sucking the life out of someone for my own ends, and being such a draining leech would make me feel horrible and depressed.

So what to do? I hate lose-lose, damned-if-you-do-or-don’t, caught-between- Scylla-and-a-hard-place options.

**********************************

And then Will Wheaton put this up on his Blog:

報復性熬夜

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, which has a much more beautiful name in Chinese (the literal translation for revenge bedtime procrastination means “suffering through the night vengefully.”), is a phenomena unique to people who feel out of control in their daily lives, so we refuse to go to sleep early, to exert some control over our lives, and to enjoy some quiet time alone, when the rest of our people are sleeping.

I should confess, straight up, that I am, by nature, a night owl. It runs in the family. But I love both this concept and its name. Between the depression and the M.E. and the State of the Union, I’m having an increasingly hard time getting any sleep. I just wish being AWAKE YES I’M AWAKE YES I DO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS OH ISN’T THAT A LOVELY SUNRISE? would wreak some actual vengeance on the conditions and people who are responsible for my near-insomnia. 

 *****************************

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-face-branches-woman-3317298/

I hope my ruminations provide some conceptual cud for your synapses, dear reader, to masticate at the pace of your choosing. And don’t forget: enable is still waiting for us to effect an heroic rescue, one worthy of our idiom.

[rebelwheelssoapbox]

Disability Rights & The Woes of Political Isolation

by Rebelwheels NYC Although it is true that disabled people exist within every marginalized demographic, and thus every issue impacts the disability community, (as a person can be disabled and black, disabled and transgender, disabled and a refugee etc), I am going to be talking about some issues that don't normally get the spotlight and some theories as to why that is the case.

There are many obstacles in the path of advancement when it comes to Disability Rights in the U.S. Politicians being one - and not just Republicans, my friends. Sometimes it’s not just the elephant in the room, sometimes the donkey is truly an ass.

[photo of disabled activist and editor in chief for Rooted In Rights, Emily Landau who is sitting in her wheelchair, holding up a sign that reads “Because of the Americans With Disabilties Act, I can get around my community! # Hands Off My ADA #Stop HR 620, because there were people in the Republican AND Democratic party who voted to gut the ADA. ] But I digress. Another major influence is the severe lack of disability representation in the media (TV, Movies, etc.) When there is representation, (besides there being a total lack of diversity), more than not the stories are written by able bodied people, the disabled characters are played by able bodied actors, and the plot is usually some recycled trope.

Disability is tragic, pitiful and the only chance of happiness is a cure... or death. Disability is a trick, where the character presents themselves as disabled but ha ha ha, plot twist! They are not disabled at all. Fakers! Cheating the system, swindling us all. And of course, the dangerous disabled man, usually blind and/or mentally ill, who should be feared and is typically some sort of murderer. But let's not forget the disabled character who might as well be called Angel, because they never complain or frown and pretty much exist to inspire and uplift the able bodied audience.

[A poster for the movie Me Before You, where the disabled character kills himself in the end, leaving all of his money to his able bodied love interest, because while the tagline of the film was to live boldly, apparently the film did not intend that message to include disabled people. In the image the able bodied character is sitting on the disabled character’s lap, as the disabled character sits in his motorized wheelchair.] People seem to love disabled people when we’re presented as this trope-based concept, but when we present ourselves as full fledged human beings, fighting for and deserving of civil rights? Well, that “plot line” just doesn't seem to be as interesting.

Many people don't even know the word ableism. When we are oppressed, it's not oppression, people are just being “mean”. As a result, you have this weird mix of experience (if your disability is visible) where when you're out in public, random people gawk at you, hyper aware of your existence, and yet, when it's time to talk about cuts to healthcare (as an example), such as medicare and medicaid, it's disabled who? Disabled what? Never heard of it.

[image of a disabled activist in a wheelchair being taken away by the police. A lot of people seemed to forget how disabled activists, including those from ADAPT, put their bodies on the line, when protesting Trumpcare in solidarity with the resistance. Photo source: Getty Images/PS Mag.] Now, mix all of that with the fact that there is so much injustice going on in the world, to the point where it's practically impossible to keep up with everything, and well, disability rights issues pretty much go unnoticed. But wait a minute. Is it really that simple? After all, a number of people were up in arms when there was talks of major cuts to The Special Olympics. My local politicians had pinned tweets (posts on social media) with petitions, outraged and pledging to take action, but as an example, when New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo was (and continues to) talk about major cuts to medicaid programs like the CDPA , with the exception of some minor local media coverage and a small pocket within the disability rights movement, it was pretty much crickets.

[A disabled athlete poses in front of a red backdrop with the white special olympics logo. She flexes her muscles and smiles, and has several medals around her neck] Now, it is true, Special Olympics is a federal program, where as the proposed cuts to the CDPA were only state-wide. More than that, one is a televised program where disabled athletes compete for medals and glory. There are lights, there are cameras, it's a whole production with corporate sponsors eager to scoop up that good PR. The mission is to empower people with intellectual disabilities to find purpose and confidence via sports and competition, while also inspiring [able bodied] “people in their communities and elsewhere to open their hearts to a wider world of human talents and potential.” And then we have The CDPA, lesser known but a program nonetheless, that empowers disabled people (like myself) who rely on home services, to hire their own personal attendants, thus giving them a choice as to who comes into their homes, who bathes their bodies, who makes their meals (or even helps them eat – if this is what is needed. Needs vary of course.) And while there are no lights, no cameras, no tickets to the show – it does create over 100,000 jobs, which is nothing to sneeze at.

[photo of New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo who stands at a podium. Behind him is a blue backdrop that reads “2019 Justice Agenda”. Sadly, his justice agenda is not justice for ALL New Yorkers and in many ways, throws disabled New Yorkers under the bus] But there is another factor here that can not be ignored. The name. While I am not a fan of the term “special” when in regard to disability, when it comes to a name like Special Olympics, you can get an idea of what will be involved. There are sports, there is competition, and there are people with “special needs” aka disabled people. And then, we have the CDPA ...what the hell is the CDPA? Even if it's spelled out: Consumer Direction Personal Assistance. How many people even read the whole title? Furthermore, after reading it, do you have any better idea as to what it's about? And that is one (of many) problems that the Disability Rights movement faces. Because a lot of disability rights (at least on a systemic level, opposed to identity and the more social side of ableism), it's pretty much policy based, which is just not that interesting to most people, especially when these policies are given names like Disability Integration Act, Consumer Direction Personal Assistance. None of these names invoke any kind of emotion or intrigue.

Now, of course the disability community can't help what the government chooses to name the policies, but what if when talking about them to the public, the community referred to them with something more exciting and informative? What if the policies were given direct but intriguing Reference Names?

[photo of disabled activists from ADAPT, taken from their website: Adapt.org ] For an example, let's take the DIA or Disability Integration Act. What if that same act was now referred to as the Stop Warehousing Disabled People Act? In that moment, you now have an idea of what the DIA is about. Of course, it would be the call of organizers to pick a reference name and it would still be connected to the legal name.  Example: The Stop Warehousing Disabled People Act (otherwise known as the DIA) is an act that would prevent the state from being able to force disabled people against their will into institutions and nursing homes (because yes, that’s a thing.) And while the legal name would mostly be used when talking to people in the government, the reference name would be used when talking about it to the public, and even within our own community. The other day, I was chatting with a friend of mine, who is also in the disability community, about the DIA and he replied, “...What's the DIA?”. “You know, Disability Integration Act?” “Never heard of it.”

[photo of a man with a  confused look on his face] Given the obstacles that the community faces when trying to gain public empathy and solidarity in response to the attacks from the system, one of the last things we need is to be held back by a lack of accessible and easy to understand language / marketing.

This includes how we describe the details of the policies as well. Several times, when I’ve attempted to comprehend the details of a policy that directly impacts myself and/or my peoples, I've had to ask a dear friend in the disability community (who is a former policy analyst) to literally translate the details into layman's terms. Not only does this show that the language is not accessible, but it also begs the question, how many people won't even bother to ask? Now of course, the issue of disability and political isolation is a very complicated topic, and in no way am I suggesting that these two ideas are the solution to all that ails our community. It should also be noted that in no way is this intended to disparage the efforts of the disability activists who work incredibly hard for the liberation of our people. That said, using language that is easier to understand, that invokes some kind of emotion, beyond our immediate disability activist circle, is only a step in the right direction, and may even lessen the woes of political isolation. 

[Photo of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo in mid speech. source: The New York Post. ] TAKE ACTION!

If you think Governor Cuomo's massive cuts to a program that not only empowers disabled and/or elderly people to choose who enters their homes and takes care of them, but also creates over 100,000 jobs for the community, then tell Cuomo, in the name of disability and worker solidarity to leave the CDPA alone. #SaveCDPA Call him at 518-474-8390 and press 2 to talk to his assistant. If you are unable to make a phone call, you can send him a message via his website: https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form or reach him on twitter @NYGovCuomo

[mittensmorgul]

1) Is Dabb a Black Mirror fan? Cause 14x20 reminded me of "USS Callister" (4x01). It's about a gifted software developer (a "god" of programming) who takes DNA samples from his co-workers in order to insert himself and them as characters in a videogame he's created. In the videogame world he mistreats his co-workers (e.g forces one of the girls to kiss him repeatedly) and they desperately want to free themselves from his control. (+)

(2) In the end the characters find a way to communicate with their real-world counterparts, who finally manage to lock the programmer’s character in a loop of emptiness within the simulation, which he can’t escape since the co-workers left the programmer alone and motionless IRL, implying that he’ll eventually starve and die. If Dabb was inspired by this, I assume that TFW will follow the same narrative aka killing God for “free will” to triumph.

*****

Hi hello there! Yes, I know this has been sitting in my inbox since April. I’m trying to get better and replying to the insane backlog and picking random messages to reply to (my inbox crept over 900 messages recently and my guilt will not let that stand :’D).

Confession: I have not seen Black Mirror, so I’m just going by what you said about this episode of it. I only have a kind of vague idea what that show is about from a few posts I’ve seen cross my dash, so I can’t really speak to the comparison directly. But I can speak to the implications of what you’re suggesting in terms of the SPN universe situation.

And in a sense, yeah this is kinda along the lines of how I suspect this will be eventually resolved. For the sake of argument, though… Chuck is effectively immortal in the narrative. You can’t trap him in his own game and wait for him to starve to death. Because he won’t.

But also, we’re not talking about a mental construct within reality holding TFW captive like the game situation you described in Black Mirror. TFW doesn’t have “real world” counterparts to the characters we know. They ARE effectively in the real world (to them… *we the audience* know this is fiction, so on that level J2M are their real-world counterparts, in a sense? But I don’t think the show will end with us breaking the in-story universe that badly. I think Dabb really does want us to end the series believing that TFW will continue on, their universe finally saved from Chuck’s eternal manipulation in their lives). 

The situation in Supernatural is a bit different, though. For all he would like to, I don’t think it’s ever been implied that Chuck actively can control the individual members of TFW directly, you know? He can’t “force” them do do things directly, like puppets. What he CAN engineer are circumstances that back them into narrative corners and force them to react. But their reactions are their own. It’s a subtle difference, but a very important one.

Like Ruby told Sam way back in 4.22, in a smaller-scale version of Chuck’s manipulation of the overarching narrative:

Ruby: No. It wasn’t the blood. It was you… and your choices. I just gave you the options, and you chose the right path every time. You didn’t need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo! I know it’s hard to see it now… but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it.

Sure, Dean killed her for it, but Chuck is just… on a cosmological scale, “Chuck” is literally just a manifestation of Creation itself. He’s not a guy, you know? This is where I start to sound like a lunatic, sorry. :P

For all his apparent power, for all the fact he is effectively “God,” he’s just as much a construct as creation itself. He’s the manifestation of Creation attempting to interact with itself, and he’s actively made himself into this personification, created this personality for himself. But it’s not what he is. He’s a sock puppet, and the sock needs unraveling.

Without unraveling all of creation in the process, because they are– at the most basic level– one and the same.

It always brings me back to the s11 finale, where the apparent solution to save the universe was attempting to “kill” the Darkness. But… you can’t actually do that, you know? Not without killing the Light as well. That’s just not how anything works. We always joked that Dean couldn’t kill Death, but then he did… except nothing changed… people kept dying and Billie ascended to become Death. It’s not a “person” but a mantle of power and an embodiment of the universal constant that whatever lives must eventually die. Whatever comes into creation must eventually leave it again. Whatever begins must eventually come to an end. That’s the whole “Alpha and Omega” of the entirety of creation.

And in 11.23, Dean achieved that balance by reuniting Chuck with Amara, or the concept of creation with destruction, light with dark. And he did it with words.

The “Chuck construct” needs to let go of his creation and allow it to truly be free. It’s not that he needs to die, though he might choose to disconnect himself from his creation or dissolve the Chuck Construct in order to allow the universe to truly have free will. It might not tell the story Chuck most wants to see (egotistically his own origin story narrative, played out in every level of the story of Supernatural through his favorite characters and chosen avatars), but human consciousness wants a chance to tell its own stories now.

And Chuck, in story as the avatar for the original creator of Supernatural– i.e. Kripke– being finally disconnected from the universe by the in story avatar of the final showrunner, Dabb– i.e. Billie as Death– I find that’s kind of poetic, yes? Knowing Billie has been plotting something in the background for a very, very long time speaks VOLUMES about how Dabb has seen his own role in bringing the series to an end since he took over as showrunner. Remember, Billie was his character first introduced in 11.02, in what’s functionally the second half of a two-part episode begun by Carver in 11.01. When I say it’s spirals all the way down, I really mean that on every imaginable level. This metas outward into the actual structure of the showrunning and writing here in the real world, too. Dabb… is on another level, tbh. :P

(eta2: not even mentioning that by mid s11 Dabb had effectively taken the reins, and penned the season finale literally called Alpha and Omega in which all of this came to pass in the narrative for the first time around...)

On the side of this with the broken fourth wall, it means being able to hand the narrative over to the fandom, for us to play in that universe in our own imaginations, with a closed canon we can return to again and again to tell our own stories. Fanfic ahoy! With the full blessing of the creators. :’)

And on every level, this is the philosophy Dabb has been putting forth since he took over as showrunner, and I can’t imagine he’d veer from that path now.

ETA: Because I got sidetracked with the Big Cosmology Stuff and forgot the other point I was gonna add here >.>

We did get a smaller-scale scenario where this sort of situation you’re describing played out EXACTLY as you described during s14– in 14.15, with Chip Harrington who’d been directly messing with everyone via the sort of mind control you’re describing in Black mirror keeping people trapped in his “game scenario” of the town of Charming Acres. Sunny had been bound to him by a promise to her dead mother to make sure her father would never be alone. She indulged his game, watching him manipulate and murder people in the name of keeping himself happy, but in the end she freed herself and everyone else from his tyrannical, self-described “god” level control of the town by using that same psychic power she’d inherited from him to trap him in his own version of happiness inside his own mind, where he could be happy without hurting anyone else.

He’s effectively trapped inside his own mind now, unaware of outward reality. In that state, what will actually happen to him? Will he be put on life support machines like Donatello was after Cas stripped his mind away? Will he slowly wither away and die? Will his own psychic power trapped in that reality– which we have been given leave by the show’s own cosmology is the equivalent of his “heaven,” or his spiritual happy place and theoretically his own afterlife (barring the distinct possibility that he’s destined for hell because of his actions and choices during life?). We just don’t know, but his removal from the town didn’t have the sort of negative impact over anyone else that removing the creator from all of creation would…

Chip didn’t (like Chuck) create the town of Charming Acres. He just controlled the people who lived there. Chuck, on the other hand, doesn’t control anyone… he just creates the universe and manipulates it to push people into confronting the choices he wants them to have to grapple with. Again, it’s a subtle distinction, but in the end, I think it’s a very important one.

Okay, now I’m done. :’D

[statusquoergo]

Credit where credit is due, Gabriel did a nice job directing this episode. He had more screen time that I’m used to from actors pulling double duty, and he seems to have handled the extra workload well.

That’s not to say the episode was flawless. Yeah, by Season 9 standards, it was pretty good overall, but I mean. Season 9 standards.

We start off at home with Louis and Sheila having a terse exchange over tea as I wonder, yet again, why they’re together at all if they’re always so goddamn pissy about everything. Louis bemoans his demotion as Sheila irritably directs him to drink his rooibos and asks him what the big deal is, being that he didn’t even want the job in the first place (true). Louis parries that he only said that because Donna offered it to him the same night he found out about Sheila’s pregnancy (true), but at any other time in his life, he would have taken it (false). On the contrary, you may remember this fairly unambiguous exchange from “Pecking Order” (s08e02) between Doctor Lipschitz and Louis: “As I recall, you accepted Harvey becoming managing partner after Jessica left.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be managing partner.” I suppose I’ve never accused this show of internal consistency before, why bother starting now?

Louis then delightfully compares himself to a ball-less cat and laments that though “the job wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, [he] was getting really good at it,” and excuse me but what? Forget that disastrous hearing that summoned Faye to their doorstep, his most recent acts as managing partner include trying to bully Professor Gerard into letting him be the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Ethic Conference to talk up his failing firm, and going completely off the rails trying to fire the poor IT guy for failing to digitally break into the New York State Bar Association. Louis sucked at being managing partner.

Next up is a reminder that I need to be careful what I wish for as Donna and Harvey discuss his reflexive support of her impassioned but quite incorrect argument against Louis trying to fire Benjamin, and how much she didn’t appreciate it. Turns out it wasn’t so reflexive; he did it because she thought she would like it, which is its own magnificently flawed concept—thinking she’ll get mad at him for disagreeing with her doesn’t say much for his respect for her integrity—but then Donna realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to leave him if he doesn’t unconditionally support her, and you just know the writers thought they were being real clever with this. (Wait, isn’t one of Harvey’s defining character traits his ability to read people? “You read books, I read people” was actually one of the first things he said to Mike in the pilot… Gosh it’s been a long time.)

As I was saying about this show’s internal consistency, two things about this whole exchange: One, all through Season 7, Harvey had no trouble calling Paula out when she was being ridiculous and disagreeing with her about all kinds of shit. Two, as recently as “Everything Changes” (s09e01), Harvey cooed that “[he’s] finally where [he’s] supposed to be” when he’s with Donna, to which Donna replied “We both are,” and like, are they a match made in Heaven right out of the box or what? His trust in their relationship is wildly inconsistent. Unless he wants to forfeit his autonomy for some reason? I don’t know, it’s weird and I don’t like it.

I also take issue with Donna’s dismissive “Oh, my god. Of course. Harvey, I’m not gonna leave you.” This has been an issue for him since forever, as she well knows, but rather than ask him what’s wrong—is he really afraid she’ll leave him over something so small?—or point out that he needs to go to therapy (if she wants to be tactful, she could ask if he wants to “talk to someone” about this), she treats it as an endearing character quirk, and someone needs to save Harvey from all this shit yesterday.

The interruption to this…reconciliation isn’t quite as cringy as the can opener bit from the last episode, but I’ve gotta call it out for being just some truly lazy storytelling. Gretchen appears out of nowhere to tell them they “need to go see Louis,” on account of his demotion, and Donna’s deer-in-headlights response is “Oh, my god. We need to go to him right now.” Yeah, no shit, that’s what Gretchen just said, except this framing affords Harvey the opportunity to mount his noble high horse and declare: “No. You go to him. I need to go see Faye.” Which he does, dramatic music and all, declaring that “dammit, not everybody has to do everything by [her] book,” and I must point out that she demoted Louis for trying to fire the employee who he asked to perform an illegal activity that he failed to perform only because he was caught; in what book is that okay? He then asserts: “You want consequences, I’ll give you consequences,” which is delightfully reminiscent of that old classic, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” in that it makes absolutely no sense, and Harvey, you adorable impetuous dumbass, if your goal is to convince her to leave, I think you might be going about it in a little bit the wrong way.

Roll title crawl! (No seriously, that was all just the cold open.)

Anyway Donna does go to comfort Louis, already treating herself and Harvey as a unit when she assures him that “if [he] ever [needs her] or Harvey during any of this Faye bullshit,” they’re there for him, and dropping the much more interesting detail that she has a much older sister she doesn’t want to talk about who “turned every man she was ever with into an emotional doormat,” which I don’t have time to fic right now but I feel like might explain a lot. Then Alex and Samantha have an endearing little exchange wherein Samantha proposes doing something to help Louis and Alex clarifies that it has to be ethical, and it’s nice to know that at least a couple of people around here aren’t completely insane.

Speaking of things being insane, I won’t fault Gabriel for this because the direction itself is fine, but from a writing perspective, the narrative construct of this next scene is terrible. Harvey shows up at a meeting with Some Guy whose nondescript company is apparently, thanks to his board and the company’s lawyers, being taken over (by someone) against his wishes, and the only hint of context for any of this is that “the people” orchestrating this takeover are “related” to Faye. The obvious conclusion to this exchange is that Harvey is going to help this guy, who is apparently the CEO of this random organization, sue the company by acting as a shareholder rather than a C-level employee, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Back at the firm where I do kind of know what’s going on, Susan the Associate approaches Katrina with a problem she found in the VersaLife case Katrina’s working, and as soon as they gave her a name in the last episode, I know she was going to be important. More to the point, it looks like Katrina’s got herself an associate! (Remember when senior partners were required to hire their own associates? It was a whole big thing back in Season 1, I think.)

Next up, Louis is having lunch with an old friend, Saul the Judge, who informs him that some other judge is retiring or being fired or something, and offers him a judgeship, and there is so much wrong with this scene that I don’t even know where to begin.

Yes I do. Since when has Louis’s lifelong dream been to be a judge? This is literally the first time he’s ever expressed any interest in it, at all. And another thing, that is not how judicial selection works.

In New York State, judges, depending on the court, are either appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, nominated by a commission and approved by the governor, chosen at a partisan nominating convention and elected by the voting public, or appointed by the mayor. Qualified individuals can apply to be considered, such as by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, but there’s no one-and-done offer/acceptance transaction between someone currently on the bench and his lawyer pal, so either this guy is offering Louis a job that doesn’t exist or, more likely, the writers don’t know shit about the New York City legal system.

Moving on. Harvey shoves a recusal form in Faye’s face as he informs her that he “got” a case against her old firm, and he’s “taking it,” as though he didn’t go way out of his way to hunt it down in the first place. He then throws a stupidly juvenile hissy fit, claiming he’ll use whatever he fucking has to to “win,” and prove his system his better than hers, but he won’t have to cross any lines because she de-balled (second reference, just as charming as the first) the guys at her old firm so much that “they’re shaking in their boots” at the mere threat of lawsuit. This whole exchange is basically a showcase of Harvey acting like a spoiled child, and I know he’s a passionate guy but I gotta say, I’m getting tired of this whole act.

Back to that clusterfucking disaster of a judgeship offer, Louis fesses up to Sheila but admits that he doesn’t want to accept the drop in salary with a kid on the way, or leave his friends in the lurch, and she in turn fesses up that she asked Saul to make the offer in the first place because “being a judge has always been [his] dream.” (SINCE WHEN?) Louis is incensed until she tells him that it was basically Saul’s idea, but that if he doesn’t take it now, he’ll never get the change again, which… Why? Well, I guess they haven’t pointlessly manufactured any tension in awhile. Anyway, Louis promises to sleep on it.

Elsewhere, Samantha proposes committing conspiracy to get Faye out of their lives and Alex shuts that shit right away, and I’m actually really enjoying their dynamic right now. Susan asks Katrina what she should do about a smart, funny paralegal she clicks with; Katrina, having “seen that before,” recommends finding a new paralegal, and I’ve never had this question before but is Katrina anti-Machel for some reason? Doesn’t matter. Susan proposes reaching out to opposing counsel, who just so happens to be an old family friend, and Katrina wisely tells her not to, but somewhat less wisely starts and ends her rationale with “Because I know,” which I’m sure won’t motivate Susan to act in any sort of way.

Now, I’m no dream theorist, but luckily this show has all the subtlety of a Liberace action figure, so it’s not too difficult to figure out what Louis’s subconscious mind is trying to say: He wants to humiliate Faye (for demoting him and taking over his firm), he wants to bang Donna (and maybe also Alex), he thinks of Harvey as his peer but also his inferior (who he wants desperately to impress and probably also to fuck), and his confidence is mainly derived from the approval and admiration of others. Also he wants to have sex with basically everyone. Maybe not Gretchen. But everyone else.

Dr. Lipschitz, to whom Louis was evidently relaying the events of this dream, finds the whole thing quite amusing, but points out that if Louis takes the judgeship, he won’t have his friends around him anymore. Double-edged sword and all that.

Part II

[dylanobrienisbatman]

100 Questions

it’s long so it’s under the cut, but man was this fun. thanks for the tag @the-most-beautiful-broom ♥ i’ll tag my loves (if you want to haha this is a lot) @raven-reyes-of-sunshine @perhalta @dracovengeance @hedaalicia and @amihanmayari

1. What is your nickname? Bails

2. How old are you? 24

3. What is your birth month? February

4. What is your zodiac sign? Aquarius!

5. What is your favorite color? green (Aw hey linds, same !!) 

6. What’s your lucky number? I was number 8 for marching band every single year (F8 for flute 8) except my junior year, and my junior year we had a shit show, so im calling that. 

7. Do you have any pets? 5 dogs back home in seattle but none where i live now or in NY when i get back

8. Where are you from? everywhere and nowhere. my dads military. but im american! 

9. How tall are you? 5’ 5″

10. What shoe size are you? 7

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? A whole lot, but they’re not always all with me. 

12. Are you random? not really. im pretty set in my routines and very comfortably a home body

13. Last person you texted? my best friend @broadwaybound2016

14. Are you psychic in any way? not even a little tbh

15. Last TV show watched? The Bold Type (WATCH IT ITS AMAZING)

16. Favorite movie? I’m not really sure but i just watched Love, Simon and im literally just crying because of it right now so im gonna go with that until further notice

17. Favorite show from your childhood? probably Lizze McGuire

18. Do you want children? Nope

19. Do you want a church wedding? I dont really want to get married

20. What is your religion? agnostic? maybe? im not religious, and not very spiritual. I love spirituality, things like crystals and stuff, but i try not to appropriate those things from groups/cultures who actually use them. I’d love to learn more about them and be someone who actually knew how to practice but, again, i dont want to step on toes culturally and take things that aren’t mine to take

21. Have you ever been to the hospital? a lot! a ton of surgeries on my ears

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? nope, im literally a goody two shoes

23. How is life? lovely

24. Baths or showers? showers!

25. What color socks are you wearing? i dont really wear socks? i like those little half socks. I’m not wearing any rn

26. Have you ever been famous? nope.

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? probably. i’d love to have a voice, and if it was for doing something i love, i cant think of anything better than getting to share my passion with the world like that. But it would definitely be a lot of pressure

28. What type of music do you like? i’m into literally anything. I love Hayley Kiyoko, the 1975, big fan of just basic pop like ariana grande and charlie puth, Harry Styles’s album is a masterpiece, Shawn Mendes, 5th Harmony. i love anything.

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? Yes!!

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? just two!

31. What position do you usually sleep in? on my stomach

32. How big is your house? my house at home is a 5 bedroom 3 bath, my apt in amsterdam rn is just a room in a hotel type place with my own bathroom, and my apt in nyc is a studio

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? i literally hardly ever eat breakfast, but i love a bagel

34. Have you ever left the country? I’m in europe RIGHT NOW! lol

35. Have you ever tried archery? once, i was terrible

36. Do you like anyone? Not right now, but i might want too

37. Favorite swear word? i love the word fuck. it’s got so much you can do with it. i swear like a sailor.

38. When do you fall asleep? ummmmmm? whenever i guess lol 

39. Do you have any scars? A few small ones. a decent one on my knee from falling off my bike when i was 8

40. Sexual orientation? Bisexual

41. Are you a good liar? excellent

42. What languages would you like to learn? ALLLL the languages. I’d love to learn native hawai’ian. i spent my high school years there and the culture is so incredible, and i was so welcomed into it by my friends who were from there, i’d love a chance to really connect too it and try to learn that. 

43. Top 10 songs? Oh boy... im just gonna bullet these because i cant decide the order but this is the general

the way i am - charlie puth

young god - halsey 

rather be - clean bandit

feelings - hayley kiyoko

woman - harry styles 

make me feel - janelle monáe 

six inch heels - beyonce 

get right witcha - migos

my my my - troye sivan 

nice for what - drake 

44. Do you like your country? i’m torn at the moment. I hate tr*mp and everything him and his stand for, but i think america can be a wonderful place. 

45. Do you have friends from the web? Yes!! <3

46. What is your personality type? MBTI: INTP 

47. Hogwarts House? Ravenclaw

48. Can you curl your tongue? yes!

49. Pick one fictional character you can relate to? I am Hermione and Hermione is me. (also i really relate a lot to Lexa from the 100, which... is interesting. the way she suppresses feelings, her generally logical approach to things, the way she is totally useless around pretty girls.) 

50. Left or right handed? right!

51. Are you scared of spiders? If they’re like, big spiders yes. or if they come out of nowhere. im way more scared of cockroaches tho.

52. Favorite food? For some reason this question has been really hard for me lately? idk. i love a good indian style curry, and tacos? 

53. Favorite foreign food? Indian!

54. Are you a clean or messy person? I’m CLEAN, but im messy. i feel like cleanliness and orderliness have been misconstrued to mean the same thing, but clean is to dirty as orderly is to messy. I’m clean and messy, i am not very orderly, and i am NOT dirty. 

55. If you could switch your gender for a day, what would you do? Experience a walk down the street in a city at night where im not afraid

56. What color underwear? black

57. How long does it take for you to get ready? not too long, but it sometimes takes me a long ass time to pick an outfit 

58. Do you have much of an ego? It’s as big as it should be. 

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? i suck on them until i can bite them

60. Do you talk to yourself? Constantly.

61. Do you sing to yourself? Hell yeah

62. Are you a good singer? i’m decent but i need another voice to match with. on my own i can’t carry a tune. 

63. Biggest Fears? failure. and heights. 

64. Are you a gossip? I can be, but never about like.. bad things. I like to talk about how this friend or that friend did x y z cool thing but im not like “omg did you hear so and so hooked up with so and so” 

65. Are you a grammar nazi? Not really because i can’t spell for shit

66. Do you have long or short hair? Short-ish? i cut my hair in march of LAST YEAR and then trimmed it again this year and i want it to fucking grow

67. Can you name all 50 states of America? i would definitely forget some

68. Favorite school subject? History

69. Extrovert or Introvert? Pretty introverted. 

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? Nah, im not allowed too for medical reasons

71. What makes you nervous? when I see kids wandering and their parents not noticing (okay im keeping that because me too, but also travelling? like the in-transit part of travel, catching busses/trains/planes makes me panic)

72. Are you scared of the dark? not at all

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? i try not too unless its major. usually its unintentional or the mistake is irrelevant to the flow of the conversation/situation  

74. Are you ticklish? Yes, but i hate being tickled unless its like, my sister or my dad

75. Have you ever started a rumor? No

76. Have you ever been out of your home country? Yes i have lol (linds, ily, we DEFINITELY have been over this already)

77. Have you ever drank underage? a little, but not until i was like 19, and then i was in europe for 6 months, so i didnt REALLY drink underage until i was like... less than 6 months to 21

78. Have you ever done drugs? Pot pretty regularly here in Amsterdam, and i’ve done shrooms

79. What do you fantasize about? getting a beautiful loft in a big city (preferrably london or NYC), with a kick ass job, a dog, and maybe a girlfriend with huge curly hair.

80. How many piercings do you have? Four

81. Can you roll your R’s? Yep!

82. How fast can you type? I just took a little online quiz that said i can type 72 words per minute with 93% accuracy? 

83. How fast can you run? lol I don’t run (same linds... same)

84. What color is your hair? brown!

85. What color are your eyes? Green!

86. What are you allergic to? I’m a bit lactose intolerant and pineapple makes my tongue itch?

87. Do you keep a journal? no, but i wish i did sometimes 

88. Are you depressed about anything? I’m not depressed “about anything”, im just generally someone who experiences a pretty mild case of depression.

89. Do you like your age? Yeah, i dig it.

90. What makes you angry? bigotry, ignorance, and spilling things. I spill drinks constantly, i spilled a WHOLE BOWL OF CEREAL ON MY FLOOR THE OTHER NIGHT.  

91. Do you like your own name? I didn’t used too but i really do now

92. Did you ever get a foreign object up your nose? not that i know of

93. Do you want a boy or a girl for a child? I don’t want kids. 

94. What talents do you have? i have a pretty great memory, but for random things i dont need 

95. Sun or moon? Moon <3

96. How did you get your name? My dad, he just liked it. My middle name was also my dad, he heard the name Jess on the movie A Man From Snowy River and he thought it was a nice like, nickname/pet name, so he gave me the middle name Ges (pronounced like Jess) with the intent of calling me that (it didnt stick), but he didn’t want anyone to think my middle name was Jessica, so he spelled it Ges.

97. Are you religious? I am not, but i have a lot of respect for the concept of religion, as long as its used for the real purpose, which is to make people feel peace and help people find love and comfort. 

98. Have you ever been to a therapist? I have not, but i shold

99. Color of your bedspread? White

100. Color of your room? White, with one black wall 

[zydrateacademy]

Review: Destiny 2

It took me a while to compile enough thoughts for a proper review, and to find time to actually begin writing because I’ve been far too busy actually playing it. This will come with a minor disclaimer or two. First, I haven’t played the first game. It was on console and I’ve been on PC for a long time. Secondly, I may mention a lot of other game comparisons and there’s a reason for that. This game feels like it borrows some of the best parts of other games and stitched them together to make something great. I can’t really comment on the game’s previous story, but I hear from most players that there wasn’t much of one. Somehow I feel that this is hyperbole on their part because you can’t really have a game without a story. Even team shooters like Overwatch shoehorn some lore within their dialog or various external material. All the same, I’ve gathered that a giant alien ball gave a large portion of the Earth population immortality topped with magical powers. Not exaggerating, I have literally heard the word “magic” be used in what seems to be a Sci Fi adventure. The game proper starts off with a full on assault from an enemy faction that only had a tertiary presence in the first game. They win pretty swiftly and kick you off a tower. Your guardian loses their “light” powers and must traverse the first forty-five minutes or so of the game without the ability to resurrect. Of course that is of limited value as checkpoints are still a thing so feel free to die if you don’t quite have a handle on the gunplay.

The campaign is stated to be around six hours long and that’s fairly accurate. It felt incredibly short and it was surprising to learn about this sun-destroying device that the Red Legion created. Funny enough, that’s actually the halfway point and the exact moment where the story becomes less interesting. Before that, you hop between planets to “get the band back together”, essentially. You collect the various class leaders across the system, each with their own unique problems that you solve and get back together to help lead the push against the guys who took everyone’s light. After that, it’s a generic doomsday device that you must disable, and the campaign missions themselves feel a bit padded at times. You’re often assigned to disable something, only for it to not work so you must go destroy something else two more times before the thing actually works. The old school trope of “You cannot thwart stage one” is in full effect here folks, and you’ll likely predict what will happen to the big bad Ghaul himself long before you actually see it. Weak story aside, the gunplay is some of the best feeling in a first person shooter I’ve had in a while. At first glance the game looks and feels like a less irritating version of Borderlands, a franchise of which I love anyway like a slowly improving problem child. Enemies have large health bars and every hit you land, magical floating numbers pop up signifying your damage. Ultimately these numbers mean very little because max level players can play with level three’s and nobody can really one-shot anything except for the basics. There’s some strange autobalancing coding going on in the background, but it still manages to make sure that anyone can play with their friends regardless of people’s gear level. This includes the fact that max level players will constantly get tokens and can break down lesser gear for yet another type of turn-in token. There’s always a reason to do things and I find that it’s a great mechanic. 

The story is mostly just an excuse to get you to maximum level and have access to the tower. After that, the full game unlocks to you which is common MMO fare. It lets you dip your toes in some player-versus-player but after you beat the campaign, every planet and game mode will have a set of challenges and milestones for you to work towards and continually get your item level up, also known as a “Gearscore” if you’re a veteran of WoW. Ultimately this is where the game shines and where I typically have the most fun, because it essentially becomes a first person sandbox. No, there’s not really an open world and there’s not much to explore unless you’re hunting for Lost Sectors, secret sections of the map that typically have yield chests with better loot that will only unlock when you defeat the local miniboss. They’re a lot of fun. Each planet has this sort of “hub” area that you’ll find a few other players running around in. I figure they’re instanced with a likely player cap because I’ve never seen more than a few at a time. At most I think I saw about seven other people joining in on a public event with me, one of my favorite features of the game. Public Events are not a new concept in recent gaming history. The earliest comparison I can personally think of is Rift (2011), but I think they started dipping into MMO’s a year or so before that. It’s as it sounds, in hub areas these events will trigger down from a five minute timer to allow other people gather and prepare and it will spawn a moderately difficult boss or objective based event. They’re typically too difficult for me to solo but I’m sure other, better players can manage. By completing optional objectives you can help upgrade every event to “heroic”, which yields a lot more experience and a bit more loot. You might have to research or simply take cues from other players and see what you have to do, but if you see people shooting at that ship circling the area or slamming on this random device in the middle of the firefight - That’s probably why. Those side challenges I mentioned can be a bit fickle sometimes. Sometimes they’ll require you to kill enemies with a certain weapon or a certain way that doesn’t necessarily to cater to my playstyle. One in PvP once wanted me to make a few kills with a subclass I never used and thus had no upgrade points put into. I never got that challenges because, as per the game’s meta, there’s certain gun types or subclasses people just don’t use in certain modes. For example, nobody ever really uses the Hunter’s “Nightstalker” subclass in PvP because it’s a sort of crowd control that’s useful against several clustered enemies. In PvP that almost never happens and it would be too easy for actual players to escape the little orb that the Hunter created. 

There’s also a multitude of gun types, all with their varying clip sizes, fire rates, and range capabilities that are more useful in one mode than the other, so this typically encourages you to keep a certain ‘collection’ of things depending on what you’re playing. So far I’ve only talked about challenges and public events. I’ve found it hard to talk about what and first because there’s a lot to the game to chew through between the various updates the game will inevitably have. Of this writing, the game’s first expansion has already been announced for the fifth of December which will likely bring a whole new set of milestones, strikes, missions and most importantly, loot. I’ll try to get through some of the fun stuff you can get a hold of at the endgame which mercifully doesn’t take long to get to. Strikes are basically just dungeons from other fantasy based MMO’s. There’s not a lot to say about them, they’re ten to twenty minute encounters with a variety of bosses and mechanics you need to figure out. My least favorite so far is this Fallen boss who will constantly disappear after just a few hits and spawn these electrified robots that will limit your movement and now allow you to jump at all (and there’s a LOT of jumping in this game). They’ll also constantly damage you because of course they will. It reminds me of a survival game to be honest.

There’s the Crucible, Destiny’s name for PvP combat. It’s run of the mill PvP with your usual zone controls, team deathmatch and even a mode that’s reminiscent of Call of Duty’s “kill confirmed” mode where you only get points by picking up a sigil from a fallen enemy; Or else let their allies pick them up and get denied the score. I enjoy it and I can sometimes get rewards from it even by losing. I’m currently working on an exotic weapon quest where you have to dismantle rare or better scout rifles, which the crucible rewarded me with one just for losing. So hey, progress! There’s also something called “Nightfalls”, which remind me of “Heroic dungeons” from World of Warcraft, but are actually more comparable to Starcraft 2′s mutator mode in their Co-Op. Every week it changes, typically with some kind of timer mechanic to make sure your team is at their most optimal. On our first week, in addition to the timer, all of our skills recharges what seemed to be five times faster. So the mutations are not always there to hurt us. Naturally it gives much better loot than their more basic versions and can be incredibly intense. Myself and two buddies from my gaming community managed to kill the boss of one with a mere four seconds left on the timer. Our first ever Nightfall, to boot. I alluded earlier to the fact that there’s tokens you get from a variety of activities. This mostly gives incentive for high level players to continue playing, as you can turn these tokens in to a variety of faction leaders for engrams (a fancy word for “loot boxes”) that typically level with you so they’re usually good to grind out.

And yes, there is a grind here to a certain degree. There’s a sort of soft cap to gear levels, I found it a crawl to get past the 260-265 hump but then slingshot past it on the game’s second week with a new rollout of milestones that wanted me to play several crucible games, complete five challenges out in the world, and a few other things. Each of them gave me 269′s and 271′s and helped me gear up a bit. At a certain point it becomes advantageous to roll multiple characters so you can do all of this more than once, padding the gameplay and turning it into a grind. There is a bit of fatigue once you hit that soft cap I will admit but it’s typically relieved by playing with friends. This goes with any multiplayer game, true enough. As mentioned I can continue playing missions with newer players, hunt for public events, or toss my scrub ass into the unforgiving ring of failure that is Crucible and I’ll always get something for my trouble. There’s never not anything to do. All this time I’ve actually forgotten to talk about how really damn pretty the game is, to boot. Most of my settings are on maximum with the sole exception of my textures, which have to be medium as to not stress my unfortunately low about of VRAM. I’ve had people smarter than me try to explain why exceeding it matters but regardless, the game is still one of the best looking things in my entire library.

There’s a lot of chatter about microtransactions in the industry lately. Yes, they are present here in the form of “Bright” engrams, which can be acquired in two ways. Obviously you can buy “Silver” which acts as a separate currency for Bright engrams. The other way is, as a level 20 you will get one per ‘level up’ as you continue to play. The flow of such is pretty slow and I typically only get one or two a day (If I’m actively playing my main Hunter) as opposed to dropping ten dollars and getting five immediately. They typically contain cosmetics, some more practical than others like faster speederbikes that will help you traverse stretches of land on planets with a bit more ease. They’re the primary source of the shinier “shaders”, or armor dyes. You can get shaders out of basic chests and other loot boxes but shaders do have “rarity” like any gear does and I don’t think I’ve gotten some of the better looking ones through more basic means. Still, the microtransaction craze does speak to a seedier part of the industry and I will admit the “It’s just cosmetic!” argument doesn’t quite hold up, but I’ll leave that for the individual to decide. I’ve already purchased some silver twice now, but that’s my prerogative. I’ll just say that the game never, not once, beats me over the head with “BUY SOME OF THIS AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE MORE COMPLETE”. They better not, after I spent the full hundred dollars to begin with. In conclusion, the game feels like the most refined collection of a dozen games I could name, like the world’s cleanest zombie. Borderlands, The Division, World of Warcraft, Rift. The gameplay constantly reminds me of other games but is the absolute best version of all of them. The gunplay will keep me coming back as I do occasionally itch for an ironsight shooter but all the current ones I have are boring or have dead communities with long matchmaking. A large portion of my gaming community is playing so I can typically play at my own pace, or get others to join me if I feel like I want my objectives to go a little quicker than usual. There’s plenty to do and it’s all up to me to figure out what I want to prioritize when I log in. For a game with this much in it, it can only improve with more content.

[matts4-blog1]

Artwork #5 - A dead meme

By Anonymous artist

Yes I am literally analyzing a meme. I thought that looking at my several different reviews and delves into topics that have very defined knowledge basis, and people who have spent their entire lives studying and theorizing about specific concepts, I thought it might be a little bit different to add in some research about a knowledge field that is still relatively new. It may seem like a bit of a stretch but these meme’s do encapsulate a large amount of the modern day young society in which we live in today. I decided to choose something that was close to me as well as I thought that way I would be able to relate to it more and then maybe I could more easily find connections between the subjects of knowledge. 

I really have no idea if my research and proper analysis into this picture is going to be deemed as valid, but if the whole idea of the paper was to understand and draw connections to subject matters, I do not see why not the analysis of this meme and whole phenomenon of internet based memes would be invalid. 

Themes and thinking points presented

- Bad craftsmanship

   Now the main thing that is apparent when analyzing this picture is the very bad quality used in every aspect of it (badly cut out monkey, poor resolution quality of emoji, overlapping of text on picture etc.) But believe it or not I feel as if this is a meaningful and purposeful technique used in this piece. The bad craftsmanship is supposed to represent the feelings that alot of the people who look at these pictures (teenagers aged from around 10-21 or so) feel. Due to the process of them growing up and going through changes in their mindset things like puberty, often questions spring up about their futures and their worth to society as they need to start to think about what they are going to do with their life. So the bad craftsmanship I feel is used in order to represent these peoples feelings and when looked at people will probably just laugh because it hasn’t been made completely perfectly. But we can use that to start to think about maybe it reflects that you do not have to perfect to be considered as funny, or interpreted to as people would feel it, you don’t have to be perfect or really super amazing to make it in life. Now this is an uplifting thought and in essence I feel capitulates the true nature of a meme and its purpose in this young society. [1] 

Depression rates in United States young people

   Figure above [1]

As clearly stated in the graph the average level of depression in adolescents  has been increasing and still continues to do so, which is why I feel memes have a very large prevalence in today’s young peoples lives, memes may even be the way to decrease this number further as the themes presented in the meme that we have analysed have been positive things that are trying to reinforce anti depressive thinking points for people. Memes are very prevalent in young peoples lives as well due to this depression level increasing, people wouldn’t want to go do something and would more than likely just try to have a bit of fun and look at some memes that may make them laugh. 

- The forklift

   Now as random as it seems the forklift is put in there as the meme is pulled from a page called forklift memes which is a themed meme page that jumps on different meme trends and puts the forklift swing on it. So essentially this is a sort of inside joke that not everybody would get. This is another thing that I think people find so enjoyable about memes, the fact that they can join in on this private joke and feel a sort of community when they meet like minded people who find it funny. Linking it back to the depression study of kids I feel like there is a chance that they do not feel enough connection with other people or maybe that they are socially outcast but here where they can browse memes and laugh they can find a nice escape from the world that is causing them so much terror and grief. I feel like the forklift displayed in this meme is a very good way to see the sense of community that people feel when they find a meme page that they can either relate to or that they just find funny. 

- The emoji

   The emoji’s located in this picture are used sarcastically to mock the constant overuse of them on social media by people who are regarded as “normies” a normie usually is someone who likes a meme when it becomes overplayed and then they start posting it again, so the people who have already been witnessing the meme over the last while are re-exposed and usually get annoyed. So often people are branded with the term normie completely contrary to that sense of community that I was mentioning before. The emojis could be another reflection of a way that the people who enjoy memes are using to get back at the people who don’t really look at memes. So I theorize that because the nature of alot of memes are related to depressive thoughts and overcoming them the basis of the fan base will be people who are suffering through it, so therefore the people who wont be on the cutting edge of the newest memes will be the people who are not depressed. Now my theory goes that due to the nature of cyber bulling and such new mediums to torment other people, the term and branding of the name normie is a way for people to get back at the people that might have induced this depressive state of mind. Which in my mind and from my own personal experiences I can tell you is mainly true and it does indeed exist in the way I put it.

- The monkey

   Now the monkey as a disclaimer is a “dead meme” as its life cycle has come to an end. To explain the basic stages of the lifecycle of a meme I am going to use an excerpt from a passage I created about the history of them; 

“ Well I have some teaching to give you my friend, there is a difference between an extensional solo meme and a widespread copy pasta phenomenon.  A meme only truly evolves into a meme when shitpost pages start to create some OC about the copy pasta relating back to other themes and such presented by the main topic of the page. For instance we will use the monkey meme. When the meme was at the shitposting stage people started to create OC that could be used for specific pages in such the birth of runescape variations of the monkey meme were birthed. If a meme page has not reached a point of capitulation then they will also jump onto the phenomenon and create the're own relatable thematic versions of the same meme and this is the golden age of a meme. This typically lasts around 1-3 days in this day and age and may be hard to find without the right connections or dealers. After this we start to see the decline of a meme once it reaches the stolen meme pages that’s job is to find developed OC and repost it to people whom believe they are meme sufficient, but in essence are the first wave of normies but are semi tolerable compared to fully fledged normsters. Here the meme gets re exposed for people who have only been seeing these for the last few days and people start to get sick of it. This next stage is the true death when a meme starts to reach true normie distribution channels such as 9-gag and Unilad (mostly unilad on facebook) and then very poor renditions of the original meme get posted and then create an exponentially increasing amount of anger towards the meme. This is why people do not enjoy "dat boi" memes any more (unless its a rebirth which is another phenomenon all together). That is the full cycle of a meme and without the right distribution channels the entire process is very hard to grasp and thus the term normie must be branded on the specific character “

Now when a meme dies it is no longer funny for alot of people and this meme has been dead for a few days but it is still relevant into understanding the fundamental aspects of a meme. A wide spread copy pasta phenomenon is what we see here with a monkeys hair being cut as this meme was put in random places completely out of context for no real reason but just because it was funny. This meme is an example of one of those as the monkey was made to look almost like its being cut by the forklift. So with that I feel like its a good thinking point to start looking into the actual phenomenon that occurs and why so many people find these things funny, which we could further connect to why people think things are funny in the first place. I feel as if people think memes are funny because at this day and age they are just so random that you can’t help but be entertained in an disorientated way, and that people think that other people will find it funny so they share it to a meme page, which means that content sees a larger audience and then the meme grows and grows until people start to get sick of it. This is something unlike I have ever seen before and always fascinates me when someone posts something that is considered as normie as the typical reaction is people getting very angry at each other. But maybe this is all necessary so that the memes move on and we create better and stronger ones in the future, almost like an evolutionary cycle where some things need to die out for the stronger to reign supreme. 

Artwork conclusions

I feel as if this artwork (if you would let me call it one) honestly encapsulates alot of the contemporary issues that take place today within today’s kids. I feel that as well as holding alot of information about us and what our lives are like, its also an emerging knowledge field that hasn’t been researched too much into, which is honestly quite refreshing as it means that there could be a sort of opportunity for me to look into this topic more deeply. But for now hopefully I have touched on some themes and thinking points that I will be able to connect to my other fields of knowledge I have studied in a creative fashion. 

Bibliography 

[1]  National Trends in the Prevalence and Treatment of Depression in Adolescents and Young AdultsRamin Mojtabai, Mark Olfson, Beth HanPediatrics Nov 2016, e20161878; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-1878

[numinous00]

RAWA answers questions!!

This is an “in-cavern” (but not in-character) interview with RAWA 2.0 from a couple of years ago (oct 2015) that I just stumbled across. I’d never seen it before so thought I’d post it here in case anyone else missed it too. It’s mostly D’ni language stuff. Quite interesting.

Click the link - http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=28054&start=15 or the “read more”

(Max): So in short, what was the inspiration or the basis for the D'ni language? Can you tell a bit about the origins of it? I suppose it's very Non-English, but does it for instance have any Arabic, Hindi, Japanese or some Asian influences? Or any correlation to other common languages and speech patterns? RAWA: Hmm... I realize that most will not understand this, but it is very difficult for me to be OOC as 'RAWA v2.0' here rather than IC 'Dr. Watson' when I'm literally 'In the Cavern'. It just feels so wrong. Having said that, it is an interesting story that I don't think has been told before, so we might as well go for it. Just don't tell Dr. Watson or the other DRC members. RAWA: I have always loved languages of all kinds. Just the idea that (somewhat) arbitrary combinations of sounds, and/or symbols could be imbued with 'meaning' is cool. A secret 'code' that groups of people more or less try to adhere to, to imperfectly share information with each other. What I say is not necessarily what you hear, even if we supposedly speak the same language. This is why I joke about taking things literally. Everything I hear, I try to 'hear' as many different interpretations as possible, and pick the most literal to respond to, even if I know they meant one of the other possible interpretations. It drives people nuts. A very simple example: My son: 'Can I have a soda?' Me: 'I believe you are 'able' to, but you are not 'allowed' to.' This comes from years of typing up email responses and having to go through every single word over and over, knowing y'all were going to dissect every syllable. BTW - Don't dissect this, please. It won't stand up to it. I got used to trying to guess what would be misinterpreted and trying to be very specific to address those reactions before they happened. I was not always successful, but I did always do my best to try to be clear, even if the answer was basically, 'I can't tell you that, yet.' Back to the language story. In sixth grade, I had the chance to take just a little bit of German during our lunch breaks. The idea that not just words changed from language to language, but entire modes of thinking fascinated me. Then in high school, I took two years of Spanish. A whole 'nother mindset. New grammar concepts. I don't remember many of the specifics, but the basic concept stuck with me. The rules are pretty arbitrary and could theoretically be just about anything. The important thing is that everyone agrees to abide by them and use them the same way, or no meaning can be conveyed from person to person. What I say is not what you hear if we do not agree on how the 'code' should be encoded/decoded. Some of this is unavoidable, because we bring our own experiences to the conversation. When I say the word "watermelon", my concept of "watermelon" is slightly different than your concept of "watermelon". When I say "watermelon", I remember eating waaaay too much watermelon when I was very young and getting sick from it. I could not eat watermelon again for years, and I still do not really eat it. If you never had a negative experience with watermelon, you probably do not have any of those connotations connected to it. Back to languages, sorry for the bunny trail. My next "languages" were from Tolkien. Wow. Clearly he had waaaay too much time on his hands. Amazing. Inspriring. Then came Hebrew. All just basic stuff, no formal classes, just bits and pieces I was picking up. After that was Tenctonese from a movie called Alien Nation (Mandy Patinkin, 1988). Their language in the movie was very complicated with clicks and pops and they had a script that looked like an EKG heartbeat with dots and wavy lines. I tried to figure out if they did all the work to make it real, or if they just faked it with randomness. Turns out it was pretty detailed. Cool. Then the TV series Alien Nation came out. Still good, but the language in the TV show was a simpler version. Knowing how long it takes to translate, and how hard it is to get actors to say "gibberish" in the first place, I certainly understood. The TV show's version of the language was easy to figure out. Standard English word order for the grammar. Many words were simply anagrams of their English counterparts. I recorded every episode on VHS tape, and watched it back. Keeping track of the subtitles. Learning new words. "Tagdot tay monga su. To tay mish uray." = "Tagdot (a character name) is among us. It is his time." (This is 25 year-old memory. I believe I am remembering it correctly, but I may have messed it up a little.) The point was - they got an "A" for effort from me - that it wasn't just random. When I started at Cyan, Myst's other languages were gibberish. See Achenar's recordings to the Channelwood natives. That was all recorded before I was hired. When it came time for Riven, I asked if I could take a stab at it. It might not be perfect. It might not be pretty. But it wouldn't just be random. I could at least do something like the TV version of Alien Nation did. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was always a good student. I was a pro at English grammar. "linking verbs: have, has, had, do, does, did, am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been", "Types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory", "Pronouns: nominative, possessive, objective", "who/whom?" "11 rules for the comma" No problem. I had a great English teacher, Miss Gaupp. She's 84 now, and still teaches English! Her father lived to be 105. so she might teach a whole 'nother generation! D'ni was mostly based on Hebrew as far as the alphabet structure works. Hebrew uses a dot on some of the letters to change some consonants from a fricative like "v" to a stop like "b". Tongue and lips are in the same basic position, the dot just tells you if you completely stop the air or not. For vowels, Hebrew usually uses an extra letter a yud (y) to make a dipthong. I simplified it a little and used the same dot that is used for consonants, only when it's on a vowel, it becomes a dipthong, usually sliding from the original sound to an "ee" sound. The language using suffixes and prefixes to show number, subject, etc. are concepts I remembered from Hebrew and Spanish. Small words attach together (agglutenative) "And, the, etc." attach to the words they modify. Hebrew and German do this. The number system and alphabet evolved together - this is from Hebrew. The combination of base 5 and base 25 came from the idea: what if I use my right hand to count like tick marks and my left hand to keep track of how many sets of tick marks I have. Their coordinate system (polar coordinates) came from Rand first. I am starting a website where I plan to start releasing more and more information about D'ni. Stuff that has not been released before. It's an ambitious project. It sounds good on paper, but in my current state I am coming up with ideas much, much more quickly than I can ever hope to execute them. My To-Do list gets exponentially longer. We're going to need a lot more "back burners" on our proverbial stove. And once i'm back to work full-time on Obduction, these new projects are definitely going to take a hit. (Zeke): Could you give us a little more background on the bahro (something we dont know about them) and where the bahro concept came from? RAWA: Sorry, Zeke. I still hold too much hope that we will be able to reveal that in a game or novel to just spill it now. RAWA v2.0 may be chattier than RAWA v1.0 was, but I still would rather you experience these things for yourself than simply be told them. (Zeke): Why is Myst island closed off to the public did you plan to have Myst island released to the public at some point? RAWA: In Uru, I expect? Yes, like everything else when Uru was initially designed - we were leaving ourselves a great deal of freedom for future expansion. (Zeke): Where are the D'ni bathrooms? Did they have ages that they went to for the bathroom? RAWA: My long-running, standard answer for that is: "That's why we don't allow you to swim in Myst..." (Zeke): Why was the jump feature so important in this game? RAWA: When you plan a game that is meant to evolve and change and grow over time, you want as many options on the table as possible. As many arrows in your quiver, tools in your belt, spices in your cupboard, [insert your analogy here] as you can get. Especially when it comes to puzzle creation. You wan the flexibility to make completely new kinds of puzzles than were made anywhere in the game before. Don't get me started on the original plans for the pods (Negilahn). Picking things up with your hands, for example. Kicking the traps into place in Eder Kemo. That was never meant to be the final interface. But it worked as a stop-gap until grabbing/ holding/pushing could be implemented at a later time. Then Uru was canceled before it began, and all those grand plans sit unfulfilled. (Acorn1): We know from a recent interview with David Wingrove that a draft of the Book of Marrim exists. But we also know it's been on the back burner for years. You've told us not to give up on it. Is there anything you can tell us about what would need to happen to that draft in order to ready it for publication? RAWA: It's on my bucket list. It won't be great if I write it, but there are several critical bits in it that have to be told, and told right. The rest of the "filler" story, I don't care quite so much about. The outline we worked on with David was good and all, but <shrug>. (Mister Magic): Are there any updates in the pipeline that you can let us know a bit about? RAWA: Which pipeline? MOULa? I'm out of that loop, sorry. Obduction? We are hard at work. I have been in the office several times, briefly. Much to my wife's frustration. On Thursday, Ryan Warzecha literally asked me one question that I had to think about. It completely drained me, and I had to stop to recharge. My RAWA v2.0 joke about the upgrade is more accurate than you probably think. As soon as I try to engage my brain in any meaningful way, I immediately, literally feel myself slow down. The clock starts ticking, and my energy is quickly dissipated. The more of my brain I try to use at once, the faster the energy is gone. So the joke now is that they get to ask me one question per day, and that's it. (Tai'lahr): I greatly enjoyed the YouTube video of you singing, RAWA, so my question is: Is there any chance you could be convinced to submit a song or two to be played during the weekly Uru Karaoke event? RAWA: You're too kind. It's awful. I was too tired to play well or sing well. The lyrics drive me crazy when they "pop" a word down to the next line as they expand. But it did its job - proves I have all the pieces to make -something- work. Now it just needs some love and time. RAWA: More stuff will be placed on my YouTube channel. I've already recorded the next one, I'm just working on the graphics and lyrics. Once that next one's up, I'll go back to redo As a Deer. That was mainly for my aunt. it's her favorite song that i play (cskid13): Can we call the content that is currently being created by the Intangibles "canon?" So, in other words, will their version of Kahlo be the "real" Kahlo, etc.? (cskid13) RAWA: Our philosophy has not changed. What happens in the Cavern happens in the Cavern. We just roll with the punches and try to weave everything into the story as best we can. We certainly didn't plan for any of the Cavern closings, but they are part of the story now. If y'all make Kahlo, it will be some version of Kahlo. If the DRC ever gets funding to come back, they might find an "older" Book that links to another version of Kahlo, just like your Yeesha book does. (maggie696): this brings our prepared questions to an end. We have only one last request - that you would visit us more often RAWA: Hope springs eternal that we eventually have to officially "burn that bridge while we're crossing it" (tm).

[coffee-bit]

Yume Nikki: how interesting can random dreams get?

first post uh? I decided to start with one of the games that will always come back to my mind every once in a while

Yume Nikki

WARNING: mention of drugs/abuse/violence/blood/rape/mental illness/body horror/suicide

Yume Nikki let’s you get in the shoes of a girl named Madotsuki who lives on a tiny apartment that she refuses to leave and the only things you can do there is look outside, play a video game, save your current data and what the game actually wants you to do Sleep

As you fall asleep you are sent to Madotsuki’s dream world where she’s able to visit many places and collect what we call “effects” that give Madotsuki special abilities or just fun stuff 

Even since the start screen of the game it fills you with an unnerving vibe that does nothing but increase as you get deeper and deeper on this girl’s dream world

From forests with apparent murder scenes

To a place that the fandom calls literally hell

Passing by some guy that really loves his stairs

to a girl that might “come in handy”

To more much more!

Yume Nikki is a trip to a really active mind of what we assume to be just a teenager. You can wander through endless worlds with nothing but blackness and then suddenly find a door that leads you to a neon world, this game will never tell you what is behind each door

You are never given a goal or explained anything, not even the many weird beings you find ever talks to you making you feel...lonely

There seems to be no plot to Yume Nikki, no explanations no character traits nothing ever even when we are given some “important” NPCs such as Uboa, Poniko, Masada etc characters that call your attention more than the normal monsters you seem to find all around the game, either because they trigger special things or because they just don’t look like anything you’ve seen before

Yume Nikki more than a game it’s an experience 

How interesting can random dreams get?

This is what I focus mostly when thinking about Yume Nikki

You see some people have compared Yume Nikki to LSD Dreams, and while yeah they do share some similar stuff it is a different concept and material

LSD Dreams let’s you explore the dreams of someone under the effects of said drug and we know that for a fact, on the game you also have no goal and things make no sense but it’s because of drugs the mind is not in it’s normal state, on Yume Nikki we don’t really know if Madotsuki might consume drugs but as far as we know she just goes to sleep and awakens on that world of hers, where everything is connected on a perfect way

It makes us feel like there’s a meaning to it

With dreams with drugs you really can’t expect for it to have a meaning, there’s really nothing else to it other than that....drug induced dreams. With Yume Nikki you seem to explore a mind that it’s dealing with a lot of heavy stuff

And this is where the fandom likes to step in, as random as the dreams are just because they seem to have a secret meaning the fandom has gone left and right up and down trying to find it and creating so many interesting theories with it

Such as Madotsuki not being really female, Madotsuki being a victim of rape, Madotsuki potentially killing or being involved in the killing of her friends or people she knew, Madotsuki having many mental illneses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder etc

These seemingly “random” dreams were well thought out or else it wouldn’t have really called anyone’s attention, and the creator was smart enough as to never explain why anything is like that on the game so the magic isn’t dying anytime soon

And before you say anything, yes I’m aware that there is an ��ending” to Yume Nikki where Madotsuki kills herself by jumping off the balcony but I don’t think it really matters to the story? I mean yeah she killed herself after finding all the effects but she could have done it at any time so her dreams were stopping her from that so I like to think the dreams are the important part.

Honestly I could talk about Yume Nikki for hours, it is and will always be a game that will be a part of me and while the gaming part can be boring the story and community... is fun.

[the-crystal-muse]

Who wants another headcanon, this time about reincarnation?

[Cricket noises]

I’ll take that as a yes. Meet me under the cut for a bare bones theory that’s probably been done a hundred times over. Turns out the Mane Six, plus Starlight and maybe Cadance, are the Avatar. Who knew?

[Warning: Spoilers for Friendship is Magic Comic #25, where the CMC travel through time with Discord, and slight spoilers for Fiendship is Magic #1, Sombra’s backstory.]

This is a simple theory that I’m sure has been done to death. Basically, it goes like this: Each of the Mane Six, plus Starlight Glimmer and possibly even Cadance, have been reincarnated at least once in their existences.

This headcanon comes about from one particular scene in the time traveling comic from the Friendship is Magic series. The CMC and Fluttershy are brought to ancient and lost civilization of Anugypt (Pony Egypt) by Discord. There, they find that Anugypt is ruled by King Anubis, king of the jackals (a species that Discord says is known for being great artists, builders, military strategists, and torturers). His army, comprised of jackals and very disgruntled ponies, seems to rule Anugypt with an iron fist.

Apparently, Discord had helped the cat population of Anugypt, along with their leader Baast, start a rebellion against Anubus, and the group pays the price in the comic. While the rest isn’t too useful, a few importantish things in the comic stood out to me. One of them was this scene.

In this scene, the group is saved by the intervention of Baast’s soldiers, cats that have the same coloring as each of the Mane Six. While they serve little purpose other than a quick cameo, it got me thinking. What if they don’t just look like the Mane Six, but they are the Mane Six? Past lives of the ponies we all know and love?

This was an idea that I’ve been nursing for some time, mostly as a fic concept. Remember the founders of Equestria?

The Founders in the play do act a lot like the ponies chosen to play them. While that could just be that the play’s director has a good eye for casting (I’ll say it was Spike), it just feels like an interesting idea as to why the Mane Six had those specific roles. Plus, Clover the Clever was the student of Star Swirl the Bearded. Maybe this is part of why Twilight’s such a powerful mage, and why she’s so fascinated by who could possibly be her former mentor?

Now, this theory would imply that the Mane Six have had at least two past lives, one as soldiers of a rebellion and one as founders of a nation. I doubt they’d be just randomly reborn for no reason whatsoever. (Well, they could be, but that’s no fun.) So I thought there might be a connection between them. And that connection is their Elements of Harmony!

In Anugypt, Sweetie Belle stumbled upon a set of hieroglyphics regarding King Anubis. These hieroglyphics showed him shadowed by a shadow and holding the moon. Baast later confirmed that his cruelty came out of nowhere, as well as his power. Sweetie quickly deduced that he must have had the power of Nightmare Moon somehow, and that they’d need the power of friendship to defeat him.

(Wow this is a long post.)

So, we have the Mane Six in an ancient civilization as well as one of their most well-known enemies. I think this is because of a concept introduced in Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles (appropriately enough, an Egyptian-based series) where the forces of good and evil regularly come into conflict throughout the centuries. In these conflicts, mortals and gods work with or against each other in battles that are practically the same each time. The gods follow old patterns, reliving the same conflicts over and over. The humans are the only ones who change, and as such as the only ones who can ensure the battles have a new outcome each time.

So what if the Mane Six are a part of a similar cycle? They’re the forces of Harmony that are reborn each time a powerful agent of chaos, such as Nightmare Moon, rises. When the Elements are reborn, their job is to restore order to the land. Such as when they saved the CMC, allowing Sweetie Belle to explain how to defeat Anubis. And also when they allowed for the creation of Equestria and the end of hatred between the pony tribes. Perhaps some of the villains our heroes face, such as Nightmare Moon, are recurring cycles that appear every few hundred years to set chaos upon the world, but are eventually defeated by the reborn Elements? The proof can even be found in Anugypt.

Several of the hieroglyphics are actually cutie marks belonging to the Mane Six. Fluttershy’s and Rainbow’s are in the fourth from the left, while Applejack and Twilight’s are on the last one. Rarity and Pinkie’s are found on other panels.

The thing is, cats don’t seem to have cutie marks. For all we know, these are random symbols to them. Maybe it’s part of some prophecy of some sort. Maybe it’s part of their instinct to recognize symbols of the Element bearers. Who knows? But the only reason those should be there are if they have a connection to the Mane Six.

...Or, you know, if the artists wanted a nice background gag. That too.

So, we’ve discussed the Mane Six, but I also promised you guys two other ponies, didn’t I? Cadance and Starlight. Well, let’s start with Starry, since she’s a main cast member and I talk about Cadance enough on this blog that she can wait a few gosh-darn minutes.

So there’s a popular theory out there stating that Starlight Glimmer might be descended from Star Swirl the Bearded himself! I’m not actually sure where the idea came from, but here:

Here’s a post explaining it.

Now, I’m technically fine with the idea in theory. I believe that raw magical ability can be passed down through bloodlines, but the issue is that Star Swirl lived centuries ago. For Starlight to have inherited his magical abilities, the Star family would have had to carefully breed with powerful mages like themselves to ensure their power wasn’t diluted as time went by. That means centuries of only unicorns, and powerful ones at that. I’m not so sure that’s plausible.

Yet, she does have the connection we’ve seen. So what if rather than being descended from Star Swirl (or in addition to), she’s his reincarnation? Maybe he was reborn for a reason. He never did manage to become the mage he hoped, had he? Celestia said that he was never able to complete the Cutie Mark Swap spell (a spell similar to how Starlight had stolen marks), so maybe he felt a need to complete his life’s work? Become a powerful mage, master the one magic he never could: Friendship. So he’s reborn as Starlight Glimmer, a pony that not only ends up learning about the magic of friendship, but does so as the student of none other than the reborn Clover the Clever, his old student.

But what about Cadance? This is purely headcanon really, no concrete evidence of any kind,and it’s just one I came up with while thinking about this blog. But it’s cool to think of so here.

Who knows about Princess Amore?

(Thank goodness a small image. My computer can’t take much more.)

Princess Amore was the ruler of the Crystal Empire before Sombra came along. According to Radiant Hope, a character in Sombra’s backstory, she apparently looks a lot like Cadance herself, and it’s hinted at that they may be related to one another, and even says so on the wiki.

Yeah...Can’t you tell by the uh...Height? They’re totally family.

(Pony genetics are weird.)

Anyways, to make a long story short, Princess Amore is dead. Kinda. In a fit of rage, Sombra used his magic to turn Amore into a dark stone, then shattered her across Equestria. I guess you could say Amore was no-more.

[Cricket Sounds]

...Ahem. Anyways. So Cadance might be descended from Amore. I suppose they do share similarities. Amore has alicorn-like height, has strong connections to hearts (it’s literally all over her design), she hair that I swear defies gravity, and Caddy even has her in the name (Princess Mi Amore Cadenza). So, since I like things being more complicated than they have to be, what if Cadance is Amore reborn, looking for a chance to redeem herself for letting her kingdom fall to the rule of an evil king, hoping to save her people even in another life?

Yeah, that one’s pretty far-fetched, the most of all of them actually, but it’s mostly just a cool concept I considered. I think it’s nice, and while I’m on the bench about Cadance, I think the others have some amount of traction for them. It’s interesting food for thought at least, and it got me to stop thinking about Zebras for at least a few minutes.

So there you have it, my theory about reincarnation in Equestria. Thanks for listening, and see you all later!

[tyrantisterror]

How I’d Ruin It: Batman

(thanks to The Lego Batman Movie for making my brain keep coming back to this, and also for making such awesome goddamn toys for my retail therapy needs)

While I write my own stories nowadays, the old fanfic writer in me resurfaces every now and then in the form of idle thoughts about how I’d handle certain stories I love.  Sometimes these musings lead me to one horrible conclusion: that no matter how much I may love the story in question, I’d be absolutely fuck awful at writing it.  This is because the scope of things I’m interested in writing is significantly smaller than the scope of things I’m interested in reading/watching - my muse is a pickier eater than I am.

Still, no matter how awful and off message my bastardized mental versions of these stories may be, they keep popping up now and then, demanding to manifest as stories are wont to do.  So today I’m going to exorcise one of them by summarizing it to you.

Today, my wonderful readers, I’m going to tell you how I’d utterly fuck up at writing Batman.

I’m a conditional Batman fan, because there’s a lot of Batman media out there and a lot of it is shit - and also there’s so much of it by volume that even reading/watching only the good Batman stuff would take more time than I can spare.  So when I say I love Batman, know that I mean, like, mostly the 90′s animated series and scattered arcs like The Long Halloween that can stand alone, and The Dark Knight, and the Adam West show, and Holy Musical B@man, and some other random Batman stuff.  I only know/like some Batman, but the amount of Batman I like is still, like, a lot of Batman.  Jesus Christ there’s so much fucking Batman dudes.

But I have some problems with Batman, two of which are relevant to this post because they’re also kind of necessary to its appeal.  The first is one that is almost justifiable, although it will undoubtedly sound preposterous to most people: why does Batman have to be so dark?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a horror fan, so obviously I’m not completely averse to darkness in my fiction.  A big part of Batman’s appeal to me comes from how it’s rooted in Gothic Horror tropes.  It’s a comic about a dude who dresses up as a Dracula to fight monster men in a city that’s literally called Gotham, so darkness has to be part of the story.

But jeeeeeesus christ Batman is needlessly dark sometimes.  Does a bat themed super hero really need to be fighting a guy who carves tally marks into his skin for every person he’s murdered?�� Is the Joker really more interesting when he’s killing everyone he sees than when he committed clown themed heists?  Isn’t being a crocodile man enough intrigue for Killer Croc, or does he need to be a creepy cannibal too?  Does every villain need to be a murderer?

While the Adam West Batman show is so campy that I can only tolerate it in small doses, it nonetheless makes me pine for a brighter take on the character/series.  It’s kind of nice to have bright colors and jokes and a Batman who doesn’t whine about how sad he is, and villains who are more into making elaborate puzzles and traps instead of finding new ways to mutilate their victims.  I’d love to see it blended with the complex psychology of the darker Batmans - but more on that after we get to problem number 2.

Which is, of course, Batman himself.

Batman can be an interesting character.  In the best Batman stories, I certainly do love him.  But, to be totally honest with you, even at his best, Batman is never the main draw to me in a Batman story.  He’s like the bun of a hot dog - it’d be weird to have one without him, and a lot of the more interesting ingredients would sort of fall apart without him holding everything together, and you’d have a great big sticky mess on your hands, but... I mean, if I’m honest, he’s not the part of this I’m looking forward to experiencing.  Batman isn’t the meat of the meal to me - no, that role goes instead to his villains.

Goddammit those villains are great! Joker, Two Face, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, even the obscure ones like Killer Croc and Clayface, and even the shitty ones like Calendar Man - I just fuckin’ love almost every single one of ‘em, and they’re the reason I keep thinking about how I’d love to just... just utterly ruin Batman.

But when I start thinking of the story I want to tell with those villains, inevitably I remember that, oh hey, I need to have something for Batman to do because, y’know, it’s called Batman for a reason, and my muse just wants nothing to do with that.  And that’s why the wheels always fall off.

Well, that and I have a billion other stories to write, but still.

So here’s how I’d ruin Batman in a brief pitch: My Batman story would star the villains, almost none of whom are murderers, in a version of Gotham where Bruce Wayne died with his parents, and thus has no Batman.

You’d have a Gotham City much like the one in Year One (I hate to reference a Frank Miller comic but it’s easily the most well known framework for where I’m starting here), ruled by a mix of slightly exaggerated gangsters and corrupt businessmen - more outlandish in their evil than the real thing but not quite on supervillain level.  The villains would all retain their origins for the most part, but without a Batman to draw their focus they sort of turn on each other.  It sort of splits into two factions: the Freaks, who are victims/products of the corruption inherent to the city, and the Crimelords, who are the few members of the old/mundane criminal element that adapt to the superpower boom and transition from normal gangsters to supervillains.

The resulting conflict would be the story of a bunch of broken people trying to destroy the system that made them, and the horrible remnants of the old crime world desperately trying to return things to how they are - anarchists vs. tyrants.

Now that we’ve got the basic plot/conflict down, let’s go to what I always focus on first when writing a story: the characters.  We’ll begin with our protagonists...

The Freaks

The Joker - obviously the leader of the bunch, the Joker is probably one of the characters I would bastardize/alter the most.  Nowadays it’s set pretty firmly in stone that the Joker has to be, like, the most evil man in existence.  He’s gotta kill people on a whim, physically abuse his girlfriend, cut off his own face and wear it like a mask, and just generally be a real fuckin’ creep.  But does he have to be that evil?

Well yes, yes he does, it’s what makes him iconic and is basically his defining trait, and without it most of the stories told with the character wouldn’t be possible.  The idea that he’s the villain who gives other villains nightmares is what makes him stand out.  If you lessen the depths of his depravity, you’d ruin Batman.

but does he haaaaaaaaaave to?

Imagine if you will a young, down on his luck commedian named Jack Napier who, in an attempt to provide for his wife, accidentally gets involved with the mob.  They make him dress up as a (fictional) crime boss called the Red Hood for a caper - he has to act the part to get the police off the scent of the real bosses.  Little does he know that he’s a patsy, set up to not only mislead the police but to buy time for the crooks’ escape by getting into a firefight.  He’s shot and falls into some chemicals, gets bleached, and wakes up with a new, much more unhinged state of mind.  Like the normal Joker, he finds the magnitude of his tragedy to hilariously absurd.  Also like the normal Joker, he decides to become an agent of entropy in hopes of dismantling the city that made him a monster.

Unlike the normal Joker, however, the focus of his wrath isn’t a paragon of morality and justice, but rather the corrupt and powerful rulers of Gotham.  He becomes the arch enemy of mobsters, crooked cops, and politicians - people the normal version of the Joker also antagonizes, of course, but not to this level.  Since his nemeses are different, this Joker never defines himself as a force of evil and corruption.  Instead he humiliates - this Joker punches up and brings those in power down a peg.

The “joke” theme because important here, as the Joker ends up creating a lot of schemes designed to ridicule and embarrass his victims as much as destroy them.  It’s not enough to just shoot the corrupt politician - he needs to kill their ego and their sense of power.  This Joker would much rather scare the shit out of his victim with a convoluted and frankly stupid “death” trap than just shoot them - and he’d be perfectly content just splatting them in the face with a vaudevillian pie instead of actually killing them at the end.

He wouldn’t be an out and out hero - he doesn’t go out of his way to save people or anything - but he’d also be a far cry from the “killing dozens of people a day for the sake of proving he’s evil” Joker we get nowadays.

He also wouldn’t be aware of the fact that other people don’t necessarily get the joke - not in the malicious “BWAHAHA I’M EVIL AND I’M KILLING YOU WITH LAUGHING GAS IT’S FUNNY TO ME BECAUSE I’M EVIL” way, but in the “Look, I know you’re technically in peril here but you have to admit it’s objectively ridiculous that you’re being dangled above a tank full of piranhas, right?  I mean, is it even true that they eat people, or is that a myth?  This whole thing’s pretty surreal right?” sort of way.

Harley Quinn - Harley is my favorite Batman character when she’s written well, but sadly she’s normally written absolutely horribly so I’m kind of happy to just fuckin’ ruin this story for her sake.  Part of her problem is that the core concept for her character is “psychiatrist is seduced by patient, subjected to psychological and physical abuse by him, and because of said abuse becomes a supervillain.”  I mean, a lot of Batman villains also have the “horrible psychological problems make people evil” thing going on which is, y’know, horribly unfortunate, but I feel like Harley’s hit harder than most.

But since the Joker isn’t nearly as much of a bastard in this story, maybe Harley can get out with a nicer origin as well?

This version of Harley isn’t the Joker’s victim so much as a collaborator - maybe the Robin to his Batman?  They’re kindred spirits in their love of whimsy and their distaste for how the city is run - Harley in particular has a focus on the corrupt nature of the mental health facility she works at (I mean, Arkham’s not particularly good at its purpose even in the normal Batman universe).  Like Robin, Harley softens the Joker’s war on Gotham’s criminal underworld a bit - she drags him into a more compassionate viewpoint.  Unlike Robin, she’s not a subordinate/ward - while Harley plays on the Joker’s clown motiff, she doesn’t follow his schemes without question, and always argues for a different way of doing things when the Joker’s plans get too mean-spirited.  They’re actual partners in crime, as opposed to the victim/abuser dynamic they had in past fiction.

I realize this is the kind of alteration to canon - y’know, making the main villain sympathetic and a canonically abusive relationship into a healthy romanticized one - that makes people use the word “fanfic” as a pejorative, but, well, I did say this is how I’d ruin Batman.

Catwoman - while the Joker is obviously going to be the leader of the bunch, Catwoman would be the deuteragonist, both because she’s just as iconic and also because she’s probably the closest thing to Batman in this world, and it is still ultimately a world designed to work around a Batman-ish character.  Born poor, Catwoman pickpockets her way into wealth, specifically targeting the most corrupt of the wealthy.  Unlike most of the other Freaks, she has the option of living a normal life, but is ultimately compelled to keep robbing from the rich and giving to the poor (and also herself - look, she has a lot of cats to feed).  Catwoman grounds the Freaks in reality and helps them understand the rules of the system they’re trying to break - and, with her status as an up and coming socialite, is able to give them valuable intel on some of their targets.

Mr. Freeze - honestly you could just transplant the Batman: The Animated Series take on him right into here, because it’s kind of baffling he was considered a villain in the first place.  It takes literally no effort to make him a heroic figure - you just have to remove the more-traditionally-heroic Batman to make him shine.  Mr. Freeze isn’t as daffy and volatile as the Joker, but is every bit as determined to bring Gotham crashing down and to make the corrupt pay for their cruelty toward people like him.  He’s also hilariously serious, providing a stoic counterpoint to the more flamboyant personalities of the other villains.

Poison Ivy - Poison Ivy’s motivation has been “protect the environment, plants specifically”, which is pretty noble to be honest - it’s just that her methods are unnecessarily homicidal.  So, y’know, maybe tone that down a bit?  Less “mind controlling innocent people and murdering them for money to build a plant park” and more “using convenient giant animate plants to halt construction that threatens local parks” sort of schemes.  She’d basically be an environmental sciences themed vigilante - Captain Planet with an aggressive streak.

I know it’s more traditional to pair her with Harley Quinn, but I’d kinda like to try setting her up with Catwoman instead - both of them has this history of being femme fatales/evil seducers of men, so it’d be kind of fun to have a story where they just have none of that at all.  Though pairing her with Harley and making the Harley/Joker relationship purely platonic is an interesting dynamic too...

Killer Croc - he’s a great big crocodile man who lives in the sewers because no one above ground accepts him, on account of him being a big crocodile man and all.  Despite his fearsome appearance and prodigious strength, he’s a pretty swell guy - the gentle bruiser of the group.

Two-Face - like Mr. Freeze, you really don’t have to alter much to make him a good guy.  Just keep Two-Face pointed at mobsters and he works as a hero pretty well.

The Riddler - In this world, the Riddler begins as a cop who, while clever, isn’t corrupt enough to excel in the police department.  His superiors assign him to the Freak case in hopes of getting rid of him (preferably in a fatal sort of way), but that plan succeeds in the worst way, as he ends up defecting to their side.  The Riddler helps the Freaks make their schemes truly bizarre and unpredictable, and helps them get to the bottom of who is truly running Gotham City.  He’s also a smug prick about it, because smugness is key to his character.

Clayface - a star of Gotham’s theater scene, Basil Karlo is convinced to try an experiment age-defying makeup which turns him into a giant shape changing mud man.  He becomes the group’s master of disguise and also ups their general theatricality, and can back up Croc as the muscle in a pinch.

The Crimelords

Penguin - a petty thug with delusions of grandeur, Penguin wants to rise to the ranks of the social elite and goes to great lengths to seem more educated and “classy” than he is.  While he is never accepted by the rich people he idolizes, he continues to do their dirty work in hopes of getting their approval.  He is cunning in a way, though, and rises to prominence throughout the story as one of the few criminals who can keep up with the increasingly eccentric Freaks - probably because he’s basically one of them despite his protests.

Scarecrow - a corrupt psychologist at Arkham Asylum who helps the mafia by providing insanity defenses for mobsters and driving key witnesses insane, Scarecrow’s obsession with fear would spiral out of control throughout the story.  Eventually he’d switch sides to the Freaks when he gets too weird for the oldschool criminals to tolerate, although he’d never be well liked by either side.

Firefly - a particularly skilled arsonist for the Maroni crime family.  Not much more than that.

Deathstroke - the greatest assassin employed by the Falcone crime family, Deathstroke takes himself very seriously, which is to his detriment considering the pack of ridiculous monster men he’s facing in this story.  He has a bitter rivalry with...

Deadshot - the greatest assassin employed by the Maroni crime family.  Deadshot doesn’t take his work very seriously at all and is prone to sarcasm and flippancy.  He kind of loves the fact that the freaks are causing so much ridiculous trouble for his employers, but that doesn’t mean he won’t kill them for a paycheck.

Bane - a mercenary hired by the crime families to take down the Freaks.  Bane eventually switches sides; he may be a bad guy, but he also cares about the downtrodden having grown up in a city not unlike Gotham itself.

Calendar Man - the youngest son of the mafia boss Carmine Falcone, Alberto Falcone is inspired by the theatricality of the Freaks and becomes a holiday themed serial killer, targeting enemies of his father’s business in a misguided attempt to earn his approval.

Black Mask - As the different crime families slowly dwindle in number over the course of the story, Roland Sionis, an underboss for the Maroni family, eventually rises in the ranks (due to his superiors dying) and unites what remains of the mafia under his iron fist.  Deciding to fight fire with fire, he crafts a grim alter ego for himself in hopes of striking fear into the Freaks.  It doesn’t work because he’s just not theatrical enough to pull it off, but he does manage to be a thorn in their side for a while.

Hugo Strange - the chief psychologist of Arkham Asylum, Hugo Strange is an awful, awful man.  He’s also an incredibly intelligent one, master minding many of the problems the Freaks encounter.  He’s not the root of Gotham’s problems, though, as he ultimately serves...

Ra’s Al Ghul - an ancient sorceror who has made and destroyed countless societies in his many centuries of scheming, Ra’s Al Ghul made Gotham City into a nexus of misery and cruelty in hopes of awakening a world ruining entity - i.e. basically he’s trying to bring about Gozer the Destroyer.  ‘Cause why not bring in a bit of Lovecraftian terror to a setting that has a madhouse that makes monster people that’s literally called Arkham Asylum?

And that’s it.  That’s how I’d ruin Batman.

I’ll probably repurpose some of these ideas into other stories like I do with most of my fanfic ideas, but man, this sure is shitty as a Batman story, huh?