#I THOUGHT I HIT POST

[thewolfisawake]

End of a Rotten Dream

How many times have they crossed blades in their lifetime? Balmoral had long since lost count since at some point they became like a dance. One of many that Mhoirbheinn taught and learned alongside him. Step back, step forward. A weave here and glide along the back there. To him, it was no different than being led through the steps of a waltz. Even though Mhoirbheinn tended to be capricious in his action, he was deliberate in execution. But Balmoral adored that still.

There was an artistry to Mhoirbheinn's cruelty that captivated Balmoral to this day. With his paints of mercurial and crimson blood, he could compose a masterpiece as easily as breathing. If it were his vindictiveness at play--as cruel as it was--the king would've allowed this to continue. But he couldn't.

Not like this. Not when it brought torment to people that had come to trust the rule within these castle walls. Not while knowing it all came from a deluge of distress and woe. Not when Mhoirbheinn was suffering, trapped in a long looming nightmare.

So ensnared, Balmoral doubted his voice was getting through. He pivoted to avoid a lunge. Even if he could win a battle of attrition, it would not guarantee his love's freedom. He flipped back, narrowly avoiding the secondary attack of a sickle. He needed to get Mhoirbheinn to stop somehow. Twin daggers descended on him once more.

During their encounter, Balmoral noticed that while Mhoirbheinn maintained his strength and prowess that he had in present...his tactics hadn't. It was like dealing with that scornful yet desolate youth. While it had been their beginning, it was painful to think of the other reverted back to this time. A time with nothing but grief and directionless anger. To relive the sorrow that spurned him. To believe that there was only loneliness in his freedom.

"We are past that point," Balmoral said aloud although he didn't expect to be heard, "it's time for you to come back."

Balmoral went in for a slash and was met by the scrape of metal as Mhoirbheinn met his attack. He pushed against the hold, seemingly starting to step the other's foot in a bid to rest control. However Bal shifted, his boot hooking the fae's ankle and only giving a push to trip him up.

A pang dug into him but he didn't relent as they both went to the ground. Prepared for the fall, Balmoral straddled his opponent and managed to pin an arm. His blade flush against Mhoirbheinn's throat. The sword hovered just above his skin but went no further. Yet its chill could nip his neck.

Ah, how many times had they also ended like this? Sometimes like this. Sometimes reversed. An air of teasing and amusement abound. But today there was only a tension, heavy pants made evident with wisps of frost. They were frozen in that moment, awaiting the next movement, next word.

Rather than a hardened expression, there was only a faint quiver of forced patience. Mhoirbheinn blinked, his eyes alternated between focus and searching. But at the mention of his name, Balmoral's shoulders sagged as he released the breath he didn't realize he was holding. He allowed room for the other to sit up. Adrenaline winding down, his body reminding him Mhoirbheinn didn't take his counters lying down.

"Ha, ah never cannae time your haun right..." he wearily chuckled. Mhoirbheinn didn't find any humor in it, instead dropping his last defense. Before he could move away or call out, Balmoral held fast to his arm, "Simmer, Bheinnan...it's alright. It's over."

Oh, if only those words would be true.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[badolmen]

People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.

For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.

The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.

So yes, I’m going to pirate and support piracy.

Edit: if you are able, use $5 you would otherwise use for a streaming subscription to donate to a GazaFunds campaign.

[fracturedgodhead]

I'm feeling inspired #4

I am dreaming really big right now. I'm not going to write them down, because I have dreamed this big before and what usually happens is that I try to make the dream a reality and end up disappointed and hating myself when I fall short of it.

I'm going to try something new.

I'm going to make goals.

There is a YouTube video I watched almost a year ago now, that was about how to become successful on YouTube, or perhaps more accurately, how success on YouTube works. There were two main points that the video centered on.

The first is that YouTube is, fundamentally, probabilistic. The success of a piece of content on YouTube is dependent on chance, not entirely of course, but enough so that even with all the effort in the world, a perfect piece of content can fail completely. As such, to maximize success, you need quantity, not necessarily quantity over quality in all cases, but 1 or 2 videos ever does not a successful channel make.

The second is stranger, and to reflect that, I will be calling it the 'Spaghetti Burger principle'. The guy in the video compares YouTube, with all its content creators and videos and viewers, to a food court. The creators make things that the viewers consume. It makes sense. Following along with this metaphor though, the guy in the video explains that, much like a food court, you don't want to be the second burger shop.

One of the key factors in content being successful is making something no one can get anywhere else. Making your spaghetti burger. There are thousands of gaming YouTube channels, there are thousands of makeup channels, there are thousands of review channels. These markets are saturated, established, and competitive, it's not impossible to rise above all of the others, but it is challenge that is not necessarily needed. If you want to make successful content, you need to be able to sit at the top of your niche. The easiest way to do this is to create your own niche.

There are certain characteristics that virtually all successful channels have, to refer to the metaphor, a spaghetti burger is interesting and something people can enjoy but something like a store that sells cactuses in a food court might not be so successful. Otherwise though, you have some control over the definition of your own success.

All that said, I think those ideas generalize very well to creating content in any kind of forum. The 2 pillars of chance and individuality. I think I will make my goals with those ideas in mind.

Goal the first: Create more consistently. This practice that I'm doing right now, the daily blog posts, satisfy the majority of this goal. Doing this is a form of progress in its own right, I'm not blind to that. Buuuuut, these blog posts don't become a game, and that is the end goal. I am managing to do this consistently so far, so perhaps I can piggyback off of these posts to drive myself to write or code or draw or music consistently... We'll see I suppose, but today I know that I will be writing something or other for this project once I post this. I'll also put it up on here.

Goal the 2th: Combine media. The main attraction, and what I get the most out of from games and game dev, is the act of 2 separable things being combined together. Observing the synergy of multiple already decent things coming together to make something exceptional feels really good. Music and video, art and its exhibit, an ARG and its community, I cannot describe how much being able to see these things in real life brings me joy. I want nothing more than to contribute to this collection of beautiful and complex things.

Goal the 3nd: Make something new. I need to find my spaghetti burger. Art is communication, I think that's common knowledge. I want to make art, art that people will be interested in and get something out of. I think the only way to do this is to put bits and pieces of myself into my art, make something only I can make. I think a lot of people recoil from their own work because they see parts of themself in it, possibly even some parts they don't like. I suppose this goal is me telling myself to get over that instinct. Accept that parts of me will exist in my work and see that as the inevitability, and occasionally even strength, that it is.

I think those are good goals, so now I need to figure out how to achieve them... I have no idea how to do this part. Even the making goals thing is new to me, and I think I got it a bit wrong T . T

Plan 1: Shoot for one piece of content per week. Writing, drawing, music, code module, whatever. Decide on Monday what I want to make and work on it over the course of the week. I think I can fit that schedule around work or school or whatever else life starts being.

Plan 2: This one is more complex. I don't really know how or what I can plan to achieve that second goal... Maybe this blog is actually the solution... or a blog... Maybe I can plan to combine all the work of the month into some kind of collage every month and make a blog post out of it... That might not work too well though, given that the weekly content s might not relate to each other. A story about one thing combined with random music about another... idk. Maybe I just plan for the last project of each month to be mixed media of some kind, maybe incorporating the other pieces from the month or older ones or maybe not.

Plan 3: This is a strange plan to achieve the second goal, but hear me out. I need to consume more content. Well not exactly more, but I need to take more control of my content consumption and be more intentional about it. If I want to be able to put myself into my work, I need to know myself, and I need to know the mediums I am working in. That means that if I want to write, I need to understand writing, and the way to do that is to smoke a lot of written work and actually think about it. I need to read and analyze, I need to listen to music and analyze, and I need to look at art and analyze. To this end, for now, I have a few books I've been wanting to read, a few albums I've been listening to, and I've been collecting art. I think that trying to analyze one of these pieces of art every week (maybe not the whole book, rather, a portion of it) will help me better understand and improve my own work. Iron sharpens iron I suppose.

It's late, but I plan to do a bit of writing after this. Given that I'm already working on a daily blog, I may as well turn these weekly and monthly works and analyses into a few other blogs. Accountability, even parasocial, is a powerful motivator.

I would like to thank your eyes for existing though your mouths may not speak to me. Your existence motivates me.

[clownboybebop]

if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!

1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.

2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.

3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes

it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.

It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.

so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know

[freddiecorleone]

I don't care how gay the wicked movie is or whatever this site can't gaslight me into taking ariana grande seriously all of a sudden

[mroddmod]

they are like puppies. 2 me

[machveil]

Roommate!Simon Riley that doesn’t correct people for thinking you’re dating. Simon’s minding the trolley while you grab a box of cereal at the store, idly standing by while watching people dip in and out of the aisle. when an older woman says you make a cute couple he just nods and says ‘thank you, ma’am’. he especially doesn’t correct someone when he stalks up behind you, a protective hand on your hip when they scoff and ask, “Is this your boyfriend?”

Roommate!Simon Riley that knows you like the back of his hand - ever changing, but still familiar at the end of the day. a new scar marring his knuckles? he’ll memorize what you like from that new café that opened down the block. a new nick on his wrist? he’s picking up that new movie you were gushing about wanting to see, a genre you wouldn’t necessarily choose usually - he’s ignoring how the main love interest looks like him. at the end of the day, some things never change, like how he’s memorized your smile and the way your nose scrunches

Roommate!Simon Riley that’s fallen into a comfortable pattern with you. your friends always say you act like a married couple, but you wave them off. so what if you guys are in the bathroom at the same time? you need to squeeze a shower in and Simon wanted to brush his teeth - besides, he can hand you a towel when you’re done. so what if you sleep in each other’s rooms? the damn AC is busted again, it’s not your fault Simon is as warm as a furnace and welcomes you with open arms

Roommate!Simon Riley whose favorite start to the morning is seeing you bleary eyed and groggy. your hair is messy, pillow lines across your cheek, and your t-shirt is askew - perfect. he doesn’t care if you have crud around your eyes, he doesn’t care if you haven’t brushed your teeth yet, he doesn’t care that you’re wearing his t-shirt— Simon pauses, eyes glued to you. his last name decorating your back… maybe Simon does care about you wearing his shirt

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[keplerspacecraftofficial]

electing to believe this is what griddlehark looks like to everyone else

[artsymeeshee]

Random idea I got this morning thinking about how small little things (mostly about missing important moments of the past) make the boys emotional and sorrowful.

[gerrykeay]

im not putting this post into words. beams into your mind The Parallels

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[joy-drops]

[syrren]

“The artist becomes the canvas!” - TMAGP 002: Making Adjustments

[agentravensong]

thinking about how the extra area added on to a pacifist run of undertale, the true lab, is about alphys's past mistakes. how it ends with the story reaffirming that, despite the pain she's caused, the thing that matters is that she has now made the choice to do the right thing. she's still worthy of her friends' love.

thinking about how undertale doesn't expect the player to get a pacifist ending for the first time. how it's more likely than not that the player will kill toriel the first time they battle her, how lots of players don't initially figure out how to end undyne's fight without killing her, etc. what it expects — not even expects, really, but hopes — is that the player, if they care enough, will use their canonically acknowledged power over time to make up for those mistakes.

no matter how many neutral runs a player has done before committing to the pacifist run, the thing that matters to the characters, to the story, is that you've chosen, now, to do the right thing.

compared to alphys, the player honestly gets off lightly, in that you're the only one (other than flowey) who really remembers any harm you might have caused. and any direct guilting the game could have done about it is long past at this point. instead, as undertale often does, it makes its point via parallels: alphys caused harm, and she knows it. she has committed to being better. in doing so, she has unlocked for herself a better ending to her story. and she deserves it. she's forgiven.

those structural narrative parallels are all over undertale, if you know where to look. and that's one of the things that makes it so fuckin' good.

[kendyroy]

thinking about how this movie could’ve ended like any other superhero movie where they go their separate ways before teasing some future threat

but instead it ended with wade calling out logan’s name romcom-style, and them living a happy domestic life together with their newly adopted dog