#I don’t post about CC enough I think….a lot of you (the very few of you who are following the PDBC lore lmao) probably don’t remember her

[hana-bobo-finch]

i am one day late to my own character’s birthday but whatever better late than never. this image popped up in my head last night and I felt obligated to make it

for context Tornado is the name of the only social networking site on fincg island and C.C. is. very into the occult and would definitely think this is a halfway decent thing to do (it is not)

og

[anachronistic-falsehood]

Ok before I answer any more asks, I feel like I need to get my full thoughts out there. This might be a bit long, but I have a lot to say.

First off: I am very impressionable. I always have been and I always will be. I am well aware of this. When people tell me things, I often believe them at face value. I’m trying to get better at that, which is why I tried to stay neutral this time around when everything first came out. Then I removed myself from the situation for a couple days, came back to it today, forgot to beat my hyper empathy into submission for ten minutes, and found myself almost believing him one hundred percent. I almost forgot about his first response, where he lashed out and threatened to sue people over this. I also tend not to focus on situations like this often because it’s really bad for my POCD. I am bad at this. I need to preface this post by saying that.

I don’t support Forever anymore. I can’t, not after everything that’s happened over the past few days, especially after seeing his original reaction, which was to get mad and threaten to sue and to brush it all off as just twitter drama. And he still brushed it all off as twitter drama in this most recent stream. He didn’t even acknowledge how old the alleged victim was, which means a lot of people who only knew of this through his streams don’t know that he flirted with multiple girls as young as 13. He said it was just jokes, but he did privately message at least one of these girls and meet her in real life, even if it was within a group of people. Things can happen even within a crowd.

There had to have been more things that happened behind the scenes for all of his friends to suddenly drop him. Whether it was some kind of proof that he was aware this was wrong as he did it, or if he lashed out at the other ccs for initially unfollowing him when this all came out, I don’t know. But he handled this very immaturely in his first response without even looking into the issue, and I don’t feel right supporting him anymore.

Still, and hate me for this if you want, I can’t help but sympathize with him a little bit. I know, I know, but I was a shitty person when I was a teenager, and I’m constantly paranoid that things I’ve done or said will stick with me forever or come back around to bite me in the ass. Hell, I have done and said things when I was 17 that would get me dogpiled on twitter if I was a cc. I do understand why he was upset. Knowing that he has mental health issues because of repeated twitter hate mobs does make me feel sorry for him in that regard. Just because being exposed for past actions may have been deserved this time doesn’t mean that excessive hate was deserved every single time, nor is it deserved for every cc who has fucked up in the past.

However, he was very immature with his initial response, and him pushing this off as just a twitter cancellation is enough to tell me that he does not quite see that he was in the wrong. He keeps saying that he’s matured and that he’s better now, as if that alone is supposed to absolve him of any kind of responsibility. I think he handled this wrong, and I don’t want to support him anymore.

As for q!Forever, I know he has a lot of similarities to the cc. That will be too hard to look past for a lot of people, and if you don’t want to engage in content that includes him anymore, that’s well within your rights. I still love q!Forever despite that, and I personally will still consume content that includes him, and I don’t want to write him out of the story of the smp. We can do the same thing we did for c!Dream and basically adopt him as our own oc. q!Forever can be our character now if we want him to be, and we can still acknowledge that Forever put a lot of work and thought into his character and appreciate what he did for the smp while not supporting him as a creator anymore.

And finally, I also don’t like the way that this entire situation was handled in general by the fanbase. The person who did this (as far as I’m aware) was dedicated to going after ccs for generally trivial things. If they wanted justice for this, why not bring it up before now? Why not before he joined the smp? And the victim didn’t want any part in this as far as I know, and yet people went after her demanding comments on the situation. Twitter kept celebrating the ccs dropping Forever like it was some fun party, just like people have been doing for the whole Dream situation. Twitter hasn’t handled this with any sort of tact whatsoever, and many of us here on tumblr (myself included) have been more invested in arguing and over correcting our own actions and phrasing when some biased people bring up invalid points to actually step back and take a break.

We’ve all been on the defence from each other. People on here have criticized each other’s views, invalidated other people’s experiences, and thrown insults and names at each other like this is a playground fight instead of a serious situation. The situation is over. Let’s just breathe.

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: leftistgnf

today's interviewee (after far too long letting this sit in my drafts) is leftistgnf/marg, also known for running the gnflegalteam blog! they were kind enough to answer my laundry list of questions, and i'm excited to finally share them with you all!

Q: What do you remember about the mcytblr awards?

A: omg i hope this isn’t a disappointing way to start but i actually remember very little about these. were these the ones angie markets did? i just remember attempts to make mcytblr-wide events like this usually got complained about because the fandom was too big lol.

Q: What was the gnflegalteam blog?

A: probably the most poorly-aging part of my digital footprint 😭sometime in late 2021 i started doing a bit on my blog where i’d roleplay as a lawyer defending george from the gay allegations. on april fools day 2022 i made a sideblog with this fake press release about how we lost our case and needed help with the appeal and people started sending asks and it became a whole little side project. it was honestly pretty fun! people who already didn’t really fuck with me called it parasocial, but so was everything we were all doing all the time. unfortunately it is gone forever now…. after the story about george sexually assaulting caiti became public i made a final post telling him to kill himself and someone reported it and tumblr deleted the sideblog LMAO. it was a pretty fitting way for it to go out.

Q: What was the "drama stream" that you and Hari streamed?

A: HAHAHA okay this was like, summer 2022 i think? i had made this channel with the gnflegalteam username just to talk in sol’s twitch chat, with no intention of ever streaming, but hari and i began kicking around the idea of doing a “””drama stream””” where we’d mostly talk about cc drama. i’m not sure how to best describe this but: we, and our friends, tended to disagree with the dtblr majority on a lot of controversies. and dtblr could be really vicious when you had differing opinions! even on inconsequential stuff like lore takes! so people already saw me and hari as being toxic and controversial, just because we held those differing opinions, and i guess i felt like i didn’t have anything to lose by talking about it all at once.

admittedly we clickbaited it a lot and probably flew too close to the sun and hari made a very uhhh.. inflammatory advertisement for it. but looking back i don’t think we actually talked about anything THAT crazy. like i said, most of the “drama” was related to creators or the dsmp and not other tumblr users. there was a group of blogs who specifically planned a stream at the same time as ours and made posts about choosing positivity or something, which blew what we were doing way out of proportion and created its own unnecessary drama. but the stream itself, after all the angry anons we got leading up to it, was a lot of fun. it attracted a lot more attention than i ever expected. i infamously got connoreatspants to react to a raid from a channel called “gnflegalteam,” which was probably one of my favorite moments of my whole mcytblr experience.

Q: What was it like to be in 404blr?

A: 404blr, especially in the earlier days, was nice because there were so few of us who actually considered themselves “”george mains.”” george never streamed and was barely even active on social media so a lot of the community bonding happened over content droughts. i remember a lot of thinkpieces on the trajectory of his career and these floods of desperate “i miss george” posts. also, i know you didn’t ask about 404cord but i want to mention it briefly because basically everyone on 404blr ended up joining in the first couple of days. before all the drama it was really just 404blr people, plus a couple dream stans who also really liked george. it used to be very fun and normal!

imo most of the conflict surrounding 404blr happened when we fought with other subblrs. there was definitely a clash between dream/dnf mains and george mains, because they would really mischaracterize and over-sexualize george in ways that felt weird to us. in the context of shipping, george was always portrayed as this blushing virginal twinkish nymphomaniac. in general a lot of self-proclaimed dnf/dream team mains were really just dream mains who liked george as the other half of a ship and didn’t really care about him as a person. honestly, we were always just on a soapbox trying to convince people that george was a fun interesting good streamer.

it’s complicated to look back on because obviously i think george is really fucking gross now, which colors all my memories of being a fan of his. i don’t know that i still agree with my past self about him being particularly good at streaming either. but i met a lot of friends through 404blr and generally think about that specific community fondly

Q: Why was Hari in people's blocklists?

A: hmm i won’t say too much about this just because it’s not my exposé to give. but like early 2021, when i had just joined mcytblr, there was this discord server that hari was in, and they had a conflict that escalated to the point of some members putting her and “her supporters” in their dnis. it was really bizarre because they talked about her like she was a problematic content creator and not a friend they fought with. i was mutuals with a couple of the people who were mad at her and they were vagueposting like she killed their entire family. iirc everyone involved was very young at the time, which i think explains a lot of how that went down.

Q: Do you think there was an overlap between inniters and 404blr?

A: yes thanks to me! JUST KIDDING. i personally was a big clingy duo fan so i followed a lot of inniters and ended up being friends with a lot of inniters, but most of them didn’t really gaf about george. a lot of inniters (sbi fandom in general) didn’t like dream and really didn’t like rpf so we were a little star-crossed… i can’t speak for innitblr as a whole but there were definitely jokes among my mutuals about a couple of us being token george mains or token dnfers. because george (at the time) was kind of controversy-free and also interacted a lot with the uk dsmp creators, i think it was easier for them to let 404blr into their hearts than like, dreamblr or dtblr.

on the other side, a lot of dtblr people hated inniters because they were critical of dream, or because they had such different opinions on lore. i was constantly getting anons asking me why i was friends with certain blogs who had made fun of dream before. so i guess idk if crossover is the right word because it was more like, three or four dnfers who really liked tommy and shamefully showed up at the doorstep of innitblr asking not to be softblocked. thank you spider enclosure for extending that grace to me.

Q: What was it like on the inniter side of Tumblr?

A: my personal experience with innitblr was great! obviously a lot of them felt apathetic or negative towards george or the dream team but that was never really an issue for me i guess -- all my mutuals’ criticisms were pretty fair, even back when i disagreed with them. i remember the community itself being really funny and a lot less volatile than dtblr or even 404blr. they were also way more invested in lore, which was another draw for me because i was always a huge lorehead. tbh i probably posted as much about clingy duo as i did about the dream team so i was basically a part time inniter anyways. that being said, innitblr skewed a little younger than dtblr so i was never as involved in the community. but i always loved interacting with them and i’m still friends with a lot of my (ex-)innitblr mutuals. most of spider enclosure (for example) are still on tumblr and just post about like doctor who and shit.

Q: What were some positive things you remember from that time?

A: like i’ve mentioned: i made a lot of really really great friends who i still talk to often, even a year and a half out from leaving the fandom, which is easily the most positive outcome for me. i could write a million words on how grateful i am for those relationships. it’s kind of sweet to think about how these random blogs i befriended during a crazy minecrafter hyfx are now people i’ve hung out with in real life, or who send me instagram reels, or who i watch timothee chalamet movies with. mcytblr also had some of the most talented artists and writers i’ve ever met! i also think the culture of liveblogging was a LOT of fun, especially during like big lore streams or mcc. an all time favorite memory was liveblogging tommy’s love or host because i saw tommy fans, george fans, and variety fans on my dash all begging for it to end lmao.

Q: Conversely, what are some negative ones?

A: a lot of people were like… really really not nice. and i’ll be honest, most of the not nice people were on dtblr. it’s kind of insane thinking back on the stuff that was said to and about me and my mutuals. this is another thing i don’t want to get too into because a lot of the stories aren’t mine to share but in addition to run-of-the-mill suicide baiting i got a lot of lesbophobia in my ask box, and my friends got anti-semitic and islamophobic and racist and transphobic hate anons. i’ve been on tumblr for like 10 years and it was my first fandom experience that was that vitriolic. it was also really easy to get swept up in that kind of toxic culture -- i’m certain i said some things i wouldn’t be proud of now, especially in defense of dream or whatever.

after october 2022 when dtblr self-rebranded as “dtblr 2.0,” there was a lot of gossip and hate posted about those of us who had left. i don’t like admitting this but it really fucked me up for a while! and ruined a lot of my ability to look back on the fandom fondly! it sucks knowing that people who have never once spoken to you have decided to hate you.

anyways, i’ve done a lot of self-reflection on my own relationship with fandoms and online discourse and public figures and i think i’m better for it, so i guess i hope the people who harrassed us have done that too.

Q: Were there any major fandom/creator events that you remember?

A: broadly speaking, mcc will always have a special place in my heart because it was such a community-wide event. like yes it was about the creators but there was so much activity in the fandom surrounding it (posts, art, analysis, etc etc) that it felt really major for us too.

i don’t remember details about this but i know there were mcytblr elections at some point in like 2021 maybe? i just remember i endorsed the 404blr ticket. maybe you’ve already archived posts about this. i don’t think it really went anywhere, but the campaigns were fun! and it was the first “community” event in the mcytblr fandom that i remember being around for.

ALSO i’m a little nervous to talk about this one in case it’s still controversial on dtblr. but ages ago i had a friend who put a bunch of mutuals in one of those silly hunger games simulators and it became this whole thing where people accused them of only including the “dtblr 1%”. which was like, categorically untrue, but it spawned such inane discourse that it’s ingrained in my mind forever.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to share or have archived?

A: i think you got an anon asking for 404blr perspectives in the wake of caiti’s statements, which is like… what do i even say except that george is a sexual predator lmfao. because he is! obviously i left the fandom when a lot of people did, after dream’s grooming allegations, because i think he’s also acted inappropriately with underage fans (to put it mildly). the sheer number of survivors publicizing their experiences with abuse and assault in the mcyt space proves how prevalent an issue it is, and how harmful it was to have george and dream (and wilbur, and punz, and so on) in such positions of power there. it’s nauseating to think how much they, and men like them, were able to get away with. i regret how many red flags i overlooked, even back then before the worst of it was known.

i’d like it archived that spider enclosure was technically in the washington post. they ran an article about r/place back in april 2022 and the screenshot they chose for the header included the spot where we wrote “spien” even though it’s so horribly pixelated that it’s illegible.

uhh i think that’s it. sorry if this was more focused on dtblr than 404blr, they were pretty inextricable by 2022. but i hope those people who wanted to hear from 404ers got the insight they were looking for? my parting words… subscribe to tubbo.

[executables-sims]

Get to know you: Sims Style

Thank you so much for the tag, @goatskickin! :D I am ill rn, so please excuse the rambling. x) Long post ahead!

What’s your favorite Sims death? Maybe fright? I've only ever had it happen once via ghost, the anim is pretty funny. :)

Alpha CC or Maxis Match? My Simblr probably says otherwise, but I don’t have a preference! I’ve had nearly every possible CC style under the sun throughout my years of playing, and I constantly think about reviving my 'semi-realism' folder (living vicariously through you, other simmers!). I didn't play with CC until early 2006 though, so MM is a little bit more nostalgic. :)

Do you cheat your sims weight? Hell no! I'm still in awe of Nysha's townie body diversity mod finally letting townies be fat. :D I wish the game had a better way of managing bodyshapes so I could add more variety that way.

Do you move objects? Of course!

Favorite Mod? Of all time? Impossible! My continued interest in gameplay is always because of new mods. :)

I did gain a new outlook thanks to a mod recently, though! My wild romance sim Blaze Biermann ended up 'mood swinging' to fortune before he went to uni, and instead of reverting, it got stuck.

He had a few flings still (pleasure secondary), but after he returned home and met his daughter (for the first time since her birth), he started cringing whenever I directed him to romance his dates. It felt like he had grown as a person, and I loved it!

TL;DR: Randomly change your sims' original aspiration/s to give them interesting character arcs! First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack? I mean, not my decision, but our first TS1 EP was Hot Date. I'm pretty sure I got TS2 EPs/SPs in order of release (miss those days of unwrapping a new one every birthday/christmas!).

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing? We're LIVE, baby! 🎥

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? I don't usually get very attached to my first-generation sims, but maybe Evonne Milos, from the gameplay/story hood I accidentally destroyed in four days? Never actually played her, but I had a lot of ideas for a corrupt 'sexpot' politician. x)

Have you made a simself? Lots! 99% of the fun I had playing TS2 as a kid was me and my best friend making ourselves and our respective crushes of the week, and we'd always live in one of those Veronaville lots that was two houses connected by a balcony. I can't even tell you the amount of times she got me pregnant against my wishes whilst I went to the bathroom, lmao.

Which is your favorite EA hair color? For colour consistency, probably brown? But there are a lot of brunettes in Brunwick (must be the name!), so I enjoy the recessives popping up in gameplay. :)

Favorite EA hair? Does an EA download count? Jeanette is lovely.

Favorite life stage? Ohhh dude, that's so difficult to answer. They all bring different challenges and dynamics to the household! I feel like I've started to appreciate the child lifestage more since Brunwick has grown large enough to have multiple friendship groups. It's fun watching them goof around with each other and be actual kids, instead of sitting indoors skilling. I really need to build a park! :)

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

Are you a CC creator? Yes, I really love how this game has led me to so many creative hobbies! Would like to tackle BHAVs one day. :)

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad? Yeah! I consider us all friends over our shared enjoyment of the game really, but as a chronic lurker I'm not the best at cultivating connections. x) Does anyone wanna make a secret club? xD

Do you have any sims merch? No, but I do have a bunch of rad sims memories. 👉😎👉

Do you have a YouTube for sims? Nope, but I watched plenty of sim music videos back in the day! Found a lot of songs that way. :) Some formative memories here: One / Two

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing? I sadly don't have screenshots of my oldest saves thanks to a combo of no external HD and no screenshot program, but here's one example:

But gameplay-wise, a lot! My early years were probably based around creating stories more than actively playing, but when I did I would just emulate perfect families, attempt legacies, and restart BG hoods over and over. x)

Now I'm all about wants-based gameplay; witnessing and interpreting a story, as opposed to creating one from scratch. But I will add drama if I find my interest waning! x)

Who’s your favorite CC creator? Again, super-duper impossible to answer because everyone's CC makes the game fun, but my most recent CC shopping spree was Honeywell and HugeLunatic! :) 🛒

How long have you had Simblr? Technically 2011, officially 2013, but if we're being pedantic, I finally made a dedicated Simblr (this) in 2016. x)

How do you edit your pictures? These days, just sharpen and shrink! CC previews aren't too complicated either- a blurred out screenshot for the BG and a shadow.

What expansion/gamepack is your favorite? Ooh… maybe Nightlife, by a smidgen? I feel like it gave us a lot of new features and items, and the subhood was nice (as a non-builder at the time!).

Tagging: @daman19942 @aondaneedles @eulaliasims @profesionalpartyguest @tvickiesims @and everyone else, I love reading these! :D

[the-crimson]

I’ve seen a decent amount of people comparing the vibes of the qsmp to the dsmp and I thought id give my two cents because there is a huge difference between these servers that I haven’t seen mentioned. I’m gonna put it under a cut so if u don’t care for the dsmp or this comparison ignore this post XD

So, the main thing, is that the dsmp was never intended to be a roll play server while the qsmp was 100% a role play server from the start- like that is the entire point lol

Because the dsmp was never intended to be an rp server, it didn’t have the infrastructure to support the collaboration required irl. There are so many horror stories of last minute script changes and people being left out of the loop for key events and its like... the server had had so much time to implement things irl to help with that but they didn’t because only a few people were running the show.

This is the other thing, the main lore and story was mainly driven by like 3 people so all the other ccs lore and plans were left in the dust. People were constantly being rainchecked on important lore events until it was too late and the server/audience had moved on or the lore that was there was belittled and mocked by the more popular ccs. And because these ccs didn’t take it seriously, neither did their massive audience. Most people only cared about lore where they were the center so collaborating was very difficult. It was really messed up and I’m still salty about a lot of it lol

My favorite arc on the dsmp was the eggpire arc because there were no main characters. Everyone involved was on equal footing and you could tell there was a lot of communication and planning irl and that everyone involved was passionate about the story they were telling. However, any time Tommy touched the lore, I would get so pissed because he was such an ass. Like, any lore Tommy touched that did not revolve around him, he ruined and I’m glad people stopped trying to involve him in the eggpire after like 1 or 2 streams lol He is one of the main reasons many fans thought the eggpire arc was a joke. He is just one example of a cc on the dsmp that had terrible rp etiquette, there were many more.

I think the end of the eggpire arc, the red banquet, was a victim of the more influential ccs on the server not wanting it to become the server ending threat it should have been. They wanted it to remain a side story. The lead up to the red banquet was so amazing and the stream itself was also so amazing but it just felt like the beginning of the eggpire’s arc! I was so confused when that was the end of the eggpire because - without changing anything about the red banquet - it opened the door for a truly great conclusion to the dsmp storyline that could have tied of everyone’s character arcs without it dragging on for another 1, 2?, years only for a weak ass finally.

I have an entire 40 chapter fic outlined where the red banquet is the beginning of the end for the server and its a banger - if i ever actually write it T_T

I’m going to briefly explain why the red banquet planted a future arc perfectly: the egg killed a demigod (Foolish) which could have given it enough energy to hatch or at least become close to it. Purpled could have been playing Quackity and BBH to get double payment and told BBH that Quackity was going to attack, that’s why Purpled didn’t chase after the eggpire when they were escaping - then, when Quackity destroyed his UFO, Purpled joins the eggpire to get revenge on Quackity. Everyone at the red banquet who ate the soup could have been infected by the egg and slowly brainwashed over the following days/weeks. Nicki (a member of the anarchist commune) was on the inside and could have been working with Techno, leading to the anarchist commune joining the fight against the egg as a whole. The Red Banquet was a false victory that put the rest of the server at ease while the eggpire was only growing stronger.

It could have been so good!!!! Screams.

But - my theory - is that bbh and the others had to wrap it up because the bigger ccs had “more important lore” that they wanted to do. The eggpire and red banquet arc felt the most close to the qsmp out of any lore on the dsmp which makes total sense as to why Quackity invited bbh since the eggpire was mainly his creation XD

I think Quackity learned a lot from the chaos and disorder of the dsmp behind the scenes and went out his way to ensure his server would not run into the same problems. Not only is there a solid infrastructure of admins and discord channels, he chooses to bring in ccs who are respectful and have good rp etiquette and know how to tell stories. Everyone has been wondering why Jaiden was added, including Jaiden XD, but it makes sense! She is a story teller and those are the types of people Quackity needed.

At the end of the day, the dsmp was never intended to become an rp server and was doomed by that from the start, just like L’manberg. There are plenty of wonderful stories that were told but so many more that were left in the shadows and forgotten due to poor rp etiquette and that will forever be a tragedy.

[rivkae-winters]

For the ask game 4, 8, 12, 18 and 25 for any fandom

This is part of this ask game :3 Mostly seven with some general and one intentionally unspecified fandom

4) What was the last straw for finally blocking that annoying person?

I’m very bad at actually blocking people, I tend to cause my own problems that way, but the last time I blocked someone it was because they sent me an unsolicited DM basically trying to guilt me into commissioning them right after an artist I’d just recently commissioned posted the piece. I love getting DM’s and interaction in general even if I’m not super active myself because of anxiety so I was really upset about it when I saw the message. 

On one hand I get it, I do- I’m also a commercial artist and I’m lucky enough to have a decently stable W2 Job right now. On the other hand though: maybe make your sales pitch at least more enticing than a Jehovah's Witness knocking on your door. 

8) Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about?

This one got WELL out of hand length wise so I'll be posting my full thoughts on why later today or tomorrow.

The apple game in CC (from the Silver Elite fan club letter) is bs, and it baffles me that people trust what Hojo says as much as they do. 

Honestly, most of the fan mail in the game is bs or has the truth heavily muddied but this example is especially egregious in my opinion. It's not an activity that Genesis, Angeal, or Sephiroth would actually enjoy much. Sephiroth himself would be bored to tears since he has such an unfair advantage since his sword is much slimmer than Rapier and Angeal's standard issue broadsword. There is also the issue of the fact that all of them likely have some element of food trauma (or in Angeal's case are confirmed as such) but the expanded post later today will expand on that.

Disclaimer that you can enjoy and write what you want or believe in the story of AGS playing with apples and swords. Make content you feel inspired to, consume content you enjoy, and don’t let me stop you from having fun. 

12) The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I don’t know how unpopular he is anymore but Denzel is great- if you can find the ‘on the way to a smile’ anthology and read ‘episode Denzel’ or the OVA from 2010 his character gets a lot better. He’s a complex little guy with layers and plenty of regret already trying to go forward with life. Post AC he starts working with Reeve as a protege of sorts iirc after Reeve blocks him from joining the WRO’s militia. (Which would not have gone over well with anyone if it went through, Denzel is 10ish at that point.) 

He wants to save people like Cloud saved him, somewhat so he can feel worthy of having been saved. There is also still a lingering of the unintentional toxic positivity his mom instilled in him and it is delightful.

The book mentioned above was finally released in English around a decade after Japan got it but it was $35 USD last I checked. I think there are some readings of it on YouTube but I can’t vouch for the quality of any since I don’t do well with audio books. 

The OVA can be really hard to find because it was only on the AC complete Blu-Ray discs of a certain edition- I’m pretty sure it was the first run of them but I may be wrong. Because of this and the fact that I’ve seen take-downs happen continuously each time I went back to reference it last year it’s to the point where some people are incorrectly assuming it’s just totally lost media. Either way I have a so-so quality copy I saved, I won’t put it on the post directly just to be cautious but if you’re interested DM me or contact me through discord (rivkae) if you have that and I’ll shoot you the drive link. 

18) It’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

In og CC Gillian dies with a smile on her face. In reunion it’s blocked by a vignette.

I’ve never seen it mentioned in a fic dealing with her death yet, the few that there are, so eventually I’m just going to have to do it myself.

This answer is almost pathetically short because every time I start thinking about this I get the urge to write. Since I can't really sit down to write prose right now so I'm not going to get to into it.

25) Common fandom complaint that you’re sick of hearing? 

(Slightly dramatized for effect, I’m not saying the fandom because I’m mostly out of it writing wise right now but iykyk feel free to send me your guesses)

‘Ewww I hate y and z version of [media]!!! X version of [media] is the only good one- anyone who interacts with y and z supporting posts will be blocked!’

‘I hate this version of my favorite character from x in y and z [complaint that could be very easily interpreted as racism] anyone with art of this design will be blocked! DNI if you have [bastardized version of the characters name to show distaste] content!’

Except then they don’t block you after you DNI, they start following your blog posting stuff for y and z version of [media]

Now obviously blocking is a core part of the tumblr experience, really the entire social media experience but it’s taken more seriously other places. Here though? If they breathe annoyingly it is perfectly fine and normal to block them- encouraged even! I have no issues with a DNI, BYF, etc as concepts I just get a little irked when people don’t practice what they preach while still loudly complaining about [media]. 

Now obviously adaptations make a lot of people angry for good reasons sometimes, I understand that. I dislike many adaptations myself, but it’s the incessant complaining when you aren’t even following your own rules that it gets under my skin a bit. That’s not even mentioning the drama that happens in discord servers with areas about said alternate versions of [media] where most community spaces to discuss said versions die quickly due to the toxicity of comparison and the group norm to conform to being putting x version, the original version, over the other version. You can like y and z but you should like x more- you should agree that x is objectively better. Even if x is also offensive in several ways and dated in others and isn’t as easy to consume story wise- which is how y and z brought new fans to the fandom. 

I’m going to cut myself off there but… Yeah. I hate adaptations too sometimes but it shouldn’t be used to backhandedly bully others into silence. Let people enjoy what makes them happy.

[invinciblelikeu]

Maybe this is trying to be hopeful (but tbh the way these guys have shown their true colours is rather then ) but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ccs who are “distancing then self” try and go back to the dteam in a few months. Not to be that person but a lot of their audience was dteam followers. And while yes their have gained their own fans, they have also lost a huge amount of casual viewers. Because while they did make their own confer, a lot of it also revolved around being friends with the dteam. What I mean by that is punz Would gain viewership when him and sap would play valo but sap wasn’t streaming (or he was on kick) Hannah would often bring up the dream and tell stories of them when they would hang out.

While yes on twitter they may look good and have people “support” them for it the main platform that actually matter could and will most definitely take a dive.

I was absolutely fine with still watching and engaging in content Hannah would be making ( because she was genuinely one of my favourite ccs) when she said she just didn’t feel comfortable around them anymore because fair enough she knows them and she may not trust them now. But seeing her stance as of her recent Reddit posts and comments, I don’t want to watch her. Everyone makes mistakes, it going to happen. So to scrutinise and isolate someone for making an honest mistake because you can’t “forgive mistakes” is a horrible outlook on life and helps no one. Especially when punz has all that against him (I’m not too caught up on him) and she hasn’t made one post about him. And what he has against him is 100% worse then this but twitter isn’t at is throat so it’s not important to these ccs

I genuinely feel like she was just hurt finding out what George did( she’s 100% valid for that) saw twitters reaction and panicked like the rest of them. Made her statement way to early or without gaining the proper details first and now people are starting to realise how out of proportion this how thing has gone, she’s trying to save her self from looking like a shitty person but just ended up doing the opposite

And don’t even get me started in punz because what was he even thinking ??

I think what we have all learned from this is people only care about their public image. These guys have been “friends” for a very long time, and it wouldn’t surprise if they still talk to dteam out side of content. They just wanna save their own asses and look good for twitter to gain brownie points, while still actively engaging with awful people behind the scenes or even in content (the whole beau situation)

long post

hmm i honestly don’t know the outcome of this, but if they do crawl back to dteam i think they would do it privately, and whether or not dteam will take them back, i don’t know either

and you’re right. the clout they’re getting right now isn’t from support for caiti, it’s from the hatred for dteam. they are fostering interactions from antis who will never give them the attention the way dt’s community has given them — that i can say for certain. once this blows over i don’t think they will see a significant rise in viewership

regarding hannah, i felt awful for her at first. because in my eyes she was a good friend who was blindsided. and then she didn’t even make it about supporting caiti, she made it about ousting the dream team, which let’s face it, is performative as fuck. it could easily be passed off as trying to take a stand for women in the gaming community — which in itself is a very good cause — but it seems pretty transparent to me that she either was trying to save face, or has the most narrow mindset when it comes to growth ever, or both. she’s not gonna have many friends to rely on if she continues with that mindset. the friends who are honest with you and tell you when you fuck up but stick around to see you grow are the ones that last. best case scenario she’s just hurt and making panicked decision after panicked decision, but THEN i saw her lurking in the dwt2 reddit so idk about that anymore 😭

and punz is an asshole who threw dream under the bus mere hours after he was begging people to talk to him if they have any issues with him, just so he can deflect and appease to the twitter mob’s anger and make a diversion from his own allegations which were much worse. i’m glad it backfired on him because that was embarrassing as fuck.

content creation and the streaming industry has made these cc’s spineless, shifted their priorities to be more self centered and selfish, and it’s come to the point where they will burn bridges to save their career and get their 5 minutes of clout. they pick and choose who to support and who to drop depending on the reaction they will get. they pretend to be heroes while being hypocrites off camera. they need humbling, and they need interactions with people whose lives don’t revolve around the internet.

[kasienda]

So you reblogged a post recently about how you should never give unsolicited cc on ao3 fics and I 100% agree but I want to hear your thoughts on something.

Once several months ago I read a fic where the main characters were very misogynistic and the narrative was justifying their misogyny. I went into the comments and there were a few other people who pointed out the misogyny in the work. I replied agreeing and said it was kind of uncomfortable. The author replied basically saying "don't like don't read".

Ever since then I've wondered if I was being a jerk for making that comment. Is unsolicited cc justified if the author is misogynistic? Or should I have just ignored it and moved on to a different story? I've been wanting to ask someone else for a while now but I've felt kind of guilty about it

Hey anon!!

I don’t know if I’m an authority on this topic, but I’ve actually been in similar situations, and here are my few thoughts.

1) I don’t think the rules are different when I come across stories that don’t agree with my values. And I think that criticism will still come off as rude. And I think it’s up to YOU to decide if it’s something you care about enough to not care if it’s rude or not. And if it’s something you care about then, I don’t think you need to worry about hurting that author’s feelings. It’s definitely not worth your guilt for days or longer after the fact. Like it’s a can I live with being rude? Can I live with myself for NOT saying something even if it is rude?

2) on the other hand, saying something in the comments is not really going to change anything. There’s lots of people who are prejudice in some way and that’s always going to come out in their artwork. That’s the world they live in in their head. And hearing from a stranger on the internet is not likely going to change their minds or make this person suddenly reflective and self aware.

I have learned (by making a lot of mistakes! Haha!) usually that if I’m reading a story that I don’t like because the author and I clearly have very very different values, that I’m better off just not engaging. I hit that back button. Because if I do say something, and the author responds we usually just get in a back and forth and I get all worked up and angry, and they get all worked up and angry and double down, and it’s just not worth it.

Now I have made an exception before when it felt like the writer wasn’t aware of how it was coming across, and would want to know. But even then, I don’t phrase it as criticism! I usually say something like, “omg! This is so good! I have so many feelings! I can’t believe character x didn’t respect character Y’s no!! I can’t wait for Y to kick them into the sun!” And this works because a lot of the time the author DID mean to write it that way and this comes across as me engaging with their story instead of criticizing the story! And if they didn’t intend for x to be unlikeable in that scene, well, now they know that it landed that way anyway!

I will tell you that if someone has already commented about my issue, and the author has responded defensively or reflectively, I don’t need to say anything.

It also helps me to remember that stuff I find awful is always going to exist! Always! And it being awful is not a reason for it not to exist! Because there’s someone out there who is going to find some of my stuff just as awful! (I’ve even heard from some of them!). My comments and values are not going to stop that kind of stuff from existing. I respond by creating stuff that I wish existed instead. I call that spite fic! Haha!

I also want you to know that I’ve messed up before, I’ve been rude on purpose before (usually in defense of writers, but not always), I’ve apologized for my impact before when something didn’t land as positively as intended, and I’ve not commented on stuff that I abhored before. I’ve done it all! And from that, I’ve learned how I want to engage with fic and fandom. And I have gotten to a point where I almost never comment criticism to a writer I don’t know. But it wasn’t always this way. I LEARNED that by doing it other ways and it blowing up in my face. Mistakes are awesome like that because they are the biggest opportunities to learn.

So if you take one thing from this, I hope it’s this - your guilt is not needed. If it was a mistake, learn from it and move on. But only you can decide if it was actually a mistake or not.

[syoish-aot]

ARIA MARKS - (post canon) Mikasa Ackerman x Original Character

Aria's been floating in and out of my head as another character in my post-canon verse for a while now. I haven't spent too much time thinking about her because I wanted to focus my energy into The Letters She Wrote, since that's the intro fic to my post-canon OC/CC world.

Still, even though I don't spend as much time thinking about her, she's in my head and pops up every once and a while. Over the last few days she's been around a lot so I've been slowly piecing together some things about her and I figured I'd post them (as well as a short fic preview) to give them somewhere to go! So here's everything I know about her so far:

She meets Mikasa post canon, after Mikasa comes back to Shiganshina, and they start living together.

Because of Mikasa's PTSD and depression that begins after everything in canon, Aria pretty quickly slips into a sort of caregiver role for her and does the bulk of the household chores while Mikasa heals (both physically and mentally)

Aria is a musician/singer and plays the piano

She works late night shifts as an entertainer/sex worker where she can perform her music (she has several very dedicated patrons that often give her gifts)

She's a redhead, which is an idea I love because it ties in the symbolism of the red colour of Mikasa's scarf!

Her character colour is light blue

She's an aromantic lesiban but sleeps with men for work

She has scars on her left arm and I'm still trying to find out why but I think it has something to do with whatever she was up to during the rumbling

She has a pretty bubbly/positive personality and will flirt with anyone that breathes. She specifically thinks it's funny to make men squirm because they're weak willed and easy to please.

Her romance with Mikasa is a very slow burn that starts from a place of loneliness and desperation and eventually blooms into a place of healing and safety. There's a strong sense of "I've loved before, and you'll never replace the person I lost; but what we have is special too and I don't want to lose it".

Mikasa and Aria end up having a very nontraditional relationship (since I headcanon Mikasa as heterosexual and Aria is aromantic) but they still love each other very much and are each other's life partners.

Everything about her is very subject to change and I have no idea what her backstory is. But I'll figure it out slowly, just like I have with everything else!

[picrew source]

FIC PREVIEW:

Aria stared down at the worn stone at the base of the tree:

Here forever, it read, resting quietly.

This was the place Mikasa was always visiting. Always wandering off too. Always spending hours sitting or thinking or- crying… Aria figured she did a lot of that, based on how she always came home with her eyes red and swollen before excusing herself to the bedroom for the rest of the night. 

It was here.

At the base of this huge tree, on top of the hill, overlooking Shiganshina.

This is where Eren Jaeger was buried, 6 feet under, along with Mikasa’s entire heart.

Aria scowled. “You’ve got some real audacity,” she told the stone, “you know that?”

The stone- the grave- didn’t reply. It was a rock, it couldn’t. But still, Aria continued:

“You’re a selfish jerk. Wiping out pretty much the entire world wasn’t enough for you, was it? You had to leave her like this too. Well, guess what, I’m glad you’re gone. I’m glad you’re dead and I’m glad you’re never coming back. I don’t like you. And even if you weren’t dead, I’d kill you myself!”

Her hands clenched into fists at her side as she continued to scowl and the world went completely quiet around her.

Even the gentle breeze, that had previously been causing the leaves above her to flutter, had enough sense to come to a quick halt.

“I’m going to make her smile again,” Aria said confidently. “I’m going to make her smile so widely and laugh so loudly and for a second- even just one second- she’s going to forget you ever existed!”

With a dignified huff, Aria spun around to walk back down the hill.

She got three paces away before she stopped.

No. That wasn’t good enough.

He didn’t get it yet. He didn’t get the rage that Aria was feeling. The frustration. The pain. The way her heart broke every time Mikasa returned home and tried to hide her tears. The way Mikasa flinched at the sound of a merchant accidentally dropping a large box outside. The way she tossed and turned in the night with words of “Eren” and “don’t go” and “stay with us” mumbled against her lips. 

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Mikasa was here and Eren was just-

All he had to do was die.

Dying was easy.

Being left behind… that was the real hell.

Aria quickly turned back around and pointed directly at Eren’s grave. “ONE DAY I’M GOING TO MAKE HER SO HAPPY!” she yelled. “SO MUCH HAPPIER THAN YOU EVER COULD!! SO HAPPY THAT YOU’LL FEEL IT FROM THE DEEPEST, DARKEST CORNER OF HELL!!”

The breeze picked up again.

Fallen leaves danced around Aria’s feet.

And a bird flew above her.

Aria didn’t move. She just stood there glaring at a headstone- at the base of a tree, on top of a hill, overlooking Shiganshana. She just stood there and glared. 

Mikasa Ackerman would smile again. No matter how long it took. She’d smile.

Aria Marks would make sure of it.

Her hand dropped to her side and she confidently nodded.

Suddenly… Aria’s shoulder was covered in bird shit.

[solojihyo]

this is probably going to be the last post i make on the matter but i just want to say a few things. i think it’s really telling how everyone will agree whitewashing is bad but the moment a bigger cc does it, it’s considered okay. everyone will agree that pocs need to be listened to and not spoken over when it comes to issues like these, but that changes when your friend is the one who does it. it’s really something that people are more hellbent on hating on someone for calling them out - after having been given several chances and having been talked to by other content creators in private - rather than reflecting on why they were called out in the first place. blatantly lying about having been talked to to save face? claiming to have deleted a whitewashed post as soon as that ask was sent despite it actually having been deleted over a month later, and only doing so when a net admin brought it up? not a good look either. the only reason why the call out post was made was to make other people aware of the issue. i never insulted anyone in the post i made; i asked for accountability. but it’s so telling how little people actually care about whitewashing because i’m being insulted left and right - not because of the whitewashing, but because i made the post in the first place. i love how people are assuming i didn’t try handling it in private first. if people are so mad about the callout, then you should reach out to me. i’m more than happy to talk (though i know you won’t, because it’s very telling how i haven’t gotten a single hateful message since i turned off anon).

i don’t give a shit if you’re so hellbent on defending whitewashing. the saddest part, though, is that in the end kpop idols are pocs, and it’s unfortunate that people don’t even care enough to protect them. you can say all you want about making gifs with pretty sharpening and coloring, but if you don’t bother to protect pocs from very real world problems like colorism, then what’s the point. giffing takes a learning curve. no one expects you to be perfect from the start. even experienced ccs are allowed to make mistakes. but people do expect you to learn and to hold yourself accountable, and to be willing to take feedback. if you don’t want to do that, and instead choose to think you’re perfect all the time and are doing absolutely nothing wrong, then that’s on you.

i don’t regret making the callout post. it’s actually helped me see a lot of people’s true colors, so thank you for that! i blocked a bunch of people today. you can call me and my mutuals and followers elitist all you want, but it doesn’t change how most people feel about a very prevalent issue within the kpop community. hold yourself and your mutuals accountable. if, as a cc who creates for pocs, you can’t even be bothered to do that, then i don’t even know what to say at that point.

[frostkingsimp]

Random Frost King Headcanons

Art is by MarshallTrap on DeviantArt

What I’ve always thought about having really niche f/o’s is that there is little to no fanfiction on them. Now, that is where I’m writing career begins as I am forced to make my own.

Frost king is no exception as, frustratingly enough, a lot of people don’t even make it to the Snow World levels, let alone even the desert ones. ;,( so Frost King doesn’t even have a chance to be recognized to potential simps (I had no other way to word that sentence, apologies.)

Anyway…enough of my rambling.

If you’re one of the very few people who have read Frost King’s Knight on Wattpad, I headcanon that Frost King’s actual first name is Julian. I think I may have been inspired by an inactive cc ask blog…? I don’t recall the name of the tumblr but it is long dead. But, I liked it as Julian just feels like a wintery name.

Another thing that was inspired by another cc tumblr post was by @/monodes. It was basically their version of Blue Knight’s backstory, and I just really liked the way he was portrayed in it. I am a supporter of dumb and naïve Frost King since, I’ll admit, his voice and mannerisms in-game just scream that.

Again, this might not be new to you if you have read Frost King’s Knight, I headcanon he purrs. Okay, yeah, this one’s more on the self-indulgent side but this guy is DEFINITELY not human.

Speaking of him not being human, I think his skin is a little leathery. Inspired by the image above.

Also on this image, he’s giant. Like maybe this image is a little inaccurate to what I’m thinking, since maybe he nears seven feet?

I also like to think his eyes glow when he’s mad or using his powers.

Along with many others, I don’t entirely think he kidnapped the princess with intentions of marrying or courting her, more of just because the Evil Wizard kept the princesses with the other big bads. But, I do think he had a reverse-stockholm syndrome effect. As a single king with with a captured princess I think he figured it’d only be appropriate to act as her husband or something.

Moving onto reader-insert ones…

Talking post-game…Frost King’s got a skewed version of love and relationships. While I don’t fully believe he would be entirely physically abusive, I do think he believes women are inferior. So, he will often not allow you to do medial tasks on your own. Need to get out of bed? Call in a small team of iceskimos to help you get dressed and make your bed. Need a glass of water? Don’t you dare get up, either he’ll do it or his Iceskimos will. But, it has its ups and downs. He might not let you leave the Ice Castle without telling him where exactly you’re going or why. Even if you do (on the rare chance without his supervision) he’ll probably send one of his knights to spy on you.

He’s a boundary-pusher. Not to the extreme, but rather in his own odd ways. I’d like to think he’s a rare species. He’s humanoid, talks like a human, mostly acts like one, but one of his odd features is the way he expresses affection. If you tell him to stop, I’m sure he would. But, he’ll often pick you up casually. He might do this to sit you down somewhere or is too excited to wait for you to follow him. If you freak out from this, I bet he’d look so confused just because he’s so much taller than you and is like “???? Isn’t it easier if I carry you????”

I like to think he really enjoys just sleeping next to you. I also believe his body is naturally cold so your body heat fascinates him. However, I do think he’d get bothering by the heat by the middle of the night so you’ll fall asleep in his arms and by the morning he’s all the way on the other side, facing away from you. Don’t worry, he’s not mad, just hot.

He probably would have a few trusted Iceskimos to tend to you. Like I said before, there’s a team dedicated to getting you ready, preparing your meals, etc…

I think that’s all for now! Let me know if you want to see any more of this typa thing. This was a lotta fun for me to write so feedback is appriciated ! :,)

(Also if you guys happen upon any Frost King fanart I would love to see it. Or, if you drew it yourself, even better. Love u all)🩵

[wonusite]

feeling really :/ today. there’s a kmg centric account on here that uses very intense themes of ddlg in their work and i just.. i’ve sent them a few asks to explain why it’s harmful and they ignore them all. i don’t know what to do…. i think the arguments i made were valid. i understand it’s all in preference. a daddy kink here and a ‘my cute little princess’ there is all fine. but having phrases like ‘kid’ and ‘dad’ and ‘im ur real dad’ is just so.. especially using svt’s name to do that? even saying MDNI will not ensure minors don’t make priv accounts or lie about their ages or ghost read. and romanticizing tropes that are harmful could lead to young readers never realizing the dangers around them if they are in situations where someone is taking advantage of them.

this obviously isn’t about u nalani!! i just thought to come to u bc u seem to have good judgment. maybe i’m being dramatic and it really is just a kink in not sure. it just scares me that something with pedophilic undertones and definitely incestual undertones is being promoted on caratblr using the names of svt members.

u don’t have to publicly reply to this if u don’t want to!! i’m just a little let down by the caratblr community for not caring enough to not only not promote harmful tropes but also not having more care for svt members

i can only reply publicly since it’s an anonymous ask lol. anyway, i’ll answer below the cut.

first of all your feelings are valid, and i hope you know that. idk what blog you’re referring to so i can’t say whether or not the content is outright pedophilic or incestual. (but yeah those phrases are a little… 😬)

tbh ddlg isn’t for everyone since (from what i understand) it’s more of an intense type of role play/lifestyle that involves age regression and being entirely submissive to the dom. that type of content isn’t for a lot of people, and that’s okay.

regarding to the asks you sent being ignored, every content creator has the right not to respond to asks no matter it’s contents whether polite or rude. in a way i understand where this person’s coming from. when i wrote spoiled, i got some not so nice asks because of the content of the fic which i ignored. some of the asks weren’t rude but still not something i wanted on my blog. even now a lot of people won’t read my content because of that series, and that’s fine.

of course saying/writing minors do not interact on any smut post is not a guarantee that they won’t read it. BUT as content creators, we can only do so much. we’re not parents to the people who read our stuff, and it’s not our responsibility to teach people wrong from right. i’m not for romanticizing harmful content, and i can’t say whether or not that’s what this person is doing. even so, we can’t expect content creators to be responsible for a reader’s perception of reality or making them aware of the dangers of this world. it’s just not realistic or fair.

and i don’t think you’re overreacting. as i said before, your feelings and thoughts are valid. as a carat, i understand that you feel upset about svt being used for this type of content.

finally, i don’t think it’s fair to say that about caratblr as a whole. we can’t police or kink shame someone just for using a group they love as a creative outlet. there’s nothing wrong with writing about certain kinks or even darker content as long as it’s about adults. fanfiction is just that: fiction. it’s part of what we (cc) do because we love our idols and we love writing. caratblr is meant to be a fun and safe space for all carats, and having everyone go after someone would just destroy that purpose.

and this is not meant to shame or scold you because im glad you felt like you could come to me with this. your feelings are valid.

[aspiringtrashpanda]

🔥I’m Alive🔥

In the literal, physical sense, at least.

See below for a long ramble about my life and what I'm working on. No reason, really. Just felt like shouting into the void. 

Not like I'm a super popular writer or anything, but maybe some of you have noticed that I've kinda disappeared over the last few months. Long story short, I went back into restaurant management, despite such a position sending me on mental health leave a few years ago due to a lack of work-life balance and deep depression.

That leave + regional lockdowns during the early stages of the pandemic were actually what got me back into writing in the first place. I rediscovered a passion I had had in high school, and had since abandoned because I didn't have time to do anything other than work, and then partake in less than productive activities afterwards with coworkers... where all we would talk about is work. The restaurant industry is emotionally and mentally draining, my dudes.

So, I wanted a change. I moved back home and told my parents I wanted to focus on writing while I bartended part time. They were supportive at first, but when I wasn't pumping out original work quickly, they started pushing me towards full time work. Money is important, I get it.

Unfortunately, I'm not qualified to do much else other than manage fancy-ish restaurants and I am really good at it. So, I tried again, and dropped off the face of the universe. Sure enough, I was tasked with an inappropriate amount of responsbilities for garbage pay and I once again found myself letting my hobbies (which are very important for my mental health) slide. I left that restaurant and have taken another restaurant job that I start on Monday... It sounds like it will be easier to manage. Fingers crossed.

ANYWAY, that’s why I haven’t been posting or updating much. On top of that, I feel like I’ve lost a lot of inspiration for my current works. I’m so tired and drained all the time, and just thinking about my fics is almost overwhelming. It brings me down often - how am I supposed to enjoy life if all I do is work and I don’t have the time to do the things I love? I’m terrified of sliding into a deep depression again.  Thankfully, one fic lives rent free in my brain. You see, I’m working on a sequel to Crystal Clear - my fever dream of a Steven Stone/Reader fic that I wrote in like a month (the things I can do when inspiration takes me...). The thing is, I’m not sure if I will ever post it. 

I’m conflicted. I had an idea for a sequel as soon as I finished the fic. It would take place a couple months later and would be a fairly long, fluffy one shot with a happy ending to make up for the bittersweet open ending of CC. But then, I had a dream. 

Let me tell you, dreaming the continuation of a fic you wrote is pretty wild and super immersive (probably because the world and plot and everything is SO PROMINENT in your subconscious). It was nothing like the follow up I had planned, and something I really didn’t think I’d ever be interested in writing. When I woke up, I was left with a lingering feeling of confusion and loss and a bit of a “...huh.” The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense. And then I started sitting down and actively planning it out and yeah, I feel like it flows so nicely with the other fics in the series, and carries over many recurring themes. If you look at the end of CC as “the bad ending” (because really, they made a choice, and it was probably not the best choice to make, albeit the safe one), I feel like the continuation is sure to reflect the regret and resentment that would build between the characters.  I decided to embrace the “reader” as an OC. I gave her a name. I solidified her story. She was already more a character than “reader” anyway, but crossing into the Steven Stone/OC fandom is kinda scary and I don’t know how this will be received. And not only because of that - the fic deals with some themes that are definitely not everybody’s cup of tea, and I’m scared of people who liked CC being like “wtf is this?” because it isn’t the continuation that they pictured for themselves as “reader”. Not to mention, there’s a significant time skip, in which the characters have changed and grown and developed. What if people think they’re OoC because of how I’ve interpreted their reactions to certain choices? I feel like these characters are no longer “Steven” and “Wallace” and “reader”, but different versions that live in a completely different world that belongs to me. 

I’m a few chapters in, and I’m really loving how it’s turning out. I think it might be my baby, my labor of love. And that’s why posting it and not getting much reception (or negative reception) for it terrifies me. But I also want to share something I’m proud of. And I know I shouldn’t be writing for other people. I should be writing for myself. But validation and praise are nice and they make me feel good and I DON’T KNOW, I’m just not sure what to do. 

It’s not like I need to decide now, anyway. I’d like to write some more chapters before I start (IF I start posting), so there’s time to think about it. 

So yeah. That’s my ramble. Thank you for listening, void. 

TrashPanda out. 

[timeless-toaster]

Introduction & Rules

Hello. This is going to be an out of character post, as this is my first time writing here.

Some info on me: I don’t like to apologize for my English, but if I write funky, then just remember that this is not my first language. I’ll try my best tho. So with that out of the way, let’s talk about Sims. I only started playing the Sims 2 a few years ago, but I basically fell in love with it. I was always interested in having a historical neighbourhood, but the amount of CC that would have been needed really discouraged me. This challenge made that big obstacle much smaller, since you only need a handful of CC for the first stage, and it slowly progresses into more. I think it also adds a goal to reach that keeps up your motivation to play.

As probably a lot others in the Sims 2 community, I’ve learnt about the Test of Time challenge from PleasantSims, and I’m using her rule modifications with some modifications I’ve made for myself. You can find the original rules she modified here. My changes will mostly only be based on the first stage, since that’s how far I’m in my playthrough.

My rule modifications: 

Every family has a color, and must wear clothing approriate for their assigned one. This is just a fun thing I thought of, and it makes it very easy to differentiate between the families. I usually give the heirs a fancier variant of the clothing but I don’t always pay attention to do that.

Sinks and showers must be placed outside. In my mind they’re collecting rainwater to use these, but I don’t actually wait for rain to allow them to shower. I already only use hygiene increasing “furniture”, so I don’t go insane from everyone complaining about being smelly.

There can be mathriarchal families. I currently have one family like this, and I just thought it would be interesting and fun. This family follows the rule of heirs too, but it’s all about the oldest female child. More on this later if I ever start writing the story, since this does cause a lot of complications (that I find fun).

I can reset the temperature of sims every night. Okay, so this might sound like it defeats the purpose of the all time summer, but I struggled sooo much with sims overheating and not being able to do anything all day, every day, that I just had to make this rule in desperation. I think it’s also logical, that the temperature would go down at night. And I have to add, that I still constantly have near death experiences cause of some sims deciding to go hunting or showering when they’re already almost overheated.

Their living condition improves with time. This is a vague rule, that is not set in stone. What I mean by this is that I start a family with very basic stuff, like only one little tent bed, a bush for a toilet and a tree trunk as a sofa, but as they start to not struggle with food, I imagine they could possibly have the strenght and time to build a basic house for themselves with wooden materials, and even make basic furniture. If their family is big enough, and they have multiple teens and adults in the family, I think they should be able to build their houses with stone, since they have a community to help them carry heavier materials.

I have 3 day rotations. This is purely a personal preference, I’ve always played 3 day rotations, and I’ve found it the perfect balance for myself.

That’s all for now. I’m very lazy with rules and keeping everything perfectly organised in the Sims, so I’m not sweating blood to always be on point with every little detail. I do definitely keep up with the most important ones. But after all it’s all about having fun. 

[teethpaste]

Wow ok it’s actually so crazy seeing someone who is “normal” (no substance abuse, good relationship with family, steady job, friendly, not ran thru lmao) and consistent (makes plans with me, I don’t have any doubt he likes me) .. this is a first for me. I really only date avoidant or love bomber men. I’m still seeing the guy from Charley Crockett. We don’t text a lot, he shows up, he’s told me he likes me, we have fun in person, I met his friends. We kind of had a check in where we were like OK we both like eachother but not in a spot to put labels on it - we didn’t say if we weren’t seeing other people. Just agreed we’re really enjoying our time and taking it slow. That we’ll check in again if we’re still doing this in a few months. I’ve been in two LTR (5 years and 3.5 years) and his longest is 6 months. When I asked him about it he just said he’s never dated anyone he could see a relationship with - until now. It’s the first time I’ve ever had this convo with a man and it was mutually brought up out of genuine interest from both parties, not insecurity, and I don’t feel like his answers were lies. We were both just being honest. That we do like eachother and it’s genuine but we’re still seeing what we want - but not in a bad way.

And for the first time ever this convo didn’t freak me out. I’m actually okay taking it slow, bc he hasn’t given me a reason to think otherwise (… yet, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop). Normally I’m pushing the “what are we doing” convo (if we’ve been “dating” not just having sex) bc the man has me STRESSED out and I know he’s seeing other people and his love bombing / bread crumbing keeps me hooked. Makes me feel like I’m not good enough and if I could just get them to choose me, it would make me feel whole (this is false I know). So to have this convo with CC guy .. and genuinely feel okay and be like cool can’t wait to keep knowing you and figuring this out feels so weird. I do have a mental block about entering a monogamous defined relationship w/ him though bc I do NOT want kids and he seems undecided. But that’s something I’ll revisit if we’re still doing this in November.

It’s also so insane to be seeing someone where the relationship isn’t based around sex. Like we actually hang out. I am very out of my element. I think I am honestly also just used to seeing men that frankly don’t respect me. Or I choose men that I immediately see they have 10,000 red flags so it gives me a false sense of control bc I’m like “cool I could never be in a relationship with you but I could fuck you so now I’m in a safe zone where my feelings aren’t involved”. And sex with CC isn’t what I normally am used to but I think it’s bc he respects me??? Lmao. Like I’m used to starting with crazy sex and building the relationship backwards. Not starting with dating and then building the sexual relationship.

We went on another date last week and I brought up that sometimes I can’t read him bc I’m a physical touch person and he doesn’t initiate and he was like “oh my god I’m physical touch too, I’m just not trying to be too forward or disrespectful bc I’m getting to know you” and I was like 💀 damn am I the problem.

Anyways; TLDR, seeing someone nice, consistent, not a love bomber for the first time ever. I’m out of my element bc it’s not triggering my dopamine receptors by love bombing and yanking attention away. My nervous system feels very regulated. I don’t have to send his texts to a panel of judges to interpret. He’s just nice and I like him. I’ve been avoiding posting this too thinking it may jinx me but. What’s meant for me won’t pass me by, I guess.

[lanymme]

This is a really fantastic post. Having played… a lot of gacha games in my time, what I find really fascinating about Arknights is that the story and the gameplay are both built on such a solid foundation that they make it possible for the developers to create interesting gameplay scenarios, and to create interesting story scenarios.

Arknights is, at its core, a very good and very interesting game. The core mechanics are deep and well-thought out, which makes the gameplay resilient and adaptable to power creep, while also accommodating the addition of many new characters, who provide new tactical tools you can bring in your large group of units to each battle.

The core gameplay is also able to be flexible because it stands on its own. Think of it like this. In many gacha games, you have some characters who are interesting, but have deeply flawed kits, and that requires you to teambuild and play around their weaknesses to let them perform. They have negative synergy: they require other units with positive synergy to bring them up to par. Meanwhile you have some units with fundamentally well-designed kits, which can stand on their own and be fit into a variety of tactical situations, where you don’t have to think about making them work, they can just contribute to the team. Most gacha games are the former type: Arknights is the latter. It does not require design to address its weaknesses: merely to create new, interesting scenarios. That’s why we have IS, CC, SSS, Interlocking, etc.

And meanwhile, on the story end, they’re doing something similar. Strong, concrete rules for the world—not just a power system, but a political, social, economical, and geographic one. The world is sturdy enough to sustain investigation and time spent in its corners. As a storytelling space, it operates almost by the One Piece principle: there’s enough connective tissue, enough planning, that any random character or setting detail—something the characters have heard about in a vignette, a small aspect of a previous run of worldbuilding, something mentioned by a side-character—can and does support an entire side-story surrounding it. It gives you the impression, over time, that this is a huge world with an infinite amount of things to learn in it. It feels real.

And that, too, suits a gacha game, which will always be looking for new stories to tell, new characters to tell them about. Everyone is anchored in this world, has a history and a present and a future that is not so easily ignored. The characters don’t (can’t) just get up and leave the setting at a writer’s whim: they live there. They have roots. They’re real, too.

All of this together is why something like IS3 hits so hard. There is so much world to destroy. And that palpable loss, that narrowing of the expansive world to your squad steadily moving deeper and deeper into the waves, creates this sense of danger and claustrophobia. There’s so few people left that you’re inheriting the will of entire nations—Yan, Sargon, Victoria, even Ursus, whose fearsome Blades have already been overrun. They are the closest thing to an enemy nation, but at the end of the day, you’re all human, and the enemy is not.

And the gameplay is adaptable enough to tell this story as well. Struggling for resources in a roguelike scenario, scrounging together a small team of what survivors remain to continue challenging the sea. Yes, this is an Iberian event, and the Iberian and Aegrian operators and their tragic fates are involved, but so is everyone else, in the little details.

Whether it’s humble perfumer Lena, shining against the darkness, making a scent to remind operators of what the woods and nature once smelled like, to remind them what they’re fighting to avenge:

or whether it’s watching Carnelian, who I have trusted as a reliable pillar of my formations since the early days of my time with the game, who is defined by her strength and ferocity and who has a whole story of her own waiting for her, crumble like tissue paper in front of enemies because she’s been afflicted by a permanent illness that destroys her way of fighting, and realizing that her only remaining use is as a distraction.

IS3 is a demonstration of the unique kind of storytelling and gameplay, and the interface between them, that is possible thanks to the way Arknights is designed. I don’t think any other game can really achieve the same effect.

It’s a real demonstration of the power of solid fundamentals and disciplined design. I think the way Arknights operates is quite beautiful.

What are some of the greatest/most impressive feats of strength in Arknights’s story?

Taking the overall narrative and worldbuilding into account, I believe the most effective aspect of Arknights' narrative is that they managed to make Terra feel like a breathing, living world and setting instead of a vehicle for the point-of-view character to exist in and act upon. This is specially remarkable for a mobile gacha game, as settings in these tend to be exactly that sort of vehicle instead of world that give any hints of existing when outside the player's immediately vision. The way I like to think about it is, "if a tree fell somewhere in this setting while my intended point-of-view or self-insert character isn't there to see it, did it make a sound?". In pretty much every game of this sort that isn't Arknights, Girls' Frontline and SIGH Epic Seven (credit where it's due), the answer feels like a yes to me, whereas in every other, it feels like a no, if you know what I mean.

This is intrinsically tied to the cast of characters: It is an inevitability that games where a guiding principle is to release an immense number of characters throughout its lifetime will have characters that will never have any relevance whatsoever besides existing as a minor piece in the world, and Arknights is not immune to this. Even other works of a different base nature and with a much smaller casts will be victims to this: In Trails of Cold Steel, for example, you have a pretty big cast of playable characters, some of which are very well developed and have a lot of screentime and development, and others who are Gaius Worzel. However, this leads to two aspects of Arknights as a narrative and as a game telling a story and fleshing out a world that I appreciate:

The first is that those characters that do get used, are for the overwhelming majority fun and interesting to see and accompany throughout their narrative, and rarely for me, I include the usual point-of-view character in this, Doctor. I tend to have a pretty big dislike, if not disdain, for characters you're meant to self-insert into, I sincerely cannot stand them. Doctor definitely has a big of a self-insert nature to them, but there's also a lot of the Doctor that is actually pre-established, such as them being a weirdo, tending to be very effective but also causing troublesome aftermaths that others then have to clean up, and being particularly good at bonding with assassins and underworld types, among other things. More importantly, Doctor is not present in most side-stories. This is fantastic and leads to the second aspect I appreciate.

This second aspect is that the cast has legs to stand on without needing the protagonist or POV character. You'd think this is a problem mostly limited to gacha games due to their usually flimsy narratives and structures, right? Except, this is actually a huge problem in pretty much every corner of narrative art! I can think of countless comics, manga, cartoons, anime, light novels, novels, and much more, eastern and western, that just tend to have worlds and casts that center entirely around the protagonist, for the protagonist. Whether it be a US author writing out their post-apocalyptic hoarder fantasy or a Japanese author detailing the trials and tribulations of a relatable nobody that a myriad of girls want to have sex with, and even some other pieces of art perhaps not so comically easy to make fun of, it's a consistent aspect of them that the protagonist is the center of the universe, both in terms of events and what the rest of cast thinks about, talks about, and takes action upon. Obviously, this results, in my opinion, in weak worlds and weak casts that have no legs to stand on. I appreciate that even without Doctor around, Arknights does a good job of having protagonists of their own little stories in the side stories: Olivia Silence is a joy to follow when she takes the lead in a Rhine Lab story, Kroos has been one of my favorite characters to be able to experience events through with the Sui stories, Skadi and the Abyssal Hunters are exciting to watch in Abyssal Hunter stories, and the latest event as of the writing of this post filled me inspiration, seeing Reed star in a character piece that tells us more about someone so immensely reticent to open up. It's by having interesting world events occurring throughout Terra that don't have the input of Doctor, and thus lets us see more and more of this huge cast of characters taking the lead that I think is a fascinating experience for me as a reader that keeps things fresh. It's even allowed me to come to appreciate characters I initially didn't care about, such as Bagpipe and Magallan, and see, in most games of this nature, if I don't care about a character frame one, it's probably going to stay that way because, well, if I didn't care about what their limited assortment of pre-cooked lines had to sell me on, then I'm likely not going to care about that character likely not showing me a new aspect of themselves impactful enough to change my mind in an event they'll likely just be an accessory to.

It's upon this base that I think Arknights stays interesting and fresh: A solid foundation that I can agree with and that keeps things dynamic and interesting. Specific events and story beats that I think are interesting are a natural result of these baseline aspects, but it all traces back to the cradle, to these baseline aspects that facilitate those cool narratives in the first place.