#I don't talk all that often on the discord server....but between you and me I've been thinking about posting in the tf2 channel

[anothermonikan]

Ayo this you??

Context uH

A friend threw me into the uni discord and I was looking around to see if someone played Rain World (no results D:) BUT then your thingo came up ultrakill and I was like..mmm close enough

And then your only post was a Tumblr link

And the cogs in my brain were turning real hard and It took so much scrolling to find that video on the tag but LiKe

Hello???? You like robot??? Machine??? Have you heard of Rain World?? Massive city sized semi-organic supercomputer???

^^^ Live footage of me reading this ask on a tumblr break from my work

...Needless to say I'm never posting a tumblr embed in a discord server again ^^;

but yeah. hi! What I post on this blog stays here, no one outside of here and my immediate friend group knows about my little weirdo blog, welcome to the club! wahhahsdhshsasah

I've never heard of Rain World up until now! I did mayhaps. took a little peak through your blog. and looked at the steam page for the game and it definitely looks right up my alley, I don't know why I hadn't heard about it up until now!

I'll definitely have to check it out at some point! I'm trying (and failing miserably) to save towards smth right now, so mayhaps after the term ends ^^;

Thanks for the (Insane, I was literally sitting in the library head on hands after reading it) ask!

[starberry-cupcake]

GUESS WHO'S BACK??? Happy new year you bone-loving weirdos (affectionately)!!! Let's start 2025 with Nona!!!

previously, in this react series:

we (I mean me, but also you, alongside me) finished harrowcita del 9

we read some short stories

I made a gideon craft as a gift and the person I made it for told me that the recap I wrote in the back made it to some discord server somewhere

my legacy is being unfunny

NOW LET'S START WITH NONA:

(that's how I called 2 of my great-grandmothers)

I decided to skip all the praise for the book because some of them were getting a little too involved with the story and I don't want to know anything, thank you very much

I did however read the blurb in the inside cover that I missed the last time

I wonder if at some point I could make like an audio version of a recap as I read, because my reaction when I read the following was Something, but then again you'd have to deal with my pronunciation of the names and idk if I want that

anyway, blurb says "with Pyrrha, Camilla and Palamedes"

???????????????????????????????????????????

I thought it was judith and coronabeer twin??????

I'm gonna change her name from regina george twin to coronabeer twin now because she outlived her other nickname

she's the only nickname graduate so far

who took palmolive out of the tamagotchi river loft???????

who set him loose????

how is phyrrha there, she was with gideon/harrow/gideonharrow fusion??????

"each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull painted face"

don't we all

the list of books says "Nona the Ninth" and so does the title in the paratext

instead of dramatis personae we have a guest list for a party

there are a lot of dogs invited to the party, which is nice

one of them has six legs

there's also people with BOE names

and one kevin, love to see it, I'll remember him

lots of meme potential there

there are some camilla annotations beside all the people from BOE allegedly nona wants to invite

still not seeing coronabeer and/or judith

gonna imagine that, wherever they are, they're making out

good for them

we got two poems after, the latter of which is a bit heart wrenching, I don't wanna ask about it

then we got a title that looks like a bible verse

had to google it and it is a verse about peter and a disciple finding jesus's tomb empty

ice cube barbie is locked tomb jesus confirmed

I've never mentioned this before but this has happened to me ever since book 1, and since it's here again I'm gonna say it

I have noticed I have a bad knee jerk reaction to the adjective 'fat' being used so often for so many things, but I'm trying to work thought it

don't wanna project my trauma onto unintended narrators

we got a summarized recount of events of what might be how emperor asshat and some of his lyctors got where they got from maybe present times???

there's talk about cryogenics for a lot of people and an evacuation plan from earth

and names are erased but we have some initials that could be augustine, mercygirl, cassiopeia and gideon

I don't think c is not!dulcinea because she was meant to be a newer model lyctor

during this recount he's in the beach alongside harrow, who he says he's gonna hurt

harrow apparently says she still loves him

gideon would be kicking him in the nuts

also, I thought the emperor was with yandere twin

what the hell happened between the two books???? where's everyone????

DAY ONE (hot sauce and 5 days until the tomb opens) CH 1

we've got a recorded statement of what feels to me like the Pool Situation Wink Wonk You Know The One

is she harrow??? or is harrow in the river with the emperor and this is a new person???? who is this????? is harrow's soul in the river???? where is gideon's perfectly preserved body that we knew camilla was carrying around with coronabeer and judith???

I don't know anything

but my wife is here, so it's all good

also, she's apparently sharing a body with palmolive now

so now the wife ideal turned into a polycule situation, I guess

didn't have that in my 2025 cards

I have two hands, apparently, idk

turns out, palmolive was somehow freed from his tamagotchi loft in the river and placed in camilla's body so they share it

how? by who? when?

glad you asked, I don't know

they're sharing space now, that's all I know

it's kind of like the lyctors should have been if the emperor wasn't an asshole, I guess

because it seems they can also switch easily and like coexist without totally cutting the other one out

it feels a lot healthier and organic in their relationship, even though palmolive is a soul guest

palmolive says camilla's body is a temple, so I'm glad we agree

pyrrha is also there, I assume taking over og!gideon's body fully, since he died, afaik

they're taking care of nona, who doesn't know who she is and they don't seem to know either, but if she has harrow's memories, I don't know what to tell you

they're living in a complicated militarized situation with few resources and little light use

palmolive thinks he could write explicit materials for a living but camilla doesn't want them to be remembered for that

palmolive wrote a lot of Things to his bae in correspondence, so maybe that's already part of his legacy

nona is sent to her room while palmolive and pyrrha argue about BOE acting weird

camolive want to rescue people, pyrrha thinks it's a bad idea and wants to get nona away from the planet

pyrrha also mentions a "she" that's crazier than camilla and makes references to commander wake me up when september ends but that one died???? twice????? so idk who this new "she" is

let's remember, for the record, that both og!gideon and pyrrha were Intimate with commander wake me up before we go go

apparently there are more people who are planet refugees in this one planet than two houses combined

which doesn't surprise me in the least, because that's how oppression often works, but is good to have it confirmed

heralds are also still a problem and camilla wants to fight them

pyrrha thinks that's a bad idea, because there's data of that not being possible

but she doesn't know that camilla hect is perfect and can do everything right always

it is important for me to clarify that, more than anyone ever in this book series, nona is the true definition of what in my land we refer to as: "está en un cumple"

the literal definition of the phrase means "she's in a birthday party"

the idiom definition is that someone is totally unaware of what is going on, without understanding what's around them, often used for people in a content state while unaware of a problem everyone else is worrying about

I truly think it's a very good way to describe her and I can't translate it in a way that feels the exact way, especially due to the party context

I headcanon her wearing this shirt

she also wants to save the animals, while camolive want to save the people

pyrrha is just tired and wants to retire to a farming planet to live in peace

I get it, though, imagine having to serve emperor asshat for so long

poor cavalier deserves some rest, og!gideon had the right idea when he exited the entire situation

saw an out with that fight in the river and left the chat

pyrrha is also worried about BOE capturing and torturing camolive for interrogation

and there seems to be an underlying plan between camolive and pyrrha that I'm not entirely sure of yet

nona, apparently, goes to school, because she's in a cumple, as previously established

going to school on top of the eye in the sky and the military issues and the social strife and the potential torturing doesn't sound ideal but very glad there's still an education system in place among all that

AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW!!! It's proving a bit complicated to do recaps with a paperback but I'm gonna try to find my footing!! See you on the next one!!

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hey there sex witch! This one might be a little bit out of your wheelhouse, but I don't really have anyone else to ask 😅 and this seems mostly relevant to what you talk about.

So recently I (a very shy person for a long time) have gotten pretty active in some fandom discord communities, and I've been making a ton of friends. Which is great because I used to have social anxiety to the point where I could barely talk to people, especially online. The problem is that my new friends are all VERY horny, all the time. Which, great for them, I don't really feel the same way. They're also very interested in ERP and other varieties of e-sex and often ask if I want to join. I really don't, but it's fine that they're into that. One guy in particular is really starting to freak me out though. He's a semi-popular creator and a mod on one of the servers. He's becoming a pretty good friend of mine and I play online games with him and others a bunch. He, like the rest of the crowd, is also very horny all the time. He often makes sexual comments about me, sometimes very graphic ones. Stuff like telling me to take my clothes off IRL while on call with him or saying stuff like "I want to fuck you until you cry" or just dming me asking if I want to have sex with him. Sometimes he notices that his comments make me uncomfortable and he did reach out to sincerely apologize for it once, but he hasn't changed his behavior a whole lot.

The big thing that worries me about him is the fact that he's 28. I'm 18, just graduated high school. He knows this about me. He does a very good job of keeping his server 18+ and would never make a sexual comment about a minor, but is still comfortable doing sexual things with people ten years younger than him. Another thing is that even though I've told him I already have a boyfriend, he assumes I'm in an open relationship even though I never told him I was. My boyfriend also says this guy kinda freaks him out and that he's a little worried about me.

I know that age gaps between older people can be perfectly healthy and problems arising from them vary pretty heavily from person to person, but I'm not entirely sure if this is ok or not. This guy doesn't want to hurt anyone. Have I probably just not properly expressed my boundaries with him? It's not like he's targeting me or anything, he acts this way with basically everyone. I'm torn on what to do, he's still my friend and I like him otherwise. Should I just keep laughing it off? I am uncomfortable but I guess it's not a huge deal to me. Should I stop talking to this guy?? Help??

🐟🐟 So I can find this quickly if/when you answer it

hi 🐟🐟,

this guy fucking sucks and needs to be banned from interacting with maybe anyone until he learns what "no" means. literally every individual thing you've described him doing would be alarming in it's own, but altogether this man is a walking collection of red flags. this is not your friend and this is not a guy who cares about your boundaries or well-being; this is a man using his fandom clout to sexually harass you (and likely others). him being ten years older than you isn't even really the biggest issue here; all of this would be shithead behavior even if you were exactly the same age.

get out of there, double fish.

[scoops404]

How do you come up with your fic titles? And what were some of the hardest ones to pick:]

This is such a good and hard question. I've been thinking about it for hours.

Hoo boy i had some things to say I guess

Ones I regret:

I've never fallen from quite this high, florida man dub, i was your willing accomplice honey, when the frost is gone there you'll find mulberries.

My favorite title is probably Hits Different. it's just so perfect for that fic where they, you know, hit each other, but also their relationship hits different AND that was the song i was obsessed with when writing it. Too perfect.

I hate coming up with titles but i recognize the title is very important to the fic. I use a lot of Taylor Swift songs (all of my hot girl summer bingo fics were named after TTPD songs) and John Dunne poems. Two fools is from a a john dunne poem: "I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so" (shine here to us is also from a john dunne poem called The Sun Rising, which i also used for a teen wolf fic "All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy")

Otherwise, I name fics based on what they're about and/or a pun. Circling Back (fun fact my boss said this very same thing the other day and it made me internally laugh)

Wait, here's a funny screenshot of Chelsey helping come up with that title

Let me familiaize you (which is about George accidentally making Patches his familiar but also means, like, let me catch you up on the tea but in corporate speak).

I also have two PWPs with biblical names or allusions - A pillar of salt in front of sodom, which of course references Lot's wife turning back as the arch angels were destroying the city for the sin there. The other one is Like Moses at the Burning Bush which is an awesome title and references the moment when god calls to moses to go back and save his people--a real call to action, so to speak. but this was a more direct in-joke between me and some friends from a discord server, which i won't explain because it will make no sense to anyone else. I have often felt that I need this to be a triology and thus need a new pwp nasty boy to complete it. (can i use you up could have gone here but i was sticking to the TTPD names then)

Here is a screenshot of me bothering dizzy to help name this fic (and I can share it now because the thing it references has already come to pass)

Can you imagine crying in the club about a fic called "Bloomer Sooner"???? lmao

bless dizzy's heart for being like "your titles are usually better than that"

For Merry men making merry - I wanted a title that referenced this was a Robinhood AU. Here's me bothering Taizi about if I should change it or not

And then we can't not talk about the one time I have changed a fic's title after it was posted, but before it finished uploading:

the Sapnap mpreg abortion fic (my beloved). It was originally called... okay i actually don't remember but my author's note says it was from "fresh out the slammer" which is not my favorite song on TTPD. But yall.... the fic title of this fic is so perfect that I'm mad at myself for not thinking of it originally-- I'm having his baby (no i'm not) like come on that's a perfect title

I like my long fics to have only one or two words in the title (learned that less from i've never fallen from quite this high--but i named that one before i had fandom friends to bother for their opinions. in fact, that was the fic that made me my fandom friends yay)

Hits different, just one touch, shine here to us, deep in dream, Anagnorisis

Oh! Deep in the dream of a game--i knew I wanted the title of that one to reference the end poem (because the end poem is sprinkled into every chapter of that story if you squint) and someone who is no longer in the fandom came up with that line of the poem and I agreed it was perfect. Shortening it to deep in dream also just makes me laugh.

Anagnorisis is an experimental phase of naming something pretentious and it didn't super work out. People are confused on the name, understandably so. The word itself is a dramatic term meaning "the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character's true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances." Which was my funny way of showing you guys that there were two side of the story and kinda foreshadowed george's realization that dream is coming at things from an entirely different perspective and that it would be revealed to him in time

See the Elephant is also a really good title, i think, because it's literally about an elephant soul mark, but also, this fic came out right after the grituation. See the elephant as a phrase means "Experience more than one wants to, learn a hard lesson; also, see combat, especially for the first time" which kinda felt applicable for us all coming out of the trenches for George.

Theres hope out the window is from a twenty one pilots song literally about guns and gun violence, which is also what that fic is about (underrated fic imo)

Continuously Unraveling New Thoughts: CUNT hehehehe. This one i just wanted to see if anyone would make the acronym and not realize. like "CUNT!Dream is so patient!"

Shameless.

And here is Extra coming through with the blueprint

For vis-a-vis, my beloved microfic, here's my call to the people on what I should name this thing. I usually don't listen anyway, but Flower had such a good suggestion that my jaw dropped

The Curse and Cure of the Internet -> very hard fic to name. I had written that line in the fic itself and it just kinda jumped out at me as the title. And it worked. I really think it works well as a title and inherently makes sense to that fic in particular.

Presently in London - just kinda funny because it was written for Dream's birthday, so present, but also he went to visit London so he was presently in london. A pun. I do love those.

Anyway this has gotten long enough. Titles are so fun. The fic really starts to feel real when i have a title and can start referring to it that way!

[greeb-theartist]

Made a really big rant on wambus in my friends discord server, wanted to share it;

I wanna do a really big info dump on Wambus and Triffany's relationship and also talk about Wambus himself cuz he's pretty cool and I'm really fixated on him now... so:

I think a lot about Wambus tbh. Lemme explain. I feel like that's why he's so attached to Triffany, and everytime she doesn't come back for days and nights on end you can see it in the beginning of this game he just has this gut feeling that she's not coming back for him. I'll say it once and I'll say it again, wambus did not cheat on triffany with the cactus. cactriffy was created because of Wambus' unstable emotional attachment to Triffany.

When Triffany doesn't come back for awhile, rather instead of bottling his feelings up and exploding one day on her way random he tries to talk to the cactus about it. Cactriffy is a type of coping mechanism for him to deal with his abandonment he feels like he facing. Wambus is stubborn though, a crucial part to his character yes, but Triffany is too and I believe that is what many people in the fandom forget. He didn't cheat on her, she didn't cheat on him, all that happened was that they were both too set in their ways and hobbies to apologize to one another.

I feel like what people in the fandom also don't consider is that Triffany held her stakes *way* too high for Wambus. She expect so much of him it seemed, and it can probably come from her whole ordeal she has to be like her grandmother and such. They both have expectations they've tailed to live up too, and have different ways of coping with it. Triffany's way however seems to be staying away from humanity, more comfortable with intimate objects. Wambus is too, but he also misses feels like he failed Triffany so much he can't be forgiven, he can't be believed in anymore.

Speaking of not feeling he can be believed him anymore, I feel like this fandom tends to ignore his death voices lines. Wambus DIES thinking he is a failure, the others do not. His death is unique because it points out something about him: He was so set in his beliefs, he didn't realize Triffany loved him. And the truth is? It's because she didn't show it as much as she should. The whole reason why Triffany plans to grow a garden of all his favorite plants and such is because now the failure has shifted to her. She's now realized she's failed him not only as a wife but as a friend too.

With this next part I'm stepping into a bit of theoretical theory, but when watching @doomedpuppetyuri replay bugsnax, it had shown me a few times where Wambus was often mistreated by the cast. Take for the beginning party for example, I am always extremely infuriated by how people make such a joke of it. When Gramble says to Wambus "you don't know a thing about love, that's why your wife left you" it feels like an assumption. Triffany did *NOT* in any way leave Wambus, there a difference between packing up your things and leaving someone behind us. A stubborn personality getting in the way of an apology. They were not divorced in anyway or how, they were simply doing their own thing to handle their lives. Another thing I've noticed is Gramble often brings up Wambus a lot more than Wambus brings up Gramble. People forget that Wambus never starts the arguments, he is easily agitated. He doesn't speak much either. Same thing with the whole idea people have where Wambus threw cromdo out of spite or something. Cromdo, like the man he is but no hate to cromdo I love him probably agitated Wambus in some way that made him do that, and a small detail too is that in the DLC, Floofty has picked on Wambus too once (stating, Wambus doesn't trut Floofty since the 'Noodler Incident')

(And also I just wanna say no hate to any other characters I mention in this I've just noticed this about their relationship with Wambus.)

Wambus' emotions are their own topic themselves, because people often forget he's grumpy all the time, people make him grumpy. He's easily able to change his mood depending on what he's exposed to from other Grumps, and it feels like the some of other Grumps aren't nice to him. But Wambus is also at fault here sightly, because he's not the best at handling criticism and such, his mood can often change. Take the first scene where we meet Wambus for example: due to his stubborn qualities, when Filbo says something (accidentally) it provokes Wambus to be more hostile towards him. However, you can tell he is regretful. He is regretful when he apologizes to Filbo, Gramble, and Triffany.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this has probably been my longest ramble ever on wambus troubleham 💔💔

[hells-sirenqueen]

roleplayer name: Xixi

roleplayer pronouns: She/Her

muse name(s): @hells-sirenqueen:

Hazbin Lilith -Lilith Morningstar (og/ show canon) -Albedo as alt fc -Sinner Snake Queen Lilith ( Unholy Crusade verse) -Queen Lilith Aradat Demonica (Dark Lilith - Failed Cycle Lilith/ Vampire UC Verse) ------ @baphomet-slumber-queen Belphegor - fc Gaap (Umineko)

-Frequent side muse Bethany ( paralysis demon) - fc Demon form Catherine. --- @cannibalxroses Overlord Rosie (Hartfelt. Married in UC verse to @/radioiaci and has taken his last name.) ----- @fxiled-fxithful Angela Blanc/ Ash Landers -Versed in Black Butler / Obey Me! / Hellverse -Primary focus is the Unholy Crusade Event/Verse & Aus associated

--------- @forgottenxsoldier Marie Hellverse OC (Former) Exorcist Angel

preferred communication: Honestly? Discord. I jump from one blog to another frequently depending on the muse I am feeling. So discord is the way to go. If you would like my discord and we are mutuals, please feel free to ask for it.

experience: Oh boy. So far as writing online, I've been rping since 2012. Started on Facebook, then slowly moved onto here and then to Twitter and then discord. Lately I've been mostly on here and discord though.

preferred roleplay type: I'm a hopeless romantic. I mean, I draft poems and romantic shit all the time. There is a writing partner of mine, whom I have a server with. We leave each other IC poetry for our characters and honestly it gives me life. I actually wrote a fic with them this past summer with our characters leaving love letters for one another. It was super sweet. (It was for Lucian x Shauntal. You can find it here if you're interested in reading it. I wrote for Shauntal.) But I am usually found writing some sort of angst or flirty/romantic scene. I'm..not the best at fight scenes, but with the UC verse, I've had to step out of that comfort zone a lot. It can get OP and Godmodding very quickly. I honestly hate it. There are some exceptions though. Like, if I am actively talking to my writing partner about the fight and what would seem fair, I'm down with the fight. Overall though? I just really don't see much appeal to being aggressive in writing.

pet peeves & dealbreakers:Lack of communication between replies for threads. If there isn't an ideal goal or direction that a thread is meant to steer towards or enough ooc conversation to keep all parties involved for the thread, things can get messy or even cause a bit of a writer's block for other parties involved. I know I offer to change my replies often if it doesn't work out well for my partner, but I'm well aware that there are writers out there who won't. Just keeping an open mind and open line of communication out of character goes a long way. It irks me when I have to deal with those who aren't. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with that in this RPC, but I have had to deal with it before.

best time to write: Late in the evening. Usually around 9-11pm EST. I'm usually mobile but if I have a thread that is important enough to be concerned about, I will relocate to my laptop if needs be.

are you like your muse?: I'd like to think I see a little bit of myself in each of my muses.

I'm always prejudged without anyone getting a chance to know me like Lilith, I have a terrible love/hate relationship with sleep like Belphie and I can be snarky like Bethany. I do love to gossip like Rosie and I have a bestie I talk to every so often to share the tea with. ( Lookin' at you @alteregozowie) I can be a devout friend like Angela and at times, I tend to have a similar temper that Ash has. But most of the time I feel like Marie. A clueless person who has no idea what the hell is going on and feeling like an absolute airhead 85% of the time.

Tagged by : @hells-greatestdad

Tagging: @mages-pandoras-box, @radioiaci, @radi0activesmile, @primordialruin, @sirserpentine, and anyone else who wants to

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

Hi, could you please explain to me the following terms: "Psychopath", "Narcissist", "Sociopath", etc?

Up until now, I've ignorantly used these words to describe someone who is self-prioritizing, without empathy or compassion, and antagonistic towards the boundaries of others.

I want to be better informed in order to avoid repeating this mistake from now onwards; Most of my search results present unreliable information; which is how I came to fall for the misconception in the first place.

I am mentally disabled myself, but completely out of the loop- mental health is stigmatized where I come from. I'd like to understand the distinction between the terms listed above, and how they came to be associated with negative records.

First of all I'd like to thank @bfpnola because I got this information from people diagnosed with these conditions on the bfpnola discord server.

Second of all, I'd like to say I've not been diagnosed with these conditions nor do I presume to have them. So I do ask you seek out people with antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder who talk about the stigmas against their conditions to hear them out. I'd suggest a tiktoker I used to follow but people with these conditions tend to get banned quickly on tiktok due to abelism.

I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from when I say it's abelist to use these terms.

Now to continue with the answer. Sociopath and Psychopath are outdated terms. They used to be diagnoses that were in the DSM, but the terminology has been changed to antisocial personality disorder. People with antisocial personality disorder do not experience empathy. Like... at all. And that's what people are trying to attack when people call someone a psychopath. However, that implies an incorrect definition of empathy.

Empathy is the ability to feel and understand others pain. People assume that means they don't care at all about others. They are very capable of caring about other people and forming close emotional bonds. They are also very capable of being protective of those they care about. They just don't feel empathy. Furthermore, there's people that experience empathy that legitimately just don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. Just because they feel others pain doesn't mean that they give a shit.

And attacking someone's lack empathy is often used to stigmatize other conditions that can cause low empathy like autism, Borderline, narcissistic personality disorder, schizoeffective disorder, and there's probably a bunch more I'm forgetting.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People think a narcissist is someone that thinks the world revolves around them. But based on what I've heard people diagnosed with the mental health disorder have said, it's a deep insecurity rooted in being raised with their caretakers making them feel deeply insecure. They compensate by masking with self-aggrandizing behaviors. And that's why people think people with NPD think the world's revolves around them. Because they're experiencing external symptoms with no awareness of the internal monolog in their mind that leads to those symptoms. Which is why I keep saying only a psychiatrist or therapist can diagnose people. Because even if you grew up with this person, you won't have the connection with them that a therapist will have to learn their internal right process.

And a lot of the people that are incorrectly called Narcissistic actually have BPD. (I've seen an overwhelming number of people in response to these posts say "I've experienced Narcissistic Abuse. My abuser had BPD.")

Borderline Personality Disorder is COMPLETELY different from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder is the result of an insecure attachment style from the caretakers as a child. This results in unstable relationship styles as an adult. They like someone and develop a "favorite person". Which sounds really cute but can actually be really traumatizing for the person with this disorder. Then they do something called "splitting" in which their views of the people they care about change. They feel the person is pulling away or rejecting them (even if it's untrue). This leads to dangerous behavior like threats of suicide, binge drinking, taking drugs, excessive shopping, gambling, passive aggression, etc.

And the sad thing about NPD and BPD both is the fact that a lot of the negative stigma surrounding them is due to how they externally react to the things the inner demons they have in their head.

Now I know someone is going to say "You can't let people use their mental health as an excuse for shitty behavior". This isn't letting people use their mental health to excuse shitty behavior. I'm saying you can't use mental health terms to describe shitty behavior. A self absorbed asshole is nothing more than a self absorbed asshole. It's not crazy. It's not psychotic. It's not narcissistic. It's an asshole. No more no less.

-fae

[uwukeres]

Re: Writing a massive CoD tea post

Disclaimer: I don't often write long posts on tumblr so my formatting may be way off here, so bare with me while I get my footing a bit. The original thread by @jazzybot4 that is (as of 24/7/23), on-going can be found here. This thread will be in response to all three parts, as I'm tired I've watching someone swing behind the genuine belief of misinformation. This post will primarily be in defense of @zyomih, as OP has made several claims against them that are backed up by little more than smoke and mirrors. jazzybot4 makes some points, such as the previous mod team mishandling some aspects of moderation, I won't argue with that; we were a small team that was fit to moderate a smaller server and not one that had over 1k members. However, where they lose me, and a lot of other folks is when they begin pointing the finger at @zyomih and saying that they are a "Generally unpleasant person, howling screaming tantrum throwing anti." who has apparently abused Leech (formerly known as Maggot-- I will more than likely alternate in between their names, as I knew them primarily as Maggot) and is heavily implied to have sent death threats, used a sock puppet to bypass blocks etc, etc. Lets start at the beginning, if you want to see the same handful of screenshots from the original twitter thread that OP reposts in every single part, use the link above. I'm tired of them rehashing the same two-three screenshots for their argument. Zyo's original posts can be found here (1) (2) and I encourage you to give them a thorough read through, and not just a light skim. (2) is where they first mention Leechknot, as can be seen below:

This is, and continues to be their only mention of Leech in the context of this drama. But, still the comments persist that Zyo is apparently disparaging Leech:

(Taken from the first posts comment section-- sort by oldest, and its the second or third response. This was in response to me asking when exactly in the first post they went word-for-word and proved-- anything really.) So lets take a look at their dm list on their main account:

This screenshot is their last interaction, which is dated June 27, 2023 which was the day of the server hand-over. They have exchanged no messages since-- and there are no deleted messages, as then there would be long-stretches where Leech was seemingly talking to themselves. Note: Leeches messages have been blacked out in order to not leak their private dm's. This screenshot was taken 2024/07/23 (Today) and is current with Leech's current profile picture. While I appreciate the faith you have in my friend to juggle several sock accounts to block evade/send death threats, its simply not true. Zyo has always been the type of person to say them directly. Lets make something clear, I'm not saying that Leech isn't receiving death threats at all; but I know for a fact that they aren't coming from Zyo. Yet still, Since you insist on being a pariah of truth and receipts (of which you don't provide yourself the majority of the time) here is their entire dm list from their only alt discord account (The 'Dart' dummy account):

This screenshot is, again, taken from 2024/07/23. The user on the top of the friends list is NOT another alt account, but a mutual friend. Their name has been blacked out for privacy. Something I wanted to highlight is the fact that NEITHER of these screenshots show any evidence of Zyo sending threats or any type of abuse towards Maggot. Moving on to the allegations that Zyo made and the latter half of comments which you ignore. You incorrectly identified what their main issues with the server are, and I'm assuming this is so you could strengthen your stance that Zyo is, for lack of a better term, full of shit.

Screenshot from the third post, and lets actually go line by line since you seem incapable of following the structure of your own posts. 1. "Hosting Illegal Content."-- This claim is made because the server hosts threads that talk, in detail about Rape and Sexual assault. These are not support threads, as it clearly states in the rules that there is no venting channels. There is no sexual assault depicted with these characters in the screenshot below, nor is there within Modern Warfare games with the exception of Ghosts comic backstory.

And, an accompanying list of those who were active within the top thread (Important note: Mod roles are defined by [Sgt.], [Lt.], [Cpt.] and [Cpl.]):

Which shows that mods were active within these threads. You are right, their unacceptable content list is well within the recommended list that Discord provides. However, underage nsfw has been shared there before:

--and that has a mod engaging positively with it. They are lenient when they come to their mod staff and their more well-respected members (AKA, those with a significant following.) An example of this is here, when a member is asked by a mod to not stream a game that may or may not have some SA undertones in it:

Which does imply a bias, which I don't think is fair to ignore. If you're going to base your entire arguement over accusing Zyo of acting in bad faith, its really pertinent to include the whole context, and not just cherry picking what does and doesn't work for your argument. I noticed in all of your posts, you've always neglected to approach the Underage aspect of the accusations. Which are, by the way, prohibited by Discord TOS:

I can hear the argument already, that members of the server are not trying to 'Normalize' child abuse. However, as the definition goes on to state-- "Do not post content or engage in conduct that in any way sexualizes children.... [in] any type of digital creation." Fanfiction, by law does count under digital creation. As well, if you look at the top of the screenshot from Discord, you can see the searching the phrase "Underage" yields about 55 results; if we assume that at least 5 of them are from mods asking for the content not to be there and at least one of them is dedicated to their unacceptable list, then that still leaves 49 instances of where the content was discussed in the server. 2. "Engaging in Censorship and Silencing pro-Palestine Activism."-- Once again, no, Zyo was not commenting on them silencing Pro-Palestine Activism. They stated (And their thread has been unrolled for a neater screenshot, the original can be found here):

Which is referencing this tweet where the mod-team asks @/aquasuperbat to remove their comment that Elliot Knight is a Zionist. Jazzy, you say in your first part that you will get back to these allegations later but you never do-- so for the record, Elliot Knight (Who plays Gaz) actively follows and has liked several pro-Israel posts on his twitter. A source is included above. Considering how exceptionally online most folks who are in fandom spaces are, Jellycakes more than likely went into it with the assumption that the original poster knew this, and still wanted to gush over him anyway. How does this relate back to Zyo though? From an outside perspective, the deletion of the comment made by @/aquasuperbat and the immediate deletion of the comment made by @/recentlydeceased implies that the mods are, in some aspects, uncomfortable talking about these topics. This is well within their right, however I'm not sure how they can adhere to the no-politics rule when they have allowed charity fundraisers for Palestine in their server. Is that not also inherently political? Or is it only against the rules when it goes against someone's favorite character? Musings aside, you also claim that 'Real' Silencing would have been mods outright deleting the comment without asking first. While not completely wrong, this also doesn't actually reflect what social silencing is; Silence Theory suggests that those who think that they hold the majority opinion are more comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions. The mod team is comfortable with expressing that they don't want individuals discussing a current war in their server; their opinion holds the most weight since they are in a position of power; therefore their opinion is the majority. THAT is why the server comes off as being a bunch of Zionists, and why Zyo et al. took issue with the screenshots that were raised. So far, you have done nothing to disprove this fact. Rather your more comfortable with insulting them, calling them names and making baseless threats (ex. Threatening to go to the FBI for death threats Zyo has not made.). You've turned them into the architecture of a villain that you need to have in order to excuse the fact that Leech, for as good as a person as they seemed, still allowed Sexual Assault, Underage and suppressed folks who were Pro-Palestine. You attack their moderation style, for their organizing of a server that they passed along over a year ago. You call them an abuser based on what? Vibes? Because it sure as hell isn't evidence that you've shown-- and if it was as damning as your hyping it up to be, why wouldn't you show the evidence? You have constantly said that these accusations have no weight to them, when in reality it's just showing your lack of reading comprehension when it comes to anything over 100 words. Moreover, your moral posturing is laughable, embarrassing and screams of someone who wants to be the main character of a story that they were on the outskirts for. Take a step back, experience some whimsy in your life and accept the fact that you exist solely in a echo-chamber of people who are confirming your bias. I know you want to defend your friend, I get it, I really do-- I wouldn't be writing out this whole damn post if i didn't, but completing a character assassination on someone whose been mostly inactive in the cod fandom for the last year? Maybe I just don't get it because I haven't been active in the Cod Fandom for a while either, but I don't understand where you get off putting Zyo on blast for every small thing that they have ever done to apparently wrong both you and Leech. Just to reiterate: Zyo hasn't had any contact with Leech for almost a full year. If they wanted to get hateful on main, they would do it from main. They're not going to ban evade and hide behind a dozen different sock puppet accounts just to terrorize the lot of you. That's a significant effort for a dying server with a mod team whose views don't, and will probably never align with ours.

[salmonthaart]

hihi uhhm. sorry if this comes off as creepy but i scoured both your blogs for info on pop and lock but unless i suck at looking for stuff i didtnt find much. you should totes tell me more about them

that's not creepy at all don't worry!!! i've never really posted any oc lore publicly because i'm not sure if people care, and boy do i apologize you having to look through my sideblog because Wow Is There Nothing Important On It, but i'm BEYOND elated to answer any questions about them!!! literally thank you so much for asking, you made my day 😭

i have a looooot of stuff about them written down on places like google docs, a discord server i infodump in, and also In My Head so there's a HUGE amount of previously untapped info about them just around, but i'll stick to their main things for now :)

(i also have a toyhouse, but i never finished setting it up, so i'll also probably post more oc stuff on that when it's done)

pINK Lemonade Official Lore Post™ under the cut!

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POP:

Pop is an Octoling based on the Flapjack octopus. They are genderfluid, and thanks to the benefits of the cephalopod form, change their physical appearance regularly just for the hell of it. They vary between masc-leaning and femme-leaning, but usually look some flavor of GNC. (Their physical build remains the same, think of it like how the player characters in Splatoon change their gender and hairstyle. Pop just does that whenever they feel like it.)

They are fruitily charming, outgoing, unserious to a fault, and smug. Pop is a lot more sociable than Lock, often chatting people up or making friends at unexpected times. They are well aware of their charm, but make an effort to be the more likable of the two. They like to introduce themselves first, leading to many close relationships with a lot of people that otherwise would never have talked to them. However, when they dislike someone, they make it VERY known. They are unable to hide their distaste towards anyone they regard as too annoying. They can get aloof at times, but are generally a very peppy and easy-going person.

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LOCK:

Lock is an Inkling based on the Whiplash squid. He is the composer and instrumentalist of the duo, and is very talented on the keyboard.

He likes to put on an off-puttingly brooding, "cool guy" persona, but when you get to know him, it becomes clear he is often neurotic and overly sensitive. He can be very visibly depressed, though he tries to play off his inability to take care of himself as part of his uncaring attitude. He pushes people away instinctively, but gets very attached to the people who love him despite this. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to healthily express his emotions and can get rather sulky and mean, leading his closest personal relationships to be... rather strained at times.

He also has a toxic and ultimately doomed relationship with Tide of Suit-Nami that both Shlubby and I have agreed is very fun to watch as it slowly burns. Sorry Lock, you're fated to lose the best boyfriend you'll ever have :')

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There's a lot more to both of their backstories, but for the sake of keeping things simple, here's a condensed version.

Lock was a trust fund baby pushed into idol culture that got shunted off to boarding school once he was deemed more trouble than he was worth by his parents. In a petulant attempt to be acknowledged by them, he regularly commits petty crimes and acts of vandalism, but is bailed out from afar every time to avoid his family name getting bad press. It's a real sore spot for him.

Pop had loving parents who encouraged them to explore their love for music, but after they got older and started posting their music to HueTube, they got relentlessly mocked for being cringe and were devastated. They went to boarding school in an attempt to escape their reputation and worked past their trauma by pouring it into their work and reclaiming their identity.

Pop and Lock were placed together as part of an idol internship program during their last year of school. Pop felt bad for Lock, and specifically requested him as means of lending a hand. Lock had previously avoided them for quite some time, but once they were forced to pair up he realized he had found his first genuine friend.

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and, special one-time deal, two extra characters! i literally have never posted (or. ahem. finished) any art of these two, but they fill out the gang behind the scenes and they occupy my brainspace just as much as pop and lock do :)

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MONA:

Mona is a halfmoon betta fish and handler-turned-posse-member of the group. She's an underpaid and overworked employee of the idol agency Pop and Lock are employed at, and was assigned to pINK Lemonade to keep them in check after they were involved in one too many incidents (read: PR nightmares)

She has a bit of a temper, as most bettas do, but over time has formed a real relationship with Pop and Lock and does not blow up at them as much as she does others. Their friendship has also helped her loosen up and not let her job consume her soul.

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CILAN:

Cilan is a calm, easygoing, tall inkling and the oldest of the four. He has long purple hair and seemingly permanently closed eyes. He's the group's resident eye-candy and secretary/flunky. There isn't a whole lot to his personality that I can say right now. He's just hot... sue me...

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Thank you so much for asking about my ocs!!

[greyplainsttrpg]

5e Villain Arc 7

Okay, so I know that I said I would start doing content about The Darkness, however there is one last thing that I need to talk about (for now).

One of the pieces of feedback (positive) that I received as a GM is "you know, your games are based around collecting weird objects to be applied in weird situations." And, yeah, pretty much. Not exclusively, but I absolutely encourage Players to have their Characters pick things up and then figure out how to use them later on. There are numerous reasons why this is the case, but I believe that a central axiom of why Players in my games tend to value and utilize objects is because spellcasting is always more limited. More often than not, Characters do not have a "solve this problem" button stapled to their character sheet. They do, however, have some amount of garbage that they are carrying around that they can use to solve problems en lieu of spellcasting. However, in Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024), objects are worse for all sorts of reason unique to that game (unbounded from its history as well).

This Post Is About Equipment Being Boring

A long time ago, I heard of a debate from a far-away discord server of a man explaining why the Fighter was, in fact, the best class in the game. As part of the defense, he provided a single-specific use case (reddit build) that had a very specific combination of magic items (that also assumed haste was cast on them). In this case, the Fighter would outperform any other Class in the game. The obvious counter-argument is: "umm, okay, but the Wizard needs to cast haste for this to work, so the Wizard is objectively better than this specific Fighter because the Wizard doesn't need to cast any spell in particular to be good." The other obvious argument is, "well, what if they do not have these exact combination of magic items and are not at the specific level necessary to activate all these abilities and did not pick all these feats?" You don't need me to explain that the average Fighter is worse than the average Wizard, you all know this by now.

However, something fundamental to the situation that I find very interesting is how reliant on magic items martials are in Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024). This is actually not a criticism but an observation. This has been true throughout the history of Dungeons and Dragons and, in fact, the history of fantasy media in general. Martials are better users of items, magical or otherwise. Meditate on this yin-yang that I've constructed to illustrate my point:

The point here is that martials, by their very nature, are arbiters of reality. In a fantasy world, there is inherent narrative conflict between the real and the imaginary. That which is real yields to magic, and that which is magic yields to the real. Think of Beowulf and Grendel (maybe not the best example for inventory, cause you know, but we'll get there). Grendel is monstrous (magical) specifically because he is immune to weapons. Beowulf recognizes this and rips Grendel's arms off with his bear hands (in the nude). Magic defeats the real (the warriors of Heorot's mead-hall), and the real defeats the magic (Beowulf's biceps and grabby-fingies).

Wouldn't it be a shame is "stuff" sucked?

Stuff sucks in two primary ways: 1) on their own merits; 2) in comparison to the magic alternative.

1: Stuff sucks on their own merits:

Carrying Capacity: This is perhaps an ironic point, but one of the reasons that stuff sucks so much is that carrying capacity is too high. As the base rule, 15* strength score is an insane amount to be able to carry off the bat. The result of this is that the party will be able to pick up just about anything and everything. Once these things get picked up, it is very easy to lose it all in the ambiguous-volume "pack" aka your inventory sheet. Because so many things are in your inventory, nobody can remember most of the stuff in their inventory. This partly contributes to why Players very rarely use consumables. It is partly because they are thinking "maybe I can use it later." However, most of the time it is simply because they forget that the item is in the inventory at all. Stuff would be better, in that it would actually get used, if Characters could carry fewer total things. Pathfinder 2e has a better system with "Bulk" as opposed simply to "Weight" as a system for measuring things. 5+Strength Bulk makes a decent amount of sense considering the power-level of that system.

Object/Weight Value Nerfing: A good example of this is lantern oil. Lantern oil, when ignited, deals 5 fire damage. It can also be applied to a 5-foot square. However, it weighs 1 pound. This means that an average strength character can carry 150 vials of lantern oil (and buy that much oil for a measly 15 GP). Think about it for a moment. Hint: a skeleton has 10 strength. That is 750 points of damage per 15gp if you ignite the skeleton at once. Right?

Almost certainly not (and probably for good reason). As far as I can tell, more oil would not really increase the damage. The closest thing I can find that might be comparable is "Wading through a lava stream" on page 249 of the DMG. 10d10 at the very most, but at the table this would almost certainly resolve in a lot less. This would be entirely up to the GM to figure out because the game does not account for more than a single vial of oil igniting at once.

Alternatively, one could look at the table for explosives (even though lantern oil does not really explode). For a keg of gunpowder, it deals 7d6 explosive damage; but wait there's less! You can make a DC 12 Dex Save to take 1/2 this. How much is a keg of gunpowder? Well I did the math, and according to Wikipedia, it is 12.34 liters of black powder. I cannot stress enough how much black powder that is.

To get a reference of how much black powder that really is, I did some digging. Consider a cooking pan FULL of black powder (happy thanksgiving).

That is a total of 438.5 in3 of volume. That equals about 7.2 liters of black powder. So take a full pan and 2/3 a pan of black powder and put it right next to you. It is very hard to determine weight from this, to be honest. However, I have this handy dandy table of seed-weights which give us a reference for the density of similar objects.

At the higher end of weight, and I believe this is more accurate considering the dimensions of gunpowder, we end up with about 4.6 kilograms of gunpowder (converting the weight of a cubic foot of rapeseed into 12.34 liters of gunpowder and then converting to kilograms because the next calculator asks for kg). Using this calculation, we get a blast wave of 850 feet. Now, exactly what that means is a bit unclear to me, but we do know that, because the wave is in 3 dimension that the effect of the blast wave is cubically more devastating the closer you are to the explosion. At the maximum distance, you would probably be pretty safe. However, this is an explosion that extends 850 feet. Like, holy shit. That's a lot of explosion. How is anyone making a Dex Check at the epicenter? Where are you going? Can you jump 850 feet away from the explosion at once? No. A more accurate way to portray this would be in ranges from the explosion with flat damage, similar to lantern oil. So at the center it does like, idk, 1,000 damage. The Cube root of 850 is about 9.5 feet, so let's say 10 feet (2 squares) is the blast epicenter. There is an ideal math calculation to resolve how much damage is dealt at each 10-foot distance away from the epicenter (no matter what the epicenter damage is), but I'm not immediately able to figure it out, and it is also not entirely the point. The larger point here is that explosions, a very real thing that kills people pretty well, do not do an amount of damage that makes any sense. Also, explosions do not deal "fire" damage. They would deal Thunder damage similar to Thunderwave. It's all about pressure.

Easy inclusion of fall damage. A reasonably high level Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin can fall from orbit and be totally fine, RaW. This is at theoretical max damage, but a lower roll than average will result in some pretty silly outcomes/survival rate. 20d6 damage, without modifiers, is really not that much damage. That's an average of 70 damage. You have pretty good odds of living maximum fall damage at level 9 for Fighters, Rangers, and Paladins (assuming 14 or more Constitution) and level 8 as a Barbarian (assuming 14 or more Constitution). This matters because it won't be possible to cheese powerful enemies by pushing them off of things, and it won't be as easy for powerful monsters (the DM) to cheese-kill a PC by throwing them off of something. One could argue that this is a good thing because it makes the game more fair and in-line with developer intentions. I argue, instead, that the developers' intentions are dumb and result in Players not taking advantage of terrain and objects in the environment because it is strictly worse than the alternative (using your character's paper buttons).

2: Stuff sucks compared to magic:

Let's look at weapons: Longbows deal 1d8 damage with 150/600 range. Each longbow costs 50gp. They also have ammunition. If you wanted to arm a platoon of guards with longbows in order to shoot down flying creatures, that will cost a small fortune.

Compare that to the spell fire bolt. 1d10 fire damage, 120 range. Does not cost any money to prepare, does not have ammunition. If you want to hire out a bunch of amateur wizards from the wizard's college, it will be much cheaper and more effective than hiring guards. Now, you might say, "hey Jacob, hiring out wizards is harder than hiring out guards. Also, guards can wear armor and wizards can't." Is that true, though? Is that really true, though? Any human can pick wizard cantrips and a 1st level spell as a bonus feat, RaW. Yes, they could also pick Weapon Master to be proficient in Longbows (and three other weapons, hot dog!). But like, really? Imagine hiring a fleet of of Level 0 humans who all picked magic initiate for their feat. All of them have fire bolt, and they all get to pick an additional cantrip AND a unique first level spell. Compare that to Level 0 guards with a long bow, a shield and medium armor, and a sword or some other weapon. Which is better? Which is cheaper to field? The magic initiates are better, pretty obviously.

Another counterargument might be that not ALL humans can get a bonus feat, just ADVENTURER HUMANS and well shit--we have arrived at magical people being better than normal people. Cool. Your theoretical argument is now my argument. Sucks to be a normal person, I guess.

Compare the keg of dynamite to the spell, fireball. 8d6 damage, save based on DC of caster (almost certainly better than 12). Costs no money, requires no carry, no chance of premature detonation, and the character can likely cast this multiple times.

Compare lightning to call lightning: natural lighting does 2d10 damage? What the hell? Like, huh? Call lightning does 3d10 damage (with a save) and 4d10 if there is a natural storm. How is real lightning less than this? Again, this is an example of reality being fundamentally weaker than magic despite the fact that magic can be used basically any time while natural lightning will only happen in specific cases. Why plan around using natural lightning when you can oonga-boonga call lightning. Also, this keeps happening with concentration turn after turn after turn. You probably have someone that can cast it. Your party has a moon druid in it. Also, because call lightning keeps casting, it is one of the few spells that are actually worth upcasting.

But what about magic items? Yes, in my opinion, magic weapons have always favored martial characters in every edition of D&D than they do casters. There is a range to this, of course, but giving a character that is intended to function without spell-like effects is generally better than giving a character with spells items that give them spell-like effects. The magic items are strictly competing with what the caster can normally do instead of enhancing the features of the martial characters.

HOWEVER

Magic weapons providinng baselines + to hit and damage are pretty lame because of bounded accuracy and unbounded HP. Also, magic weapons are funneled by the character's number of hands, and this is untrue in earlier editions of the game. In AD&D, it is assumed that characters WILL have men at arms to carry all the other magic items that the character cannot use at once. This is enhanced, in my opinion, in 2nd Edition because of weapon proficiencies. A -2 to hit (for warriors) with weapons they are not proficient with is not a major penalty in practice, however it still incentivizes the player to spread out the loot that does not directly work with their character to their henchman, followers, and hirelings. Classes are balanced around getting followers, and Charisma is a good ability score because it determines how efficiently you can use magic items via your access to henchmen. For example: Fighters get men at arms at level 9, but Paladins do not. However, Paladins have to have at least 17 Charisma, meaning that they have a maximum of 10 henchmen at 17 CHA. Fighters get more dudes of lower power level (followers), but the Paladin inherently has access to more powerful allies (henchmen). This provides an interesting balance of managing magic item efficiency when navigating problems. It is not uncommon in AD&D to pick units for a mission solely because of the combination of which magic items the Players have assigned their various followers and henchmen. All this is lost in post TSR D&D, an this means magic items are nerfed compared to spellcasting because players have less access to using the magic items that they have collected. In other words, getting "another" +1 longsword is awesome, all the time, because hey that is a guy in your posse that just got substantially better then they were before.

Additionally, because martials inherently take better advantage of magic items than casters, attunement uniquely effects martials more than casters. In pre-attunement systems, each piece of armor was interchangeable, meaning that a warrior (who can wear armor) can equip a large number magic items (boots, greaves, cuisse, gauntlet, helmet, cuirass, etc.) as well as their weapon and shield. This means at medium and higher levels, martial characters are much more diverse and powerful than they would appear simply by reading the class description. Additionally, each of their followers and henchmen could be decked out like this to varying degrees. This means that martials: a) benefit more from magical equipment than casters per item and b) can equip more magical items than casters (per character and per character-posse). In Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024), martials are throttled to the same level as casters, but casters are not throttled to the same level as martials.

Also, AD&D is more of a Rogue-like game because a huge amount of character advancement is dictated by whatever junk the characters find by getting loot. People like Rogue-likes, right? Oh, you want an optimal build? Well then, you'd better go into that dungeon, idiot, and pray you get what you want. Or, you know. Be more flexible and be happy with what you get.

Back to weapons. Spells, by their nature, have all sorts of effects and interactions that weapons and armor cannot replicate. This is not an inherent problem, however it makes it far more clear how lame weapons are in contrast. What does a longsword do: 1d8/1d10 slashing damage (add strength to damage). Cool.

"BUT WAIT," you might say. "HARK, FOR WotC HATH ADD'TH WEAPON MASTERY!"

Toil, Naive. For 2024 Weapon Mastery is but an asinine attempt to reference the majesty that is AD&D 2nd Attack Options (but poorly).

Okay; Cleave, Graze, and Nick have no direct alternative, but those are just shit, anyway compared the standard AD&D 2nd offerings of more attacks and more to-hit. You know what's better than doing damage on a miss? Doing damage on a hit. You know what's better than attacking another creature within 5 feet of you hit (no ability modifier lmao)? Attacking again (no drawback, also you have like 120 yards of movement--base). You know what's better than attacking using a bonus action? Attacking again (no drawback) (and initiative works off of smaller weapons, so that is the reason to use "light weapons.") Also you can kick whenever you want as part of your attack action, and there is nothing stopping you from wearing spiked boots if you want. These are also all debatably covered by Heroic Fray, which gives PCs that are substantially higher levels than their foes a whole bunch more attacks, allowing medium-level martials to carve their way through weak enemies without much issue (speeding up gameplay).

Push: This can be accomplished either through Pull/Trip or overbear. Lots of weapons can attempt a Pull/Trip, and one or several creatures can attempt an overbear. You can also push the enemy like normally, which is surprisingly not defined in AD&D 2nd. As mentioned previously, the opportunity to engage with terrain means that automatically succeeding a push in Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2024) is fundamentally not as good as just pushing a paper button in all but the most specific of cases, in which case you could just, you know, push them.

Sap: In AD&D 2nd, Sap is a bit of a silly rule in execution, but it does allow PCs to just straight up KO enemies in one shot, completely bypassing their HP. All weapons with a pummel can attempt a Sap.

Slow: This can be accomplished with the much more adaptable Called Shot by pinning enemies in place (rather than just slow them down). The Called Shot also allows Characters to convert their to-hit advantage into auto-crits (similar in practice to the Great Weapon Master feat) that can just kill or severely cripple enemies immediately.

Topple: Again, Trip/Overbear (and now Unhorse if the situation calls for it) will also accomplish this without being locked to a particular weapon.

Vex: Called Shot accomplishes this but better (because it works on THAT round instead of next round, and Critical Hits are usually much better in AD&D 2nd), but the idea of outskilling the opponent to get an edge can also be applied to Disarm (both on your turn AND on the enemies turn), Trap, Trap/Break, etc. An example of a Called Shot Vex that is in spirit of the concept and not the limited execution of the game is the Character can use a Called shot to cut off the armor piece of an enemy with the intention of forcing a Morale Check (which they could fail and then flee, thus circumventing all their HP AND not kill them if you want to say, follow them or question them, etc.).

Weapon Mastery, while it seems to be a buff to weapons, is actually a nerf to martials in general because it takes potential actions out of the creative commons of play and isolates them to specific weapons that only certain characters can take advantage of. It is also more complicated, weirdly enough, because now each weapon has unique things to keep track of. These Weapon Mastery features should have just been a part of actions that anyone can do, by and large. I'm not here to balance their game, so I will not give them suggestions of what I would do.

I want to pivot here to money: the stuff that determines stuff. Isn't money kind of ass in Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024)? Like, what are you supposed to do with money? The answer is pretty funny: make magic items. LMAO. So, let me get this right: you want me to use the money I collect and turn it into items that I cannot take full advantage of? Epic. What a great game.

In a real game (AD&D), money is the critical resource that drives the game forward. Each Character basically becomes a feudal lord, except they got to their position by amassing treasure instead of the usual way of conquering land and possessing dominion. This means that an AD&D character has to use gold to do basically everything that a conventional feudal lord does with taxes. Need farmland developed? Gold. Need food for men at arms? Gold. Need a castle built? Gold. Need iron to manufacture weapons, armors, and tools? Gold. Need the forest cleared to get wood to build siege equipment? Gold. How do you get gold? By going into dungeons! Why do you need gold? To go inter bigger and deeper dungeons! Gameplay loop justified, and gold is the central mechanic that drives it. In AD&D, EXP was determined by how much Gold the characters get. Gold is the advancement system and a resource to spend on advancing more. Gary wants you to get gold. Gary want you to go into the dungeon.

In 5e, money is just kind of there. Like carrying capacity, it is a vestigial organ growing out of Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024) that serves little to no purpose in gameplay. What are you going to do with gold? Buy stuff? Why would you have stuff when you can just use magic? The best thing to do with gold is to turn it into scrolls so that Casters can cast even more spells. For some reason (I know why), WotC has instructed DMs to be stingy with their treasure allowance to PCs. So the entire gameplay loop built into dungeons and dragons is severed. What do they replace it with? Apparently with narrative gameplay.

EXP? Get rid of it: level by story beats.

Gold? Ignore it: focus on story beats.

Magic Items? Limit it: the magic items are the story beats we made along the way.

And what does WotC give us in exchange for all these material losses? How do they better accommodate storytelling in their mechanics? No, seriously. How? How is 5e any better than any other edition of D&D (besides 4e in this case) at facilitating narrative gameplay? It's not. I would argue that older games actually had MORE mechanics for this being morale, reaction, etc. Narrative gameplay is not the structural focus of the game.

Casting spells and mashing your character's paper buttons is the focus of the game. That's it. It is an incredibly shallow experience that strips players of meaningful access to creativity and gives them a repetitive, WoW-inspired slog-fest in its place. Playing Hasbro's: Wizards of the Coast's: Dungeons and Dragons (2014 and 2024) at the table feels identical to that World of Warcraft South Park episode.

soulless.

Previous Villain Arc:

Villain Arc 6:

Next Villain Arc:

[menhera-jellyfish]

I hate it so much, I'm posting quite regularly on my Tumblr but almost nobody interacts with me, like literally 0 interactions or just a one like, okay maybe 3 sometimes, why it's always like that?? I hate this feeling, I've always been ignored, I can't count how many times I met someone new and told them to text me and they didn't, most of my friendships seemed one sided even if they told me that they care for me, I haven't seen it in actions, I was the one who always had to initiate, people ghost me so often or they cut contact with me, lie to me, manipulate me, talk behind my back, I've always been hated, when I'm venting on a discord server nobody reacts, when I'm posting on Tumblr nobody reacts, it's like everything and everyone is just constantly letting me know that there is something wrong with me, that I'll always be the weird alien, that I'm not even worthy of attention and I'll never be treated like a normal human being because why would they include me in their society? And I can't consider myself fully human at this point, I think it was like that since childhood, and I reclaimed the feeling of not being quite human but at the same time, the alienation is not something I can just accept. I wonder, why am I so insecure and paranoid? /s It annoys me that it's so difficult for others to understand. Maybe because I'm always excluded from the society, maybe because I'm always hated, maybe because even my own friends that say that they care for me don't show it by their actions, ghost me or don't initiate contact first? Maybe because of how many people left me and hated me. It's like there is just a very obvious difference between me and other humans that will never disappear and everyone will always remind me that I am a stranger and an outsider. And they feel uncomfortable around an outsider and they can't treat an outsider like part of their group. And it's why my friendships feel like that because even if they like me they won't like me in a way you like someone who belongs to your group. You may be friends with a dog but the relationship between a dog and a human will not be the same as with humans and most people won't even consider a dog someone equal to them. If I told them that, they will deny it but it won't change how I feel. It's like you may have a good talk with a child and you can like them but it's not an adult, it's still just a child, you may be friendly with them but you won't treat them like an adult, you won't have the genuine connection you will have with an adult. It's like everyone saw me as a retarded but they won't say it in my face. But they won't treat me like I'm not an outsider because I'm just retarded to them. Maybe they don't even realize it themselves that they just see me that way and it's why they just can't not to treat me that way. It's why I'm feeling the best around other mentally ill/disabled people because some of them are like me. But I'm still ghosted or they still don't initiate contact with me so even in the best situation there is still something wrong. I still feel ignored and not cared for. Oh, and I'm not friends with ANYONE who wouldn't be in any way mentally ill, disabled and a minority tho. I just know that with normal regular humans it would be even worse, I would see an even stronger wall and I doubt we would be able to find common ground at all. So it's like, even around people who are different, I'm still different from their differency, most of the time at least. And even if we really are similar, there is still something wrong, they won't initiate contact, they will ghost me, cut contact with me, it'll turn out they talk behind my back.

[talk-to-me4ever]

HIII!!! Talks @ u forever

erm what do you do whne you really dislike a person but they're dating your best friend

like they aren't a bad person or anything they just REALLY annoy me because a few certain things,,, like one that really makes me upset is how hard setting boundaries are with them,,, i remember recently me & them were joking around in a discord server and they made this really sexual joke towards me and it made me really uncomfortable and. i told him hey! can you not make those jokes please as a boundary (in dms) and they literally apologized for it like 200 times. and i felt so guilty about it and now every time they make me uncomfortable i just feel guilty making their insecurities flare up like that because they have a lot of mental health problems but they're basically just guilttripping me even if it's unintentional idk i just if i told my friend about their bf being like this than she'd either not believe me or she'd break up with him and his issues would get worse,, i'm kinda acting like a mini therapist for him atp and i've worked really hard to try and make him feel like he doesn't have to apologize for everything and that we care about him and if we just left he wouldn't believe it anymore. like at the end of the day i pretty much have to keep being his like stand in therapist but GOD does it get tiring especially when he can just run around saying whatever because i'm so shitty at setting boundaries

vagueposting on a tumblr blog probably isn't the most mature move but eh this has been on my mind for some time lol

on anon because my best friend has tumblr and i don't want them seeing this 💔 but i think you know who i am LMAO

hey how about you just take a breather here and we’ll get a hang on things. So from what I understood, you’re having trouble asserting yourself and are stuck in a situation where you have to make sure the other person is alright despite it affecting you in an unpleasant manner.. Well, in any case, if you’re doing the job of taking care of someone for them (without any primary reason of let’s say a family member or sick friend you’d go to the end of the earth for) then it’s most likely a relationship that’s bound to be destroyed.

Most things when forced just don’t work out well, even if you have a vague sense of obligation that’s just unspokenly pulling you to stay with someone because you can’t bare to see them hurting. It’s something that many empathetic people suffer with and often leads to a draining exchange between someone who is likely ignorant to the help they’re getting and someone who is giving their all but getting nothing in return. Ofcourse, I’m not saying that’s what’s happening, because there’s thousands of variables that could affect a situation, but I just am one to say that if you gotta be overly careful around someone, limit yourself, and feel awful because you’re trying your best for them and are getting nothing in return, to just stop that little game. Easy on paper but can be a struggle in real life. Disliking someone can be a natural process but if it’s actively worsening your mental state, even just bit by bit gnawing at you like a termite infestation, then it deserves to be adressed, especially if to the point where you are aware of it and the discomfort it brings.

Usually, in life, the universe does a silly thing where when you remove one thing, it bounces back. It’s just a strange thing I’ve noticed, like.. if you save $2 somewhere, in some odd range of events you’ll end up paying 2 bucks extra somewhere. It’s an odd effect I’ve noticed and unsure if it has a name or is just a theory, but it’s similar with people for me. If I stop talking to one person, I’m just magically supplied with another individual a few weeks down the line. It’s like a cycle of balance. And for good to come sometimes you gotta be patient through rocky times. But you need to know, if there isn’t anything that’s changing, you must actively do something.

If he is bothering you, albeit with mere presence alone, you need to work on allowing yourself the courage to set your foot down. Even if it means being rude, even if it results in appearing mean and a bit cold, but you shouldn’t prioritise other people over yourself, never, in any condition. It’s good to try keep relationships healthy and blossoming but many people just force themselves to stay in a loop in fear of losing someone close, rejection, or being uncertain. Change is a natural part of life, and if in response to you being yourself someone leaves, then it was just meant to be. Don’t be afraid of announcing that you’re not exactly comfortable with something, and best of all it’s nice to work things out, but if they refuse to listen, make stern decisions.

You deserve peace in life and relationships that don’t feel like a chore, friend. And even through a hard moral struggle, I believe you can decide on something that best works for you.

im a bit unsure of how to work through boundaries and all but if you pin point a specific problem, then that could be a good place to start. Do make sure you are happy, though. Please. I want you to be able to say that you’re uncomfortable and for things to just calmly happen and change, ya know? I hope your day (and lifetime) goes well. :)

[smosh-fessions]

People either coddle Damien for his autism and traits or treat him like shit for them and I have yet to see an in between. He's in his 30s and he doesn't need people to crusade for him. If something bothers him he can take care of it himself.

And on the flip side, if you don't like him and every reason is an autistic trait, find some healing in your soul.

I've seen it be spoken about across multiple platforms that people either hate Damien because he's autistic, or it horseshoes around into the baby gloves handling of him. I too, am autistic, and have experienced both sides of this coin myself and it sucks to be on either side. Twitter appears to often be the side where everyone hates him because of his autistic and other ND traits, and here it seems to be the other one.

Continuation under the cut.

I understand caring about the man. I wholeheartedly do. But when you start acting like you know his wishes and you need to protect him from anything that may make him uncomfortable in any small way, you've gone way too far.

Doing things like threatening telling the mods in his server like they're guard dogs because someone repeated something said publicly is a problem.

I'm going to say this and I'm going to say this once: If multiple people ever pile on me in my replies again for making a statement based on what someone who is part of the pair of people being spoken about has said themselves, I'm restricting replies and reblogs on that post because it is highly unnecessary, especially considering more than one of them already knew who was being spoken about due to that person having made posts about it themselves and dropping hints. No one had to dig for any information. People are allowed to talk about very, very public info posted where literally anyone can see it whether you like it or not.

Considering the info was stumbled on by the poster themselves outside of the subscriber discord channel, straight on main, and people are acting like I hacked into a mainframe, you all need to take a step back and re-evaluate the level of parasocial you're operating at.

This would be like if a bunch of Amanda fans got mad someone knows her husband's instagram handle after she herself tagged him.

If someone had dug through things like they did to Spencer to know this, that's one thing. But the person posted it publicly on their own. You don't get to shoot the messenger over that, especially one who also said that they aren't a thousand percent sure, but the amount of hints very much seems like they're together, and its their right to never confirm it if they don't want to and that I hope Damien is happy whatever his situation is.

The fandom as a whole has had no problem immediately saying Bailey and Alex are dating despite there not being a verbal confirmation anywhere. But because there's no verbal confirmation involving Damien, anyone who talks about it has done something wrong (?). The only difference in the two men here that I can see that would lead people to treating them so differently is that Damien is very openly ND, and Alex is not.

If you have an issue, take issue with someone who has apparently claimed to want privacy and secrecy for safety breaking that enough times that people who do not actively follow them and came across their page through tags alone knows exactly what they're talking about. You don't say you want secrecy for safety and then tell people the secret.

[krpgarden]

shooting my shot! i've been itching to set up some 1x1 discord servers with 25+ writing partners! i strictly write oc and usually stick to mxf for rom ( would love if we could switch! ), but would love to explore plots other than rom too! i write para style threads that range from 200-300wc and reply relatively quickly, between a couple hours to a week depending on how busy i am irl! i would say i'm pretty literate and can provide writing samples if needed. would love it if my partner is on a similar level, both in terms of reply speed and literacy!

i love worldbuilding and will often create pinterest boards and playlists especially if i'm really into the pairing! i also love plotting in depth and can talk for hours about hypotheticals! my approach is to plot a lot, and thread the scenarios that come up in plotting that we feel would be fun to explore! when writing threads, i usually also let my muses decide how they're going to react and am open to the thread deviating from what we've plotted. i hope my partner has the same approach too!

more important than anything, i would appreciate a partner who can understand and establish boundaries maturely. i am a very communicative person and would love my partner to be the same! sometimes, plots don't work out and that's ok! i would hate to put in a lot of effort to plotting, setting up the server, and worldbuilding, only to get lackluster replies or worse, ghosted. i would love a partner who communicated with me if they didn't vibe with things and i will do the same, no offense taken!

fc wise, i tend to write kactors and third/fourth gen idols. i do have random pairings that i really love and would like to write, and likewise if you had a pairing you enjoyed writing, i'd be happy to write that for you too! that said, i don't believe that fcs are the be all to end all, and i also tend to stay away from same group pairings.

if you're interested, please like this and i'll message you! thank you so much, and thank you krpgarden for this lovely platform! ♡

hey there, thank you so much for your message! 💚

friends, if you're interested in this 1x1 idea, please like this post so the op can reach out to you! 💚

[branmuffins22]

13, 26, 35, 39, 44 from this ask game

Ooo, that's a lotta questions!

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

The short answer? NOT EXACTLY BUT I REALLY REALLY SHOULD

The longer answer?

Technically, I have almost every major plot point written down in some form or another before I write a thing. That said, they usually aren't in any sensible order, and are buried in a mess of a channel in my private discord server, where ALL my brainrot goes.

When I write, I mostly just pick a starting point from one of my notes, and walk it forward from there. I tried properly outlining for one of my fics, and it got me... somewhere, but for the most part, my brain just doesn't work that way. An outline becomes a task list, and I can't stand task lists.

My current system is kinda horrid, but I'd be more worried about someone getting bored sifting through all my scattered notes than getting a headache from them.

26. What’s your biggest distraction when writing?

That one's... probably a tossup between a lot of things. Bodily needs, background streamers mentioning something I actually have an opinion on, my mother barging in with shame and deadlines for cyclical tasks (man, I need out of this house), my twin having something funny to show me... basically just ~Life~, lmao.

I guess part of the problem with my current life situation is that I don't have a lot of time that's truly, unequivocally my own, so I get pushed and pulled around by whatever or whoever calls my attention loudest.

...Or maybe that's just the adhd talking.

35. How much has writing fic changed your life?

SIGNIFICANTLY.

Now, I've been known to struggle with feelings of situational/emotional permanence, so I could be a little biased by the fact that it's my current biggest hobby, but at this point, around half of my social life happens in fandom/fanfiction circles, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.

Two years ago, I didn't read for fun. Like, full stop. I only started doing that after Thanks to Them released, when the hiatus brainrot got me seeking content and community from more than just the show itself and the friend who got me into it. I think the very first fanfic I read was a oneshot someone cross-posted to tumblr, which somehow convinced me to join both tumblr (technically rejoin tumblr) and Ao3 around the same time. Well. maybe a month or so apart, because of the weird account-creation queue thing Ao3 has goin' on. But still.

I don't think I started to consider writing my own fanfiction until I read A Blight on Bonesborough, by GeminiAlchemist, and got a bunch of ideas from the way they expanded upon the lore and magic system and characters and all that of the Owl House.

From there, it kinda took over my life completely, lmao.

I wanted to write about Luz's experiments with glyphs, and some potential avenues of missed opportunity brought to my attention by The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, by IdeaHunter, and that eventually turned into the Artificer|Overthinker AU (to this day i still haven't picked the name).

Later, I wanted a story about Luz experiencing human high school again after all the dust settled, and after reading a fun fic whose premise was great but whose execution didn't quite scratch the itch (Luz Noceda and the mysterious case of her imaginary girlfriend, by Imkindagayyk), that slowly evolved into Masha and the Very Normal Nocedas (which I actually started writing over a year ago, and still haven't gotten to a postable state with even a single chapter, lmao).

Ever since, I've pretty much been rotating some fic idea or another in my head 24/7.

Nowadays, I wake up and check ao3 for fic updates/new fics, I read while I cook and eat breakfast, I browse tumblr for new stuff from my faves and mutuals, I check ao3 again every few hours, sometimes (but not often) I find the motivation and such to actually write, and I kinda keep up like that all day.

It's maybe a little excessive/obsessive/destructive/etc, but fanfiction kinda defines all the intentional parts of my life right now.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

Voice and gimmicks.

The most prominent examples I can think of are the various literary tropes I try to imbue certain characters and such with. I usually write in 3rd-person limited perspective, so the characters' voices influence not just the way I write their dialog, but the way I write entire scenes.

There aren't any good examples of it in either of the fics I've actually posted so far, so you'll kinda just have to trust me on this, but a great example is the way I establish the POV character of a given scene.

It's easier for some characters than others, and I haven't come up with a gimmick for every character yet, but I try to open each scene with a literary trope that emphasizes some aspect of the POV character's voice.

For example, scenes written from Luz's point of view always start with speech, either hers or directed at her. Luz is a rambunctious, chatty, and kinda awkward character, who tends to exert herself on every situation she comes across, so I figure an unconventional (and arguably obnoxious, according to some people) opener works great for her.

Hunter is an outwardly-cocky character with some deep-seated self-worth problems (and a very slanted worldview besides), so his scenes always start with a self-affirmation of some kind, usually followed by a contradiction. Often, he's either intentionally or subconsciously trying to convince himself of something, or to do whatever it is he's about to be doing in the scene.

Vee is a bit of a special case. Like Luz, her scenes start in media res, but she tends to borrow the gimmicks of characters around her. She's a shapeshifter, and learned about life in the outside world as a doppelganger, so she has a tendency for mimicry, intentional or not. She also has a secondary gimmick, one that's a bit more her own, in that narration about her often finds itself filled with alliteration, especially involving the letter S (since she's sort of a snake, and snakes hisssss (and doing it with the letter V was too hard lmao)). It started as a running gag she played on Masha in MatVNN, but then I couldn't stop using it, so it's kinda everywhere now.

Masha is a superstitious (though slightly apathetic) character with a keen eye (and no attention span with which to wield it). They tend to seek out meaning even where there isn't any, and thus often completely miss the broader details in favor of the little things. Their scenes start with an isolated excerpt, usually a tarot reading. In an ideal world, the readings would foreshadow both the events of the scene and at least one of the ways they've misinterpreted them, but unfortunately, I haven't yet actually learned enough tarot to do that. It's a big part of why Masha and the Very Normal Nocedas is taking so long to get to a postable state 😅.

That's pretty much all the opening gimmicks I've worked out so far, but another one I'd like to mention has to do with the way magic is written.

Whenever a spell is cast, I whip out my thesaurus and try to sprinkle in a few words nearby that relate to the kind of spell being cast. For instance, I might say that when Willow casts a wall of vines, she first "plants her feet on the ground", or "stifles her budding anger". Before Luz casts an invisibility spell, she might think about "hiding the cards she was dealt" or maybe "her hands disappear into her pockets". Stuff like that.

The way I imagine it, magic taps straight into the caster's homonculus (broadly, the part of their brain that decides and understands what encompasses "the body") in such a way that the caster becomes part of the spell just as much as the spell becomes part of the caster.

Luz in particular, having the knack for magic that she does, tends to start this process of "becoming the spell" as soon as she decides to cast it, not just at the moment she actually casts it. It's like working yourself into the headspace of a thing, before sitting down and doing it. I've got a whole huge segment in one of my more dramatic fics that's basically an entire page of this kind of thing, with Luz preparing to cast a really big spell (or, well. technically a pair of big spells (TECHNICALLY technicaly it's one normal spell being used to prepare to cast the two massive spells. it's a whole thing)). It honestly might be the highlight of my writing portfolio, which is a huge shame because it's a MASSIVE spoiler.

Anyways, uhhh yeah. I really like gimmicks.

44. Rant about something writing related.

WELL SHITDAMNFUCK, IF ONLY I READ ALL THESE QUESTIONS AHEAD OF TIME! I COULD'VE SPARED SOME OF THOSE PRIOR RANTS FOR HERE!

Well. Guess I aughtta find something else to write about.

How about the ultimate enemy, the scourge of our people, the cornerstone of suffering itself, the dreaded and feared, the great and terrible:

Writer's Block.

It may come as a surprise to the ignorant among us (hehe, amogus), but I, too, suffer from Writer's Block from time to time! In fact, I'm even suffering from it right now! And I have been for the past... oh goodness, over 2 months now.

I had one good day of writing, in all that time, which only came about because I nearly fell asleep in the tub. I somehow daydreamed my way into a really good turn of phrase that I just HAD to put into context for Backlight and Bitrot.

So far, that singular scene, set (the equivalent of) several seasons into the story, remains both the only thing I've written for that fic, and the only thing I've written at all since January.

It's infuriating! I have all these ideas, all these things I WANT to write, all these people I want to share these ideas with, all this time, all this passion, all this brainrot, and yet I Just! Can't! Write!

AUGH!

It would be one thing if I'd simply run out of ideas; I could call this whole thing something pretty like a "dreaming phase" or a "break in order to recharge" or whatever. But I've been dreaming for ages! This break has been in no way relieving! I'm just wallowing in my inability to do the things i love, while the world moves on around me!

You've had an excellent way of phrasing this for yourself, recently: "The executives are on vacation."

It's not some pleasure cruise for me! Those darn jerks (basic brain functions) who dictate every little thing that goes on around here just fucked off to who-knows-where! Completely blind to the consequences (stagnation, suffering, shame) of their absence, and how those affect their employees (me)! I just work here, man! Lemme do my job! I wanna do my job, but I can't if you don't let me! Ugh.

I want to write so goddamn bad. I've got all these projects to write for, all these brainrot spores to spread. I've got so much I want to accomplish, and yet my dumb bitch brain can't seem to get the memo. Work phone is powered off, I suppose.

It's gotten to the point lately that even those random notes to myself have slowed down. I'm having less new ideas than before. I'm picking old ideas out and polishing them less than before.

I'm worried I might end up having to find a way to cater my writing to the dumb mammal part of my brain somehow, in order to bring some momentum back. Write about something crude and easy and filled with every instantly-gratifying fantasy I can imagine.

No more of this 'careful thought' and 'consideration for themes' junk, we want it LOUD and we want it NOW.

Ugh.

Writer's Block is the worst.

What a bummer to end on. Oh well, I'm gettin' kinda sleepy, and I'm out of questions anyways. Thanks for the ask!

[kuhlayduskopik]

Intermission

Hello I'm going to talk at you a bit now about how things have been going.

Overall, it seems like I don't do great on this whole social media thing as a whole. When I fall into it too heavily stuff like the constant numbers game and some of the other methods employed by popular platforms despite knowing how they work seem to get into my head in the worst way, so I felt I finally needed a bit of time to fully detach and relax that tension. I can find a better way to engage with these places and keep my creative process intact.

Sharing my work is still something I very much enjoy and want to do, but I often found my intent and creativity getting lost in the conflicted muddle between indecision and platform pressure, especially as many sites have been changing the last few years in ways I find incrementally more difficult to navigate as they go. It's always been something of an issue, I just jumped into this without much familiarity with the digital landscape, not exactly a digital native despite my age bracket, and I'm not sure I've ever quite figured it out. I'm also not really keeping up as they continue to change, so I'd really just like to find a way to not get overwhelmed by whichever algorithm is pointed directly at my face.

But it's not all been issues with the sites themselves of course. Aside from that, what I was making wasn't quite vibing with me for quite a while so I was making a half-hearted attempt for far too long to walk both sides of a river I couldn't bridge. I had to take a step back for some better perspective and a fresh approach, and while I did seem to be making some satisfying progress most recently as a pretty positive note I did need a bit more to go, so I've been trying to maintain this momentum independently to really explore this avenue without having other distractions pull me down for now.

It might not take me as long as I'd thought, already things have been seeming a little more manageable, but I've still a ways to go to find the best solutions for me, and I think it's largely down to this last point. Health issues are a pain, as are mental ones. I've been followed by one or the other or both for a few years that without a doubt get in the way, but they're looking much more on these days thanks to finally finding what I needed to settle down and work through what I needed to. Not being in pain is pretty much just a net positive all round and it turns out therapy helps you pick out and work on issues in ways you'd have never have managed on your own, who'd have guessed.

I couldn't tell you exactly when I expect to be getting back into things, but I know exactly what I want when I didn't quite know before, and I have a much clearer idea of how to achieve it than previously, so I hardly expect it'll be too long. My biggest hope is to rediscover my passion and enthusiasm for creative work that I seem to have misplaced and to fully put this into my art, rather than just a thin veneer, and removing every obstacle that's gotten in my way seems to be the way I can do that.

Still- until I've sorted all that I am still making art, and you can even keep up with it if you want. If interested, you can find what I'm doing on a few Discord servers as it's the only place I'm posting for a little while as I feel a lot less pressure. It's not an ideal solution for the long-term, but I'm hoping it's not going to be long-term. Here's my server if you want to see updates there: https://discord.gg/eQh2ArADgk