#Imaginary Player

[ogmensch]

[diabolican]

DIA!!!!!,DO YOU HAVE A MADCOM OC PERCHANCE,,,, >:)

ERMM.... kindaaa?? Here's my arena patient player mimbles, I took a huge bite out of his head to simulate how I feel whenever I get a headache

[thegreatyin]

i went digging for a bit and stumbled across the echoes for uncle archibald's legacy- it's an old (dated 2012) fallen london story that was only available to One Person as a reward for backing the original silver tree kickstarter, and it doesn't really have much beyond a few tidbits of seeing veils' perspective via red honey dreams. i think the most notable thing about it is that it was the original source for veils being the vake, way back before BaL was finished and that was all made very evident and very publicly accessible.

anyway. i say all of this because there is one (1) echo from this story that i'm mildly obsessed with:

divorce real.

[seastoried]

Given that their composition changes so regularly, any team I currently support may be made up of completely different players, coaches, and administrators in five years. In what sense, then, will I be supporting the same team that I support now?

adam kadlac, the ethics of sports fandom

been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in relation to the growing trend of fans (in a variety team sports) supporting individual players as opposed to teams. what compels us to continue supporting a team even after the youngest player at the first match we watched has retired? what identity, independent of the players who make it up, does a team posses? even after players have been traded, coaches have been hired and fired, and ownership has changed hands, there remains some spirit so foundational to the being of the club that allows us to identify it as the same. this, i believe, is it's grounding in and connection to a particular place.

i find it particularly telling that the practice of supporting individuals over teams is perhaps most prevalent in sports where there is a concerted effort made to scrub away a team's sense of place to make way for sponsor based identities, such as formula 1. the sport's international nature and high team turnover rate (tied to sponsors, of course) likely also plays a part. what, then, is driving this change in other sports?

football has always been a sport where teams have been intrinsically tied to a place. while the player over team support trend has yet to become as prevalent in football as it is in some other sports, it does seem to be creeping in. this could be potentially chalked up to a number of factors. perhaps it's the globalization (read: mostly increased american interest, as the rest of the world has been playing football happily for years) of the sports, introducing fans who have no personal connection to the place a club is from, and therefore lack allegiance to the club. maybe it's the steady increase in foreign ownership of teams, to an extent where this erodes away at fan's visions of a club as a physical manifestation of the spirit of their hometown. perhaps stronger personal branding of players is a part of it; they're no longer simply an agent of the team, but an individual in their own right, worthy of being followed no matter where they go (there is something to be said here about the relationship between personal branding, increased sponsor opportunities, and the fact that having ten individual players shill your product is better than the singular entity that is the team). whatever it is, i do find it a little sad - it renders teams somewhat purposeless, empty husks whose only purpose is to house players, otherwise devoid of value.

[applealchemist]

is this team cooked or nah

[alligaytorswamp]

hate the obnoxious 'im this character's no.1 fan' people, who aren't actually joking they truly act like they are the only person ever to love this imaginary dude. and it's not even about understanding the character, oh no, there is a high chance this individual doesn't even get the character! it's about how they approach other fans or people who simply also like this particular fictional guy. these freaks straight up manage to gatekeep a character in a conversation with another fan, always acting like it somehow belongs to them completely, turning any and all topic revolving around this blorbo into a weird competition where you will undoubtedly lose, because god knows they will make a point to act like they are the only person to like this character in the Right way, no one else is even capable of the passion they have, and you... well you just get to experience a curious feeling of 'do i enjoy this character wrong? why do i feel like i'm not doing it right? why do i feel weird for even mentioning them to this person... how the hell did they manage to make me feel bad about liking my fav...?'

[bloomingdarkgarden]

you guys, lore-building is hard. writing and incorporating canon compliant plot when you wanna just lean into the romance so hard. send strength. I know why sjm chooses to have all of her FMCs trained/ mentored by their love interests, bc its fun as hell and provides so much easy relationship building and is lovely in its own way. but I cannot. And im giving it my all bc I have a dire need for Elain's story to evolve around her own journey equally in parts with her romance ... but good lord i need wine.

[chaos-has-theories]

TRICK OR TREAT

MORALLY GREY WOMEN FOR ISA!! this is from an intended longer piece, working title:

Allies or Enemies: Prologue

Laura had been so focused on the shadows in the corners that she hadn’t even seen them gather at the ceiling. Now, one chunk of them detached and landed softly behind Ben, like a cat in human shape.

Then there was a glint, and a knife at his neck.

With a scream, Laura broke through the ranks of the creatures, but Ben was already falling, blood seeping onto the floor. He was dead: Deader than anyone should have been, here. His corners were already starting to fray, turning into lazy ribbons of smoke.

Laura didn’t stop to stare at him. She simply took the momentum to fling herself at the other girl, her sword moving in a wide, inescapable arc.

The girl simply ducked out of its way. Then she rammed her arm against Laura’s elbow, twisted her leg around, and Laura hit the ground, hard.

Her head rang from the pain, distracting her from even trying to reach her sword. Distracting her from the fact that the girl was now on top of her, that knife like a kiss against Laura's throat.

Dark curls were hanging past the girl’s face as she looked down at her, studying Laura like some mildly fascinating creature.

“Oh”, she said, almost pityingly, “you barely know what you’re doing.”

“You killed him!”, Laura choked out. The terror was back, and without being able to move she didn’t know how to fight it. She only knew that she was breathing faster, that it felt like every breath moved her closer to the knive’s edge.

“I did”, the girl murmured. “He’s almost gone by now. And you couldn’t do anything about it.”

A face like porcelain leaned closer to her, lips almost brushing her ear. “But you don’t have to stay. You can just... wake up.”

[sluttish-armchair]

Ok but thinking back to how I was in elementary and middle school: I had such disdain for other kids who broke the rules, that I irrationally hated a whole bunch of kids — kids I would have made good friends with — all because I couldn’t stand the fact that they engaged in conflicts with, and affronts to authority figures or standards.

It even went as far as internally mocking a kid my age — calling him “Mama’s Boy” in my head — over the fact that his mother whispered comments into his ear, which he mumbled unintelligibly into the mic, and then would fall asleep as if dead on her arm. I perceived his inability to give comments on his own, and his sleeping, as moral failings of both mother and child; because I wasn’t raised like that. And maybe, those feelings also came from jealousy. I was expected to fight off sleep all the time because I could read at a college level in third grade, and could theoretically understand the material presented at the meetings despite it still being inappropriate for my age group.

I was so far deep into the “bad associations spoil useful habits” mindset that it made me hate my fellow neurodivergents — kids I would have been friends with — who maybe couldn’t hide it as well as I could. That is beyond fucked up. Now, I work with those very kids I disliked so much as a child, and guess what? They are my absolute favorite people to be around; and many of them remind me of myself.

[mleemwyvern]

made a minecraft cyoa. have fun

[miasanmuller]

Ok before we get started I feel compeled to once again provide a disclaimer to my mutuals that: a) I hate my NT and b) I hope we lose and c) Yes I will root for us because I contain multitudes

[suburbanbonfire]

i’m working on a Very Large kraken piece that probably won’t see the light of day for like another month, and its got a full team iced (1 goalie, 2 dmen, 3 forwards) and i need some opinions:

make them specific players from the team that correspond to the roles to make it like, more relevant and accurate (and if so, who from the team?)

make them nondescript Hockey Guys so as not to leave anyone out which i feel terrible about (a friend has already proposed going with the numbers 6, 9, 4, and 20)

[ragnarlothcat]

I did not grow up in a sports family (outside of March Madness and college basketball) so picking a team is like a commitment seeing as one is not given to me by location or family ties, and the fact that I don't have sports friends lol. I would use location to pick my team however I am smack dab between the Red Sox and the Yankees and I refuse either of them on principal (also their mascots suck)

I've written all the teams down and have decided I will attempt to watch one game each and go from there to support me emotionally when the Rockies lose 100 games again this year the Rays having real rays tho is a selling point...

Oh yeah I don't even think the Yankees have a mascot. They also have no beards and no names (on their jerseys, this probably isn't a Spirited Away situation) so idk what they have against fun (and warm chins). Your best bet is definitely to find a cooler team even if they're inconveniently located!

I like your solution of watching one game from each team. I think I'd do something similar if I ever got into American football because I don't have a geographically relevant team. Just see where the vibes take you! And cheering for a terrible team can be kind of liberating. You know they're not going to make it to the World Series but they often have a bunch of rookies they've just called up so you can see future hall of famers when they're just babies figuring things out, full of possibilities!

[rustillthere]

he asked for no pickles

[toothpaste-for-the-skin]

I remember an earlier version of who would eventually become Iota that I had around 2 years ago. Funnily enough, their story back then also involved being angry about something lol. But in this case she was angry about the fact that the Splatoon 1 plaza was more or less abandoned after Splatoon 2 came out, so she was kinda stuck in her Splatoon 1 ways and unable to accept the state of things now. Tbf this version of their character wasn’t an agent but was based off my Splatoon 1 avatar that Iota is also based off of, so they’re technically an older version of the same character.

This is the only drawing I found of this version of them, from summer of 2021 so 2 years ago. (Also check out that wasabi splattershot, nice). Btw! When I mentioned how Iota is technically a redesign, this is who they’re a redesign of!

Also yeah I might just randomly post character fun facts bc I think about them at 3:30am instead of sleeping now lol.

[shiftperception]

insomnia used to be like ‘im not tired at night’ but now it’s like im so tired but all i can do is roll and roll in my bed. think uncontrollably. vividly imagine a scene as a made up guy to block it out but still im rolling and rolling. i shut my laptop between 12-1 and it’s almost 3.