#Melody's Enemy

[demaparbat-hp]

For you were lonely, you were like me

Like some outside force had sent me

If I was easy to kill, you would have done it already

—Hunter by Paris Paloma

Blood version under the cut!

[gigidagia]

I Am Bam & Melody's Enemy - Sound Control (Original Mix) (2022)

[dreamofmetoday]

PICK A CARD #2: ARE YOU YOUR OWN ENEMY?

this is to address the ways you sabotage yourself - how you hold yourself back and stop yourself from moving forward 💖

story behind the pick a card: *contains spoilers* the book howl's moving castle follows sophie, a woman who is trying to break the curse on her that turned her old. in the end, it turns out sophie was unknowingly keeping the curse placed on herself and could have broken it at any time if she had chosen to. this pick a card is to address how you may be similar to sophie in your own life - how you may be subconsciously choosing to sabotage yourself.

how to participate:

after focusing on the story, ask yourself, "how do i subconsciously choose to hold myself back?" and "how am i subconsciously choosing to sabotage myself?"

choose the photo of sophie you feel most drawn to.

take as long as you need to choose, you can check more than one if you feel drawn to do so. however, if you are having trouble feeling called to any then this pick a card is not for you. these readings will be honest.

tip jar

1. you choose to be afraid of love and intimacy. you make yourself restless and nervous and you constantly run away from people once you believe they’re getting too close (and you need to start being more vulnerable) - even though you secretly desire to have a deep level of connection with someone. this can be with friendship, family or romantically and you may feel quite lonely - easily feeling out of place. it could also mean you feel behind your peers in experiencing intimacy, and it could also mean you are afraid of sex and physical touch. you are choosing to have your walls too high. you may come up with excuses as to why you can’t become intimate with someone, trying to justify it (being too logical) and saying that you have other things to focus on or the timing just isn’t right. experiencing “the one that got away” is a big risk for you if it has not already happened.

2. you choose to not be proactive and let life pass you by. you fail to grasp opportunities because you wait for life to come to you and you don’t work hard. you may fantasise about being rescued romantically, getting rich suddenly, losing a lot of weight or something along these lines. you are constantly in a state of waiting for your life to begin when it has already begun long ago (as if you need the perfect circumstances before you can do anything). you wait and look for signs from the universe that aren’t there which makes you sad in the long run. also, instead of reaching out to others to help you, you remain isolated and mask it as independence which further keeps you stagnated.

3. you choose to not learn from your mistakes or admit you’re wrong. you are afraid of the embarrassment that comes with admitting when your logic is faulty or your choices have been wrong, this makes you overly defensive and prone to repeating patterns that could simply be avoided. you may also be prone to blaming other people for problems that occur in your life when deep down you know when it’s your fault. you may also have the tendency to correct other people and attempt to convince them you’re smarter than you are. this has a chain reaction in your life, you stop yourself from actually learning and you also make yourself increasingly disliked. you need to humble yourself and open yourself to true learning to end your self sabotage.

4. you choose to not take responsibility for your life or yourself. you will do a lot to avoid stressful situations or feelings. you are overwhelmed, you feel there is a huge weight on your shoulders and you just don’t want to think too deeply about responsibilities or having to deal with them. you turn to having fun and quick fixes for peace and happiness - this could be through partying, drinking, sleeping around or getting high. you could also overeat or overindulge in fiction. these habits run the risk of becoming more and more harmful over time, and they stop you from feeling true fulfilment or being able to grow as a person.

5. you choose to be scared (of losing what you have). you have a fear of feeling regretful or that you have wasted your time. you (may subconsciously) feel that if you sort out as many problems now, search as deep as you can for answers, work out how to lay down the correct foundations now etc. then nothing can go wrong later. deep down, you know the truth is that you never fully know yourself, we are constantly learning and we cannot plan for everything. you are so afraid of having bad memories in the future that you make yourself overly fretful and anxious in the present. you need to accept that sometimes life will come at you sideways and no amount of “getting to know yourself” can equal the strength of simply being yourself - some things can only be learnt from experience (and you must experience all emotions).

6. you choose to not have faith (and move on or relax). you lack a trust in life, worrying about all the ways it isn’t fair and feeling anxious about how everything is fleeting and impermanent. you can be so worried about your loved ones that you cannot properly focus on your own life. you may feel guilty about something that has happened that you now feel you don’t deserve to live your life, which is why your mind is constantly preoccupied with everyone else you care about. it’s possible you have suffered a loss that impacted you deeply or that you have a loved one who is unwell or suffering. you sabotage yourself by living a half life, you need to find the balance between living for yourself while maintaining loyalty and keeping fair promises to your loved ones.

7. you choose to not accept where your real home is. you refuse to accept that you don’t belong where you’re trying to. you are forcing yourself to conform to societal or familial pressures to fit in (there’s also a chance you may be in the closet and afraid to come out). there’s genuinely people well-suited to you out there but you refuse to find them (this could also be not following the career you know you want to do). you block yourself from true giving and receiving due to the fear of who you are in combination with wanting to please the people around you.

8. you choose to overcomplicate everything. your most common thoughts are prefaced with “what if” and you have devalued the beauty and fulfilment that can come with simplicity. you can be a jealous person who easily worries about who is and isn’t better than you, who does and doesn’t have what you have etc. you want more than you deserve or you want opportunities and people that aren’t meant for you (and you likely already know this). you could have been a kid who was gifted in school and now you’re somewhere where you’re just considered the same as everyone else or you could have been overshadowed by a new work colleague who started unexpectedly (or surpassed you unexpectedly) - something along these lines, and now you’re envious and upset. you’re so focused on projecting a certain image, or being the “best” or having the “best” that you are not living a life suited to you. you are too busy focusing on another person (or people).

[internetgiraffekid1673]

Hey, have I mentioned that J-Dog and I are playing Wizard101?

Everybody meet my Diviner, Melody Hexbolt!

Her personality is if you took a stereotypical Mean Girl Academic Beta Bitch trope and then instead of giving her an Alpha Bitch to follow around, you gave her a sarcastic loser nerd (that’d be J-Dog’s Wizard, Benny Feignrite)!

We haven’t sufficiently traumatized them yet, but we’ll see how the kids are feeling at the end of Arc 1 and if that merits a more serious redesign.

Benny is up next! (No I haven’t forgot about OC-tober, it’s just that the Wizard Game is consuming my every waking. . .and sleeping thought).

Oh also @givemethesleep it's not lore but I think you might enjoy.

[taterswithranch]

i personally think that trope is dumb hdhdjsk

[skullislandproductions]

This cel of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is from the opening credits of “Little Go Beep.” It, along with its end title counterpart, are the last character cels from a Looney Tunes cartoon (the rest of the production is digital ink and paint).

[kronos-lungbarrow-oakdown]

me when my beta write the most nerve wrecking Doctor/River with Missy/Doctor on the side and give it to me without even asking me out on a date first:

[lunarharp]

lazy scribbling of my baldur's gate 3 characters

[trainingdummyrabbit]

hod ruinacorp. send post

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

People questioned AFO's characterization in Naive Melody? I thought it was great, this coming from a simp.

there’s a different contingency of simps that wanted him to be more “complex” ei wanted him to have a more obvious tragic backstory or reveal that actually he wasn’t as bad as he seemed and was only pretending to be irredeemably evil for some noble ultimate goal like a shitty tiktok romantasy love interest. Others don’t like the fic because i go against the fringe fandom idea that AFO and the League are actually the real good guys simply because they go against the canonically flawed hero system.

[episims]

"-why would I know where... what?? How- how audacious!! I'm not her servant, you moron-"

"I paid the rent, as I'm sure you noticed."

"Why, certainly. I follow my accounts very closely."

"There was also some ignorant brat trying to reach you earlier. He was idiotic enough to mistake me as some sort of servant, can you believe it??"

"Hm... curious, indeed. I'd definitely pick someone less vocal, was I in need of one." Not many youths around here know about spectral assistants. Was I supposed to have that lesson with Shay today...?

"-hush, Atty, we're not supposed to- w-w-woah!!"

"A little off from the summoning circle, but I've seen worse teleportation navigation attempts."

"Uh... good evening, ma'am Knight. And, thank you, I guess?"

"Oh, if you hadn't tried to take the lead, you would've landed right where I summoned you to."

"It was spontaneous. I think."

"Such happens to us witches. Let's be glad that your fumbling didn't get you inside the wall!"

[beevean]

Mega Man X1

Sigma Fortress 3

[firestorm09890]

weird take maybe considering how hard some of the later floor themes go but I wish they'd kept the motifs of the lobby theme/battles 1-3 consistent throughout every floor instead of just the Asiyah floors + Keter. I know the composers are capable of it! Look at what they did for those 5 floors (it's done 6 times, since the enemies have a version of it as well): Keter is strings and piano, Malkuth is jazzy and upbeat piano, Yesod is atmospheric/electronic, Hod is pretty similar to Keter but more lowkey piano, and Netzach is... also atmospheric but very distinct from Yesod (I dumped all my music knowledge into classical sorry, idk how to describe it other than that). It's not like they would've run out of musical genres to do 5 more. Tiphereth is sort of twinkly and dramatic + in 3/4 instead of 4/4, Chesed is somber strings, Gebura is heavy metal, Binah is epic orchestral with compound meter, and Hokma has a Mass (music compositional term) feel, with instruments like bells, organs, harpsichords, and choir. that's all different enough that they could've done it. I have the bare minimum knowledge of arranging music that I could probably attempt to do it myself... hm...

[eerna]

spent a few hours in TotK

[sleepyselkiesims]

Part 11

Getting desperate to turn her life around, and even more desperate to be liked, melody headed to the Magic Realm.

Sure enough, Koji appeared a short while later, no prompting required.

Melody wasted no time confronting him. She understood he'd only attacked because of curse, so no hard feelings. Maybe they could be friends otherwise?

Koji didn't care one way or the other; he was just subject to the whims of game moodlets. And game moodlets said that, since they despised each other, he could never react positively to anything Melody said.

Well, there was only one thing to do: get out of this the same way they'd gotten into it.

And it actually worked! "Friendly duel" was the only thing that raised their friendship meter even slightly. Maybe Melody had finally figured out a way to make friends: violence!

Unfortunately, the method came with a cost...

And in the end, the friendship meter didn't raise much at all. And Koji seemed to relish the pain he caused a little too much.

Ooooohhh, he's an over-achiever too. There was no way out of it; these two were always going to butt heads.

Melody gave friendship one final push; please, please, just like her! She hadn't done anything to deserve such animosity! But her pleas fell on uncaring ears.

With that, Melody had to face a harsh truth: not everyone would like her. And she would simply have to learn how to cope with that.

At least all these dead family members liked her. And she had her cat.

???WTH????

AW COME ON NOT AGAIN!

This was too much!! When would Melody's happy life begin??

[autumnrory]

Often you find yourself in a conversation with somebody who says, "Taylor Swift, I don't get it. Why is she the most famous popstar? Like, why is she so famous? I think some of her songs are fine, but it doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't compute, you know. She's not that sexy, she's not that great of a singer, she's not that great of a musician. What's the deal?" I find this incredulity actually totally unbearable, because it's pretty obvious. Like, she writes her own songs. They're distinctive. They have a distinctive storytelling style, a distinctive lyrical style, and she's a great writer of melodies. I mean, the melodies are really what make her music great. It's what makes her music iconic, it's why she can always assume she's gonna be in the charts, because those are melodies you can't forget. That's songwriting. I just, I kind of find this like, what do you think makes somebody a great musician? Like, what are you talking about? She's a great songwriter, who has not only like, a great sensibility, but like, a distinctive style which she brings to every song. Every song of hers is recognizably hers, not just because of the lyrics, but also because of her melodic signatures.

Know Your Enemy: Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome