#You can listen to the text

[luminouslollies]

A text where the only important thing is in the last paragraph (this fantastic title has saved you 2 minutes of your life, if you decide to listen to it).

I've seen a few WWatCF fanfics where the setting of the tour is October 1, 1971 (YvaJ's or Softkitty55, for example, and I'm sure there are a few more I haven't read). Truth be told, I think the intention of this film was to be timeless, failing in the attempt thanks to a certain character that is impossible to make timeless.

Well, I've just come to the conclusion that the factory tour in WWatCF could not have happened in 1971.

Ah, why did I write this in the first place? I see it's the norm to set the stories in the year the adaptations are released, or to make a time jump from that year.

It's very simple to explain: according to the Golden Ticket, the date of the tour is October 1st. However, it couldn't have been in ‘71, because October 1st of that year was a Friday, and thanks to the percentages scene we know that the tour was on a Wednesday (thanks, Turkentine). I mean, I don't think there was a considerable time jump from that class to the coin scene just because and without warning, and Charlie hasn't changed clothes between scenes. I know this may all be far-fetched – Charlie must not have too many clothes and it may well have been 1970 (the year of filming), when the first of October fell on a Thursday. Regarding the next year, there is not too much distance between Tuesday and Friday.

I guess it depends on the individual, but personally, I think the percentages class and the finding of the fifth ticket happen on the same day. The finding of the fifth fake Paraguayan ticket must have happened the night before the percentages class, and I say that because, when Charlie goes to buy candy, Bill is just pulling out the bars he had hidden. If it had been more than two days, he would have got them all out by now, wouldn't he? ('Now that all the tickets have been found, I don't have to hide them anymore.')

So, even though I've gone back to the beginning and written all this in vain, assuming this is accurate, I think any year between 1960 and 1975 whose first of October falls on a Wednesday is fine.

P.S. If I am honest, I have lost the thread of what I have been writing for a long time. I may have been wrong about something anyway. I haven't seen the movie in about 2 months, but I seem to remember there were some Wonka Fudge Mallows (I hope I remember it right) in the background after the coin scene. But how do you get a rectangular ticket into that packaging?

[outer-andromeda]

More Big Shot Era Spamtenna for y'all. They have done something to my brain chemistry

[aru-and-leopard-cat]

I feel like this has to be said, since it’s becoming increasingly popular to be extremely rude to ppl and trash on their interests (especially on tumblr)

You can enjoy any media you like despite what losers on tumblr tell you that you should and shouldn’t enjoy, be it music, books, or shows and movies. If you’re having fun and enjoying yourself that’s all that matters, lame ass ppl on this site will try and make u feel guilty about what you enjoy and I think that’s stupid as fuck

Listen to pop, watch that popular show, read that book that everyone claims is bad. Who cares, ppl are way too obsessed with being different and unique that they’ll try and squash your interests and enjoyment to make themselves seem interesting

Bottom line, just treat people with kindness and don’t diminish their interests, it’s such a shitty thing to do

[rumarot]

Untitled, 2025

ko-fi

[jimmy-v-capri-sun]

The many ways I've seen artists depict Kenny's muffled speech

*transcripts/translations may or may not be provided for these

**a combination of two or more methods is also possible

[furiosophie]

[bruciemilf]

“Get in the alley.”

In Jason’s dreams, Bruce doesn't look like this.

Hard and pale eyed, cloaked in dark kevlar and darker intentions, more blood than he is man. His dreams are pearl blue, like the man behind the mask.

Jason's throat is so arid, so tight, watching the dark border separating him from Crime Alley. He's never been afraid of home. Not until now.

“Wait—”

But he is not Jason, and this is not Bruce. Not Batman, either. This is what remains when a son dies.

Batman knows he's scared. He always knows when they're scared. Criminals, rogues, monster or man.

He never realized, jus how much Bruce softened his voice , when he wore the cloak around his Jay. Now he does.

Batman sounds like the world died on his tongue.

“Get in the alley.”

Red Hood doesn’t shake, but Jason does, inside his mind, where it matters most.

“Why?” He whispers back, praying his voice processor doesn't reveal the fear behind it. “You can't kill me.”

He says it like an accusation because it is.

Batman considers him with icy apathy, walking and walking, like a horseman of destruction with a target and aim.

Jason doesn't realize his body moves backwards.

“Exactly.”

[naffeclipse]

Following SotM, would you ever be interested in writing a DCA x Reader story based in the SotM factory/story? There's so much detail and worldbuilding to the game, I think your writing would really shine working with the setting :D

I love the setting of SotM factory and just how tragic and lonely it all becomes with the Murray family, and I had a thought about a Y/N hired as a sort of secretary/investigator.

Technically, you're only here for the secretary part of the job. Edwin Murray has also instructed that you dig through all employee records, emails, and messages to find out who betrayed him. Sure. Why not. You're getting paid either way, and Edwin seems satisfied that you're not working for "them".

(You feel bad for the guy. He seems stressed and paranoid, and maybe he's dealing with a few things that more qualified professionals should broach than you.)

So, you get to work, day after day, on the slow and high-pitched droning computers before you notice a program on one of the security room monitors. Moon.exe. You boot it up, confused, before you understand that it's some kind of game. At least, that's what it must be, right?

It doesn't stay so. At least, you thought it was a game. The Moon character is no longer confined to the borders of the program but is now right there, popping up in your daily work schedule. You're very nervous about a possible virus that you accidentally downloaded, but the character doesn't seem to do much. His text boxes will bubble up every now and then, and his haunting gaze will occasionally pop over the files you're combing over in all of his low pixilated glory. (Who gave this computer figure sculpted pectorals?)

He has some odd lines, random script you assume, mindlessly being triggered by... you don't know what. None of it ever makes sense, but you like to read it, just for one moment's break from the mundane and often drivel work you've signed up for. Sometimes it's funny. He tells you to go to bed when the clock runs late, and that must be due to time-based triggers, or so you figure.

You think he's just here for... you don't know, moral support? A fun little distraction that someone must have worked on between big projects due at the factory. Who's to say.

One evening, vision blurry from reading a screen in a too dark room after hours of rehashing lines after lines, trying to decide if a disgruntled employee is suspicious or the average working joe for complaining about the boss to a coworker, when you drag the mouse onto The Moon's face and start clicking, and clicking. Out of dire boredom and need for something, anything new, you click and click as if to magically fix that clock and send you straight out of here. Click. Click. Click.

A new dialogue box pops up.

Stop.

You lift your finger off of the left click.

That's new.

So, you click again, and again.

What do you want?

The Moon's face almost seems annoyed in its half-eclipsed expression. You chuckle to yourself.

"Just pressing your buttons," you snicker. "What else can you do?"

Then you immediately look around the messy, file-filled room, as if you would somehow be caught dorkily chatting to yourself, well, a computer program. Good thing it's only you in the building. Occasionally Edwin will burst into the security office as if he might catch you red handed in something you shouldn't be, but you let your work speak for yourself, and that usually calms the man down.

You need to get out and enjoy your weekend, don't you?

You slump back into your chair and stare at the screen. Just you and The Moon.

You click on The Moon's face again. The satisfying sharpness of the mouse click fills you with bubbling amusement at the childish prodding.

The next dialogue box flips into view.

I can press your buttons too.

A loud slam falls behind you, pushing you out of your seat as you whirl back to find the heavy door locked into place. Heart in your throat, you blink as the lights cut out. You're plunged into tar-black blindness, save for the green glow of the computer screen.

Silenced by terror, you crank your head slowly back to your work desk. The computer hums quietly.

The green glow intensifies as The Moon stares at you. He fills the pixels, one eye piercing you like the end of a knife.

Your eyes snap to the next line of dialogue.

Boop!

For several, terrifying heartbeats, you stand and listen to the frantic scarping of your breath. Like prey spotted by a hunter, you dare not move. The darkness is absolute, and the only light is before you; a lighthouse or the last flicker you see before it all plunges into eternal night.

Who did that?

Then the flick of lights buzzing back on spares your half-suspected heart, and you unlock your limbs when the security door slides back open.

You hardly skim the next box of text as the computer returns to where you left off, files and emails crowding the screen side by side, and The Moon's head set in one corner.

You snatch your backpack and book it through the door. That's it. You're off the clock. You don't care if Edwin loses his marbles about you ducking out a few minutes early. You will not stay a moment longer.

It is only on your drive home, twisting your sweaty palms around the steering wheel, that your brain unscrambles enough to recall the final words on the screen.

Nighty night.

[kindaasrikal]

Glow little glow worm glow

[icantbotherwithusernames]

@matcha-milkies thought he was being slick by saying the reference image was for the outfit only. well i can't be tricked, i know a stealing opportunity composition when i see one! ahem. anyway. Married Life fanart in the year of our lord 2025

original image + bonus under the cut cuz i worked WAY too hard on the book cover to have it be so low quality

[britneyshakespeare]

happy squidward sunday

[volchiitza]

clearly trying to stop fixating on "productivity" has actually improved my focus

[dovewingkinnie]

im brainrotting over propaganda by crusher again im so serious this is the only story i have ever been so invested in and its an incomplete vocaloid series about dictator kagamine rin the way this song sounds is just so perfect and wonderful oh mygoddddddd its so iconic The most iconic song ever

[teh-nos]

actually i loved 11's run, i think a lot of it gets just wildly misinterpreted because when 10 behaved like that the narrative might semi-subtly nod to him being a dick but it didn't really hold him to account and preferred to focus on how sad he was about this latest problem he had caused himself. whereas 11. does not get that. but i think the parallels to 10 and the learned expectation that the story approves of his actions or at least will be too chickenshit to openly admit he fucked up makes people somehow think the series/characters/writers approve of however he's messed up this time.

especially the amy thing. the doctor accidentally makes a child fall in love with him and she basically goes mad and self-destructive because of it and is a dick to her everyman boyfriend while the doctor is never going to marry her because what the fuck. i suspect a lot of fandom does not want to think too much about what the obvious comparison being made here is.

if you approach 11’s era assuming it was written as a weird wish fulfillment fantasy by the worst human who ever lived then yeah that’d probably be horrible. i’d hate it too if i had done that. but to me it was just not pulling the punches on the "oh my god what the fuck have you done this time" things that the doctor occasionally does. he fucks up, it causes problems later on, but we are not just sweeping it all under the rug at the end of the episode while he cries at the camera and goes back to being a straightforward hero. which i love! but i also feel like this is for many other viewers the reason they get mad at/about 11.

[light-nerds]

“Berdly’s crush on Noelle—“

say it with him folks: I’M AN UNDERTALE FAN I CANT READ

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.