#also i JUST noticed the dead pixel

[quandledlngle69]

pretty please with whipped cream, a cherry ontop and rainbow sprinkles make me a kasier x reader where hes just totally whipped for the reader no explanation needed he just has his head on readers lap while looking up at them with humenigimornous giant puppy eyes and love hdhsksmhdkdhzhs

ur writing is so fire also pls dont explode

・. ★ Yes anon with whipped cream, a cherry ontop and rainbow sprinkles, i will do this for you :3 I promise i won't explode LMFAOOOOO

☆ CONTENT: domestic moments with Kaiser <3 ☆ GENRE/THEMES/WARNING: Just fluff and Kaiser daydreaming about you, and mentions of kaisers vulnerability. 'schatzi' – Sweetheart / darling. ☆ W.C. 0.7K

Kaiser will never admit it verbally, but he craves the small, domestic moments that he has reserved with you.

And every single time, he’d grasp the moment like a thread of a ribbon weaving through his fingers, soaking everything in like a sponge in water, his eyes forcing his mind to remember every visual detail, for his body to memorise every touch, and for his nose to tie a certain scent that grounds him so much–into something familiar, that reminds him of the home he never had. 

The early morning sun poured itself directly on the end of the couch, a random German host show in the background, almost white noise to him. His glasses were boxed up neatly on the round wooden table next to the arm of the couch, a pink steaming coffee mug next to it. 

He memorised it all–the way your manicured nails scratched his scalp that made euphoric goosebumps break out on the surface of his skin, the way he would always groan quietly when your thumbs danced themselves behind his ears, massaging an invisible pattern of circles. His head was laid on your bare thighs, turned away from the TV, his nose barely brushing where your belly button would be. He was only in sweatpants, his legs stretched out and hanging over the other arm of the couch, the warmth of the sun melting into the bare skin of his upper body. His hands clung fistfuls of fabric of the oversized shirt you wore–his shirt. Your mind seemed so invested in what was on the TV, he could see it on your sun–kissed features, your squinted eyes studying the pixelated screen, your eyebrows furrowed just a little, and your lips parted in concentration.

His eyes always softened when gazing at you, you noticed. 

To others, they were a storm of cerulean, a swirling tropical cyclone no one could control. But you–you were the moon to his dark sea, the one that guided him, that made sure the baby waves never grew bigger than that when you were around.

The smell of freshly baked pastries wafted in the air, the tray settled nicely on the open window ledge to cool down, the open air leaving a simmering sound of the city of Berlin below. There was always a twinkle in your eyes, qualified and restricted just for him and no one else. His past self would never believe he had gotten this lucky to grab your attention. He would thank any God–if there was one–how lucky he was to be able to see you, feel you, touch you, breathe you. 

“Mihya?” You hummed, interrupting his ceaseless daydreaming. Your honeyed voice a hushed melody to his ears as your head tilted down to peek at him, your knuckle brushing his cheek. “You okay? I can tell your mind’s wandering.” 

His lips parted slowly, as if to say something, but nothing escaped from them. Hell–he didn’t know where to start. He wanted to tell you how you took his breath away, as if something was squeezing his lungs. How the sun rays marked and enhanced each curve and shape of your facial features, a face that renaissance sculptors would fight to be able to sculpt, that would be placed in a museum for centuries to come, he thinks. How he always internally thought love was a dead and long buried concept for him, until you got a shovel and dug it right out, shoving it back in his arms.

How he could comfortably be vulnerable, how he didn’t have to think around you, his mind never on edge or racing. Your mere presence a soothing balm to his soul. He wants to tell you how he could stare at you all day and never find a flaw, that the many girls before you that had tried and failed to get his fragile heart were faceless to him. How when he went to get a bouquet for you in some fancy florist shop for your anniversary, the owner mindlessly told him how complementary marigolds are with roses, and all he thought of was you. 

But all he did was finally hum back in agreement, his cheek nuzzling in your open palm, lightly kissing it as his sun–lit blues focused in on your face. “Just admiring my pretty girl, schatzi.”

You beamed, his heart racing at the familiar sight of your cheeks puffing to accommodate your gorgeous smile, and the way your face flushed slightly whenever he complimented you. A giggle bubbled from your throat, teasingly calling him sappy, hands ruffling through his bedhead, but he didn’t even care.

He wouldn't mind being called sappy a million times if it meant he could witness your smile.

Quandaledlngle69 © 2025

[stari-hun]

I get having an issue with a lot of “good” ending AUs in Mouthwashing ending with murdering Jimmy or something, but I think the issue should be more with how heavily needed he is for the plot. Like as a fictional story he’s still very important to the message that Wrong Organ wants to tell and the story they wanna show. The point of having no autonomy as a player is to force you to sit down and listen because let’s be real if we had even 2 canon endings then people would go even more stupid than now. Mouthwashing is inspired by real stuff that happens (SA, “holding off” on getting justice for it for the sake of the group, people who ignore the actions rape culture perpetuates then becoming victims of violent acts on their own, etc etc).

We just saw a CEO who’s indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people being murdered and the public response that followed. As a society we��ll literally always question whether or not the death of someone bad is a good thing, but we’re much more likely to have outcry with it when it’s so blatant. Someone dying behind closed doors or “softly/peacefully” , generally a non disruptive death to the general public, it’s held with significantly less outcry. A lack of tension doesn’t guarantee the presence of justice.

I think that Jimmy being killed to save the group should also be recognized as an equally viable option in the same way Curly’s decision to hold off on angering him more until they got back to safety was valid.

Curly holds a very important role as the Captain of the Tulpar which at the end of the day means that no matter what any and all mishaps ARE on him. Being a leader means taking on the responsibility of care for others, and considering him being the sole member kept by the Pony Express, Curly was GOOD at his job. With all the fights we see between Daisuke and Swansea with him trying to chase Swansea away? Keeping them together for months was a pretty great feat. Anya asking Curly why there’s no locks on the doors of the sleeping quarters is a very significant moment, and there’s a reason why the majority of women who do playthroughs instantly understand the implications while men don’t. It’s also a big part of SA culture. Despite the very real chance of men becoming victims too, it’s something they just aren’t taught to fear or think about as a possibility. It never crosses their minds that that will happen to them or someone in their general vicinity if they “know” everyone. It’s the concept of every woman knowing a victim but no man knowing a perpetrator. Curly genuinely and fully believes in Jimmy’s potential and personhood after knowing him for so long even though logically he’d have the most exposure to Jimmy’s aggression and seeing the way he treats women. As a Captain, it’s Curly’s fault for not connecting the dots or noticing what was going on, or taking more action from the start with the way Jimmy treated Anya despite the fact that Jimmy was more than likely passive aggressive towards Curly as well. Albeit for extremely different reasons with Jimmy looking DOWN on Anya for being born a woman while he dislikes Curly when he perceives Curly looking down on HIM for having more success in life. It’s no coincidence that Curly’s narrative “punishment” is being robbed of his autonomy and choice like Anya was.

The role of taking leadership and looking out for the bigger picture as a whole and ignoring a dead pixel or the unimportant things until perceived bigger issues are taken care of is the JOB of the Captain. For what Curly knew, Jimmy was a problem but hadn't escalated past what he had ever directly seen of him doing, he was in check. When he's a potential threat it makes sense Curly chose to wait until they were in a safer location than closing in on an asteroid field, but ignorance is also a sin especially when you're proven to be a good leader in all other moments.

[paikothemouthwasher]

CW: spoilers for mouthwashing, Jimmy.

Curly is not perfect, in fact, after Jimmy, he is undoubtedly the worst person to step foot on the Tulpar. However, by the end of the game, I consider him to be fully redeemed.

The reason Curly frustrated me so much in the beginning is because of one scene in particular. The hallucination sequence leading up to his conversation with Jimmy in the cockpit. You know... The one where he literally walks right through warning signs just to get to the cockpit. The one where he barely even notices the blaring alarms and the billions of flashing warning signs as well as the knee-deep pool of a red liquid we can only assume is blood.

This scene barely gets talked about because of the much more relevant dead pixel conversation, but I think the reason this one is kind of pushed to the back is because of how on the nose it is.

However, to me, this one is more important because it highlights how differently Curly approaches the idea of taking responsibility compared to Jimmy.

Jimmy will do anything to avoid facing the music for his actions. He will stop at nothing to avoid having to do the right thing, usually opting for what he perceives to be the easier way out. Crashing the ship seems like a much more pleasant option as opposed to taking responsibility for what he did to Anya as well as the effects of it (the baby) which to him are even worse because he knows he can likely get Curly to keep the situation on the down low, but now that there's a baby involved, there is nothing Curly can do to stop Anya from rightfully demanding financial support (which she will no doubt need) not to mention the likely possibility of Anya passing away giving birth to this child given she is the only medic on board with limited tools. There is nothing Curly can do to explain that away, so Jimmy does what he believes is necessary to avoid dealing with that.

In short, Jimmy will not only run from his responsibilities, he will throw more obstacles in their way to stop them reaching him.

Meanwhile, Curly's approach to his responsibilities is a lot more subtle which is why people are more quick to defend him.

Instead of running away, Curly pretends he can't see them or he'll straight up turn his back to them. Why? To keep the peace. Jimmy is afraid of taking responsibility, but Curly is too lazy to.

He already has a lot on his plate, piloting the Tulpar and having to answer to catastrophes here and there (courtesy of Daisuke) as well as receiving the news from Pony express which he stupidly decides to share too early. Am I saying this to defend him? Absolutely not. This is to demonstrate his mentality, so when Anya comes to him with warnings about Jimmy, he doesn't want to hear it, he just wants to say whatever will get her to leave him alone. When Jimmy is obviously angry about being fired with no plan for his future while Curly gets good recommendations and the options he'd been wanting, Curly tries to comfort him with the same impersonal lines everyone uses in this situations. 'we'll figure out together' you'll move forward one step at a time' those infuriating phrases that are only good for pissing people off further.

In fact, Curly gets so used to using these shitty, lazy responses, that he just breezes through conversations using them without caring about what anyone is saying which is why he not only overlooks Anya's warnings, but he also overlooks Jimmy's concerning language like when he talks about how instead of going home and dealing with the Anya situation, the Tulpar could just be remembered as a tragedy with no one surviving to tell the tale. Curly asks no questions because he doesn't give a fuck about what Jimmy is saying. He does not care.

Jimmy knows that Curly is just that checked out that he can get away with pretty much anything.

So, why is Curly redeemed in my eyes?

For a few reasons.

1) as I mentioned before, part of his dismissive behaviour is a result of Jimmy's conditioning. Jimmy is the one who made him this way. He managed to cement his image in Curly's head as a positive one, so why would he ever question him?

2) Curly takes responsibility in the end by talking about all the things he should've done and acknowledging the things he's done that could potentially make him a villain. He blames himself as much as he does Jimmy.

3) it's safe to say he's been punished enough. Not only did he become a helpless meat sack, but he also had to watch Anya end her life at his bedside, taking their painkiller supply with her, he watched Daisuke agonisingly drag himself across the floor to open the medical room door which I can only imagine was just... Gut wrenching for Curly, then he sees Swansea, axe in hand, fully ready to murder Jimmy for what he did to Daisuke and Anya, not to mention Jimmy sawing his leg off followed by feeding it to him.

Let's talk about that for a second while we're at it.

Jimmy's thoughts when doing that are 'someday he'll thank me', but I would hate it for anyone to believe a word from this man. I believe Jimmy only did everything he did to Curly post crash was to inflict as much physical pain on him as possible. When he says 'pain is how we know we're alive' it's not some attempt to be clever or deep or comforting in any way, it's his way of making his intention of hurting Curly as much as he possibly can very clear and apparent. He beats him after giving him the painkillers at some point. That's not someone who cares about Curly's comfort. Him feeding him his own leg is not his own twisted way of showing he cares for him, it's a hateful gesture. He wants to punish Curly for being better than he is and having a better life because he believes he's entitled to getting the same thing even though he doesn't put in the same work.

[hakugreenfinch]

i actually firmly believe that even if for the wrong reasons, curly was right to not give anya the captain gun.

im basing this on the assumptions/readings that a) jimmy was abusing both curly and anya in different ways, b) he assaulted anya in her sleep (i have several reasons to believe so) and as a consequence c) curly did not realize things were that bad until it was way too late (obligatory "even though yeah he should have taken anya seriously from the first report of 'hey jimmy was in my room last night'") but neither did anya really grasp just how badly she was being abused until after the dead pixel conversation (i think this is important because it shows just how careful jimmy was in his machinations).

the thing is we want to believe that oh sure if anya had a gun it would have been fine. but the other thing is that if you have a weapon in self defense - your attacker also has that weapon. giving anya the gun would have been as good as giving jimmy the gun and cocking it for him too - not to mention we actually experience that the gun isnt easy to fire, thus making it less reliable in the case of an emergency than one would think.

anya assumed curly wouldnt have given her the gun because she knew his relationship with jimmy, she knew curly would be worried she would hurt herself with it and she knew the company sucked and would have penalized them all if the gun got out of its case for reasons they dont deem "justified" - they didnt put locks on the sleeping quarters, i doubt they would rule anya's personal safety as reason enough. i think her assumptions in that were correct, curly isnt super strict as a captain but hes not "sure heres the super locked safety gun" lax. he trusted swansea with the axe because he trusted swansea to use it appropriately, he wouldnt have trusted anya with a firearm if she was in mental distress.

i dont think those were the good reasons to not let anya protect herself in this way ("corporate/jimmy will get mad" just is not it). but i do believe if he did give her the gun it would have been a matter of time before jimmy gets ahold of it and shit goes south a lot sooner. i believe jimmy isnt brave enough to do anything to anya while she could ask for help - his entire tactic is based on only letting anyone else notice small things that he could make excuses for. he probably would have taken it from anya while she was asleep, when she didnt have it right in her hand, when she looked away for a moment. it doesnt really matter, he would have found a way, boom, jimmy has a gun now.

why i think that would have been a lot worse than him acquiring the gun as late as he does in the game is that jimmy is pretty much fueled by a hunger for power and control. he gets those once curly is out of the picture as someone capable of running the ship but before the crash? hes very sneaky about his manipulation. he goes after anya physically when nobody can catch him because he can overpower her but he wouldnt try something like that with curly who is likely physically stronger than him (curly weight lifts in his free time!) which is why he puts pressure on him emotionally. the crash is actually very convenient for jimmy, he gets to usurp the title of captain without having to actually do anything to curly himself (as in, with his very own hands and with the intent of getting him out of his way). i just truly think if he had gotten his hands on the gun while curly still fully believed he was his friend and could fight back things would have gotten very ugly a whole lot faster.

tl;dr i think "anya should have had the gun" is something we want to believe would have saved the entire crew but considering jimmy's methods of exercising power over his crewmates proves otherwise. curly had the wrong reasons to not arm anya, but ultimately the longer the gun is out of jimmy's view the better.

[sunflower1experiment]

Yall wanna know something

I shipped Anya, Curly and Daisuke platonically

In terms of Life Companions

Like

This post is more of a rant about ships and Capitalism and also some stuff I noticed from other analysis I’ve seen.

Anya and Curly would be those platonic companions that support each other through their flaws and all and while they do banter they also understand their own weaknesses and faults

While Daisuke enters their lives and warms them up and brings out the best, Swansea brings out the strongest parts of them too.

And he’s with his wife enjoying those three beautiful bond.

With Jimmy I fr don’t ship him with anyone, I don’t rly care about ships in the fandom cuz like every time I try, my mind goes back to the fact that each character is an aspect of reactions towards Capitalism.

Like no matter what in a world of greed, corporate power and corruption and Capitalism.

There will be aspects of it that are considered pillars for why it’s such a systemic issue. Patriarchy, Assault culture, the minority group being ignored, the youth being manipulated and abused yet being seen as a form of hope. Meanwhile the minority is trying to absolve such issues, yet they deliberately get ignored until the said group leaves in their own way as one last form of strength.

And then a chain reaction happens, yet while the minority is a victim of the abuse no one will pay it any mind because it happens so much that in this case its a common story which is frightening and tragic.

Anya’s story is so tragic but not uncommon, she gets failed by two guys who can protect her. One inadvertently fails, the other hears her tell him, proceeds inadvertently fail and then when Anya dies along with Daisuke he realizes how terribly he failed them.

So does Curly, because of this chain of events it leads to him being tortured and abused by Jimmy then frozen to death because Jimmy lacks the capacity and ability to take responsibility.

Jimmy the paranoid guy who assaulted Anya to gain some form of control and expects her to move on, the same guy who called her job useless, got her pregnant then crashed the ship because oh “The useless nurse whom I abused physically has the consequences of my own actions” and once Curly saves them. Jimmy takes the opportunity to blame him, to take his title, and actually have power. But one hiccup.

None of the crew like him the way they liked Curly, Daisuke is focused on impressing Swansea, Anya is literally afraid of him, Swansea does not trust Jimmy.

And this is where narratives come in, we can all agree by now that there is no story told but povs.

Each Pov, Curly’s pov is everyone at their best but there is an underlying feeling of uncertainty behind it. Because Curly and Anya are both dealing with a dead pixel that both will have no choice but to acknowledge.

Meanwhile in Jimmy’s pov everyone is at their worst, because of his actions. Swansea is more stubborn than usual, Anya is literally struggling with mental issues and with the pregnancy, its a so so with Daisuke being hopeful and kept in the dark about what he did. Yet he still has a gut feeling about Jimmy based on the hesitation with the vents and worry for Swansea.

Then after the vent he apologizes to Swansea only. Then Jimmy who literally was told to not use the mouthwash uses it anyway.

Curly listens and reacts in an untimely manner

While Jimmy will listen, ignore and then react rashly or in a negative manner because it doesn’t fit his agenda or status quo of being this delusional leader.

Reminder this all happened because Jimmy decided that his idea of control was assaulting Anya because to him she was just an object for him to use and control. When that fails, he tries to kill her because she confronts him about the pregnancy without Curly.

Once again when that fails, this sucka pulls a Pony Express and “fires” everyone aka Crash the ship so her story wouldn’t get out there.

And Curly

I gotta let folks know, Curly wasn’t going to defend Jimmy. He went to Jimmy to get him to chill out, he even states with the key words “You” and “I”

Jimmy says “We” and “You”

Curly and Anya both gave that dummy a chance to take responsibility.

Instead of doing that he crashes the ship, proceeds to physically abuse Curly, verbally abuse Anya knowing that he Sa’d her but he expects her to act like how she does with Curly because the assault didn’t affect him like how it did her until it involved his reputation being affected.

And I get it Curly says “I’ve known him a long time” that was idiotic of him, but it shows how unaware he was. It started with the harassment, he laughs about that thinking its him goofing around……Jimmy isn’t Anya’s friend, and they’ve only probably interacted maybe during the psych evals or game night.

Like Anya is showing clear uncomfortable emotions towards his psych evals and Curly does read the room but not at a full comprehension of

“Oh shit Jimmy is harassing the only woman on this ship and saying crude shiz like this during a psych evaluation”

Why? Cuz thats his friend, he’s probably made many crappy jokes before around Curly and it doesn’t justify it but it shows how he’s so used to Jimmy’s behavior that its at the extent of his other friend and coworker.

This just goes back to the fact that when Anya tells him again, it’s clicking for Curly. He’s getting anxiety, his heart is racing, the sinking feeling of realization.

Then when we realize she told him, it’s clear Anya doesn’t know Jimmy like Curly which definitely makes Curly feel worse cuz he realizes the so called friendship he tries to set up for the crew was nonexistent. Especially when one crew mate is harming the other and probably (we don’t know) forced the other to be silent. Or the other was too scared/ashamed.

It works out in his pov as the observer/bystander because he was able to witness it but what does that mean without him observing…

I’m basically saying everyone has their own flaws and Jimmy had his and had the potential to be better or do better.

Anya and Curly believed it which is astounding because they’re the main two he hurts on purpose and directly.

Meanwhile with Swansea and Daisuke they have a hard time trusting him. All the while he indirectly and directly harms them, he manipulated Daisuke, ignoring his and Swansea’s warnings about the vents being dangerous simply because he wanted to get access to Curly (to cannibalize)

Then he lets Daisuke bleed out for 2 hours, burns him (once again ignoring Anya because he somehow doesn’t value her words yet values her perception of him cuz he cannot be seen as anything but a hero in his mindset) with the mouthwash.

Then he gets a panic attack, because all of this actions came back to bite him.

The one friend he wanted to die with as a “hero” saves everyone, so he makes him the villain and takes his title.

The woman he assaulted and planned to kill, offs herself before he could get the chance to. But she and Curly both inadvertently cause one another’s downfalls.

Curly with Anya and the crew because of trauma response, fawn and freeze.

She fawns at Jimmy, then uses the last of her strength to leave by her own hand. But this leads to a chain of events.

The young adult who’s practically the reason why the others are trying to seem tame, ends up dying because of Jimmy. Simply because he won’t admit that he is the cause to why Anya locked herself in there, instead he does what he did to Curly. Make her out to be the villain, and says she’ll hurt Curly.

Then there’s Swansea, who knows everything and most likely figured out with Anya that Jimmy crashed the ship. So he tells Jimmy off and everything he says is true. Jimmy kills him in “self defense” and is scared of Swansea.

That part actually makes me wonder, Jimmy isn’t afraid of Curly even though Curly is capable of fighting him, but he knows Curly. Jimmy doesn’t know Swansea but Swansea knows Jimmy because there are people like Jimmy out there. Selfish, insecure and paranoid and willing to harm others just to avoid accountability to the point of self deletion.

There is so much I wanna discuss that it’s not even funny.

Wrong Organ literally made this game calling out so many taboo topics. Can we please just dig deeper about them!?

[heaven-s-black-box]

The Fuck is a Teyvat?- Natlan characters & Isekaied!Reader

Return to File

Recovery date: January 17th, 2025

Description: Hello sorry if this is a bad time but I wanted to make a request similar to an Isekai but genshin impact doesn't exist in the reader's world, and the reader literally falls into natlan, along with a couple of their friends but they got separated, though luckily Ajaw partially broke the reader's fall, but the reader was absolutely terrified of the little pixelated dragon and ran away.

Notes: This work was recovered in conjunction with an anonymous researcher, we thank them for their contributions. I just kept writing, and writing. Every time I thought i was done i was like, nah.

Word count: 1 518

Back to directory

You’d think that if you feel like you’re falling after you die, you’re going to hell. But this place looked too bright to be hell, and wasn’t as hot as Y/n expected.

Y/n blinked in surprise, sitting up and leaning back on their hands. They shifted awkwardly for a moment before reaching beneath them to remove what they thought might be a stone. The ground was rough and sandy anyways, surely it made sense that that was what they had landed on.

It was not.

From beneath themself, Y/n pulls out a thrashing pixelated lizard-thing. It coughs up dirt, spitting out little rocks and spit soaked sand, and then lays into them.

“You impudent peasant!” Y/n shrieked, tossing the lizard as far as they could. “How dare you use the Almighty Dragonlord K’ uhul Ajaw as a cushion for your-”

“Ajaw, shut up,” a man with dark hair sighs, waving Ajaw away. Then he turned to Y/n and extended a hand. “Are you alright?”

Brain taking a moment to catch up, Y/n could only blink dumbly as two others ran over. One, a tall woman who arrived on a… shark? And the other a young girl who hopped off the back of the… shark… surfboard? What was that thing?

Y/n’s head snapped back to the hand in front of them, they hadn’t even noticed their gaze wandering.

“Uh… ya?” They take the man’s hand hesitantly and he pulls them to their feet. “I think so, at least.”

They dust their clothes off and take a moment to look around.

They’re on the edge of wide open plains, surrounded by steep cliffs, in the middle of a dusty road. There’s a dense collection of trees a bit away, with what looks like bridges and houses built in the canopy. Through the nearest cliff face is a path, thin and jagged with wooden platforms and bridges scattered as far as they can see.

In the distance they also notice tall giraffe looking things, and a few unfamiliar birds around.

But that’s not the most interesting thing, no.

“Is that a chocobo?”

The three strangers follow Y/n’s gaze, and the young girl asks, “What’s a chocobo?”

Y/n point at a tiny green creature with huge floppy ears, perched on a log, that tilts its head curiously.

“That’s a yumkasaurus,” the older woman says, seemingly unconcerned with what Y/n now thinks was a stupid question.

After all, the other three seem more confused at the name chocobo then they are about the creature itself. But Y/n quickly receives an answer to why they aren’t more confused.

“You must not be from Natlan, can we help you find somewhere?”

So these yum-things aren’t all over this place. It makes Y/n feel a little better about the question, but they’re left with a new question. Can these people help them?

“Um… I’m looking for my friends?” They looked around the area again.

If they’d just dropped out of the sky, surely their friends should be around somewhere?

They’re not certain what happened, but they know their friends were close enough it was reasonable to assume they were dead too. Dead… Was Y/n dead? Was this place the afterlife? It was certainly nice enough that it could be. Whatever happened, it made sense to Y/n that they should all be around the same place.

The three strangers looked between each other, having a silent conversation that made Y/n shift awkwardly.

“Um… you fell out of the sky,” the little girl said. “I’m not really sure we can help you find your friends, unless you know where they might land?”

It took Y/n a moment, but they realized that the girl– and probably the other two– thought they’d been skydiving or something. Y/n wasn’t exactly sure how to correct them.

“No, I don’t,” Y/n admitted awkwardly, “sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” the man says, speaking for the first time since helping them up.

He’s eyeing them curiously, and they feel like they’re being interrogated.

“You can come visit my people for now! You took a nasty fall, I’m sure you could use a dip in the hot springs.” The older girl cheered, extending a hand for Y/n to take if they wanted to. It’s as Y/n reaches to take it, that the woman has a realization and pulls her hand back suddenly to facepalm. “Oh my archon, we haven’t introduced ourselves!”

Y/n makes a mental note that archon seems to be the equivalent of god, an important note if they don’t want to seem like a fool. Though, if archon is a local deity, it may be odd that they use the expression but didn’t know about the green chocobo thing. Oh they could feel a headache coming on.

“Oh no!” The little girl exclaims, slamming both her gloved palms against her forehead. The man seems to be the only one uninterested, only sighing at the girls’ outburst. “My name’s Kachina,” the little girl introduces herself, extending a hand that Y/n shakes.

“And I’m Mualani, a guide from the people of the springs!” She inclines her head to the man beside her. “This is Kinich, and the little annoying dragon was Ajaw.”

“You won’t have to worry about him,” Kinich says, “I’ve put him in time out.”

“You… launched him through the air?”

“He’ll be fine.” Kinich shrugs.

Mualani offers Y/n a hand again, and when Y/n takes it the woman begins dragging them along.

“Come on! Let’s get you settled and make sure you didn’t hurt yourself when you fell.”

Y/n let's themself be dragged along, trying to put their situation together.

It occurs to them, as their legs grow tired from walking to Mualani’s tribe, that this world could be huge. Earth was huge, seven continents and sprawling oceans, so who’s to say wherever this was wasn’t equally as big. Maybe their friends were elsewhere in this world.

Mualani takes them to a room for rent and brings them clean clothes; she doesn’t listen to Y/n’s insistence that they’re fine, assuring Y/n that they don’t need to pay her back. Y/n asks for a map as Mualani shoves them through the door, and the woman promises to get one while they change.

Once they’ve changed, Y/n opens the door to find a new face.

“Hm,” the woman hums, face uncomfortably close to Y/n’s.

“Granny Itzli!” Mualani yells, and the woman is pulled away from the door.

Kachina is standing to the side with a map in her arms, and Kinich is nowhere to be found.

“Hey!” Granny Itzli yells. “Don’t drag me around like that!” The woman turns to Y/n and places her hands on her hips with a pout.

“How’d you get here?”

“I, fell from the sky?”

“I know that,” Granny Itzli rolled her eyes and reentered Y/n’s personal space, “I mean how did you get to Teyvat? You aren’t from here, are you?”

“Wait, what?” Kachina exclaims, nearly dropping the map.

“How did you-”

The woman, who Y/n assumes is granny only in title, lets out a long groan. They frown. If Granny Itzli thinks thai is frustration, how does she think they feel?

“Doesn’t matter, but you’re looking for your friends, right? What makes you think they’re here? How did you get here?”

“Look,” Y/n snaps, “I woke up on the ground, and I just have a feeling that my friends are here too. Is that good enough for you?”

Granny Itzli seems taken aback, and looks like she’s about to bite Y/n’s head off in return before Mualani steps in.

“Look, I think we’re all kind of on edge now. How about we get something to eat, and… I dunno, fill Y/n in on where they are?” She turned to Y/n. “I'm sure you have a lot of questions.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” Y/n sighed.

“Lunch sounds like a good place,” Kachina interjects, holding out the map to Y/n.

“O-Okay,” Y/n sighs, taking the map and following Mualani who pushes Granny Itzli ahead of the group.

Kachina falls into step with the outworlder, looking up at them in awe.

“By the way, where’s… Kinich? Was that his name?”

“Oh, Granny Itzli sent him to get the Archon.” Kachina ended her thought there, before having a realization. “Oh, you don’t know who the Archon is! Well, she’s our… Mualani, help me out please.”

Mualani laughs. “Natlan is divided into six tribes, and each tribe has a chief, but the Archon is kind of like the chief of all the tribes. She’s our strongest warrior!”

“Then, why did Granny send for here?”

“Look, save your questions for the Archon please? You’re just going to run into more and more, and none of us have all the answers.”

Y/n scowled. “Yes, Granny.”

Granny Itzli looked back at Y/n, a similar scowl on her face. 

Ah, this would be fun.

[chevvy-ryder]

Sending out kudos to everyone who has shown their love towards Ryder for the past two years.

I love u all very much and every engagement, be it even just a like, means a lot to me.

I've intended to sorta make a cool post of some older vp of him as of today, September 17th, exactly 2 years ago I have created Ryder,— back then as a supposed supportive character for Vijay, very unsure if I would like him as Ry didn't visually turn out as I wanted him to be in the first place and he never went that way either afterwards — yet I find myself writing those lines instead.

I've accepted his look and his imperfection started to grow on me with each picture I took of him. Unlike my other ocs he went his own way leading me along to discover his personality. That's what makes him so different compared to my other blorbos and has me so attached to him.

I did not plan to make him a raver (he was supposed to become an 80s goth punk, a total different style than he's got now) neither that he would end up with a rogue AI controlling him. Only his name, basic info and the toxic family story was planned right from the beginning but that's pretty much it – Ryder showed me the rest of it.

Within the year 2023 I noticed more and more that Ryder has slowly but surly turned out to be my main character.

He turned out to be the most expressive and photogenic one of them all. I don't see him as the prettiest looking either yet he's my most precious and I love every pixel about him.

He's the one thing in my life I am actually truly 100% proud of.

Almost all my ocs exist because of him. They are his support characters. Without him half of them would not even exist. There would be no Thyjs. Even Garnet exists so Ry can live out his passion (that was not really put into the game but exists as lore: Technoise).

I am beyond happy to have created him.

He helps me in a lot of rather personal ways too I do not need to address here.

I got so much to tell about him (also about my other ocs) yet idk if I should continue or not as I find myself stuck with overthinking about it bc of lack of public response literally everywhere (this excludes private chat talks with close friends). Maybe Ryder's too intimidating (not the first time I would read that), his lore gets overlooked easily, or it's to much (confusing) text.

I cannot make anyone force-like him. Tastes are different. Minority is into others oc lore. Less time to read it all. The list is long. I'm aware of it all.

But I cannot underline it enough: do never hesitate to ask me questions about him. He's on my mind 24/7 and my biggest wish is to get this story out and done some day (whenever it will be) and receive some actual feedback on it what was liked.

Just a tiny detail is enough. <3

Another wish I have ever since I joined the CP77 fandom: that people would go back to comment each other more. We all do have little time for it, we all think "oh no so much text to read", we all are in our own bubbles rarley coming out to explore another bubble within this universe. It takes a lot of effort to do. people do seem scared on top to write anything at all for numerous reasons. I have all those problems as well. But I try to sit down and read the one or other lore chunk others wrote down and give a tiny comment as best as I can to make the creator have a smile on their lips. I truly wish we all would do this at least once a week to one person. once a month would be also fine. But if we don't this fandom will be dead soon enough and all thats left is just liking vp with characters on it we know almost nothing about. And maybe even those characters won't have lore anymore bc people stop creating it.

[ask-postcrash-curly]

Here's the deal, Ouroboros. Bite down, or let go. But you can't keep holding on like this.

Sooner or later you'll have to make a choice, or die in a cycle. Always too scared to grasp, too scared to cut loose.

So ever in a perpetual stasis, standing there.

Frozen.

Deep down, you want to bask in the ignorance and bliss of what once was, to remain in the past. You're tightly clinging on what you thought of those you've met, and how those ideals were crushed by the terrible reality of who they actually are.

It's slowly killing you and you don't even realize it, that you've become so numb to the pain they have caused throughout time. Can't even realize that there is a cycle to break.

And in the off chance that you do realize, you have become so tunnel visioned that it's taking a literal cacophony of voices to make you realize the desperate need for change.

Change hurts, but worse things fester for a long time.

First you found respite on our back and forth, but then couldn't stand the constant, constant screaming.

After all, they're always there. In the back of your mind. The dead pixels you were told about.

It's hard not to notice, now right in front and inside you. But they've always been there, haven't they?

We've told you.

Sure, they were easy to ignore, with our backs turned, and our eyes closed. And we tried, we really did. But now that you can't even turn a blind eye to it all, you finally see them. Some day you were going to get fed up with them.

And you did. But with the bad also left the good, and we disappeared.

Now you can't sleep without us... easy to grasp, hard to leave. You gained the inherent need for someone to talk with and be heard without a voice, but it is company at the expense of your morale.

We said tomorrow will be different. Today would be the last day. The last one. The last one and then another. And another, and another, and another...

Every time, you get caught up in the same old venomous spiral inside your head. At one point you'll just have to start hearing:

"Learn to bite down or to let go"

You have to accept that some things are out of your control. It is not easy to cut yourself off from familiarity. It is also not easy to take a risk, or to choose consequences of your own accord.

But it is possible.

It's easy to feel locked into a course of action because it's what you've always done and it's what's expected of you, even if it's detrimental to your well being. It's hard to look at an unfamiliar path and choose to gamble that same well being on the end of it.

You just can't keep this going.

Maybe the idea of biting down sounds self destructive, and letting go being of resignation, but not making the choice is the real fatalistic path. It's continuing to forsake your own agency for a "safety" that is still hurting you, but feels safe because it's familiar.

Biting down and letting go are both active choices to end the cycle, both are positive outcomes.

You bit us down, and we left an unwilling void in our wake. Then came the pleas, so we came back to fill it once again. But accompanied by the dead pixels too, for our collective dismay.

...

Grant.

We will have to be let go one day.

You've got to move in a direction rather than circles, whatever that direction ends up being.

You are eating yourself alive.

I know the quiet is violent, it forces you deal with the raw situation. But we're just a fake screen masking the real issue in between.

We are all afraid of silence. It is terrifying. But we also wish you peace.

You'll have to do it someday Grant.

You will have to do it scared.

Of course I want to remain in the past. The present is an endless fucking nightmare and it's too late to fix anything. Not— not so I can unlearn what I've learned, that wouldn't be fair to her— I don't want that. Can't. No.

...

Why does that sound so familiar? It's true. It's completely true. Never told him off when I saw the signs, never left this job, and I let it become all this. One big old festering wound.

...This isn't the same, though.

You're wrong. It is not at the expense of my morale. I didn't have any morale to lose before you lot came along, do you understand, I wanted nothing more than to die every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month! Death was all I wanted, all I prayed and begged for, when I wasn't too overwhelmed by the pain or drowning in the guilt. That was worse, that was much worse than the damn screaming. I can't go back.

Look. As terrible as things were before the crash, it was better than it is now. Dead pixels, big picture. I was wrong, I know that, but there was a grain of truth, yeah? Before the crash, we at least had the appearance of being fine. We had medical supplies, we were nearly at destination, I wasn't hurt and I could have stepped in, and I didn't but we're not slaves to our past and I could have stepped in at any moment in the future if that wasn't taken from me. It was awful because of the dead pixel in the corner but it wasn't unsalvageable. Couldn't have fixed it, I see that now, but could have kept us moving. There's no repairing the damage, but there's healing. But now? You think this is better? Hah! There's no more dead pixel. The whole damn picture is dead with a few tiny squares of light. And it's unbearable. There is nothing I can do to help her. There is nothing I can do to help myself. Not one of us is better off than we were before.

All this to say, I don't care if the dead pixels remain. Or, well, of course I care, but I'd rather take that than the gaping irreparable damage they leave when you try to smash them out! There's no fixing those things without destroying the whole picture and I can't, I'd rather have a marred picture than no picture and be alone again, yeah?

It isn't the silence I'm afraid of! It's the pain! I can't take my mind off of it without you there! Please, all I'm asking is that you don't leave me alone with it again. You can leave once it stops if you need to but please please I can't stand it. I can't. There is no peace to be found. Having you lot distracting me is the closest thing I can get to peace. It was awful, all right? That's what I'm scared of the most, being trapped in that again, it was the worst thing I've ever experienced and it went on so long and I can't do it again, I'll do anything if you don't let me go back there again, please, please.

And if I fall back in again, with you gone, how can I let it out? I can't scream, I can't cry, that's been taken from me already. You are all I have to take it out of my mind and have anyone at all understand. There's no form of expression I have left.

I AM DOING IT SCARED! I'M FUCKING TERRIFIED, OKAY? I'VE BEEN SCARED ALL THIS TIME!

...

Sorry. I'm so sorry.

Just— please. I don't care how self-destructive you think this is. All choice in my life has been stripped from me. The one thing I have left in which I have any form of agency is the conversations I have with you and I can't lose them. I believe that you want to help me and if you do please just stay a while longer, just until I'm safe and it doesn't hurt and I can communicate again, please, I can't do this alone I'd rather die right now than go back to doing this alone, and that was when I had painkillers that worked and that was before he hit me and I can't I can't there's no way out except you all. I won't hold on forever, just until it doesn't hurt, yeah? Just— just let me hold on until it doesn't hurt, please.

[aeolian-mode]

Analysis of Mouthwashing (indie game)

Just played Mouthwashing and it's really affecting me. Thought I'd type my thoughts/analysis of it. (TW: if you don't know about the game, I talk about sexual assault as it is a major theme of this story. Also, spoilers!)

I was thinking for a while about the symbolism of televisions and screens in this game. I believe they are a metaphor for falsehoods. The vintage commercials are often untrue in today's modern economy or exaggerated. The screens seem to represent an unattainable ideal.

The screens in the ship display false day/night cycles. Anya finds comfort in the fake nighttime, but notices the dead pixel, which I think represents how she, herself, is overlooked in the "big picture" of both the Pony Express profits and Curly failing to notice and help her.

Swansea eventually destroys the screen of the sunset, revealing the grotesque reality beneath. He hates the falsehood and he strips the fantasy away. But what really struck me is the scene when Jimmy confronts Curly while watching himself in a TV screen during one of his final hallucinations. He tells Curly this: "What happened was an accident. We were trapped. I made a mistake."

When we watch TV we, more often than not, are watching actors engaged in a performance.

So, not even during his supposed moment of self-awareness is Jimmy sincerely apologizing and recognizing his own assholery. He's just watching himself, playing himself, on a screen.

In contrast, when Swansea gives us his monologue, the characters are silhouetted against a TV screen. There are no actors represented on this screen, just flashes of indistinct scenes and colors. Swansea is no actor, not anymore. He's real and sincere. He's above the performance now.

In Jimmy's case, not only is he apologizing insincerely to only one of his victims, he never acknowledges or apologizes to his primary victim. In fact, when we see her corpse, he doesn't acknowledge her at all. Worse, he actively blocks out the reality of what he's seeing later. Not once is Anya acknowledged in his television performance. I think he's a pretty terrible actor.

Additionally, Jimmy also never says directly what he did.

"What happened was an accident. We were trapped. I made a mistake."

What, exactly, is he referring to here?

The rape? Crashing the ship and pinning Curly on it? Tormenting Curly in his suffering? Slowly whittling down the rest of his crew until Anya breaks and kills herself, Daisuke is manipulated into entering a life-threatening vent, and Swansea snaps?

None of things were accidents or mistakes. They were all calculated decisions. "What happened" (passive) "was an accident" (absolving himself self of guilt). "I made a mistake" (sad sausage.)

Abusers rarely apologize. When they do, it's often performative, saying what the other person wants to hear. And they don't tend to directly acknowledge their own actions. They seem physically repulsed by the idea of saying "I hurt you. I made a decision to inflict this specific suffering on you." (In Jimmy's case: "I mixed the cocktail. I drugged you. I waited for you to pass out. I broke into your room. I raped you.") "This was evil. I was evil. I will do what is necessary to face the consequences, from both you, and society."

You will probably never hear an abuser say something like this, especially without an ulterior motive. To directly acknowledge their decisions, retread their steps, and verbalize how it hurt someone else? This is the antithesis of a disordered personality. A person who does this sincerely is probably a well-meaning and stable person, or a disordered person who is taking therapy seriously.

The fact that Jimmy is only able to bring himself to say "I made a mistake" as an actor on TV just really struck me the more I thought about it. I don't know how many other people also felt like this but I thought I'd share, since I've read a lot of analysis about Mouthwashing but haven't read about anyone talking about this. The symbolism of the game shows an impressive and unsettling understanding of what goes on in the minds of abusers. It reminds me so much of my own situation. It makes me feel seen. To know that the game's narrative grapples with this, and made a character like this with no redemption and no sympathetic "come to Jesus" moment, is cathartic to me.

Jimmy is an abuser. He never cares about the pain he causes others. He only cares about impression management, dodging consequences, and feeling like a good person. When all avenues to achieve this fail for him, there's only one way out. And he would rather crash the ship, manipulate everyone further into suffering and death, and shoot himself than face the music.

It's just so, so real.

[joshcaladia]

Mickey 17 — A Modern Masterpiece

I just watched Mickey 17 in the most run-down theatre that I think I've ever seen. There must've been 50 or so dead pixels in the bottom left corner. One of the front-left speakers was consistently fuzzy. It was also packed in the theatre, so we didn't get very good seats. Despite this, it was one of the most enjoyable theatre experiences I've had in years, maybe ever. The incredible score, VFX, acting, story, editing, cinematography, and anything else I've forgotten to mention, just blew me out of the water.

Some may be surprised that this was my first time seeing a Bong Joon-ho film, and after seeing Mickey 17, I'm surprised too. Every part of this movie spoke to me in a way I almost never experience in movies and TV. I'll be avoiding spoilers in this review, but a few major plot points will be mentioned.

The Score

The score was instantly immersing, with a seemingly impossible mix of hard and soft, modern and classical, always playing at just the right volume, at just the right time.

The Effects

The visual effects were consistently flawless, with only a few mere moments of CGI-floaties, and my girlfriend noticed one (1) actual error in a distant shot of a crowd simulation. I never felt a separation from the physical and digital world.

The Cast

Then there's the acting. Robert Pattinson once again shows off his brilliant range, with a meek voice for the titular Mickey 17, and a harsher, drier voice for his less-titular counterpart. His presence shrinks as 17, showing his timid nature, and his emotions always feel extremely real. Steven Yuen's understated presence as Timo is similarly perfect. His mannerisms and the way he delivers his lines is as realistic as it gets, without getting banal. Naomi Ackie as Nasha was just about perfect casting. Her diction and physicality perfectly mirrored that of Pattinson's rather non-physical performance (as well as playing up his other, much more physical performance).

The science team always felt exactly like the stereotype of a science team, in only the best ways. Awkwardness, undying loyalty to scientific progress, and of course only the whitest of lab coats.

Mark Ruffalo is in his prime in this film, as is Toni Collette, as they play the most deranged power couple put to screen, with all the subtlety and nuance of the people they're a parody of (ha ha). Ruffalo takes every moment on screen and makes it instantly memorable. Collette speaks and moves in such a way it enhances her character's already uncertain motives.

The Story

To recap: the story of Mickey 17 follows Mickey Barnes in his escape from Earth through a space ship colony on a mission to an ice planet, along with his long-time friend Timo, after they take a loan from the creepiest mob boss alive to start a poorly-thought-out macaron store, and can't pay it back. While Timo can talk his way into a pilot position on the space team, Mickey takes the first job he sees, which is the controversial 'expendable' position. Expendables are scanned, killed, regenerated, killed, and regenerated again, ideally forever. They're banned on Earth due to the ethical and moral concerns, but in space, anything goes (on the drive home, I listened to Anything Goes by Tee Lopes, and it resonated as poignant to the movie). Mickey goes through many regenerations, through a few incidental deaths and a dozen or so deaths related to the science team testing on him. I won't go over the particular tests, but they mostly involve being injected with a formula, directly followed by throwing up blood. It's not until Mickey survives an assumed death, aided by an alien species (known as 'creepers'), and returns to the colony to find he's been cloned again, that things start to go off the rails.

Mickey 17 doesn't waste time telling you who Mickey is and what his job is, but doesn't rush at all to give any other details. It's paced slowly, but not monotonously. This is also one of the only movies I've ever seen with sex scenes that are not only short, but also directly serve the plot, which is how I like my sex scenes.

There are several flashbacks, some nested, and a lot of the context of earlier scenes are given prudence from later scenes. Near the very end of the film, there's a moment, a fairly long scene considering what it is, as a flashback respective to the scene surrounding it, which you might assume would completely fuck the pacing up, but it actually serves to give the surrounding scene a lot more weight. The timeline of the edit is so unique, and I love it.

The Editing

My oh my, the editing. The sound, the music, the timing, the effects, all of it is incredible, but none more so than the fact that Pattinson's dual performance is completely seamless. Not just in visual effects, but in the reactions from other actors. It's perfect. 'Nuff said.

Conclusion

I don't feel like I talked enough about Mark Ruffalo's role in this review, but it's hard to talk about without spoiling too much. I loved every second of this movie, and proudly give it a 10/10. I do feel pretentious saying this, but I wholeheartedly believe it to be a modern masterpiece.

[three-dee-ess]

hiiii 3DS tour!!!!

from the day i first got it, i knew to name it Happiness..... nothing deep about it i just wanted to say "my mom took my Happiness away for exam week :("

a bit of a reveal but i'm the anxious sticker placer anon haha it's still plain to this day if not for a few scratches (a lot actually but it's not that noticeable, right? qwq)

the barcode and numbers are super faded i can't read them!! plus the scratches are much more noticeable, im not sure where most of them came from but i remember one of them is when i accidentally dropped a screwdriver on it oops

the cartridge is pokemon black 2!! i've had this game before Happiness. yup i have a metallic rose DS lite that's sooo busted up, (well i had a coral pink DS lite before that but i got mugged when i was like 7 years old and it's gone which is a story for another time)

anyway, metallic rose had dead pixels that spread like some fungus, L button didnt work at all, buttons feel gross to press now, etc yknow normal 7 year old not knowing the value of things thing

i'd send a picture but it's back at my old house, pray that the spiders know how to play dig dig dug

:D i'm very normal about cyrus pokemon i swear

if you check my theme plaza account you can see i also made one (1) batch of badges which is hunter x hunter badges as you can see from the folders, i'm also very normal about hunter x hunter i swear

i wanted to lay everything out without folders and arrange everything pretty but it's so hard how do all of you do it qwq

gon folder (top left folder) are my 3DS gaammeess, i haven't played some of them bc i still got a lot of games to finish but they're there!!

frens (i didnt make the badges other than the hunter x hunter ones btw!)

killua folder (top right folder) contains DS... well used to, now it holds other games! i also haven't played most of them im so busy qwq

i deleted the shortcuts for the DS games i finished, also it took me way too long how to inject GBA and other games into 3DS

kurapika folder (bottom left folder) contains videos and movies! i figured out how to convert them but it's so hard to find download links to the movies i like now :(

also did you know the first 3 volumes of hunter x hunter are on the japanese eshop? i can't read japanese but i keep them because i like the novelty of it

leorio folder (bottom right folder) is my homebrew and miscellaneous stuffs! self-explanatory -w-

if you have any homebrew stuffs you wanna recommend, tell meee

eek, asks only allows 10 pictures apparently so i'm gonna send another one because we're not done yet!!!!

Happiness is so awesome the crows wants an encore so i shall deliver ohoo

activity log :D i love that the 3DS has this so we can all look back on memories and such

and that's the day when i first got Happiness!!!! i was pretty late to the 3DS party but i stiiiillll love it if you couldn't tell i really love pokemon and that's why i wanted a 3DS so bad lol i don't think i will ever be as excited as i was holding Happiness in my hands for the first time qwq

yknow, i still don't know how this happened

and that's all from meee if you have any questions or wanna tell me something, go to my ask box because i don't wanna clog up three-dee-ess's notifs!! thank you for having me

----

galaxy style n3DSXL

thank you so much for the tour >:3c I loved reading through all of it! In depth tours like this are super interesting to me so thank you for sharing!! it makes me really happy.

I'll need to find my red 3DS again so I can share my own stats, since my grey one I use to mostly play puzzle game titles like picross, not any like, RPGs.

[lutethebodies]

The Boys Are (Tactically, Therapeutically, and Non-Lethally) Back In Town

So I know I just made a big whiny deal about trying to make LTB less of an "all-men-all-the-time" corner of BG3 Tumblr, but contradiction is balance, I guess? Seriously though, this multi-Tav run starring three of my Elite Eight (plus a new guy who's seen relatively little screen time) has a real purpose: treating my latest—and most chronically severe—case of restart-itis. Since there's a bit of background and most people won't care, I'll keep the (very text-heavy) rest below the cut.

I've noticed that my restart-itis happens when IRL freelance-design-work sits fallow between projects and when I'm waiting for the next BG3 patch to drop. Ahead of Patch 8, this has been exacerbated by completing the game with a second Tav (because yes Olini finished, modded with her original Horizon Walker subclass, and escaped Faerun-Groundhog-Day for retirement on Shadowheart's farm).

It's also manifested here recently with a few playthroughs that have been excellent for screencaps but (for whatever reason) not compelling enough to totally follow through once I've explored their initial novelty:

Cannor's 22nd run, my first on Tactician (stalled at the créche)

Oops All Elf Ladies, a multi-Tav with Minthara, Kagha, Florrick, and Naoise (stalled after saving the grove)

Wood Elf Minthara (aka Morenthara) with hired gun Fauxrin (human Orin), stalled on Day 3

The latter two remain interesting and I'll surely revisit them (for obvious thirsty reasons), but I feel like I've been neglecting a few non-BG3 creative projects I'd like to do this year (not to mention my first fic that may or may not happen), so I need to place a lot more friction on my BG3 hours before it takes over my life the way it did in fall 2023 when I was stuck at home recovering from Covid.

That's where my boys come in. They're ideally gonna impose friction in this playthrough by helping me take on three concurrent challenges: 1) managing romances for four separate Tavs, 2) trying to go through the game with Non-Lethal Damage always on, and 3) doing it at Tactician level, which I've only tried once before. Three tall orders, to be sure, so there are caveats related to each one:

Couples Therapy

Four separate romances is a nightmare to manage. I mean, the last time I tried this I had to make a spreadsheet. It might require lots of party-switching while each guy takes his respective date (Cannor/Minthara, Ruy/Lae'zel, Farago/Shadowheart, Daven/Karlach) out and about to get to know each other better (aka flagrantly mine approval).

This will ideally impose severe limits on what any given adventuring day accomplishes, and might even help me impose a sort of "one in-game day per IRL day" rule on my BG3 time. "Couples Therapy," then, but for my video game addiction and not for my pixel dolls' well-being.

No Needless Death or Cruelty

Non-lethal damage won't help me 100% of the time, of course—for plot reasons some enemies can't just be knocked out—but given the above romance details this will probably be a grove-saving and not grove-raiding run. So Cannor doesn't get his on-screen night with Minthara, but that's been visually buggy for me for a while now (weird torchlight glitches effectively black out much of the scene) and he'll be reduced to a wingman for all of Act 1.

That's fine because this'll be his 23rd escape from the nautiloid, and for a silly reason this might be his last run before retirement (saving some photo-mode excursions): 2023 was the year I released my mandocello-music project of his seven best songs, an accomplishment I'm still really proud of.

A final note on non-lethal damage: it won't apply to undead, because I've always feared and loathed those monsters and, well, they're already dead. Destroy them with fire and radiation! That might become an issue in Act 3 with the 7000 vampire spawn, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Tactician, For Real This Time

Cannor's 22nd start introduced this to me—in a slightly modified form where I didn't disable Free First Strikes—and I'd had more downed characters more often than ever before. Death is relatively gentle in 5e/BG3, but for obvious reasons it's still a bit stressful, so trying Non-Lethal at this level of difficulty is gonna require much more stealth/subtlety.

That'll manifest in each character's build: Cannor will be Lore this time instead of Swords, so he can focus on control spells and be the "mage" of the party (Gale, Astarion, and Wyll likely won't see much use, if they're recruited at all). Ruy and Farago will need more face skills to mine approval, so their ability scores will shift a bit (and Farago will revert to his 5e class of Rogue, trying to get as close to his 5e Scout subclass as I can). They'll have modded camp clothes galore, and four chests to hoard with, so trading all that extra gear for supplies instead of killing for gold might help too.

And new guy Daven the paladin (more on him later, perhaps) will change from his 5e build of DEX-based Oath of the Open Sea to a more conventional Vengeance/STR build. That'll beef him up a bit (allowing me to use Body Type 4 for the first time as I don't really prefer to play Big Dudes), but it'll balance Karlach a bit so that's fine. He'll still use Umberlee's dye, though, because ex-pirates who target their erstwhile shipmates must maintain some standards.

Speaking of pirates—finally, it's not that big of a deal but I justified the all-straight-male run to myself with one very flimsy caveat: when Patch 8 drops, Zafraia the Bandit is waiting in the wings to swash every buckle from Ten-Towns to Athkatla, and coincidentally every other character of mine waiting to play their original 5e subclass (conveniently included in the next patch) are all women: Sianed the Stars druid, Vashti the glamour bard, and Qiranna the hexblade warlock.

So an all-female multi-Tav run will balance out these boys eventually, but for the next several months this blog might be Very Dudely. Thanks in advance for your patient indulgence.

[blurredfloweryblood]

ironically one of the things keeping my mouthwashing fixation still breathing are the alien movies (1 and 2) Not only because they also bring the point of corporations taking advantage of their workers as replaceable tools, dehumanizing them to pieces of meat for the real super from (the xenoform), but also, because of it's amazing way of replicating through science fiction, something entirely possible. Normally I steer away from sci-fi movies since they are sometimes too convulted and in my opinion pretentious, but alien is perfect. Just absolute perfection in its critique of capitalism and corporations, as well as how everything is out of control for the crew. Since they are workers that are dependable of higher ranged people, they have to trust the company, there's no other option. They are all already conditioned, which also sends the plan in motion. Perfectly calculated movements with people used like chess pieces that are cast aside "eaten" If you will.

I just like both Mouthwashing and Alien because they bring very amazing points with elements from space. And especially in space, where nobody can see you. And if nobody knows what happened, does it mean that it happened at all?

Also, Alien 2 is a great way to bring back the concept. If they couldn't get their alien at the first try, what makes you think they won't try again? Better yet, what makes you think they haven't been trying? Or that they would let Ripley, the one witness who knew what the company was after live peacefully? It brings elements, diversifies them, and does it so well.

What Romulus brings to the table is also a good concept. Corporations are born from the skeletons of other companies. The objectives are sharper, harsher. The conditions go from worse to downright horrific. And when you push people who are looking for better lives, dangling the possibility of freedom close enough that they can see it, but far enough so they don't get it. They work more, they won't think about escaping the system because they will think of the hours, and then, they will forget and work and work and work.

The desperation of wanting to get out, sometimes leads to poorly made decisions. I'm not blaming Tyler or Rain or anybody from the movie, since that's the point. They are clawing their way out, and some way or another, the companies still have a way to haunt them. I still think the execution of said concept could've been better.

Both Mouthwashing and Alien show us where we are going, and where we are. The taking of responsibility is almost impossible for those who either don't care, or are to high on the ladder to even notice it. They are all dead pixels with moves that they don't even know that are planned. There is no such thing as fate itself. Fate is the word invented by people who want to tell you there's only one way to live and they will tell you how.

Men will tell you that fate is for everyone. And you can't choose. Ironically, you'll believe it at some point, because for them to not have blood on their hands, they want to make sure that you doom yourself. And what better way to take your life away, that promising to give it back?

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #325

I'm definitely going to need to send my laptop away to get the screen replaced; it has seen much better days:

It's still kinda holding together. But there are lines of dead pixels on the bottom left side, so I imagine it's only a matter of time before the screen goes completely kaput. Lame...

I wasn't nearly as productive today as on previous days. I think doing all that cooking and all those dishes really pissed off whatever's wrong with the upper right quadrant of my body (at this point, I suspect serratus posterior superior dysfunction of some kind...). When I went to PT today (weird day of the week for it, I know...), the trapezius and the rhomboids on my right side got mashed up, and now the whole area is super pissed, and it's kinda hard to move or breathe or do anything.

On the bright side, I did get to talk with that Canadian immigration lawyer today. I'll tell you all about him, but after I get his permission to do so in this space.

Still, I have the first few steps of the process of getting out of here outlined. First, we have to take an English test called an IELTS, and also get our academic credentials evaluated by a Canadian company of some kind, in order to make sure they're up to snuff for Canadian employers.

Well, as it turns out, we cannot take the IELTS without passports. And, though J and I have ours, M's expired over a decade ago, so we had to go to an appointment to get a new one. It's not going to get to our house for another 6-8 weeks, though. We'll have to wait before we schedule the test. But we should be able to get our academic credentials evaluated. I'll look into that process tomorrow.

...I forgot to eat for most of today. Before leaving for physical therapy, I did stuff a couple slices of cold cuts into my mouth, but that's hardly substantial. My appetite has been kinda weird these last couple days. At around 7pm or 8pm, though, I remembered that my body needs fuel. So I made a salad:

It's got mixed greens, tomatoes, onions, black beans, goat cheese, scrambled egg, and crushed Fritos in it. And then I put ranch dressing on top. Want some...?

I made some tea to go with it; that vanilla bean macaron tea. Here:

...These aren't the best swirls, I know. I think the focus must have been off, and I didn't notice until it was too late. Sorry about that.

…

...I spent most of the rest of today just floundering, partially numb, and foggy of brain. I wanted to play Oddworld, but... I just couldn't bring myself to. I wanted to doodle, but... I dunno. Even with a plan spelled out and things to tentatively look forward to, it's still kinda hard to think.

I guess I'm still a little sad that so many people voted for someone who wants to kill me and my little family and almost all of the people I love.

...I just... want to live a life in which everyone gets to be happy and safe. And I know that this could happen if everyone worked together, but there's so many different people with so many different kinds of trauma, and all of them have their own ideas about which kinds of people do and don't deserve to live (there's no such thing as a person who doesn't deserve to live). I wish for a world in which it was easier for folks to cast aside the conditioning they received that teaches them to associate the worth of themselves and of others with silly, arbitrary things.

We are all the same in that we want to live in peace with people we love. And given that everyone wants that, it shouldn't be so hard to do, but... a lot of people get taught that the only way they can live happily is if some other group of people defined by arbitrary characteristics didn't exist, and... I think that's really sad. It's really sad that some people truly do believe, for example, that the only way they can be happy and safe is if every single person with dark skin and every single person who was ever at any point related to someone with dark skin ceased being alive.

...I just wanna live someplace where we aren't near people who would be happy to kill us. I think everyone wants that. And this shouldn't be a difficult thing to find in my world, but... here we are.

...Well. One step at a time. We'll follow the immigration process one step at a time, and hope for good things. But... ya know. If there's any chance you can just “zoop” us all over to where you are... I certainly wouldn't be opposed. You could use the company. And I could use a nap.

No, I know; it's impossible. I know. But it's still nice to think about. I'll just keep making preparations to protect my little family, and I'll do whatever I can for the others around me in the meantime. I'll write the steps to the immigration process as we go through it; maybe it'll help someone else, somehow.

Suppose I'll stop writing for today. I feel like if I keep going, I'm gonna ramble on ya (if I haven't already). And I feel like I'm a bit too weird in the brain right now to express myself particularly well in any case.

Don't worry. I'm tired and feeling kinda sad and lost, but I'm not down for the count – not while I have people to protect.

Tomorrow is when M and I decided to celebrate our wedding anniversary this year. It'll be our 10th year of marriage, though we've been together for 12. I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. I can't believe he hasn't gotten tired of me yet, hahaha...

We're gonna go to a sushi place to celebrate. It'll be me and J and M all together at the place we ate on the day we got married. Maybe I'll tell you more about that tomorrow.

I love you a whole lot. And I'll write again tomorrow. So please stay safe out there, okay?

Your friend, Lumine

[dostyaak]

please yap about hinako king 🙏

Ough... What have you done?

Oh God... This is going to be loooong.

The fake Hinako was always an interesting character to me, I've always liked how she acted, and I mean EVERYTHING.

Her personality, her plot, her character development (Even though it was pretty short, I still loved it), her design HECK, EVERYTHING I don't know what happened, she's one of my favorite dummies, I just really love her character, she's funny, she's interesting and she's an asshole, my favorite tropes <3 /j

With that, I started craving more content about her, eventually looking for fanfics about her, I was just curious to see what the fandom was doing with my fav I found some cool fanfics, some pretty good, some mid, some I didn't even dare to read just because of the tags, every kind of thing

Until. I found a fanfic about Real!Hinako.

(This fanfic to be specific: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45710128/chapters/115030948)

I know this post isn't a fanfic review but I gotta say, I didn't finish the fanfic... It was an OK fanfic, not extremely good but not horrible, just... Fine

Anyway, something on that fanfic sparkled in my heart, something about reading about a suicidal girl surviving a Death Game and slowly regaining will to live was incredible.

I started to think about the stuff I didn't enjoy the fanfic, Real!Hinako is a character that we have NO INFORMATION about, so the author did whatever he wanted, giving Hinako a backstory about how her father killed her only and best friend, hence why she's suicidal

It was an good lore but I didn't liked it that much, something about it didn't sat me right, so I thought "What would I do if I wrote a fanfic about her? That was my mistake.

I started to think about what would I do, how would I do, what events would happen, what wouldn't, who would she trust, who she wouldn't, how would her suicidal tendencies effect her, how would she regain her will to live, etc etc

I wrote a whole ass backstory about her, I started writing a first chapter for a possible fanfic about Hinako surviving the Death Game, about how she would become friends with Ranmaru and Anzu and that would help her feel alive again, I wrote and drew A LOT. (I lost most of those drawings because my computer broke, but I had like THREE WHOLE 2500X2500 PIXELS CANVAS JUST FILLED WITH DOODLES OF HER)

Also about her backstory that I created: Basically, Hinako had a normal family with a mom and a dad, the classic "butter advertisement family", y'know? Her dad worked for a well-know pharmacy bussines... ASU-NARO, did he know about how inhuman ASU-NARO was? Kind of, but he gained enough money to protect and give a good life to the people he loved the most, his wife and his daughter, so he could overlook wha they did, besides he didn't know everything, he just knew the tip of the iceberg, if he knew everything he probably would've stopped... Right? That doesn't matter, eventually he started to notice that ASU-NARO was looking throught his family, investigating and stalking his wife and daughter, and on a desperate move to protect them, he asked for a divorce, which left Hinako's mom in shambles, she started to develop a hatred for her husband, he never told her what went wrong, why he was going away, what could she do to be better, he was just... Gone As for Hinako, she also didn't knew anything, but she couldn't hate her father, he was such a good person, such a good father, her only friend, the person she trusted the most... How could she hate him? They would meet up during the weekends, and every time Hinako asked why he went away, he would alway say the name thing "It's for your own safety, dearie..." He became more and more distant each time, eventually he stopped meating up with Hinako, stopped answering his wife's calls, stopped calling Hinako's mom, completely fed up with his cold shoulders, decided to go to his house to settle things up with him The scene she saw... Her ex-husband... Hanged... Dead. Hinako never saw his body, thankfully, but that didn't mean his death didn't affected her family Her mom became even more distante and angry, angry at her husband, angry at Hinako, she couldn't help but feel angry at her, she just... Looked so much like him, looking at Hinako reminded her of her husband, that made her so annoyed About Hinako, she became more distant of her friends, she didn't felt like talking with anyone, she missed her father so much, she tried to hate him hoping that hate would made her feel something different, but nothing, she just felt so... Miserable "One day... I'll be with you, dad..."

GRRRRRRRRRRRR I FUCKING LOVE THIS BACKSTORY I GAVE HER, I CAN'T EVEN EXPRESS ENOUGH

I think what made me love her more was making this backstory, it just made me feel so connected with her, creating a story and carefully putting stuff together just so I can make sense of her character is so... Amazing, I loved it

Will I write that fanfic I said I started? Probably, I really want to, I have a lot of stuff planned to it, I just need to start writing

Anyway, have some HinaDoodles

My daughter :]

[lusi-raul]

I’m making another compilation video and while I was gathering clips I noticed the difference in how some eggs cope with boredom. Like I get it since during parts of the streams where their parents are having a long ass conversation with each other it reminds me a lot of my younger self when my mom catches up with her friends or relatives and I have to sit there listening to the conversation giving my mother subtle hints that I want to go home cause I was so bored out of my ass which is of course ignored every single damn time lol. I guess that experience is such a universal thing that it also applies to pixelated egg children in a block game 😂

As far as I’ve seen these are how the eggs deal with boredom.

Chayanne: when he’s bored out of his mind he digs out a pattern on the ground and replaces it with potato crates, creating a checkerboard pattern of potato crate and whatever the original block on the ground is. Chayanne also likes to jump around a lot whenever he’s bored.

Tallulah: Tallulah just lays down flat on the ground whenever she’s bored. This happens a lot when Phil is having a conversation with other people and she is left with nothing to do or add to the conversation. Sometimes she uses the idle time as a chance to organize and reorganize her backpacks.

Ramon and Dapper: I don’t follow them enough to know more about their individual coping mechanisms to boredom but I know that Ramon likes to climb things and use his potato launcher to shoot random things a lot. I don’t know much about Dapper but the twins together like to use their grapple thingy and hang around in a room like an egg piñata. Both of them also Mary Poppins out random machines from their pockets and work on that while adults are talking.

I’d love to follow other eggs too but I’m just not capable of following all Cc’s povs. I’m upset because I think Pomme is such a cutie patootie, Leo is such an egg full of personality, and of course our wonderful artist Richas is so funny to watch with all his dads but I don’t know much about them but I really want to. I really don’t think I have a favorite egg but I have eggs that seem like my faves because their parents are the ones I watch the most and thus I know more about them than other eggs but seriously considering it, all the eggs, dead or alive, I adore equally in my heart.

So if you guys can help me out by telling me everything you know and love about each of the eggs, even the ones who left us (still hoping temporarily), please reply or add to this post. In the future I want to make a huge thread post of all information about the eggs like the ones above focusing more on exploring each egg’s personality and preferences. I love how they are played by actual admins and thus each have their own distinct personalities and contribution to the lore.