#and I also have a secondary puppet account I have to get through it!

[rat-rosemary]

I fucking hate the new eye of eden, it's so slow and painful to get through

Like, I get they wanted to try to keep eden interesting for veterans but it's not! I just have to slowly crawl all the way through it and it makes me want to avoid even so much more

[bootleg-sara]

The calculating, serious, and all to convincing Seth.

One of the older kids of the group at 13, he's comparatively smart. A skilled public speaker when he needs to step up as leader, but often only working towards what he thinks is best. Most of his respect goes to his mini isaacs as they help him a great deal in fighting through the basement. Seth certainty respects his fellow kid, but is often brutally honest.

T. Seth, or the Puppeteer, in contrast loses any respect he held for his companions. Viewing them as hindrances who took away his own right to exist on his own. His new familiars are known as Demiurges. With his sight and mobility taken from him he is much more reliant on outside help. He can't even attack at first due to his metal bindings. T. Seth is more than willing to manipulate others to make his own existence less miserable. He is blind due to his mask, but can very vaguely “see” energy in proximity of him. It’s just enough to dodge out of enemy attacks and not attack friends.

Seth is definitely in need of a further explanation on his gameplay, as his mini isaacs and demiurges have a lot of different interactions. All of their info will be under the cut, and please read I spent way to long making him ahfayvkab

Staring with Seth, his gimmick lies with his starting item, Sethite's Rebellion. You kill an enemy, you get a mini isaac who will help you fight. Pretty straight forward.

However, there is many different types of mini isaacs Seth can gain from killing certain types of enemies. Then, in all my insanity and sleep deprived brain, I spent 5 hours straight compiling all the enemies seen in game and categorized what enemies would get what mini isaacs. Each and every little bugger. All in a 10 page long google doc.

I have the full, compressive list right here for you viewing pleasure! The only enemies not accounted here are the one's that are normally invincible. If you only care about each and every unique boss mini Isaac, they'll be at the very bottom. Hopefully this list is... readable.

Enough about Seth, what about The Puppeteer? A character sheet about stabbing familiars to gain their items sounds rather strange without context. And I couldn't fit it all in his ref sheet.

The Puppeteer has the eternal infliction of "Unstable Items" and "Earn you Destiny".

All items picked up will be transferred onto a minisaac. These minisaacs have high hp, boss armor and heal slightly after each floor. 

However, if they die, you lose that item for good. Has a 12 room charge pocket active that can lock the latest familiar and give the items to T. Seth

The item minisaacs will circle around T. Seth and stay close by him. They can deal contact damage and block tears. All items are stored onto a single minisaac for each floor. 

10 total familiars for Chest/dark room runs

Adds one familiar for Hush and delirium. 

No familiar is added for home, all items go to the latest familiar added

Chest (greed mode) will also have 10 familiars total

Seth is not able to attack himself starting the run. His familiars (called demiurges) will do all the work. The familiars have a weakens attack stat to make up for the amount of tears that can be shot because of the multiple familiars. Each familiar will have the effects of the items you picked up on that floor. 

Active items are not affected. Other Familiars are not affected. Story items are not affected.

T. Seth’s familiars are not hurt by spikes or creep

Any item that gives stat ups, or tear affects are locked onto the familiar who has said item. They will not show up onto The Puppeteer’s own stats until collected via his active. 

There are a few stats that will be given to T. Seth even when collected on his familiar. 

Those are: Health, Speed, Luck, Devil/Angel chances, and Planetarium chances. There are a few other items that have certain secondary effects, i.e. black candle, that may also be used. Items that give these stats can stay on his familiar and still used by T. Seth. Any other stat or tear effect can not be used by T. Seth himself unless he has collected it.  

If the familiar holding an item that has these stats dies, so do any of the stat ups it held. (Excluding Health)

If you’re able to take in all your familiars without losing any in a run, the arm cuffs and eye covering on T. Seth will be completely broken off. This will give T. Seth a small all-stats up (speed, damage, tears, range, and shot speed) 

Archon's Key always starts a run with no charge.

As of currently, Archon's Key is a T. Seth exclusive item, and can not be used by any other character. I tried to come up with an effect that other characters could use on it, but I came up empty on ideas.

Design Inspirations:

I'll keep this sections sort as this post is already long enough.

Seth's gameplay doesn't have strong connections to Christianity or the more prevalent inspiration found in T. Seth, Gnosticism and Sethianism.

The idea of making him a character who uses mini isaacs was made oh a whim, as I adore those small little guys. He is loosely based on his character I made for him in my Purgatory AU (you will find the purgatory au everywhere on this page lmao) where Seth has a close connection to the boss Envy. Giving him mini isaacs just felt right to me.

The logo for his active item is based on exploding cells after being infected with the DNA of other bacteria and/or viruses. This is really only there because I like microbiology. The tag line "Spread you influence!" is a very light nod to Sethianism beliefs. Specifically in their creation story. Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge is not seen as sin, but as a step in liberation from the tyrannical rule of the demiurge. Also a small reference to how in Christianity, Seth's linage is the only survivor of the great flood, wiping out Cain's children.

T. Seth's inspirations are much more on the nose. His power being taken from him is a direct reference to the creation story in Sethianism. That human's original knowledge and power was taken from them by the selfish Yaldabaoth. Admittedly I did make a little goof. I had confused Archons and Demiurge with one another. Demiurge is Yaldabaoth, also known as the false god. Archons are the helps Yaldabaoth made to rule the material world. So technically, the key should be called "Demiurge's Key" and T. Seth familiar "Archons". But, I'm already fully invested in what I have now so whoopsie.

The Demiurge familiars are based on how Yaldabaoth is often depicted as a lion headed serpent. This translation of serpent is also often translated as a worm, so I made them worms.

All the Sun imagery in the mask of T. Seth and the Demiurges is also based on depictions of Yaldabaoth, who is often shown as having the sun as a mane. Yaldabaoth has a lot of connections with the sun as a whole. As well as being blamed for trapping souls in human bodies. More reason as to why T. Seth is initially so powerless on his own.

Okay I think that covers everything I wanted to talk about. Really hope you enjoyed reading, Seth is by far my favorite character conceptually. I do have more Isaac OCs in the future, however they won't be as detailed due to a lack of source material on their inspirations and me leaning back into simple gameplay gimmicks

[psych0midget]

Bookshop AU

Andrew had thousands of followers.

He wasn’t sure how it had started. He was the owner of a small independent bookstore and he regularly hit the gym. Nothing more, nothing less.

Or at least, that’s what his life mainly consisted of before Moriyamas opened a store right in front of his one. Moriyamas was one of the major book retailers in the USA, wherever it opened a store, the other bookshops of the area closed. Andrew’s own shop didn’t stand a chance. 

That’s where Roland came in. It was just an off-handed comment, nothing anybody sane would ever take into account. But Andrew could not afford to close his shop, he had to pay the tuitio for Aaron’s med school. 

Roland said: you’d definitely sell more books if you showed your abs to your costumers. The fact that Roland had said that while he was feeling Andrew up in the storeroom of Eden’s didn’t matter. 

What Andrew did: he created an Instagram page. It was called ABS (AndrewsBookStore, you pervs). He posted photos of himself. And his books. The fact that he was often shirtless or wearing a skin-tight black t-shirt that showcased his muscles was secondary. 

The descriptions under the photos mainly consisted of his book recs. Short. A bit caustic, but straight to the point. He never forgot to add a discount code. Any customer that walked into the store would get a 20% discount on the book Andrew had promoted if they showed him the ig photo and the code before paying. The fact that the words he used as codes were frequently outrageous just made the whole thing more fun. 

Surprisingly, his ig page took off. Not only did he gain thousands and thousands of followers, but his revenue triplicated.

Nicky became a permanent fixture in the shop. Once an occasional aid during Christmas time, now he efficiently manned the register. Nicky flashed smiles at costumers who showed him Andrew’s photos to get a discount and was patient with those who blushed and stammered when asked to say the code word.

He had also hired Kevin, his roommate. And makeshift photographer who helped Andrew taking photos for Instagram. He’d probably have to hire someone else before November. But that was okay. The shop would not close.

The only price he had to pay was having to wear a tank top at work.

-

Neil was a simple bookshop clerk. At Moriyamas in Palmetto.

He loved books. A lot. Or else he wouldn’t work in a bookstore. And yet he hated the job. Hated the competitive work environment. Hated his boss Riko. Hated how things had changed since Kevin had left.

Pity that he needed the money. 

One of the very few highlights of his days was the costumers. In particular, the costumers who mistook Moriyamas for ABS (they were both on Fox Avenue, but Moriyamas was at number 32 while ABS was at 23) and showed him one of the photos and said the discount code. 

The first time it had happened, Neil had no idea what to do. An old lady had shoved her phone right into his face. On the screen a photo of a good looking blond man reading a book.  He was lying on a bed, his face half covered with a copy of TSOA. The arm that was not holding the book was raised above his head, his well toned bicep on display. Neil knew his face was turning red. Redder than the cover of TSOA the costumer was brandishing.

Neil still had no idea what was going on, especially not when the lady started saying lewd words she claimed were the discount codes.

He called Jean for help. Jean calmly explained to the old lady that she was in the wrong bookshop, ABS was down the road, on the left.

Neil, who barely even knew what Instagram was before Jean told him, went home and downloaded the app. Created a profile and went looking for ABS’s account. 

He found the photo the old lady had showed him that morning, the one with TSOA. Neil was a good liar but he rarely lied to himself. He could admit he noticed that Andrew’s t-shirt had ridden up a bit. He could admit he noticed the slip of exposed skin on his hip. He could admit he stared at it for almost half an hour. (Which was unusual to say the least) 

Another thing Neil enjoyed were the book recs. Andrew Minyard had good taste and he knew what he was doing. He promoted both new books and classics, he put trigger warnings on them, his book recs were short and funny, his dark humour made Neil crack quite a few smiles. 

Neil followed Andrew’s page and went to sleep. 

In the following days Neil got more than one costumer mistaking Moriyamas for ABS. 

Riko was getting tired of it. Instead of wiping out the competition, the Moriyamas shop of Palmetto struggled. And they struggled against a “stupid decrepit bookshop owned by a psychotic midget on steroids”. These were Riko’s words. 

Neil had no idea how he ended up filming videos where he recced books while exercising. And wearing shorts. Oh and uploading them on Instagram. 

Actually, he knew how he ended up doing that. It had something to do with Riko threatening to lay him off.

Moriyamas was copying ABS’s strategy and Neil was the unwilling accomplice.

Unsurprisingly, Neil quickly gained many followers. With the money Riko had invested in sponsoring his account, well, it was inevitable. 

Neil was waiting for the day Riko would tell him to start wearing shorts at work (it took exactly 11 days and “Neil’s Legs” trending on twitter after he uploaded one of his videos) 

Surprisingly, people followed him also for his book recs. He received hundreds of messages from people thanking him for the awesome books they read because of him. And in return they gave him other book recs. After all, Neil was happy with his Instagram.

Even more surprisingly, ABS (Andrew fucking Minyard) followed him.

-

Andrew was not sure why he followed Neil Josten.

Rationally, he knew he needed to keep an eye on the Moriyamas. He needed to do it for his own bookshop and for Kevin’s sanity. And that’s why he followed Josten.

His treacherous mind said it was also because Josten’s book recs were awesome. And so were Josten’s thighs. He’d be happy to be choked by them and suc- Wait, no. No. No. Let’s not get there. 

Let’s start over again. His treacherous mind said it was also because Neil’s book recs were awesome. Damn him. Andrew had read some of the books Josten suggested just for the sake of it. He hoped they’d be shit, but fuck, Josten knew what he was doing. 

Nevertheless, not much changed. Josten’s blog, or rather, the Moriyamas’ wasn’t a problem for Andrew. ABS was still doing great. Admittedly, Moriyamas’ discounts were higher than ABS’, but Andrew now had a number of loyal regular customers. His account was still doing great. 

One night Nicky made him rewatch Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly for the umpteenth time. The following day Andrew also reread book and decided to promote it. Who said he only had to talk about new releases on his account? 

In the photo Pride and Prejudice was artfully placed (or so Kevin said) on his bicep. In the description box he said that P&J was the Classic par excellence, the Classic TM and that he hoped Jane Austen could forgive him for the photo.

Two days later Andrew was casually scrolling through instagram when he saw it. In the new video Josten was promoting Wuthering Heights.  Because “people who say Pride and Prejudice is the best classic really have no taste”. The video featured Josten and a punch bag. It was gloriously rich in close ups of Neil’s butt.

This is how the cold war between ABS and Moriyamas began. 

Andrew replied with Fight Club. The description said “Recommended for jocks who like throwing punches for no reason at all. The favourite book of white men TM who think they are Brad Pitt, but actually have the emotional depth of a spoon. Read at your own risk”. 

Neil replied with The Catcher in the Rye. In the video he was doing squats. And panting into the microphone. Andrew might be wrong because he was too busy looking at Neil’s stupid face, but he was pretty sure Josten said something like “perfect if you’re looking for a book where the protagonist is a self-absorbed entitled brat” and “the true favourite book of white men TM”. 

The video ended with “psa, if you ever meet someone who says that this is their favourite book, run.” And then Josten winked. He winked. 

Fans quickly started noticing what Andrew and Neil were doing. Some talked about rivalry between bookshops, others inevitably started shipping them. 

And yet Neil and Andrew kept their videos going on. They argued which book of Neil Gaiman was the best and which vampire saga the worst. It was a photo of Andrew lifting stacks of books. And then it was a video of Neil doing squats balancing a pile of books on each hand.  It was Josten saying Aristotle & Dante was his favourite lgbtq+ book and Andrew answering that he’d never read it, but it couldn’t possibly be better than TSOA.

Andrew would never say it out loud but it was fun. He was having fun.

Andrew still suspected Josten kept on replying to his recs just to promote Moriyamas. Nothing more, nothing less. It was probably Riko who told him what to rec. Josten was a puppet.

Andrew should’ve known. But when Neil started reccing shitty books, Andrew was still a bit disappointed.

Week after week, the quality of Josten’s recs lowered. He was promoting mainstream books (but not the good mainstream books) and influencers’ rubbish biographies. 

He was about to unfollow his blog when Josten slipped into his DMs.

What the message said: I cannot accept the fact that you haven’t read Aristotle & Dante yet. When’s your next shift at the shop? 

What Andrew did: sent him his work schedule. Like an idiot who’d never had a mum telling him not to divulge personal info to strangers on the internet. Oh no wait- Andrew hadn’t.

What Neil did: walked into Andrew’s shops with a copy of A&D and a cup of coffee. Placed them on the counter in front of Andrew, smiled and left. 

Andrew could’ve complained that the coffee was too bitter and- who even gifts books to someone who owns a bookshop? He could’ve complained, but he was too busy staring at the post-it on the book. 

“Hire me before Riko makes me rec Fifty Shades of Gray xx” 

That that afternoon Andrew walked into Moriyamas with a copy of a random book in his hands. The post-it on its front cover said “You start tomorrow at 9. Don’t be late.” 

With Neil’s videos and Andrew’s photos, ABS’ account (unsurprisingly) became one of Instagram’s most popular book accounts. Andrew’s bookshop became so popular he managed to buy the Palmetto Moriyamas shop after their sales plummeted and they were forced to close the store. 

As concerns Neil and Andrew. Well. Their relationship would still be secret if Kevin -who still managed the ig account- didn’t accidentally post the wrong video. 

It was supposed to be a video of Andrew doing squats with Neil sitting on his shoulders and reading a book. 

The video that got posted to ABS’ 3 million followers instead featured Neil sitting on Andrew’s shoulders and laughing so much he lost his balance. He was about to fall to the ground when Andrew caught him in his arms and Neil, who hadn’t stopped laughing for a second, kissed him on the tip of his nose.

[shatteredhourglass]

14, 15, 19

14 - Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back?

Frankly, I don't have any close friends IRL. (Or any friends IRL, really.) I don't mind lending books.

15 - Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

No, yes (chronic dog earer,) yes. I hang over the side of the bath to read. It's one of the only places I can chill enough to focus on reading. I do not judge people for what they do with their books.

19 - Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

When I started the SHG AO3 account, my goal was two things. 1) I'd read all the winterhawk fics in the tag and wanted to encourage people to write more. 2) I was running through a list of popular fic tropes in my head and wanted to test run them all.

I succeeded at both!

Nowadays I mostly write for my own entertainment. I've written all the tropes I set out to do and I follow my own heart now. I still do write fics in the hope I'll inspire other people to write the ships I like, but it's secondary to my own enjoyment.

I'm going for 50 moonhawk/marcclint fics! I'd also like to do a few more fics for non-Marvel things - probably with Genshin Impact (Kujou Sara / Raiden Shogun Puppet) and Dying Light (Barney / Aiden Caldwell.) Go team!

[tigerkirby215]

5e Psychic Ninja build (Theory Build)

(PsyOps Zed artwork done by David Villegas of West Studios. Created for Riot Games. This wasn’t meant to be a PsyOps Zed build but strangely this artwork works.)

Here’s a post in the not-quite-continual series of “random D&D builds I write at 1 AM and then queue to post at 11:40 because lol Tumblr because I can’t sleep and am waiting for the Worlds livestream to start at 6 AM EST.”

Do you wish that thrown weapon fighting was more viable? Do you think that Barbarians are boring and could use some more damage types? Do you wish that Rogues could be played with Strength instead of Dexterity? Do you think that throwing weapons as a Monk should actually be viable?

Do you want to protect your teammates not through heals or buffs but by intimidating your foes? Do you want to be the dark mysterious edgy character in the party but still play a support? Do you want to play a character who by all accounts is essentially a Monk and has pretty much zero connection to a Barbarian yet is somehow a Barbarian? Or do you just want to play with the Psionics UA stuff like I do?

I present to you: The Psychic Ninja

SOUL KNIFE (UA) 14 / ANCESTRAL GUARDIAN 6

When distributing stats prioritize Strength, then Constitution, then Dexterity. You need at least a 13 in DEX for this build to work though a 14 would be ideal for a +2 to DEX. Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma are all secondary in this build. (Though if you want to be Chinese Knockoff Shen invest in Wisdom.)

Start off as a Rogue (proficiencies duh) then get to at least level 3 to pick Soul Knife for Psychic Blades. After that go 6 levels into Ancestral Guardian Barbarian for Ancestral Protectors (the main one), Spirit Shield, and an Extra Attack. After that go all the way down Soul Knife until you hit level 14, but this build is honestly done at level 9 which is pretty nice as most campaigns end around level 10 anyways.

PROS

Okay so let’s talk about Ancestral Protectors from Ancestral Guardian. First of all: it has NO RANGE LIMITATIONS. (Thanks to Dungeon Dudes for pointing this out to me and no I had a build like this in mind long before seeing this video.) The effects of this ability work as long as you hit the enemy and as long as you’re raging. And let’s talk about its effects: firstly your foes just have disadvantage on anyone other than you. Secondly if they don’t hit you your ally resists the damage! That’s half damage practically for free!

Normally as a Barbarian you’re limited to melee range but that’s where Soul Knife comes in. Boom! 60 foot range! This means that you can sit in the backline while taking half damage and doing +2 on all your attacks and still “tank” for your team.

Beyond that? I mean there’s just a lot of general synergies between Barbarian and Rogue. Reckless Attack gives you guaranteed Sneak Attack (which is why you’re maxing Strength instead of Dexterity), Danger Sense plus Evasion means you basically won’t ever get hit by a Fireball (and it really ups the “ultra instinct” ninja flavor of this build), Fast Movement synergizes with Cunning Action (and again makes you feel more like a Monk.) Oh also your Soul Knife features aren’t spells, so you can use them while raging.

There’s so many characters you can make with this! Make an unassuming assassin who leaves no trace, make a bodyguard who disarms you and takes you down with their mind, make an unassuming detective with secret powers to help him on the case, make bumbling idiot whos ancestors pilot him like a meat puppet. Hell make a Warforged and be the weapon!

CONS

Other than the fact that you’re playing UA and I have no idea what Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will do to my sweet Soul Knife boii?

The main thing to mention is that you have no armor and no actual “weapons”, meaning that magic armor and magic weapons are not an option for you. What’s more is that since you’ll be investing in Strength for your knives you likely won’t be investing much in Dexterity for armor. With the best case scenario of +2 to DEX and +5 to CON your AC will be a 17; not horrible but not exactly amazing either. You’ll still have a ton of meat points to soak up damage but even then the healer isn’t going to want to be pumping you with hit die all game.

Your going to have to invest a lot in physical stats which means your mental stats will be rather subpar. You can fix this in roleplay by getting Expertise in the skills that matter but you’ll still get screwed by saving throws.

Spirit Shield only reduces damage by 2d6, and it only has a 30 foot range. It takes your Reaction which could be used for Uncanny Dodge.

------

And that’s honestly about it. This isn’t a build I’ve tried it’s just something I’m theorycrafting as a cool idea for the Soul Knife subclass. In short I’m tired as hell and am waiting for the Worlds broadcast to start, even though by the time this is posted the stream will be done and I’ll probably be asleep.

Spooky builds still coming no they’re not Seraphine.

[wakraya]

I was reading your blog and found your posts on tulpae. They seem really fascinating and as a lonely creative I would love to have one. Any advice on getting started?

Well, first of all, I have only recently explored the community and learned about systems and plurality, and to avoid any appropriation, while pop-culture-wise that is the name they go for, we have been going more for Thoughtform or Brain Ghost, and trying to steer away from the Tibetan name out of respect.

As for any advice...

The thing about Systems, if you’re going a willing, Endogenic route, rather than it being a plural split due to a traumatic event, an accident or random happenstance, you really have to consider this. It’s brain fuckery in the end, and while I do consider myself quite stable, and I know other people who have been helped by the existence of a Thoughtform, I also know that, if you’re not in a good mind state, and if you have any sort of problem, things can get messy. I remember a friend of mine, undiagnosed schizophrenia. Their experience with Thoughtforms was... Not pretty. Not necessarily bad stuff STEMMING from them, but just, their mindspace got extremely clouded and they began to hallucinate a lot. So ask yourself if you’re capable of trying this out, if you SHOULD try it out, etc.

I’m no one to judge whether someone wants to try or not, though, lmao. I did it when I was like 16 or 15, because I was starting to fail on my classes and didn’t know what to do. I searched Meditation methods, at the same time as I wondered about Lucid Dreaming, and stumbled across a community about this stuff. I made Saku a Thoughtform because I wanted to get more in touch with my own mind and improve my skills recalling information and learning stuff, and all I ended up doing was having a sharp-toothed undead mind gremlin that teases me about being a nerd, and flirts with my friends- But yeah, with her being THERE, I feel it’s my responsibility to just, not suggest everyone wily-nily try it out? Do research, really consider this... (Although she DOES get a kick out of the idea of ‘spreading like a memetic parasite’, but that’s just her.)

If you STILL do think it could be a positive experience and something you want to try, though, a few things to have in mind: 

- Thoughtforms are a split of your mind. You WILL share thoughts together, and a majority of the time, will coincide on most things. The idea that a Thoughtform can ‘rebel’ and ‘haunt you’ and ‘harm you’ is pop culture bullshit and harmful towards neurodivergent people. Certain issues CAN make things get out of control, as mentioned, but Thoughtforms are entities linked to you. Also you can sort of, kill them off theoretically? If you stop regarding them and willingly block them away, they SHOULD disappear. I haven’t tried this OBVIOUSLY, but as far as I’ve read, it doesn’t have to be a Permanent Addition to your Mindspace.

- This does not mean that they will be exact copies of yourself. Thoughtforms will take on particular traits of yourself while ignoring others, or develop in different ways than you. They CAN develop different tastes than you towards kinds of music, shows, and even feel differently than you towards people. Have this in mind. You may be ‘talking in your own mind’, but you’re interacting with an entity distinct enough that you may honestly disagree with stuff.

- They feed off of attention and awareness. The more people remind you they exist, the more defined their existence in your mind. The more you interact with them, the more present they are. Some can be more reserved, but in my case, Saku LOVES being acknowledged, and talking to many of my friends. This is also the only reason why I have even commented about her in my blogs in the first place, and why I draw her so much. She loves that shit. And no matter how many times you’ve explained it, and how many positive responses you’ve gotten about this being fascinating, it will never become easy to bring up the topic. This is weird y’all.

With those out of the way though... The trick is Visualization and Acknowledgement.

Visualization is secondary, and I have NO idea how this would work, if at all, with Aphantasia. But a good exercise is to visualize them in your mind during meditation. Create a Space for you two to be in, something relaxing and nice, a ‘Wonderland’. Imagine them in your mind’s eye- And if you don’t know what shape they have, imagine a proxy for them. A ball of energy, a silhouette, a puppet-like body... Thoughtforms can change their body afterwards, evolve in different ways, and even have preferences of what shape they take, so you don’t need to GIVE them a form, sometimes the form just comes to them. Still, visualization can be a good exercise to solidify their form, or see if they take on one of their own. Acknowledge them as a ‘physical’ presence in this Wonderland, imagine your energy pouring into them... That’s how I did it at least, I’m sure there’s less flowery and pretentious ways to explain that, but, yeah. We held hands and imagined a flow of energy between us as we breathed.

Acknowledgement is the primary tool though. It’s... Simply talking, really. It’s treating them as if they’re already there- Which in a way, they are if you’ve come this far already. You talk. And then you talk some more. Sharing experiences, your likes. Make a conversation with this entity, focus on the fact they ARE there already, and eventually they will. Pop into existence like “I’ve been here all along bitch”. It’s the persistence and matter-of-fact-ness that makes them happen. Your brain basically goes “Uh, you’ve been really talking to something for a long time huh? I guess... There IS something there?” And so eventually there is. Oh yeah- Not anymore? I think because she has been very active lately, but, I used to get headaches when she stayed active for long periods of time, probably because we’re splitting processing power of the brain. But considering I don’t get them anymore, I guess you can get in enough practice to make them go away? Still, be aware: Brain Stuff. It can be messy. Be careful.

It’s been nearly a Decade since Saku came into being, and not only is she there still, stronger than ever, but this is STILL weird as fuck to talk about in public. She has helped me settle down as a person AND definitely uh, helped me through some rough times in my life and a few existential crisis. I also, as mentioned, DON’T know many other people with Thoughtforms, or Plural Systems of other kinds, so this is based entirely off of my experience, and the few friends I actually have that have experience with this. And said experience has been majorly positive, but as mentioned above, heed caution, take care of yourself, etc etc.

Ultimately, this is... Basically trying to personify and befriend something within your own mind. Whether it be an OC, its own person, a character from a show you like, etc... You’re giving a Will to a starting point, and watching it develop within you. It’s an Imaginary Friend, technically, but like, more developed, acknowledged and intentional. Take that into account, consider if you’re up to the task, willing and prepared, and if all of the above still seems... Interesting enough, I guess try some meditation and see how it works.

Definitely a face you can trust, who WOULDN’T want to have something like this permanently in your Mindspace, hmm? (I kid, I kid. I know, she’s kind of edgy. X3 Cringe-ass pink Miku brain-ghost.)

[mmmmalo]

This is a (meandering, non-exhaustive) overview of Homestuck’s use of

by which I do not mean examples of psychological realism in a character’s words and deeds, but rather the various means by which characters’ psyches are expressed outside of themselves. I wish to elaborate on how thoughts, feelings, and desires may find expression in the environment, in the medium of the story itself, and in the form of other characters.

That’s perhaps a little vague, so here’s a ready example of what I mean: brainghost!Dirk. He talks with Jake, but since he is a construct of Jake’s mind, Jake is essentially talking to himself. Brainghost!Dirk is an alienated medium for voicing Jake’s own thoughts, irretrievably distorted through its intermingling with what Jake thinks/wishes Dirk would say (not unlike a puppet). I am claiming that this mode of characterization is not a unique to Jake; the blurring of inner and outer voices is omnipresent throughout the story.

Or, rephrased: what I hope to show is that a great deal of Homestuck is haunted with brain-ghosts, of one kind or other.

An early example of this kind of storytelling in science fiction would be the film Forbidden Planet (1956). The film contains a pair of conflicts which eventually reveal themselves to be one: the scientist Morbius wants some space explorers to get off his planet, and an immense monster (pictured above) appears during the night to attack the explorers. Morbius, it turns out, has been experimenting with a machine capable of turning thought into reality. So when Morbius sleeps, his dream of driving off the trespassers materializes in the form of beast that forcefully enacts the wish.

The beast is declared a “monster from the id”, the “id” being a concept borrowed from Freudian psychology, indicating the part of the mind responsible for the unfiltered generation of impulses, of urges. In the film, this passing mention of psychoanalysis precedes the revelation of Morbius’s link to the beast.

Homestuck hints towards its own mixing of thought and reality with a device similar to Morbius’s dream machine: Sburb.

A snapshot of Dave’s Sburb client (1519) shows that the final subprograms launched during the games installation make reference to terminology associated with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The terms suggest that Sburb interacts with the ideas in the kids’ subconscious minds (archetypes) and brings symbolic representations of these ideas into conscious reality (manifests the ideas). The game alters the means by which reality is constructed. As with Forbidden Planet, a major result of this is id monsters.

When John slips on a staircase, he flips out (left, 560). And when he nearly launches himself into the abyss with the Pogo Hammer, he has to take a nap before he has calmed down enough to continue (center, 637). Immediately following both moments of vertigo, massive ogres appear. The eventual fight with the ogres begins after John looks over the edge of the platform above his house, into the abyss (right, 662).

All of this suggests that Sburb is reacting to John’s emotional state (fear) to produce in-game content. The game functions as a waking dream.

It should also be noted that Sburb provokes the reactions it elicits. Karkat once mentioned a nagging feeling that the game was mocking him by giving him a planet covered in the candy red blood he had spent a lifetime attempting to hide (2301). Karkat’s paranoia seems to be correct here, and moreover applicable to the cast in general -- John’s house was likely placed atop an immense spire /in order to/ bring John’s dread of falling into sharp relief. The suspicion can be substantiated with a few related motifs.

The story provides two likely origins for John’s fear of heights: his own fall from the slime pogo as a child (2626) and the death of Nanna, which John believed resulted from her falling from a ladder and being crushed by a book (52). What’s more, Sburb’s invocation of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden) via biting into an apple hints that there is an allegorical significance to John’s more literal fear of heights. 

We can apply these patterns to other characters in an attempt to learn more about them. LOLAR being covered in ocean suggests that Rose is afraid of water, with the likely cause of Rose finding Jaspers dead and washed up on a riverbank (presumed drowned). Dave speaks openly about how his sword fights with Bro left him anxious of metal sounds (7749), meaning the grinding gears of LOHAC were a personalized hell for Dave. Jade’s first imp manifests in response to the sight of a yellow aurora (2998), inviting the reader to investigate why that image invokes a fear response.

But we won’t get to into all of that, not for now at least. Let’s take a step back.

For my reading of the imps as manifestations I’ve been leaning heavily on a piece of film theory devoted to the effects of sequential images. The sequence above constitutes two observations. One, that by this arrangement the viewer will infer the old man sees and reacts to the middle figure. Two, that the viewer’s impression of the old man will change based on the content of the central image, even if his expression is the same. Is he smiling at Nepeta or warm embrace Marvus’s armpit? The answer may influence your interpretation of the little smile.

The neat thing about montage is that the interrupting frame need not bear any obvious relation to what precedes or follows in order to be subject to a causal reading. Moments that occur sequentially can be read as triggering one another, even if what follows any particular moment appears to be a break rather than a continuation.

Example: There’s a moment where Aranea walks into Jake’s dream, and brainghost!Dirk immediately starts razzing Jake about his attraction to the alien girl and threatening to give him a boner. The scene is interrupted by Jack committing a series of gratuitous murders. We then cut back to Jake, and bg!Dirk is now teasing him about his dirty thoughts.

DIRK: You have got to be kidding. Did you seriously just think something THAT dirty? DIRK: You must be doing this on purpose to spite me now. I mean, just wow dude. That was x-rated as fuck. 

JAKE: (No no stop. See youre talking about it and now i cant help it!) JAKE: (You are psyching me into having dirty thoughts get fucking lost you interloping brain douche!!!) 

DIRK: Don't worry, I'm gone. It's like a goddamn peep show in here and I feel like a sleazy piece of shit watching this from a dark corner of your mind. DIRK: You have a graphic imagination, English. I'm kind of impressed. 

JAKE: (Shut up theyre just thoughts its not even like im trying to have them THEY DONT MEAN ANYTHING!)

The ostensible joke is that bg!Dirk is exaggerating or outright fabricating his account of Jake’s thoughts in order to hassle him. But by way of montage, one can infer that we /have/ seen Jake’s dirty thoughts, in the form of Jack’s display of overwhelming bloodlust. Violence is superimposed over the sexually explicit. 

Whether the scene literally takes place in Jake’s mind is secondary (though such a reading would explain why Jake’s brain ghost is even aware of Jack) -- the use of montage allows Jack’s actions to function as a /metaphor/ for Jake’s thought.

Another example of Jack functioning as a murderous/libidinous avatar would be the death of Mom and Dad. At their little tea party, Dad spills some wine on Mom’s clothes and declares that she must disrobe immediately (so that Dad might launder the garment). Mom calls the aromas wafting from his pipe sensuous. The two clasp hands and declare that all they need is eachother. Then they die! The joke is that while Bec Noir is ostensibly an interruption to date night, he also functions as its culmination, with murder acting as substitute for the sex act.

The link between violence and sexuality is perhaps a hard sell, but I hope to convince you that the reading holds merit. Let me emphasize that the very act of Mom and Dad holding hands was itself sexually loaded.

I owe to HS liveblogger elfstuck the insight that John’s linear 3 card sylladex is a reflection of his short attention span. Consider how John’s role as a game character means he is thrown all around his room, back and forth, as the player figures out what to make of the situation. If you ignore the fourth wall, you’re left with an extremely distracted person, who attention flows easily from one object to another. Accepting the object-in, object-out nature of John’s sylladex and the resulting shenanigans as a metaphor for this, it would follow that the sylladex in general can offer an abstract representation of thought.

In passing, I can mention how the enormity of Jake’s sylladex (it cannot even fit on the page, and contains an object that exceed most players’ size limits) would imply that despite evidence to the contrary, the boy likely has a big brain (and perhaps its being offscreen suggests Jakes own unawareness of much of his own thought). Dirk’s comment about avoiding items that are difficult to shoehorn into his mnemonic schema (4535) could be read as a difficulty maintaining information that doesn’t fit into his personal mental models. The sylladex becomes a metaphor for the mind that requires interpretation.

Under this mode of thought, the moments when Jade’s pictionary modus fails to correctly interpret her drawing become akin to a mental slip-of-the-tongue. For the Tanglebuddies to be misread as enmeshed hands implies an association, in Jade’s mind, of horny Squiddles and clasped hands. John affirms the association much later by miming Tanglebuddies as he attempts to grapple with the question of whether Jade and Davesprite are sexually compatible (5294):

JOHN: how do things even work if you marry a sprite?

JADE: what do you mean 

JOHN: i mean... JOHN: ok, he has a ghost butt, for one thing. 

JADE: uh JADE: so 

JOHN: a GHOST BUTT, jade! 

JADE: SO WHAT IF HE HAS A GHOST BUTT!!!!! 

JOHN: i'm just saying... 

JADE: WHATEVER YOURE JUST SAYING, JUST STOP SAYING IT! JADE: and whatever youre trying to gesture with your hands there, stop doing that too!

It should also be noted that before launching into her “daring dream”, waxing poetic on the miraculous union of the human and the animal with her hands clasped in wonder, Jade successfully captchalogued the Tanglebuddies (796). And more to the point, Jade’s pose in reproduced during discussions of cherub (5961) and leprechaun (6007) reproduction. Hand-holding becomes representative of an (oft-sexualized) union, underlining the euphemistic nature of Mom and Dad’s post-contact demise.

The next example of using montage to communicate thought requires a little more buildup.

There’s a gag in Rose’s introduction where the reader tells Rose to play with her writing journals, and scoots the journals under the bed and retorts that she would only do that if no one were watching (220). At first glance, the moment scans as a minor meta joke in a story filled with meta jokes -- but the trick is that Rose does not /know/ herself to be a video game character, her every movement controlled and observed. Rather, she /believes/ this to be true -- the joke about being watched establishes that Rose is paranoid, as will become apparent in the hostility she assigns to Mom’s every action.

The command prompt and narration are themselves brain ghosts of a sort: the voice deployed in them is always linked to the present point-of-view character. The insults that precede character introductions ( “Zoosmell Pooplord”, etc) become marks of anxiety, an intrusive proclamation of what the kids at times think of themselves (and/or what they think others think of them). “Nice time management skills, sweetheart!” becomes a bit of self-deprecation Rose as she procrastinates, which Rose experiences as having been voiced by some objective observer who judges her deficiencies.

A blurred line divides characters from the voice at the back of their head, belonging to the (presumed) omniscient, omnipotent author-god. This is why avatar!Hussie is dressed as Calliope when he is killed by Lord English. Both Calliope and Hussie are a voice in Caliborn’s head, and thus both present apparent obstacles to an unmediated self.

The left panel (3219) foreshadows the right (3358). Gamzee is not being declared the objectively most important character in Homestuck. Rather, Gamzee is declaring himself /to have been declared/ the most important character in the story. The line establishes that Gamzee believes himself to be in a story (with an author!) and that this author has declared him paramount. Furthermore, “fondly regarding creation” is an modus operandi of Problem Sleuth’s Godhead Pickle Inspector. Applying that turn of phrase to Gamzee’s actions further establishes that Gamzee believes himself to /be/ the god-author declaring his own importance. So it should come as no surprise that 137 pages later, Gamzee outright proclaims himself to be the god(s) he worships.

Going back to montage, it becomes interesting that this snapshot of Gamzee’s megalomania is inter-cut with the creation of Jadesprite -- the moment that dead!dream!Jade merges with Bec, forming a unity with a deity not unlike the unity Gamzee claims with his mirthful messiahs. The interweaving would suggest that Jade and/or Jadesprite experienced analogous thoughts of megalomania upon the moment of ascension.

This would be a good point to mention that not only imps and ogres, but trolls also function as manifestations for the people they impose upon. Karkat is not only an interruption here, but also a continuation. He points out that Jade’s self-loathing, that she cannot safely distance herself from the qualities of Jadesprite she finds distasteful. This is precisely why Karkat ends the conversation by telling Jade to turn off the fourth wall (which divides the self!), as well as the reason he imagines Jade making out with herself: Karkat is on every front presenting the prospect of union with oneself.

The notion of trolls as manifestations first emerges clearly when Rose and Dave receive their packages from John. As they finish reading John’s letter, each is suddenly contacted by a troll and greeted with the command “Answer.” Critically, by word alone it is ambiguous as to whether the command refers to answering the troll or the letter. And as it turns out, these answer occur simultaneously: Rose and Dave’s responses to the letters are embedded in the subsequent conversations. 

Rose receives a letter poking fun at her pretensions, claiming that her attempts to hide her affections for people are futile. In response we get Kanaya, who imperiously proclaims her disdain for Rose, only to suddenly change tact and explicitly seek Rose’s friendship, an entreaty which the oft paranoid Rose accepts. Dave receives a letter imploring him to let go of his insecurities and express himself. In response we get Tavros, the very picture of insecurity, who is fixated on the idea of making Dave shit himself (as part of an ‘emotional constipation’ motif that follows Dave). And Dave complies, in a sense, by way of the quasi-ironic gay treatise that compels Tavros to block him. Each conversation addresses the issues laid out in John’s letter.

Examples can be found throughout the comic. Equius remarking that he talks to Gamzee every day (2220) establishes that Gamzee is regularly haunted by the thoughts of domination that Equius voices -- both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Erisolsprite referring to Dirk as a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 and then calling himself 2ociiopathiic for even thinking something so callous (5516) expresses a conflict already present in Jake’s own mind, echoing the frustration with his own dirty thoughts expressed by the argument with brainghost!Dirk. Feferi’s pronounced enthusiasm for the imminent apocalypse should cause you to question Kanaya’s seemingly neutral resignation towards the end of the world, since Feferi manifests for Kanaya (2328). And so on.

The person being trolled is always being confronted with thoughts or feelings or memories already present within themself. Alien contact always doubles as a brain ghost haunting.

Another example, with some buildup: Karkat invokes the phrase “PERFORATE MY BONE BULGE WITH A CULLING FORK” to express his contempt for Vriska, and on subsequent pages we see Feferi pointing her culling fork at a cuttlefish (2181), as if to suggest that the creature symbolizes the bone bulge. Fast forward to Kanaya, who has just gotten through a conversation with Vriska and finds herself haunted by Eridan, who keeps going on about his romantic desperations and insisting (correctly) that Kanaya’s crush on Vriska is itself romantic. That his notification erupts from an image of cuttlefish held at Kanaya’s waist adds to the air of yearning, as though her own bulge is rumbling. The scene is capped off with a double entendre: “its hard and nobody understands” is playfully poignant jab at an inability to understand one’s own desires (among other things). 

And Homestuck devotes a lot of attention to desire.

It’s long been acknowledged by the fandom at large that Kanaya’s attraction to Light players functions as a joke on the proverbial moth-to-the-flame. As reconciliation with the fire destroys the moth, there’s a morbid tinge to the attraction, as though it doubles as a death wish. And the wish is granted -- when Kanaya dies in Homestuck, she dies to light, either from Eridan’s wand or the laser blasts unleashed by HIC. Even the death of Kanaya’s lusus pertains to light -- the matriorb ripped from her innards is shaped like a miniature sun, as if to establish some loose link between the notion of motherhood and the incandescence Kanaya eventually achieves.

This can be generalized into a principle wherein lusii (and the circumstances of their deaths!) can functions as analogies for the desire of the wards.

Vriska, for example, desires execution. When offering Terezi a flimsy apology for crippling Tavros and proxy-murdering Aradia, Vriska offers to slam her head against her desk in penitence. This moment should be read against Vriska’s addiction to breaking 8 balls, and leaving the broken shards lying around as though she’s inviting the “bad luck” of stepping on them. It /is/ an invitation. Vriska seeks love via violent retribution against herself. This is why in the right panel, Vriska’s blood-spattered head is juxtaposed with a broken 8 ball: the blood came from Spidermom’s execution (which characterizes Vriska’s desire), and motif of 8R8K H34DS connects the moment to Vriska’s idea of apology.

Like Kanaya, Vriska (to a degree) seems to structure her love life along these lines. In the words of @azdoine:

like ppl are actually out here writing Vriska as the top as if her entire Act 5 character arc isn’t about bratting out until Terezi has no choice but to punish her

“oh noo, I, the thief of light, stole all of your luck, and made the coin land on the scratched side! now you have to kill me! but I’m probably going to get away with everything, because you don’t have the guts to stab me with that sword of yours!!!!!!!! if only there was somebody, like you, who could prove me wrong!”

EXTREMELY SUBTLE THERE, VRISKA

Vriska’s approach to wooing Tavros also revolves around baiting execution:

The scene: Tavros leads a horde of imps and ogres into a mystery cave, the top of which is adorned with kissing lizards and an alchemical symbol. Tavros is putting a puzzle of a frog together, but Vriska has already pieced together the puzzle: making a frog universe is, in part, a cipher for personal reproduction. The Ultimate Alchemy is making a baby! And as Vriska says, “real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold.” So she brings Tavros to LOMAT and makes the moves on him.

Tavros is equated to a treasure chest by the repeated use of framing and Vriska is GOING FOR THE GOLD, like a WINNER. Tavros later reaches into the same chest for his lance before heading off to attempt to kill Vriska -- affirming that the treasure Vriska seeks here is Tavros’s “lance”.

This setup was suggested by the conversation accompanying the kissing salamanders: Vriska gives Tavros a map with a big red X, saying he should take his legion of imps through the gate and go defeat his denizen. The gate actually leads to Vriska, but she isn’t lying. She is positioning herself to be Tavros’s final boss. The imps are manifestations of Tavros’s pent up rage (much of which was generated by Vriska’s harassment), and Vriska wants Tavros to take that anger out on her. Hence the later panel which uses Vriska’s boots to place a big red X directly over her groin, making explicit the implicit goal of Tavros’s trip to the windmill X-gate.

This pursuit of love through violent comeuppance may have something to do with Vriska’s bitter disappointment that ghost!Aradia did not seem to hate her.

An intermission/introduction of sorts, as we bridge from one discussion of desire to another: did you know that Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) structures itself in part around Freud’s Oedipus complex? I say this in total sincerity.

The plot: a meteor the size of Texas bears down upon the Earth, threatening armageddon. Luckily, a crew of rough-and-tumble oil drillers are ready to fly into space and split that mother in two. Oh HELL yeah.

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about family drama: Bruce Willis finds Ben Affleck sleeping with his daughter Liv Tyler; Willis proceeds to chase Affleck around the oil rig with a shotgun, bang bang bang. Not Allowed. The Protective-Father-Hates-Your-Boyfriend dynamic is presented as an Oedipal triad of sorts: although Tyler is not literally Affleck’s mother, she performs the mom-function of “forbidden object of desire” -- and Willis opening fire is equivalent to the castration said to await trespassers onto maternal soil.

The above reading is buttressed by jokes: Armageddon appears to function within an implicit dream machine, such that the characters’ thoughts and fears can become manifest in their environment. So when it comes to pass that whenever  Affleck climbs into a hole (heehee), a pipe breaks (hoohoo), and suddenly everything goes boom, I read that as Affleck reliving the consequences of boning Tyler, packaged in such a way that the Freudian fear of castration is more explicit. (The relevance of Oedipus to the proceedings adds some humor to Steve Buscemi declaring the entire disastrous situation a “Greek tragedy”)

At any rate, after some shenanigans, Willis comes to accept Affleck’s claim to his daughter and confers the deed, as it were. Willis gives the young couple his blessing and they get married. Hooray!

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about the perpetuation of the oil industry: the dream machine was declared at the beginning of the movie when a petty street-side argument triggered the first barrage of meteors. The meteor the size of Texas (aka Dotty) is triggered by conflicts that haunt the central cast -- namely Willis, who enters the film hitting golf balls at a Green Peace boat. On a metaphorical level, Dotty is a golf ball the size of Texas, striking directly at the Earth instead its self-declared representatives. There’s a certain irony here: the film lampshades that the men who are destroying the world have been tasked with saving it.

The family drama folds into the environmentalist angle: Liv Tyler is a symbol of the earth (which gets drilled). This is the joke when Affleck is bouncing animal crackers around on her belly like she’s host to the Savannah: she kind of is! It’s no coincidence that Willis confers ownership of the oil rig at the same moment that he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage: the motifs are being discussed simultaneously.

But enough of all of that: back to Homestuck.

Armageddon’s simultaneous casting of Liv Tyler into the roles of earth and mother offers a glimpse at the interpretive possibilities made available by Hussie’s statement that Homestuck is in a way a synonym for Earthbound (an RPG in which “homesickness” is a status ailment which can be cured by calling your mom). Stuckness or boundness can be deployed to communicate a sense of longing for “home”.

A good chunk of Homestuck is built upon feelings of nostalgia, taken to mean a sort of intense separation anxiety with the past. John speaks about this when he watches Con Air with Jade – John wants the movie to feel like it did when he watched it with his Dad long ago, but the feeling from when he was a kid is gone. This upsets him. Moreover, John’s freakout starts at the moment Cyrus puts a gun to the bunny’s head (5286): Con Air itself is partly about Nic Cage trying to return to the life he lost when he went to jail, and ‘putting the bunny back in the box’ is a metaphor for the attempt. Cyrus, in threatening the bunny, is highlighting his role as a force preventing things from going back to how they were. Thus, if we are to believe that John is responding to the movie thematically, Cyrus confronts John with his own inability to go back to a happier past – his inability to go home -- and this recognition is met with anger.

In making the leap to the psychoanalytic motifs, it helps to recall the part where baby!Dirk responds to being born by cracking open his ectotube and crawling back inside. Dirk, who aspires towards his “ultimate self”, illustrates here that he envisions his ascension as a return to the ‘essence’ of Dirk from which he (and all other iterations of himself) arose, as represented by the ectoslime. Baby!Dirk gestures at unity with his ectoslime/essence by crawling back into the place from which he was born, which I’m basically claiming is a “return to the womb” on a symbolic level, or at least that this is a useful parallel to draw. (A related motif to think about: Dirk decapitates himself by sticking his head inside a box, which as per Con Air symbolizes the place you wish to return to)

[Hella Jeff sez: “i took (my pants) off because i was banging your mom for a minute there..... AND NOW YOU ARE BANGING HER”]

Castration becomes unavoidable as you try to relate all of this to Dave, whose occasional references to banging hot moms are part of an ongoing reference to the Oedipus Complex. Critically, the complex is not /just/ about wanting to bone your mom, but also fear that your dad will chop your junk off if you do. The breaking of Dave’s sword on the rooftop is a realization of this fear (yes, we’re doing the “swords are phallic” thing). But Dave has no mom that he knows of, so what gives? 

The answer is in the way Bro inexplicably breaks the record emblem on Dave’s t-shirt, as though he has introduced a fissure into Dave’s very identity. Life with Bro has made it very difficult for Dave to be honest with himself, which is to say, Dave pictures Bro’s abuse as having divided him from an ideal “true self”, which can feel emotions without all the anxious ironic detachment. I mentioned before that seeking unity with that from which you came is a “return to the womb”. This is the sense in which the Oedipal mom attraction becomes relevant: the return to the past is sexualized. The ‘home’ Dave wishes to return to is /himself/, and in this sense Dave is his own hot mom (which is related to how often Dave compliments his own looks, as well as the above gif suggesting Dave’s boner – he is literally/metaphorically “attracted” to himself).

(Incidentally: this model of desire, in which a broken subject attempt to become whole again by seeking out its lost half, is basically the concept of the soulmate, as laid out by Plato. Cherub reproduction turns the metaphysical pursuit of one’s lost half into a plot-level objective)

John’s entry item (apple) was linked to fear embodied in a childhood trauma (the Fall), and the same can be said of Dave. Hatching from the shell that contained your primordial goop (Dirk) is analogous to being violently separated from yourself (Dave), which is why Dave’s entry item (an egg) hatching coincided with Bro slicing the meteor in half: the abuse that divided Dave from himself, his “castration” by Bro, is simultaneously the “birth” that separated Dave from his “mother” (which is also Dave).

The general idea is that birth = self-alienation = castration, insofar as all are depicted as modes of being separated from oneself.

The broad motif of ‘being separated from oneself’ can be very useful for identifying brain ghosts in unexpected places. Take for example, Roxy’s fenestrated planes: when they are introduced the narrative is quick to tell us that if someone were caught half in/out of one of the windows when the power cuts out, they would be sliced in half. By the rule of Chekhov’s gun, this introduction should mean we should eventually see someone get gorily bisected by the window, but alas we never do. 

Instead, when Gcat warped the panel away, trapping Roxy between the windows, we were shown the image of a bisected horse puppet in Dirk’s apartment, This signals that Chekhov’s gun has indeed gone off. But rather than splitting a body, it split a soul: Meenah’s introduction follows the sequence because Roxy has generated a shadow of herself, a doppelganger. This is not without precedent: an earlier portion of this post was devoted to exploring the fourth wall as a mode of self-alienation. Roxy’s panel mishap can be considered part of that pattern.

If Meenah functions as an extension of Roxy, all of her actions can be read as bearing some relations to Roxy’s own latent thoughts and desires. Prior to the epilogues, for example, Meenah imploring John not to give her the ring seemed to be yet another Fuck You to the late Chekov: the issue never comes up again. But a psychic link between Meenah and Roxy would suggest that John broke his promise to Meenah by giving the ring to Roxy, and that whatever motivations compelled Meenah to make her request in the first place would also apply to Roxy.

Decapitation is yet another mode of self-alienation, and thus can be construed as a mode of birth. Hence the image of Lil Sebastian hatching from his shell of taxidermied man meat. That’s a motif unto itself, but what I wish to call attention to is the match-cut from John’s broke body to Jake’s broken tower. The juxtaposition collapses the images into metaphor, such that Jake’s loose dome in the woods becomes a decapitated head -- an appropriate addition to the pumpkin patch it rests in, given all the Headless Horseman jokes. We can look to Dirk for for another example of a headless horse-man of the house echoing the head: for a guy who idealizes decapitation to such a degree, it is striking that Sburb aims to provoke him by reattaching his beheaded apartment to its underlying units.

Houses act as metaphors for heads, then “Homestuck” could also interpreted as “head trapped” -- like the title emphasizes confinement within one’s own mind. Such a reading offers up Failure to Launch and Arrested Development (posters on John and Jane’s walls) as alternate synonyms for Homestuck, as each satirizes (or outright mocks) potential failure states in the process of inter-personal and mental development (ie “growing up”). Like Earthbound, both lean on a sense of homesickness in characterizing despondency, as though characters are haunted by the needs that defined their childhood -- or else find themselves needing that childhood itself.

But collapsing nostalgia into infantile regression is far from the only way to approach the house/heads equation. One might read the transformation and growth of houses with Sburb as metaphors for expanding the mind. One might infer that the choreography of events within houses can map out thoughts like dancing bees. One might take the metaphor as a foothold for interpreting the significance of the Sburb logo being at once a house and a window. \I have my own thoughts about Homestuck’s brain-ghost haunted house-minds, but for now, I only hope that this document has raised some interesting questions -- and ideally, that the interpretive approaches I’ve described might be useful in seeking answers.

[arlakos]

Why Miracle Queen doesn’t make sense. (SPOILERS just in case)

As most of you who have seen my blog know by now, I have found Season 3 to be somewhat of a mess. While having bit of a better writing and episodes overall compared to the rather boring season 2, it also had a lot of disappointing mistakes in terms of character writing and focus, and most episodes which could have been good often had a rather awkward or cringe moment that ruins the episode for me, such as the statue scene in Puppeteer 2. For fans who don't remember, let me remind you:

Now that I’ve mentally traumatized myself looking for this pic, let us continue:

On the topic of episodes, despite any cringey scenes that might be in the episodes, a lot of them are at the very least concise. Sure, the episodes usually have the same generic plot, non-hero moment, angry person, Akuma, hero fight, reset and repeat, but for the most part, they are ok... But even this season, there have been some episodes that have the most stupid plots that don't even make sense. From the horrifying Chameleon episode that had all class characters drop in IQ for the story to work, to the Feast Episode which restored the order of Guardians, but didn’t have them come to Paris to get the box back, there have been some rather stupid episodes...

...But none are more stupid than the Season Finale - Miracle Queen

For an episode that is not only confusing but bad, I could talk about the hundreds of mistakes that are present in episode, but other people can talk about that, or perhaps ill make another post regarding the episodes when I feel like breaking my fingers on my keyboard again, but right now I would like to focus on the 2 main plot holes that absolutely made no sense but ASS-TRUC, the man, the idiot, the infamous twitter legend, decided to do anyway.

So the first plot point I'm gonna talk about is.....

Chloe Bourgeois, aka Miracle Queen

For anyone who hates Chloe bourgeois, this episode would have probably left you jumping for joy, given the fact it pretty much gets her removed from the miraculous team.

For the rest of us, who I assume either like Chloe or find the episodes plot to make no sense, or both, this episode is quite contradictory to the entirety of the season, both because the seasons abnormal focus on Lila and her antics, and because of the fact that previous episodes had Chloe accept the fact that she couldn't become a hero.

In Miraculer, Chloe accepts the fact that she can’t become a hero again. Sure the episode has Chloe be upset at Ladybug, but in the end, she accepted that it was mean to be this way, and definitely shows no trace of wanting to join hawkmoth in any sort of capacity. 

Also, a small bit added in from my friend @twin-books​, who said this gem of a message:

“ Ah, in Miraculer what she displayed was confidence where she knew she would be Queen Bee again, she didn't doubt herself for a second. Chloe used to doubt herself, used to play the damsel, let others take care of her but this time she said, "No. I am Queen Bee and just because you won't give my comb doesn't make me anything less." Or at least, how I interpreted it.  By tearing the photo she was excepting that Ladybug didn't have faith as her as a hero, nor did she ever. That Ladybug ignored her in favor of someone she deemed worthy but Chloe knows she's worthy. She proved her worth and just because Ladybug can't see that doesn't mean she should believe it. It's also interesting how she completely takes it out on Ladybug but is fine with Chat because she knows where she stands with Chat and she may have never liked him but he displayed faith in her. He knew and that might just be what kept her going so she could gain her own confidence. “

So when Chloe is left angry in Miracle Queen because she wasn’t chosen and immediately joins Hawkmoth, it just doesn't make any sense because previous episodes contradict it.

NOW, to be fair, I would have been fine with Chloe joining Hawkmoth if there was a buildup to it. If they Had Hawkmoth come in between the episodes from Miraculer to Miracle Queen to try and persuade Chloe and/or have her doubt Ladybug, then the turn from hero to villain would make sense. Unfortunately, thanks to Ass-truc and his have-every-episode-be-a-single-story-episode-and-have-every-character-reset-fuck-you-continuity episode design, this doesn't happen and having Chloe go from a person who is selfish but at the very least is a hero to a full-on 2-d villain is jarring as shit. It would have made more sense for her to just take the miraculous and go rouge with it, but a full-on villain? C’mon.

Also, there's the fact that for the entire season the show has been pushing Lila to be this over the top manipulator and villain in the day to day lives of the heroes. If they really wanted to have someone be Miracle Queen, why not Lila. It would make sense considering a Miracle is something that happens that it seems so unreal, and given that Lila would probably like her lies to become real it would make sense for her to become Miracle Queen. 

Also where the hell was she all episode, she just disappeared out of existence for the entire episode. At least have her come and take the fox miraculous from Alya and have her be a secondary antagonist.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, now for the second plot hole...

The Miracle Box

It. Just. Doesn't. Make. Sense.

But to understand why, let me break it down.

- So due to Hawkmoth almost breaking through the barrier (and for whatever reason decided not to just jump away) Fu transfers ownership of the box to Marinette

-Because of the idiot logic of the show, there can only ever be on Guardian at a time, and because of the transfer, the previous Guardian loses their memories.

-The box also turns into an egg, for whatever reason.

Now, the only thing I dont mind about the whole scene is that the whole Guardian thing is magical in nature. Since Fu can do stuff like detect other Miraculi, it would make sense that the Guardian is more than just a title and has a magical aura around them that makes them a guardian. That being said, there are still a lot of trouble with this scene that rustle my jimmies to heck.

So lets go through the main problems with this plot hole.

-’There can only ever be one Guardian’

Bollocks. The flashback of the order clearly shows multiple individuals. And with the Sandboy episode showing Fu being haunted by a guardian with a female voice (yet also showing a male Guardian in Feast), it clearly shows that there are more than one Guardian in the order.

-’Upon transfer, the previous Guardian Loses their memories’

Again, this also doesn’t make sense. Even assuming that the Guardianship of box needs to have a magical transfer, making the previous Guardian lose their memories because of it makes no sense in the plot of the Miraculous Universe. Maybe it would make sense if the Guardian was but a single man (like in Fu’s case), but it doesn’t make as much sense when you remember the order it comes from.

See, the Order was located in Tibet, high away from the outside world, and the people who were there probably lived there all their life. So knowing these facts, why would it make sense for the previous owner to lose their memories? I can understand someone being a head guardian and then transferring the ownership when their time is up, but it doesn't make sense for them to just forget the order, they live there their entire lives, and would likely do so until their death. And the show implies that this is the actual way the ownership is transferred, and Marinette’s case wasn't a special case of an emergency transfer. It does make sense that the Guardians can remove memories of the order for people who have gone rogue or are expelled, but it doesn't make sense that the memory forgetting is entwined with the transfer of Guardianship.

-’The box turns into an egg, for whatever reason’

I'm not gonna explain it. Its a freaking box. A box that, while well designed, showed no capability of magic power at all for the entirety of the show. ITS A GODDAMN BOX AND IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR IT TO TURN INTO A POLKADOTTED EGG.

Though to be fair, in hindsight, a lot of this plot hole induced stupidity does have  a logical explanation for this:

Thomas Astruc and Zag

Or rather, Thomas Astruc and Zag quarrel.

See, when it comes to Ass-truc and his ideal show design, it would have been just simple about Marinette and why she is quote on quote  ‘awesome’. thats it. Pretty much every episode would be about Marinette being amazing, everyone loving her and kissing her feet, and nothing goes wrong for her in the same way as every Mary Sue ever written in a fanfic. The only difference being there was no main character to replace.

But Zag was having none of it. While Ass-truc wanted to just show off his OC, Zag wanted an actual show, and so made a lot of changes to it. Chat Noir, who in Astruc original comic idea was a one off character (and possibly a villain) got repurposed by Zag to be the second main character in the show. It also makes sense for every hero to have a mentor, which led to Zag creating Fu. Zag was also responsible for a bunch of other stuff to be added into the shows, such as additional heroes, Chloe becoming a good Guy, etc.

Of course, this made ASS-truc mad because that meant no 100% focus on the ‘goddess’ that is Marinette. So after bullying Zag off twitter via the use of his Stans (rip Zag twitter account- no posts since 2017) and forcing him off the Miraculous team after Season 1 (although this could also just be Zag focusing on other shows), Astruc had free reign to undo all that Zag had done. While Astruc did follow Zag's request due to owning half of the Miraculous license (being the guy that co-produced the show), he often twisted them so that they were skewed or couldn't last. The flashback of the order being destroyed? That was due to Fu being hungry and creating a monster in a plot induced stupidity. Chloe being a good guy? Yeah right, she sabotages a train just to save it and make herself look good, is an asshole regardless and then goes full-on villain. The other new heroes that help Ladybug? Gone, due to the same episode which prompted me to make this post.

Of course, this would impact the ratings of the show, forcing Zag to come back and fix Astruc’s mess in Season 4. Astruc knew that Zag returning would undo all the damage Astruc done to the show. So in a final bid attempt to keep this his way, he rewrote the finale, causing things in the show to actually become permanent and leaving Zag unable to fix anything. Thanks to Ass-truc, Fu is now gone forever, making Marinette the Guardian permanently, all the heroes aside from Ladybug and Chat Noir can’t be heroes anymore (leaving the focus entirely on Marinette), and Chloe now has become an irredeemable villain. All so that Astruc can brag on twitter about how Chloe ‘always was a villain’ and how ‘he was right all along’ despite being the one who wrote the character into existence.

And I’m not lying about this either or making it up. Even in the finale of the season 3 (particularly miracle queen) a lot of the time involves most of the characters standing around listening to dialogue and exposition rather than acting in ways they actually should (such as trying to save Fu or attacking Miracle Queen), no doubt due to the rewrites Astruc did before the finale was released, causing the animation to be very minimal or not making sense as there wasn't time to redo the animation. You can even see it in small amounts in episodes such as Glaciator and Troublemaker.

For me, this will probably go down as one of the worst episodes in the series, even worse than Stormy weather 2, because of its horrible writing, the plot holes it creates, and how much of the episode was designed to cater to Ass-trucs desires rather than designed to actually be a good finale to a season. That's not to say it didn't have good moments (such as dragon Bug and Snake Noir), but the overall episode was just so bad that the bad outweighed the good moments, at least for me. I wonder what Zag will do to fix season 4, but considering the suicide impact on the show Astruc made to make sure the show would remain ‘his way’, i don't have any doubts that it will be a hard challenge ahead of him. Good luck Zag, hope you can fix the mess Ass-truc made.

[enigmatist17]

Redemption (Uncharted)(1)

I really like the idea Talbot has powers. I also may or may not have fallen in love with him. Seemingly with every secondary villain LIke Whoops

--------------------------------------

Talbot couldn’t remember his life before Marlowe, not really. Faint memories of living in the streets, fighting those triple his size for a scrap of food would sometimes buzz in the back of his mind. What he did remember was being 12 years old, being held down as needles the length of his arm were forced into his skin. What felt like acid was deposited into his very bones, his body twisting and spasming as he screamed in agony.

After that, he was nothing but a slate.

The rough and tumble kid was still there, but more as a back street driver than anything. Whatever they had done to him had taken his very will, his body reacting much like a puppet tied to a string. At first, he had been angry, sometimes getting mocked whenever Marlowe caught the look deep in Talbot’s eyes. The rage of stolen youth, of his stolen body that took life despite his agonized screams, the rage of others in this sick Order that knew and merely commanded his body. Over the years, the rage quelled, quiet acceptance and silent obedience taking over as he aged. Marlowe seemed to notice at some point, setting about ordering his shell to learn all it could. Despite his upbringing, Talbot absolutely craved to learn. It didn’t matter the subject, he devoured whatever was given to him, only ever leaving Talbot craving more. 

He wasn’t a fool, his supposed opposite was much like himself, intelligent enough to fool Marlowe more than once.  

Sometimes he would think about this Drake he had heard of. He knew everything the Order could get its hands on about Nathan Drake, down to his eye color of all things. Yet, about the man himself, Talbot knew so little. Was he a jokester? Was he kind? Was he a fair and thoughtful opponent? Would he be able to see Talbot for more than just being a shell?

The questions died out, as finally, it was time to end it all. 

Drake was bigger than he first thought, wearing a suit that seemed out of Drake’s comfort. In a sick way, Talbot was pleased when their plan backfired, and Drake escaped. The painful slap he received from Marlowe was less so pleasing, but he could do nothing about it.

Charlie Cutter falls to his spell so easily, those frightened and dilating eyes seeming to see Talbot, just for a moment. He so wished it lasted longer, hearing himself purring to Cutter for his notebook and gun. Grey eyes make contact with Nathan’s, the man idly commenting on how blue those eyes were before he took off, using his ability to teleport before the small group could see. Talbot doesn’t see Nathan again until he is drugged, the slightly younger man using his powers to pull Nathan towards him, cooing through the drugged haze that was Nathan’s mind. Watching as the dazed man, stumbling slightly as he stared ahead with glassy eyes finally appeared made Talbot feel terrible. Nathan most likely felt so trapped, his body as tense as a drawn bow as he is lead into an armored car for interrogation.

Talbot goes to sleep when he hears the half-terrified mumbles, he can’t bear to listen.

Sullivan isn’t so easy to control, yet is surprisingly observant. The old man is defiant, Marlowe often ordering Talbot to beat the older man until he tells them the next step. One night, Talbot is tending to a wound along Sullivan’s side, and the older man places a hand on Talbot’s shoulder. Grey looks into slate, and Talbot watches as Sullivan’s eyes widen just a fraction of a hair.

“Damn bitch.”

Talbot doesn’t pretend to understand, but the way Sullivan growls out makes him feel...heard. It’s not until days later, and Marlowe is eventually sinking to her death that Talbot can run. The moment she is gone, that voice in his head silence, Talbot bolts. With each clumsy step, he can feel everything. The gravel hitting his arms and face, his ragged breaths as he escapes a collapsing city, the blood pouring down his face and side. It’s all so terrifying and wonderful, and he almost doesn’t mind when he slips and falls. He can see the entrance of the city, so close and yet so far as he tries to jump and reach for his saving grace. Even if he doesn’t make it, Talbot will die and die under his own power.

The arm that grabs his nearly makes his heart stop, Talbot silent in shock as Sully hoists him up. He can see Nathan, face twisted in confusion and slight anger, but it’s only for a moment. They run as a trio, Talbot snatching them both by the arm and teleporting them up and to the safe edge of the crumbling city. The two groan at the shift, taking a few steps as Talbot remains, watching with a blank look on his face. Somewhere down there Marlowe’s body is most likely being crushed, and the thought fills him with utter delight. He can’t rip the rings from his fingers fast enough, flinging them into the chaos with an almost defiant breath. It’s been 21 years since he last could do something for himself, and it was absolutely wonderful. He is silent as a man comes to their aid with horses, Sullivan vouching for Talbot as he pets his horse slowly. Salim frowned but allows the pale man to join them, Ubar left to rest in its place deep in the sand, its dangers forever sealed. It’s not until they reach Salim’s camp that Talbot looks at his saviors, seeming to really take them in.

“You alright there son?” Talbot turns to him, staring at Sully for some time before opening his mouth.

“Absolutely.” He sounds hesitant and unsure as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time. Nathan is completely blown away at how different the other was, no longer standing tall with intent to kill. No, he looked so small now, constantly wringing his hands and looking around as if everything was new to him. His hair hung around his face, and his eyes had dark circles that seemed to be forming with each moment, framing grey eyes that were so curious yet frightened. 

Ah, crap.

The three men slept deeply, Talbot gone when Sully and Nathan wake late the next day. He is found at the edge of the camp, sleeves rolled up as he calmly brushes his horse from the day before. It takes Talbot a moment to recognize he’s being called to, Nathan standing nearby and holding some water out.

“For me?” He asks curiously, grasping the cup as if it held the meaning to life. Nathan, still coming to terms that the Talbot he had hated for days had been nothing but a puppet, nodded. The liquid is drained, and Sully coaxes them both to eat something for breakfast. Talbot, now able to ask what he actually wanted to, began to ask Nathan what he enjoyed about history. Sullivan sits back and lights a cigar, watching as Talbot was like an excited child at having someone to entertain his thoughts. Nathan was laughing before long, pulling out his journal and showing Talbot things he had drawn or taken, the younger’s eyes wide in amazement. He had to wonder what Talbot had to be thinking, knowing Marlowe had snatched him up just to be a foil to Nathan. Excusing himself, Sully goes for a short walk, having no idea in hell what he was going to do with the kid. 

The Order would break apart without Marlowe, and if Sully was honest, they didn’t deserve the kid back. If one thing got under Sully’s skin, it was the mistreatment of any child.

What the hell was it with him and picking up kids like coins off the sidewalk?

It’s a few days ride back to the city, and neither he nor Salim can count how many times they had to pull Talbot from innocently wandering off. Despite being in his early 30’s, he is so much like Nathan in that child-like curiosity. Elena is surprised but is pulled away as Nathan fiddles with something in his pocket. Talbot just follows Sully to his plane, innocently asking for a laptop. Sullivan has to admit he is impressed as Talbot easily drained the Order of all it had, distributing the funds in accounts only he could access, giving Sullivan and Nathan’s account a nice boost. It’s hours later when the couple, both smiling and wearing matching rings, join them. Talbot is asleep, one of Sully’s jackets draped over him as a makeshift blanket. Elena asks what’s going to happen to him, and the older man gives a shrug.

They’ll figure that out in the morning.

[deathghost8]

We are playing a game, and the game runs like this: the only thing you really know is what you can put into words. Let’s suppose I love some girl, rapturously, and somebody says to me, Do you really love her? Well, how am I going to prove this? They say, Write poetry. Tell us all how much you love her. Then we’ll believe you. So if I’m an artist, and I can put this into words and convince everybody that I’ve written the most ecstatic love letters ever written, they say All right, okay, we’ll admit it, you really do love her. But supposing you’re not very articulate. Are we going to tell you you don’t love her? Surely not. You don’t have to be Héloïse and Abélard to be in love. So the whole game that our culture is playing is that nothing really happens unless it’s in the newspaper. So when we’re at a party, and it’s a great party, somebody says, It’s too bad there wasn’t a tape recorder. And so our children begin to feel that they don’t exist authentically unless they get their names in the papers, and the fastest way of getting your name in the papers is to commit a crime. And then you’ll be photographed, then you’ll appear in court, and everybody will notice you. It really happened if it was recorded. In other words, if you shout, and it doesn’t come back and echo, it didn’t happen. Well that’s a real hangup. It’s true, the fun with echoes; we all like singing in the bathtub, because there’s more resonance there. And when we play a musical instrument, like a violin or a cello, it has a sounding box, because that gives resonance to the sound. And in the same way, the cortex of the human brain enables us—when we’re happy—to know that we’re happy, and that gives a certain resonance to it. If you’re happy, and you don’t know you’re happy, there’s nobody home. But this is the whole problem for us. Several thousand years ago, human beings evolved the system of self-consciousness. And they knew they knew. There was a young man who said ‘though It seems that I know that I know, What I would like to see Is the I that knows me When I know that I know that I know.’ You see? And this is the human problem: we know that we know. And so there came a point in our evolution when we didn’t guide life by distrusting our instincts, and had to think about it, and had to purposely arrange, and discipline, and push our lives around in accordance with foresight, and words, and systems of symbols, accountancy, calculation, and so on. And then we worry. Once you start thinking about things, you worry as to whether you’ve thought enough. Did you really take all the details into consideration? Was every fact properly reviewed? And by Jove, the more you think about it, the more you realize that you really couldn’t take everything into consideration, because all the variables in any human decision are incalculable. So you get anxiety. And this, though—also—this is the price you pay for knowing that you know. For being able to think about thinking, to feel about feeling. And so you’re in this funny position. Now then, do you see that this is simultaneously an advantage and a terrible disadvantage? What has happened here is that by having a certain kind of consciousness, a certain kind of reflexive consciousness—being aware of being aware. Being able to represent what goes on fundamentally in terms of a system of symbols, such as words, such as numbers. You put, as it were, two lives together at once, one representing the other. The symbols representing the reality, the money representing the wealth, and if you don’t realize that the symbol is really secondary, it doesn’t have the same value. People go to the supermarket, and they get a whole cartload of goodies, and they drive it through, then the clerk fixes up the counter and this long tape comes out, and he’ll say Thirty dollars, please, and everybody feels depressed because they give away thirty dollars’ worth of paper. But they’ve got a cartload of goodies; they don’t think about that. They think they’ve just lost thirty dollars. But you’ve got the real wealth in the cart; all you’ve parted with was the paper. Because the paper—in our system—becomes more valuable than the wealth. It represents power; potentiality. Whereas the wealth—you think Oh well, that’s just necessary. You’ve got to eat. I mean, that’s to be really mixed up. So then, if you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death—or shall I say, death implies life—you can feel yourself—not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke—but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically—deep, deep down, far, far in—is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. -- You know that the word “person” means “mask?” The persona which is the mask worn by actors in Greco-Roman drama, because it has a megaphone-type mouth which throws the sound out in an open-air theater. So per: “through;” sona: “what the sound comes through;” that’s the mask. How to be a real person. How to be a genuine fake. The mask. 13:09 So the dramatis personae at the beginning of a play is the list of masks that the actors will wear. And so in the course of forgetting that this life is a drama, the word for the role, the word for the mask, has come to mean who you are genuinely: the person. The proper person. Incidentally, the word parson is derived from the word person. The person of the village. The person around town, the parson. Funny. So anyway, then, this is a drama. I’m not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it; I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities. I’m not trying to prove it, I’m just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, this means that you’re not victims of a scheme of things—of a mechanical world, or of an autocratic god. The life you’re living is what you have put yourself into. Only you don’t admit it, because you want to play the game that it’s happened to you. In other words, I got mixed up in this world—my parents; I had a father who got hot pants over a girl, and she was my mother. And because he was just a horny old man, and as a result of that, I got born, and I blame him for it and say, “Well that’s your fault; you’ve got to look after me,” and he says, “I don’t see why I should look after you; you’re just a result.” But let’s suppose we admit that I really wanted to get born, and that I was the ugly gleam in my father’s eye when he approached my mother. That was me. I was desire. And I deliberately got involved in this thing. Look at it that way instead. And that, even if I got myself into an awful mess, and I got born with syphilis, and the Great Siberian Itch, and tuberculosis, and in a Nazi concentration camp—nevertheless this was a game, which was a very far out play. It was a kind of cosmic masochism. But I did it. Isn’t that an optimal game rule for life? Because if you play life on the supposition that you’re a helpless little puppet that got involved, or if you played on the supposition that it’s a frightful, serious risk, and that we really ought to do something about it, and so on, it’s a drag. There’s no point in going on living unless we make the assumption that the situation of life is optimal. That really and truly we’re all in a state of total bliss and delight, but we’re going to pretend we aren’t just for kicks. You play non-bliss in order to be able to experience bliss. And you can go as far out as non-bliss as you want to go. And when you wake up, it’ll be great. You know, you can slam yourself on the head with a hammer because it’s so nice when you stop. And it makes you realize, you see, how great things are when you forget that that’s the way it is. And that’s just like black and white: you don’t know black unless you know white; you don’t know white unless you know black. This is simply fundamental.

Alan Watts, selection in the beginning of Nature of Consciounsess part 2 (out of your mind session 2) for the first episode on zen show. The episode is titled for the first sentence here. We are playing a game.

[deceasedatsunrise]

Killer AU Concepts

Eh, Killer!Survivor AUs may seem done to death but it's still plenty fun and I wanted to take a crack at it.

Whenever a new chapter comes out I’ll try to come up a killer au! for any new survivors and add them via reblogs.

Here's my ideas, I’ll try to give them all a Killer Alias, short backstory, an idea of what their power would be, a quick description of their appearance, and their weapon. I’m not good at perks so for now, just imagine all of their killer perks being reskins of the canon killer perks.    

More below cut.

Warning for DBD typical topics: Murder, Torture, Trauma, Parental Death, Body Horror, drowning, dismemberment, car crashes

Dwight Fairfield (The Ghost) - It was meant to be an innocent prank, one where they’d laugh at Dwight’s expense once again. While the boss was still asleep they simply took advantage of the cheap inflatable mattress Dwight brought along for the retreat and simply let lake do the rest. When he woke up, he panicked, and fell off the floating mattress into the chilly water. The others laughed, but stopped when Dwight never emerged. They lied, saying that he left early, and pretended nothing was wrong. They would never know that, as his lungs filled with water, Dwight begged for help from anyone-or anything...and something answered.

The boss left for a moment, just a few minutes to call Dwight to tell him he’ll be looking at even lower pay if he leaves again without checking with him. He returned to the retreat’s site to find the bodies of his employees. 

Now as a malignant spirit, Dwight resembles a cold, bloated corpse suspended in the air as if carried by invisible puppet strings.

His Power would be called Haunting Grounds, a teleporting ability that assists in locating survivors. He can see the auras of generators in his terror radius, and may teleport to one as long as it’s not being worked on by a survivor. The teleport and recharge takes a couple of seconds, with a very small sound cue. He cannot teleport to fully charged generators, but when the gates are all powered he gains a significant speed boost. (This is based on the teleporting mechanic in Soul at Stake, so yes I am in fact stealing from a DBD Clone).

His main weapon is a large tent spike, stained with blood and rust. Useful for quickly killing those who’ve wronged you.

Meg Thomas (The Predator) - Meg Thomas never lost hope, even as her mother fell ill. Then one day, her mother collapsed suddenly after she supposedly began to feel better. Meg was in a hurry, she simply loaded her mother into their car and made her way to the hospital. No time to wait for an ambulance, no time for seatbelts, and no time to take into account that she didn’t have a license. She was reckless, believing she knew enough to save her mother, and it had cost her. She ran into a car and was sent flying, she came crashing down. She dragged herself through debris, both legs maimed by the crash alongside a useless arm, to look for her mother. She found her, she didn’t make it.

She heard the cries of the man she rammed with her mother’s car, and crawled her way to him, along the way she picked up a tire iron that had fallen out of the trunk. When police investigated they found two bodies, one was chalked up to the accident while homicide investigated the skewered driver. Meg dragged herself into the nearby woods, the only way she could escape her mistakes, as she was in no state to run. The entity had repaired her body, with grotesque, gangly limbs made in it’s own image, allowing her to hunt the survivors she could’ve ran with if she wasn’t so, so reckless. Several small spider-like legs jut out of her back and her eyes have been touched by the entity, making her vulnerable to flashlights.

Her main Power is New Instincts, her new body follows the rules of beasts when hunting her prey. Think of it as a mixture of the Pig’s Ambush ability and Fatal Frenzy. Using the power button will make her enter Stalking mode, where she’ll crouch down and lose her terror radius. Using the power button again will initiate Frenzy mode, where she’ll chase after survivors and instantly attack them if she’s close enough(this attack can also destroy dropped pallets). This will apply Deep Wound, or shorten the bleed out timer of a survivor who already has the status effect. If she attacks someone who already has Deep Wound in Frenzy mode she’ll be momentarily stunned but the survivor’s mend meter will lose a part of it’s progress as well. 

Her main weapon is a her own Mangled Arm, an appendage similar to the entity’s claws, regrown after she was collected. After making a hit she’ll grip her head in agitation.

Claudette Morel (The Gardener) - Claudette Morel found happiness a rarity, none of her relationships extended beyond others taking advantage of her knowledge. Stress was killing her, in more ways than one, all because she was lucky enough to make it to a good college. Under her façade of a curious student, was a ticking time bomb waiting for a single spark. She was aiming for a great opportunity, to intern for actual botanists, as long as she kept her grades up. But she had overslept, too many all-nighters added up and she paid the price. Her strict teacher locked her out of the classroom, and she had to watch the class finish the test without her. Her grades were already in danger of falling, but this one F sealed it, so her spot went to another student. Claudette stopped coming to classes, and her chat rooms were left silent. There were five students selected for the Internship, all five and one teacher were found in the forest. The bodies were buried, but beautiful, non-native flowers were planted on top of their graves as markers. Claudette was spotted by a jogger walking into the woods, but she was never found.

The Gardener was once a human, now she’s merely a vehicle for the parasitic plants consuming her. Vines entangle her body, and flowers obscure her face. Her stomach is gruesomely torn open, thick vines spill out like intestines and have wrapped themselves around her waist and legs. The flowers are “Pustulas”, the flowers that grow from the hallowed blight cankers and produce the Putrid Serum. 

Her Power is called Parasitic Saplings, giving the gardener the ability to infect survivors with nutrient draining plants. When a survivor is downed, she may use her action button to “plant” the seeds in their open wounds. The survivors are now in a short timer where the plants grow, once the time is done they can now remove the fully grown plants. However a second timer pops up, if the survivor does not “prune” themselves in time the vine growing on their bodies will bind them in place until either another survivor untangles them or the killer downs bound survivor. Pruning is a non-healing action, and being hooked or hit by the killer’s weapon will pause the timers for varying amounts of time.

Her main weapon is a Gardening Shear, half of a pair that still leaves it’s mark in bone just the same.

Jake Park (The Greenman) - When Jake Park ran away to live off the grid, only his mother bothered to keep tabs on him. When she reported him missing the police gave up their search in little time, despite her pleading. If they searched harder, perhaps they would’ve found him. He went on a hike to restock, but made a mistake while climbing. He found his leg trapped between a rock and a hard place, and his screams were swallowed up by nature. No one truly knows what it means to survive, not even Jake Park until this very moment, when he tore himself free. Even with a splint Jake’s skills only grew, his near death experience proved to him that he truly was alone in this. He fully integrated into the forest life, only interacting with humans to steal tools and food. When hunters entered his territory, he dealt with them with skill and precision.

Jake had fashioned a mask from the skull of one of his victims, the only warning sign his victims would receive before he killed them. He crafted an outfit that would blend in easily, leaves were woven together into a cloak and skins were stitched together to provide warmth. Urban Legends cropped up, of a “Greenman” who raided campsites and mauled solitary survivors with ease.

The Greenman’s Power are his Handmade Arrows, with only natural materials the Greenman had created a formidable secondary weapon. Similar to the Huntress’ hatchets, the arrows will have a charge time that allows you to aim and shoot them. Two arrows, without add-ons, will make a survivor go down one health state. However, when an arrow hits a survivor it will stay embedded in their body until the survivor pulls it out. If the arrows aren’t pulled out then the survivor will groan audibly until it is, add-ons can add status effects to his arrows.

His main weapon is a Broken Antler, taken from a moose he fell. It’s best to use every part of the animal after killing it, right?

Nea Karlsson (The Shadow) - Nea Karlsson delinquency became a downward spiral into disaster. She had grown sick of her parents and ran away, she mainly couch surfed to get by, pick pocketing to afford food. She never lost her interest in tagging, becoming more bold every time. Her skills developed, allowing her to sneak past guards and dogs with ease. She was a shadow, as that was the only thing anyone saw of her when she struck. Except one day, when she was caught. Pure chance, but she wasn’t going to jail. She tried to break free but he wouldn’t let her go, not until she struck him with the crowbar in her hands. Nea wondered if she meant to do it, or if it was an accident, but something in her gut told her that it was necessary. And something even deeper inside of her told her it was thrilling. She experimented with her crimes, violence became a norm for her. She no longer associated with others, and a string of violent assaults, and murders, began to gain media attention. Nea was never caught...by the police, anyway.

Nea is a shadow, a pitch black hole in the rough shape of a human. Bright, white eyes peer out of the darkness.

The Shadow’s Power is called Security Measures, barbed wire traps that remind her of the many gates she’d jumped. She begins the game with eight Barbed Traps that she can place on Vaults, areas where pallets were, and between doorways. They are extensions of the entity, and ensnare victims to unknowingly go through them. When caught in a Barbed Trap the survivor will have to wiggle out, doing a skill check at the end of the wiggle meter. If they fail the skill check they can still get out, but they are downed by one health state. They work similarly to the Hag’s traps, where an old one will disappear if you use another trap after placing all at your disposal. The shadow can pick them up and move them to other areas.

Her main weapon is a simple crowbar, a tool with many purposes for her lifestyle.

Laurie Strode/Cythia Myers (The Copycat) - Michael Myers was let out of the asylum without much fanfare, yet Cynthia Myers never got to meet him before a car crash left her an orphan. Michael was legally old enough to live on his own, but she went to live with the Strode family as he refused to take custody of her. Cynthia had grown to resent her brother, as his legacy followed her wherever she went. Her classmates were not kind to her loss, and she shrunk away from large crowds. Even after convincing her adoptive parents to let her change her name, any person she attempted to grow close to would find out about her brother’s crime. The bullies were one thing, but the “True Crime Freaks” were a hell of their own. Judith would be remembered as a corpse, and “Laurie” would be remembered as the sister of a murderer. A dark whisper began to grow louder, asking why she should be the one to suffer? When her brother was the killer, shouldn’t have the one to pay for what he did to his sisters?

She found him, and paid him back. Murders began to spring up in the town he lived in, the victims were the eldest daughter of families with more than one child. Laurie thought it’d be easy, they’d easily assume Michael went back to his old ways and then lock him up again. But that wasn’t enough, she had to make sure he suffered. No one knew what happened on Halloween Night, except Michael and Laurie, who both disappeared that same night.

Laurie wears a clown mask similar to the one Michael wore that fateful night, alongside a bulky jacket and grimy jeans. Every inch of skin was covered, so that it’d be easier for any escapees to confuse her for Michael.

Laurie’s Power is called Survival of the Fittest, watching the survivors from afar has led to her learning their tricks. The Copycat can do many actions that were thought to be limited to survivors only.

- She can Sabotage Gens, Chests, and Lockers. Sabotaged Gens will need to be “recharged” before they can be repaired. Sabotaged locker doors and chests are stuck and have to jimmied open, with a short sound cue after they’re unjammed. It takes forty seconds to sabotage a gen, and four seconds to jam chests and lockers.

- She’s the only killer unable to break a pallet. However, while in a chase she can jump over pallets. Outside of a chase she can lift up a pallet back in place and sabotage them as well, making it so that survivors have to do the pull down action twice to drop the pallet. 

Her main weapon is a Butcher’s Knife, the tip had been broken off in her attempt to spill the blood of her kin. 

Ace Visconti (The Misfortune) - Ace Visconti, was a foolish as he was confident. Too many debts with the wrong kind of people were bound to catch up to him eventually. One bet, involving some underground fighting ring, sealed his fate. He ran, and made it pretty far before the goons came to collect. What meager winnings he had on him weren’t enough, so their boss ordered them to make an example out of Ace. So they cut him into pieces, wrapped them up in plastic wrap, and dumped them all into a murky swamp. As they held him down he made one final desperate deal, the goons didn’t buy it but something did in fact take him up on the offer. The goons stuck around the swamp for a smoke break, and went missing soon after. A police investigation ten years later would lead to the swamp being drained, all the bodies found at the bottom would help send a dangerous man to the big house. Ace Visconti’s body was never found, but the goons were. Drowned in the murky waters by the looks of it.

Ace wear his water damaged, and muddy clothing, with plastic wrap obscuring his entire head. Duct tape is wrapped around some parts of his body to prevent him from falling to pieces. He lacks shoes but wears a ridiculous amount of jewelry, perhaps collected off his fellow victims in the swamp’ s depths?

His Power is called Unlucky Deck, cards that he uses as offerings for bonuses in the entity’s game. All cards are randomly generated, and more cards can be found in chests,. The Misfortune is the only killer who can loot chests but he closes them after use, he cannot use chests search by survivors without add-ons. Add-ons can increase his chances to get a certain type of card. The killer can shuffle his deck to look at his other cards, when a card is chosen he will pick it out of his deck and it will instantly burn away into ash. His deck consists of the following:

Ten of Clubs - If any of the crows are disturbed, they will flock to the survivor and follow them for ten seconds. This lasts for 30 seconds.

Jack of Clubs - The aura of survivors opening chests or lockers will be revealed for 6 seconds. This will last for 30 seconds.

Queen of Clubs - Once used, after hitting a survivor with a base attack all survivors in your terror radius will have their auras revealed for 8 seconds. This will continue until all survivors still in the game are hit at least once.

King of Clubs - When a Generator is completed after this card is used, all survivors will gain the Exposed status for 20 seconds, and their auras are revealed for 4 seconds.

Ace of Clubs(Incredibly Rare) - All survivors auras are revealed for twenty seconds regardless of distance, however the killer’s movement speed is slowed for the duration of this card’s use.

Joker Card(Tremendously Rare) - A random affliction of another card is played, lasting for thirty to forty seconds regardless of the original time limits.

The Misfortune’s main weapon is a Bloody Saw, used to make an example of him and later thrown into the water as evidence.

Bill Overbeck (The Carrier) - Left behind, left to rot. When the entity found him it knew just the way to “fix” him, after all, he was already a carrier. Becoming one of the creatures he had tried his damnedest to evade. Very similar to a Smoker(Type of Special Infected), with the bloated skin and a gross, long tongue. However his lumpy skin would be a charred black with cracks that glow like the claws of the entity(also makes his skin look like the black lungs of a cigarette smoker). When hit by a pallet or a decisive strike he will emit smoke. He no longer sees survivors the same way he used to, and now hunts them without restraint. This is due to the entity skewing his perception, making all the survivors resemble infected that attempt to escape to spread their disease, with dark thoughts urging Bill to prevent them from getting out alive.

His Power would be Ensnaring Tongue, an ability he shares with other smokers. He shoots out his elongated tongue straight forward to choke a survivor in place. Hitting the survivor or the survivor managing to wiggle out(similar to escaping a beartrap) will break the connection, resulting in tongue being torn off and a small cooldown for his ability to regrow it. A secondary ability is that survivors will cough in close proximity, and will continue coughing for a few moments even after gaining distance. 

His weapon would be a combat knife, a memento of his younger years. 

Feng Min (The Patient) - Taking inspiration from the controversial Dr. Yang Yongxin(Chinese Clinical Psychiatrist that likely inspired the Spark of Madness chapter), in a timeline where Feng Min is taken to a “Gamin Addiction Treatment Center“, where her parents handed her over to the “good doctors”. The head doctor’s experiments in curing their patients came crashing down when, after the electroshock treatment became to much, Feng proceeded to escape and murder the staff. She would wear the hospital gown she was given for her stay and would still be connected to electroshock equipment. Her face is heavily bandaged, and a syringe is stuck in her neck. The only hit the main doctor got in before he was snuffed out. Her Power would be similar to the Carter’s Spark, Remnants of Rewiring, driving survivors exhausted to the point of self-destruction. She afflicts survivors by creating an electric pulse that flows in a straight wave, that extends for several feet in front of her. When affected their progress may go backwards, either destroying any progress they had made before or not even getting far in the first place. Maybe at the highest tier of her pulse ability, Survivors might go into a “drowsy state” where they will have to do a skill check or two to not fall asleep, this leaves them open for attack but if the survivor falls asleep and is woken by a survivor/killer they return to tier 2. They would need to escape The Patient and “relax” to lessen the effects. 

Her weapon is a chipped baton, ripped out of the hands of her main watch guard as he bled out. 

David King (The Boar) - David King was meant for greatness, in this life or the next. He squandered his success, all in his search for a good fight. While out drinking he met a shady man who took interest in his fighting prowess, and offered him an experience even more thrilling than his less-than-legal underground tournaments. Two men go in, one comes out, gladiator style. It took David one night to agree. He grew notorious in the underworld fighting circuit, wealthy spectators paid extra to watch King’s own unique style of brutality. He was a bloody mess, and his victims were worse off in every aspect. His “Manager” gave him a unique reward, a boar’s skin, said it would liven up the crowd if they saw David wearing it. David couldn’t give a shit if he tried, as long as he got good competition. 

He was soon more animal than man, taking extra measures to make the losers “squeal” for his own personal pleasure. He soon disappeared abruptly, his manager admitted that David King simply left and never came back. Sure, King was his best fighter, but even he wasn’t stupid enough to order the beast around.

The Boar’s Power is Beastly Brutality, when a survivor is downed the brutish man will grab their leg and break it, applying the Fractured Status effect. Until healed the afflicted survivor will be slowed and unable to vault, They will also grown audibly. If the Fractured status effect is reapplied, the grunting is less frequent, until it’s barely noticeable the next time it’s applied(The Boar’s base speed would be similar to the Huntress’ to give the survivors a fighting chance). There is also a “Struggling” action where the survivor can try to pull away from David until he gives up and carries you or wins. His secondary ability can be used after every two hits with his base weapon, where he tosses the Pig Skinner to his other hand and strikes a survivor with his balled fist after gaining a short speed burst. This will distort the survivor’s vision and make their ears ring.

He wields “The Pig Skinner”, a cleaver with a broad blade and long handle. Of all the weapons he used to mutilate his opponents, this one was his favorite, besides his own hands of course.

Quentin Smith (The Sandman) - Forever haunted by endless nightmares he set out to do the impossible by avoiding sleep all together, slowly destroying himself in futile attempts to avoid the necessary part of human life. His parents were forced to admit him to a hospital when it began to make a toll on his health, where he met familiar faces(whether he remembered them fully or not) with similar problems. When a friend took his life in front them all, he broke, and set out to escape. In a desperate attempt to “save” Nancy, the only one who believed him about the “darkness“, as well he proceeded to murder the staff that tried to restrain him. He escaped into the surrounding woods, vowing to return for Nancy. When the entity collects him he desperately searches the realms for her, hoping to save his fellow victim in this life now that he had failed in the other.

He’s severely sickly from sleep deprivation, and his eyes are permanently closed, this does not affect his eye sight. He wears the clothing the hospital provided, with noticeable burn marks leaving holes in them. His Power would be Dreamwalker, when used the survivors will experience “Micronaps” slipping into the dreamworld where the Sandman may harm them. The Sandman can only interact with survivors doing “Skill“ actions, such as healing and gen fixing, afflicting them with “Fatigue”. They are now on a timer until they “rejuvenate” themselves with a health kit(by healing to full health), every ten seconds they will enter a Micronap for ten seconds, in a continuous loop until fatigue is lifted. The Sandman can attack during the entire time you are in fatigue but is invisible outside of Micronaps, only his red stain reveals his location during these brief moments. 

His main weapon is a fire axe, meant to be used for emergencies but stolen in his escape. 

David Tapp (The Detective) - (The Following is based on the first Saw Videogame, where Tapp had to travel through an asylum until being given a choice at the end of the game. He could’ve chosen “Freedom”, the canon ending where he gave up his search for Jigsaw and freed all occupants of the Asylum. Or the alternate ending, which I’m following for this au, where his obsession makes him choose “Truth” which results in the death of an innocent.)

His choices made him who he is, in his obsession he had cost the deaths of many. He was as equally guilty as jigsaw, and the mastermind took advantage of this fact. Detective Tapp died that day, and whatever was left took up the dying man’s offer to join him. As an officer, he knew who deserved punishment, and became another valuable asset of Joh Kramer. During one kidnapping, where he accidently killed a victim before they could be tested, he vanished. Jigsaw was disappointed, but not surprised, he had already lost another disciple before and there were always more who could be taught. 

He wears his old uniform, the bullet proof vest provides better protection than the red robes his coworkers wear. A pig mask, modified by a wire frame under the latex to give it structure. Leather straps ensure it stays in place without obscuring his vision.

The Detective’s Power is called Night Watch, he carries a large flashlight that acts as his secondary weapon. When using it, any survivor that is caught in it’ s light will be stunned for 2 seconds and have their aura highlighted in yellow for 30 seconds. The flashlight can charged to flash brightly, this blinds the Detective for a few seconds but any survivor who sees the flash will be put into the exposed state for 16 seconds. The flashlight works as long as it’s beam is in the survivors line of sight, ie. like how flashlights work for killers. 

His main weapon is a Modified Bat, nails have been driven into it to increase the damage it can cause. What was once evidence is now his tool to free his victims.

Kate Denson (The Siren) - One must always be weary of the dangers of travelling alone, who knows what kind of people you could meet. Men who can’t take a hint, who do not like to be told no. It was not her fault, she simply wanted a quiet place to write. The woods nearby reminded her of home, but one must always be careful when wandering away from civilization. The man from yesterday still hadn’t let it go, this time he brought along friends to convince her. She was a fighter, but they played dirty, so she had to run when she spotted a window of opportunity. One of the men stopped her easily, and she fell as her guitar splintered into several pieces over her head. They had killed her, or so they thought. They were prepared to leave her in the river to be swept away, but she woke up kicking and screaming, they would be caught if anyone heard her voice so they silenced her with a nearby rock. 

Kate Denson was reported missing after she ceased all contact with her family, her Chevy was later found abandoned in the woods. The law enforcement already had enough on their hands though, in only three days several bodies had been found in the river. There were no sign of struggle, it was as if these men jumped into the waters by choice. Anyone passing these woods would swear they heard singing from deep within, but no one had ever been brave enough to look for the source of such a beautiful voice.

Her Power is Song of Remorse, a mournful song that entrances survivors into letting their guard down. If survivors are in the radius of her song they will be “Enchanted”. Similar to madness, it applies different effects as it’s tiers increase. Survivors can snap enchanted teammates out of it, or they can “clear their thoughts”. Clearing thoughts will make the survivor’s vision blurry for 5 seconds.

Enchantment Tier One - An image of the Siren’s face will flash on screen for a second, darkening the screen for a moment until the image fades away. This will happen every 20 seconds. A quiet humming will be heard for 2 seconds after these flashes occur.

Enchantment Tier Two - Whenever a Survivor attempts to drop a pallet there will be a chance that they do the action without actually pulling it down. The flashes will now occur every 10 seconds. Quiet humming can be heard for as long as the survivor is in this tier. 

Enchantment Tier Three - Nonsense singing fills the survivor’ s ears, obscuring all other noises. Survivors can no longer heal, drop pallets, or fix gens. All flashlights will point downwards.

Her main weapon is the Driftwood club, her prized guitar now acts as the handle of her makeshift weapon. Driftwood, old rope, and what remained of her guitar have been crafted together to ensure only the most devastating of blows.

Adam Francis (The Ember) - It’s difficult to break such a disciplined man, but not impossible. The crash left him in shambles, but the person he failed to safe was left as a smear. He refused to die, dragging his legless body even as flames began to spread. For the first time in his life he displayed weakness, and allowed himself to feel fear. Death, the ultimate end, or at least so he thought. Something dark loomed above him, dark whispers making offers. Even as he bled out, he chose to think of others. He had a feeling that whatever deal he made, it would not end well, the last hope he ever had was that that young woman he failed was saved. He closed his eyes as flames devoured him, dark tendrils dragging him away.

When he awoke, he’d find a fire contained in his own body, now a hollow shell of the man he used to be. Lacking legs he instead floats in place, he breaks pallets by striking them with his weapon.

The dutiful Ember uses his Power, The Onibi’s Lament, as a way to close the distance between him and far away survivors. Activating his power makes a small orb of fire containing his soul shoot out of his corpse’s midsection. His corpse stays behind as a husk, with the player now controlling the orb to bypass pallets and quickly search for survivors for a short period of time. When the power is stopped, either by cancellation or the power bar going empty, his husk disappears and he silently “reforms” from the ball of fire. As a ball of fire he can harm a survivor once by running into them, but this automatically cancels the power and the “reforming” takes a few seconds to finish(think of Wraith’s uncloaking). His secondary ability is releasing a harmless decoy Onibi, to fool survivors into thinking he’s a harmless husk. The false orb goes in a straight line until it either hits something or fizzles out.

His main weapon is the Steel Shrapnel, a jagged piece of metal from the train wreck that had embedded itself in his arm. 

Jeff Johansen (The Unseeing) - Losing one’s sight is a horrifying experience, especially for an artist. One fight and he was forever changed, his shyness promptly became a need to isolate himself. Even though he attempted to adapt to his new life, dark whispers in the back of his mind never allowed him to forget what he lost. He began to dream, and as if guided by invisible hands, he began to sketch what haunted him in his mind. A dark mass of unknown shape, with hundreds of arms reaching out in search of something. He created several drawings, greatly worrying his mother. Jeff left home without a word, and seemingly fell off the earth’s radar. A series of murders began, a bloody trail from Winkler to Ormond, nicknamed the Mural Murders due to what the police assumed was the killer’s calling card. A mural, in blood, paint, or other materials, depicting a many armed creature could be found on any wall or flat surface near the bodies. The trail went cold and the murders were left unsolved.

Jeff as a killer looks similar to his Heavy Metal skin, though his clothing is covered in numerous paint stains. His eyes have been touched by the entity, making him more vulnerable to flashlights.

The Unseeing’s Power is called All-Seeing Entity, a gift from the entity that allows him to hunt and steal the sight of survivors. The Unseeing will always see the maps as a pitch black abyss, all surrounding items in his terror radius are highlighted by a white glow. Aka, this is how he can find survivors while physically blind. Holding down his power bottom will make him release a harsh yell, any survivor caught in the yell’s radius will be cursed with “Dying Sight”. A two minute time will begin, the survivor’s vision will slowly be consumed by darkness until they are fully blind by the time the timer runs out. Once blind they cannot see at all until they’re downed, which restarts the timer. Survivors can cure their Dying Sight by finding a fellow survivor and being healed to a completely healthy state by them, Dying Sight is not affected by Self-Care or medkits.

His main weapon is a sledgehammer, a tool with a surprising use in his art. It reshapes rigid materials to his liking.

Jane Romero (The Idol) - No matter how influential you get, or how famous you become, nothing will drag you out of the pit of your own creation. Stress builds, expectations become increasingly more difficult to meet, and sleep becomes a rare luxury. It all builds up, until one final straw breaks your back. Did Loretta Lawrence expect to die, by the hands of a daughter she declared not hers? Envy fuels hatred, and when all you see is red, what’s a little blood gonna do? Jane wears her mother’s dress, the beautiful gown she wore for the interview that led to her demise. When Loretta’s body was found in her dressing room, everyone searched for Jane, it was as if she vanished. Many of her loyal fans refused to believe she’d done it, leading to an increase in sales for Jane Romero sponsored products.

Her Power is called Shattered Reflection, giving her the ability to leave behind copies of herself while the true body went on the prowl. She can create a total of five "Reflections" without add-ons, if she creates a new reflection after using them all up, the oldest made reflection will disappear. Survivors with flashlights can destroy copies, however it’ll take about 10 seconds. Reflections have a simple AI that allows them to move around a bit like an NPC, if a survivor is close enough they can strike once. If they land a hit the survivor goes down one health state and the reflection disappears. Each reflection has a small terror radius. The idol will receive a notification when a reflection is destroyed, a survivor is in a reflection’s small terror radius, and if the reflection lands a hit on a survivor. The survivor’s auras are highlighted for 6 seconds.

Her main weapon is a Glass Shard, a piece collected after she smashed a mirror in frustration. It’s size and shape ensure damage equal to a knife.

Notes

- David’s Boar Skin is based of the Greek Erymanthian Boar

- Dwight is similar to the ghosts in Silent hill 4

- At least two of these powers were inspired by a DBD clone called Soul at Stake

- I tried my best to make each power fair and interesting, but I guess it’s up to your opinion to know if I succeeded

- My favorite concepts are Ace, Adam, and Quentin’s

- Ace’s backstory was inspired by a character in the movie “13 Ghosts”

- Yes there are Survivor Versions of the killers

- If it’s not clear, Adam wished to save Rin Yamaoka after failing to save her in this au. You can probably guess how the entity “saved” her

- Asks me questions about this au if you like, there’s a bunch of details I left out because it was already long as is

[tazusher-blog]

Mind out, Mum!

There’s no time more necessary than now to share our techno-wisdom with our elders. 

It is no doubt that at one time in your life you have had to show a parent or grandparent how to use a piece of technology. That might have been showing them how to take a photo, send an email, or even turn the computer on. Whatever the action, it is also most likely that you will have chuckled to yourself at the time; stopping to question how the simplest of actions could appear so complex to these people. Especially to those who once taught us to read, write and ride a bike.

Having been brought up in an age dominated by digital technology, it is hard to imagine how using such devices as smart phones and laptops comes unnaturally to some. In fact, if you asked your parents or grandparents, you’d definitely be shocked to learn the age at which they got their first mobile, when they sent their first email, and at what point their family owned a fully-functioning TV. Chances are, their responses will most definitely not fall within the first 13 years of their lives; an answer which is likely to come from only our current generation. Nonetheless, owing to the ever-growing influence of modern day technology, it is no surprise that more and more members of the older generation are turning to high-tech devices for the simple purpose of keeping up with the world. Yes, grandparents are still able to visit their local corner shop for a copy of the newspaper each day, or call up the number of the catalogue they want to buy a new winter coat from, but there are still so many advantages to be gained from having access to the internet. These include the use of Google, online shopping, and catch up TV; all of which my very own grandparents have gained access to following their recent purchase of an iPad.

So where do we step in?

Unlike us who will receive our shining new iPhone upgrade and have our devices set up and ready to go within an hour of receiving the phone, those who aren’t accustomed to using such devices will struggle to know where to start. And yes, there is that 1000-page document that comes with the device to tell you how to work it, but when you have no idea what you’re looking at to start with, even just getting the gadget to work can be a mission.

As a tech-savvy and knowledgeable generation, it is our responsibility to be there for our parents and grandparents; to show them the ropes and help them keep up with the world. I, for one, am frequently bombarded by questions from my parents about what updates on their phones mean, or how to email our auntie the latest photos of our family holiday. Equally, it is our role to warn our parents about the dangers of the internet by showing them how to protect their information online, and how not to be fooled by those on the prowl for such clueless victims.

(Yes, my grandparents are this cute.)

Surveillance Capitalism

One of the most pervasive elements of our online activity is the occurrence of surveillance capitalism. This is when the puppeteers of the internet take control of everything that we do online by converting our personal data into something useful and profitable to them. And it’s all out of our control.

Take Google for example. Google is a marvellous platform which allows us to ask almost ANYTHING and receive an answer within seconds of our search. We can ask Google how to change a tire on our car, what time the nearest Nando’s closes, or where to buy the best value top-of-the range makeup. Whatever our search, Google has an answer. And he’s happy to help at no charge. Well, that’s what we think…

Google is in fact, watching our every move. Absorbing our every click into its data base and sharing this information to its many friends; Facebook, Instagram and Amazon. And what do they do with this info? They use it to create targeted advertising tailored to our searches. Presenting us with adverts to help us find that perfect coat we were searching for two days ago, and tempting us with content that is personal and applicable to us.

Where’s the danger in that?

Whilst there are many of us who are aware of the internet’s tactful tricks, our parents and grandparents are less sensitive to this. And this is where things might get sticky. Take my mum for example, she on a day to day basis messages me with links to products she’s “seen on Facebook”, asking me to purchase them for her. Some of these products are often the most random of things; pillow case covers, ring polishers, and magnet eyelash extensions. Things I certainly wouldn’t come across on my news feeds. When asking her about the unusual eyelash extensions, I discovered that the previous week she had actually googled ‘the best mascaras for lengthening lashes”: and this is where I was able to make the link. The sites had worked together by exchanging this data, and their objective (to target my mum with a product which offered an expensive solution to her search) had ultimately succeeded!

However, this is a very minor example and it could be argued that it was my mum’s choice to buy the item. And that she easily could have turned her head if it was something she didn’t want to buy. On the other hand, there are also adverts which promote slightly fraudulent deals such as ‘Buy XXXXX for £0, limited time only’, which actuals totals at £20 once an extortionate delivery price has been added at the checkout (and you’ve already put your card details in...).

Elsewhere on the internet, there are also much more extreme examples of fraudulent and manipulative behaviour. Phishing being the major method of attack. Phishing is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “The fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.”. It is an act which forces users of the internet to become victims of their own devices, and can result in serious consequences such as losing money, being hacked, or having your identity stolen.

As with the other online trickeries mentioned above, phishing is another example of the need for us to educate our elders about such online crime. Just like cold-callers and scammers who use telephone calls to target vulnerable people, phishing is another, and arguably easier way, for criminals to benefit from the naivety of their victims at the click of a button.

How does it work?

Phishing usually occurs in the form of emails claiming to be sent from trustworthy sources such as your bank, ‘fake’ colleagues, or PayPal. Some might also occur in the form of Holiday agents claiming that you need to enter your card details to re-secure your recent holiday payment. In reality, after giving into this email, you won’t be able to afford that holiday you were saving for!

 Whoever the sender, their goal is to persuade you to give them something valuable to them; that being your passwords, credit card details, or personal information.

What to look out for:

Before you can warn others about the danger of online crimes, it is important to know yourself what to look out for. The main things to seek out are:

Who is sending the email?

Do you actually know the person? If so, do they email like they normally would? How do they sign off the email?

 If it’s from a bank or company, do you actually have an account with them? And is what they are referring to something actually relevant to you?

Is the email legitimate?

The first thing I do when receiving a suspected spam email is to click on the name of the sender and view the entire email address. This way I can see whether it’s likely to be an official account or not. If it doesn’t even mention the name of the sender, it’s likely it’s not.

Are they likely to EMAIL you about this?

When receiving an email about your latest bank transaction, or prompting you to verify your Paypal details, it’s also wise to ask yourself: would they actually email me about this? Or would they rather send me a letter in the post or give me a call? Legitimate emails from companies should never ask you to do something involving such confidential data at the click of a button. 

Also, don’t allow yourself to be fooled by your inbox. Even if an email hasn’t been sent to your Junk folder, this doesn’t mean that it’s as true as it claims to be. Highest chances are, it’s only made its way through the spam checks because the sender knows what s/he’s doing.

If there’s anything that the hundreds of E-safety lessons at secondary school taught me, it’s to think extra-cautiously about everything I do and engage with online. It’s now time to share this wisdom with those who might be slightly less aware. Don’t be dumb, tell mum!

Image credits:

https://gfycat.com/fortunatesmartgreyhounddog

https://smith.queensu.ca/insight/articles/don_t_buy_what_surveillance_capitalism_is_selling

https://tech.rochester.edu/security/phishing-education/

[angelic-guardienne]

I loved your tags about Xehanort and Ardyn in that short post you made about KH. Because there are so many people who just hate Ardyn and just see him as pure evil and doesn't deserve any sympathy.. He is honestly my favorite villian, he was well written and his backstory was compelling in being a dark Jesus in a way, I really REALLY hope they stick with Xehanort's scientific curiousity for KH3 as well.. because that would be absolutely disappointing after all this time.

!!! yes exactly.

Ardyn’s motive is revenge. Revenge for what’s been done to him. That’s all it is at face value, and that’s inherently regarded as a bad thing. Revenge only breeds more disaster, it doesn’t leave anyone satisfied. 

Ardyn started off as a savior to the people, sacrificing his own well-being to enhance that of others, taking the Starscourge into himself to save his people. He was meant to be the king, and he probably would have been a damn good one. He had a whole future ahead of him, one that looked so bright. And he had all of that taken away from him in a snap. In one fell swoop, he lost his brother and his future and all the ones he knew and loved (because you have to be immortal to survive the whole of Ardyn’s exile, and he’s the only one that was).

Ardyn’s primary goal is revenge on account of that, and that’s canon, and it’s also the reason why I think a lot of people see him as just the villain. Anything deeper than that is mostly conjecture, but it’s conjecture so supported by his actions that it may as well be canon, too. And I think that’s where the line is drawn between the two opinions of Ardyn. 

Ardyn was definitely someone who wanted to die and couldn’t, like literally couldn’t, unless it was done by the proper hand under the proper circumstances. He was waiting for the end. Why else do you think he faded with a smile on his face?

There’s a lot that Ardyn could have done that he didn’t do. You could say it was because it wouldn’t quite fit into his plans, but level with me for a second. Part of his revenge was ending the line of Lucis. What stopped him from just killing Noctis right after the fall of Insomnia? We all know he had ample opportunity and more than enough power to do it. 

You can say satisfaction. Ardyn himself says that killing Noctis (before the 10 yrs) would bring him scant satisfaction.

I think it’s because of that secondary goal, suicide. If Ardyn killed Noct prematurely, the line of Lucis would end, yes, but he’d still be there. A Fallen King of nothing, doomed to wander alone forever because he prematurely killed the one person who could have killed him. Ardyn doesn’t want that, hence why he doesn’t kill Noctis. (To even bring the line back in, killing him early would bring scant satisfaction because he’d just be dooming himself all over again, even if he did get what he wanted)

Hell, even Noctis sympathizes with Ardyn. Noctis, who has every right to absolutely despise Ardyn and everything he stands for just because of what Ardyn’s done (I have a feeling that he blames Ardyn for the fall of Insomnia and Ignis’ blindness, among other things, even though he doesn’t 100% know what happened), sympathizes with him. It’s really only seen after the 10 yrs of darkness, which is arguably when Noctis should have been at the height – he’s had a whole decade of reflection to think about what’s happened to him and what Ardyn’s done and he still sympathizes. He’s not excusing Ardyn’s actions, but he sympathizes with his plight. 

Don’t get me wrong, Ardyn is still a villain. A tragic one, but still a villain. His actions can really be summed up in “cool motive, still murder.” Don’t like what he did. But Ardyn’s also a victim.

(It’s interesting, we spend the entire game hating him, but as we get closer to the end we learn that he wasn’t always like this, that he was also chosen by the gods, that he was meant to be a king. Noctis was chosen to succeed, Ardyn was chosen to fall; they were both doomed to their fates, both victims of the prophecy.) 

Ardyn being a victim is what separates him and Xehanort.

Like you said, Xehanort has a scientific curiosity. He’s heard the legends of the Keyblade War and the absolute oblivion that it brought about and how the worlds recovered from it to give them the worlds that they live in now. He wants to know if it’s possible to recreate this, and if it is, he wants to know what the aftermath will be.

Everything, to him, is like numbers – or, to hammer home the canon connection, a chess game. He’s got to move the pieces in a certain way and anticipate his opponent’s moves in order to get what he wants.

Xehanort wants to cause the apocalypse for the sheer wonder of what’s going to happen next. He looks at it like an experiment, where the people involved – Ventus, for example – are only smaller variables in the greater scale of things. Ventus lost his heart and went into a vegetative state as a direct result of Xehanort’s actions, and Xehanort deems this a mere rash mistake on his own part. He announces it with all the care of someone talking about the weather and laughs a little afterwards, because none of that matters to him. 

Xehanort implements instrumental reasoning – that being, assigning everything some amount of worth based on how useful it is as a means to an end – as a tool – and completely disregarding intrinsic value. 

All the characters we’ve come to love and cherish are just tools to him. Ventus is the broken boy who failed to be the blade. Terra is the feckless youth who became his new vessel. Aqua is the misguided master who sacrificed herself for a friend. To Xehanort, you’re either a tool, a hindrance, or a non-variable. Never a person. Never anything with value beyond your use to him.

Xehanort invested a lot of time in Riku, as we all know. He saw Riku the same way he saw Terra – another boy susceptible to the darkness and a possible augment to his plans. Thing is, Riku overcame that darkness and found a way to trap it, to deal with it, so that it couldn’t overtake him. As soon as Xehanort realized this – “a boy who is immune to darkness is of no use to us” – he tried to get rid of Riku, because what was previously a boon was now a hindrance. 

Xehanort has a scientific mind. That’s not a bad thing. It’s how he’s using it, it’s how that it’s the only lens he views the world through, that’s what’s bad. Xehanort is science without morality.

This brings me around to the original post’s point. The young Xehanort we see in the opening trailer – the OG Xehanort, if you will – didn’t have yellow eyes. Yellow eyes, in the KH series, is seen at the top tier sign of “fallen to darkness” or, later, “Norted.”  There are two directions this little tidbit could go in.

1. “Xehanort” is not his original name and he was overtaken by some higher entity (which would, therefore, be named Xehanort) that led him to commit the crimes he did throughout the series. This OG Xehanort is not, in fact, Xehanort, and he is instead a puppet – he was similar to Terra in that he was tricked and couldn’t overcome that darkness. That he’s a victim, in essence.

2. That is Xehanort. He’s in full control of himself. His heart was strong enough that he could (like Riku, actually) let the darkness in and trap it and not let it overtake him. Xehanort fell to darkness (like any other average joe) in his quest to sate this scientific curiosity, and it turns out that it actually helped him to do so.

While the former is an interesting theory, the latter fits Xehanort’s character portrayal way more. Number one wouldn’t be totally out of left field in regards to Xehanort up until this point, but it would be deeply disappointing, like you said.

This is what I meant when I made the original post. Ardyn was a victim. Xehanort is not, never will be, and never should be, and if that route is taken, it completely undermines his character. 

But possession is a huge thing in the KH series. Xehanort possessed Terra, and Riku, and the members of the new Organization XIII. If “Xehanort” becomes an entity and the OG Xehanort becomes just another name to add to the laundry list of his victims, then it’s in line with what KH has shown us so far. That’s why it wouldn’t be totally out of left field. I just hope they choose not to do that. 

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY Dr. Edward Pretorius is a scientist who has developed the Resonator, a machine which allows whoever is within range to see beyond normal perceptible reality. His assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, activates the machine and soon sees strange creatures in the air. When he is bitten by one of them, he urges Pretorius to turn off the machine. The crazed Pretorius refuses. Crawford panics and flees. When the police arrive, they find Pretorius decapitated. Crawford is subsequently arrested and accused of murder.

Crawford is committed to a psychiatric ward, where he is treated by Dr. Katherine McMichaels. After Crawford gives his account of Pretorius’ death, Katherine orders that Crawford undergo a CT scan, showing that Crawford’s pineal gland is enlarged and growing. Convinced of Crawford’s innocence, Katherine has him released to her custody, and plans on taking him back to Pretorius’ house and the Resonator. They are accompanied by Detective Bubba Brownlee, who investigated Pretorius’ death.

Upon returning to the house, Katherine and Crawford rebuild the Resonator. Crawford reactivates the machine which causes more creatures to appear along with a severely deformed Pretorius. His consciousness having taken control of the creature that devoured his brain, Pretorius tells the trio of a world beyond that is more pleasurable than normal reality. A panicking Crawford shuts off the Resonator, making Pretorius and the creatures vanish.

The next morning, Katherine insists that the Resonator could shed light on the victims of schizophrenia, as well as possible treatments and suggests that they turn the machine back on, but Bubba and Crawford disagree. While Bubba and Crawford are asleep, Katherine gets back up to feel the pleasure from the machine and turns it back on, bringing forth a worried Crawford and the now-almost unrecognizable and mutated Pretorius. Bubba enters the scene as Pretorius grabs Katherine, preparing to eat her mind and take her to the world of beyond. Crawford and Bubba go down into the basement to shut off the power, but encounter a giant worm like monster. Bubba succeeds in shutting off the power, rescuing Crawford and Katherine and sending Pretorius away.

When Bubba decides that they should leave the house, all of a sudden, Pretorius somehow returns and the Resonator turns back on, as all three of them run up into the attic to deactivate it. Katherine and Crawford are attacked by little beelike creatures, and as Bubba pushes them out of the way, he is devoured to the bone. Crawford fights off Pretorius and succeeds in freeing Katherine, but then his enlarged pineal gland pops out of his forehead. Katherine short circuits the machine by spraying it repeatedly with a fire extinguisher.

She then takes Crawford back to the hospital, where she is evaluated for insanity and schizophrenia, since her story was just like Crawford’s. As Katherine is being prepared for shock treatment by a sadistic staff member, Crawford has developed an overwhelming hunger for human brains and kills Katherine’s superior Dr. Bloch. Katherine escapes and drives back to the house with a bomb and a crazed Crawford following her.

Katherine puts the bomb on the Resonator and goes to leave when Crawford attacks her. As he is about to eat her brain, she bites off his pineal gland, reverting him to his senses. However, Crawford is pulled away and has his brain eaten by a completely deformed, mutated Pretorius. Before he can do the same to Katherine, Crawford’s consciousness begins to fight for control within Pretorius, the opposing consciousnesses tearing their shared body apart. Katherine finally escapes through the attic window just as the bomb explodes, killing both Pretorius and Crawford and destroying the resonator.

Landing outside, Katherine breaks her leg and the neighbors gather around her as she suffers a complete mental break, saying “It ATE him!” while bursting out in mad laughter.

Stuart Gordon Behind the Scenes From Beyond

DEVELOPMENT/PRE-PRODUCTION Stuart Gordon, whose 1985 debut Re-Animator, a modernized adaptation H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, was a landmark of excess that made an instant genre icon of its star, Jeffrey Combs. Seeking to duplicate its success. Gordon, alongside Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna and screenwriter Dennis Paoli. again turned to the Dark Prince of Providence for a more ambitious follow-up feature. But when their plans for Dagon based on the Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth – were shot down by Empire Pictures head honcho Charles Band, they turned to a much slighter, though no less strange, Lovecraft tale for their next feature: the 1920 short story From Beyond.

The script, co-written with playwright/screenwriters Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris, Gordon observed, “This was a much more difficult adaptation than RE-ANIMATOR because it was just the setup and we had to come up with the rest of the movie. Lovecraft’s story is only five pages long.”

“I would say Katherine in FROM BEYOND afforded me the greatest opportunity to play a wide range of emotions in the course of 90 minutes. I went from being a repressed Psychiatrist to a yearning, sexually charged and awakened woman to…being a hero! It was quite a journey and one where Jeffrey (Combs) and I almost reversed roles from what we played in RE-ANIMATOR.” – Barbara Crampton

Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” inspired Gordon and his screenwriters conception for the film’s monster. Explained Gordon, “We came across a creature, the Shoggoth, which were the slaves of the Old Ones that once populated the earth. The Shoggoth is a kind of protoplasmic ball fifteen feet in diameter, which has the capacity to change itself into anything it needs to be. If they needed arms, they’d just grow arms. Somehow, they also gained intelligence.”

Observed Gordon of Lovecraft’s constantly-evolving Shoggoth, “One trouble with horror movies is that once you see the monster, the movie’s over. This idea allowed us to have the monster changing constantly-just when you think you’ve seen it as bad as it can get, it gets worse.”

After a tentative budget for the film had been fixed, Yuzna contacted New York-based writer Dennis Paoli to come up with a screenplay. That script was heavily revised by the producer and Gordon. Major changes were made in the design of the special effects. Comic strip artist Neal Adams was brought in to work on the storyboards. Adams eventually teamed up with Gordon on the task, eager to capture a unique look for the creatures. The script described them as both shapeless and erotic at the same time. Adams and Gordon worked very loose, without worrying about how the creatures would be made to work. They strove for a striking EC Comics look.

The production hired special effects coordinator Michael Muscal to determine whether effects could be filmed according to the storyboards. Muscal was joined by supervisors John Naulin and Tony Doublin, who worked with Gordon on some of the visual concepts. Gordon decided to avoid opticals as much as possible and create effects live on camera.

According to Shostrom, Dennis Paoli’s screenplay was open concerning how the creatures looked. “Stuart has an artistic background,” he adds, “so he was able to come up with some great storyboards showing what he wanted, like Mr. Bubble (the first-stage Pretorious transformation). He had seen some sketches I’d done for a film a few years back where a person had a large membranous sac attached to his neck, an idea which he liked. He did some illustrations that took it further. So, Stuart had much to do with the final image.”

SPECIAL EFFECTS John Naulin and Tony Doublin started designing the effects for FROM BEYOND. Based in California, Naulin supplied all makeup and mechanical effects. Tony Doublin took charge of the optical and mechanical effects. Naulin got the assignment of the graphic makeup effects. He also designed the pineal gland and the mechanical lamprey eels. John Buechler created the phase one Pretorious effects. Mark Shostrom was brought in for the later Pretorious transformations, known as “Mr. Bubble.” Pretorious, the central character of FROM BEYOND, gradually evolves into a protoplasmic, shapeless entity.

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In Buechler’s key transformation, Pretorious’ head gruesomely splits open and a pair of rotten hands shoot out to grab a terrified Barbara Crampton (dressed in black leather). The movements were entirely mechanical. A small replica of actor Ted Sorel’s torso was sculpted at Buechler’s lab in California, then sent over to Italy, as were most of the effects props.

“The first transformation was done with a bunch of appliances,” said Michael Deak, who assisted Buechler in Italy. “The muscles actually came off his face. Then we switched to a puppet for the split open scene. We had the help of Dave Kindlon and Rob Kurtzman (of Mark Shostrom’s crew), who were coordinating Pretorious arms. Bill (Butler) and I were pumping out a sort of gelatinous slimy stuff.”

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The MTSD crew additionally provided the S & M and splatter material, subsequently removed for the R-rated release: whipping, nipple spiking, tongue piercing, eyeball sucking, and brain eating. Of course, there were basic wounds-cuts, bruises, burns-but also Bubba Brownlee’s (Ken Foree) death scene when he gets eaten by insects. Greg Johnson, along with the rest of the crew, built Bubba’s lower body, while John Criswell sculpted the torso; Anthony and Therese Doublin created the tiny insects.

“Those “insects’ were really millions of polystyrene balls,” explains Doublin, “blown around by a huge fan. Actually, one of the crew kidded me that Stuart wanted tiny eyes painted on each ball. I said fine, get me 500 prisoners,” he laughs.

We also did what could be called the secondary creatures, the non Pretorious related stuff,” Naulin elaborates. “The giant lamprey eel, for example, that sucks off Jeffrey Combs’ hair. Also, the psuedojellyfish and wriggling snake-eels that are present when the Resonator is switched on.

“There was an interesting crossover since part of those effects are optical, created by using rod puppets in a tank of water, matted in to give them the necessary degree of fluidity of motion. Tony Doublin developed the water aspect. John Criswell and I built the snake-eels and jellyfish.

“We used different puppets on set for the biting sequences,” Naulin continues. “There were two of each: one fully mechanically and radio controlled, the other physically operated in part. Those were less sophisticated stunt versions.

“We had a problem coming up with a design that would work with an optical that obviously would not be added until much later,” Naulin observes. “The eels used out of the tank were different because the mechanisms had to be covered up, made to look like innards. For the close-ups, one of the main elements used were latex condoms, which were thin and flexible yet translucent enough for the back-lighting to show through.”

Both FX supervisors consider From Beyond to be a good test of their skills, one they enjoyed. However, an aspect of Italy neither found pleasant was the sub-zero temperatures experienced during shooting as Rome was plunged into a rare, deep snowfall. This aside, Naulin and Doublin praise the Italian crew who provided their backup.

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Mark Shostrom luckily missed the bad weather, but remains frustrated that he could not supervise his creations on set due to his Evil Dead II responsibilities. In his place, he sent animatronics expert David Kindlon and makeup artist/technician Robert Kurtzman. “I was quite distraught that I couldn’t get over to Z monitor what went on,” confesses Shostrom. “But Robert is the best person I know to oversee that kind of situation. He’s an excellent artist. as is David Kindlon. With him troubleshooting the mechanics, I could sleep nights. I’m enormously pleased with the way it turned out on screen.”

Shostrom joined the production during its early inception. “I had lots of discussions with Stuart and showed him my sketches, which were quite surrealistic monsters. But it basically came down to having a design because we suddenly got a green light, so I sculpted a couple of maquetes, small sculptures for the final creature, and the Pretorious monster.

As for the final creature seen in From Beyond, Shostrom tried to go beyond his budget. As he puts it: “We were pretty ambitious there. I told them what it would take. Brian Yuzna said Empire couldn’t afford that. We tried anyway. I sculpted the maquete of the creature, trying to give it a look that was unusual, yet would fit within the story. Creating it really drained my budget, but the key thing was the animatronics designed and built by David Kindlon, who really bit off a lot to chew on that one. He had to make radio-controlled heads and arms all by himself, although his work was essential to the creature’s success.

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“The reason why we all went full steam ahead on this film,” he relates,”was simply because it was such a neat project. That, and the desire to create a really memorable monster, to make it better than it should have been on the given budget.”

The Pretorious creature emerged as the end result: big, complicated, difficult to manage due to its size. “We need several things we hadn’t obsessed with the machine. He shows her what it can do because he cares, but he’s a victim. He is then transformed, his whole life is changed, Crawford is a man who runs away every time there is danger. But he learns to stand his ground. It’s almost a moral message.”

From Beyond was a very difficult movie. I’m kind of schizo about it. It involved a lot of makeup. I counted it up once, it was 30 days in that hideous, bald-headed, dog-dick-out-of-my-forehead thing. I hated it. It was so uncomfortable. And yet on the flip side of that, it was shot out of Rome, Italy, and I got to spend a glorious eight weeks in one of the world’s greatest capitals. It was good. I feel like Charles Dickens: It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. But I also felt like the role in From Beyond was so polar-opposite to what I had done in Re-Animator, where I played a strong, driving personality that pushed the action forward. Here, I was really—for all intents and purposes—being a victim. Someone standing there going, “No!” So I felt like some of the tools in my kit were being taken away from me. That was a bit frustrating, too. – Jeffrey Combs

From Beyond was shot in Italy with an Italian crew in order to save money. Gordon says that the film would have cost fifteen million dollars to make in the United States, whereas the foreign production enabled him to hold costs to approximately two and a half million dollars. It was shot on a soundstage called Dinocitta just outside Rome. Dinocitta was originally constructed by Dino DeLaurentiis, but was seized by the government for nonpayment of taxes, and then sold to Empire Studios. From Beyond was one of the first films shot at that venue during its period of ownership by Empire.

Dinocitta Studios are located to the south of Rome, a 50-minute drive from the city center. This industrial estate clashes with the surrounding lush countryside. It is here, in studio three-a huge concrete hangar the weird and wonderful reality of From Beyond is being created.

The entire soundstage has been transformed into a large mansion, both interiors and exteriors. The set, created by Giovanni Natalucci and built at a cost of several thousand dollars, it is a large gothic style New England house.

This time around, Yuzna and Gordon have an eight week schedule in which to work their cinematic magic, twice the length they had for ReAnimator, and double the budget: the first Lovecraft adaptation cost $2 million to make; From Beyond’s budget is $4.5 million, primarily because of the enormous amount of special FX required. In this gothic picture, the action starts on page one of the screenplay and doesn’t let up until the explosive climax that promises to be truly stomach-turning.

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“This is a far more ambitious film than Re-Animator,” Yuzna explains. “But we’re under much less pressure because of the time we have. It’s taken an awful lot of organizing, but you’ll see the results on screen.’ Producer Yuzna has nothing but praise for the director. “Stuart has advanced in leaps and bounds-he’s getting terrific. He’s already brilliant as far as I’m concerned. A couple more pictures though, and he’s going to be tremendous. He’s one of the best directors I’ve ever come across who really works with actors. But, Stuart’s greatest gift is he knows how to tell a story. He does it the old way. The oral tradition; fairy tales stories where wild, crazy things happen. And people relate to that. It’s human storytelling.”

CAST/CREW Directed by  Stuart Gordon Produced by  Brian Yuzna Screenplay by Dennis Paoli Story by Brian Yuzna Dennis Paoli Stuart Gordon

Based on “From Beyond” by H. P. Lovecraft

Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Crawford Tillinghast Barbara Crampton as Dr. Katherine McMichaels Ted Sorel as Dr. Edward Pretorius Ken Foree as Bubba Brownlee Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as Dr. Bloch Bunny Summers as Neighborhood Lady Bruce McGuire as Jordan Fields

Makeup Department Bruce Barlow … shop crew Giacinto Bretti  … additional effects makeup: Italy Roberta Cozzo    … assistant makeup artist Gilda De Guilmi  … hair stylist (as Ida De Guilmi) Giancarlo Del Brocco … makeup designer Rita Innocenzi   … hairdresser Mark Shostrom    … special makeup effects Alfredo Tiberi   … assistant makeup artist Bill Forsche … special makeup effects artist (uncredited)

Neal Adams   … conceptual artist

Special Effects by Bruce Barlow … fabrication crew: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Gabriel Bartalos … fabrication crew: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (as Gabe Bartalos) John Blake   … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio (as John Blake Dutro) John Carl Buechler   … special effects creatures and transformations designer and supervisor: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (as John Buechler)

William Butler   … location supervisor: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries / special effects makeup

John Criswell    … assistant to Mr. Naulin: More Than Skin Deep Gino Crognale    … modeler: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Michael Deak … location supervisor: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries / on-set effects supervisor

Mitch Devane … modeler: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (as Mitch De Vane) Joe Dolinich … fabrication crew: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Anthony Doublin  … physical and photographic effects supervisor: Doublin EFX Theresa Harding Doublin   … production effects assistant (as Therese Harding Doublin)

Thomas Floutz    … fabrication crew: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (as Tom Floutz)

Greg Johnson … special effects makeup assistant: More Than Skin Deep Crit Killen  … effects technician David Kindlon    … animatronics: Mark Shostrom Studio Robert Kurtzman  … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio Peter Mark   … post-production effects assistant Ralph Miller III … animatronics: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Michael Muscal   … special effects coordinator

John Naulin  … optical water tank creature creator: More Than Skin Deep / special effects makeup and creatures coordinator: More Than Skin Deep

Shayna Naulin    … special effects makeup assistant: More Than Skin Deep Greg Nicotero    … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio (as Gregory Nicotero) Salvatore Passanisi  … special effects assistant: Italy Steve Patino … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio Gregor Punchatz  … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio Mark Shostrom    … pretorius creatures and body prosthetics designer and supervisor: Mark Shostrom Studio Aaron Sims   … effects technician: Mark Shostrom Studio Giuseppe Tortora … special effects technician: Italy Gino Vagniluca   … special effects technician: Italy John Vulich  … fabrication crew: Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Drex Reed    … special effects crew (uncredited)

Visual Effects by Linda Drake  … optical compositor (as Linda Obalil) David Zen Mansley … designer and creator: resonator (as David ‘Zen’ Mansley) Mark Shostrom    … Pretorious creature effects

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY film.avclub Cinefantastique v16n04 Cinefantastique v17n01 Fangoria#56 Fangoria#59 Fangoria#64

From Beyond (1986) Retrospective SUMMARY Dr. Edward Pretorius is a scientist who has developed the Resonator, a machine which allows whoever is within range to see beyond normal perceptible reality.

[titmasjack]

Weekly Summary

With three weeks remaining before my first deadline on the 26th of February, much like the previous unit, I wanted to dedicate a set amount of time to work on my 1500 word essay. With academic writing not being the strongest aspect of my work. I found it really helpful giving myself the time to focus on the production of my essay last unit, as it not only benefitted me by giving me allocated time to produce at least a first draft but gave me the lack of stress about having to complete it last minute. 

Wanting to ensure that I continued this trend throughout this unit, I gave myself the majority of week 7 to focus on the research narrative project for my upcoming peer and tutor reflection on the 5th of February. Using this time to my full advantage I broke down the necessary paragraphs and functions of my essay to ensure that I produced a methodical and progressive essay that reflect a range of opinions and ideas responding to one of the five questions posed by Lynsey herself in a previous week. 

Directly focusing my work on this project, I definitely sidetracked not only my other projects but my blog, as I haven’t had the opportunity to produce a range of other written content having been focused on my essay itself. In the upcoming weeks, I hope to be able to reflect and build back up the work on my blog, responding to the tasks that I completed and missed to ensure that I don’t fall behind in any other projects I’m currently tasked with.

Although I feel that I could have continued the trend of producing a blog every evening, academic writing has always been a weak point in my work and didn’t want it to affect the flow and dynamic of my essay, when having to produce a much more formal outcome. 

I feel that having given myself the time to work solely on my essay will definitely help me in the long run as it means that I have taken action to prioritise what I know is a weakness in my own work. Getting myself ahead of the curve in receiving the best feedback possible on what I can improve and develop upon in my upcoming iterations. Although I know that I have to add formal citations and references to my work, this is something that can be done when given feedback and isn't reliably needed when asking for a response from my tutors and peers. 

Although I still had my timetabled lessons, I felt that now was the best time to work on my essay as throughout the previous week we have had a lot more independent study. In preparation for my deadline and next project, now was the best time for me to pursue my essay to get the most out of my time available. 

Research Narrative

Solely focusing on my research narrative essay, I made great strides in being able to produce a completed first draft with a total of 1458 words that fit into the 1500 word count. With a 10% leeway I was originally sceptical that I would be able to create enough content to meet the required word count, but soon found that the extra 500 words in comparison to our previous units essay, gave me enough breathing room to explore and discuss in more depth a few ranges of points, rather than highlighting many points with little detail. Focusing on a couple of main theorists, I was able to constantly refer back to the original intentions of my essay, clearly responding to the original thesis that I stated in my introduction.

In comparison to my previous essay, I believe this showcases a much more clear and concise response to a given question, with alot less unnecessary fluff surrounding the topic of discussion. I was happy to have had also included a lot more of the cultural and historical context to my work as a driving factor to drive home my opinions. Having the chance to research the background information surrounding a films incentive and foreign culture has definitely widened my eyes to the possibility of interpretation and stylised choice as a director. 

I am happy with how this week turned out in regards to this project, as it gave me a good way in demonstrating how I can get ahead of the curve in producing and finalising a project before its deadline. This will give me a great setup for the upcoming week as I now have the opportunity to ask for the tutor and peer reflection on my work, to how I could further improve or expand my studies. 

Although I haven’t fully completed my bibliography, I wanted to ensure that I had a completed first draft to present on the day of my reflection. As I wish to continue to expand my bibliography as I create a variety of iterations, I hope to look at alternate sources and begin to use the library as a tool of resources that can support my studies. 

Digital Morphs

N/a Whilst focusing on other tasks, I didn’t find the time to make any significant developments on this individual project.

Animated Sketchbook

N/a Whilst focusing on other tasks, I didn’t find the time to make any significant developments on this individual project.

Intro to Stop-Motion

Developing our initial introduction to the software we took our animations past ball bounces by interacting with humanoid characters. Having them complete the task of lifting a box, we experimented with injecting character by varying the timing and spacing of our animations to portray various characteristics and responses to picking up a box. With a variety of variables I could consider throughout my experiments I got the opportunity to highlight the effects of a lightbox, heavy box, consider age, and form, technique and context. This gave me enough variety to create a range of experiments through stop-motion animation, video reference and story-boarding my initial ideas.

Although I only had the opportunity to animate two box lifts, I felt that my tests were a lot more effective than my original experiments with our ‘introduction to stop-motion’ with animator Tine Kluth. Using a much more simplified armature, I found it easier to not only pose but bend and articulate the humanoid figure due to its wire limbs compared to the previous ball and socket animation experiments I had previously made. 

With the much-improved flexibility, I believe that I was able to convey a lot stronger posing that established the characters weight and momentum throughout each action.

To best support my work, I also filmed a series of box lifts by myself, friends and peers documenting the subtle differences in completing the action, accounting for size, weight body shape and age. Having the opportunity to use this alongside as reference when animating, made my life significantly easier as it allowed me to establish a realistic sense of the posture of the characters and how they reacted to varying weights. What I found most interesting was the vast amount of secondary actions in the simple task of lifitng a box. 

Next week we’ll be establishing a more character driven task that relies on the emotion that I as an animator can portray through the physicality of a puppet. Much like before I intend to not only shoot reference footage but support my work by creating a range of storyboards that expresses the emotions I want to explore.

Intro to Digital 3D

Jumping further into the new software of Maya, this week focused on the modelling aspects of the program, looking at how we could bend, expand and distort original shapes to create a series of outcomes based on reference imagery. Specifically using the modelling tools available, we established how I could use them to my advantage to create a series of tools and everyday objects based around reference art and imagery we were provided beforehand. 

Staying away from animation, modelling is a huge aspect of the animated film industry that could be a potential gateway for me to pursue as a career later in life. I found that I got to grips quite comfortably with the modelling aspect of Maya and was something I definitely pursued further in my own time. Whilst not having the opportunity to fully complete the task of the session in the dedicated time, I took it upon myself to independently develop my modelling session by changing, developing and working on my original models to ensure they best reflected the original reference images we were provided. 

Taking the time to independently pursue this further, I found it rather fun to be working in software I hadn't tried before. Unlike After Effects, although I want to be introduced to a range of new tools, I found it personally easier to create outcomes and creatively develop ideas using the tools available. I hope that in the last week of the project we get the opportunity to explore our own ideas in creating a modelling task that leads to animation. Amalgamating both techniques and processes we have learnt using this new program.

Overall, I found it very helpful to have dedicated the majority of my time this week to my narrative research essay. Having the chance to now get peer reflection on my work, this will allow me to iterate and create multiple drafts without the stress of creating a full essay closer to my deadline.

To summarise;

With my deadline of the 26th approaching, I need to focus on my digital morph and sketchbook project to get them to the standard I want to create.

Having prioritised my essay, I need to catch up on my blog to showcase the work I have been creating outside of my narrative research project.

In the upcoming week, I need to get peer and tutor response for my essay on how I can improve and adapt my outcome to best suit the brief.

Continue to develop and expand upon my two mini-briefs introducing stop-motion and digital 3D animation.

[understandingthevoices]

quora always recommends me narcissism-related posts so here’s a comprehensive/basically complete list that someone came up with to identify a narcissist. PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. DONT RUIN YOUR LIFE - OR WASTE YEARS WITH THESE SCUM. 

Listen to your gut and your intuition. You’ll start to realize all the red flags. Something will feel off about this person…

They will never care about your feelings, opinions or desires. Sometimes they may act like they do, but they really really really don’t.

Everything is always about them. They are extremely selfish and think about themselves in every situation. To a narcissist, you are not seen as an individual, but as an object that can provide them things.

They will never compromise. You either like it or you don’t, it’s their way or no way!

They won’t congratulate you on your accomplishments - no matter how small or big.

They are parasites. They will use everything you can offer them - especially money, sex, food, driving your vehicle and shelter. You’ll end up paying for mostly everything, and they will hardly ever contribute anything. They will keep their money for themselves while gladly spending all of yours!

They are hot & cold. You end up feeling confused with their moods being constantly up and down.

In the beginning stages of your relationship, they’ll make you feel like you’re the center of their world. It seems like they make so much time to talk to you, and make you feel “special”. Then during devaluation, you will start to go days without hearing from them. They won’t respond to your messages, calls, or attempts to get together with them. They’ll make it seem like you’re smothering them, or annoying them and will call you too needy or clingy.

They’ll tell you all kinds of things to get you hooked under their charm. You will end up quickly becoming attached to them.

They will talk about their exes in a negative way. My ex narc referred to most of the women he’s been with as “bitches”.

They’ll make you feel bad for talking about the things that are upsetting you. You can forget about having healthy communication & working things out constructively.

They aren’t caring, or nurturing. They especially won’t be there for you if you are sick, or feeling hurt. They will actually abandon you during times when you need them the most.

They make all kinds of promises and will never follow through on a single one of them.

They have no goals, or ambition and don’t value hard work ethic. Instead they spend their days preying on others, and being low-life leeches. They have no shame in this! They have a “fake it until you make it” mentality.

They will isolate you from your family and friends, control who you talk to, but they get to socialize with whoever they want to without question!

They’ll ghost you and disappear randomly; leaving you all confused and distraught. This is one of their favourite games to play!

All of the “compliments” and “kindness” you saw in the beginning will stop once they realize they have you right where they want you; in love and head over heels for them. The idealization phase doesn’t last very long before you start to become devalued, criticized, constantly put-down and ignored.

They get bored very easily and live unpredictable lifestyles. Routines are not for them.

Huge procrastinators. They usually have many side projects going on, or have a hard time committing to jobs. If they end up keeping a steady job, it’s because they have a high status position, and consider themselves to be on top. However, many narcs are really lazy, and would prefer for their supplies to provide for them. Hence the parasitic type relationship!

Sexual addiction. Many are addicted to porn, and erotic lifestyles such as strippers, escorts/prostitutes, and they are extremely promiscuous. Women/Men are merely viewed as objects. I would highly recommend never having unprotected sex with them, and if you do then get yourself checked for sexually transmitted infections and diseases.

They will openly flirt with people in front of you to make you upset and get a reaction out of you. This includes friends, family of yours, co-workers, neighbours, complete strangers, or anyone they find attractive. Then they will call you jealous, controlling, or crazy if you say anything about it.

Cheaters!! They are always cheating. They will admit to cheating on past relationships, and may even tell you that they will cheat no matter who they’re with and that it comes with the package. They’ll even sleep with your friends or family! Everyone is fair game to them.

Drug/Alcohol addiction. Many narcissists will abuse substances in excess to mask their deep internal suffering.

They have no moral compass! They will behave in ways that most people would find abhorrent.

They’ll act nice in front of others & be fakely kind to people in your presence, but treat you like garbage behind the scenes where nobody sees.

Insecure, but will act overly confident. Almost cocky like their better than everyone.

They will rarely if ever apologize to you or take accountability for anything, and if and when they do, expect it to be really insincere.

They will tell you about their abusive childhood to justify their behaviour. They do this so you will empathize with them, but they have absolutely zero empathy for anyone else.

They will lie about anything, and keep things from you.

They don’t like to share. They have the mentality “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine.”

They won’t make you feel appreciated on special occasions such as holidays, and birthdays. They don’t care about these things.

They expect you to be submissive, and complacent. If you decide to speak your mind and stand up for yourself, you’ll be met with rage, or even get discarded if you hit their ego.

They are very immature! It’s like they still haven’t grown up.

Mentally, physically, sexually and financially abusive. They may call you degrading insults in arguments, subtly put you down or humiliate you in front of others, they may act out aggressively against you or violently, they will take your money that you work hard for and try to control you, and they can also become sexually abusive by forcing you to have sex when you don’t want to or make you engage in acts that you normally wouldn’t.

They have no regard for the law or rules, and live reckless lifestyles. They know right from wrong, but don’t care to live by societal standards. Many end up breaking the law, and getting arrested.

You’ll begin to realize you’re just a puppet on their strings. They call allthe shots!

You’re constantly walking on eggshells trying to please them, but nothing will ever be good enough. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Triangulation - they will somehow manage to compare you to their exes, or make you constantly wonder if there is another person in their lives - which in narc world, there is ALWAYS another supply. Whether you’re primary, secondary, side piece used for sex, or “just a friend”; trust me, there is always someone else!

They will cut off anyone, and only keep people around that serve their lifestyle. Most of their “friends” are people that they can use, or just go out and party with.

Pay close attention to how they talk about others, they rarely have anything compassionate or positive to say about anyone.

You feel like you’re being constantly devalued and left feeling confused about where this nice charming person went that existed during the lovebombing phase. It was really just an act! The dark demonic force you are starting to see is their true self. They can’t mask it for very long.

They can dish it out but can’t take it back! They have no problem calling anyone out on things that don’t fit their narrative, but the second you even mention anything about them (even if it’s warranted and truthful), all Hell breaks loose!

You’ll begin to realize you’re the only one making true sincere effort to make things work. All they do is take, take, take and serve you tiny little crumbs to string you along while they look for their next target.

They use social media as their predatory playground to check up on their supplies, and hunt for new ones. If you have a lazy narc, then they’ll just recycle through one of the sources that still believes all the shit they serve.

Master manipulators! They know all the right things to say to win you over. They get to know their victims very well like your strengths, weaknesses, insecurities, and vulnerabilities. They will use this all against you in their favour.

They aren’t into true intimacy or affection, especially in public. After the idealization phase wears off, they will not put any ounce of effort into taking you out on dates, being affectionate, or even doing basic things like holding your hand. They will turn completely cold and become withdrawn; especially after sex.

You’ll basically start to feel like nothing you do is appreciated - because to them, it isn’t! You’ll be lucky if you even get a simple thank you for the nice things you do.

It won’t matter how nice of a person you are, you’ll eventually be discarded in the worst possible way ever and they’ll coldly move on as if you never existed. You’ll be left devastated trying to make sense of everything that has happened. To them, everyone is a means to an end!

Bottom line is not every narcissist is the same; some are more malignant and overt while others are covert, but they all share similar traits and usually follow the same relationship pattern with everyone - idealize, devalue and discard. You will never feel truly happy in the relationship, because it’s not a parternship. It’s a toxic one-sided, abusive, selfish dictatorship that makes you feel objectified, used, confused, unloved, and insecure.