#and a bunch of other randos i don't remember the names of

[simatrix]

Alberto hosted a New Year's Eve party, mostly because he needs to appeal a community policy so that he can vote on a policy for his aspiration since we have the max amount of policies in place in this community right now. So, he hosted a party to schmooze and get signatures for his appeal.

[clownhara]

is there like a jester ocs 101 i do wanna learn about them

Putting these under a read more because this might get long

My family :)

Edward Roberts-Rosales: I made too many jokes about this bastard being my dad and now he's my dad. High key wants to fuck plants. Evades taxes like no ones business. Kind of a shit guy but it's funny to watch him mess up everything so we keep him alive for that alone Max Rosales: My better dad. Can really do so fucking much better than Edward but he settled </3. Is a plant man. Likes baking. Is the dad that actually loves me. Heron Rosales: I don't do to much with her but I'm trying to do more. Max's trans sister. Wants Edward dead and honestly, we don't blame her. Average chronic pain haver tbh please get her some Ibuprofen. Boaty McBoatface: My brother who is a boat. Edwards favorite son, despite being terrified of being on boats after he was the sole survivor of a ship wreck. I fuckinh hate this thing

Project Moon adjacent ones

Despise Domek (Or just Des): Local Enkphalin hooked rat. Goes by it/they but people close to it can call them she/her. There are two remaining people who can call them she/her. Steals things from people it likes to keep a piece of them, so don't invite them to your house. Things WILL go missing. Says the phrase "Well it didn't kill me so I'm fine" way to god damn often. Ambrose Domek: Not actually related to Des at all his parents just stole Des's parents last name. We heart religious fanaticism to the point of self harm!!!!!! Has two boyfriends and has convinced himself neither of them like him. Him and Des are besties :) Keith: Real Jester-heads remember Keith. I made this bastard before Ruina came out and he keeps fucking staying relevant to whatever game is out. How does he do it. Lobcorp him is Geb and Myo's adopted son, a Rabbit, and had a complex where he's gotta prove himself 24/7 and ends up getting his leg ripped off. Ruina him is trying to find Gebura again after the whole Library situation happened, and is wildly distraught after learning Myo's whole deal. Limbus Keith is content, much older, runs a weapons shop, and is gay married to Heathcliff. Jesus Christ I made him before the new translation of Lopcorp happened I think HOW LONG HAS HE EXISTED WHAT THE FUCK

Damien Domek: Also not related to Des, just took it's last name because he liked it. They are qprs though. Also is broke as shit but mostly stays out of the Rat lifestyle by just old fashioned robbing people. Loves lying to people for fun and profit, but he is honestly a pretty nice guy. Minus the lying

Randos

Arlo: Disgusting rancid cyborg scientist who needs to bathe and touch grass. I adore him though. Ellie: Arlos little sibling. She/they user. Kills people for money and feeds the bodies to the eldritch horror that follows her around Hector: The eldritch horror that follows Ellie around. usually just looks like a dilf tbh its easier for Ellie to explain. Can't actually speak so he usually just talks telepathically while making a bunch of hums, chirps, and clicks to mimic speaking.

Oleander: Local unethical scientist that unethicaled a bit too hard when trying to revive his even worse older brother and turned off most of his emotions manually to avoid coping with the mental toil. Sad! Many such cases. Can't feel any emotions other then joy now. Kinda sucks but he certainly doesn't seem to upset about it :)

Simon: Oleadners brother. Kinda. Moreso a robot piloting Oleanders brothers body. Fucking hates Oleander but after Oleander lobotomized himself Simon begrudgingly takes care of him now. Despite his complicated feelings, he's wildly overprotective.

Cybel: A robot Oleander made! They are meant to gather as much information as they possibly can in case some horrible event happens that kills off humanity. is quite literally indestructible. Likes ice cream.

Octavius: I made this guy to be a danganrompa villain back in high school and I succeeded too well. I fucking hate this fake ass bitch

Tabb: This fucking guy. Trapped in a time loop but he doesn't know and its technically not a time loop. Met his (now) husband ages ago but died shortly after meeting him, so he revived Tabb, then the two got married, then Tabb died again so Halt (the husband) revived him again but he lost his memories then halt died and Tabb revived him the Tabb died again so Halt revived him but he lost all his memories so they dated again and got remarried then Tabb died again and you get the idea. Very nice guy, a bit anxious, perfectly normal minus the dying thing. If it wasn't for him losing all his memories and Halt tampering with shit so he was in love with him i uh. Don't think he'd actually like Halt all that much tbh

Halt: Just wants to be happy with his husband :(. Sad he unethicaled all over that science. Hey are you noticinga theme here. Also he's a cat boy but thats really not relevant to his depression issues

Urge: Halts kinda milfy twin sister. Really sick of all of this loop bullshit because she gets to watch her bestie Tabb die repeatedly, so she packed up her bags and left. Can't be in the same room as Halt without them getting into a fist fight. Do you see the themeing with their namesan d their ideals. Halt is kinda halted in place but Urge keeps pushing forward because she has the urgeto move on. Do you see it. It is almost 1 am

Russel: A kid that got roped into this whole mess because he walked in on a Tabb revival tube without permission. Sticks around Urge most of the time. Had a bad homelife to put it mildly, so Urge took him in.

Theres way more of these bastards but these are the most relevant ones. I am going to bed now. Goobnight

[shanastoryteller]

It’s been a while since you’ve talked about it, but I’m worried about visiting LA this year. I don’t live in a city that big, I can’t really investigate it online, and I have no idea where it’s safe to hotel there. Where do you (did you? You may have moved on?) feel safe in the city? Where would you recommend to people visiting to stay? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to! You’re just one of the very few people I know that has lived there. Thank you, regardless of your answer, you didn’t have to read this at all❤️

hi! answering publicly in case anyone has advice they want to add :)

i'm a little worried this might come off as dismissive, but honestly i just don't find cities to be that dangerous. i've lived in LA for almost eight years, lived in another city for 3 years before that, and have visited about a dozen major cities outside of america

homeless people, by and large, aren't going to bother you. if you have a couple bucks to spare, give it with a smile and look them in the eye, and move on, or if you have nothing it's fine to say that you just don't have cash. if there's an encampment, which happens all over the city and just not on skid row, then they're definitely not going to bother you because they don't want to cause trouble and get kicked out of where they've managed to find a consistent place to sleep

the truth is if you get assaulted, statistically it's going to be by someone you know rather than a rando on the street. if you do get assaulted in LA by a stranger, it is WAY more likely to by an out of work background actor named josh who picks up shifts at a tiki bar than a homeless person or gang member

that being said, i actually have no idea what neighborhoods are considered dangerous in LA these days? i guess the flip side of finding nowhere in LA particularly dangerous is that it's all dangerous, but really you're more likely to get taken out jaywalking in dtla than anything else

as for locations, it's important to remember: los angeles is huge

it's more like a bunch of small towns next to one another than one cohesive city. the town i grew up in is smaller than the neighborhood i currently live in. if you're visiting, i HIGHLY suggest you rent a car. the public transport in LA is shit

i've only been to east LA to visit friends and eats burgers. both were enjoyable, but you're relatively far from the coast. they also built a stadium in inglewood, which multiple friends have informed me has fucked up the housing in the area, but i don't know if that would make it better or worse to stay in

anywhere in the valley is going to be cheaper than the city proper. north hollywood and studio city are good for that. the garland in noho is really cute and right next to the highway. sherman oaks and van nuys are decent too and they're literally right next to each other. i personally think encino is one large strip mall and so is panorama city, but panorama city at least has the saving grace of good filipino food

if you get to northridge, you've gone too far north. malibu beaches are definitely worth a visit, but it's such an expensive area and so far from everything that i wouldn't stay there

hollywood proper, venice beach, and santa monica are probably the most quintessentially LA places, but I would only stay in santa monica out of them. not for safety reasons, but because the other two are filled with tourists. which, i know you'll technically be a tourist, but still

koreatown has great food, but terrible parking. it's also a cheapish place to stay. downtown LA is something I avoid because it just reminds me of the financial district of every city i've ever been to. the dtla library and the last bookstore are the only things worth going there for, personally, and it's also a very expensive place to stay.

little tokyo is very cute and manages to feel separate from city while being surrounded by it. i admittedly only go to chinatown for bakery runs, but it's all delicious and vey beautiful, especially if you've never been to a chinatown in a major city before

west hollywood is expensive, and i wouldn't stay there myself, but it has great brunch places and devastating parking rules. the most expensive parking ticked i ever got was in weho. burbank is the land of animation studios and also porto's. it's a really cute area. beverly hills exists and taking a walk on melrose is fun but i wouldn't linger. again, not safety, just terrible vibes.

i know this probably seems like a lot but i've actually only listed the more popular neighborhoods that i'm personally familiar with. los angeles is HUGE.

i hope this helps somewhat! and sorry to anyone who's neighborhood i've disparaged T_T

[ask-obt]

I feel like this question has already been asked but i can’t remember and I couldn’t find the answer by searching his tag, so: What was the role of Akio in the original OBT? From what i can tell he’s meant to be Rune’s son, but what about his father? Is there a chance he could appear in the current comic, or would he just be repurposed into a new character? (Sorry for long prompt btw)

// the explanation was a bit buried into this ask here (which also talks about other plot points from old OBT), but I'd be happy to give a more accessible version of an explanation as well as some extra context! so akio is the remnant of an arc I had in mind for rune from the very early era of preboot OBT up until I officially scrapped him in 2020. october 6th, 2020 in fact (happy die day you little freak)! in old OBT his role was to be the son of rune and some rando from the luxio tribe in a one night stand, mostly to stir drama between her and kodali. later on it turned out that luxio had the same name as one of my partner's characters (a mew named Xander), and we joked about Xander shapeshifting into a Luxio and blending into the tribe and getting together with rune... and then I made doodles of a vulpix with fun little mew traits, and got attached to the idea! around that time I was gearing up for the reboot of OBT, so he's... well, I was gonna say alolan, but this was actually my first doodle of that fire opal vulpix concept!

and then I thought "actually it'd be more fun if he was kantonian and also will help differentiate his design from rune" which is where you get the current iteration of his design that I use for memeing purposes

then with this being in the reboot timeline, it meant it started intersecting and butting heads with other arcs I had planned. I can probably go more into detail with that once we're a bit further along in the story, but basically rune was A Little Cringe for the circumstances she ended up with xander in the reboot, which would've ended up giving akio a bit of tasty insecurity as he got older and realized he resembled his dad in several ways he didn't like.

one of those ways being that he was flirty, but didn't want to commit to having a family

but that said... these were all headcanons for akio when he was older, aka either in the epilogue of OBT or in a potential sequel. which would've meant I'd have to carry around a baby character that I didn't really have any strong feelings about, a character arc for rune that was fitting with the story less and less over time, all for an epilogue or sequel that may or may not have seen the light of day. don't get me wrong, i still LOVE the idea of exploring this type of arc. but... does it have to be rune's son? she has a bunch of other arcs to explore, and her experiencing motherhood was just complicating the story in a way that wasn't fun to write. overall, it stopped fitting with the themes of OBT and needed to be cut in order to tell the story I actually wanted to tell. so nowadays, akio is a funny little in-joke with myself as a remnant of a long forgotten storyline, and is floating around my brain like a dvd screensaver. maybe someday he'll find a home in a story (he'd be more likely to find another life in my original project before OBT), maybe I'll use him in some sort of RP/collab, or maybe he'll keep collecting dust. only time will tell!

[goopi-e]

Seeing how MLP:FiM and specifically wild MLP AUs are in vogue again, I vaguely remembered working on an AU of my own as a little pony-lovin' baby:

So remember how for one episode in one of the early seasons the Mane6 (well, sans Twi) switched their cutiemarks with each other? What if these were their actual cutiemarks, like, since childhood? Because, like, all their cutiemarks are owed to the Sonic Rainboom, and Dashie doing the Rainboom was iirc kinda circumstantial? So what if she didn't do it, and now they all live in the Rainboom-less world and coincidentally recieve each others' cutiemarks, are all more or less miserable in their places, and the Elements of Harmony do not work because their future wielders are not in their proper place in the world anymore/yet. I.e.: Pinkie has AJ's cutiemark, so she's more into the pie-baking aspect of her personality and her hair is most likely not poofy for obv reasons; Fluttershy has Pinkie's personality, so she has to be an entertainer somehow (iirc I was thinking something in line of how that one dude from that one episode was so prone to little misfortunes he went into slapstick?? Idk, you know the guy); etc. etc.

Except it's not the point where this AU diverges from canon, lol, that happens way earlier — when Celestia sacrificed herself to become Nightmare Sun (man, remember Nightmare Sun?) in her stead with a cutiemark-switching spell which is the real reason for the lack of Rainboom. So Luna becomes the ruler, and millennia later she's still looking for a solution to, well, that, and has a whole program for gifted unicorns with stellar-adjacent powers to help her raise the sun and/or rescue Celestia. Naturally, Twi is a part of this program, and has a Mane6 of her own, except it's composed of many familiar faces like Trixie, Sunset, Moondancer, Starlight Glimmer and her friend Starburst or whatever his name was — but they're not like their canon counterparts at all, they more or less fall into the stereotypes OG Mane6 fit: iirc, Sunset was the Rainbow Dash substitute as the "rowdy one", Moondancer was the Pinkie substitute as the "party-going fun-having one" based on that throwaway quote from episode freaking 1 and so on and so forth.

And so this Mane6, aka the Stellar6 (sure, let's call them that), somehow catches wind of the Elements of Harmony and the real Mane6 that's supposed to exist but doesn't. Probably by stumbling upon the Lost Records™ of that cutiemark-switching spell, idk. And now they gotta go adjust the lives of the OG Mane6 to the point that they come back to their canon status quo, maybe by forcing a Sonic Rainboom or whatever — except everyone involved thinks it's a really stupid idea. Twi doesn't want to trade her lifelong friends for a bunch of randos she never met, the Stellar6 is also upset by that but still push it upon her as her duty, and the Mane6 simply don't want to be taught how to live their lives by, again, a bunch of randos.

...I am... not editing this wall of text, lol.

[xamaxenta]

Had this AU idea for saboace where Ace survives just barely but thanks to the news everyone thinks he's dead still cuz there's a brutal picture of his body bloodied and unconscious on the front page and he does look low-key dead so he has to disguise himself somehow and hide while simultaneously training up his haki (cuz I don't think he really did much with his haki, I think he had it but didn't like using it and refused to train it up, I headcanon that he did this on purpose to spite Roger who also had haki, honestly I refuse to believe Ace wouldn't have been dozens of times stronger if his haki had been properly evolved. Though he absolutely has all forms of haki already awakened cuz he's just that much of a badass, anyway).

The only place they can think of to hide him is right under everyone's noses, so he somehow wiggles his way into the revolutionary army. He's not too happy with it cuz he's got beef with Dragon (hey whyd you abandon luffy) and Dragon I think knows it's him despite the disguise but says nothing cuz that's none of his business (Kermit meme here) and since it was announced Ace was fully dead Sabo regained his memories and already had that super fun nervous breakdown and three day coma and is NotDoingWell™ and Dragon is a Dad so he's like "imma push these two together and hope they realize the connection, surely my Chief of Staff is smart enough to recognize who this is" but he underestimates Sabo’s Spicy Trauma cuz he does not realize.

And Ace knows it's Sabo but he's told by a few of the other revolutionaries that Sabo still has amnesia (yeah man he can't remember shit from his childhood from what I've heard), bummer he's only heard it from random footsoldiers and not those closest to Sabo but it's fine I'm sure. So Ace is like "oh I may fuck him up more if I fling my disguise off and tell him we know each other so imma just be quiet" and Sabo is like "wow I let my bro and first ever friend and high key love of my life get murdered I wish I was dead:)" and Dragon is like "guys plz just kiss".

Anyway I'm writing this fic but it's been a hot minute since I worked on it, I thought you'd enjoy hearing about the chaos that will ensue.

Anonnnnnn pleaseee *grabbie paws* gimmieeee i love this premise so much

Dragon doing the Kermit none of my business tea sip meme is so fucking funny i really should draw a bunch of classic memes as random OP characters bc its tragic that there isnt more maybe eight ? I love distracting myself from the projects i should be working on HAHA demon standees marcos bday whats that oops

Ace knowing its Sabo is sooo good but hes so sweet hes like i cant just reveal myself!!! Itll fuck him up, maybe he’s gonna hate me!!

Dragon watching their bs like gods help theyre both stupid

Snickering if its just a random guy Sabo overhears saying that xyz ‘insert Ace’s fake name’ is actually thee portgas d ace and Sabos like WHat DONT JOKE ABOUT THAT!!!! And thag rando is sweating like omg chief no harm no jest i swear its true

But when Sabo goes to ask Ace Ace looks to the side and hes like haha… no?

😭

[iam-emmet]

//What am I doing with my life??

//this is basically a 'the story thus far' except it's set up like a bad infomercial

Are you bored with your life? Wanting to try new things? See new places?

No?

Well, who cares. Arceus sure doesn't. Congratulations, you've won a great trip to the wonderful land of Ancient Sinnoh! Don't worry about the people you left behind, you won't even be able to remember them anyways!

Welcome to Hisui, the historical name of the beloved Sinnoh region. Here you will learn to fight pokemon thrice your size in hand to hand combat, solve ancient feuds, and cope with the fact that almost everyone here hates your guts!

Just remember to trust your instincts, and if they say don't take the cold medicine, there's probably a good reason for that.

Along the way you will get a phone and contact people from The Future! This includes the twin brother of your soon-to-be adoptive parent (more on that later), as well as the leader of an evil team, and a bunch of other random people.

But not everyone hates you! You have the Warden of Lady Sneasler and some random kid on your side! And let's not forget the blond fuck-face who lives in the walls.

Oh no, it seems you've been sent Back to The Future. Now you're out of time twice! Unfortunately you're also wearing a modified version of an evil organization's uniform so you have to dodge Officer Jennys until you make it to the subway station some rando you met on the internet works at. Luckily, he's actually not a creep and he's your adoptive uncle. Not that you realize that, it's not like him and your dad look basically identical. Not at all...

But that's boring, so now you're going to a private school you probably broke into until a Dragonite decides to carry you off to another region. Whatever, you don't care. You've been displaced so many times it'd be weird if it didn't happen.

[We interrupt this program to give you: Emmet gets to not have to deal with anything bad as his twin didn't go missing. Dumbass decides to eat a weed brownie and is paranoid the weed monster wants to eat his joltiks]

It's fine, you get to catch this cute pokemon. You're smart enough to not eat its 'wish granting mochi' so nothing bad happens-

Oh look, your uncle finally caught up with you. He also hasn't slept in a week and is stupider than usual. Oh no he ate the mochi. Oh wonderful, he's possessed. Now you have to deal with your guardian completely delirious and convinced his brother is back when he's clearly not. It's definitely not scary to watch someone interact with something you can't see.

[We interrupt this program to give you: Welcome to Wonderland, Emmet spends the entire time absolutely blasted out of his fucking mind]

Your time has been cut short as some other God got bored of your existence. Goodbye, fuck you, no one needed to remember you anyways. You're now living in the Who-knows-where Place and get to watch the boy version of you deal with your problems instead. Also your dad went AWOL but we're not entirely sure what he's up to at the moment.

[We interrupt this program to give you: Alternate Emmet got Winter Soldiered after trying to get Ingo back from (where he thought he was) in Team Plasma and Akari didn't get isakaied]

You've actually interacted with that guy before, but you had more problems to deal with than an alternate universe version of your uncle being brainwashed.

That's all we got so far, but aren't you so glad you were chosen for this shitshow?

[@thetraveleroftime]

[escapaldi]

So… I followed you a long time ago, and then I left tumblr. I can’t remember if we interacted much back then, but since you’re also active here I have to ask: what did you think about the specials as a Capaldi fan?

Hello! I know I've seen your name around before, so welcome back! Even when I wasn't posting on this blog specifically, I was still on tumblr posting fic and stuff, so even though there is a gap I've always been here.

Now, as far as the 60th anniversary specials: I haven't watched them and don't plan to for a long time. A long-winded and salty rant by me is under the cut.

To be honest, I haven't felt the need to watch any new Doctor Who since Capaldi and Moffat both left because it all sounded like boring and cringey fan fiction (derogatory) I wasn't really jiving with. If that makes sense? Then RTD came back on as a showrunner and I was severely disappointed because it felt like such a step backwards. Plus that Tennant was going to be in it? No thanks.

Like... I get that to a lot of people, his return makes these specials "feel like Doctor Who again". I've seen that statement a lot from both randos and people I know. Which, fine, whatever, I'm not begrudging people for it, but for a lot of folks saying that, the statement includes a bunch of the show that doesn't feel like Doctor Who to me. I came in w/s5 because of a series of events that turned me off to the show early on. I was nearly sixteen when s1 premiered in the UK. That should have stuck me in the prime demographic to not only love s1-4, but have a sort of nostalgia filter over it to help facilitate excitement over the 60th specials. Well, there's some problems with that.

I can't stand Rose Tyler and any reference to her as something positive makes me cringe. Doctor/Rose in any form makes me viscerally nope out of anything. She was not as likeable as people lead others to believe.

I've been Pavloved into disliking Tennant due to the oversaturation of his interpretation of the Doctor in the series and the fandom as a whole, despite the fact he's just meh. The Doctor is not his best role and in general he doesn't do it for me in the looks department, especially as the Doctor. Which, it's fine if you like watching him (I'm sure Georgia loves watching him and she is a very good sport about a lot of shit) and I know my DW experience has been enhanced by watching the pretty but I am a demographic outlier lol.

What I did see of s1-4 before I got into s5 was Rose being an idiot, getting a deeply unsettling feeling over Jack Harkness, being pissed off for Martha and Mickey and livid about Donna, being irritated by the Master and the angsty space Jesus shite, and thinking Ten and Donna would make a good couple actually.

Oh yeah, and very specifically I'm mad because I watched The End of Time Part 2, like, almost soon as I could, and knew immediately that Martha/Mickey was Pair the Spares Race Edition even though at that point I hadn't watched all of s1-4 and for all I knew they hit it off in an unseen-by-me episode for a reason that wasn't getting drunk over their mid-tier white exes hooking up. Like, I clocked that shit back in 2009. There was a lot of shit I was not clocking in 2009, but I caught onto that, which should be an embarrassment.

...and, like, I'm on the internet, so I've seen spoilers. It's difficult to not see spoilers. Some of the spoilers I love to see hello Fifteen's THIGHS we love us a good slutty Doctor and I do have one UK-based friend specifically whom I've talked to at length about the specials. My fiancé also has been watching this entire time w/o stopping since 2005 (bc he caught it all as it premiered here in the US and at least he got to watch s1 Billie Piper; I fault him for nothing), so he's been giving me updates on what's going on as well. He is a good man who has done saintly things like drive me across three state lines to meet Peter Capaldi at a Doctor Who convention, so... he's generally trustworthy, but also a lot more forgiving than I am. But he was also the one who broke to me the news about Rose Noble because he knew I'd get upset that she's not Donna Jr. So I've got some good fonts of information. They tell me that I'd like the second and third more than the first, that we've just got some extra Ten-Donna adventures, and that generally everything's stepped up a bit from Thirteen.

...but to me, a step up from Thirteen is still not a step towards where we need to go.

You can't go from Eleven and Twelve, an ancient eldritch god trapped in a body with the grace of a baby giraffe and a legit punk who punches diamond walls for his wife and racists for his daughter, respectively, to a Tory apologist who never really got a scary "I am the Doctor and you're stuck here with me now what a shame :)" moment like Nine through Twelve got and think that "a step up" from that is going to catch me. I'm not enticed by the prospect of another Ten-Donna adventure done by the man whose writing and showrunning kept me away from Doctor Who for so long. I. could. not. care. less. There is literally no nostalgia filter making this okay to me. I cannot see what other people see.

I don't want to be an anti, I don't want to be a NMD, but they keep pushing my fucking hand and now I'm sitting here having not watched new episodes of what is literally one of my favorite shows since before the pandemic, watching from an arm's length as it sort of caves in around itself, going and absolutely pissing away their chances at having a really cool, massive-multi-Doctor bonanza like no other. You could have twelve Doctors. TWELVE DOCTORS. Eleven if our most venerable just kinda taps out like nah I'm done unless you give me Bill's job from the Three Doctors special. Like, the fuck, y'all. That got whizzed right down the fucking leg. Did they even try? Did they get rebuffed? Whose decision was the 60th specials? Do they even like Doctor Who? Or are they part of the set that thought that Tennant's Doctor would never be topped?

So... yeah... that's the gist of it. I'm sure it's gonna take being sat down for a marathon by Mr. Nehs before I get into Doctor Who again, which is honestly sad. The BBC has hated this show and been visibly trying to run it into the ground since they decided to make the divisive decision of casting Matt Smith (which worked out great in the long run but having been on the internet at the time as that announcement I can assure you it was not received well) and now they've got Mouse Bucks and some straight-up boring as sin seasons/series under their belts and idk what in the hell's coming for us now.

[bobbybutterfly]

Day three of avoiding updating my Stardew Valley fanfic!

Yeah. I got kind of carried away with this Saki Sanobashi fanfic idea. This is a new oc for the story I'm making. I don't have a name for her yet.

Okay.

I just googled a list of posh japanese girl names (look fellas I just need some place holder name) and the name Aiko jumped out. I'm just a rando from central Europe. I will try my best but I'm bound to get somethings wrong, writing about a group of people I'm not a part of.

Anyway.

TW: mentions of suicide, bullying, abuse and gore

About Aiko. She is a rich popular girl. If you've been keeping up with my other post anout Saki Sanobashi, the way the girls end up trapped in the bathroom after they attempt suicide. At first you would think there was a mistake. She is exactly the type of bully that drove a lot of the girls to attemt to end their lives.

Now some spoilers.

Aiko grew up in an abusive household that ended up in her developing traits similar to Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She thrived in school, becoming super popular. But school is not forever. As the graduation neared, she couldn't imagine a life where all her school "friends" go to collage seperately.

On the last day of school she ends up jumping off the school building, forever tying how she is remembered with her favorite place.

She is one of the people that dies in the bathroom. In my version of the story there is a way out the bathroom. If you actively choose life and deal with your problems a door will let you through. But if you don't. Well. You get to kill yourself once more.

Maybe I will make her the girl that scratches her neck till she dies. What if she had a beautiful voice and in a world where she choose to live, she would have made it as a singer?

She isn't supposed to be likable but you are supposed to at least understand her. That being said, if my thing ever blows up, I bet you a hundred percent there will be incels walking around at conventions with body pillows of Aiko under their armpits saying she did nothing wrong.

Luckily she's 19. Oldest of the bunch, unless you count the two spirits that are immortal. I also plan on adding two 18 year old lesbians (better said saphic couple because bisexuality is involved) that through their love get out the bathroom. And a 17 year old girl that doesn't make it saddly. Ending up with... 6 people in total trapped in the bathroom.

Speaking of lesbians, this is a picture of the two spirits from my last 2 posts (so not THE saphic couple) that I said I totally ship. Go read the other posts for more on them. They have like an angel and devil dynamic. Super cute.

With all that out of the way, I'm off to watch Oppenheimer because last week we went to see the Barbie movie.

Bobby out!

[moved-to-piersgender]

5. How did you figure out you are aro?

6. What is your favourite part about being aromantic?

9. What is your favourite aro-spec identity flag?

17. Do you have any aro related labels that don’t fit into the other groups (like loveless / lovequeer / amatopunk / etc)?

Someone got to 6 before you so I shall answer the other 3.

5. The specifics have been lost to the sands of time, it was a bunch of things that snowballed into me finally taking on the label when I was 20 or so. I live in a very conservative state so even as a kid there was this huge emphasis on getting married and starting a family even as a kiddo, and I just... didn't relate. I'd get the "oh, you'll find someone someday" spiel and just dismiss it with a "yeah ok sure" indifference. I figured out I didn't want kids pretty early on too. When everyone in junior high was pairing off and playing grab-ass I remember distinctly feeling like I was surrounded by aliens (and not the cool kind).

When I was around 14 or so I was subjected to an absolutely odious church activity where we made "wedding cans" where we were supposed to talk about our dream wedding, write a love letter to out future spouse, talk about how many kids we wanted and what we were going to name them, all sorts of drivel like that that we were supposed to open up and show our spouse later for some reason. And I just felt...dirty. And pissed. I played along (putting deliberately stupid answers to everything) but opened the can up a few days later, went outside, soaked everything in it in acetone, and burned all the paper to ash (very safe, I know 😅)

Similarly, when I was 18, those same ladies IMMEDIATELY started trying to set me up on dates with all the single randos around the ward, which similarly pissed me off. What was I, a fucking broodmare? I ripped the lady who was the ringleader of it a new one, which I did feel a little bad about because she really thought she was being helpful, but still, it put a stop to it REAL fast.

So I put the pieces together that most of humanity- even many otherwise intelligent people- have some kind of internal impetus to paie off and breed that I just...don't. AND a lot of what's conventionally considered romantic- pairing off, partners "belonging" to each other and having no lives of thier own, the way you're expected to throw all other connections in your life out the nearest airlock once you find The One- and anything that reminded me of that expectation made me feel downright sick. (I deadass thought my siblings would stop loving me whenever they dated someone. It sucked)

So when I found out that aromanticism was A Thing it didn't take me long at all to realize that that's me. I ID'd as "just" arospec for a while to pacify the last of the "you'll find The One someday" arguments but eventually I dropped even that pretense.

9. Can't go wrong with the classic, I think. I'm a sucker for anything with that green, black, white and grey color scheme because of it. I've always liked the triangle demiromantics get even though that's not a label that applies to me.

17. Amatopunk is based as fuck and something the entirety of humanity needs a crash course on. I've also been drawn to the "evil aro" concept a bit recently because while I'm not loveless I very much do fit some of the negative stereotypes and am not sorry at all about it (I'm highly romance repulsed and not at all interested in coddling the feelings of allos that put romance on a pedestal.) Also while not aro labels, evilpunk and voidpunk both heavily overlap with my experiences as a neurodivergent aro person (evilpunk with how society demonizes living for yourself and not living a life of constantly putting other's needs before your own, voidpunk due to humanity's obsession with romance being another thing that seperate me from them.)

[got-no-skill]

Okay, I'm watching the movie again and I decided I need to talk more about this.

Something that was lost on me (and I don't think I'm alone on this score) watching this when I was younger was what the Building and Loan was. You see a bunch of people demanding money in a scene that takes place in the 1930s and your mind thinks, "Oh, a bank," and up until a year or two ago that's what my brain thought. A building and loan was another, unnecessarily long name for a bank, except one that isn't run by Lionel Barrymore playing Jeff Bezos. This left a lot of questions to ne, like why did a bank have an account at another bank? Was it just because the other bank was bigger and had more resources? If Potter has a stake in this bank and the other bank, why isn't this bank run the same way as the other bank? The answer, of course, is because it wasn't a bank.

What the Building and Loan was in actuality was something called a Savings and Loan Association, or a Thrift Association (other countries call it something different, such as a building society or a trustee savings bank.) What differentiates this from a normal bank is (quoting Wikipedia as I was basically already doing that), "the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization," which isn't a thing at a bank. Another important thing about S&Ls is that it's usually private individuals; legally they can't have more than 20% of their lending in commercial loans. A savings and loan association is kind of socialized banking and mortgage lending.

So why was this lost on me?

Once again, this prick.

To summarize a LOT of history that I am too exhausted to go over in great detail, you remember learning about the Great Depression, what with all the banks failing and Herbert laissez-faire Hoover doing fuck all about it that didn't make things worse? Imagine that happened to a different set of financial institutions, and it happened in very living memory, but no one seems to remember it and of those that do none talk about it. This is presumably because S&Ls mainly catered to working class people, and since the only economic crises that matter to politicians are the ones that affect rich people (i.e. their base), they can just act like that didn't happen even though it very much did and arguably led to the housing crisis that precipitated the Great Recession 20 years later.

Prior to the Savings and Loan Crisis there were 3,371 such organizations in the US.

As of 2019 there were 659.

George Bailey wasn't just a guy with rotten luck, he was the biggest reason working class people could afford homes in that town.

The same could be said of real-life thrifts.

I'm rambling a whole bunch at this point, and I would be shocked if I didn't get something important wrong. If the legacy of a financial crisis everyone pretends didn't happen intrigues you, I implore you to seek out actual sources and not to accept what a rando on tumblr says at face value. However, if you want to blame someone for why you can't afford to move out of your apartment (or worse yet, your parents' place) or why there was a huge boom in sub-prime home equity lending that led to the most recent major financial crisis,

Blame this prick.

It's a Wonderful Life makes less sense now thanks once again to Tumblr's archrival.

This prick.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

So this may be one of those “I’m thinking about this more than the actual creators are” situations, but it seems like a fairly obvious problem? Either way, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Where does William go from the dinner party, not mentally/emotionally or in his goals, but rather in a practical sense? While Mycroft and the Queen could no doubt arrange some kind of pardon or excuse to call off any angry mobs, it seems like that would undo...everything? The Lord of Crime needed to be vilified, and to die, and needs to stay dead, in order for the Plan to have succeeded. And for all the Christological parallels, this is a scapegoat saviour whose resurrection would not be welcome. The media circus that would follow if William reappeared publicly would presumably do all sorts of damage to the progress the Plan set in motion.

And...everyone thinks he’s dead, and he looks a bit different now (in so far as an eyepatch counts lol), so people might overlook him at a glance on the street. But if he hangs out with his brothers publicly, or even worse, with the dude who “died” with him and who HAS been very openly revealed to be still alive, people are gonna catch on fast. So like...is he just going to be a basement gremlin and never leave the house now? (Relatable.) Or live somewhere other than London? Am I overthinking this or underthinking it? 😅 

A couple facts from canon I'd like to point out:

Irene Adler is in legal trouble with the government and also legally declared dead, and they decided to show up alive with Sherlock Holmes just to fuck with him. No repercussions of this have ever been discussed

Moran, a legally dead man, has been wandering around without changing his appearance at all, and he was nobility, and no one has commented even though Albert publicly calls him "Colonel" and, uh, John's about to write a story about him. He was literally acting as a servant for a bunch of nobles at the tea party, after being recognized by someone for who he was a few months earlier, and...no one...noticed?

No one has ever cared that William and Louis look nearly identical even though officially they are not biologically related.

For some reason, the nun who raised them originally needed to be Relocated so William would never run into her as she would recognize him. ??? Okay.

While William's basement-gremlin-ness is to be argued, Louis definitely doesn't socialize (Louis has enough family to socialize with), Albert appears eager to never do it again, and Sherlock even more so, so who would even see them hanging out.

While Sherlock's face might be a bit more known from paps, Liam spent the bulk of his time many hours away from London, almost never socialized with anyone in London, and so the major memory of his face would be a newspaper article almost no one probably kept from three years ago. Do you remember the name and face of a serial killer from three years ago from the papers well enough to call a hotline about it? Most people probably don't.

However, three years before, Sherlock wanted them settled in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan because it got less foreign traffic and they were less likely to be recognized. But three years have passed since then.

Billy literally introduces himself with both his legal name and his super-famous nickname and then out-shoots people and does not seem to care at all that there was a whole Thing about how he needs to be dead for Garrett and such. Oh, sure, you can't mail your bestie a letter every now and then because You're Dead and He Killed You for the the Story to Save the Town, but you can go introduce yourself to randos. Okay. Whatever, Billy.

While William's name and face was definitely in the papers, the fact is that John's story is super well-known and kind of overtook the memory of the real thing that happened. The story which called him "James" and his brothers "James" and portrayed him as an old man.

Whether or not people recognize characters they absolutely should recognize in this series is entirely based on, "Are we at all interested in discussing that story?"

(The answer appears to usually be "No")

And I still say that we'll hear exactly what William intends to do from now on after this godforsaken flashback finally ends. Maybe it will address this. Maybe not. William in this series has been a much more active hunting spider than one who merely sits in a web waiting, but perhaps he could retreat to one now and hang out in the basement with his web around him plotting.

So, there's a few points that lend plausible deniability to all this nonsense, there's a few points that indicate canon isn't going to give a single fuck about it, and there's the open question of, "IDK, there's probably something he could do about all this."

[masterprocrastinatortm]

Yo!

I've been a regular follower for a while, and your uni looks beautiful and so modern (or post modern idk), and it just looks great.

But

How is the course, law I think?

How's uni life?

How's it all!

I wanna know cos imma be doing uni in 1.5yrs, and I just really am interested in it all

Thanks!!, FeS2

Hey! I am very happy to answer this!

This is a very long answer, so TLDR; University is different from school, I like student life, law is hard but you can do it if you want to.

I go to University in Aberdeen, Scotland (not sure where you're from but I know there are like three Aberdeens in the world...) and I really love it here. The University itself is a combination of really really old (Kings College was built in 1495) and really new (like the SDR library and some of the lecture halls and buildings).

I think any course in University or college will be very different from what school is like, just from my own experience. Especially if you go overseas (which is what I am doing). I think regardless it will be quite a big change. Personally, a good change - but it takes time to adjust.

When I came here I found it really difficult to acclimate to how the focus of learning here is very much memorization-based - remembering rules and names and dates, etc, whereas I was used to having a lot of open-book exams and application of rules that you could look up in the book.

My boyfriend is currently doing his first year of University, and he is finding it quite hard to get used to how to write in academia, compared to how it was in school or day-to-day as a standard working adult. There is a lot more referencing and you have to be quite critical of which sources you use - and it's a lot more stressful than what he thought beforehand.

this is why it's so important to choose something you are actually interested in, not just something that will give you a good job for the future - because going to University is like having a full-time job and a half, and a lot of people don't necessarily know/understand that

As for student life, I really liked my first few years. I was assigned 5 random flatmates for the first year, and it was a very eclectic bunch. I was very lucky and liked all of them, but they did not like everyone, and some of our neighbors really hated their flatmates. My best friend (and used to be library buddy) is actually one of those randos

We were a bit of a party flat the first few weeks, but after a few months together and some drama, we opted to go out instead so we didn't have to deal with the arguments that cleanup brought.

I think a lot has changed now though because of how society has adjusted to the panoramic. It hit while was on my year abroad - and honestly, it really affected my grades. I'm pretty sure most courses now have no in-person lectures, only online ones. And only some lucky courses have tutorials and seminars on campus (that you can also attend online). The same is true for socials. A lot of student societies (I could not recommend enough that you join some while in uni) have had to cut down on in-person events, or at least limit numbers, and has had a lot of online socials which personally I find almost more isolating than not joining any at all.

Law itself - would not recommend unless you hate yourself. But also, if you really want to do it, you are fully able to do it.

Our lecturers are like any other place, some good some bad. Aberdeen uni is very international so we have lectures from all over the world, and honestly, I still find them so interesting.

Studying is a lifestyle. It is very hard, but once you kind of crack the key for how to do things it does become easier. Since I'm in my last year and doing honours courses it's a lot of self-study, and very little anything together with lecturers or tutors, which personally I struggle with but is also fine if you set some good boundaries for yourself - and keep some good habits (I dont lol). This is where any friends you have from your course is good to have (i was lucky and made some friends in my first year who are still around this year)

[fierceawakening]

Like, that post about what it's like to worry about maybe needing a trach reminds me SO MUCH of living through the whole Terry Schiavo thing.

Like, at the time I was just getting into transfeminism and surrounded by people who were very into the whole progressive stacking thing, and I was so convinced they were better leftists than me, as I was probably trans but not transitioning and therefore had cis privilege, and wasn't sure yet if I was queer... and and and...

...but whenever they talked about Schiavo, they just kept CONSTANTLY making weird jokes, not about how creepy it was that her religious family seemed to be overriding her stated wishes or that we had as clear evidence as anyone ever does of lack of consciousness or... anything like that, but about her... feeding tube.

I couldn't figure it out. I mean, not being able to taste stuff sounds like it sucks (and honestly having had COVID yeah it kinda DOES suck) but like... people seemed so obsessed with the idea that once you had to eat a certain unusual way you MUST be too far gone and you'd NEVER WANT to live.

I remember there were these comics about it that everyone who wasn't me just LOVED, where her feeding tube was a character, and it would show up to sarcastically talk to these other characters (who as far as I could tell were nondisabled leftist randos explaining leftiness) about how awful needing a feeding tube was, and every time it appeared they'd shout

FEEDING TUBE!!!

and everyone who wasn't me apparently thought this was hilarious because the disgustingness was obvious, while I just sat there like "I... thought the problem was she's almost certainly not conscious, not that she... doesn't eat. what the fuck."

And I was so uncomfortable with this (the word for what they were doing is "failing at intersectionality" now I think) that I went looking for what other disabled people had to say.

And I found a bunch of fully conscious happy enough seeming feeding tube users organizing protests named things like "this is how I eat," to show people that they... actually don't want to die because they don't eat the usual way, why would anyone conflate those things, what.

When I think of who cripple is aimed at I think stuff like that. I think the presumption that if your body fails to function to a certain degree you deserve to die, or even in some weird way are mostly dead. And people don't bother to ask you.

Do people think autistic people should want to die? I mean, I guess so, so if you want to explain to me it's the same... eh, okay, whatever, but I feel a little confused, because that's not what I thought you were saying before???

[lavenderek]

So you're saying you don't think "underage" fic is gross. Is that what youre saying?

well, no. yuck. what i’m saying is, what exactly and specifically do we want to happen?

there should not be explicit fic about underage characters, got it. so what age can they not be under? 18? 16? what country’s laws regarding the age of consent do we prioritize? like, i think it’s gross that the age of consent is 16 in some places, but i’m an american, so i would, wouldn’t i? so ok, what if we hedged it a bit and put the age as like, 14? that way it’s not little kids, it’s all teenagers. but no, gross, 14-year-olds are children. fun fact: so are 16-year-olds. they are also children.

what about fic about two teenagers having a consensual encounter? should all romantic or sexual fic have to be about adults only? your answer to this may very well be “yes,” and that’s completely valid. a teenager writing fic might disagree. somebody who’s a big fan of a show that’s about a bunch of teenagers might disagree. should there be an adults-only section on the site? there’s already a “stop, you have to be 18″ box to check before you can access explicit fic, so how do we verify a user’s age? they can just lie about their age and click through anyway. you have to be 18 to make a youtube account and i’ve had one since i was 13. i remember very deliberately choosing a new birth year when it asked for my birthdate.

then you get to slightly greyer areas like large age gaps, or heavy role play between consenting adults. i have absolutely witnessed fic that’s clearly written to be CP, but it’s tagged as age play. so like, for all intents and purposes this is CP, but if you roll in like “hey, this is fucked up,” they can be like, “oh, so you read this picturing actual children, sicko?? you have a problem with two adults doing shit in the bedroom??? how dare you!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”

it’s kind of like on porn sites, how they make like nasty inc*st stuff but call it “stepmom” or whatever, like oh, they’re not actually related! sure, joseph, thanks for covering all your bases

so we can’t ban kinks. or can we? should we limit depictions of serious addictions or domestic abuse too? torture, or even body horror? these are generally accepted to be dark content.

i’m not trying to engage in whataboutism, i’m naming actual, relevant questions about shit that’s disturbing in real life (no offense to kink people who follow codes of consent and conduct) and can be incredibly upsetting to encounter online. shit that i can’t imagine wanting to read, let alone write.

these are the questions that we, you, i, people pro-a*3 and people anti-a*3, are all asking, and not a single one of us can or should answer them unilaterally.

so it’s like, oh, okay, so there should be no oversight at all? should there be no rules? no, obviously, that would be horrible, i don’t trust any of these fuckers to conduct themselves civilly. so there should be some rules, but not too many rules. that’s what we have now, and clearly the way things are now isn’t working because a lot of users are reasonably very upset.

should there be a voting system, and rules are set by a popular vote? should certain words be flagged and you can’t post the fic with that word in it? should there be a thing where when you post a fic, you have to select the ages of each character and that’s listed at the top of the fic? what if they age during the fic? should there be a flagging function, where you report someone for not using sufficient tags? users will find workarounds for all of this. you know they will. so mods will have to be very specific about the rules and introduce, like, a vetting system for it. which is a lot more manpower and a lot more chances for subjective judgments.

all of the above is why it operates on a tagging system instead. i’m gonna be real, i only go on a*3 to read comments on my own shit lmao, and even when i did go on there more often i never went in the tags searching for fic. so is there a blacklist function? is there a flagging function?

if there is a flagging function, maybe they make it so that if the flagged user has violated the rules, their account is suspended and their fic made private for the duration and until they add necessary tags.

cool, a compromise. but uh-oh, it turns out Mod A agrees that this fic is n*ncon, but Mod B thinks it’s just vague, not n*nconsensual, and doesn’t feel comfortable banning the fic. or it turns out User didn’t post anything flaggable, they were reported by somebody who is targeting them for some reason, or by someone who is more stringent about n*ncon than somebody else would be, like, it’s gotta be enthusiastic and verbal consent or else it’s skirting the edges too much.

it’s like, we’ve already witnessed censorship (please take this word usage gently, i know it’s touchy but it’s the word to use here) being a problem here on tumblr with their stupid nipple ban. there’s a double standard regarding whose nipples are explicit and whose are kosher for public consumption. people have to appeal their shit getting flagged and sometimes nothing gets fixed regardless. i’m sure other people are pleased that there’s less of a chance of them accidentally scrolling past a picture of a hard dick at work.

so you get it, this is a problem that’s more complicated than “all of x should be banned and if you post it there’s something wrong with you,” a belief you’re more than entitled to hold but can’t base, like, fanfic legislation off of. you get it you get it.

you get it, but like, what is the fucking deal with those “fandom moms” who go off on soliloquies about the days of old or whatever the fuck whenever this topic comes up? what about the weirdos who are like, “what’s next, banning gay fic????” yeah, if we allow gay marriage you can marry a tree, that’s how it works, thanks tiffany.

but no, the reason they do this is NOT that they think lgbtq content is comparable in any way to CP. the reason they do this is that this exact problem has taken place on every site that has ever hosted fic. and many previous sites did think lgbtq content was comparable to CP. it was categorized as adult content and hidden.

that’s why a*3 exists in the first place. it was to avoid godmodding and absolutism. it’s supposed to be more or less self-governed. i don’t want there to be CP on a*3 any more than you do, but i also don’t trust randos to decide what is and isn’t acceptable content. this topic is not new.

i’m in support of stronger government regulation in real life because it can be argued that certain actions and systems violate human rights. everybody deserves food and shelter, for example. the same can’t be argued in this case because some creep writing CP doesn’t violate my rights. i find it offensive and i don’t think they should be writing it, but my right to click the back button is intact. there is no institution making it impossible or even difficult for me to not read fanfiction. the creep could just as reasonably argue that their right to post what they want is being affected.

why is this response so long? is it because i can’t shut up? yes, but also because this is a complex issue and that’s why nobody has taken significant action on it.

people are also big mad.

i’ve never understood this impulse to see somebody not doing a thing you want them to do and assume it’s out of malice or incompetence, anyway. i don’t know anybody who volunteers for a*3 but it’s my assumption that given the choice to have us all pissed at them, or have us all not pissed at them, they would choose to have us not be pissed at them. it just seems like the reasonable reaction to have. and like, i’d be pretty shocked to part the kimono and find out they’re all CP-loving gargoyles and a*3 actually stands for A lot Of child abus3. that is the reason i have not been like, “fuck a*3.” because what are they supposed to do, you know?

there’s no simple or inarguably morally right solution here. the princess is in another castle. just post fic on tumblr, i guess? make another hosting site that’s exactly like a*3 but romantic characters can only be like, 21?

i actually think the legal age in the US should be raised to 21, not joking. your brain literally and biologically isn’t finished developing at 18. teenagers lack the world experience to make decisions that adults make.

somewhere there is an 18-year-old or a person who moved out and became self sufficient at 18 who hates this sentiment. there’s a teenager in an abusive home who would be intensely demoralized by the prospect of having to remain beholden to these people for three more years.

and there’s a parent who is relieved to know that their kid can’t be preyed on by army recruiters for three more years. there’s a person who got into a car crash with a teenager who misjudged whether or not they could make a turn who’s like, yeah, she could probably have benefited from a few more years.

nothing is as simple as it should be. i agree with you, but i’m not willing to pass blanket judgments with regards to actions that should be taken. and honestly, given how little i actually go on the site, i don’t even have a dog in this fight. so all my opinions on it are moot anyway.

(side note, if you are in an abusive home and you can’t make your own bank account, or if your bank account is monitored by your abusive parents, maybe try venmo? you can get a debit card that pulls directly from your venmo balance. a surprising number of places accept venmo payments, and this way you can save up money in secret.)

anyway uhhhhh seeya

[cinderblackwrites]

The 'Alex from Target' Complex

Like everyone else these days, I find myself spending way too much time on social media. I recently made a TikTok account just so I could see what everyone was going on about. My brother sends me TikToks all the time, my little sister is speaking in slang I don't understand, and I'm discovering songs super late, that have been out on the app for months.

What really got me into TikTok, though, was my obsession/fascination with cottagecore. I'm in love with it. Something about rolling down green hills barefoot, while beautiful mountains sit behind you like a painting from a dream, just makes me happy. There's also a nostalgic factor because I live really close to mountains and have traveled through them quite a lot. When the light is just right and you're in a certain part of town, you can see them clear as day. Even the snow at the tippy top.

But, besides that, I just found myself exploring what TikTok has to offer. There's a lot of good stuff on there. People are getting a lot better at humor and timing, and I find it EXTREMELY fascinating that average people are becoming huge internet sensations.

It's not like it was a decade ago, where you would get a handful of one-hit-wonders on popular day-time tv shows. Now, it's hundreds, THOUSANDS of people becoming popular overnight. Famous overnight. Rich overnight. It's amazing and a bit crazy...

I also started to notice something else. A few months ago I stumbled on a video from a guy named Rebal D on youtube. He has gotten pretty big with his TikTok reaction videos. Especially the thirst trap ones. All of his videos are fun to watch, but those specifically, have high view counts.

Mind you, this was before I knew much about what was on TikTok, so all of this information was fairly new to me.

After watching these videos and trying my best not to cringe at these people selling their "$ex appeal", I honestly couldn't believe these people were real. That they were really putting it all out there and people in the comments were just eating it up. I mean, there's some really cute, and fun thirst traps, then there's k!nky stuff, and THEN, oh boy, there is POV stuff that just has my mouth on the floor. I don't want to k!ink shame anyone, but some of that stuff is wild.

But, you get used to it after awhile. You're just like, alright, fine. It is what it is, and you move on if it's not your thing. But, all of this got me to thinking about Alex from Target.

I don't know if any of you remember this guy. But back in 2014, a picture of a teen working in Target went viral, after some teen girls decided that he was hot. Then a bunch of OTHER people thought he was hot. It picked up even MORE traction after news outlets and stuff wondered what the big deal was and who this kid was. Then finally, he made his big "reveal" on an episode of E!!en. He really was just a normal teenage boy. He didn't even see something like that coming his way.

At the time, I just thought it was really weird. I mean it was so cool that he got famous overnight and that he got to hang out with all these cool celebrities. He was invited to a bunch of exclusive parties. He got to go backstage and gained and bunch of interesting friends. A teens dream. Right? Well not really. Not to him.

Every once in awhile I check to see if he's still doing alright. Yup, that's me. A rando girl on the internet who worries for people who she doesn't actually know haha. But he seems fine. The last time I checked, he had left the spotlight behind him. He is a gym rat, and has a normal girlfriend. Both living normal lives.

So, what happened?

Well, I read in an article he claimed that popularity wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He realized people were just using him, or just liked him because he was "hot" and not because of his true self. Plus, he didn't have some amazing talent like singing or playing an instrument that would keep people's attention. That's a tough reality for anyone, let alone a teen still trying to figure themselves out. Especially, when his popularity began to fade and people started to move on to the next shiny, new thing...

Now, in 2021, there are hundreds of 'Alex from Target' type of guys and girls. I guess people call them 'Pick me' guys/girls. Where people are just popular for their looks and literally nothing else. Just normal people blessed by the Gods haha. Or their parents depending on how you see it.

There's one guy in particular who has completely blown up on TikTok. I don't really wanna say his name, though, because I actually like the guy after finding his Twitch. But, prior to that moment, he seemed intimidating af. His instragram and his TikTok just made him feel arrogant. Girl guy and everyone in between has a big crush on him. I mean, it makes sense. He's really good-looking.

But, again, he's literally just a guy. Who happens to be attractive. And this isn't me trying to criticize him. It's just me making an observation.

People in general are interesting to me. The way we work, how we think, and our response to things we encounter. It's all so fascinating, and I like to dig deep into the human psyche. Probably because my mom studied psychology and was a therapist for awhile. I used to read some of her books as a kid. Anywoo...

I know there's always more to a person than their surface level. What they say. What they don't say. I always want to dig deeper. And so, I did a little digging.

I realized a long time ago, that there are people who are comfortable in front of cameras. Like youtubers, streamers, and stuff like that. After a few years they just become comfortable and more confident. You can tell who has been doing it for awhile and who hasn't. For example, there was this really popular model on instagram. Millions of followers. Thousands of likes. Hundreds of comments. I guess they thought they should transfer to youtube, but it didn't work out. Not at all. Only about a thousand views on a couple videos. A few hundred on others. They eventually gave up on it. But, in doing their videos, I could see how out-of-their-element they were. This really attractive person, untouchable. All of a sudden they became just a person, who stumbles over their words when they talk, and looks awkwardly at the camera every once in awhile. Just a person. Not this super intimidating instagram model.

This is what I look for in people. Those humbling moments. Are they really arrogant, rude, dismissive? Or are they just like me? Just a girl or a guy who's just navigating their life? Granted, I obviously don't know what kind of person they are in real life. They could be terrible lol But, I just go off what they show.

This TikTok guy that has everyone clutching their water bottles, actually seems okay. Definitely a little awkward in front of the camera, definitely young and still figuring things out. But he doesn't seem so bad. I started to wonder what he thought of his fame. Is he like Alex? Does he feel used sometimes? Does he see all the bad things people say about him? Does that stuff make him depressed?

Seems so. But, unlike Alex, he has decided that staying in the limelight is okay. He isn't running from it even when things get dark and depressing. Personally, I respect both. I respect Alex for wanting to just leave it all behind and live normally, and I respect this guy for wanting to make a business out of it.

It sucks that people often forget that everyone is just a person at the end of the day. I wonder what all this fame will do to us and how it will ultimately shape our culture.