#and they were really obviously trying to get people to go after the entire mod team

[hugintheraven]

The Undersiders and their Overwatch mains

(This will use OW1's 2/2/2 comp because that's what makes sense and will ignore any chars introduced after the point where that ceased to be relevant) (Obviously this team is initially sponsored by Thomas Calvert/Coil).

Grue: Reinhardt. He protects others, he likes how tactical Rein vs Rein can be, he's big and hits stuff, but it's not overly complicated or focused on accuracy. Brian can and does learn the other main tanks, and later on his Sigma is disgusting, but he was really happiest when it was just him and a shield trying to out-time some other guy with a shield, with the entire team on the line if either screwed up.

Hellhound: Off-Tanks. She doesn't have a main, preferring to pick a char depending on the situation(even going Mei/Brig/Winston if off-tanks are bad in the current patch), but "get in front of the enemy, get hit, hit back harder" are general themes. Was accused of cheating a few times because she runs a custom HUD mod that replaces all text with icons and all numbers with partially-filled bars; this was EVENTUALLY ruled to be assistive mode similar to colorblind mode and officially patched into the game, but she still receives online hate for it regularly(as she doesn't read and exclusively uses social media to post and look at pictures of puppies, she is able to ignore this, giving her the single healthiest relationship with social media possible for a streamer.)

Imp: Offensive flankers. She has a Sombra icon on most social media, has cosplayed as her, and many people call her a Sombra main, but Brian got the game because Aisha saw Tracer in the early advertisements and went "I want that". She does not consider it a win if her team wins. She considers it a win if the opposing team's Mercy or Widowmaker DCs, and will play any char that can accomplish that.

Skitter: Widowmaker, other snipers. Officially flex DPS, any time the Undersiders need someone to play an unusual hero in a new broken team comp, Taylor can pick them up quickly and well, but she's at her best clicking on heads and 180ing to take out Genjis and Sombras who thought no one had seen them coming up behind. Taylor is just very very good at noticing who's absent from the battle and knowing which route is easiest for them to take to get behind the team. Was laddering as Mercy/Ana with Emma's group of friends when she got scouted by Lisa. When solo-queueing she will literally play anyone to keep from getting bored.

Tattletale: Main support, heavily Ana. Shotcaller for the team, good at knowing who's high and who's low on health. Tends to tunnel vision on the fight and get taken out by flankers, but so good at keeping everyone else alive and getting her grenade onto key targets that it doesn't matter much. Lost a 1vs1 as Lucio to Taylor's Battle Mercy and sent her a friend request immediately.

Regent: Zenyatta, maybe Lucio if he's in a good mood or Brian asks nicely. Because:

The Heartbreakers are Canada's premier esports team, coached by former competitive Half-Life 1 player/asshole, Nikos Vasil. Several of his kids have shown up amongst its roster. People complain about nepotism, but the kids are actually mostly very good. Hijack and Cherish were standouts in the early days of Overwatch, with his Hanzo and her Genji working extremely well together, even if they hated everything about it. He eventually ran away and deleted all accounts, but his savings ran out and his attitude was not well-suited for a real job. So he went back to streaming with stolen wifi and his old gaming laptop. After all, if he didn't play Hanzo, no one would notice, right? Lisa spotted him in under a week and promised cash if he'd try out. His rule: No DPS. So now he's their secondary support, with a Zen that out-damages most Soldiers when he tries and at least keeps his healing orb out when he doesn't, and Alec shows up to competitions/conventions in a mask.

Other people:

Glory Girl is an obvious Pharah main, and Pancea learned to play by picking Mercy and jamming her staff directly up Pharah's butt. Amy ends up with more hours logged on AO3 than actual Overwatch despite eventually becoming extremely good as a support player/shotcaller(after leaving New Wave).

Cherish also leaves the Heartbreakers and gets picked up by Slaughterhouse, an extremely aggressive team coached by also-asshole Jacob Black(Jack / ). They peaked during dive comp. She continues to play Genji, and is still miserable.

Scion is Bobby Kotick.

[bltngames]

Mod Spotlight: Sonic Forces Overclocked

So this is an interesting little thing. For those of you not aware, Sonic Forces Overclocked (if I'm remembering right) was originally an attempt to "fix" Sonic Forces by expanding all of the levels and even completely rewriting the story. Obviously that's a big task, and the developers eventually realized that, scaling it down into what could best be described as an "Encore" of sorts -- an epilogue story where the villains make one last desperate final push, spread out across remixed versions of eight of the game's best levels. All told, it's about an hour worth of content.

Which is... actually totally fine. With eight (technically seven, but the final boss still counts) levels, there's plenty to see. Actually, pacing is probably Overclocked's strongest suit.

The original Sonic Forces was a pacing disaster; levels often felt like they were cut off at the knees, usually ending just as they were getting started. That's never true in Overclocked, as each level took me a good 3-5+ minutes to finish. Levels in Overclocked are also massively improved in other ways, too -- all that extra length is put to good use with Sonic's trademark alternate pathways, new enemies, and new interactive elements. Interactivity is up across the board. Sonic Forces loved to lock you into long, obnoxious scripted set pieces but Overclocked keeps you firmly in control most of the time.

Which brings me to something I'm not entirely sure is a complaint: difficulty balance. If you've been reading this blog long enough you know I can be pretty picky about difficulty balancing, and the way its handled in Overclocked is interesting.

Generally speaking, Overclocked treats the boost like "expert mode." It's there for people who know the levels already and want to push themselves to do it faster. At first it's fine -- boosting means you'll miss some alternate paths (shortcuts, most likely) but you can still bumble your way to the end of the level and coast by on C ranks. The further you get into the game, though, the more it starts to punish you for trying to go fast without knowing what you're doing. The safety nets that would catch you in earlier levels go away and Overclocked tells you to either slow down or get serious.

Which... I think I'm fine with? The thing it brings to mind for me is the two Sonic Rush games. My favorite one is Sonic Rush Adventure, because it's more accessible (read: easier to learn) than the first Sonic Rush. At the same time, the first Sonic Rush ends up being the more replayable of the two games, because it's a lot harder to master. The higher skill ceiling has kept me coming back to Sonic Rush long after it felt like I wrung all of the gameplay out of Sonic Rush Adventure.

So the idea of a Sonic game not only facilitating a higher skill ceiling but maybe even encouraging that? Not the worst way to balance things, as long as you keep the less skilled players in mind and communicate things correctly. Which, at least for me, I feel like Overclocked does. It started to kick my butt at certain points, but never in a way that felt too mean or unfair. And that's exactly the way it should be, though it should be noted I haven't exactly put myself through the hell of trying to go for higher ranks.

The one real complaint I have about the levels is something I've been observing for years, and unfortunately my fears came true: the lighting.

I've talked about my monitor in the past. I bought it somewhere between 2011 and 2012, so it's getting up there in years. I believe it was the first thing I ever purchased with my Youtube Earnings. It's starting to get kind of dim in its old age, and it's exacerbated by the fact I like to keep it on its "Theater Mode" setting, which gives me really good black levels (for an LCD) and amazing color. But it's an aging monitor, so those amazing black levels end up feeling a little dark, depending on the game. For those of you who caught my halloween streams this year, you know I ended up switching my monitor to its "Standard Mode" because it flattens the contrast and makes the darkest darks more visible. It could be argued that I should just leave the monitor in "Standard Mode" at this point, but I can't stand how Windows looks with it turned on.

To cut to the chase, I had to turn on "Standard Mode" for Sonic Forces Overclocked. In keeping with the theme of this being an encore, a lot of levels have wildly new lighting applied to them, with many levels set later in the evening or at night.

This blankets a lot of levels in a single color and lots of high-contrast shadows, which makes character, enemy, and hazard visibility incredibly difficult. In some levels with a lot of high-frequency noise (like Chemical Plant) it can be difficult to tell where your character even is on screen sometimes. In other levels, like the revamped Mystic Forest, the blue-on-purple-on-teal color scheme makes for a readability nightmare (as does the Death Egg Core level with Buddy, with a red character navigating a level full of orange fog, lit by pink and yellow lights).

When you're running through these stages at a couple hundred miles per hour, it all blurs together into something that's sometimes either too dark or too muddy to parse. At one point Sonic jokes that Infinite's aesthetic is "monochrome colors" but I'd rather have the levels be readable at a glance than hanging a lampshade on it. Things just need to be a little brighter, with a little more diversity of color to highlight the edges of roads and incoming hazards.

The story is... fine. It's not incredibly deep, and it doesn't need to be, so it works well enough. There's actually a surprising amount here, though, from mid-level chatter, map screen debriefings, and even full on cutscenes. Voice acting duties seem to be handled by Adrenaline Dubs, who I subscribed to last year for their surprisingly good dubs of Archie and IDW Sonic comics. They turn in some pretty high quality work here, often rivaling Sega's official dubbing efforts. My only real complaint is that Sonic's dialog is a little too referential; his call-outs during levels often reference other infamous lines from different Sonic games ("The whole city's on fire!", etc.), and sort of like how the game pokes fun at the monochromatic lighting, there's a line where Sonic even cringes at his own dialog a little bit. "We're admitting it's bad, but still doing it anyway" is not a healthy design ethos.

Earlier I mentioned cutscenes, and rather than the complex, high-budget cutscenes Sega had in the original Forces, Overclocked instead opts for motion comic videos. Artistic duties for these cutscenes are shared between a handful of 4 or 5 different artists, each bringing their own art style to their scenes. Generally, I think this is a good move. A little more consistency between artists would make it feel a bit more polished, but seeing the art style change between scenes has its own charms, too. It really drives home how much of Sonic Forces Overclocked was not only a team effort, but to some degree, a community effort. Many different hands touched this project, and it is better for it.

It's easy to focus on the negative things I said about Sonic Forces Overclocked here and think I came away not really liking it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think this is a genuinely impressive mod, with significantly better level design than the base game. It has a few problems, sure, but the overall product, when taken as a whole, is absolutely wonderful. This might be a bit incendiary and hyperbolic, but this close to the top of the list as the most fun I've had with a Sonic game this year. If you own Sonic Forces on Steam, it's not to be missed.

Download: https://gamebanana.com/mods/485051

[luvtonique]

How do you keep up the motivation to work on your game?!

I've been stalled out on 2 ttrpg projects and every time I try to get started, either my motivation dies like a candle in a hurricane or I get immediately interrupted and motivation gets hijacked to go do someone else's thing.

I have a few motivators of various different weights.

I want to play the game with my mom. I wanna show her what I've made, and get her honest first-time reaction of seeing a video game designed by her son. Especially with the Pixel Animation, which lets my mom see my art come to life. When I was growing up, our family was a Disney family, and animation has always been something of a dream of mine to one day be able to do. So showing my mom that I have made a game with animation in it that I made all by myself is a priceless thing that I want to experience.

I need to just figure out motivation in general. I'm 35 and I've only been employed a total of 2 years in my life at Victoria Secret in Hollywood. If I don't make something of my life soon, I'll never get anywhere. At least I don't think I will.

Money, obviously. I can absolutely live on commission money and conventions for the rest of my life if I keep producing merchandise and commissions, but I've got extremely high hopes for my game. After making the Lil Miss Rarity animation with almost 9million views and daily comments after 9 years, the Bestia mod for Binding of Isaac with over 100,000 downloads and sitting at the 70th most downloaded mod in the game, and the Full Service Playing Cards which made me lifechanging amounts of money at conventions, I'm convinced that I'm entirely capable of making something that people will love and will give me a real income that will let me live more comfortably and continue to follow my dreams.

I am extremely excited to tell this story. I've always been a creative writer, my teachers used to call my parents just to tell them over the phone to encourage me to keep writing. I wrote a story called "The Wolf and the Vixen" when I was 13 that was about a wolf inside the earth who built mountains to try and impress a Vixen in the moon who was making rain and water with her alchemy, and a guy got called in from a university in Florida (I'm in Cali) to read my story and he talked to me about getting a Young Writers Scholarship and moving to Florida to study in some program where I'd get a publisher at the end of it. (My dad told me to turn it down and I did).

Added to the above: I think Melodi, as of right now, is the most insanely deep and compelling story I've ever written, and that's saying a lot. I've been writing the world of Lucidia since I was 13 or 14, and I gave a hint of it in Lil Miss Rarity with Malice and Lucidia's story arc, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

So, I know, what you were asking was "How (IN GENERAL) do you stay motivated to keep working?" and a lot of these are very personal reasons that won't really help the average person, so I'll give some advice here. The advice here is, because if you truly are passionate to tell your story, nothing should stop you from telling it.

[thefirstknife]

I've emerged. Did the whole campaign and some side stuff, haven't had time to touch the season but I will do so shortly.

Overall, I really like it. Visually absolutely stunning. I adore Nimbus to death. Love the extent of involvement from Osiris and that we and our Ghost got to speak so much. The whole campaign feels much more Guardian-centric than any other before.

I played on normal mode because I do not want to think about difficulty and to sweat when I'm just trying to get through the story for the first time so difficulty wise, normal mode is fine to me. Didn't experience any issues with that or with new mod system or anything.

Full spoilers under (Deterministic Chaos mission as well) and because it's a long post:

Despite loving it, I feel like some stuff was rushed. One of my major issues is that we did not really have any meaningful explanation about the main point of the story, which is the Veil. I feel like we should've known exactly what it is in order to understand why we're protecting it outside of the whole "the Veil powers Neomuna so if it gets destroyed, people will die." That's understandable enough, but we have no idea what it is. I think we should've known that.

Without knowing what it is, we can't really understand what happened at the end. It's a really shocking, unbelievable and stunning ending, but also confusing. We do not know what happened. Zavala and Ikora both spoke as if the Traveler disappeared which got me confused until I read Ikora's summary in text:

And ofc, until I saw the view in destinations and from the HELM:

From Zavala's speech, I genuinely thought that the Traveler just disappeared entirely, despite us not seeing anything in the cutscene after the Witness entered it. Only this line from Ikora's summary explains that the Traveler isn't gone or destroyed or dead, just kinda... Shut down. I guess.

Which again, we simply do not understand. I love when things are mysterious and we can speculate, but in this case there is nothing to even speculate about. We simply do not know what happened or why. We have no idea what the Witness wants or what it did.

Some of it might get explained in the raid, but I believe that the main campaign plot point should be explained in the campaign. There was a brief possibility that some stuff would be explained in the exotic mission for the machine gun, Deterministic Chaos, but instead of clarifying the Veil, it just made it even more confusing.

Basically, the mission explains that the Vex tried making a copy of the Veil, but the copy was not successful entirely. The copy? The Black Heart in the Black Garden. It obviously didn't pan out for the Vex, but it's unfathomable to me why an object of Light would turn into the Black Heart, even as a failed copy. Not to mention that the Vex can't handle paracausality. Perhaps that is why they failed? There's a lot of text involved in the mission, but it does not explain anything further and it ends with us getting a core from a Vex mind that has yet to be researched.

This might possibly all make clear sense in the future, and I don't mind waiting at all. But I do feel like we could've easily gotten more substantial information during the campaign. The Veil was an entirely new thing introduced here and the whole campaign has us chasing after it, but we have no information about what it is. And the information we do have is wildly conflicting. It's tied to the Light and it's an object of the Traveler, but it's also able to be copied as the Black Heart and can be used to slice open the Traveler? Like, on one hand it's obviously Light based, but on the other it's highly dangerous and helpful to Darkness.

We'll probably find out eventually so I'm not too bothered, I just think we should've found out during the campaign. It's definitely going to be a sore point for everyone, since we literally do not know what we were doing.

On another note, we're finally fully done with Nezarec! A thing I am glad to be wrong and overly cautious about. I had huge dread over hyping myself up for something like that and only for it to not pan out so I advised caution. Luckily, it is panning out!

However, I have some issues with that as well and it mostly stems from the past year of Nezarec simply not being set up sufficiently enough. He got set up as a past disciple and then as having died ages ago and then as having several of his body parts ground into dust and also as a "traitor." Assumed traitor to the Witness since he was a disciple. Then suddenly he's still on the Witness' side. For ... reasons? I guess raid lore will clarify.

I liked the fact that he's shown as "stuck" in a prison of being in between life and death (his lines in the strike), since that fits with where he would be given that he died. And was turned into tea. But we know that he can still speak from his remains so that's cool! I also like how he sounds utterly silly evil. Like in a good way silly. He just sounds evil, which is sometimes refreshing given that all our villains get expanded to the point where I feel sorry for them. I hope he stays like this.

Another thing that bothers me is, again, the whole nightmare thing. It's reiterated once more that he's tied to nightmares, but Lightfall CE specifically untied nightmares from the Lunar Pyramid and Nezarec. Which falls with my issues with him not being set up properly; we should've known about his powers unambiguously when he was introduced in Plunder, or earlier. Again, this might be explained in the raid lore, but I feel like it's something that should've been explained as a part of the setup. I already made the suggestion that Nezarec may have made the nightmares and has nightmare powers and that he distributed that power to other Pyramid ships which would explain why the others have them. I hope this gets addressed or it'll bother me forever because Collector's Edition lore stuff is usually crucial to understanding the new expansion and characters so the contradiction is currently odd. Until we get an explanation ofc.

Another thing I like is how some Tormentors are named! And when they're named, they're also called "Imprints of Nezarec." Suggesting that they're either controlled by him or made by/from him. Or modelled. Not sure which word to use here but they're definitely tied to him. It's an interesting little tidbit. Would explain how they look half Rhulk and half.... something else. That something else, as I've speculated, might be Nezarec and it might explain why the Witness wanted his body parts (though this is then an issue yet again with Plunder because we prevented it from having those body parts. So if the Witness acquired some other body parts regardless, then what was the point of Plunder. I digress).

Also the first Tormentor we see is the only one with a different title:

Hoping for more info about them! Possibly through the raid!

I read all lore tabs that are available and I loved those! Some really cool stuff in some of them. These are all available for reading right away in collections! Seasonal gauntlets have really sweet lore with Saint-14, Caretaker sword actually made me cry with lore about Drifter helping the Eliksni and specifically Eliksni kids. Guardian's Angel Ghost shell killed me dead with lore about Mara being concerned for Crow and Crow accepting her help. Tech Witch Ghost shell mentions Sjur Eido!!!!

From the campaign lore stuff and little details, I really love the lore book Last Days which is about Neomuna citizens preparing for cryo. Some really sweet interactions and information. There's another gay couple in there! And a really neat concept of how the Neomuna citizens choose different appearance for themselves when they're in virtual reality which consists of choosing an avatar and gender (!) and they can change that any time.

Absolutely thrilled that Maya Sundaresh and Chioma Esi, aka Golden Age science wives, were revealed to have been among the founders of Neomuna. They even have areas named after them!

Also super excited to do some side missions like the ones in the Archive about other Cloud Striders. The leader of the Archive, a lady called Quinn sounds really cool and she's voiced in the quests and in patrols, as well as some other really cool characters. Quinn is also super neat because of the lore of the exotic ship Tropopause in which she speaks to Ikora and manages to completely stun Ikora in what interpret as Ikora's wlw impulse. This can be read immediately in collections.

Also, Calus is finally dead and gone! Good riddance bitch! Also super chilling cutscene with him pissing off the Witness. What a bad move, Calus. But I love to see the difference between Calus and Rhulk in how they treat the Witness. Super interesting.

Our Ghost... Man. My boy needs a break. If I see anyone slandering him for anything, I will personally end them. He literally cannot stop being taken over. It's super concerning (and also not fully explained why the Witness can just do that). On the upside, my Ghost shell (catboy) was super funny in those scenes:

Kitty Witness real.

Overall, I liked it and I feel like the story and the new setting and everything adjacent to it has a lot of potential and I'm excited to play more and get more information as we get through the year. I really do think that we'll get everything explained eventually, but it's definitely slightly disappointing that no questions were answered. As a matter of fact, we just got more questions. Things that we never knew existed were brought up only to not be elaborated on at all, but they were treated like the most important thing in the world and crucial aspects of the story. Even if you know that we'll find out eventually, it can feel strange to follow a self-contained expansion story and not get any clarifications as to why we're doing the things we're doing.

Looking forward to seeing more though! Exploring the world is definitely a blast and there's a lot of stuff to do. Strand is also incredibly cool to use and I can't wait to get all upgrades.

[cristalin-league-official]

My Experience with Team Disco (@discoindahouse): A PSA.

...I really wish I didn't have to make this post.

As a preface: Don't harass anyone. Most people in Disco are as much victims as I was. And trying to fight fire with fire won't get us anywhere.

Hi. My name is Wyatt. I'm the Aventurine City gym leader in Cristalin and the guitarist for the band Double Time.

And I was convinced to go to one of Team Disco's discos. This is that story. -W

The story begins some months ago. I was approached by a man who calls himself the DJ. He told me that the purpose of Team Disco was to bring novelty to music. I don't necessarily agree that today's popular music is boring, but art is subjective, and I can always get behind new voices in the industry. So I told him that sounds fun.

Nat, a friend of mine, was rightfully worried about the organization, but, as far as I was concerned at the time, they were just being overprotective.

There's this member of Team Disco. You know her as Rush, and that's the name I'm going to be referring to her by for this post's purposes, to protect her privacy. As I mentioned, she's a victim too. If you're reading this... I'm so sorry. I know what you think I'm doing, and I really wish I didn't have to write this post. Rush and I became quick friends.

A little while back, the DJ opened invitations to join Team Disco. I was talked down from this, because I already have several commitments, but I was also invited to come to one of their discos. Against Nat's warnings (which I once again saw as overprotectiveness), I accepted.

I was escorted to the disco once I arrived in the city by Mod Rush. I was anxious, but I decided it was just nerves over doing a new thing, and I pushed it away.

The first red flag should have been the sewer. Now, I'm not going to judge locations, I've been to some great out-of-the-way places, but if you, as an allegedly popular organization, are holding a party in an abandoned warehouse that can only be accessed via the sewer system... That might be something to start questioning.

I didn't question it though. I was busy pretending I didn't notice anything wrong.

The next red flag should have been the entire crowd waving at me in creepy synchronization. Once again, I ignored it. I was the guest of honour, after all, leaving would be rude. And maybe they were just tight-knit.

The music was good. The DJ sent out a Loudred, I participated in a dance battle. Rush came on stage, and she's a really good singer. All was well.

Until everything stopped. The crowd went completely rigid.

And Rush stopped singing. And... The DJ sent out a Hypno.

I panicked, but then, suddenly, I didn't remember what was happening. I shrugged it off and went back to dancing.

At the end of the night, I was convinced it was the most fun I'd ever had. And hey, it was a pretty good time, up until the Hypno thing.

I only got back the next morning. I got about three hours of sleep. Nat... was concerned, but I was still reeling from last night. It was the best night of my life, or so I figured.

The whole thing's kind of fuzzy, but I remember being... weirdly happy. Like everything was suddenly alright, and nothing would ever change again. I barely slept, ate, or drank water. Being tired wasn't on my mind, and I had better things to do.

Then came the day of the concert. I was still hyped. And everything backstage went great. I looked great, felt great. I was sure it was gonna be an awesome concert.

When I started playing, though, it changed. Something about playing my own music... broke the Hypno's influence, I guess. Obviously, I immediately felt like shit. I hadn't slept, and only minimally ate or drank water. I passed out backstage, and the rest is history.

...So that's what happened. Please, don't repeat my mistakes. And, I want to reiterate, I do not condone harassing the DJ or anyone else involved. This is just meant to be a warning. Thank you.

[infinitethree]

It rankles Daz to have both Day and Theo in his territory without permission.

The Council rooms are the closest thing he has to something holy. Sure, his rooms aren't exactly public property, but–

This is his oasis. His place to retreat to when he needs a break from wearing the mask of his false persona.

Nobody who he didn't explicitly approve of should be here.

Granted, he was the one who brought Theo here first. But that was for a singular goal– a goal that Aster thwarted.

…He's isn’t sure he really believes that he's not cursed. And Lee doing something like he did will only draw the Scribe's attention to him.

Catching the interest of a being like that could lead to a fate worse than death.

Nothing he can do about it but try and divert their attention– try to make things interesting enough that they don’t bother focusing on Lee.

Currentl, the full Council, Lee included, are seated at their table alongside Day and Theo.

They've been listening to them explain what they've been doing. His allies are pissed at him but adamant that the Council is good for both them and the server as a whole.

“Daz can be an asshole, yeah. Deeply fucked up in a lot of ways that I've been worried about for a long time, but…” Khons gestures around them.

“The fact that he could make something like this, fully hidden from everyone? That's a testament to what he can do when he puts his mind to it. The fact that someone like that, regardless of the reasons, decided to help the server…”

Instead of letting the implication linger, Raine is more blunt. “If Daz had malicious intent, we'd all be cooked. I've heard bits and pieces of what he did to his ex-mentor. He might be a petty dick with even worse self esteem than we realized, but Khons is right. I've gotten a better view of him than…maybe anyone else ever has. Aster’s weird visions aside, obviously.”

Daz glares at said person, who is still not meeting his gaze.

Coward.

Raine keeps going. “You literally could not pay a dozen people to shoulder even half the load that he does. Even if they agreed, they would somehow be worse at it than he is!”

Day interrupts, “I'm going to need clarification and examples of what exactly he does that goes beyond the Welcome Wagon.”

That's his cue, then.

He leans back in his chair and scoffs, “I keep track of basically the entire server. Not with mod tools, but with gossip. If the Egg broke through, I'd be the first to realize. If we were somehow secretly invaded, I'd be the first to realize. If tensions rise, if prank wars go too far, if people are feeling unhappy in a dangerous way– I'm the one who fixes it.”

His console pops up with a message. There’s not a ton of people he's routed messages through his com like this, which means he can't hold off on answering.

As he scans the text, he frowns. “What dogshit timing. I can’t put this off– usually I'd walk off to do this, but I doubt I'm allowed to. So everyone gets to shut the fuck up while I put a fire out.”

He doesn't bother waiting for a response. He pulls his com out and puts it on speaker for incoming audio, puts his earpiece in for his mic, and makes a call.

It's easier to don his mask if he does so completely, so his body and face shift to worried but kind. “I got your message, Ten. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Tentra, a recently-settled refugee and Dream, hiccups. “I– I don't deserve to be here. Not after everything I've–”

“Don’t be silly! You made mistakes, sure, but so have lots of others. There aren't a ton of people here who can truthfully claim to be totally innocent. And, y'know– Sanctuary is really big on rehabilitation! Just because you did bad things doesn't mean you can't learn to do better,” he reassures, tone warm and gentle.

He knows why Tentra thinks his sins are unforgivable. He was from a fantastical world, a dragon who had been roused from his slumber when knights tried to slay him.

Enraged, he had gone on a rampage and laid waste to the knights and a nearby town. After that, he was hunted and nearly slain before the T3 showed up.

Innocents had died, and now that the fear and anger have subsided…Tentra feels every bit the monster he was claimed to be.

“I'm– if I stay, people will just get hurt!” “Even if that were true, we can kinda respawn as many times as we need. You can't really kill anyone here for good,” Daz points out.

He does not mention the caveat of will to live. No point in making things complicated.

The guy protests, “But they're still going to be hurt!”

He sighs softly. “You remember Day and Theo, right?” “Y– yeah? They were nice…and a little scary.” “Well, their family sorta stabs each other for fun. Theo regularly threatens to murder his dad in his sleep, and Day's response is just to laugh and taunt him. My understanding is that Theo has sincerely tried…and just kinda failed.”

Tentra sounds concerned. “Are they okay? That's…weird.” “I mean– Day did adopt two people who are cosmically just himself. So, like, weird is relative when it comes to them? Also, he's…got some unorthodox parenting methods. But the Was-Taken household is super loving, even if they also, like, lunge across the table to stab Theo and/or Perce during family dinners.”

He giggles. “As weird as it sounds, it works for them! Theo's best friend, Aster– the Swords and Shields guy? He's like, super big into fighting. The two of them do sparring matches all the time! He's actually like, super cool to watch; we call him the Comet for a reason.”

Staring Theo dead in the eyes, he drops his voice like he's sharing a secret and says, “Just between you and me? Aster is waaay more impressive. He’s, like– gosh, he was a pretty normal guy! And then he just decided to get really really good at combat. Sure, Theo is cool and on the same level…but he kinda got cheat codes.”

Theo makes an offended face and Daz flips him off. Tentra says, surprised, “Isn’t Theo really strong? So this, uh, Aster guy– he's on that level?”

“Yeah! And we kiiiinda have a mutual friend in Raine. You remember him, right? The kinda quiet Dream I work with. I bet if I asked nicely enough, he could get Aster to agree to something like…a demonstration, maybe? To show that even if you're a dragon, you're not the strongest person here. If you somehow like– totally lost it, there are people who could subdue you.”

That offer is met with silence for a few beats, and then a quiet, “I'd…really like that.”

Daz beams. “Awesome! I can set it up soon. In the meantime, how goes progress on finding a therapist?”

“I don't…know who to pick.” “That's okay! We have a ton of options and it can be confusing to sort them. Stop by the Welcome Wagon at some point soon, and I'll sit down and at least get you a shortlist, yeah?”

There's a sniffle. “Okay. Thank you, Daz. I– I feel a lot better, talking to you.” “I'm really glad to hear that. There’s no reason to leave, not unless you really want to go.”

Tentra sounds like he’s smiling. “I dunno if I believe that. But I'll trust in you, at least.” “You’re sweet. Any world would be lucky to have you, Ten.”

He hears that smile get a little bigger. “I'm pretty sure that's what I should say to you. I…I feel really blessed that I met you.” There’s a beat, and then Ten murmurs, “I'll let you go now. Thank you again, Daz.”

“Anytime,” he replies. He lets Ten hang up before taking his earpiece out and rolling his shoulders.

Day seems fascinated. “Why did you diffuse that?” “Because he’s a person who is best served in Sanctuary. It’s my job to make sure people who leave do so for the right reasons. Dragons are a bitch to rehome, too– d’you know what kind of considerations we have to have for that shit? So, yeah, no; I’m going to avoid that pointless hassle as much as possible. My time and energy are better spent elsewhere.”

Sullenly, Theo mutters, “Aster is not more fuckin’ impressive–” “I said that specifically to piss you both off. Congratulations on giving me exactly what I wanted.”

His attention shifts to Aster, who flinches despite still not looking at him. “You had better fuckin’ come through on this.” “Of course I will; I’m not that big of an asshole.”

When his glare intensifies, Aster shrinks down in his seat a little.

“Aster did a good thing,” Lee protests, and Daz just scoffs. “He invaded my privacy in a way I’m powerless to stop.”

The subject of his ire mutters, “I’ve told you my reasons–” “And I’ve told you, those aren’t fuckin’ good enough! You are so fuckin’ lucky that I can’t ruin you.”

Finally, Aster lifts his head to meet his gaze. There’s an odd look in his eyes, and an almost grim look on his face. “I don’t like this either, you know. It– your life sucks.”

In between breaths, the traitor suddenly goes pale. A shaky, almost uneasy laugh escapes him as he stares at the table. “I did not need proof, fuck, fuck, fuck–”

“...What did you see this time,” he asks, curious despite himself. “The fucking– Pogtopia. The worst part.”

Ah.

Interesting that he’s so distraught by that. “You had your own, didn’t you?”

Aster stares at him and says, half-hysterical, “Not like that, no! I could– lay down, at the very least! And there was– shit, there was some kind of light!”

Huh. Kinda fucked up that his own brother was worse than Aster’s Dream, in that regard.

He shrugs. “It’s not that big of a deal.” “Not that big of a–?!”

Eyes slamming shut, Aster takes several deep breaths. “I…can’t believe I’d take my Dream over him. Fuckin’ Prime…”

“It’s always the ones you love that can hurt you the most,” Daz hums, turning his attention back to the group at large. “An enemy hurting you is expected. A loved one doing so…well. That’s a special kind of treachery.”

Theo’s eyes are steely. “No fuckin’ shit. Especially when it’s your own fuckin’ parent.”

He corrects, “Brother. Phil and Techno were negligent and absent, but Wilbur…” “Of course it’s Wilbur,” Day mutters under his breath, wings poofing a little with distress.

The immortal scrubs a hand down his face and heaves a deep sigh. “I don’t– I don’t know that I can fully stop you. I’m pretty sure you’re capable of evading…pretty much anything I try and do to you, at least in part.”

“You’re correct,” Daz says, wary at where this is going.

“But here’s the thing.” Leaning forward and bracing his forearms on the table as he stares him down, Day tells him, “You’re not magically immune from the rules of Sanctuary. I’ll refrain from restraining you– all of you– on a few conditions. Your therapist, who you will be genuine and honest with, is going to be Iatros.”

Aster murmurs, “Closest thing we have to an expert on admins.” “Mhm. And he knows how to keep secrets without letting it affect how he acts too much. You’re also going to share information about the Scribe and Observers–”

“The latter of whom are already watching,” Raine tells him. Day grimaces. “Uhg…I hate that. I didn’t know they just– watched, without asking questions.”

Shaking his head, Day continues. “And you need to come clean to Lucid. He deserves to know–” “He’s the biggest fuckin’ threat,” Daz snaps as he shoots to his feet. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be under the thumb of an admin who’s snapped?!”

Day glares at him. “Your concern is noted. However, he has a dozen people closer to him who are more likely to notice something wrong before you. On top of that, it’s an extreme mental strain to not be able to drop your act outside of blackout rooms. For that reason alone, I’m putting my foot down about that.”

Daz seethes with rage. “Fuck you.” “Hate me all you want– but it’ll be better for you and everyone else in the long run. Shit– do you not want Lucid to be in your debt? Because you clearly know things that we don’t. Filtering it through Lee will be a bigger pain in the ass than just coming clean.”

Said person agrees, “And if he knows you’re as good as you are, you can stop being forced to cut back on Welcome Wagon hours. I know you hate doing that! And maybe you can, I dunno– fuck with his head by showing him a meeting with the endfolk–”

Clever kid, he already knows exactly how to reframe a situation to speak to Daz.

But his dad and brother seem surprised. Theo asks, “Endfolk? Are they fuckin’ special like piglins?”

He scoffs. “Yes and no. Endfolk are– capricious beings whose entire lives revolve around verbal sparring. Haunting dynamics are complicated, and endfolk customs are weird to wrap your head around. Fucking them up means that in a worse case scenario, dozens of hauntings target you and yours.”

Rolling his shoulders at the idea of Lee being subjected to that, he sighs, “Lee isn’t ready. Not until he can pass a test to my satisfaction. That’s the only point in which I’ll finally let him shadow a meeting with them.”

Day’s head tilts a little. “Explain why it’s so much more difficult than meeting with piglins.”

He moves to the side and gives an elaborate bow. Once he straightens, he gives his standard greeting. <”I of the day greet thee of the eternal night. I pray thy haunting has been blessed with prosperity and amusement.”>

Both Day and Theo jolt a little. “Fuckin’ shit, that's archaic.” “No wonder nobody caught on until now, if that’s their native tongue. Even those who speak Ender wouldn't use that dialect…even for words that exist in that one, a lot of them are shifted or different,” Day mutters, brow furrowed in thought.

Daz smiles enigmatically, but keeps his eyes on the neck down. <”With a tongue as old as the ancient cities they walk within, games using words both spoken and not, and little patience for those that fail to adhere to rules…truly, the why is no mystery. Attempting to do so would earn only the wrath of a folk who stand atop the food chain.”>

Both sigh deeply. “That’s some fuckin’ fae shit, right there,” Theo groans. “Sorry, baby bro, but– I might have to side with fuckin’ Daz on this one.”

He keeps his smile affixed. <”Thy admittance is commendable.”>

“Still pissed at you, don't fuckin’ push it,” the warrior growls.

He snorts and sits back down. “Noted.” He looks to Day and asks, “Are those your only conditions?”

The immortal sighs again. “...Just be honest with us. As commendable as your efforts are, I just– I don't like that you've hidden so much of yourself.”

When are you going to remind them about me?

A shudder goes down his spine at Innit’s seething tone.

“...You don't– aren't you worried? About me, about Innit–”

Day looks oddly sad. “You need therapy, Daz. Actual therapy not whatever the fuck you've been doing the last few years. Am I happy you apparently wanted to kill every Dream? Of course not. But I can’t punish you for thought crimes. If anything, you've punished yourself for that worse than I could ever hope to.”

The older man studies him like he's trying to understand him. “You sealed away a fundamental part of yourself to protect Lee. You did– all of this, on top of what we already knew about, to protect Lee. It's…insane, honestly? But also impossible to not recognize.”

That makes no sense to him. “Then why the fuck are you mad at me?”

“You did still lie to me, my kids, and the server at large for three years. And you were moments away from leaving a horrific scar on my eldest and youngest,” Day points out.

He answers, “My reasons have been made clear, and I left extensive documentation. You can’t be hurt if you're dead.”

Lee hisses, “You don't get to make sacrifices like that for me, asshole!”

It does make his heart twist a little to see how hurt the kid is. “I felt like I didn't have a choice.”

Quietly, Aster murmurs, “Because your failsafe realized just how mangled you actually are. And you knew I'd never follow through.”

“You broke into my head, my past, and drove me to a cliff,” Daz sneers. “You betrayed the trust I put in you.”

Aster finally meets his eyes. “You were making sure I'd be able to put an end to things if you went too far. Well…I did, didn't I?”

Fury sings in his blood as he withdraws, twists, and throws his butterfly knife. Aster easily dodges it as Daz screams at him, “You could have killed everyone, you stupid fuckin’ jackass! Your fuckin’ noble bullshit could've led to– not just fuckin’ death, but a fate worse than that! What if I was right and I was cursed?!”

“But you aren't,” Aster answers. “Even if you were, though…? I'd still try to save you.”

He doesn't understand, and it pisses Daz off.

Aster continues, “I'd have used that goddamned wish on you, if I needed to.”

It feels like the floor falls out from under him.

In no way, shape, or form is he deserving of something as impossible as a reality-altering wish.

Even if he might have been, once upon a time…he isn't any more.

Not after he failed so miserably in the worst possible ways.

But he’s good at hiding his true feelings, so he just scoffs, “Right, I’m sure.”

The traitor seems a little sad at that– like he wants Daz to believe he’d do that.

Maybe he would. Maybe it doesn’t actually matter, because he still did something horrible and violating.

Suddenly, Raine groans and slumps forward against the table. “I never thought I’d miss you two bickering, but here we are!”

“Yeahhhh…it was kinda nice not getting new and awful bombshells dropped every few minutes,” Khons agrees.

They’re all quiet for a long moment, and…Daz can’t help but agree.

And then Raine asks, oh-so-innocently, “Do I get whatever the fuck a real claim is to you now?”

He sputters, “I– what?!”

A little smirk is on his friend’s lips as he explains, “Given you literally thought doing that would kill me, I can’t really blame you for your– whatever you’ve been pretending they are? But, well, now we know you’re not cursed. So it’s safe, right? And as your best friend, if anyone deserves a claim from you…”

Daz stares at him, and then Lee says, “I already wanted to give you something. Are you reaaaaaally gonna reject it and break my heart, huh?”

The idea sends a current of icy fear through him. He knows better than anyone at this table the effects of rejecting an admin’s claim.

He…he can’t do that to Lee. Not when there’s not a good reason to do that.

Throat tight, he nods.

It’s still terrifying to accept love, let alone give it out. He’s spend so long convinced that doing so was a death sentence, after all– that fear can’t vanish overnight.

But maybe…maybe he can try.

[itsm3m00n]

THE ELSIE MOTH’S GUIDE TO TAOCC

Aka: “oh gosh here we go”

copy-pasted because I’m lazy ;-;

TAOCC is, in a nutshell, like 10?ish mods (last I counted) making up a random TADC fic that started as a few askblogs and turned into a multiverse with lore, fourth wall breaks, and a heavily expanded universe. Here’s the lore basics:

TAOCC seemingly takes place over the span of October until now, in between episodes one and two. It will most likely have an lore update after 2 comes out. TADC exists within a server run and managed (and seemingly abandoned) by the company of C&A, which, depending on the character, is either:

A well-respected game development studio (People with Direction)

A shady company that will take anyone as test subjects (Hammer Anon)

A faceless set of developers with unknown motives (Sun and Gangle)

A respectable but unknown corporation that uses odd means to get people to test their hardware (Dunite I think?)

It’s most likely some combination of…all of the above. Generally, C&A is elusive and will not help the characters or get involved past backstory, with the exception of Lonn and Lattia, who are human developers who just…found this computer after a long story that I won’t get into lol.

Currently, the digital worlds are as follows:

TADC (run by Sun and Caine (on paper))

Dusk’s domain (run by Dusk)

The Bewitched Digital Kingdom (run by Hexe)

The Void (run by nobody, glues the various worlds together)

The Loch and It’s Surrounding Areas (unknown administrator, little is known about it in general except that there are dragons)

The Skies/The Heavens (similar to the void)

Now for the OOC stuff!

The Mods:

The mods are myriad and have multiple, wildly different approaches to making this setup work. Each will have different rules and guidelines on how they interact and what kind of content there is, which includes guidelines on suggestive, violent, or ridiculous content. Some mods write this thing like a book, trying to adhere to the standards of actual literature, while some are just here to have a good time and do whatever. Sometimes this even varies from character to character! Similar mods tend to form groups, and you shouldn’t feel pressured to interact with every single mod all the time. Mods ages range from 13-17, usually. Nobody younger than 13, obviously.

The canon characters:

The canons are dead.

…Okay that’s a joke and an exaggeration. Due to circumstances of various kinds, most of the canon character askblogs are deleted, inactive, etc. Below are their URLs and short explanations.

@/theoneandonlysun - Active, Mod Xeya is a major member of the mods

@/thecomedicallytragicgangle - On a short hiatus, Soup Mod is taking a break but active elsewhere

@ragatha1 - inactive since November

@pomniii -inactive since November iirc

@jaxtherabbit-deactivated2024021 - Deactivated, Jax mod went to university

@/zooooble - Mod Rat, after a lot of problems caused by random anons (the canon askblogs were typical askblogs at first, before the extended universe) and others, left the fandom entirely. Mod rat was also Kinger’s mod.

@blue-tooth Moon mod was locked out of their acct and has not returned.

@/shiningwiththesunshelp - Mod Galaxy’s attempt to bring back moon as a character

@/team-buttonblossom - Viewer’s attempt to bring back Pomni and Ragatha, canonicity is currently being debated/is undecided as far as I know

@/cainetheringmaster - barely active, uninvolved in “anon lore”/Taocc proper

The canons weren’t and won’t be really involved in Taocc, besides sun. Taocc doesn’t really have “main characters” as much as it has “overarching plots that make characters relevant”/“known characters”/“main mods kinda ish”

Mods you should probably know:

@/invaderxeya - called Xeya or Octavia, Sun mod, active, Sun tends to be the center of things around here

@/silhouette-anon - called Soup Mod, semi-active, gnagle mod, runs the Silhouette plotline with Xeya

@/feiar - Nymn mod, active, runs the pirate plotline

@/iciatheguardess - called Star mod, Icia Mod, active, runs the Bewitched Digital Kingdom plotline with Feiar.

@the-moth-from-elsewhere - MEEEEEEEE! Called Elsie, Dusk mod, active, runs Dusk’s domain and has the most fleshed out characters

@/theautumnalcat - called Autumn but also has a sona character named Autumn, Pyxel mod, active, no specific plotline, started Taocc as a whole!

@/kumo-taoc - called mod Kumo, active, local music person, Kumo mod, will cause problems on purpose

Aaaaand more! But these are the ones I know best lol

Oh gosh that was long…sorry!

*curtsies*

thank you so much :D

so can other people who aren’t mods create characters? How exactly does one join the circus do I create a character and roleplay as them?

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Yeah, While I didn't like how Hajime was portrayed, He wasn't the worst out of all of them. There were some characters that I liked in dr3. For the new characters , It's Chisa for me. Perhaps of the fact of the potential she could go with by being so connected with class 77th. Munakata is another one being interesting as hell.

//If I'm being totally honest, of all the new characters introduced in DR3, there was only one that I really kind of liked, and that's obviously Seiko.

//I just felt really bad for her, and while I think she only had a few major contributions, such as the medicine that cured Kyoko as well as her involvement in Despair Arc with Nagito, I still feel like she was a fun character.

//That being said, I was ok with both Kizakura and Gozu too. But I didn't have any feelings of real affection towards either of them like I did Seiko. They were just alright.

//I had a lot of problems with both Yukizome and Munakata though. And I know that sounds weird considering Munakata and Kuripa share a lot in common, but they are different at core. Kuripa has a sense of loyalty to the people around him, whereas Munakata only treats everyone with doubt and suspicion.

//I just feel like what they were trying to do with Munakata was something original that would make him seem like a new, fresh threat to the series, but with the way it was done, it only painted him as a moron in my eyes.

//When the Final Killing Game starts, Munakata decides that the best way to figure out who the Mastermind is and stop the Killing Game is to kill everyone. Which wouldn't have worked anyway since killing Tengan didn't stop the Killing Game anyway. Then after he kills Tengan, he continues to kill everyone because the old, obviously evil bastard tells him everyone is against him, and Munakata doesn't DOUBT him for even a SECOND.

//He's an honestly stupid character who just keeps fucking up over and over again, for little to no reason. Even attributing it to Yukizome's death doesn't excuse the dogshit writing behind him.

//Speaking of Yukizome, she's a whole other issue. In my opinion, despite playing a central role in BOTH arcs of DR3, she just seems like incredibly wasted potential.

//She was a great teacher who looked after her students well, and her personality slotted PERFECTLY with the DR2 characters, who on their own are probably the best main cast in the entire series, and she is the voice of reason and figure of positivity they really really need at times.

//And then her entire arc ends with her getting brainwashed and lobotomized by Junko and Mukuro, thereby then becomes much less interesting, and then fucking dies in episode one of Future side.

//So yeah, just another reason why DR3's writing is awful.

//People keep saying that if DR3 was a game and the characters had more of a chance to be fleshed out, things wouldn't be as poor, but I genuinely disagree with that. The DR3 characters suck even at base level, and if Munakata is anything to go by, it's unlikely they would develop even if they were each given more time.

-Mod

[peachy-sxnrise]

why are people on the internet so mean.

so the sims released the trailer for their new pack today and i was really excited for it, and my favourite sims youtuber, kayla (lilsimsie) was too when i watched her reaction video. in the video tho she missed a little text box that said one of the new items allowed you to summon the grim reaper at will, a feature i knew she'd be really excited about.

so then i went onto twitch and opened her livestream since i knew she was live and wrote in chat "pls tell me y'all told simsie about the summoning the grim reaper at will thing in the trailer after she missed it three times", to which a couple people very nicely replied "yes!" and "she did!", to which i replied "yay! I knew I could count on y'all!". i initiated this because I was excited for the feature and I knew Kayla would be too, and I hoped to spark a conversation on stream about it since I like her being excited about things.

I'm about to close the stream after this when I hear kayla say my username and start talking about what I just put in chat. she was perfectly nice and not targeting me in any way, just pointing out that so many people had brought up that she missed it. but then EVERYONE in the chat is going "people are so toxic" like constantly on repeat everyone is saying it. also, whole Kayla is talking someone says "you've done it now y'all you've broken her". and then kayla says "truthfully I did notice in editing I was just trying to get the video out quick and also I didn't want to take the time to add something onto the end because I had just found out my parents dog had cancer."

meanwhile, people are still yelling in the chat that people are so toxic for bringing this random feature up repeatedly (I'd just opened the stream I thought it would have already come up and i wasnt expecting kayla to respond to my comment if it had cos in that type of scenario she would just ignore the comment if shed already seen a similar one)

so basically the entire chat is yelling at me for bringing something up (in a very friendly way btw) because i thought kayla would be excited about it, and they're all making me feel shit about it and then I get the news that the reason kayla didn't go back and add it in afterwards is bc she found out her parents dog had cancer. which is really sad and obviously im sorry about that and kayla didn't do anything wrong in this situation.

but the CHAT oh my lord why were they so mean ;-; Kayla was perfectly nice about the way she addressed it, as we're the chat mods when they informed me that yes kayla had in fact been told about it, but the rest of chat were so freaking mean ;-; how on earth does this situation make me toxic. I was excited about the new feature. I knew Kayla would be excited for it too. I just wanted to hear her talking about it. I had no way of knowing if shed already been talking about it since I hadn't previously been watching the stream. but I'm toxic. great.

and then afterwards I knew I needed to rant about this whole situation bc it was pissing me off and I can't let go of things until I say them outloud (or type them ig) and I considered my boyfriend, but he was offline, and I considered my mum, but she was asleep, and then I realised I don't have a best friend to rant to. it got so bad I even considered twitter even tho I almost never use it anymore. eventually I decided on tumblr even tho I don't have a following who would be interested so no one's gonna reply to this being like "oh I'm sorry that happened that sucked" or whatever, which is fine ofc, but I just which I had someone in my life who I could be saying this rant to instead of saying it to an empty corner of the internet.

[will-o-the-witch]

Antisemitism in Witchy Spaces

And no, I will not be putting it under a cut.

I started recording every time something happened in hopes it would show how antisemitism actually manifests in witchcraft circles. It eventually got to be five parts long and instead of having people reblog incomplete versions of the post, here is the whole thing in its entirety. Give it a read. Seriously. Read the whole thing so these things can happen less.

Facebook Witch Group: post is made by a user with a profile picture of a clear nazi swastika. After being notified, admin declares the user is allowed to stay because the group is a “judgement free zone.” 

Facebook Witch Group: Jewitches were assumed white by default and pitted against other groups, as if Jewish people are leveraging their identity to “play up” their own oppression and undermine others. Many openly Jewish witches are harassed out of the group.

One of the mods in that same group discovered they “might be Jewish” and became the sole authority on Jewish issues despite having zero connection to the culture or any kind of confirmed Jewish heritage. They were eventually caught lying about their entire race/ethnicity/background.

A witchy discord group implements a rule that outlaws all mention of all closed practices (including Judaism) “to protect from appropriation,” even if the person has legitimate claim to the practice. When I pointed out this basically forced me into hiding, admin says, “you can be Jewish. Just not here.”

A user identified themselves as a Kabbalist. Later in the discussion, they were surprised to learn Kabbalah was Jewish in origin, admitted they didn’t know a single Jewish person in real life, and argued that Kabbalah couldn’t be that bad because Arianna Grande also used it. (”Are you saying she’s wrong too??” yes)

Another user is called out for appropriating Kabbalah and proceeds to sling antisemitic jokes until they are banned.

Just. So many more people appropriating Kabbalah and becoming hostile towards any Jewish person that expresses discomfort. (Including one person that even gave themselves a Hebrew username)

A group of users too big to argue with talking about how amaaaazing working with Lilith is. A few Jewish folks respectfully ask them to be mindful of her origins. They’re not given attention. (Or what attention they are given is only to debate her origin.)

Discord server has rooms for every major subcategory of Paganism and one room for “Abrahamic.” Christian witches completely dominate the conversation.

I mention on my blog that I am a proud Jewish person. One of the comments shortly after is “go be Jewish in Israel.”

A Nazi sympathizer joins a Discord group, reveals themselves, is banned, and proceeds to try and join over and over again through different accounts.

I check my blog activity to find a nazi witch blog had gone through my feed and liked a ton of stuff so I’d be sure to see their username (they did this to other notable tumblr blogs as well.) Looking at their bio revealed their agenda of proving Nazis “weren’t all bad,” and their dash included an open invite to a holocaust denial discord server.

A tumblr thread gets big of a bunch of witches arguing to cancel the word Sabbat because of supposed antisemitic origins. Jewish people chime in to insist that we really don’t give a shit about Wiccans using the word Sabbat, and not to speak over Jewish people and declare what we’re offended by. Tumblr arguments ensue.

I get “called out” for baking challah. That’s not antisemitism but it made me laugh really hard. (It’s okay for goyim to bake bread, obviously. Just don’t be weird about it somehow.)

“High magic” and ceremonial practitioners ignoring or brushing off their tradition’s origin in blatant appropriation.

A user shares a magical Hebrew chant to a group for everyone to use. It includes a name of Gd, even though the group is largely Pagan. They didn’t realize that was a part of it because they don’t speak or read Hebrew.

Another discord group asserts in the rules that members of closed cultures may be openly themselves and discuss their craft, but not in an educational way.  Meanwhile, a mod practices exclusively Hermetic Kabbalah. I don’t have the strength to get into it.

Discord server-wide prompt ping: Tell us about your Christian upbringing! (This isn’t “pure” antisemitism, but it sure does erase those of us who weren’t raised in Christian households)

The nazi witch blog starts making rounds again, dropping asks in multiple inboxes to the effect of: “Jews are anti-pagan and anti-gentile, so why can’t we be anti-Jewish?” (Hopefully I don’t have to explain why that’s a shit take

I joined a discord server and see people discussing different religions, at some point I point out Judaism doesn’t share every major Christian belief. People start challenging this, one person even saying (essentially) “Jewish people might not believe in Hell, but Judaism does because they believe in the same God as Christianity.” (????)

That same conversation, Modmins quickly shut down discussion and some members suggest we not speak about religion to avoid making lurkers uncomfrotable/ to avoid giving people a reason to hex us. Even though religious discussion had already been going on. (I left after that.)

Another Jewish tumblr brings up the history of violence against Jewish graves, and  explains how taking graveyard dirt is considered an act of desecration by traditional Jewish law. Another user argues that because their practice considers it a rite of honor, taking graveyard dirt from a Jewish grave should be okay. They explicitly said they would take it from my grandparent’s graves. They said they would take it from my grave. Multiple people have to explain why you shouldn’t eagerly desacrate people’s graves.

Another Jewitch once shared a story with us: A woman claimed she was able to contact (or had already been contacting and working with) that person’s ancestors who were killed in the Shoah.

A person discusses why Kabbalah is appropriation. One person’s counterargument boils down to: “I was told I was Egyptian in a past life, therefore I may have been Jewish, therefore I have rightful access to Kabbalah now.” (Side note, pretty sure I’ve also seen people mention “past lives” where they were killed in the Shoah.)

A discord server adds new roles, including Qlippoth and “Kabballah.” I inform them that 1) They didn’t spell it right and 2) I hoped that it would be respected as a closed practice. The mod response was essentially, “it’s not closed, are you a Rabbi?” When i asked “are you Jewish?” they would just continue to assert that my voice on the issue wasn’t valid unless I was a Rabbi. (Rabbis have no one unified belief on pretty much anything, btw.)

Another mod came in eventually to try and be more helpful, but still hesitated to make any changes. (The suggested changes were either taking off the Kabbalistic roles, or adding roles that were more inclusive to other types of Jewish magic. We��ve got more than just that.)

This could be more ignorance than “true” antisemitism, but I’d be amiss if I didn’t preserve someone asking “What about Hermetic Quaballah?”

In a discussion about Lilith, one person asserts to my face that Jewish people cannot be witches without forsaking and publicly denouncing their entire religion and culture. Therefore any Jewish anything was up for grabs for witchcraft purposes, and all Jewish witches present were mistaken in some way.

Another person in that same discussion describes an (incorrect) origin story for Lilith, which involved Judaism’s malicious plan to take local mythical figures and portray them as demons to oppress the other local religions and further their “rabid monotheism.”

Through the comments of the old thread, I learned about Wiccans trying to make their own mezuzot, which is hilariously off base.

A semi-prominent witchblr user has an epiphany, and begins posting about how “most conspiracy theories hold a large amount of truth.” While they say they don’t want to delegitimize Jewish pain, also believe that Jewish people control all the banks, and the Holocaust was a “strategic move” to create a narrative of Jewish oppression and delegitimize any conspiracy theories

At least one other tumblr witch sees this blog and comments with enthusiastic support. (along the lines of “Yes, the truth is coming out! Preach!”) Their account looks really normal otherwise, so they were just quietly interacting with the community while harboring these beliefs.

Joy of Satan, a well-known neo nazi propaganda site disguised as a Satanism resource, comments on one of my posts with a link to their homepage.

Somebody in a Discord chat goes to the #closed-practices room and asks a genuine question about Lilith. Several goyim respond with incorrect information and challenge any Jewish voice trying to speak in dissent. One person even says they have spoken with Lilith directly in the past, and anybody who believes she is restricted just doesn’t understand Lilith/the Divine as well as they do.

A popular Facebook group focused on calling out cultural appropriation begins making rounds. Jewish people (and lots of POC) are shamed if they do not find something as offensive as the collective group, even if the other group members are not actually members of that culture.

A narrative forms that tarot is a closed practice, ignoring Jewish mysticism’s influence on it and insinuating that Jewish people have no right to reclaim it while other people profit off of our appropriation.

A person (not even on anon!) Comes into my inbox saying that “Abrahamic religions” are anti-Pagan, anti-satanic, and anti-women, so they should be allowed to be “anti-Abrahamic.” They also conflated Lilith with a Hindu deity with no actual backing for it. Turns out they’re a Joy of Satan promo blog.

Someone digs up an old post on Lilith share her personal story (and try to receive validation that they’re the exception and should be allowed to appropriate her.) When she doesn’t get what she wants, she asserts I “need to do shadow work” for responding in my (terse, but not malicious) tone, and asserts she knows more about Lilith than us and that Jewish people are disrespecting Lilith. She then digs up OTHER posts I had personally made about Lilith to comment on what “bullshit” they are.

Someone asserts that Jews are only co-opting the term “appropriation” from other minorities (and don’t have our own legitimate claim to it) and that Judaism is only closed because we “think we’re the chosen ones” and therefore better than everyone else. (This is a deeply GROSS misunderstanding of the chosen people thing, btw.)

A popular occultist account on Tiktok responds to Judaism being a closed practice by “joking” that he’s going to beat our heads in.

A group gets recommended in a chat I’m in. When I warn them about the antisemitism I experienced in that group, I am met with doubt and asked to provide (what would have been months-old) screenshots of the offense and people insinuate that I am actually working to silence other minorities (because the group was social justice focused) in some way for levying these “allegations.”

A group signs me on to be a moderator for no other reason than the fact that I am Jewish. They didn’t really know anything else about me, but they knew they needed representation in that area. Benevolent, but still notable.

Later on, a mod tries to insinuate that I have never truly experienced oppression or felt unsafe because of my background, and refused to recognize that Jewish oppression existed at all without adding a “but...” or saying I was playing a victim card and somehow undermining her own struggle. Just for saying antisemitism exists, not that it’s more or even equally important as other types of oppression. Just that it exists. I leave the group.

Somebody makes the distinction in a group that not all Pagans are witches and not all witches are Pagan. A moderator of the group says they “disagree” and believe all witches are Pagan. I (and others) reassert that our respective religions don’t fall under any definition of the word and we do not identify as Pagans. Their reply: “in your opinion.”

I gently point out (in what was a friendly conversation up to this point) that something they were doing could be seen as appropriative or offensive if they didn’t go through the proper channels. The tone switches abruptly and suddenly they’re accusing me of “believing in cultural superiority” and gatekeeping knowledge. Another person joins the conversation solely to back them up, and says I am “pouring out negative energy” by talking about this.

This same person also calls me a false witch, asserts that my power/magic is meaningless, etc. There was no reason for them to believe this other than my religious affiliation.

A person asks me to sic Lilith on somebody on her behalf. I tell her I’m not comfortable doing that on command, especially with strangers. It felt like she just wanted to use my traditions “through” me and get free magical labor. (This same person later called me a r#tard and a sh#male when she got banned from a group I helped run.)

I make a post venting about antisemitism. In less than ten minutes, somebody has reblogged it connecting my vent to Israeli politics. The original post never mentioned Israel.

I share a post that covers a rough history of antisemitism over the past 1000+ years. Though the post only mentions Israel in brief passing (and was much more about the historic geographical area than the modern country,) somebody concludes that I am “anti-Palestine.” For.... reblogging someone mentioning Israel in an academic context. I guess. Anon is sure to send me all of their opinions about it.

I reach out to a mod of a group with concerns about appropriation and offer to help educate the mod team if they have any questions about stuff. I get banned.

There are two servers dedicated to ceremonial magick and its ilk. One has a mod who has been called out by Jewish people online for years and claims to know more about Hebrew/Judaism than actual Jews. The other is not as outwardly hostile, but the meme chat is FILLED with borderline nazi shit.

I receive a wave of anonymous harassment containing some very disrespectful and NSFW elements mixed with kabbalah and asking about my Rabbi. They either have friends helping out, or change IP addresses to bypass multiple blocks.

There's a nuanced, interfaith discussion about respecting Abrahamic practitioners (and not taking the Torah/Bible/etc. at only literal face value with no critical analysis.) People flank in to combat this, citing why they believe God (using the yud-hey name) and their followers are all horrible based on citations from the Bible which are taken at only literal face value with no critical analysis.

I get waves of asks requesting I explain various aspects of Judaism, which I'm nearly always happy to answer. Over time though, it's clear a few individuals are taking advantage of it and ask things increasingly asinine and easily googlable, fixating on subjects not even relevant to my practice. Eventually I realize they're just using me as their personal research machine for closed topics and hit the block button.

Another discord debate about Lilith sparks up. After HOURS of heated discussion and full articles of emotional labor from several Jewish people, the person admits that they had agreed with us the whole time. They just wanted to "play devils advocate" and make us argue (aka dance for them) in order to get a "deeper understanding" of the issue.

Now with fun new additions!

[wirewitchviolet]

Dear Game Developers, I don’t want to be a rapacious colonizing blight on the world.

I like a pretty wide variety of games, but one general thing I’ve always been particularly keen on is the sort of game where I start off just kinda naked in the wilderness with nothing and have to build up a bunch of infrastructure to accomplish something. So you know, RTSes, Civ clones, survival games, sandbox-y Minecraft stuff, Dwarf Fortress and similar things, but these all have this really annoying habit of making my character the biggest existential threat to the entire world, and I would really like them to stop doing that all the time.

So, just to open up with an example of how to do this sort of thing in a way I like, Subnautica is one of my favorite games. I recently streamed the whole thing, so, links to that if you’d like: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

Subnautica actively confronts my issue head on, and handles it right. I’m not slaughtering everything I see, I’m not strip mining the whole planet, I’m not leveling forests. I’m here by way of horrible tragic accident, and by the end of the game I’ve done my best to clean up the mess from that and address some other global issues to the point where I can confidently say my presence over the course of the game has made for a net positive impact on the environment in which it’s set. Plus it’s a great game in a bunch of other ways.

I’m also pretty happy with Factorio, oddly enough. In Factorio I AM strip mining the whole world, slaughtering absolutely all of the local wildlife, and any forests I’m not clear-cutting I’m choking out with industrial emissions that leave nothing but dry withered skeletons where there were once beautiful stretches of foliage. The thing of it is, between actually tracking my environmental impact as a mechanic and having such downer visuals, it at least feels like the developers and I are sharing a really dark joke about how awful you are in games like this.

Then on the other side of the coin here, we have, say, Satisfactory. A game in the same weird subgenre as Factorio (do we have a name for these yet? Convey’em Ups?) but... really gross. The player is explicitly just heading down to this really beautiful planet to extract and process all the resources they can. You’re rewarded for killing... basically all life you see despite it not generally posing any sort of real threat to you, clear cutting all the vegetation, and to keep the factory building vibes nice and chill, when you tap into a coal vein or set up an oil well, you get an endless supply of those burnable fuels to use forever, with absolutely no consequence, as you just consume all the things to make all the other things and ship them out to meet quotas. And that’s... kinda gross? Again, the fact that nothing you do has any sort of consequence despite half of it being stuff that is literally killing the world in reality makes it way worse.

Meanwhile, lately I’ve been keeping a lot of modded Minecraft videos going in the background to stave off the social isolation with the whole plague and all with some human voices, and see what cool new ideas people are testing there. One of the real popular new mods is this one called MineColonies, and you know what? It’s really neat. The idea is you find a big open plot of land somewhere, throw down blueprints for really huge multiblock structures of houses and workshops and such, get those built up a little, and NPCs start wandering in you can start giving jobs to. Here’s someone to harvest and replant trees, someone to go mining for underground resources, someone to build and upgrade the rest of these buildings, people to provide renewable food and medicine to all these other NPCs. Schools for their kids to get their stats up to good places by adulthood, a whole higher learning system to advance a tech tree, it’s cool.

But the thing is, as you probably gathered from the name, it’s DISGUSTINGLY colonialist. All these people coming in are explicitly white, with British accents, explicitly gendered and explicitly heterosexual too incidentally, and a huge part of the general infrastructure building is having to set up guard posts and barracks all over, training knights and archers to defend against the local barbarians native to the land you’re building on who wander out of the wilderness to attack everyone with some regularity. And I mean, how messed up is that? This mod is explicitly adding in native people’s just so there’s someone for you to displace and murder as you colonize some big chunk of unspoiled wilderness in the name of prosperity for your... British colony. Which of course works on an explicitly feudalist system (and then also for some reason has everyone grumbling about how you’re spending your gold, which you aren’t even doing). It totally thematically ruins what I’d otherwise be super super into. And not long after this was released, baseline Minecraft did basically the same thing. There are now roving barbarian tribes who go around trying to kill you and any villagers near you and you have to concern yourself with wiping out whole groups of them with some regularity, whereas previously the only enemies you really had to deal with were zombies and skeletons and a few other weird explicitly monstrous things. It’s gross.

My distaste for slaughtering barbarians extends to the civilization games too. Which... I mean I have put a LOT of hours into a lot of Civ games so it’s obviously not a total dealbreaker for me, but... you’re always this weird immortal dictator and even if you set your civilization up as a democracy, you sure do win every single election regardless of how unhappy people are with you, and you spend a good chunk of time slaughtering local barbarians. And increasingly, with each new game, smaller independent nations because they really keep putting more and more emphasis on military conquest being, if not the best path to victory, one you have to push pretty far no matter what you’re going for.

And it doesn’t have to work like that. My favorite game, mostly in the franchise, is still Alpha Centauri. Where the “barbarians” are brain eating space worms, not other humans, and even then, you can (and I consistently do) be a big tree-hugging hippy, enact worm-friendly social policies, make friends with them instead of killing them, and have them go devour a bunch of violent anti-science anti-environment right wing creeps, strongarm everyone else into adopting similar policies, and, like Subnautica, leave the world better than you found it by foregoing all the easier wins and doing the thing where you find a permanent solution to the local planetary superconsciousness accidentally going berserk and eating itself at periodic intervals. Happy ending for everyone! Except for Miriam. Screw Miriam.

Meanwhile, someone I know not to long ago just randomly pitched a game where there’s a big nature ravaging industrial sprawl, but you play as some sort of reclaiming embodiment of nature, strategically... I guess spreading trees to grow up through everything and have rats chew through the wiring and stuff, and yeah, I would play the hell out of that game. If nobody else gets to it before I clear my plate of all these other projects, I might even make that game.

I should stress again too that it’s not even that I don’t want games to ever put me in such a role as the player, just if you’re going to do it, acknowledge that that sort of thing isn’t cool, and either make it clear that the player character has been forced into a really unfortunate position, or that said character is just awful. Or both, both works.

What I don’t want to ever see people do is rationalize a way out of the issues. “Oh this is an infinite supply of clean-burning coal” does not fly with me. “Oh we’re establishing a colony but it’s on an alien planet” is still colonialism. The weird fetish the whole game industry seems to have with leveling forests is not made better by having those trees give you saplings that fully replace every tree cut down in like 2 minutes. If you don’t want to unpack the moral implications of something, you can just not include it to begin with. None of the stuff I’ve been laying out here is actually necessary for any of these games to work. Just... quit being weird and making me play coal-mining conquistadors already.

[charlotteswriting]

Hello I do hope you are doing well! I'll be honest I haven't been doing great,,, l'll be introduced to new people but then something bad happens to them and I kinda just feel like its my fault? like im bad luck,,, I'm just slowly getting more scared of meeting new people in fear of them getting hurt,,, is it alright if I could get some comfort from Gundham, Kiyotaka and Fuyuhiko with a reader dealing with those thoughts? Of course you don't need to just do whats comfortable with you - 🎭

Hi, 🎭 anon! It's been a while.. I am sorry I can respond to this ask only now, I had stuff to do. But if you're still dealing with these thoughts, don't be shy to send me an ask or a message! I am always down to talk to you about your problems, etc. Anyway! Just wanted you to know you did nothing wrong, don't let these thoughts get the best of you :) I want to keep this short, so let's get started now! -Mod Kaede

Gundham Tanaka

—"What's the matter, my Dark Queen/King/Monarch? It looks like something's been eating you out." Of course he noticed it. That's why he appeared in front of yours. It was clear that he was confused, no, worried.

—With a sigh, you sat him down and take your seat next to his. Feeling a bit uncomfortable, you tell him what's wrong and he remains silent the whole time

—What he heard from you makes him question if it's a curse, but he immediately shakes off that thought and grabs your shoulders

—"My love, you're blinded by these harmful thoughts but I, refuse to believe you're under a spell. It's only natural for those mortals to face bad things but this has nothing to do with you, you can't keep an eye on them all the time, the fault isn't yours nor you are bad luck. It's their luck, and you have nothing to do with it. If you were, the Supreme Overlord of Ice such as I, wouldn't have fallen for a great being like you."

—Bursting into small tears, you start to hug him. He doesn't refuse your hug even though he's flustered by the closeness.

—"Let them rain, my liege. I shall accompany you until you're at your best."

—And he did as he told. He stayed with you the whole time. When he felt like his words won't cheer you up, he let his Four Dark Devas of Destruction handle you, and they did a pretty good job.

—By the end of the day, you were exhausted from playing Animal Crossing with him and asked if it was okay to sleep, he wasn't really into sleeping together when you can have more fun, but since that's what you wanted, he might as well agree.

Can you tell I had so much fun writing for him 🤧 I love Gundham

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

—"I am sorry, Taka, I hope Mondo accepts my apologies. I just don't feel like hanging out today."

—You've been like this for the entire week. Pushing away people around you and not even giving excuses anymore. You even managed to avoid Chihiro, your best friend.

—And you even skipped your study night! Was he worried.

—"Y/n, what's wrong? What is bothering you?" Taka's voice shaked a bit as he spoke. He couldn't help it, he was worried. "Nothing, really," That was obviously a lie. He gave you puppy eyes and you sighed. You started letting all out

—"You should have told me about it, we could have talked this out..." He says while feeling overwhelming sadness. He looked down, he wasn't disappointed with you, he was disappointed with himself; for not noticing earlier.

—"I am sorry you had to go through this.. But I want you to know none of these thoughts are true," He explained without breaking eye contact. "It's only natural for you to feel this way but you're being too harsh on yourself. I think they're just careless; we can always help them, though. You shouldn't isolate yourself because of that. You are not bad luck, you're the best thing that has happened to me, to be honest."

—Smooth boy wiped your tears away with a soft grin and planted kisses on your face. "You're fine, you did nothing wrong." He opens his arms for a hug and you waste no time to give in.

—After a cuddle session he tells you about his day as well. "It was hard to find excuses to give my bro. Do you know how much I struggled?" He asks you jokingly

—"Pff, sorry about that, I guess. I'm feeling better, so we can hangout sometime. I should make it up to Chihiro as well."

—And he's so happy to hear that

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu

—Did he do something wrong?

—Because he was the one usually distances himself, it wasn't supposed to be you.

—Sure, he treats you like royalty but he's sometimes a jerk to people around him.. Is this why you didn't want to be seen with him outside? Wait, you don't want to be seen with him?!

—Oh no.

—You two were having a dinner, he was lost in deep thought and you were playing with your food silently.

—"Just how long are ya gonna stay quiet about this?" He finally breaks the silence. "About what?" "Don't act like you don't know. If you don't like me anymore, you can just tell it, y'know. I won't force you to stay with me, you don't need to be trapped."

—"What? I never said I didn't like you anymore.." You try to speak but were cut off by him, again. "Then why're you distancing yourself? What did I do wrong?"

_"Oh. You're talking about that." He misunderstood everything, didn't he. So you explain to him.

—"So.. That's all?" He raises an eyebrow and waits for you to confirm. When you do, he looks relieved. Then he panics, "Wait, no! It's not that I don't care! I thought you were gonna break up with me for a second." He scratches the back of his head and avoids eye contact for a second. "I.. You should have spoken to me or Peko, y'know? You are not alone, Y/n. I don't think bad things happen to people just because they get involved with you. I.. Know you aren't bad luck or anything like that. You're only a.... Blessing." He looks away. He's blushing? Before you started teasing, he continues "So stop hurting yourself. Distancing yourself isn't a solution.. No good will come from that."

—He's not the best when it comes to comforting with words, but he is trying. Because he really cares about your well being, so he doesn't want you sad, that's for sure.

—"Also to whoever made you feel like that, you should talk to them and maybe offer them help. That'd make you feel better, I guess." He says and stops, not wanting to pressure you or anything. "But for the sake of god, be nicer to yourself."

—If you want, he'll hold you for a while.. Though it might be awkward.

There, done! I am not sure if these are good.. It's been a while since I wrote comfort, so I hope this is ok! Just you know, you aren't bad luck or anything! I will deny it even though you think it's true. You are amazing and no bad can come from you. Asking for help and talking about your feelings are so important. Your feelings matter and you are valid! You can always talk to me or somebody if these thoughts are messing with your mind. -Mod Kaede

[kintatsujo]

LoZ AU- The Courage of Running Away Part TWENTY-TWO

Hoi hoi go read the previous post if you haven’t!

#AU August

#LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away

So this is an action scene that's more getting planned than anything so that's how I'm presenting it, keeping in mind I think about fight scenes in kind of video game terms in the first place:

We have:

The Silver Hinox- Informally nicknamed Chekov by Ice.  If we're thinking of it in game terms, obviously he would follow the BotW patterns of being a huge pile of hit points, but flavor-wise I think of him as being a very OLD hinox, so he'd have a more complicated attack pattern of doing shit like grabbing his enemies and trying to throw them, which I actually think would be hilariously fun to see in a BotW mod if someone could figure it out lol.  

Normally I think he'd throw bombs at enemies that were too far away the same as a black hinox, but he's in the Hyrule Castle throne room right now so he cares more about slamming people into walls.  Another thing he'd be doing is wide sweeps with his arms because he's surrounded by a lot of little dudes.  

Serenumbra probably keeps him from happy napping time so he is super, super fucking cranky.

The Pikku- They're still focused on getting to Princess Zelda but also on creating as much chaos as possible; the Scarred Woman is the team mage, the Burly Man focuses on brute force, the Average Middle Aged Guy is a tricksy fighter and Shady Guy and Unsuspicious Girl are both scrappers.

The Royal Guard- Doing their best.

King Aldway, Gray and Princess Zelda-

[Image Description: The Burly Man knocks into King Aldway’s back, causing him to pitch forward and Gray to grunt in pain in his arms.  “Papa!  GRAY!” Princess Zelda cries out.  Aldway twists as he falls so that he’s underneath Gray as much as possible, hitting the ground with a thud, and the Burly Man runs off.  The Scarred Woman suddenly appears behind Princess Zelda and wraps an arm around her waist, summoning a teleportation circle.  “Gotcha,” the Scarred Woman says.]

Queen Zelda- I want you to think of her like a very high level version of Bow of Light Zelda from Age of Calamity; she's deathly powerful but slow, and once she's on the battlefield it takes a bit for her more powerful abilities to charge up.  (I've been slowly getting more ideas on what CoRA WOULD look like as a video game but we're gonna leave that for a supplementary post.)  She's also focused on finding her daughter and husband, so after firing a blast off at Chekov to give Link a head start (Basically think of her as starting out with a full bar of A move) she starts trying to locate Aldway and Zelda in the fray.

Impa- Look don't let Impa being in her 40s fool you, she's an agile fuckin powerhouse.  Absolutely think of her as being on the level of AoC Impa at high level.  Impa wants to find Gray but knows he's probably with Aldway or Zelda Jr if he can help it.  She ends up in a scrap with Average Middle Aged Guy, Shady Guy and Unsuspicious Girl.

(Impa is wiping the floor with them.)

Link- Mad as hell and has fought a blue hinox in the training dungeon from hell, so he goes straight for Chekov and starts hacking at his little legs.  This is not the recommended way to fight a hinox but it's the way he's forced to work for him.  He's also still wearing those power gloves, which in CoRA generally improves his strength in all respects and is the only reason swords would ever have durability in CoRA as a game.  I like to think he shatters at least one in the middle of this fight and has to borrow one off one of the guards.  

(Astramorus, staring in horror, says softly, "I have no right to be afraid.")

Ghirahim-Still getting up from where Eltani's loftwing landed in the courtyard; I actually tend to think that one of Astramorus's handful of "this man is not a COMPLETE disaster" skills is that he's actually very skilled at directing his loftwing and that's why Hera was even able to land on the balcony of the throne room.  (Impa saw that's where the action was and used a paraglider to get the rest of the way in the room.)

Astramorus-has no fighting skills aside from the Bow that's still in Gerudo City (it did get put away properly I swear), so when he sees that Link is starting to struggle with Chekov and knowing that it's his own fault Link even tried to take this thing on with nothing but a sword, he throws a chunk of rock at the back of the hinox's head trying to distract it.

This.  Doesn't go well for him.

[Image Description: A rock hits the hinox in the side of the head with a “SPAK”.  The hinox looks over its shoulder at Astramorus, who is preparing to run.  The hinox spins and, with one hand, straight up punches Astramorus with a BOOM, hitting his entire body with its enormous fist.  “FATHER!!” Link screams.  End ID.]

I am so sorry I didn’t draw this part but this is when Ghirahim finally reaches the fight, and between he and Link the hinox finally goes down.  

Link rushes to his father’s side, and Astramorus is very still, and there’s no fairy in sight-- 

but Link’s been picking up every fairy he could catch since Windfish Isle

[Image Description: Link SLAPS a fairy into Astramorus’s forehead with a TING!, screaming, “DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME NOW!”  Astramorus startles alive, and Link leans in to yell in his face: “WHY DIDN’T YOU HAVE YOUR FAIRIES?!” Astramorus stares at him in shocked silence for a moment, then smiles ruefully.  “...Because I was trying to end BOTH your problems by taking out the prince,” he admits. Link shouts in his face again, and Astramorus hunches his shoulders in surprise.  “YOU STUPID USELESS MAN!!” Link shouts.  Tears begin streaming down his face.  “That’s not how you fix ANYTHING!”  He sniffles, rubbing at his face.  “Stop SCARING me like this!” Astramorus stares at him, shocked, sorrowful, then comes to an internal conclusion.  He sits up better.  “You’re right,” he says.  Link stares at him in surprise as he continues, “So first of all I’m sorry for SCARING you and I’ll try not to do it again...” he now turns away, flushing slightly.  “And SECONDLY I’m sorry I used to call you SOFT like it was a BAD THING.”  Link blushes, and Astramorus adds softly, “I mean you didn’t get CRYING EASILY from your MOTHER.” End ID.]

I was honestly not going to have Astramorus manage a fucking proper apology until the sequel but Link just beat a silver hinox with a sword and resurrected Astra by slapping him with a fairy like one of those old stupid “shoulda had a V8″ commercials, AND Link just managed a proper yell at his dad and got through his whole statement so really it felt right.

Next update we finally get to see Princess Hilda properly so I’m excite!

[niennanir]

I’ve been asked why the drama on Tumblr doesn’t seem to impact me. Well, let me tell you; 

About twelve years ago I was running a beta test of a game for a developer and in order to test the new parts of the game that were in closed beta you generally had to run around doing some mild grinding for gear in the areas that were in open beta. (I probably could have asked for gear and gotten it but part of what I was doing was gauging the entire player experience) So I roll up in this open dungeon where there’s a really cranky dragon about to kill the five guys who were trying to take it on. Of course I did what any Lawful/Good adventurer would do, I hopped right in there, my purple hair flying in the breeze and absolutely kicked the snot out of that dragon mostly singlehandedly.

Well these dudes peel themselves off the floor from where they’d been trampled, offer their thanks and then setup camp for a respawn. One of them, let’s call him Charlie, was about to get an incredibly rude awakening.

Now it bears mentioning that I’ve been on the internet long enough that I remember a time when it was actually considered rude to ask an individual’s preferred pronouns. Gender, race, surnames, didn’t exist on the internet of my youth so consequently to this day I’m still a little skittish when someone on the internet calls me a girl.

“Nice gear,” Charlie says to me. 

“Thanks” I reply, settling in to wait for the respawn.

“Makes you look hot,” Charlie added. “Have you got a boyfriend?”

“Pal, you don’t want to go there,” I said.

“Dude!” One of Charlie’s friends interrupted. “It’s probably a guy, everyone knows girls don’t play video games that well.”

Now I started playing video games in the late 70′s so I wasn’t impressed with this line of thought and despite my usual caution I decided there was an awful lot of personal information I was willing to divulge in order to disabuse these characters of their ill-conceived ideas.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventeen,” Charlie replied.

“No you’re not,” I said. “If you were seventeen you’d tell me you were at least eighteen. The fact that you think seventeen is somehow mature tells me you’re about twelve years old and you shouldn't be hitting on thirty-five year old women in internet video games.”

“Thirty-five?!?!” Charlie was rolling through every emote he knew, including the one for dying. “What are you doing playing video games?!?! Why aren’t you looking after your babies?!?!”

“I haven’t got any babies,” I answered. “What’s your mother doing since she’s obviously not watching you?”

“You shouldn’t be playing this game,” Charlie insisted.

“I’ve been playing video games since before your parents met,” I said. “I’m the same age as most of the people who are currently working on this game. Do you think other twelve year olds are writing this code in their spare time?”

“You need to log out or I’m going to report you,” Charlie said.

“What are you going to report me for?” I asked curiously.

“For being too old and talking to kids,” He replied.

“So you are twelve then,” I said. “You know the games restricted to players 13 and over, right?” I screen captured the unimaginative swears Charlie threw at me and scrolled back through the chat window to get the whole conversation before sending it to Lia the game mod.

My DM chat window pinged. “Do you know some guy named Charlie just reported you in game?” Lia asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “but this dragon just respawned and I need to save these idiots. Check your email.”

“Wow,” Lia said. “I guess I’m going to have to perma-ban myself if middle aged women can’t play video games.”

“I know right?” I said gleefully. “Also, pretty sure he’s twelve.”

“Ugh, I hate it when they lie on their registration,” she signed. “I’ll look into it.” All five dudes had got themselves killed again and I took out the dragon on my own a second time. No sooner had its carcass dropped than Charlie logged out.

"Where’d Charlie go?” one of his prepubescent pals asked.

“Well I’m going to go out on a limb and say logged out for violations of the rules on abusive language,” I replied.

“Oh this guy is definitely twelve,” Lia said with a put upon sigh.

“Or for being twelve,” I added.

It took less than thirty seconds for all four of Charlie’s knuckle dragging friends to log out of the game, leaving me the dragon and the loot.

I still think about Charlie sometimes, he’d be 24 now. He probably still doesn’t have a girlfriend though.

So if you’re the sort that wants to bring your drama up in here, feel free. In order for your juvenile posturing to impact me I have to actually care and I honestly find you less intimidating than a twelve year old who thinks all women have nothing to do but look at babies.

[theshabozengine]

I don't watch Vtubers but I want to fuck that orange haired girl you keep posting. Also why is it sad she is graduating? Shouldn't you be happy she is getting her diploma? Education is important

Her name is Kiryu Coco.

"Graduation" in idol-speak means "leaving the company", be that because of being thrown out ("forcibly graduated" like Aloe or Hitomi) or just deciding that enough is enough.

Kiryu Coco was the VTuber that really pushed for Western involvement, since she came from America originally before moving to Japan to get more in touch with her roots. Without Kiryu Coco, the entire Hololive English branch wouldn't exist since it was her suggestion for it to be made. She also adores the community, often highlighting shitty memes they make and used to have a little news show where she would summarize everything that happened that week in idoling. Coco was also a ride-or-die bitch and stood up for her friend Haachama when the Chinese were bullying the fuck out of her because she happened to mention that a good portion of her viewership came from Taiwan. On her little news show, she brought up Taiwan and mentioned that she too had a large amount of viewers that watched from Taiwan (fun fact, Chinese fucks use Taiwan in VPNs and stuff to get around things. The 'Taiwanese viewer-base' was most likely just Chinese people using VPNs and such being retards.).

Because she stood up for her friend, both her and Haachama were suspended from Hololive for a while, while Cover the company behind Hololive tried to damage control. When they saw that there was nothing they could do to change the minds of fucking idiots who shit themselves over the mere mention of the word 'Taiwan', Cover cut their entire Chinese branch of idols and supposedly did their best to protect Coco and Haachama.

Eventually upon her return, Haachama still got a bit of hate, but the slimefucks realized it was a genuine 'mistake' and cut her a bit of slack. COCO, however, did so intentionally and with intent and they couldn't let that slide because they're retarded subhuman filth. Coco was bombarded with hatred and just so much evil that she had to basically sequester herself off away from the rest of Hololive as a whole.

She wasn't welcome to do crossovers, her news show was canceled, she wasn't allowed to appear in any of their 3-D skits, it was horrible the way she was treated. She did her absolute best to hang in there and even fought back against the Chinese as best she could, but then suspiciously things started to tilt towards the Chinese's favor. A red was made a Mod and started banning Coco's regulars, resulting in her crying on stream and her housemate Kanata having to console her, Cover made public comments towards them to try and get them to stop, it was a whole shitshow. After all this, Coco still tried to hang on, but...

Now she has chosen to leave Hololive. On the surface it appears to be mutual, but a lot of people theorize (please note this is people guessing and nothing has been said about whether its true or not from either Cover or Coco) that Cover made her life at Hololive so insufferable that she essentially had no choice but to quit. The truth of this matter will most likely come down to if they attempt to re-open the Chinese branch, where it will be incredibly obvious that they allowed Coco to be harassed until she just broke. No one knows for certain why Coco is leaving other than Coco, but it is a said affair none-the-less.

On a more personal note, Coco was my absolute favorite VTuber, and though she wasnt the one that introduced me to the concept (that would be Kizuna Ai who has her own entire list of drama associated with her), she has always been my favorite. The fact that she could stay so strong in spite of all the evil thrown her way made me love her even more, and it just hurts to know that we won't be able to see her anymore as our beloved dragon. Obviously she has her own personal channel, which according to some might be a reason she has to leave (again, nobody knows and this is a guess from certain parties that she didn't want to delete her personal streaming channel where she has another VTuber avatar and Cover basically gave her an ultimatum), and I'm obviously going to support her over there, but it'll sting a bit not seeing her interact with her friends over at Hololive. I don't think she's even allowed to show up in Kanata's streams once she's gone, and they're fucking housemates.

Overall, and I'm fairly sure that you were joking with the question but I thought I'd answer anyway, it's just an extremely sad situation especially since her fuckin birthday just happened. It hurts, it sucks, and I'm crushed we weren't able to protect her smile. Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[beetleboo]

long post. one i’ve been trying to make for a while now. hell, i wrote this like... third week of may. didn’t post it until now because i didn’t know if I wanted to.

but something i want to lay out, been wanting to lay out for months. dont want to talk to anyone about it, just want to put the info out there for it to be seen.

if you re/blog this i will block you. i may put this on the relevant sideblog at some point.

because 2020 was the worst year on record for me for a number of reasons, and it’s torn me down to the lowest point i’ve been in a long time, and this is just. everything that’s gone down. not a callout post, no one gets named, but these are all the events

partially in relation to my fandom sideblog, because that’s where i had community, and where it’s all just. gone. doesnt exist anymore.

i started up a server, ages ago now. somewhere i curated to be a positive and safe space for things, and for a while, it was that.

around the end of 2019, spilling over to the start of 2020 when it picked up, i found, both on my blog and in discord spaces, in particular the server i ran, that people no longer talked to me. no one would hold a conversation with me past a few basic responses, no one replied to anything i shared, no one engaged when i tried to start discussions. so i pulled back from the main server - S1. thought it was just a lull in activity. stayed that way for weeks, months, and I just muted the server. no one ever cared about anything i had to say. was lucky if anything i posted got even a token emoji react

was in another, smaller server - S2. people i talked to damn near every day, even in voice. played games together - that became... no fun simply because everyone else was so much better/further ahead in the game. i was completely useless, so didn’t server a function in game and never really felt like anyone actively wanted me around, but i still participated in chat.

but again, no one ever responded to anything I posted beyond maybe a token react

couple people discussing something one day. I contributed with Theory A, and quite immediately got that shut down. few minutes later, they rephrased exactly what I said and happily nattered away. so whatever I said wasn’t worth it when it came out of my mouth but if they talked about it, it was all well and valid. so again, between that specific experience and no one interacting with me, nor anything I post. server muted. treatment taught me no one cared about my presence there.

gave admin rights to S1, my server, to someone I trusted. two requests only: dont delete channels and let me know if you want to invite anyone (since I kept it private)

RYE (i’m just assigning random three letter names to people to keep this straight) posted public invites several times. never asked me. one of the two things i asked. brought it up with them that it bothered me, just got vague noncomittal responses. more public invites. eventually, after having the server muted for months, i handed over full control and left. that was almost a full year ago. none of the people have talked to me in that entire year, through discord or here or anything.

except RYE who sent me a message after a couple months like ‘wow i havent heard from you in a while hope you’re doing ok’. i wasn’t. after a bit but still the same day, i said as much. that i wasn’t doing well. they never responded. and i don’t mean like, they didn’t respond that day. i mean i literally never heard from them until months later when they sent me a meme and also didn’t respond to me commenting on that meme.

and this is one side of things. all of the above was the first half of the year. this next bit happened about. march2020? I was in another server - S3. another place that was a good space at the time. was in voice chat with two other people. started talking about one thing. MIN very suddenly said something along the lines of ‘i don’t care about this i’ll come back when you’re done’

this is one of the very few things that can trigger me - i’ve had a lot of people talk down to me if I dare look excited about anything. when they came back, i asked if they could try to just. depart conversations more softly. MIN always said ‘if i do anything hurtful to you just tell me! i dont want to do that kind of thing!’

this was clearly a lie as they exploded on me, telling me they always have to walk on eggshells around me, that I ask so many things from them. before what I asked them that day, I can only recall one other thing i asked (which was not to talk about a person who was abusive towards me, and they were like ‘yea sure np’ about that, over a year prior’)

the whole thing turned into basically me having to shut down the fact that i was hurt by what they did, had to ignore that now and i had to fawn and placate them and the only thing i got out of that was that my feelings were irrelevant, only theirs.

(incidentally, I have had two other people turn on me in similar ways, accusing me of doing shifty/bad/terrible things, and not being willing to tell me what they are when I ask, only saying that ‘i should know what i did’ so that’s also now a Fun New Bit Of Trauma.)

and that entire weeklong event lead me straight to a breakdown. literal genuine breakdown i cannot convey how devastating that entire scenario was without going into far too many details.

so between all of these things happening in less than six months, with three different community spaces folding and collapsing and fading away from me, with many of the friends i thought i had just. moving on to other things and dropping me. people i talked to every day just not bothering with me anymore. they all have gone on to other stuff and no one ever went ‘hey beets wanna see what i’m up to’ or ‘wanna do this thing with me’

a handful of instances of me saying ‘yeah i’m dealing with these fears that have been reinforced lately that people aren’t safe to deal with, even thought part of me knows they’re probably irrational it feels like i have evidence to back it up’ and people immediately take it personally like i’m saying they’re not safe. despite. me outright saying. i know logically it should be irrational. but their reactions just reinforce it so it’s just a loop and tells me, again, never to bring up any of my problems with anyone.

so this all just reinforces that there’s something wrong with me. couple years back i spoke to a friend and how i was frustrated that I seemed to end up in bad spaces and they said ‘well you’re the one thing in common so its probably your fault’ and obviously they’re not my friend anymore but that has affected me so deeply. i can’t do anything without overthinking, whenever anything goes wrong i tear apart everything i’ve done and everything i’ve said or thought and i don’t know why things keep going bad. i try so hard but i’m just. not right.

so it all teaches me that there’s no point in reaching out in trying to talk to people because if i say ‘hey this hurt me’ i get ignored at best or torn down, yelled at, scolded. no point in trying to talk to new people because everyone just walks away at some point. not even a natural drift apart, i can handle that. but just very suddenly, they’re gone, off with better people doing better things.

roundabout, ties back to ‘consumption versus community’ - this is why i’ve been struggling so hard with lack of engagement on my sideblog. lucky to get a dozen notes on anything i make, unless it’s something other people can use (like mods) and even THEN it’s rare to see much activity. and that was FINE because i had people to talk to elsewhere, who would ask questions and we could back and forth and i shared my stuff and they shared those and it didnt matter if my posts only got a dozen notes because i had friends to talk to.

now i get (example) seven notes, six of which are likes and one is a reblog with no commentary. when i have something with a ton of notes, still, minimal commentary, no one talks to me. even on a mod with five hundred notes it just feels like i went ‘hey i made something :)’ and everyone picked it up and walked away with it, no one went ‘hey this is cool i want to talk to the person who made it.’

and it just feels like 95% of the time, i’m just overlooked. 

and it’s worse than it’s ever been in my entire life, and I wonder, what’s the point of any of this anymore.

why bother to make the posts to share when it all just gets passed by. what’s the point in trying to reach out to new people and make friends when i get lashed out at or left behind? the social is gone out of my social media. i had community, and now it’s gone.

so this has all been going on for months and months and months and hey! suffering. and i dont expect it to get any better, don’t expect this post to fix these issues, but i’ve been trying to say something about all of this for fucking months and i think just, laying it all out is all I can do about it. i’m sure i’ve forgotten some things to touch on but as it is, all these events, all of it happening all together. new traumas, old traumas reawoken, reinforced, i’ve been torn to pieces i don’t know how to function, i can’t remember the last time i felt like even half a real person. taught that the safe, positive spaces that meant so much to me don’t actually exist and they’ll all turn on me and be torn away. nowhere is safe anymore, and trying to make it safe is just going to ruin me again.

people aren’t safe, places aren’t safe, been proven to me time and time again so i just. stay away.

no matter how much i try to fight that, it just doesnt work.

anyway tl;dr beets needs therapy probably