#because that's where you stick the Massive Character Development and the Major Worst Moment stuff

[mittensmorgul]

what makes me sad though is that if you read what jensen said and the direction the nerrative is going so far, we will be seeing sam's mental health being dealt with but not deans. i'm worried that the thing with cas will also be resolved by dean apologising and being painted as repressed-emotions-so-he-lashes-out kinda guy again that suddenly gets better but we won't actually get him dealing with all this

Yeah, I did read what Jensen said. Which is what he said before they started filming s15. Before he’d seen a single other script, or knew any of the other plot points of the season. He was told what the planned ending would be, and it... shocked him.

Now this article in question was published by TVGuide on November 7. We don’t know when Jensen gave this interview, but from the sounds of the sorts of “upcoming issues” they’re going to be facing, it feels like at the VERY earliest, this interview was from during the filming in 15.05, since the “spoilers” he talks about a situation we have not yet seen happen in canon:

"We start seeing Chuck slowly disable the Winchesters' mojo and it's heavy. It's hard for them to operate in that world because they're so not used to having to live in a normal world. Is it because Chuck has written them as the hero and so they don't deal with that kind of small stuff, or is it just then we just have never seen it?" Ackles added. "All of that cool is kind of gone now and they're trying to figure out how to deal in a world where they need that mojo. They need to be able to know that they can go up against a nest of vampires and be able to take out six or seven each, but if they can't even take out one, then that's gonna be a big problem."

I think being sad about any of this is inventing problems for yourself. I’m curious though about your interpretation of “the direction the narrative is going so far.” Because it’s clearly laying out that both Sam and Dean’s mental health is under scrutiny here. Sam’s “visions” that are a direct result of the Equalizer wound seem to be more immediately affecting them physically, in reality, though, but assuming that because the focus is on that right now means they are not going to address Dean’s situation (or Cas’s situation) is inventing problems that do not exist, you know? The narrative has pretty blatantly stated that This Is A Problem, and outlined that problem with crime scene tape. They’re not gonna just... do nothing or brush it off with a contrived apology. They can’t, because of how the narrative has consistently framed this problem.

Since we don’t know *when* Jensen actually gave this interview, yet we believe he hasn’t really spoilered us for anything beyond 15.05, as far as we know, we don’t even know if *HE* knew what was coming up after that at the time he answered these questions. So really, truly, I am begging people, please don’t keep reading more into what is said in interviews (and framed by the questions asked AND the journalist’s interpretations and framing of quotes we don’t have that sort of context for).

Because it’s pointless to get all hopeless and sad over a 20 chapter novel when it seems like things are kinda dismal after chapter FOUR. Don’t assume that the main characters’ issues will be completely ignored for the next 16 chapters, just because they haven’t been specifically addressed it yet. That’s not how stories work.

I mean, please, think back to, for example, s13. The beginning of the season HEAVILY focused on Dean’s mental issues, right? And only tangentially focused on Sam’s issues (sure, Sam’s issues were poked at a bit in 13.04, but even his feelings of loss for Mary were framed as secondary to Dean’s “yelling in Sam’s face” feelings about Cas’s death) until what... 13.09, when they got proof that Mary might be alive in the AU? I mean... do you feel that Sam’s feelings were given short shrift because the bulk of the early part of the season dealt more directly with Dean’s feelings? Not that Sam’s feelings were dismissed (just as Dean’s feelings are not being dismissed in s15), but Sam’s feelings *now* and his mental health issues *now* are literally connected directly to the A Plot. They are The Urgent Thing they need to realize, which will put all the rest of their thoughts and feelings into an entirely new light. Chuck is NOT gone, Dean’s currently holding himself together based entirely on the believe that he IS gone. So do you see how coming to this realization will COMPLETELY shift Dean’s entire perspective on his own issues?

I am so not worried that it will be dealt with in due time. Dean’s “backburnered” his own issues for the time being, because he HAS to, because that’s the only thing getting him through life right now, and it’s obviously an untenable situation, you know? And when he crashes back into reality, he’s in for a SUPER bumpy landing, right? THEN and only then will he actually be able to see his issues clearly, and gain a proper perspective to even begin addressing them.

And since we’ve already been told that he’s gonna be having this sort of metaphorical come to Jesus moment in 15.09, I’m perfectly content with the direction the narrative is taking, and will patiently await future developments.

[pixelgrotto]

Night City, I barely remember ya

I beat Cyberpunk 2077 last month, and honestly, I haven’t thought about Cyberpunk 2077 that much since.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. CD Projekt Red’s follow-up to The Witcher 3 was meant to be the sort of game that would stick in your mind after completion. It was promoted over eight years of hype stemming from its initial 2013 reveal as a example of CD Projekt’s infamous “vodka and Slavic magic” - a behemoth destined to change open world RPGs forever. But in the roughly 12 weeks since its release, the stuff that’s happened to Cyberpunk 2077, including its delisting from the Playstation store for being chock full of bugs and the theft of its source code by hackers, has been more cyberpunk than the actual game.

I was one of those people super hyped for this game when it was first announced. I mean, the Witcher franchise left an indelible impression on me; how could I not be psyched to see its devs tackle one of my favorite sci-fi genres? But my hype deflated over the years, largely due to tales of terrible crunch emerging from CD Projekt’s studios and social media marketing that was ill-advised at best and transphobic at worst. Everything seemed to slowly hint that the game’s vision of “cyberpunk” - a genre that can tell incredible futuristic tales of social upheaval and marginalized peoples - would be mostly style with not so much substance.

Despite me keeping my fingers crossed, the end product is pretty much what I feared - and I guess I should’ve known, since the official sourcebook for Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop RPG that CD Projekt Red used as inspiration, actually lists “style over substance” as one of its rules.

Cyberpunk 2077’s main story revolves around a merc who dreams of big time heists in Night City named V. After a heist goes south, V ends up absorbing a biochip made by big bad corporation Arasaka that features the captured personality of rockstar-turned-terrorist Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves - who, to be fair, does a good job with the material he’s given. Cue a bunch of quests that revolve around V and Johnny coming to terms with each other, taking down Arasaka and figuring out how to separate the chip from V’s brain.

In theory, this sounds like a cool way to explore the very cyberpunk themes of identity and what it means to have a corrupt company preserve a human soul beyond its organic shell. In reality, though, the story’s a surface level examination of these concepts, and Johnny Silverhand remains a massive dick throughout most of the game, only becoming relatable if players give him the benefit of the doubt - which they’re expected to do because he’s played by Keanu Reeves.

Johnny’s animosity towards Arasaka is also never completely outlined. He - and most other characters in Night City - keep telling V that corporations are awful because they disregard human rights and destroy the environment, but we never get many chances to see for ourselves how Arasaka and similar companies, like Militech or Kang Tao, actually do this. Arasaka does kidnap Johnny’s ex-girlfriend and is behind the tech that transfers his soul to a biochip, yes, but Johnny also threatens to destroy them at all of his shows and eventually sets off a bomb in their headquarters. Not that I’m siding with the corporation, but for much of the game we’re expected to treat them as the number one enemy simply because other characters say so, which is very much a “show, don’t tell” missed opportunity. If anything, Arasaka’s portrayal feels more like a vestige of the cyberpunk genre’s unfortunate maturation during the 1980s, where the fear of Japanese conglomerates taking over the world was common and a future where Asian companies were all-powerful instead of Western ones seemed like a dystopia.

Cyberpunk 2077 is very much caught in that yesteryear mold, featuring elements that might have been progressive in the 1980s but seem passé now. For a game that relied on questionable representation of trans people in its marketing, there were no notable trans NPCs that I came across, and even though there’s a robust character creation system where you actually can make a trans person, the game makes the troubling decision to only offer binary pronouns tied to V’s voice. Despite the fact that many of the best modern cyperbunk works deal with body augmentation and the line between man and machine, most of the physical modifications you can pay for at Night City’s “ripperdoc” facilities are niche features that only offer minimal stat boosts, with only two major ones that I know of - the mantis blades and gorilla arms - actually causing extensive changes to V’s looks. And finally, while there are tons of characters of color in the game, ranging from the Haitian Voodoo Boys gang to V’s “friendly ethnic friend™” Jackie Welles, most of them are varying degrees of stereotypical. For instance, Goro Takemura, an ex-Arasaka employee, sends you text messages reminiscent of haiku at one point because he’s Japanese and has to talk like a formal, honorable samurai or something.

If you’re able to look past these issues - along with the myriad of bugs that Cyberpunk 2077 shipped with - there’s still the niggling feeling that this game could have been so much more. The signs of a troubled development process are numerous, and there are Reddit threads packed with still-visible remnants - like useless combat skill perks and an entire metro system - that were part of gameplay elements gutted at some point in order for those overworked CD Projekt Red programmers to make a long-delayed release date. Even mainstay stuff in the open world genre - like the police chases common in the Grand Theft Autos - are absent, and Cyberpunk 2077’s 2018 demo, chock full of promised features that never made it into the final product, has to be one of the most notorious bits of smoke ‘n mirrors “gameplay” in recent memory.

Perhaps most bothersome is the feeling that a lot of your choices don’t seem to matter all that much in Cyberpunk 2077, which once touted itself as “a full-fledged RPG, not a shooter with RPG elements,” but ends up feeling more like the latter than the former. The game’s three different lifepaths - nomad, streetkid and corpo - only amount to about thirty minutes of unique playtime at the start and a few different dialogue options. The vehicle combat sequences that punctuate key missions are largely scripted, looking cool but offering little consequences depending on what V aims at. The side quests I encountered had minimal branching paths, and the only time the main story opened up to offer some real choice was in the game’s final chapter. Considering that CD Projekt once developed The Witcher 2 - a 2011 game that branches dramatically at its halfway mark to the point where a lot of folks insist that you need to play it twice in order to feel satisfied - Cyberpunk 2077 feels like a step back.

And yet, despite all of these criticisms, I still put nearly 80 hours into the game over the course of December, January and February. You don’t do that for something that’s patently unfun, so let me be clear - there is an entertaining experience buried beneath an avalanche of unfulfilled potential here. Driving on my Akira-esque bike through Night City’s slums as the game’s best song bumped on the radio, taking out legions of baddies with my mantis blades and relishing in the game’s extensive photo mode (as you can probably tell by my screenshots above) was a good time. In spite of his assholery, I did feel something akin to attachment for that bastard Johnny Silverhand by the finale, and there were a few key moments - like when I was scuba diving in the ocean with my girlfriend Judy, looking at the remains of a town destroyed by the land seizing machinations of corporations - that felt like this game had something to say beyond “bang bang gunplay and neon aesthetic.”

But at the end of the day, while I do feel moderately interested in someday checking out Cyberpunk Red (the newest iteration of this franchise’s tabletop RPG), CD Projekt’s seven-year-hyped-up behemoth has largely faded from my brain one month after beating it. On Twitter, I’ve seen Cyberpunk 2077 described as something akin to a flashy Netflix series with lots of fanfare and flair but not much else - and I can’t really argue with that statement.

Night City was supposed to be the stuff of a long-term relationship. Instead, it feels more like a fling.

[funkymbtifiction]

Hi guys! I I'm an ENXP and I was looking for some advice about knowing myself better. I saw the mods are ENPs and maybe you guys could help me. I recently noticed a pattern regarding my own actions that is basically ruining my life. I seem to rely too much on my Ne, specially about my future and my career. I'm ruled by a need of pursuing anything that catches my attention in a determined moment. I obsess over it for a while and then move on. I've changed my major 4 times now. Every activity I do is temporary. And if I don't find something I can obsess over I get depressed and bored. Anyways, I think this has led me to not trust myself anymore, since I can't commit to anything because I lose interest in everything and I'm always looking for new possibilities. I have reached a point where I can't allow myself to pursue everything I want and I have to make decisions and commit. But I'm too scared to become trapped and take responsibility for my own decisions. I think this would be easier if I knew myself better, but I don't think I know who I am besides my own random interests, which is weird I guess. How can I develop my own Fi? Or Ti? How do you guys deal with your dominant Ne? How do you commit to things? I'm 23 by the way. Shouldn't I have developed some Fi or Ti or something by now? I turned to mbti because I wanted to gain a better understanding of myself but holy shit this is hard. I could only recognize my dominant Ne. All this self analysis seems useless if I don't really know myself, I realized I'm not self aware at all. So anyways, as fellows Ne doms how did you guys developed your auxiliary functions? Any advice will be amazing! Thank you guys for everything you do here!

The first thing you need to do is recognize is you are an Enneagram 7 and all of this is ‘normal’ for them in lower health levels. To overcome this, you have to ‘grow up’ as a 7 and stop allowing fear of commitment or quick loss of focus from dominating your life. You have control over yourself, you are not utterly helpless to your whims (said the Fi user who has a moral tone of ‘you make your own choices and messes and you have to get out of them’ ;).

7s have to learn to be open to the scary idea of commitment to reap the dividends of hard work.

Read the 7 profile and see how allowing yourself to ‘run away’ from commitment (which includes not finishing or devoting yourself to any project) can hinder your life. Once you recognize WHAT you are doing, and WHY you are doing it, you can develop the power to STOP YOURSELF from doing it, or from allowing ‘excuses’ or fear to run you away from good things.

ENTP Mod. : Charity is right. Here is also where the judging functions come into play. With Fi, you can eventually weed out that which you aren't personally passionate about/ those goals which don't align with your personal values. With Ti, you can see a chain reaction of the patterns in your life, and determine the most effective path to help yourself using logic to streamline your processes, make it more elegant.

Slow the hell down. Force yourself to stop running toward the future and live right now. Repeat the mantra of ‘right now is all that matters today’ a 100 times an hour if you have to. Be present. Be invested. Bring yourself into ‘now.’

My co-mod is a 7w6 ENTP who suffers from a lot of the same issues; I will nudge her to offer her two cents to this post, in regards as to what she is currently doing about it. Basically, she had to talk herself into getting a permanent job rather than talking herself out of it. Once she got into it, she realized it didn’t suck as much as she feared. Her brain is her own worst enemy.

I had to talk myself into this job. I gave myself lots of reasons why I would love it. It might sound a little unrealistic going in with pre set expectations but at least you will not go in blind. Making a pros cons list is always a good idea. It helps to sift through your multiple ideas, and narrow down the ones which can really work. Test out the feasibility of your ideas, opportunities before hand. Talk to people, do your research. Just remember that things will never be as bad or boring as you think them to be. This is a cliche but something which helps me in the mornings when I know I have boring work to do is "Get up, dress up, show up. Never give up." Also it helps to live from day to day. Don't worry too far into the future, you never know what variables might upset your plans.

Work-wise, a 7 needs to travel, get the ‘high’ of meeting new people, and not to be involved in sheer detail-driven grunt work. They need challenges to work toward and obstacles to overcome. Pick a career that offers you all of that. If you do not, you will have a string of 6 months at ___ jobs that do not look good on your resume. Find a career in something that you feel passionate about, that offers some kind of mental stimulation.

ENTP 7 co-mod is an attorney who loves to find ways to ‘get around things’ in the law.

ENTP Mod. note: Always try to remember the root of your passion when you feel like defecting from one option to another. If you must leave, leverage what you have learned in one place and how you can dress that up to make your hopping about look good. That's what I did, and it worked for me. Some of the reasons I love my job are the constant intellectual stimulation, creative aspects of it, my love for criminology pays off, meeting interesting people. Sure there are sucky days when you have to deal with the bureaucratic demons. But that won't be every day. Unless your role requires you to do something like it. In which case I would suggest that you avoid picking up detail heavy, low Si or adherence related work which will make you feel miserable and frustrated. Try to pick something that plays to your strengths, improve your weaknesses. Compete with nobody but yourself. Every day you are better than you were, yesterday. Even with a little effort. It is important to not give up. It is so hard for 7s but we have the gift of rationalizing. So instead of using it as a mechanism to justify dropping things, use it to tell yourself why you should stick around. You as a 7 can make most things fun. So find little tricks and ways to make the work day fun. Whether it is achieving small, impactful targets or making games out of small, low stakes things. Also, having money and being able to live nicely is fun. Nobody is gonna pay you if they think that their money will be wasted on training you if your pattern is just leaving jobs. It took me a long time to develop this perspective but I am glad I did.

I (ENFP 6w5 sp/so) chose a career in magazine editing, because it gives me time to do what I actually love, which is write novels. I’m afraid I can’t give you advice from my own life that would work for you, because a 6w5 sp/so is far more focused and driven to finish their projects than a 7w6, which means I push through ‘the boring, tedious bits’ of projects regardless of how ‘excited’ I am. It’s not fun to edit a book 7 times, but I still do it. I force myself to show up to work, to sit there for 3 or 4 hours, and commit to X amount of words, pages, etc.

Do you think it’s “fun” for me always to keep this queue stocked, or to type up characters at the end of a long day because the queue is low? Or go back and update old profiles and move them from this blog onto wordpress? No. I hate it sometimes. It’s boring as hell. But I committed to it, I will see it through, even though looking into my “to update” folder makes me want to scream. I tackle huge projects one step at a time. I’m disciplined but I can procrastinate at work, rather than doing whatever needs doing.

Which really is the bottom line. You want to finish things? Just do them. Force yourself to show up and do the work, even if it’s “boring.” Most of life isn’t fun. Paying the bills isn’t fun. You do boring stuff to make a living, so you can have the money to do fun things. If you do not learn to do it, whether or not it is fun, you will wind up ‘stuck at home this month, because I have no money.’

That frustrates a 7 even more than being bored at work.

Accept that your fear of commitment is a fear-driven lie.

You are not going to get trapped by committing to something or someone. Head types massively over-think things and allow fear – in the 7’s case of “missing out” on better things – to dominate their life. Admit it’s fear. Admit that allowing fear to ruin your entire life is stupid. Then do something against the fear. Do the thing fear tells you not to: commit and work at it. Fight the urge every day to leave. Stick it out, and prove you ‘can’ to yourself.

Middle functions. You’re in college so you should be seeing either some Ti analyzing or Te “buckle down and set goals and get this schoolwork finished by the deadline” kicking in. Are you more inclined to self-doubt and beat yourself up like a young FiTe user after ‘failing’ to organize your time efficiently or to make excuses and blame external circumstances like a young TiFe user?

My Fi has always been strongly evident, though I didn’t know what it was at the time. Things that set off a NOPE response in me vs. the ‘rest of everything, which I don’t care about.’ The intense sensitivity as a child. The compassion for other people and especially for small animals. The understanding of emotional dynamics and how people ‘feel.’ The constant angst between caring too much about people’s feelings and being low Te blunt or rude when I’m having an off day. The ‘going away from everyone’ to deal with my feelings in private. I have always fiercely, Fi-ishly known what I like and do not like, and have no ability to ‘tolerate’ things that I do not like. Once, I didn’t like half the people seated at my table at a public event, so I shut down completely and did not say a word to anyone at the table for two hours. My Fe friend also hated them, but smiled and charmed them all. Lucky girl. She can fake her feelings. I can’t.

- ENFP Mod

[tslasvegas]

Episode 9: “Dear Diary, it’s me, Jaiden” - Jaiden

I feel like I've had a breakthrough. I just survived my first merge vote of the game and I wasn't even having a meltdown. That's already miles and miles ahead of my last Tumblr Survivor season where I made the merge. Although I don't think my position in this game is locked yet, I feel pretty good about where I stand. I hope that the Touchy Subjects answers reveal my hopes that I'm not a threat to anybody and that people don't believe the common idea is that I'm shitty or too perfect or something. If that makes any sense. Basically I just want to know that I'm doing okay here so far. I feel good about my chances at that but we need some work to be done before I can say that for certain. I hate seeing Andrew leave because like I said he's someone that I wanted to work with, but I have to believe what people said about him being an over-player, a mess, etc. and just stick to my guns that I made the right call here. I kind of wanted to see if Joey would play his legacy for Ben but I'm glad I held back on that because I hope the legacy will come back in the future to save me. I don't have a lot of confidence when it comes to the literal minefield of idols and nullifiers out there. As long as I continue convincing people I'm on their side, or that I'm not the enemy at least, those things won't get used on me. Right now that we're on the jury, I NEED to focus on my jury management first and foremost. I am super okay with playing my strategic and social game the way I've been doing it thus far (obv learning from past mistakes.....) but the killer to my game 99% of the time I've made it deep in these things is how I get that jury to feel about me. Protect myself in game, but also set up a jury of folks who feel like they can trust me and only me. And.. hopefully some day I'll blindside Joey and he'll give me his legacy advantage.

...five seconds later

Tbh I hope that Jake reads this after the season and realizes that I never once at this point in the merge find him annoying. Somehow in his own mind he thinks hes like, the worst person ever and I'm trying to tell him he's not, he's great, we have a lot of work ahead of, etc and he's not buying it at all. Idk if this is him trying to emotionally manipulate me or not, but.. like.. thats my gameplan tf! 

So Steph, Pat and Jeff were left out of the vote. But Jaiden said it was supposed to be unanimous. That means that Keegan, Liv and Joey purposely left them out. I don't understand why they would intentionally make enemies. Better for us I suppose. We just got to keep our ragtag group of 6 together: me, John, Jake, Kailyn, Jaiden and Ben.

So the merge vote was quite interesting. With this being a 13 person merge, I tend to believe it is best to play a tad conservatively early on. This made it to where I figure the OG Palazzo would get a good 1-2 rounds of things their way before Keegan, Jake, and I mounted our little rebellion. As it turns out, I woke up to Jake and Keegan wanting me on call because Andrew was being as messy as he was on our swap tribe. Jake said that Andrew confirmed the OG Palazzo chat, something Keegan and I had already did, and that Keegan threw Jake's name out in said chat and Andrew shot it down. In reality, Andrew is actually the person that threw Jake out. He threw Jake's name out first on our swap tribe and he threw it out first here. I am really unsure what game Andrew really wanted to play beyond making sure he had options outside of the OG Palazzo. So from this point, we went around and got a feel for who we could pull. Joey had already expressed to Keegan that he felt nervous about there being a massive numerical OG Palazzo majority. The game is better for all of us if it is a bad more fluid. We ended up kicking Andrew to the curb in a 9-4 vote with Steph, Jeff, Pat, and Andrew voting in the minority. We talked in the OG Palazzo chat and those left out seemed to understand once we explained some of Andrew's missteps in PM's. This is good because I want some form of OG Palazzo to be there if it becomes something that I need down the line. At this current moment, I have heard no one bring up the super idol that is in Keegan and I's possession so I can only assume that we got lucky and no one actually checked the vault after we grabbed it. This could be due to lack of chips at the time or people just forgetting to. So for now, I shall assume everyone thinks that the super idol is vibing on the idol board, which is very good for me. Typically with a super idol, it would be super easy for you to get voted out the round after saving yourself with it. That is why I would like for it to get as deep into this game as possible. At the end of the day, the best part about having it is knowing its whereabouts and not having someone else possess it. So after TC, Jake, Keegan, and I hopped on call to celebrate. Jake revealed that Joey offered a 4 to him and Jake said I am good and should be included. This is how many current alliances are looking: - F2: Keegan and I - Three of Us: Keegan, Jake, and I - Meninism: Keegan, Jake, Joey, Jaiden, and I - OG Palazzo: Keegan, Joey, Jeff, Pat, Steph, and I This makes it so that the only people I do not have some sort of alliance with are Ben, Kailyn, John, and Xavier. I like these people but that is kind of how the game is shaking out currently. Ideally, I want Ben out next as it would allow my 3 to fade into the background and let what should be a consensus boot happen. After TC, multiple people expressed that Ben hadn't been very social. Now the current challenge is Touchy Subjects and I hope I do not get too many positive ones just because they could result in me being targeted. I think I am in a good spot to where I am doing well socially and having one on one's with everyone in some capacity, but I am hoping I am not perceived as any sort of power player at the moment. That fucked me in Trinity: Deception Island and I would not like for that to fuck me over here. I do think I have the connections to make it through for a little while. I see a path to the end but as I get closer I will have to evaluate whether or not that is a winning path to the end. Below is a short synopsis of my one on ones with people: - Steph: like nothing because I have found her super dry premerge - Jaiden: we have been talking about reading and writing and books and it is a good time - Jeff: he is a king and we have been talking about theatre and work and past games and shit - Jake: not as much one on one stuff due to our calls with Keegan - Keegan: not a lot but I have been updating him prior to updating the 3 chat - Kailyn: college and majors and such - Xavier: not a whole lot but he seems really sweet and messaged me "i am glad we voted together :)" after TC and I found that super wholesome - Ben: he has not responded in a bit but he wanted to strategize for the idol hunt with me - Joey: a decent bit of memes back and forth - Pat: lots of small talk but we have had some good convos and he seems to understand the Andrew move - John: we talked a bit about Atomic Nova Scotia Overall, I think I am doing well but not overtly so. This is ideal when we are still at Final 12 I think.

I think Palazzo will vote out Stephanie :) They hate women

Wow. I'm writing this after immunity results. I'm kind of just gonna word vomit. I checked off individual immunity from my checklist. And it's this challenge. The one that eliminated me in 26. The one that crushed 16 year old Jake's self confidence, and made him never want to play again. I got Hero, want to win, funniest, and stop talking which is kind of my favorite. I never ever thought I'd come back after 73 seasons, win THIS challenge, and in an individual setting. I changed history a little bit. And now I'm in the final 11. Ben is the easy vote this round, personally I'd love to see Stephanie go so that I can have Xavier to myself. But I can't push too hard. I controlled last vote, let someone else have a turn in the sun. I get to chill for once.

Now that’s character development!

Move now or lay low?

Final 12 feels pretty good, but final 11 will be so much better. If I make it through this vote, this will be the longest I’ve made it in a merge! And I’ll tie my placement with India :) Obviously I am still focused on my goal of making it thru til single digits, but I’m celebrating the small victories now so I don’t focus too hard on strategy that doesn’t need to take place this early. I feel like everyone is going to be looking at Ben as the dude they need to get rid of, so I won’t be surprised if he ends up going home. I don’t think that is the absolute worst thing for my game right now, but I’d prefer Stephanie or Xavier going before Ben at least for right now. I suppose I don’t have a huge voice on the subject but my pitch to keep Ben tomorrow is that it keeps Kailyn away from trying to work with Stephanie and Xavier who, frankly, need to be part of the next couple boots if we’re thinking big picture.. I don’t know if Joey will listen to me. Another option is maybe see if we can swing votes to Pat. Would anybody be upset to see Pat go home? Who knows. But basically my relationships are so little with Pat, Kailyn, Stephanie, and Xavier and idk what to do about them right now. I really just don’t wanna see those four link up and go super far because that would be kinda boring and really devastating LOL Another big win for me today was that I got put into the Meninist alliance with Jake, Joey, Livingston, and Keegan. While I’m not particularly fond of Livingston yet, we’ll see if he grows on me :) if not he can say adios. Since Joey is looking REALLY dangerous I’m gonna try to distance myself from him more and more right now. I don’t want people to think I’m drinking his kool aid bc I’m not, but I don’t want him to think I’ve turned on him bc I definitely want him to still give me that legacy advantage.. This morning I was thinking about how I can really give myself a better trajectory to the end and I’m a little bit confused still on what my winning conditions are for this game. What moves can I start making today that will set me up for six tribals down the line when surely the game is getting messy as fuck and I need protection from all sides? Maybe discrediting people like Xavier, Stephanie, Kailyn, Pat, and even Livingston aren’t the best things for me to do right now. I want to keep people who are in my corner safe such as Jeff, Keegan, Jake, and hopefully Joey but we’re almost to the halfway point of the game and it’s not going to be easy to keep everybody including myself safe. It’s no longer a question of whether I’ll win this or not. It’s a question of how I win. The merge is what counts I think.. everything before that was just the foundation for success. My foundation is cracked and not the best but I’m picking up the pace, I think. Whatever. If I have to use my social connections to Joey or John or whoever, I’m going to manipulate them to what benefits me. I don’t wanna go down that path of being messy but some day soon these ppl are gonna realize they should’ve never trusted me to begin with... because I’m coming for them.

Me almost forgetting confessionals were a thing. Ben is really popping off here today because he knows he's the boot. And now he has created a "straights alliance". This... is such a weird day. I wanna just go back to bed and not deal with all of this because it's weird.

6 years ago I wanted to pull of a move like this. I can get Ben to explode in main chat and with everyone. Pick fights, freak out, tank people’s games, just be a monster. And without anyone knowing, I’ll give him my safety without power. Idols will be flushed, mass panic, and I have immunity so I’m just chilling. We’re about to gamble baby.

Dear Diary, it’s me, Jaiden. Ben went off the deep end today and proved that he was a wasted spot on this season to begin with. This tribe is only big enough for one messy bitch, and not only that but I'm one big fat messy bitch, so sorry Ben but your time has come. 

I always get a bad feeling before tribal. I just hope Ben goes, and it’s easy and smooth and there’s no issues. 

I thought Kailyn was horny texting me, turns out she's just high........ Kailyn, 5:15 PM so is the vote tonight ben ?? i’m kind of [redacted] rn don’t know what’s going on 😳 Jaiden, 5:15 PM yeah :/ i feel bad bc ive grown to like ben but no one is offering any sort of alternative omg whats redacted Kailyn, 5:16 PM 😳😳😳 legally, it’s a joke 💖 Jaiden, 5:16 PM IM??? Kailyn, 5:16 PM JSDJKSKA Jaiden, 5:16 PM WHAT do u mean uimm i cant find the up emoji but like UP u know?? Kailyn, 5:16 PM SJHDJDKSLA yes 💖 Jaiden, 5:17 PM omg queeeeeeeen i love that for u JOKINGLY of course hehe Kailyn, 5:17 PM for the laugh 💖💖💖💖💖 thank u Jaiden, 5:17 PM god we stan r u gonna be at tribal?? Kailyn, 5:18 PM if i remember yes ofc 😇 me trying to do my french hw rn: 🧍‍♀️🧍🧍‍♂️ Jaiden, 5:19 PM HAHA good...i wanna see u pop awf hopefully HJAHHAHA i love the emojis Jaiden, Kailyn, 5:19 PM NSHDJSJAJ ofc 💖 Jaiden, 5:19 PM god im truely living my best life thru u rn tell me something french Kailyn, 5:22 PM je can’t remember a word of français rn bc i’m so h word 💖🙏🥵 Jaiden, 5:22 PM *HAPPY!!* Kailyn, 5:27 PM so true 😇 Jaiden, 5:27 PM wait i hope we mean the same h word im starting to think its not the one im thinking of....... Kailyn, 5:28 PM DJDJDJKSAKALKAK uhhh not me accidentally calling Xavier 😭😭😭😭 Jaiden, 5:29 PM DID HE ANSWER Kailyn, 5:30 PM YEAHHHSJDJSKLALA Jaiden, 5:31 PM WHAT HAPPENED IM FUIOHWODIH thats so fucking funy Kailyn, 5:31 PM NDDHJDKSS I SAW MY FACE POP UP ON THE SCREEN AND I WAS LIKE FUCK Jaiden, 5:31 PM H9uhiudheiuhfH Kailyn, 5:31 PM AND HE WAS LIKE. DID U CALL Jaiden, 5:31 PM VIDEO CALL????????????? Kailyn, 5:31 PM AND I WAS LIKE UHHH Jaiden, 5:31 PM IM DYING Kailyn, 5:32 PM AND HUNG UP Jaiden, 5:32 PM KAILYN Kailyn, 5:32 PM NSHDHDKSLSLA Jaiden, 5:32 PM IM LAUGHING SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKIGNM HARD Kailyn, 5:32 PM ate some Good chocolate on this night 😤👼 Jaiden, 5:33 PM oh my GOD you're talking about the H i DIDNT THINK U WERE TAKING ABT Kailyn, 5:33 PM JDDHJDKSKALAP WHAT DID U THINK Jaiden, 5:33 PM maybe calling xavier wasnt on accident i THOUGHT you were talking about being high but UGHFWO)DJH CHOCOLATE IS AN APHRODISIAC Kailyn, 5:34 PM YEAH I AM WTF Jaiden, 5:34 PM WHAT] Kailyn, 5:34 PM DJJDDJKSLSPAPS NOOOOOO Jaiden, 5:34 PM I TOHUGHT Kailyn, 5:34 PM SHJDJDKDOEOEOWOWA Jaiden, 5:34 PM OMFG Kailyn, 5:34 PM BCUCNCNDODNDIEOEKOEW Jaiden, 5:34 PM WHEN U SAID CALLED XAVIER AND THE CHOCOLATE Kailyn, 5:34 PM WHAT THE FUCKODKSKSKS NOOOOOOO Jaiden, 5:34 PM I WAS LIKE WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING Kailyn, 5:34 PM DBHDJSKAKAKS BYE NOOOOOO DJDHDJSKALLAA Jaiden, 5:34 PM IM DETLTING MY FUCKING ACCOUNT IM DLEETING MY FUCKING ACCOT Kailyn, 5:34 PM HSHDHDKSKALA

[gamearamamegathons]

Trauma Center: Second Opinion: HEART GLASS

[Content warning for surgery and stuff! And also for suicide, a topic that this game handles miserably, so be prepared for that. Actually, let's also add a content warning for verbal abuse towards a suicidal person, just to be safe.]

Circe here! Time to fix more organs! We open with episode 1-6. Angie is really worried about this patient, because his blood tests are off, but Derek just blows off her concerns. This surgey is pretty straightforward, we're treating inflammation and removing tumors, but Derek is continually ignoring Angie pointing out that something more seems wrong. Our protagonist has gone from a newbie doctor to a bigshot episode in the space of six scenes. Amazing. Well, after we finish up the surgery, Derek hurries off to some doctor event thing, but it turns out that the patient had more inside bad stuff that blew up, so he almost died. Whoopsy. We don't actually operate on this patient again, instead Derek basically gets fired for negligence. Angie says that any suspicion, no matter how tiny or inconsequential, should be taken seriously, which is an absolutely ridiculous thing to say, because there were actually quite ample reasons to think something was wrong.

Have I mentioned that this game's writing is...uh...a little strange? The characters react to every surgery basically as if they were operating on someone they know, and while it's admirable to care about people that passionately, this just isn't realistic, because that kind of attitude isn't sustainable when you're treating life or death situations every day. I dunno if this is typical for medical dramas, but I find it a bit jarring. At the very least, though, I guess comments like this help us understand the driving philosophy of the game's narrative.

Anyway, Derek is moping outside, when he hears about a car accident. It seems that one of the victims is being taken into emergency care, and Derek knows that there aren't enough doctors, so he rushes in and is, like, emergency un-fired, I guess. Was he really fired, or did they just yell at him a lot? I dunno, this game's fuzzy about that. But who cares because this guy's got HEART GLASS! That's right, when we cut the guy open, we find that his heart has been pretty much pincushioned with glass shards, which I'm pretty sure would mean he'd just be dead. To make things worse, as soon as we remove all the glass, another huge piece just, chestbursters out of his heart, which

I mean

I'm *pretty* sure that'd kill him.

Just when we think we've got this guy all patched up, another laceration appears on his heart, for reasons that aren't even really clear this time. In a moment of panic, Derek fixes it with magic.

...what? You heard me. This is the point at which we're introduced to the Healing Touch, a rare magic power possessed by only a handful of surgeons that allows them to go into bullet time to do surgery super fast and save people from dying. Have I mentioned that this series is a bit weird?

Anyway, no time for that now. This is the remake, remember, and bit that I'm pretty sure is new to this version is a side story featuring another surgeon named Nozomi Weaver. We don't learn much about Dr. Weaver except that she's a master Japanese surgeon who's currently practicing in America, and also she's shaaaady. In this surgery, our patient's arm bones are shattered, so we do the logical thing and collect all the pieces, jigsaw them back together, and smear some antibiotic gel all over it so it heals real good. Uh, I didn't mention this, but there's a line of dialogue early on about this gel being a cure-all, and I guess they weren't fucking kidding, were they. This surgery also introduced an unfortunate complication to my clever emulated control scheme. To put the bones back together, you have to rotate the Wii remote, something I hadn't really bothered to configure. I had to concede the need to use an analog stick here for precision, so I ended up with the controller sitting in my lap so I could operate the stick and the mouse at the same time. It was, uh, a little less than elegant, but it was the best I could do. I kinda hope they don't require any more of the Wii remote's features in future surgeries.

Back to Derek. Next up, we gotta fix these little blobs that are traveling through a guy's spleen, and every time they go through it hurts him. We're doing pretty good until there's a lot of them going really fast, so Derek once again draws on the power of magic to fix it all in time. Word of Derek's dark magic reaches the hospital director guy, and he explains that Derek has a rare magic power, and that having such great healing power is a heavy burden to bear, so he should give up on it or he'll never be happy. Derek ignores him though, like any good protagonist, so we learn how to activate Healing Touch manually by drawing the shape of a pentagram in the air.

Nope. Not kidding.

Derek explains this away as him concentrating on a simple shape to increase his focus, but also fuck you, you're invoking dark magic with a pentagram. I fucking own it when I use dark magic, Derek, and you should do the same. I should also note, invoking the Healing Touch involves holding B and Z and drawing at the same time, which is a manuever that was definitely kind of a pain to configure so I could carry it out comfortably. Oh yeah, I forgot, we also learned how to use defibrillators earlier! That requires you to use B and Z at the same time also. Gotta be real careful about zapping a guy's heart and stuff.

Aaaanyway. The next patient's got lumps on his organs that keep bursting, so we gotta cut the lumps out and stitch his veins back together. This surgery actually kinda sucks, and I lost several times before I got it, because it takes a massive chunk out of the patient's vitals when his stuff bursts, and they will, no matter how quickly you work. Near the end, there's four of them at once, and you gotta use the Healing Touch to not lose. Unfortunately, this leads to Derek passing out for three days. Whoopsy again. When Derek comes to, veteran doctor guy tells Derek that dark magic places a lot of strain on the body and he really shouldn't overdo it, because if he passed out in a surgery that would be, uh, pretty bad. I gotta side with veteran guy here. Pulling a spirit muscle is *way* worse than pulling a physical one.

So then we get to Linda. Let me tell you about Linda, and how Angie becomes the worst character in the game for all time. So, Linda is a 17 year old girl who comes in with lacerations on her lungs. Which sounds pretty bad. This is a fairly basic surgery, although we also learn that we need to close very large lacerations with the forceps before we can stitch them closed. Where things really go bad is after the surgery. It turns out that Linda was suicidal, and didn't really want to be fixed at all. So Angie does the logical thing, and yells in her face that clearly the surgery was a waste and Linda should just die if that's how she feels about it.

so

uh

hm

So yeah, Angie is total scum. Let's move on and see how it gets worse. After that shameful display, Derek tries to help Linda by giving her a little pep talk, which I don't think would actually help, but hey, the guy's heart is in the right place I guess. Later, we learn a bit more about Linda's home life, and there's some stuff that kinda sucks, but, in Angie's words, 'nothing worth dying over'.

as you can see angie understands suicidal ideation very well

Later we learn that extremely high levels of some kind of antihistamine was in Linda's body, and it's not even on the market yet, nor is there any evidence she was taking it, so her body was just kind of, creating it somehow. Apparently this huge drug overdose caused a mood swing that led to her feeling suicidal, which means

w h i c h m e a n s

which means Linda was feeling suicidal because she was sick. Angie screamed in a sick person's face that she should die because she was sick. Angie should be fucking fired, quite possibly even sued for some kind of negligence, I don't know. She certainly shouldn't be allowed back into the plot as though she just got a little upset and said some things she didn't mean. Angie even has the gall to later whisper ominously about a rumored 'death doctor' who euthanizes patients, and how it's good that Linda was treated by Derek instead of that guy. As if Angie herself wasn't literally saying Linda should be dead fucking yesterday. Fuck.

Okay, deep breaths. I'm getting ahead of things a little. While the plot is getting horrible, the surgeries are getting *amazing*. After all this, Linda suddenly starts complaining of excruciating chest pains, so we gotta treat her again. After we fix up more lacerations, we find out the reason why Linda's body has been all weird and messed up: tiny monsters in her lung! Yes, that's right. We use the ultrasound to detect a tiny winged creature moving around inside Linda's lung, and it's creating more lacerations, so we have to cut the sucker out and laser it to death. A few more of these things crop up, and we take them out one by one, until all of Linda's lung monsters are taken care of.

This is GUILT, the game's made up...disease...monster...thing. It's a little hard to be sure what they are, because the game talks about GUILT as though it's a disease, but they appear to be, like, parasites or something. Maybe it's a visual metaphor? For...something? Well anyway, Linda's all better. Veteran doctor guy whispers in hushed tones about GUILT, and says that nobody outside of this room should talk about what we saw.

So, with that major development, I think this is a good cutting off point for now. I wanna focus on the fun parts, and not as much on how Angie is a detestable human being, so let's review: HEART GLASS, jigsaw bones, and lung monsters. This game is only going to get more absurd from here, and as far as I remember, there is 100% less of characters being absolutely monstrous to teenage girls, so I hope you're looking forward to it.

[elizabethrobertajones]

In the light of the return of Sam's orange jacket - an spn fashion related question: when and WHY did Dean stop wearing his jewellery and accessoires? did he take a shower one morning and was like "Man, I gotta stop wearing these fake leather bracelets"? and what did he do with it?

Oh gosh I’m so tired I shouldn’t even try to answer this… tl;dr I spent a lot of time dazedly poking around Home of the Nutty collecting bad data and assuming a thing was gone as soon as it stopped showing up the first time.

Superwiki, by the way, is kind of useless for once… it says Dean only wore the bracelets in season 1 and 2 but he blatantly has a bracelet on when he’s resurrected in 4x01 and I remember that without checking.

Dean still wearing them from time to time in at least the first part of season 5 (i.e. I dropped in on 5x04 since I figured they’d be easy to spot in the opening scene). He has uncovered forearms in the open of 5x16 and no bracelet but I was completely un-thorough so I was just grabbing random episodes where I thought I’d probably see his forearms without much clicking, and despite having once written a fic about Dean having a huge elbow fetish which accidentally shaped my entire blog, I don’t have a clue where every example of exposed Winchester arms are :P But some time in that stretch of episodes.

Dean loses the ring between 5x07 and 5x08. On his hand in the last shot of one, not on his hand in the first shot of the next, or when we roll back time to the chronological start of Changing Channels. Concoct whatever elaborate theory you like about them having never left TV land, tbh.

But yeah… Dean gives away the amulet to Cas in 5x02 for plot reasons but also the meta reasons that it was starting to annoy Jensen when he wore it all the time and it got in the way and hit him in the face. By 5x16 he’s lost ALL his major jewellery except for his watch as far as I can tell without doing a proper study on when the bracelets disappeared except that it’s between 5x04 and 5x16. Maybe it is something that they included a little more quietly, that while the amulet is the big example of it, Dean slowly sheds his entire jewellery box over the season.

I think there’s a large element of the whole loss of his sense of identity that goes through that season - that he’s going to be possessed by Michael and stop being Dean any more, to the point that it’s a blatant suicide metaphor/not even metaphor and just directly treated like it in 5x17/18. In 5x18 Dean strips off the rest of his personality, and puts it in a box; his jacket, gun and car keys. 

I and many other sensitive Dean fans over the years have written quite a lot about this entirely depressing collection representing his entire identity and largely being John connected stuff (I’m too tired to delve my tag for this episode but there’s at least a couple of things there >.>), at least in the sense of the jacket he took from John, the car John gave him, and the job Dean inherited as the family business. It’s one of the times Dean packs in the family business, and he only sticks out the rest of the mytharc before going to stay with Lisa for a year. In 6x01 we see the jacket in a box with John’s journal, which he gets back out to help, and of course the jacket then disappeared IRL but with fortuitous timing that Dean gets to shed another part of his identity he made himself. I think it’s good positive stuff in season 6 that he has to start trying to forge ahead and make his own identity. 

I was talking for some reason or other about all the points where you write the story up to a certain point and then you pick it up and turn it around and start writing backwards from it. Dean being possessed by Michael was the “end” of the arc about John’s influence forcing him into his worst self that every previous season had dealt with at least with one episode which made some sort of direct awful comparison to how it had destroyed Dean. (Dean telling Sam in 1x11 he wishes he knew how to think for himself, Dean selling his soul in 2x22, the demon!Dean exchange in 3x10, Alastair telling Dean how John didn’t break in Hell in 4x16, and then this in 5x18, although of course there’s some other pretty awful stuff in all these seasons, I’m just picking the anvil moments that spring straight to mind) 

Anyway now I look at it and see that Dean’s jewellery disappears bit by bit through season 5 culminating in him throwing away the amulet pretty much just tells me now that it was Dean getting rid of some symbolic layer, and all for the worse in this season. In the end he takes the car and jacket to the confrontation in Stull, and then never wears the jacket again (and Baby has become too much his to argue and anyway 4x03 symbolically did sort of give her back to him in a fated way so she’s only loosely thrown in with the rest, because he did already reclaim her completely for himself). Then I think instead of building up to how this destroys Dean, he doesn’t say yes to Michael after all, and he gets an entire new lease on life where he’s freed from the pressure of the apocalypse and he enters the open waters of character development to no particular aim except personal betterment.

I think they could have played it like Dean starts wearing all the jewellery again after season 5, but I think a lot of it was a security blanket - the bracelets are lucky charms, and probably in that universe literal wards against evil, and the amulet turned out not to be lucky in the ‘i like it and wear it because i like it’ definition but actually connected to *god* and all that drama. It had to go because it was a symbol of Dean’s shattered faith in literally everything from Sam through to God (though, and I sort of hate to be That Person, not Cas because they actually bonded over this shared critical hit to their faith and I think 5x16/17 have the strongest forward momentum on the whole original Dean and Cas arc aside from 4x16). And obviously God for Dean also relates right back to John. 

And I think also Dean would have less reason to start wearing all his jewellery that formed part of his skin as a hunter over that year with Lisa because he had put aside that identity - if he kept the bits, they were maybe in the box with the jacket, and I would ASSUME that box is still in some random corner of Lisa’s attic or garage and she has no clue which one of her exes left it there… (ow) or Ben found it and started wearing the jacket because why not (OW). Anyway since things happened this way, it means he left behind a part of his identity but it was an old part of his identity which had ended up linked with the bad stuff, the toxic stuff about John, and I guess for the jewellery just being a protective thing, part of the top layer of Dean. He’s a bit more emotionally naked from Gamble era onwards because she shifted the focus in the way the emotional stuff got told, and that was a sensible idea to shift from plot to character as a main priority of the writing.

Anyway sorry for the super long reply, but thanks for making me notice that Dean has all his standard jewellery at the start of season 5 and then has none of it by 5x16 because that turns out to feel massively important and this is a Huge Thought and not something cracky like I thought I was originally angling at when I saw this question and thought oh I will answer this really quickly after a long day and oops it’s past midnight and this looks like a subject that should have taken some actual work :P