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legionofpotatoes · 4 years ago

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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idealnreal · 5 years ago

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Please overanalyze the shadows in his palace I am begging you.

@appleyjuiceboy / jester owns my braincells of course i would do this for u

Okay so i think its best if i go about the order of shadows we meet in the game so. I’m not going to go into the persona/shadows in maruki’s palace. I’ll leave that for some other day. Now! Lets hope i can remain fully coherent.

1) The fluffy haired noodle shadow we meet for (ka)sumi’s awakening

First off, look at the design of this shadow--it has the fluffy hair parted to the right like maruki, its androgynous figure, and that swirly face mask as well! The mask has two eyes, and it even looks like theres a smile there, lopsided.

We have never seen any other palace shadow taking a similar shape as the palace ruler (except maybe the yaldaboath palace). Shadows are meant to emulate what the ruler thinks of as protectors of their heart. Maruki doesn’t trust anyone other than himself with this secret. And particularly at this phase of his distortion -- there are no scientists, to attendants, no patients. Just an empty, beautiful palace -- with possibly only one type of shadow and protector. The type that represents himself.

(Also androgynous/nb maruki confirmed ?? yes)

Okay then lets look at what this shadow says to Kasumi.

Shadow: ... Heresy. You dare to spurn our lord’s mercy. Accept yourself... Our lord laments the foolishness birthed from your pain.

Having the context that Kasumi is Sumire here ... Because this scene comes about because Kasumi sees a cognitive version of herself (Sumire) blaming herself -- and so, a part of her is probably trying to remember that she is Sumire. Thus ‘spurn(ing) our lord’s mercy’. And yeah accepting herself as Kasumi instead of trying to remember that she is Sumire.

But most important is the fact that Maruki’s palace shadows refer to him as a religious or god-like being (’our lord’s mercy’ calling back christian themes). Someone who is merciful and, most of all, does feel grief over one’s pain. Painting an ideal picture of a loving and caring god, ala abrahamic religions. This is a running theme with all the shadow’s dialogs. Let’s put a pin in this for now.

These design shadows are seen again later in the container room of the palace. They’re slightly faster. The container room is a strange one -- because it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the laboratory/hospital/garden of eden thing going on. While yes labs and hospitals do have storage areas, i cant imagine them being a container warehouse like this. I do headcanon that this is a storage area for the pain and suffering that Maruki has taken on from other people in order to heal them, due to his hyper empathy -- but i’ll analyse the room some other time. For now it’s interesting that the Maruki-like shadows are now relegated to this specific and really dark section of the palace.

Like the throne room/centre of eden that the Maruki boss fight takes place in -- He resigns himself to the darker gloomier parts of his palace. And the same goes for these shadows. This is where he belongs.

Also abso-fucking-lutely we’re going to talk about how this shadow transforms when it ambushes you:

Skin suit opening up to reveal fangs and rows of teeth, and a formless monster inside. Maruki ... dude ... are you okay? If these shadows are meant to emulate him -- is this how he sees himself sometimes? HHh boy...

2) First lab coat wearing shadow at the start of his palace investigation

Prior to this, while we understood that Maruki was a researcher, it was never a defining feature of him. Like the first thing that came to my mind on Maruki was that he was just the school counsellor and snack purveyor. Now this entire researcher, scientist, side of him is in full display. And this is the most common type of shadow we see, some which are violent, and others are non violent. Maruki sees scientists as the main residents of his palace -- his drive towards investigation and discovery, to puzzling out the intricacies of the human heart, human mind, and human pain. To better further his ability to heal. But there’s also a sort of cold, methodical nature to these scientists. Their ‘healing’ is methodical, based in science.

This coupled with the religious reverence and ideology that their dialog suggests, is a nice contrast. Experiments, data, research, are people’s salvation. Not the simple belief of a deity or of a higher purpose -- but science. Science, in many ways, becomes part and parcel of their religious belief.

Shadow: Those guises ... You aren’t among those who desire salvation. Leave. You are unwanted intruders. Do not disturb our lord’s research-- this world’s salvation. Why do you willingly strive for self-suffering? Why are you reaching out to your own pain?

So here -- the shadow wants them to leave the palace well enough alone. To leave Maruki to his research, and to allow this reality to exist. They don’t want this to end violently and it seems like they’re okay with the trio not ‘desiring salvation’. And when the trio refuse to leave, the shadow asks them why they want to suffer. It’s something inconceivable to them. Maybe even challenging their resolve-- to reconsider their current path, which will only lead to more pain. Also ‘salvation’, ding, on the christian theme counter. Deliverance from above from sin, even redemption. Not for one person, but for the whole world.

We see this type of shadow again before the scene in the auditorium.

Shadow: You are misguided. Do not search for pain. Only tragedy awaits you beyond here. [After defeating it] Such a fool, rejecting our lord’s mercy. In that case -- witness it for yourself.

Same themes. Delicious. Lets move on now shall we.

3) Hastur -- the shadow that appears with Maruki at his reveal as his second-in-command / bodyguard

I don’t think i’ve talked about how much i love the lopsided smiles on these masks. Because i love it. it’s just the right amount of unsettling and creepy. fUCk. And the twitching, twisting, and the weeping blue paint that Hastur’s shadow form does before transforming is /chefs kiss. I wanted more.

Anyway, onto Hastur’s design. Not a labcoat this time, just an ordinary looking white suit with no tie. This is the only time we see Maruki have a bodyguard shadow -- something else he relies on. Hastur’s presence in this scene only shows how deeply afraid and uncomfortable Maruki actually is with intruders in his palace. This experience is a reminder that someone had come into Rumi’s parents house to kill him years ago (a theory for another time). Like that incident years ago, he doesn’t resort to violence here -- he did and does try to negotiate. But when that didn’t work, at least now he has something that can fight for him.

( It is only in the second infiltration when we see Maruki actually take a more active role -- but I won’t get to that here. )

Hastur: Stubborn imbeciles, rejecting our lord ...

There is a running theme here, unfortunately. The shadows again cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to reject Maruki’s salvation, why anyone would choose suffering. And words like ‘foolish’ ‘misguided’ and finally ‘imbeciles’ here are all used to describe those who choose to reject it. While i do think Maruki only bends reality if the person wishes it (subconsciously or consciously), and does accept that there are people who won’t accept their wishes being granted and is aware of the reasons why-- He cannot fully understand or emphatise with it.

4) These deformed Maruki-like shadows guarding the control room

Jesus christ above, i don’t like these, because they contrast with all other designs as these are more brutish and deformed. There’s used as gatekeepers at certain points of the palace, in the first control room, and later on in the brain-pod-room (my brain cells are stopping to work now excuse me) before the garden puzzle portion, at his final will seed and the entrance to the garden of eden.

We know Maruki isn’t a brute strength kinda person. And yet we see these few who’s only purpose is to defend certain things and areas with force. Its uncharacteristic, but at the same time, given the things that these shadows are defending -- it makes sense. No cunning, no wit, no negotiation, no compassion -- just forcefully defending very important parts of his heart and his work.

Shadow (at the control room): So you dare defy His Excellency. You shall not interfere with our master’s work!

Shadow (brainwash room): Foolish rebels! You won’t take one step past here!

Shadow (entrance to garden of eden) : You?! I can’t believe you’ve made it so far ...

I had to do a double take on this. I think this is the only time this title ‘His Excellency’ has been used in the palace. While it is used for catholic bishops and that sort -- its mostly used in the context of heads of state, ambassadors-- more secular roles. The other times this shadow speaks is also similarly less reverent, less religious orientated. Of course this makes sense if the only function of these shadows is to use force to defend. They’re not the scientists or the first maruki-imitation shadows -- they’re not as devoted, and they dont have to be.

5) Finally, these limbless noodles

This one is found during the horticulture portion of the palace. I can’t exactly figure out why. And as far as i can tell, they only appear in this portion of the palace.

As far as the design goes -- these are probably the most unhuman like. Slender, androgynous with only a mask. I’ve got nothing. Braincells ran out. Sorry!

(Haha androgynous maruki go brr)

SO! That’s it. thanks for coming to my ted talk and following me down this rabbit hole. I need to go and drink some fuckin tea.

#(( jester being a real bro here #(( enabling me and my insanity #f: notes #c: the self #takuto maruki #(( slides this into the main tag #appleyjuiceboy #p5r spoilers

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rainecloud020604 · 5 years ago

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Hey,how many angel/demon ocs to you have? Could you please tell us about them,please? it's fine if not,i understand ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

alrighty take a seat and lemme start with my angel ocs uwu

Universo - so far my fave out of the angels- shush! guys been through a lot and honestly so far other than dealing with a target on his back he and Anthony are engaged now and currently taking care of both Penn and Daisy. (well i mean- guess its Daisy at the moment ROSE)

Damion - Universo’s older brother, kind hearted guy who messes with dreams, currently living with his father and mother along with his fiance, guy aint the fighting type like his brother. more of a healer than a fighter

Nicolas - a small warrior angel who spends a lot of his time running around the place hunting rogue angels and making sure they are removed of their wings, guy is very polite and is really kind and happy for someone who believes he lacks a real purpose.

Josiah - kind guy who used to be in a trio with Nicolas and Christine, nowadays he sticks with Christine out of fear of her turning on him like she did Nicolas, calling him a traitor and is after him. currently stressed and honestly just wants his friends to get along again, hes not really the violent type

Christine - hates, absolutely LOATHES Nicolas’ existence, she wants to cut off his wings for just leaving the group and going on his own, she thinks he’s helping the enemy and is up to something. She’s currently at risk of losing her own wings and doesnt believe it.

Elizabeth - a gal with a pure heart, ages and ages old. She has a whole bunch of small flaming rock creatures that she keeps close because of an old friend of hers is embodied in them, so she’s never alone, a motherly figure that once she sees you need help, good luck convincing her you dont really need it

Suisei - a blind angel, a certain demon gouged his eyes out and nowadays is terrified of everything, he’s scared of leaving heaven, but who knows, sometimes when you cant see you end up tripping, and falling...

Marrisa - she’s a rogue angel which constantly taunts Nicolas for not being able to do his job right, she still has her wings and goes in the angelic class, she was a guardian angel but....that all changed when she didnt do her job and allowed for someone to slaughter the family she was watching

demon oc time:”D

Lieutenant Hugs - mainly has a human appearance but in reality is a demon that appears to look like black essence, where her extra arms come from at times, she has abandonment issues, behind that smile and open arms is a lot more than sunshine and rainbows

Rainecloud - a staff wielding cat demon who honestly can kick ass! but recently retired as a mother so its rare to find her fighting like she used to, she used to go to other dimensions to fight because she liked it, used to be a heavy drinker as well, nowadays she likes to leave her past behind and keep her friends and family close

Rainie - Rainecloud’s other half so to say, an axe wielding psychopath who enjoys killing, finds it to be a game, very playful gal, a smile that never leaves and grows at the sight of a dead body, she honestly aint one known for showing mercy

Skye - Rainecloud’s sister, this lil pupper gal being sweet as can be and highly energetic and happy all the time, she is very sweet until you cross a boundary, then the sword comes out

Charles - he’s a bit of a hothead, honestly has a past he’d rather just let rot there, hates other demons, after being forced into a war, paying a high price for leaving it, its very clear why, nowadays he spends his days with his husband and daughter as a family, sometimes visits friends in other worlds, pretty rare though

Cheese - a gal who honestly has a personality made to drive you away, has so many wall built up, sold her soul for a complex revenge plan against some people and ended up being cheated out of it, it killing her best friend and the moment she spoke out against it she was turned into a demon, hates her home being inkwell, never wants to go back

Beat - friendly guy, a music demon who is found at bars and stage performances, just wanting to hear what he is tied to, his job is to well, drag people into hell when they play a certain song for too long...

Keith - absolute prick who smokes, past he likes to keep shut, can turn into a monster at the sight of blood, a best friend he pushed away a long time ago because something in him made him try and forget emotions, emotions make one weak you know?

Yami - a super hyper and sweet demon gal who honestly doesnt know what she is capable of, she is about 1′4′’ ands honestly the moment she decides your shoulder is comfortable good luck getting her off, she sticks to everything, super fast, super strong as well! she cant fly yet due to how underdeveloped her wings are at the moment but one day she might be able to, at the moment she is happy with Troy and Artsy, her family now.

Hallie - gals been through a lot, abusive mother, horrible treatment, luckily she’s away from that all now, happy that she’s free! happy she feels safe with Teekee.... smokes occasionally, always wears long sleeves, a kind and happy gal, a bit of a flirt with who she chooses

Trebble - daughter of the devil, sweet as can be and suffered a lot of abuse and neglect from her father, luckily being in a better place with her godfather Anomy whom she likes to call dad, lots of connections with people, kind of heat but you’d be surprised what she does in her free time, just what her dad does you know?

Alphie - this little guy being Tricia’s underboss is known for being that lives off of flesh, Tricia lets his dispose of the bodies and take care of special cases she doesnt handle herself. he honestly hates Rainie, they both have a small fued between each other and when it gets in the way of business it pisses Tricia off

Judith - a drug dealer who has a thing for murdering customers, she has a certain obsession with an ex and detective Milo who put her in prison at one point, unfortunately for Milo she isnt behind bars anymore and is back with her usual business.

Myrina - a formal demon warrior who currently fled home with her son Otoko and went to a place that would be safer for him instead of him being taken from her because he “held her back” according to some demons, she’ll do anything to protect her child so dont try anything.

Otoko - a small bab who is about a year old, bright and cheerful and just loves his mother

Riku - an earth demon tribe leader, currently at a young age and is responsible for leading his small and shrinking tribe. he luckily isnt stressed from is and has time to be a kid but with what is to happen soon, who knows how that could change him

of course there are the kinda demon i guess?? list;

Hood - half demon, basically a host, battling memory loss and fighting for control. she’s a vigilante who is talented as all hell with a bow and arrow, nimble and agile as can be. just back away when she loses control.

Lime - he aint aware that he’s part demon, his father was a demon, a guy who’s had it tough, hates authority with a passion. and interdimensional thief who has a thing for shinies

Rob - guy might have angel wings but i promise you those arent his. a demonic shapeshifter. a cross breed, the guy is really sweet and kind, unaware of what he used to be...luckily

Sketch - a demon mimic, gals got a tough past, abused to the point where she forgot how to feel emotions and lost the ability to feel touch and pain. nowadays just trying to find a goddamn job after she stopped working for a gang.

Tricia - a gang leader who absolutely lacks a heart in the slightest, no redeeming her, a huge dislike for children leading her to abandoning her own child and wanting to kill her niece Trebble. currently trying to get back her test subject Artsy and working with another being Sonya...

ocs that were mentioned but do not belong to me!

Anthony, Troy, Penn and Daisy - @flowerrose14

Anomy - @elementalgod-aj

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oleanderblume · 4 years ago

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I think one of the best choices I made when writing my book was making Oliver trans.

Initially, he was cis and also only ten or eleven.

But I aged him up a bit and made him trans cause why the fuck not?

(Actually it was cause I was listening to Home by Cavetown and the first verse works REALLY well for Ols and the second one REALLY well for Dindet so I just made him trans to fit the stupid music video in my head T×T)

And I'm really glad I did so because now I can't really imagine him any other way(?) Which is really confusing when I try to explain it to friends and family cause I, being a respectable person and author, use he/him pronouns cause Ols is trans masc (obviously) and apparently that confuses some people??

But like, it opened up a lot of opportunities for me to chuck in some stupid trans things(tm) that I don't really see in fiction. Well, in actuality, I dont see any trans boys in fiction. Which is another reason why I wrote him to be trans =~=

Like, I know it's out there, but if it is, then its probably 98% transition biographies and I'm not interested in that stuff :/ also, Oliver as a character is a dickwad. A bitter, sad, scared and lonely and mean kid that pushes people away and is actively harmful to the people who care the most about him and its NOT because he's trans. (Its mostly because he is really bad at coping with grief)

A lot of times, when people write trans characters, the focus is either on their suffering or the suffering of their peers because "oh no its a disgusting tran"

But for Oliver, all his suffering is largely self inflicted. He is rude and hurtful and inconsiderate toward others and it consistently bites him in the ass with grave repercussions. The only times he suffers explicitly for being trans is by a girl who bullies him for that exact reason. (Well, it is slightly more complicated than that, but you get what I mean) a one time sub teacher who just doesn't give a shit, and technically when his abusive bio dad comes back into his life.

Almost everyone in the series uses proper pronouns, with seldom slip ups- usually when he isn't there to hear it, and treats him with relative respect.

And I love that making that decision granted me opportunities to write a whole chapter that functioned as friend bonding between Oliver and Dindet while also being a not so subtle message to trans youths about how things will get better. (Which kind of sucks because the end of this series is a real dousey)

And opportunities to just add in little character traits that make him just more well rounded. Like, how big dumb happy he gets when he sees his first chin hair (he names it Frank)

There are parts to his personality that sort of function like a revolving door, some of them are trans things, some are just personality type and some have to do with his grief and past and they all fit really nicely together to make this kid believable and relatively relatable.

Like, for instance, Oliver recognises that he can be rash and rude and say things without thinking- he has a habit of shooting off biting words without realizing how hurtful they might be. And part of it is obviously a form of personal detatchment- cause he's too scared to care about others in case he might get hurt or lose them. He is self conscious of how he's perceived but refuses to let anyone on to it and thus refuses any offers of assistance or affection because half of him thinks he doesn't deserve it *because* he is mean, and the other half simply doesn't trust that they mean it.

And all of it sits in top of a fear that no one actually sees him the way he sees himself, despite how many times he might be reassured of it which further prevents him from reaching out to others.

I really REALLY like the main character of my book series- if you didn't realize just yet.

And I really like the dynamic his personality has with the other characters.

For instance, my clown, Dindet is a very naive and caring character. She is unbelievably protective of people she cares about and eager to please them in any way, and she's like that because she has a deep rooted inadequacy complex that plagues every second of her existence. Her only real goal is to make Oliver happy (specifically, get rid of the emotional hole in him) so she goes out of her way to do things for him, sometimes as an apology, and others just to make him feel better. But under that kindness, she considers herself incredibly volatile, dangerous and selfish. And she is so utterly horrified by herself that she would rather lie and hide the truth than explain things.

Their dynamic works really well because Oliver, being a vindictive little shit, constantly belittles her both verbally and internally in order to get her to leave him alone, at least until he realized that she quite quickly internalizes the things he says and he starts trying to be more thoughtful.

And Dindet, being so steadfast in her singular goal, just *wont* quit. Its unstoppable force meets immovable object and one of them is bound to give.

And then there's Oliver and Douglass <3

Douglass is an all around good kid with a good heart. He is friendly and relatively well mannered, sort of awkward and somewhat hyper aware of his interpersonal relationships. He knew Oliver before he started transition, and they had been friends before Oliver's mom died. He is incredibly loyal and kind and understanding- especially with his best friend. He knows Oliver's personality inside and out and goes out of his way to avoid topics of conversation that would turn his mood sour, but also knows when to call Oliver out on his shit. He cares incredibly deeply for his friends, and makes an effort to talk to them whenever possible and cherishes the moments they have together. He is responsible but feigns being oblivious a lot of the time, and is one who values communication.

Douglass for Oliver is the only other person he is ever really comfortable talking to, partly due to the raport they have with eachother but also because Ols is a shit ass liar and Douglass isn't afraid to call him out on it. Despite his thorny nature, Oliver would trust Douglass with his secrets and personal history because He is intuitive enough to know when things aren't okay. Oliver is also quite incredibly jealous of Douglass, mostly because he is cis, but also because he knows that he is a good person and doesn't think he is a worthy friend, regardless of what Douglass says. He also recognises that on some level, Douglass has a crush on him which inadvertently fuels his negative self esteem as Oliver feels that he would be much better off with someone who deserved the amount of compassion and care that Douglass gives him.

And ironically, Douglass knows this already, which is why he doesn't really pursue Oliver romantically despite desperately wanting to. He sets boundaries for himself and tries very hard not to cross them, knowing that if he did, it could potentially ruin their slowly rebuilt relationship.

I'm SORRY I just really wanted to rant and rave about my kids T~T

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nadiineross · 5 years ago

Note

Print: “How do you 'accidentally' achieve immortality?"

note: abt ur prompts.. i ….actually was planning a fic abt immortality but i dont think itll be done for ages so i slammed this one out. i also made a few posts abt superhero aus btw :’). i watched hercules for the first time in like a decade bc of ur other prompt and wow…. hades is still so funny DSJFHSKH ok anyway i prolly wont write a lot in the coming month bc semesters starting next week BUT i can type out some headcanons for prompts u give me, if u guys r interested in that?

i didnt proofread this and i dont want to because i am Lazy anyway thank u sm for continuing to talk to me abt chlodine yrs down the road. pls feel free to send in ur chlodine headcanons or if u jus wanna scream abt them

Nadine’s been alive for a long time, and so nothing really surprises her anymore. But, then again, Chloe is always her exception.

They first meet in India, only a passing thing. Being alive for so long, well, it gets boring. Nadine, also, could never really handle being purposeless. She enjoys having goals and working hard to achieve them, and she definitely enjoys the brief period, afterwards, where she relishes in those achievements.

It was easier, before, to find purpose: fighting. There were a lot of wars and Nadine was good at it. She was, and is, by all accounts, remarkable. However, to preserve her anonymity, she allows herself to dissolve into the unknowns of history.

She has had many names, most of which she has since forgotten. But, her first, she will not forget: Nadine. It is that name she gives to Chloe, and it is the one Chloe knows her by.

At that time, in India, she had nothing to do. It seemed the age of fighting as she knew it was coming to a close, and she grew bored.

Of course, this wasn’t a new experience; Nadine can hardly find anything she has not experienced. Usually, she travelled. She’s been to most places, but they were always changing, and this was something she appreciated on a deep level.

India, she has not visited in almost four decades.

On her first night, she eats a feast on her own. The restaurant owners were impressed, to say the least.

It is routine, her travels. During the day, she sees the sights, explores the places that have changed the most and visits those that she loved the last time she was here. When nightfalls, again, she feasts. Sometimes, when she isn’t too tired, she’ll take someone to bed.

This, she does rarely. It is, after all, hard to find a woman interested in other women in this world. Harder, even, to find one who isn’t interested in a long term investment, since Nadine is not very interested in the part where she outlives everyone. It isn’t a pressing issue, though. She has needs, sure, but she is patient, and sex did not fall very high on her list of priorities.

Besides, she understands. The consequences of being a woman like her are grave and not a lot of people would want to risk their lives for a fling.

Chloe is only her second in India.

There is a river, a half day’s walk away from where she’s staying. It is her second to last night in India, and there aren’t a lot of things she is itching to see, so she decides to make the walk.

By the time she gets there, the sun is hanging low in the sky, not yet set, but almost. She’s sweating from the heat and the oppressive humidity characteristic of the Indian climate. So, naturally, she unbuttons the first few buttons of her shirt and leans over the edge to splash water over her face.

It is a relief on her skin, and she looks up to gasp out a breath when she sees her. Chloe, shameless creature that she is, watches her.

Nadine doesn’t know how she didn’t notice the woman lounging in the water before now. Bewildered, Nadine blinks at her and feels very bare, suddenly hyper-aware of the droplets running down her face and into her shirt.

“Hello,” Nadine finally says. She is good with languages—there isn’t a lot to do when you’ve been alive for a few centuries.

“Hey.” She swims over until Nadine can see her smirk with distinct clarity, until her bare shoulders come up, but does not go farther up the shore. “Not from around here?”

Nadine raises an eyebrow. Clearly not. “No,” she says.

“Huh. Chloe, nice to meet you,” says she, extending a wet hand from the water. Nadine has to slosh into the water to take it and give it a firm, short up-down shake.

It’s a strange name, given the context, and this whole thing takes her off guard. She stupidly blurts out: “Nadine.”

Chloe’s grin becomes wider. She doesn’t try to hide the way she eyes Nadine’s open shirt. Nadine isn’t dense, either, so she knows when there is an opportunity she could take, is she wanted.

She’s not sure yet.

“And you? Are you from around here?”

Humming noncommittally, Chloe stands, abruptly, to her full height and walks around Nadine to the shore. She is naked, and Nadine has to swallow a lump in her throat.

Nadine has seen a lot of women, and she can say with certainty that Chloe is one of the most beautiful she has seen. She tries not to stare and succeeds, given that she has excellent self-control. Though she will admit, Chloe certainly tested her in that moment.

“Where are you from?” Chloe asks as she picks up a shirt strewn across a rock and slips into it. Now, Nadine notices the pair of pants and shoes hidden behind the rock.

Nadine smiles, wryly, aware that she is giving more information than she is receiving. “Africa.”

Chloe doesn’t seem to take offence at her brusqueness. Just laughs. “Ah.” Then, because Chloe is so brave and so young, barely thirty by the looks of it, she stoops and holds up her pants, and asks, “Should I bother with these or are we going to address… what should I call it? The tension?”

Oh, how they address it.

After, as Chloe disappears into the trees on the other side of the river, Nadine realizes that she is entirely, profoundly, surprised.

Nadine has met many bold women; she can be one herself when she wants to be. Chloe, she never really forgets, but she is filed away into a tiny corner of her mind, fading away until Nadine never really thinks about it unless she is alone at a river and has run out of things to think about.

Besides, World War II has started, and she’s occupied with killing those Nazi bastards. She doesn’t enlist in any army—can’t exactly fly under the radar there—but she has connections and resources, and works perfectly well alone.

In the face of all this, Chloe is not forgotten, but she is not remembered.

And Nadine’s life goes on, and on, and on, as it is wont to do.

Nadine doesn’t know why she never dies. It just happened or, more precisely, it just never happened.

Her parents did. She never really knew her father, as her mother raised her, but she does know he died. Her mother, she held as she passed.

Years later, people began to talk. Nadine turned thirty, and that was it.

She doesn’t know if she can die at all, but she isn’t interested in testing her theories. She has avoided fatal wounds for so long; she won’t stop now.

Sure, she has suffered and has felt like she might die, but she doesn’t think she wants to die. There are so many things she wants to know.

So, she decided, a century into her life, that she would not question it. She isn’t at all old enough to have been there for the Trojan War, but she does know not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It is the 2000s and Nadine begins to feel a little existential. She will not fight in wars now, given the stakes and, especially, given her moral compass. Well, at least not official ones. She has accepted that she is a little bit of a vigilante, and she’s focusing on bettering her own home.

Always levelheaded, she never bites off more than she can chew. She only takes to the streets every few weeks. In the meantime, she decides to get into academia.

If she’s so keen on learning, why wouldn’t she go to school? Human achievement is impressive!

She has one PhD already and is working on her second. She has just started, meeting her advisor for only the third time, when she sees a flash of red in the hall, heading towards the History department.

It’s a woman with jet black hair, ponytail swinging. Before Nadine can think to squint, she’s rounded the corner and is gone.

Blinking, Nadine turns away and heads to the courtyard. She likes to sit on the grass and do her research there. Small pleasures.

It’s been an hour, maybe two, when a shadow casts over. Strangely, she feels her heart start to beat faster before she even looks up.

“Hello,” she says, throwing an arm over her forehead to shade herself from the afternoon sun.

Chloe in the flesh. She puts on the same old smirk and looks down at Nadine with her hands on her hips. “Hey, you.”

Nadine raises an eyebrow as she sits down and makes herself at home on Nadine’s picnic blanket, among her sea of books.

“Well, look at you.” Chloe keeps on grinning, shark-like. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“You’re too kind,” Nadine says, thinly. “And neither have you, by the looks of it.”

Dismissively, Chloe waves a hand and tosses her ponytail over her shoulder. “No need to flatter me, you’ve already gotten into my pants.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Much, at least, she thinks. Then, wonders if, perhaps, she is dreaming.

“That’s nice.” Chloe leans closer, growing serious but retaining her persistent underlying curiosity. “Oh, Nadine, what are you?”

Nadine snorts. “Always so bold.”

She shrugs. “Places to be, things to know, people to do. I’m a busy girl.”

Like a shark, Nadine thinks again. She keeps her mouth shut for a few moments, just watching Chloe watching her. As Nadine recalls her memories of Chloe, she notes that Chloe mostly hasn’t changed. Finally, she leans back on an arm and says, “Looks to me like you have all the time in the world.”

“Hm.” Chloe lifts a hand, maybe to touch her arm, maybe to push her hair out of her face, maybe to cup her cheek. Nadine will never know. She tenses, instinctively swaying back a little. Chloe’s hand drops down, but she keeps on smiling. “You’re immortal, then. All the time in the world.”

Nadine doesn’t say anything, just waits for Chloe to draw her conclusions.

“How long have you… been like this?”

Nadine pretends to think. “About a century or five now. You?”

“Well, I was thirty-four when I met you,” Chloe wonders aloud, tilting her head as she does the math. At this, Nadine frowns and, upon seeing this, Chloe huffs a laugh. “Yes, actually thirty-four.”

That makes her roughly two centuries old. Nadine doesn’t know how to feel about this, about everything, about Chloe. She had been, to her knowledge, alone in this for three centuries. Never once had she met someone else like this, and she didn’t want to, she doesn’t think. She had always been slow to trust.

She never tried to think about this too hard; she doesn’t know how it works—is she contagious? But none of the other women turned immortal after going to bed with her. Still, she worries at her lip and examines Chloe.

“How?”

“How am I like this?”

She nods.

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “Quid pro quo.”

Nadine rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. I just never died.” She sighs, harshly, and closes the book in her lap with a full clap. “I don’t know.”

“That’s alright,” Chloe says, gently. This time, when she reaches out, to touch her wrist, Nadine lets her. Chloe looks down at the point of contact, seemingly charmed. Then, after a beat, meets Nadine’s eyes again and smiles. “Well, I don’t know how exactly it worked, but this was an accident.”

“��what?” Nadine scoffs. “How do you ‘accidentally’ achieve immortality?”

Chloe looks sheepish now. “I went into an ancient temple and mucked around, and maybe I broke something, and… well, here I am.”

Suddenly, struck by the urge to lie down for a decade or at least go somewhere more private for this discussion, Nadine shoves her books into her bag and stands. Chloe, startled, mirrors her movements and then stills as Nadine rolls up the blanket and easily hefts everything up.

“Uh, what’s going on?”

Nadine picks up her baseball cap and puts it on, and then sweeps an arm towards the paved path. “We’re going to my apartment.”

A little dumbly, Chloe follows along. “Who’s bold now?”

Nadine gives her a look, and Chloe just smiles, looking away with a shrug. They make the journey in silence, Nadine’s is a stubborn one, and Chloe’s obliging. When they reach the apartment, Nadine lets her in first and gestures to the couch. It’s not a very big apartment, but it’s comfortable and in an alright neighbourhood.

After Nadine puts her bag away, she comes back to see Chloe leaning over the back of the couch to look out her window. She twists back around as Nadine sits.

“You alright?”

Nadine looks up at her, eyes hooded. “Ja.”

Chloe smiles, a kind one. She has such an expressive face. Nadine wants to run her hands over the dips and curves of it. Wants to feel a little more grounded in reality—is she really not dreaming?

The urge to just ask disappears in a moment as Nadine comes back to herself, feeling safer on her own turf.

“So, this is where you’re from.” It’s not a question, but Nadine nods anyway.

“Originally. I don’t remember exactly where but I grew up farther inland and then moved to the coast later before my mother passed.” Nadine rubs a hand at her temple. Tired. “They both died. I’m the only— I was the only one. For the longest time, I was the only one.”

Chloe shifts, an unidentifiable emotion drifting across her face. “Nadine.”

She sighs and says, “I don’t want your pity.”

“You don’t have it,” she says, not ungently. “It’s been a long time.”

For once, Nadine allows herself to give in. She leans over until she falls, turning her face to press her nose into the hard muscle of Chloe’s tensed thigh, just above the knee. She hugs her arms to her chest and counts her breaths. Chloe sighs, too, and puts her hand in Nadine’s hair.

Nadine’s back is to Chloe.

It’s been a long time.

So, this is how it happened.

She was abandoned by her mother and raised by a father who wanted a son. He loved her, regardless. He just taught her the ways of his trade.

Her childhood was spent scaling the shelves of libraries as he did his research and sitting uncomfortably still as he spoke to “experts” in their homes. When she was old enough, by his standards, he took her out to ancient ruins, and they explored.

It could be dangerous; she broke a few bones on these adventures. Most never healed properly, and so bumps and scars littered her body.

The worst, the one that almost killed her, occurred in the temple.

Her father passed a few years before, to disease. She carried on his work, suddenly alone. His life’s work: a crumbling ruin.

She had spent days scouting it out, hidden behind a waterfall, like in the legends. She was nervous. Afraid that her father’s work would amount to nothing, that the life she had led without him would’ve turned out to be a waste.

So, she spent days by the falls and walking along the river. It was there that she met Nadine.

She had thought Nadine was a figment of her imagination at first, peeking out from the top of the water. A beautiful, sweaty spirit of the wilds, dressed like an average person.

A blessing she received.

That night, she went in. There were traps, which she expected, and treasures, which she had desperately hoped for. In the centre, buried underneath layers of chambers, was the Tusk.

She got greedy.

Traps triggered—

The Tusk, she held to her chest—

She curled over, protecting it from falling rubble and—

The tip, sharp and shiny, punctured her middle. It was shallow, but still, she cried out and tripped, and the spear she landed on went too far in to be considered shallow.

She doesn’t remember the details; all she knows is that she came back to herself while crawling out the collapsing entrance, sticky with blood.

She hid the Tusk away, for later, and stumbled her way to the nearest town, broken spear sticking out from her ribs.

Half a year later, freshly healed and free from the doctor, she went back. The Tusk was still bloodied, and a gem from the tip of the Tusk had fallen out somewhere. At least, it made up for all her suffering in gold.

In the face of all that, Nadine was not forgotten, but she was not remembered.

Feeling awkward and uncomfortable, having been vulnerable for the first time in almost half a millennia, Nadine sits up and grimaces. Chloe opens her bleary eyes and stretches.

“What time’s it?”

Nadine could look at her watch, but she grabs hold of Chloe’s forearm. “Does it matter?”

Chloe looks down and frowns. “I suppose not. What’s happening?”

“Do you want to address the tension?”

Chloe’s muscles relax slowly. She kicks her sneakers off and, in one swift movement, shrugs Nadine’s hand off and settles into her lap. Her mouth descends onto Nadine’s.

This time is almost like the last, fast and sloppy. Except they do it three more times, at least, and afterwards Chloe settles in beside her and stays till morning.

Nadine also has many scars, and Chloe maps them all out just as Nadine does to her.

“So, am I the older woman or are you the older woman?”

Nadine bites into her skin, licking a soothing stripe along the scar tissue there.

Chloe groans and looks down. “Does that mean I should shut up?”

Nadine gives her an unimpressed look. “Yes.”

“Okay,” she breathes, hand flying to the back of Nadine’s head. “Whatever you say.”

South Africa is best experienced in the weeks after Summer has passed, in Chloe’s very vocal opinion, and maybe that’s why the days she spends holed up in Nadine’s apartment feels a little like paradise.

She is not the sentimental type, and Chloe even less so, but there is something to be said for attachments. She had forgotten.

Chloe even admits that she was only here because she saw Nadine’s picture and wanted to use Nadine for information on why she‘s the way she is. Nadine doesn’t take it too personally, because she would’ve done the same, probably.

It ends, of course, as all things do. Not permanently, but Chloe isn’t the type to stay still, and Nadine’s set her sights on finishing this damn degree.

They agree, in five years, they will return to the tree, the patch of grass, and try again.

Nadine feels like she has aged the five centuries she had powered through almost numbly in the span of those five years.

They kept in contact because neither of them is the type to make significant, corny gestures like that. Over text, Chloe echoes the sentiment.

For Nadine, it is as if Chloe had barged in, reminded Nadine that she was in control of the remote and that hitting the fast forward button on life wasn’t the only option.

“Why do you chase after violence?” came her voice, tinny over the phone. She was in Russia.

“Do I?”

Chloe hums. “All your wars, your crusades. You insist you don’t want to die and yet…”

Nadine raises her eyebrows and finishes typing out her sentence before pushing back on her desk chair. Her first instinct is to be defensive, but Chloe starts to hum tunelessly, and it reminds Nadine that not everything is a fight to be won and— “Ah.”

“Do you wanna talk about something else?” Chloe laughs, then, and jokes, “My abandonment issues? Inability to sit still? Maybe how I’m greedy and selfish?”

Nadine smiles softly. “It’s okay.” She clears her throat. “I think I just got scared of losing people and just, frankly, losing in general, with life and all. I took being independent to the next level. I forgot the value in doing things senselessly, and in a way that’s exactly what I did.”

“How do you mean?”

Nadine shrugs even though Chloe can’t see. “I don’t know why I’m immortal, and I didn’t want to know. What makes me deserving of eternal life and not anyone else? So, I thought only of what I would do with this and doing those things. I’m good at fighting. Why wouldn’t I fight? And I can’t die—there are causes I could give myself to.

“I mean, there were moments, in between, where my thought would wander, of course.” Nadine pauses, feeling nonsensical. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s alright. I get it.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“Anytime, love.” Another breathy chuckle. “Literally, anytime. From now until the rest of eternity.”

“Hello,” Nadine says when she feels a shadow loom over her.

There’s a rustling, and then a kiss to her cheek. “Hey there, sleeping beauty.”

It’s been five years.

Nadine opens an eye and sees Chloe peering down with her stupidly beautiful smile. Her fingers graze at Nadine’s cheek, featherlight, and Nadine’s touches over them. Warm.

“So weird how you haven’t aged a day.”

“Ja, I didn’t get a chance to develop stress wrinkles since you left.”

Head thrown back, wind blowing her hair aside, Chloe laughs. Nadine thinks there hasn’t ever been a surprise as nice as Chloe since the dawn of time.

Stooping over, Chloe kisses her.

#THANK U FOR THE PROMPTS THEY R V INSPIRING and also thank u for still caring abt chlodine yrs later #ok i didnt edit this n i wrote this all in one sitting literally 5 seconds ago and this isnt good like plotwise #and the themes r not thought out at ALL but #but i still am proud of myself for slamming this one out #chlodinefics #ask #anonymous

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pharaohfontain · 5 years ago

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Do you feel anxious for no reason? Are you endlessly worrying unnecessarily about your health, finance or life? Are you having panic attacks? Are you constantly on edge and anxious to the extent you can’t even concentrate sometimes? Do you find it difficult sleeping every night? Do you dream so much that you wake up exhausted? Are you constantly judging and micro monitoring yourself? Do you feel lightheaded when you stand up? Are you so tormented by the feeling of anxiety that you think you may be losing your ever loving mind? If you have answered yes to any 3 questions above, chances are you are suffering from one of the many forms of a condition called ANXIETY.

I have chosen to write about anxiety and depression as both are something that has affected me in life, the effects of these two mostly mental conditions prompted me to look around my society and wonder, was I the only one to be affected by this? Am I a special case? my studies have allowed me to understand that depression and anxiety are so prevalent in and around Accra that, I dare propose that 7 in 10 men in Accra suffer from these conditions and it is worsened because most people won’t dare talk about it.

They wont want to talk about it for fear of people’s reaction to their condition or simply for fear that they may be losing their minds so they keep it to themselves. In Accra Ghana there is a stigma on mental conditions or disorder of any kind, so most men in Accra (Both Ghanaian and foreigners in the country) find themselves dependent on alcohol or other forms of self medication just to have a good night sleep or even maintain normal routine.

Why have I chosen Accra as an area for this case study, I live and work in Accra, so naturally this will be a good and easy place in which to carry out research. I dont want to talk about Kumasi or Takoradi because I do not live there, I have spent a lot of time in and around Accra, I have spoke to so many people about this topic, so everything I say here is in most cases word for word the experiences and feelings of too many men within Accra.

For most people the feelings of anxiety especially gets so intense that they even end up going to hospitals, only for the doctor to inform them there is nothing wrong with them.

In many cases these Doctors misdiagnose the patient not because they ran tests on the individual but because the person complains of sensations, without test or ignoring their test which shows clearly that nothing is wrong with the patient, they will place the patient on drugs. Many times they will place these patients on high blood pressure drugs which creates new problems for the patient or worsens the case.

WHAT IS ANXIETY?

According to WEBMD.com the most common form of anxiety is the Generalized anxiety disorder (or GAD) which is characterized by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events with no obvious reasons for worry. People with symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder tend to always expect disaster and can’t stop worrying about health, money, family, work, or school. In people with GAD, the worry is often unrealistic or out of proportion for the situation. Daily life becomes a constant state of worry, fear, and dread.

These generalize anxiety then produces symptoms for the individual that is called panic attacks, these panic attacks can be expressed in a verity of ways; The person can find themselves with racing heartbeats for no apparent reason, they can find themselves sweating in a heightened sense of anxiousness for no apparent reason, they may develop a fear of crowded places, They may develop a hyper dream situation were they dream so much night that it leaves them fatigued in the morning, they may also develop insomnia(sleeping disorder), many advanced anxiety sufferers tend to feel fatigued throughout the day, have a feeling that they may pass out at random times or they may develop a belief that they are losing their minds from the enter affair. Basically the feeling of panic attacks brought on my general anxiety disorder is one where the suffer feels a continued sense of anxiousness and this is a most uncomfortable state of mind to live in, it is paramount to a hellish existence.

In most cases anxiety sufferers find themselves falling naturally into depression.

WHAT IS DEPRESSION?

Depression is a common illness worldwide, with more than 264 million people affected(1). Depression is different from usual mood fluctuations and short-lived emotional responses to challenges in everyday life. Especially when long-lasting and with moderate or severe intensity, depression may become a serious health condition. It can cause the affected person to suffer greatly and function poorly at work, at school and in the family. At its worst, depression can lead to suicide.

The most damaging part of this anxiety problem in Accra is that most men are not even aware that they are suffering from it, so many of them tend to use alcohol as a way to remedy the sensations in the short-term.

According to Healthline Media on http://www.healthline.com, Alcohol is a sedative and a depressant that affects the central nervous system. The first few years or months of using alcohol to manage your anxiety, you will find that drinking alcohol can reduce fears and take your mind off of your troubles. But once drinking is continuous like it usually is, you can build a tolerance to the de-stressing effects of alcohol, and this can make anxiety and stress even more difficult to cope with.

I believe that this is the real reason for the high patronage of bars, hence its high availability all over Accra. You just have to look around you and you will be awestruck once you fully grasp how frequent you will come across a bar all over Accra. Even more surprising is that no matter how small, rundown, big or expensive a drinking spot appears to be, from Sunday to Sunday there will always be men and women drinking from Sunday to Sunday.

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This is not to say that a culture of drinking alcohol is innately bad but after talking to a few people, it has come to my knowledge that most men in Accra today are drinking as a way to cope with the anxiety of living and working in the system, as most men in Accra go to bed and wake up unsure of where the next meal will come from.

Office workers in Accra account for about 30% of the workforce in Accra, the rest are small to medium scale business owners and business men engaged in many different businesses to make honest living. 90% of men in Accra including the office worker go through unbelievable stress that in most cases will cause anxiety and depression, as the system is one that we find constant inflation but the salaries and earnings seem to remain the same or in some cases even reduce.

Most men in Accra even those with wife and children go to bed and wake up with no idea where their next meal will come from, no retirement funds, no social structure that guarantees the children’s education, everything is depended on what the man of the house can bring home. It is sadly expected that this level of stress naturally will be attracted to men in a system like this.

Now we must understand that Ghana in particular is a system that does not really care about the well being of the individual human being, I mean this in the sense that we have no provision for human stress relief, no parks, no programs created with the sole intent of reducing stress or mental trauma in the system, this is the same issue in Ghana’s immediate Brother nation; Nigeria. All we have are the drinking bars and clubbing joints, it is only natural that most men within Accra will turn to alcohol as the major form of stress relief.

Most sickness that men suffer from within Accra can be attributed to an extra-ordinary consumption of alcohol and high stress, these two issues I feel are expressing a prior condition in men that the medical system in Accra have largely ignored. Anxiety can lead to excessive drinking, Anxiety is also a signal that your stress factor is out of control, I feel that if the medical system can start to treat anxiety as a serious issue and look for proper remedies for it, many men and women will be saved from more critical conditions that can come from drinking, high blood pressure brought on through stress of anxiety and also depression which can lead to suicide. I hope this article can open the eyes of all the readers so we can begin talking about this issue, and subsequently pressure our government into doing the needful to help the overwhelming amount of people in society suffering from anxiety.

14 TIPS TO HELP YOU CONTROL YOUR ANXIETY

Take a time-out. Practice yoga, listen to music, meditate, get a massage, or learn relaxation techniques. Stepping back from the problem of life helps clear your head.

Eat well-balanced meals. Do not skip any meals. Do keep healthful, energy-boosting snacks on hand.

Limit alcohol and caffeine, which can aggravate anxiety and trigger panic attacks.

Get enough sleep. When stressed, your body needs additional sleep and rest.

Exercise daily to help you feel good and maintain your health. Check out the fitness tips below.

Take deep breaths. Inhale and exhale slowly.

Count to 10 slowly. Repeat, and count to 20 if necessary.

Do your best. Instead of aiming for perfection, which isn’t possible, be proud of however close you get.

Accept that you cannot control everything. Put your stress in perspective: Is it really as bad as you think?

Welcome humor. A good laugh goes a long way.

Maintain a positive attitude. Make an effort to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.

Get involved. Volunteer or find another way to be active in your community, which creates a support network and gives you a break from everyday stress.

Learn what triggers your anxiety. Is it work, family, school, or something else you can identify? Write in a journal when you’re feeling stressed or anxious, and look for a pattern.

Talk to someone. Tell friends and family you’re feeling overwhelmed, and let them know how they can help you. Talk to a physician or therapist for professional help.

Are you suffering from anxiety? How do you handle the condition? Please share with us below.

Sources:

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

HEALTHLINE MEDIA INC

WEBMD

ANXIETY the BIGGEST PROBLEM that MOST MEN in ACCRA GHANA don’t know they have! Do you feel anxious for no reason? Are you endlessly worrying unnecessarily about your health, finance or life?

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roxannepolice · 6 years ago

Note

Long asks anon again, here to offer my opinion on the current wank. Rey as a character is rather blatantly breaking sw story rules and nothing is going to get SFF fans hackles up like rule breakage. This is root of both the MarySue accusations and current wank. Rey has a tragic backstory thats doubling as the only failure she can call her own. But its a) damn near entirely offscreen and b) serves as convenient justification for why shes competent at near everything that comes up.

Reys instantly good at the force because of a convenient force download that to the best of my knowledge only occured in the noncanon KOTOR II and quite frankly cant blame most of the general audience for not getting because without prior knowledge or the novelizations why would they? She has darkness in her but as so far used and touched it consequence free and its almost entirely symbolically externalized on the Kylo (and in SW symbolism is Real in a way it isnt in other narratives) Shes strong in the force because Light rises to meet Dark but to quote the current crop of movies ‘thats not how the force works) or at least thats never how it worked before. Shes the first SW protagonist to go behind enemy lines and come out with both hands in the second movie. For ppl wondering how come Luke and Ani never get labeled MarySues, this is why, they got thier asses handed to them, Rey hasnt. There /is/ something /off/ in Reys story, and ppl pick up on it. if you can make a post (w/ over 1k notes!) about how great it is that a character meant to prop up 7hrs worth of movies has little to no character development to go through, somethings off. If multiple ppl can make posts about how its neat Rey can tap into the darkside (still characterized as evil in ST) consequence free (with some quite frankly stupid justifications, 'shes disciplined’ really? jedi lacked a lot of things thats not one of them) somethings off and again, if the only failure your main heroine has is /entirely retroactive something’s off/. If the story were getting with the is the story most ppl think we are, a 'female empowerment’ (i dont feel particularly empowered by being told I have an equal chance at being a deus ex machina but ok) than well, her story is over and theres no need for IX (hell it could have been over in TFA, most ppl assumed she had accepted her place as the future jedi in that one) and no need for reylo The ST was always gonna deconstruct all that came before it purely by virtue of being a sequel. The tragedy of anakin skywalker is now a farce, the happy ot ending now a tragedy, and the mythopoetic structure shot to shit in the name of serialization and perpetual warfare. this stand true for all the sequel characters including rey and ben. the only question is are we going to get anything out of it? I compare it to home renovation. You can knock out a wall and the walls gone, but new opportunities arise. With Benlo, I’m reasonably confident that there will be at least some attempt to take advantage of the new space. With rey and the resistance kids? not so much. it just feels like they knocked down a blue wall to rebuild it as pink one and at the point it just feels like a waste of time because ive seen this before. Ive seen pure cinnamon roll desert orphan reform jedi order If this was all youre going to do that the fuck was the point? which circles around to my problem with team good guy this go around and That Scene. JJ twisted the story into a pretzel to justify the winners of the last round being the underdogs again and then rian twisted so much further the storys head may as well be up its own ass. And then at the very end he shoots it all to shit and rushes to reassure us its all gonna be okay. He removes the entire point of the underdog trope /the tension that comes from the fact that they might lose/. I mean there wasnt a whole lot of that to begin with already but really? So theres no tension that Reys gonna win so her journey feels frictionless, and theres no question where shes gonna end up so full offense why give a shit? Thats where the whole 'can rey lose a fight?’ thing comes from. Ppl want conflict in her arc to justify its existence and give us a reason why this her story to begin with. if the only character going through growth for all three movies is ben, if the only characters whos fate is up in the air is ben, and if all the tension in the reylo relationship comes from ben, then why is this /reys story/? why not just make it about the character actually driving all the drama and thus, the story? As a final thought, im going to add that having Kylo be aware and insecure that hes never gonna be as Iconic as Vader was a great story choice, regardless of where ends up. Current Rebels, on the other hand, seems to have not gotten the memo that they are never gonna be as iconic as Original Rebels, and the story itself seems to being trying to sell them to me as being better. Rey is Luke but better, Poe/Finn are Han wo the smuggler grit, and id be lying if i said it didnt piss me off.

Long asks anon to kick down ur door again, AND ANOTHER THING. SW is a lotta things. Subtle aint one of them, and St hasnt changed in that regard. If you have to debate it chances are either a) ur arguing counter to the text in which case mor power to you but not really helpful for predictions or intended meaning or b) /it aint there. A bunch of ppl didnt like anidala, but nobody doubted we were supposed to think they were in love by the end of AOTC, bunch of ppl didnt like poes arc, but no one doubts he fucked up by not listening to holdo was the intended take away. Which brings to rey and flaws or lack there of. Were told rey has flaws but she has yet to suffer any real consequences from them with the exception of The Damn Parentage Wank, which again, pulls the double duty of making her hyper competent at everything. Because rey has no consequences for her flaws, from a story function pov there aren’t any. If rey did have a flaw to overcome, we would all agree what it was

Now won’t you all just look at this beautiful, spot on rant which has been lagging in my askbox since the last time Rey’s flaws or lack thereof were the discourse’s focus (November, I believe?) and suddenly became a thing again, courtesy of Tweetgate. I think you really summed up the crux of this debate wonderfully, anon.

I particularly agree with the part about Rey not getting narratively punished for whatever flaws we’d like her to have (great point about returning from behind the enemy lines with both arms still in place), when SW don’t stay away from allowing characters to get “punished” even for otherwise applaudable features - vide Padmé, whose idealism is what Palps manipulates into gaining more power (this is why Padmé will never come off as a Mary Sue or too perfect, btw). But I’ll say even more - Rey doesn’t even get called out on her flaws, except for by Ben, who’s mostly dismissed as a baddie like Palpatine saying Luke was foolish to rely on his friends. Let’s just consider one thing - both Anakin and Luke get called out on their flaws by Yoda (Anakin repeatedly and by lots of other people for that matter) whereas with Rey, the same grumpy-yet-jolly senex pops up from the afterlife to further inform us what a great jedi material she is.

TBH, I have a very cynical theory as to why Rey is being pushed as the main character while it’s difficult to deny that it’s Kylo Ben who does all the plot heavy lifting. I’m pretty sure Ben’s arc was the first one DLF thought out (and the big question is, was it the only one they thought out) and only later on decided to make Rey the main character, which also involved much less spontaneous writing. Mind you, it’s not as if benepemption didn’t have a manufactured subtaste to it, but with Rey’s heroine’s journey stiff structure occasionally substitutes any in-world explanations of her actions (this is why I have to hope renperor has some narrative purpose rather than happening because lovers need to be separated and anti-hero needs to achieve what he wanted in 2nd act). I feel as if whatever potential her character had (and hopefully still has, pending IX) got smothered by layer upon layer of making her likable by everyone, which largely relied on negative characterization: she’s not helpless, she’s not too naive, not cynical, not too emotional, not too emotionless, not morally corruptible, not anything you’ve ever complained about regarding any SW character, not falling for the bad boy, not not not - and in the end it’s kinda difficult to say what Rey is like and while the goal of making her widely likable was achieved, it also made it almost impossible to view her as loveably flawed/annoying like the classic characters. And on top of all this is the matter of making her a nobody just like you!, as DLF appears to say with uncle Sam’s gesture (which also kinda assumes the existence of a Star Wars fan as some uniform entity? because if you identify with her, good for you, I just don’t understand why the franchise assumes I’ll identify with her by the grace of being a SW fan alone), because, as you excellently put it, the message here is that everyone can be chosen by God - which again, it’s not as if the saga ever contradicted this, so why the hell make a case of it? I can’t agree that it’s made into Rey’s flaw, though, imo her low birth only serves to further frame her as an oppressed virtue. And I definitely agree regarding too much of her growth being left off-screen, or before the story ever begins. The problem here isn’t even that it is left off-screen (it’s not as if we had huge insight into any of the pt or ot characters) but rather that her characterizations is left off-screen while being depicted as at least untypical (unique to put it bluntly) for her situation (same goes for Finn). A hopeful, kind person growing up on her on her own in slavery under a nicer name is a rarity and DLF makes a case for it being a rarity - and this sparks up curiosity in her past, as if market pandering to Re/sky wasn’t enough. So from this pov her un-reveal being frustrating isn’t just a case of not wanting to love her or her self only a potentially deeper psychological question getting answered with well, light.

I should add, Ben’s arc feels like the most spontaneous one (though Finn’s may yet be a masterpiece) and he’s the one to admit his fear of not living up to Vader’s legacy, because I think he’s the character serving as the creators’ vessel, more or less like Luke was Lucas’ avatar in ot. In his fear regarding Vader’s legacy one can feel Disney’s fear due to having bought popculture’s holy grail and not being entirely sure what to do with it. On this background, Rey (a literal scavenger of OT’s pieces) and rebels 2.0 repeatedly blessed by Leia come off as what DLF would want to be. And the result is that the character which was supposed to be Vader 2.0 proves the most original and surprising one, whereas “breaths of fresh air” come off as room aromatizers with “fresh” written on them.

And as far as the plot being bended into a pretzel and then disappearing up it’s own ass, well, a part of me is still hoping that taking virtually the same villains as before is a mythological-psychoanalitical metaphor of a nigredo repeating itself until the unconscious gets accepted by the conscious…. but, tbh, as the leaks flow this hope is withering.

#asks #cleaning up the askbox #long asks anon #sw negativity #let rey free from the corset disney

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undeadentropy · 2 years ago

Text

You know what? I'm not done. Cause yall got me fucked up with this one. So you got allistic Bob. Bob is very normal. His hobbies include talking about the weather and maybe a sports?? Literally every hobby I thought of could be perceived as autistic. But we'll get to that in a minute.

So. Your telling me that:

Bob might find a new hobby, but he takes it slow, not letting it get too passionate, or detract from other parts of his life. Okay, odd level of restraint, makes me wonder if Bob understands what it means to find something fascinating. But I'll accept it.

When Bob is busy doing stuff, his mind remains on the world at large as well, not by training, but animal instinct. He is hyper aware of the packs vibe without even thinking about it. Either that, or Bob is incapable of engrossing himself to begin with. Assuming it's not the tragic second one, that sounds like a great gift, a skill that takes years to learn ingrained in your subconscious from the get go, and I'm assuming not prone to screwing up on occasion.

For a guy with only passing interests and no focus, Bob lives like he has no fear, or maybe just doesn't care what happens to him. You see, Bob just goes with the flow. No plan, no problem. He will just go do things, never once asking what to even expect.

Then again, plans aren't his thing. Each day to plays out however. It doesn't faze him one bit. He requires no consistency or schedule, feeling perfectly safe being pitched about in the storming waves of uncertain life.

But don't bother asking him deep questions about how he lives the way he does. Can't be bothered. If he doesn't have a immediate answer, he'll just shrug it away, or maybe make something up. I assume he thinks it's rude not to have all the answers immediately. Allistics treat every conversation like a speed round of twenty questions. Because that's a normal way of communicating anything.

Bob is an extrovert, like all the normals. This one I understand in concept, but not that introvertedness is a disorder. Like, needing to rest after being social is aberrant behavior. Apparently?

Also, decisions are easy to make for Bob, since he really doesn't need any real context. It's nice, but hardly mandatory. He'll just toss a coin or whatever. Not to break the cycle of indecision. Just to speed things along. Bob knows it's rude to hesitate or think when dealing with others. What kind of weird creep would only make a decision if they understood what they were deciding?

Same with emotions. They aren't complex, like ever. You just feel like you feel. Simple.

Bob is very agreeable. Give him a task or a rule, he'll be on it like white on rice. Don't even bother explaining it. Dont ask why he trusts literally anyone to know what they're talking about. Why do you even need to know why? That's such a weirdo thing to care about.

Lastly, Bob will never once in his life bother to ask himself why he does anything he does. All that matters is that everyone else is doing it, or someone told him to do it. Actually, this isn't Bob.

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

Okay, this might be my longest rant, but it was an interesting thought exercise. I see two options at the moment. Either this list isn't that accurate, with allistic people having at least a few of these traits, but just somewhat diminished.

Or allistic people, and I hate to say this because it summons a fedora on top of my head, are all sheeple. No one could have all these traits at full capacity all the time, and still be capable of a single independent thought, much less any sort of innovation or personal growth. If this really is what it means to be nowhere on the spectrum, I kinda think they're the ones with the disability. It might allow them to function, but as nothing more than a useful drone. It's like some sort of brainwashing cult shit, and it's tragic.

It's gotta be a sliding scale. Autism is when it gets to the point it makes life hard. But as gross as it feels to say it, everyone has to be a little autistic, in order to be a real individual person. I know people like our friend stanley do exist, but I don't think I'm convinced that stanley is what it means to be normal. Cause that shit ain't normal.

POV: mister Devon Price, PhD, telling me that I am right about everything

Source: Unmasking Autism, discovering the new faces of neurodiversity

#autism #maybe autistic #rant #mental health

129K notes · View notes

shadowed-moonrise · 7 years ago

Text

ooc: elia and ashka chat logs

[ooc comments supposed to be removed but i might have missed some. there is a Lot of logs bc we forgot to post until now]

shadowed-moonrise

oh my god what is WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE

shadowed-moonrise

i got some horrifying anons!!! theyre so horrifying!!!!!!!

flameofcertainty

hang on let me turn off my blacklist for a moment

quick question: what the fuck

(not directed at you!)

shadowed-moonrise

i just

wow????

they sent me a followup ask like 'didnt you read what i said, my gf likes it'

shadowed-moonrise

and............... i dont....... think she does

like that does not sound like a healthy relationship and i hope they just made it up to creep on me

flameofcertainty

"hi i'm a rapist"

"wtf"

"no but she likes when i rape her"

i just

*what the fuck*

shadowed-moonrise

right

WHAT THE FUCK.

shadowed-moonrise

i was just talking earlier abt how i dont actually like that anybody can read my hyper posts but i make them on publicblog for like Awareness right?

shadowed-moonrise

and i thought i meant like abstractly, like maybe theres somebody reading them and cackling bc they dont agree w/ my politics or whatever?

but APPARENLTY

APPARENTLY

people will send me creepy asks about raping their hyper gf

flameofcertainty

some people are just really terrible?

i guess?

what are they even getting out of this?

shadowed-moonrise

i think some people just........ enjoy making other people suffer????

or maybe somehow they thought i would be like "i think this is hot or a good thing to do or whatever, thank you for your service to the hypersensitive community"

i dunno what goes on in these peoples head

shadowed-moonrise

heads

flameofcertainty

maybe tumblr just hates hypersensitives or something

it would explain a lot

shadowed-moonrise

like, okay, but what would you hate hypersensitives for

like theres somebody who hates hypos (and IS A NAT THERAPIST, AUGH) for.... not hating pollution enough, i guess

but hypersensitives are boring? we dont go outside much bc the outside is fully of scary?

flameofcertainty

maybe tumblr is just weird like that?

or maybe we're easy targets?

shadowed-moonrise

oh yeah that makes sense

flameofcertainty

most meso folks don't have a button they can press to get a reaction out of us

shadowed-moonrise

if you wanna make somebody suffer its so easy to target people with a big 'make me suffer' button

flameofcertainty

right

shadowed-moonrise

ugh im sort of regretting making it public

i could have just not mentioned it and had a really good blacklist

flameofcertainty

most of the time people aren't that bad

and then there'll be a week or two

where people send you nothing but asks about pollution

shadowed-moonrise

i blacklist some stuff but im generally okay talking about pollution if its like, abstract, so i dont do it that aggressively and then........ sometimes............. people take advantage of that

shadowed-moonrise

i wish you could like, have vulnerabilities without people just randomly deciding to fuck with you for no reason

flameofcertainty

yeah

flameofcertainty

hang on

i just scrolled down

>i’ll put my foreign object ;;;;) in your body ;;;;) ;;;;)

***what the fuck***

shadowed-moonrise

yeah.

oh GOD

i just got

another

flameofcertainty

oh no

how bad is it

shadowed-moonrise

bad enough im not sure i should tell you what it says

flameofcertainty

my brain is helpfully providing suggestions

why is it like this

are you okay

shadowed-moonrise

im.... probbly going to be in a minute

fuck

"the last "person" to hide their caste on this hellsite turned out to be red. i bet you aren't even hyper, you're just pretending so people won't suspect. i know what you really are."

thats what it says

flameofcertainty

aaaaaaaa

what the fuck

flameofcertainty

why would anyone send that to you

shadowed-moonrise

i dont know

what did i *do*

flameofcertainty

i don't know

fuck

i guess if they think you're red that would explain why they hate you?

but seriously

what the fuck

flameofcertainty

i'm so sorry

flameofcertainty

why would anyone say that

shadowed-moonrise

anon hate doesnt usually get to me like this but

sob

why

the fuck

i dunno if they even really think that or they just want to upset me

flameofcertainty

i don''t

i don't know

fuck i'm so sorry

are you going to be okay

shadowed-moonrise

yeah. yeah.

flameofcertainty

is there anything i can do

shadowed-moonrise

i dont

think so

flameofcertainty

other than not be the sort of terrible person who would send those messages

shadowed-moonrise

thamk you for not being htat sort of person!

im so glad most people arent

flameofcertainty

it's really not hard

shadowed-moonrise

oh i can... go take some eytelia right now

it will only help in 40min but i might still need it then

shadowed-moonrise

brb

shadowed-moonrise

ok back

flameofcertainty

okay

anyways what the fuck

shadowed-moonrise

someday i will have coping mechanisms other than "get high in a way that coincidentally also helps"

flameofcertainty

i mean if it helps

then that's a lot better than nothing

shadowed-moonrise

yeah it is

shadowed-moonrise

im gonna go curl up and not look at the Fuckening Internet, i guess

flameofcertainty

seems reasonable

shadowed-moonrise

ttyl <3

flameofcertainty

ttyl :)

shadowed-moonrise

hiiiiiiiiiiii im back im not sad anymore because im so high

shadowed-moonrise

i got another horrible anon and i dont even caaaare

flameofcertainty

i'm glad you're feeling better

sorry about the terrible anon

shadowed-moonrise

also did you know art is pretty

its so pretty

flameofcertainty

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

i saw a video of a yellow playing the yellowest instrument ever and i wanted to send it to you but tumblr messages werent working on my everything

maybe i can find it again..........

shadowed-moonrise

http://theyre-a-geeky-witch.tumblr.com/post/138457594516/ here

flameofcertainty

that's actually really pretty

flameofcertainty

thanks

flameofcertainty

anyways what's up

shadowed-moonrise

i gotta work in a couple hours

by which time hopefully i will be able to handle it

idk i dont HATE it but its hard on the badbrains

flameofcertainty

i can imagine

shadowed-moonrise

like i feel ok now bc hiiiiiigh but im not very excited about leaving the house and going places

shadowed-moonrise

there will be a green party where im supposed to just pretend to be green tho!

i like those

flameofcertainty

that part sounds nice

at least

shadowed-moonrise

ive been thinking & writing a lot about how thinking-on-drugs works and greens always wanna talk about that

shadowed-moonrise

one time a client had me go to a thing pretending to just be green and it was nice and then she *told everyone she hired me* while i was in the middle of talking about my cs paper (my actual cs paper, which i actually wrote, and she implied i didnt even though i CLEARLY THOROUGHLY UNDERSTOOD IT)

flameofcertainty

???

why would she do that??

shadowed-moonrise

i wish i had just walked away but i didnt know what to do

some people....... have a humiliation kink

shadowed-moonrise

and like, okay, ill do that if you WARN ME, but you cant just spring it on me???

flameofcertainty

i am super not a sex worker but "tell people in advance" seems really obvious

shadowed-moonrise

YEAH

shadowed-moonrise

i didnt really say anything at the time bc i was so shocked but later i like messaged her and was like 'thats super fucked up'

shadowed-moonrise

she didnt really get it but she agreed to pay me extra for like, i didnt know what service i was providing beforehand & thats more costly

but she only engaged with it in like, super businessy terms

flameofcertainty

how does she not get it

this does not seem particularly hard to understand

shadowed-moonrise

i think she was like 'im paying you for both sex work and going to a party so i can just like do whatever, right?'

and there was also some like 'greys are toys'

shadowed-moonrise

fucking blues

shadowed-moonrise

i do not usually go in that much for caste solidarity because im so bad at grey + greys are not great about that but in that moment if somebody asked me i would have supported a military government

i could explain 'pay people for services and also lay out terms beforehand' but not 'greys are.... people..... dont be a fucking asshole'

flameofcertainty

i don't think i've ever actually talked to a blue

at least not to say more than "excuse me, can i get through" or "the soap is in aisle five"

huh

shadowed-moonrise

there... exist blues who are okay

there even exist blues who are okay and hire sex workers and do kinky things about castes with them

flameofcertainty

i believe you

shadowed-moonrise

like 80% of the people who hire me are entirely fine?

flameofcertainty

they can't possibly all be terrible

otoh a terrible blue can screw you over a lot more than a terrible purple

shadowed-moonrise

yeah.

im not sure what i would do if a blue client did something illegal to me because...................................... im not sure what i CAN do

flameofcertainty

probably depends on how illegal

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

and who they are

flameofcertainty

yeah

there are supposed to be reporting systems in place if they try to pay you to kill someone or something

idk if they actually do that

shadowed-moonrise

nobody has tried that and i havent heard anybody talking about that but im pretty niche and a lot of my family is green, idk

i feel like if somebody wanted to pay a grey to kill somebody theyd pick one who has ever held a gun

flameofcertainty

probably

but yeah, i'm guessing if you made an important blue mad they could screw you over pretty badly

idk

shadowed-moonrise

nodnod

ugh sorry ive been talking about my shit this whole time

it has been kind of A Day i swear i am usually better at conversation

flameofcertainty

it's totally fine!

shadowed-moonrise

how is your day anyay

flameofcertainty

it's been okay

mira and i went to check out that social-dancing place

shadowed-moonrise

oooh

what kind of dance is it?

i guess i might not know purple dances??

flameofcertainty

i don't know if the name will translate

it's mostly the kind you do in a group with other people that's really traditional

shadowed-moonrise

group dances are great

if you have... similar amounts of motor skills to the other people

flameofcertainty

yeah

flameofcertainty

i haven't done anything like it in years and i'm really bad at it but it's still fun

and i'm not bad at it in a stepping-on-feet way

which is probably good, idk

shadowed-moonrise

im pretty sure not stepping on feet is strictly better than the alternative!

flameofcertainty

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

omg babybro is home <33

flameofcertainty

baby!!!

shadowed-moonrise

he is so good!!!!!!

he taaalks and he plays with me and ive been teaching him abstract concepts bc i find it really exciting when he knows abstract concepts

flameofcertainty

tell me more about this baby

shadowed-moonrise

he can do numbers up to twelve and circles and triangles and 'many' and 'other' and i asked him what one plus one was and he said 'two ones' which means he *actually understands what it means*

he has adooorable curly hair

and a little nose

and he will boop my nose with his nose if i ask him to

and he loves my weighted blanket

flameofcertainty

baaabbyyyy

what a good baby

shadowed-moonrise

i guess at this point he might not 'technically' be a baby anymore? but hes a baaaabbbyyy

[lemme edit a picture of my irl little brother to have green hair]

https://78.media.tumblr.com/fa8d578702cf6c0ed9269902f535982a/tumblr_messaging_p7ryailotL1vio47i_1280.png

https://78.media.tumblr.com/b8ec991036777a0f24c9ed84a194d921/tumblr_messaging_p7ryanbD931vio47i_250.png

baby!!!! <333

second picture featuring Grey Grandma

flameofcertainty

baby!!!!

baaaabbbbyyyyy

he's so smol

shadowed-moonrise

so small!!!!!

and smiley!!!!

flameofcertainty

happy baby!

shadowed-moonrise

i hope he is happy foreeeeever

shadowed-moonrise

his lil nose is tan bc it gets in the sun more than the rest of his face

bc he has a little baby face!!!!!!!!!!!

flameofcertainty

little baby face on the little happy baby!!!!

he's so good

shadowed-moonrise

hes next to me playing with my blanket

i looove him

flameofcertainty

what a good baby

shadowed-moonrise

i told him i was talking a friend and he says hi

although im not sure he really gets the idea of the internet yet

he seemed kinda confused

flameofcertainty

hi baby-sibling-of-ashka

flameofcertainty

he's such a cute baby

shadowed-moonrise

his name is avidik

we keep arguing about whether to use avi or idi as a nickname

flameofcertainty

hi avidik!!

shadowed-moonrise

oh no he spilled water on the carpet

its alright its a pretty waterproof carpet

he ran at me and jumped in my arms

so!!!! good!!!!!!!

flameofcertainty

eeee

flameofcertainty

baby

flameofcertainty

good baby

shadowed-moonrise

oh also have you seen this yellow violinist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGhPGH2YROA

seems like your kind of thing

flameofcertainty

wow that's pretty

shadowed-moonrise

oh i could take a picture of avi with my violin

he is not green, technically

although he also does not know how to play even a little bit

flameofcertainty

do you play violin too?

shadowed-moonrise

a little

shadowed-moonrise

im not like good at it

but it is fun

rn i am mostly actually learning to sign but i dont understand how notes correspond to mouth sounds so if i need to sightread i play songs on the violin first and then once ive heard them i can sing them

flameofcertainty

violin is great

shadowed-moonrise

it is!!!

i always felt like i should learn piano bc its easy but i like violin so much

one of my other brothers writes a lot of synth music

its really good

he plays it without telling us it's his to get unbiased answers and then he tells us and were like HOLY SHIT

flameofcertainty

gosh

flameofcertainty

that's really sweet

shadowed-moonrise

ok i’m not really online but I TAUGHT AVIDI A LETTER

HE KNOWS A LETTER

i’m so proud of him

shadowed-moonrise

hi hi

flameofcertainty

a letter!

what a good smol!

flameofcertainty

which letter is it?

i guess it might not be a letter orvaran has

shadowed-moonrise

it's [forcetranslate]a[/forcetranslate]

or uh

[forceliteral]a[/forceliteral]

shadowed-moonrise

idk if that worked

flameofcertainty

yeah

we have that sound but it's written differently

shadowed-moonrise

nodnod

flameofcertainty

it's the last one in my name

[preservecharacter] a [/preservecharacter]

shadowed-moonrise

i wonder if its always the same sound

i think it can make a couple sounds in anitami

flameofcertainty

just one in orvaran

flameofcertainty

maybe two

i'm not sure if they're technically separate sounds

and then there's accents and things

shadowed-moonrise

idk if i should try to teach him to read in valtaz

he speaks some but tbh there is just no situation where you even need to be able to read valtaz

flameofcertainty

maybe someday he'll want to swap to yvalta

for some reason

shadowed-moonrise

.............i really doubt it?

i guess if he wants to retire in the Old Country

flameofcertainty

i hear older people sometimes swap for the weather

flameofcertainty

or something

shadowed-moonrise

there are apps to machine translate physical signs and stuff but i guess theyd be annoying to use all the time

flameofcertainty

yeah

if he knows valtaz he can learn to read it if he ever wants to

right?

i'm not really sure how this works

'how to teach your family foreign languages' wasn't really covered in purple school

shadowed-moonrise

i think i should probably teach him the alphabet but not like focus on it

yeah my parents swapped out of yvalta with some retirees who wanted to go there for the weather and were unaffected by the horrible contract system bc they were too old to have more kids anyway

flameofcertainty

i can't really think why else you'd want to live there

flameofcertainty

lineality maybe

but there are other matrilineal countries

shadowed-moonrise

arent most countries matrilineal?

flameofcertainty

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

i think historically matrilineal was easier because like..... there can be ambiguity about who the father is if you dont have good genetic testing (and a database, in some cases), but you can always tell which person a baby literally just came out of

flameofcertainty

that makes sense for why

we're matrilineal

maybe someone who lived in ceredan would swap to yvalta for lineality, ceredan does permissions anyways

except for blues i think

shadowed-moonrise

how do blues even have kids in permissions countries

shadowed-moonrise

"ashka your family is from a permissions country" its not like they talked to blues a bunch

flameofcertainty

i think they have to impress other blues

probably they don't let you give yourself a permission

because then everyone would just do that

shadowed-moonrise

.....how many kids does the most important blue get to have tho

flameofcertainty

no idea

i think it varies by country

the one with the bears and no greys makes a big deal about the monarch only getting two

shadowed-moonrise

i guess with blues its always more "how many kids is it a good idea to have so that they can give them all a good inheritance" than "how many kids can they literally afford"

aww thats kinda cute

shadowed-moonrise

if i lived in a country where the king had like six kids i would be pretty pissed

flameofcertainty

good inheritances might be less important in permissions countries

i bet the way you impress people is with politics

or maybe real estate if you're bribing people, idk

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

it’s impressive that most permissions countries basically function okay

cuz like it seems like blues having to care so much about impressing other blues would mess with things

flameofcertainty

yeah

i don't think they function as well as most places

but that could just be propaganda

shadowed-moonrise

yeahhh idk how to tell the difference between “permissions countries kind of suck” and “permissions countries are usually small, often ex-oahk, etc, which makes stuff harder on them” and “our governments just don’t like them”

i’m low key impressed that blues in auction countries don’t make too many blue credits so they’ll be cheaper, tbh

i guess they super don’t make those decisions in spring + the international community would not be too happy about it

flameofcertainty

everyone i know from a permissions country says they suck but that's like two people

and if you increase blue credits everyone who isn't blue gets mad

shadowed-moonrise

my parents say yvalta sucks and i believe them but like idk how much it’s yvalta’s *fault*

flameofcertainty

i think the big thing is if for some reason a blue hates you a permissions granting blue can screw you over way more than a credit country blue

shadowed-moonrise

yeah that’s a big deal

idk a credit country blue can probably get you sterilized if they try really hard but it would take them more trying

flameofcertainty

yeah maybe

flameofcertainty

i've never heard of that happening in a credit country but that doesn't mean it never does

shadowed-moonrise

nodnod

shadowed-moonrise

anitam is trying out a first child subsidy

which is neat i thin

think

flameofcertainty

cool

are they subsidizing the whole credit?

or just some of it

shadowed-moonrise

noooo theyre starting with like 4%

shadowed-moonrise

and increasing gradually

bc you know how changing laws goes

sooooo sloooowwwww

flameofcertainty

i guess 4% is better than nothing

shadowed-moonrise

but eventually it will be a substantial fraction of the credit i think

flameofcertainty

but probably good not to do it all at once

i know there's some countries where everyone gets one and the rest are auctioned

shadowed-moonrise

first kid free just seems so much more humane? like i understand why credits are useful and stuff but people *just not getting a kid at all ever* is awful

flameofcertainty

summary bank says alavet, av valdin, celenta, fnr, ochero, qoloc

maybe some random tiny countries that no one bothered to include

shadowed-moonrise

nodnod

flameofcertainty

on the list, i mean

and yeah, i see what you mean

i wouldn't want to live in a voan country because i like knowing that if i work really hard i could get three

but it makes me sad to think about people with zero

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

flameofcertainty

i mean probably some people should get zero, like child abusers, but an auction's not going to stop them

shadowed-moonrise

hm i bet in voan/first kid free systems there’s probably a lot of four and five year olds impulsively having kids that they’re not entirely ready for but idk like maybe that’s just something they get to do

flameofcertainty

okay i'm looking at the summary bank article about the voan system

and the age when the most people have their first kid is five

flameofcertainty

but that's not most of the people

if that makes sense

shadowed-moonrise

nodnod

flameofcertainty

i know when i was almost-four they made a big deal in school about how we should all get long-term all-spring birth control

i bet they do that in voa

i guess i don't know for sure

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

i saw someone on tumblr talking about how they usually get the long term birth control and they get went on vacation to the southern hemisphere and just didn’t remember that they didn’t have the birth control and got pregnant

(they were asking if you can still get aftermarket credits in the *fall*)

flameofcertainty

wow

that must suck

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

i hope they managed to get an aftermarket credit

flameofcertainty

yeah

i bet they're cheaper in fall

since most people aren't getting pregnant

i definitely wouldn't want to have a kid with anyone i dated when i was four but maybe some people get really lucky there

shadowed-moonrise

yeah that’s a lot of what i’m thinking about like.... most people don’t know people who are definitely good coparents for them when they’re four

shadowed-moonrise

because it just takes time to figure that out

flameofcertainty

i'd've also been a really bad parent when i was four but some of that is me-things

shadowed-moonrise

yeah that toooo

i’m four and i’m super not ready to be a parent!!

shadowed-moonrise

i feel like i know how to be a good parent in THEORY but in practice i don’t like have the energy or emotional stability

avidi was born the spring i turned four, which was really good <3

flameofcertainty

that's so good

when i was four i was living with a friend rather than my parents

but if someone had dropped a baby on me i'd have been so unprepared

and my friend was living with their parents

flameofcertainty

so there were actual responsible people in the apartment

shadowed-moonrise

nodnodnod

shadowed-moonrise

fall/winter when i was three i was spending a lot of time with friends in other cities and stuff to get awaaay but then they there suddenly like “you know what, we’re having another baby this spring” so i came back

there are some upsides to the fact that my green mom has grey babies.......

flameofcertainty

i have a little sister

i've never actually met her

maybe someday i'll be able to make myself

shadowed-moonrise

oh wow i’m so sorry

flameofcertainty

it's not your fault

shadowed-moonrise

if you want to talk about it, or be distracted from it, or whatever-

flameofcertainty

if you want the story today's a good day for me to tell it

otoh it's definitely pollution-adjacent and i don't know if it's a good day for you

shadowed-moonrise

i think i can handle it, it is a good hypersensitivity day for me

flameofcertainty

so during the voan food crisis we couldn't afford clean food past the first couple months

you'd think living on a farm would help but it had been a bad year the previous year and none of our crops were coming up that season

shadowed-moonrise

oh. oh.

flameofcertainty

and i tried to force myself to eat the polluted food but i couldn't even make myself touch it

that's not the thing yet

so i was at risk of starving to death

and my mom got one of the neighbors to give her a super sketchy probably-illegal loan

flameofcertainty

because otherwise i might literally die

shadowed-moonrise

fuck

flameofcertainty

fast forward to 3423, the neighbor comes and asks for the money back

actually he'd been doing that for a while but she'd been able to put him off

we were super not going to be able to pay it back

and the loan was sketchy enough that she wasn't really sure what would happen if she didn't

just that it would probably be worse than normal

i told her i thought it would be okay

when she asked

flameofcertainty

if she

flameofcertainty

people remember fall 3422 as the introduction of the orvaran system

that was just lathande

spring 3423 was when they rolled it out everywhere

even small farming towns need someone to collect garbage, and the jobs paid really well

they had to, if they wanted to find enough people

i thought i'd be okay

shadowed-moonrise

fuck.

flameofcertainty

yeah

flameofcertainty

i was really really wrong

so wrong

shadowed-moonrise

......yeah wow

flameofcertainty

that's why i wound up moving in with a friend, if i'd stayed there a week longer i'd

it wouldn't have been good

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

flameofcertainty

they didn't try to stop me

which is good

would've been silly for them to go to all that work just for me to end up dead anyways

shadowed-moonrise

hey you survived

flameofcertainty

i did

shadowed-moonrise

it was super worth it for them to do it becuase you survived

flameofcertainty

yeah

i know intellectually she's clean

but trying to be in the same room as dad or my older brother is about the same as lighting myself on fire, brain-wise

and if it's her it's worth

*worse

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

can you talk to them online or does that not work either

flameofcertainty

not really

flameofcertainty

they have my email address

they tell me things like 'you have a sister now'

she tried leaving the job once she had enough money to pay the guy back

flameofcertainty

to see if it would help, you know

flameofcertainty

it. uh. didn't.

shadowed-moonrise

yeah.

i was born in 23, which. is good. because if i found out i/my parents had eaten polluted food when i was a baby

shadowed-moonrise

colorjustice says that almost all unverifiable food was actually not polluted but

shadowed-moonrise

well maybe if i payed them enough i could go through the like fucking six month cleaning process? and maybe after that it would be okay?

but im not sure it would be enough

flameofcertainty

yeah

i know what you mean

if i'd been a year younger and they'd told me it was clean i'd've believed them

if i'd been a year older i'd probably just have killed myself

flameofcertainty

one of my friends from the treatment program

didn't make it

shadowed-moonrise

i had a friend in school

who was hyper, worse than me

way worse

shadowed-moonrise

he was *going to school* but just barely, he had to take a bunch of meds with a bunch of side effects to get out of the house at all

shadowed-moonrise

and he was a year older than me

flameofcertainty

oh no

shadowed-moonrise

so their class learned about the food crisis? and he left school that day like normal and he took the train home and he got in the shower with his clothes on and took all his meds at once

flameofcertainty

oh no

shadowed-moonrise

they told me he killed himself but nobody would *tell me why* because like i was hyper too and they were worried about copycat stuff

i stayed in touch with his mom, she told me later

she FOUND him

flameofcertainty

i'm so so sorry

shadowed-moonrise

that

shadowed-moonrise

i cant imagine

finding your dead child

it was pretty hard on me but she was really never the same

flameofcertainty

yeah

wow

that's

i don't really have words

:( :( :(

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

he was an only child

flameofcertainty

:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

shadowed-moonrise

i think they were sort of saving for another credit but they ended up spending a lot of money on like, building a room for him where he would feel clean, and stuff

and afterwards, it's not like she was going to have another kid after what happened

flameofcertainty

right

shadowed-moonrise

they wanted to take me out of class for the segment on the food crisis for, you know, obvious reasons, but that was winter when i was three and i’d already found out from like being online and reading stuff so i guessed what it was? and they freaked the fuck out when i was like “are you just worried about me finding out about the voan food crisis”

flameofcertainty

were they hoping to just ... pretend it never happened? forever?

it's not like it's easy not to learn about, if you use the internet

shadowed-moonrise

i guess i was going to Find Out When I Was Older

or something

shadowed-moonrise

i mean i understand the thinking there, like the last time was horrible and i could really just have found out later

shadowed-moonrise

the last time being my friend

flameofcertainty

yeah

i see where they were coming from

flameofcertainty

my school kept me out of class for anything pollution-related but obviously they weren't going to stop me from finding out about the food crisis

shadowed-moonrise

......yeah

i am so sorry you had to live through that

flameofcertainty

thanks

flameofcertainty

my parents thought about having me do online school while it was happening

shadowed-moonrise

it was like really really irresponsible to just tell my friend and i’m like not sure what happened there

flameofcertainty

i don't know

flameofcertainty

mesosensitives can be really bad at guessing what's going to hurt us

shadowed-moonrise

part of it is just that grey schools aren’t that well equipped for..... dealing with....... disability, i guess?

flameofcertainty

i had a classmate who thought it would help me not starve if she vividly described what it was like to eat polluted food

shadowed-moonrise

..........what

flameofcertainty

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

i mean, i guess it’s good that they tried to help

but. WHAT

flameofcertainty

our teacher moved the seating chart so i wouldn't have to sit next to her

and gave me permission to not go to the cafeteria during lunch

but yeah, i am really not sure how she came to that conclusion

shadowed-moonrise

yeah wow

flameofcertainty

i guess if she thought i was going to starve to death unless she did something

shadowed-moonrise

sometimes i wish i could just live in a hyper colony

shadowed-moonrise

even though like i’m sort of a weird hyper? they might have called it sensitivity disorder nos if i didn’t take so many decontam showers for no reason

but it would still be BETTER

flameofcertainty

there would be a lot of nice things about that

on the other hand sometimes i hear about a hyper person thinking something is polluted and my brain decides 'oh, they must be right'

even though it was fine before

and i bet that would happen a lot more

shadowed-moonrise

oh no

shadowed-moonrise

if we all thought that the UNION of the things we thought were polluted were polluted.......

we would die very quickly, i guess

flameofcertainty

yeah

shadowed-moonrise

“oh this one guy (MADE UP) said water is polluted so uh goodbye cruel world i guess”

flameofcertainty

and even without that we'd need robots or something

to take care of garbage

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

i think robots are more of a political problem than a technological one, maybe we could get away with “look we’re a hyper colony we can’t even TALK TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD most days much less murder anybody”

flameofcertainty

i think it's like

flameofcertainty

if people spent a decade developing them then they'd have them

but they aren't mostly, because of the politics

shadowed-moonrise

right that makes sense

flameofcertainty

i'm fine with mesosensitives most days, but then *sometimes* it's like they decided to figure out how to be maximally terrible

shadowed-moonrise

honestly so many jobs should be automated not bc pollution but just bc they could be and those people could then do a more skilled job or live in the country and make art or whatever but we can’t build robots at all bc of the political thing

like assembly lines could go a lot more automated than they are and then we’d just be richer and fewer as a society

shadowed-moonrise

i feel very Solidarity with hypos but sometimes..... they too........ are the worst

maybe we could get nice hypos for our colony to take care of us

flameofcertainty

maybe

flameofcertainty

there are totally nice hypos but there are also hypos who do things like put untagged photos of pollution on the internet

shadowed-moonrise

yeah it really varies a lot

shadowed-moonrise

sometimes talking to hypos is calming bc mesos are like “but MY pollution instinct says this isn’t polluted” and that doesn’t help me at all but i have an amateur theologian hypo friend who can just talk me through the theological position and that helps a lot more

flameofcertainty

it's good that you have that

flameofcertainty

and we're not perfect either

there are hypersensitives who think orvaran system workers need to all be executed

or that if you don't do [insert absurdly specific thing here] you're not really hyper

flameofcertainty

like i can't handle being around mom but i don't want people to murder her

shadowed-moonrise

yeah

i definitely like

think that there’s an objective position on pollution

shadowed-moonrise

and it’s probably not exactly the theological one but it’s closer to that than to my paranoia

shadowed-moonrise

and honestly like... i *get* it but it just takes an insane amount of arrogance to be like, “of all the billions and billions of people with pollution instincts, mine is the objective truth and everybody else, including an entire scientific field, is wrong”

flameofcertainty

oh i also saw this one person saying everyone alive during the food crisis needed to be executed

that one was "fun"

shadowed-moonrise

oh my fucking

fuck that person so much

also how are they planning to run society after they’ve killed everyone over four???????

flameofcertainty

i don't know???

shadowed-moonrise

also i feel a lot of people with proposals involving doing lots of murder........... fail to account for the fact that corpses are polluted

flameofcertainty

yeah

flameofcertainty

anyways

how's life been

shadowed-moonrise

a WONDERFUL PRETTY NICE blue hired me and i might maybe have a crush

flameofcertainty

eeeee congratulations!

shadowed-moonrise

i don’t know how to approach this tho

“hey baby...... i would have sex with you for free (on a good day)”

flameofcertainty

if they've hired you a couple times you could ask? or something?

flameofcertainty

i am kind of bad at relationship advice

shadowed-moonrise

yes i think that i will actually do is like

wait a while and see if he contacts me

and then maybe ask him out or something

flameofcertainty

good luck!!

shadowed-moonrise

how’ve you been

shadowed-moonrise

also, i saw you post an out of stock green and purple scarf and i could try to make you something like it

i can’t do literally that but i’m thinking like getting some white silk and waxing designs on it and then dyeing it one color and then drawing on the designs in the other

this might be totally the wrong way to go about it but it sounds fun

flameofcertainty

gosh, that's really nice of you

flameofcertainty

if you ended up doing this i'd have a couple of sensitivity-related materials requests but i don't think any of them would actually make the project impossible

shadowed-moonrise

i think that kind of project would be fun rn, what are your materials requests?

flameofcertainty

the main one is not from [link to list of countries that have done cleaning and integrated ex-reds]

or eles decontaminatable

*else

but i think that might mess up the dyes?

shadowed-moonrise

ok i can do that

yeah i think it’s probably easier to just buy from not those countries than to try to... decontaminate..... dyes

shadowed-moonrise

like most commercial clothes are decontaminatable and........ have colors but they know what they’re doing and i do not

flameofcertainty

yeah

now i want to do something nice for you, help

shadowed-moonrise

umm i really like [space shoenberg], you could record yourself playing one of his pieces? although idk how much you can do that on just violin

flameofcertainty

i'll try my best

maybe i can find an arrangement or something

shadowed-moonrise

that’s so nice of you

you don’t have to, i’ll like, enjoy the project anyway

i’m not sure how to make green and purple work well as a color combo, do you mind if there’s other colors?

8 notes · View notes

planetsam · 7 years ago

Note

hi i really love your writing & i dont want to bother you or anything but when you get a chance could you please write some more jancy?? literally anything you want i just love them so much esp after this new season & same with your writing, thank you so much!!

He’s never going to get the sound of Will screaming out of his head.

The thought occurs to him as Will laugh-cries, surrounded by all of his friends. He’s going to be on his death bed and remember that sound. It makes him angry, the idea of it. The trauma of it. Not angry on his own behalf but angry for his mom, for Will, for what others have endured. Shame curls in him, licking the anger away and he drops his head and looks down at his sweat soaked shirt. He pushes himself up and slips out, if he starts to talk he knows that nothing good will come out. The anger cuts through him and when he gets into his room, he sinks his fist into the solid wall behind his bed.

Bob is dead.

He doesn’t feel anything about that except an odd sort of rage at the notion that he died and his mom is still flirting with Hopper.

What kind of justice is that? He thinks of sleeping with Nancy and disgust at himself rocks him. He knows that he loves her, he doesn’t regret what they did, wouldn’t trade it for the world. But whose to say that’s not how his dad felt when he cheated on his mom? How his mom will feel when she does it with Hopper? Maybe they are all just broken, maybe that’s why Will got taken. It’s damn sure why none of them noticed it and were able to console themselves with the lies.

“Jonathan, breathe.”

The air flies back into his lungs as he realizes he’s not alone. How did he miss that is followed quickly by what did she see? And of course it ends on the fact that Nancy Wheeler is in his room. She’s drenched in sweat and he’s just seen her cauterize his brother and neither of those things bring him out of the fantasy of the situation. She pushes his hair back from his face. He wonders where the steady confidence she’s exuding is coming from. Where the peace that’s she’s found is. She studies him with her head cocked to the side, arrives at some decision and before he’s aware they’re both in the bathroom. She’s the opposite of embarrassed as she reaches for his shirt hem and tugs it over his head, looking around. He takes it from her hands and drops it to the ground.

She gets the idea. Her own shirt is next, her fingers are steady as she undoes his belt and jeans. All of her movements are easy and efficient, like she strips people every day. If he hadn’t seen her shudder as he pulled her nightie off, whining at his slow, teasing pace, he’d think this is always how she is. She glances around, thumbing the scar on her hand in an unconscious way, like it helps her think. He does the same thing and that is what cuts at least a little through the fog. He takes her hand in his and presses his lips to the scar. She flattens her hand on his cheek, her other winding around his back. They are both still tacky with sweat and he can’t help but agree when her nose wrinkles.

“Shower,” she says. He’s not sure he has the strength as she steps back to turn the water on. He’ll go after her, save some hot water for everyone else too, “Jonathan,” she says and he looks up to see her peering at him from around the curtain, “come on.”

His mouth goes dry as he sees her underwear on their pile of clothes. He drops his boxers and steps into the shower. If his fantasy was her in his room, it’s nothing compared to her in the shower. Her back is to him as she wets her hair. He’s always known it’s curly, but the water flattens it. He’s been cutting Will’s hair for a long time, Long enough to recognize the choppy ends. She turns around, nothing about embarrassment on her face or even that she finds the situation odd.

“What?” she asks.

“I didn’t know you cut it off yourself,” he says and she ducks her head, “it looks good,” he blurts out, unable to remember if he said that months ago when she showed up with it.

“Thank you,” she says, her eyes soft and amused, like she understands the mental gymnastics he’s performing. She tugs him under the spray, her fingers skimming down his arm before she picks up the 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner, “duck for me.”

Jonathan hasn’t had anyone wash his hair since he was a kid and his wrist was in a cast. He dips down and watches as Nancy’s brow furrows while she focuses intently on scrubbing his scalp. His eyes flutter shut when she hits a certain part on his scalp, unraveling some hidden knot that’s made his skull throb for the past few hours. She tips his head where she needs it to go and then dips him underneath the water, pushing the soap from his hair. His eyes are still shut when she presses the bottle against his chest and turns around.

He can do this.

She goes to putty pretty quickly but he’s not a stranger to this side of it. Of course it’s very different when he’s scrubbing Will’s hair clean and when Nancy is the one sighing in front of him. He tries his best to divorce the two images, focusing instead on how certain places make her sigh and others make her catch her lip between her teeth. He’s tall enough to see over her. He spends longer than necessary scrubbing her hair clean before he tips her head back, placing his hand on her forehead to make sure none of it goes into her eyes. They open upside down and she honest-to-god sticks her tongue out at him, surprising a laugh from some numb spot in his stomach.

“You know I used to think about you in here,” he says before he can think it through.

“And here I am,” she replies, the mirth not leaving her. “are you still going to think about me in here?”

His mouth goes dry because he really, really hasn’t gotten that far in all of this. She told him she had waited, she made it clear that she wasn’t going to do that forever. Will needs him now more than ever. His mom does too. So either he was being honest before and they shouldn’t be in the shower like this or he’s spent the past year bullshitting himself about a lot of things. Nancy is looking at him squarely, waiting for an answer. The reasons not to are piling up, actually most of them are quite literally outside the bathroom door. Waiting for their turn to shower. Jonathan has spent a lot of his life desperately trying to prove he’s not his father. Not a monster, not a drunk, not selfish. Well, maybe a little selfish.

He moves forward and kisses her, moving them both under the spray.

She responds eagerly, pressing up and into the kiss. There wasn’t a lot of naked time, the last time they did this. They left the lights on but they were both really, really aware of whose house they were in. The chair under the door definitely wasn’t a guarantee that there wasn’t a secret entrance or cameras. Now though it’s all wet, exposed skin. Her arms wrap around him, one of her hands curling through his hair. He turns them slightly and presses her back up against the wall, listening to her gasp loudly before they both seem to remember the others on the side of the door. They both wait to hear if anyone is nearby before she presses her forehead to his collar bone, coming up laughing again.

“Maybe we should take this to my room.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” she says as he grabs the soap.

They step out of the shower into towels and he pitches both their clothes into the hamper. He does the laundry anyway and she just exorcised his brother, washing her stuff is the least he can do. They make it back to his room without anyone seeing them and he is more than ready to pat himself on the back for still being able to sneak around like he did when he had to do that kind of thing. The moment he closes the door, Nancy’s got him pinned against it, her lips already parting his. She rips back a moment later, looking up at him.

“You weren’t kidding about the room thing, right?” she says and he shakes his head, already pulling her back.

Jonathan is an expert in hyper-focus. He’s used to downing things out, maybe especially his own thoughts. Its hard to reconcile the fact that less than a week ago the lips that are moving with his were telling him he couldn’t spend the night with the talking heads. He likes the talking heads a lot, but just like that night he knows he’d rather be spending the time with her. No lyric has the same level of meaning as her gasping his name like that.

They try to be quiet, he’s not sure they succeed.

He’s not sure he cares.

Afterwards she’s more on top of him than she is on top of his bed, one of her hands is pushing through his hair and the other is pillowing her chin. Her room is all flowers and pastels, he feels like the oddity but she takes all the mess and dark in his room and just ingrates herself. It baffles and fascinates him.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to sleep again,” he confesses and she smiles proudly, “was that your plan?”

“Actually my plan was to just do this,” she says with a shrug, “but if it’s a side effect–”

She almost shrieks when he turns their position, taking his weight onto his forearm. The sound she makes is one he barely manages to muffle and has them both giggling. Which is a new sensation for him–one of many she seems to draw out of him. He’s already found her beautiful for years now, he only grows more fascinated the more time they spend together.

“We’re gonna have to go out there eventually,” he says jerking his head to the side and she nods. Her fingers curl at the nape of his neck and her body presses up into his. His fingers drag up her thigh and don’t stop at her knee, pulling her out of whatever thoughts are plaguing her, “but first, I should make it up to you, for making you wait.”

She opens her mouth to say something. He doesn’t think it’s necessarily to say he doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that he can’t stop. Nancy’s facade is such a thin veneer he’s amazed anyone falls for it. The spark of anger is still in her eyes when her body arches up and her hips drive against his hand. He has to pry one of hers off his shoulder and place it over her mouth as he slips down her body and underneath the sheets.

“You,” she gasps out afterwards, “are very good at apologizing.”

Eventually she rolls over and puts her head on his chest again, right over his heart.

“I get it,” she says later, “but it wasn’t just your mom and Will was it?” He looks down at her and shakes his head, “what was it?”

“You,” he says.

“Me?” She repeats, pushing herself up before he tightens his arm around her. She shifts before sighing, “what do you mean?”

“You–you’re–” he fumbles for the right words, “I wasn’t kidding when I said I thought about you in the shower and you, uh, you didn’t deserve to have my expectations too. You know? I didn’t know how to–make it real.”

“Jonathan,” she sighs, looking up at him, “do you think you’re the only one whose had shower fantasies?”

He buries his face in the pillow to muffle his groan and Nancy laughs before she lays next to him.

“I deserve that, but God it was mean,” he says.

“Mmmm you do,” she agrees, “but it’s great that you can make it up to me again.”

He doesn’t get how she can make him laugh so easily. It’s terrifying. The last person who had that power over him showed him how dangerous it could be. How risky it could be. Jonathan has spent his entire life fighting not to be his father, thinking of the man in this moment feels wrong. Sick. Not something he wants to think about. Nancy drags her fingers through his hair, grounding him back to her.

“Stay here,” she tells him softly.

For her, he thinks, he can try.

#jancy #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #jonathan x nancy #this gets kinda hot but not smutty #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things spoilers #prompts

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lydiahopemoore · 5 years ago

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Initial research

To understand my target market and what user’s I'll be focussing on I wanted to first search around Reddit. Reddit is a popular social sharing website that collects current news, stories, pics, memes and videos through specific communities (subreddits) that the user decides on what they want to see. Every post and comment that is made, people get to upvote or downvote it so the best content rises to the top. Every user creates an obscure username to make Reddit an anonymous platform. Therefore I wanted to use Reddit to find subreddits and posts that relate to my topic to get a general understanding of how people feel. I have collected a bunch of comments from posts which I will not mention their username nor I will use this information for presentations or the final video. ^ = upvotes. This is an effective way to know how many people agree/relate to a comment.

Female gamers! How do you handle sexual harassment?

“I don't reveal my gender when I'm playing online games and I only tend to play with a group of known friends.” 101 ^

“I mostly don't let people know I'm female until I know they aren't assholes.” 38 ^

“Two ways.

mute, report then block.

I don't play with the general public. Only with people I know and with people they know.” 17 ^

“I don't play with the general public. Only with people I know and with people they know.” 29 ^

“Honestly, in my personal experience so take it with a grain of salt, its not so much a gendered thing as it is an asshole thing.” 51 ^

“I don’t play games where I interact with people I don’t know anymore. Before that I’d usually ignore it and remind myself that my existence will never be as pathetic as theirs is in that moment.” 9 ^

“My voice is super girly so I cant hide the fact that I'm a girl. I normally record the audio or mute the offender. It happens a lot on Counter Strike and Rainbow Six” 14 ^

“The female gaming population there is pretty high, and the number of idiots is relatively low. Mostly I just tell people to fuck off if there’s an issue beyond specific skill and block/report them. 7 ^

That being said, my guild leader for one game mode is a massive misogynist and I just call him out constantly.” 7 ^

“Mostly by not playing online games anymore” 4 ^

“mute/block them , i dont need to argue with sad lonely losers” 5 ^

“Iv never come across anything like it at all. In any game I’ve played” 8 ^

Gamers of Reddit, How do you feel about women who play video games and is the gaming community in all games really that toxic against female gamers?

“Female gamer here. It can be pretty toxic, but most times it's just amusing. As long as you know how to handle yourself in various situations it's fine.” 11 ^

“I don't care who plays games. What pisses me off is how oblivious people are to leaving an OPEN MIC on with a tv going and your family shouting in the background.” 9 ^

“I've been gaming for years but with games like Overwatch, PUBG, and Fortnite now including public voice chat, I've become shy and somewhat intimidated by the voice chat feature because I know as soon as I use it with a team, I'll either get mocked because I sound like a 12 year old kid or because I'm a girl. Though when I have used it, my team just assumes I'm a kid.” 6 ^

“You know what? The opinion of "gamers" on women playing games doesn't fucking matter. Not to mention the fact that you have juxtaposed "gamers" and women, suggesting women cannot be gamers. Women play games. Women are gamers. Get the hell over it.” 4 ^

“Not toxic at all, for me. Most people don't seem to care that I'm female, and it's never really affected my gaming experience. That being said, I hear a lot from other female gamers and it seems to be an issue for some.” 4 ^

“The community is just as toxic to females as it is to males.” 3 ^

“I don't think the gaming community is toxic toward female players. Not as a whole. There are lots if individuals who are toxic, though.” 2 ^

Female Gamers, what do you hate the most when people find out your gender in a game?

“No a female gamer but I hate how as soon as a female speaks in-game it turns into sexist trash talk that goes way over the top or pandering, both make me cringe hard. I feel bad for squeakers too cause not all of them are toxic or even bad at the game but they get hammered so hard.” 9 ^

“When people randomly add me because I was pretty good or got a little aggressive on coms and they find it sexy. I do really enjoy getting free stuff in certain games though.” 9 ^

GirlGamers let’s talk about sexual harassment and abuse and what we can do to help improve our community.

“It’s really hard to go into a game and even TALK, let alone mention I am a woman. I sound like an 11 year old boy so it masks it a bit, but when I mention i am a woman, damn. The language changes completely.” 143 ^

“I think one of the worst things about the gaming community is how guys refuse to acknowledge the sexism, and when they do it’s normally in a negative context. Or when a woman brings up sexism they’re told that they should just toughen up or ignore it. It’s not that simple, and a lot of the people who say that have never had to face people doubting their every move because of something they can’t control.” 102 ^

“I think we need to make more friendly spaces for women with an emphasis on lgbt women and women of color. There needs to be all women gaming conferences, classes, and discussion groups (much like this one).” 51 ^

“I think we would need to bring awareness to the issue with a viral movement. If we picked a day to stop hiding from voice chats and post any and all harassing situations that day with some trendy viral hashtag maybe it would get media attention and further shed light on the issue.” 23 ^

Why are there more male gamers than female gamers? Is this statistic even true?

“A: Oh! This is what I studied! I can finally contribute!

Q: Why are there more male gamers than female gamers? Is this statistic even true?

A: It's actually not true! The split between men and women in gaming is almost a perfect 50/50. If you include mobile gaming (which I do, but that's an entirely different debate) then women actually make up the majority of gamers!

Q: So what things in our societies push more men and fewer women to pick up video games?

A: There are a lot of compounding factors that come into play here. For starters, when video games were first becoming a thing, it was a primarily male interest. Only a small percentage of gamers in the 70s and 80s were women. As such, it was mostly marketed towards boys and men. When more people started taking an interest in gaming, many men felt that their hobby was being encroached upon by an "other". In this case, that other was women. So on top of being marketed mostly for men, the community itself was (and still very much is) incredibly hostile towards women. That's another factor that pushed women away.

When we look at the situation today, it still seems like more men are playing than women. This isn't because that's actually the case; it's because the anti-women toxicity present in the community never faded (and in some cases it's merely festered and grown more vile). As such, women that play video games are much less likely than men to make it known that they're active gamers.

So, to answer your second question, male gamers are the main societal factor that pushed more men and fewer women to publicize their gaming habits. In this regard, the gaming community is very similar to the tabletop gaming community and the comic book community.

Q: Are the numbers significantly different in various cultures across the world, where their society may be different?

A: Surprisingly, it's a similar situation pretty much everywhere: women play games, men treat them like garbage for doing so, and then women keep quiet about their gaming habits and rarely participate in official tournaments.

Overall, it's not that women are less likely to play games, it's that the community is so toxic towards women that very few are willing to out themselves, so to speak, as women while playing.

The entire history of women in gaming (both as gamers and as developers) is an incredibly interesting topic that's worth reading up on, but it can mostly be boiled down to "holy shit, calling the gaming community a hive of misogyny is probably a huge understatement.".”121 ^

I need to vent about female gamers in the gaming community for a second.

“I am a female gamer. No. I am a gamer who happens to be a female. I play everything from Animal Crossing, to Skyrim to LIMBO to CoD. I love gaming and it relieves stress and helps me relax. Gaming is a large part of my identity and I am not ashamed of it. Studies have shown that 48-52% of gamers are women, which is HALF. So why do we get so much shit for it? Women gamers, especially in communities like League of Legends and Magic the Gathering are shit upon. The view towards female gamers is ridiculous, and I am so sick of it. Women gamers are constantly underrepresented in both the games we play and when we are we are hyper sexualized. Even as a female gamer I am often sexualized. When people see a female gamer they accuse them of being illegitimate, and only doing it for attention. Even me, a female gamer, when I see a female gamer I think that "oh she doesn't look like a gamer" or "oh she isn't a real gamer, she's doing it for attention" and this is stupid. Why do I think this when I am a female gamer? Because I have been taught my whole life that games are for men, and if I am a woman I am doing it not because I enjoy it but because I am doing it for a man.” 69 ^

“I find myself often guilty of being quick to judge other people as a "gamer." I try not to label people, but it gets so shoved down our throats all the time that it just happens. For me, I'm half afraid its because I get called out as "not a gamer" or some other such nonesense and so in my defense I start to judge other people harshly. It takes a conscious effort to change the initial thought.” 3 ^

“I don't know if it's because the only "social" genre I play is mmos, but the majority of other female gamers I encounter fall into two categories; shy or attention-seeking.“ 2 ^

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survivor-kalymnos · 5 years ago

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Finale - “Yikes on bikes!!!!” - Michele

Rain

Franco, I’m so sorry. Listen, I love you so much. So much. But I need you to know that my game will not be ruined. I will not be destroyed or knocked down because I could not save you. I am going to rise. I am going to adapt and overcome, I’m going to outlast. I’m going to make you proud that I was your ally in the first place. At this point, I see my final 3. I want to be there with Worm and Lenny. Worm and Lenny have not only been my allies, they’ve been my friends. I trust them, even if we haven’t always voted together, to tell me the truth. And I think each of us could win at FTC. I think my ideal elim order goes like this: Dusty Frank Michele at f4. I need to win a challenge. I need to prove to the others that I am here to play and I’m here to win. People are underestimating me as not a threat, but they don’t understand that I’ve won twice and made FTC 5 or 6 times. They don’t understand that I know what the fuck I’m doing and that I can win if I just put my mind to it. The thing I’m concerned about going into the end here is Jury Management tm. It has been... less than ideal. And I just betrayed my closest ally, rip. So it’s time to put in the work, Rain, otherwise the jury is going to be raining on my parade in just three short rounds.

Michele

EVEN RAIN VOTED FRANCO OUT SKSKSKSKSKSKS!!!!!!

Michele

I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders with Francos departure! I believe the tribe can be at peace for at least for a moment

Dusty

Good morning all! Last night Franco went home without a hitch. And now here we are at final 6. Yesterday Worm informed me that himself, Lenny, and “Ratchele” were in an alliance, but Worm was flipping on Michele. Michele ended up staying so I wonder what this means for that alliance. Will the three of them stick together and take out the rest of us? Or are the lines broken? One things for sure is that I hope I win immunity so that I can save my idol for something else. I’m sticking loyal to Frank and Lenny, but I’m not sure if Lenny will want to stick with the two of us. In the case that the trio does stay solid then that just leaves Rain for us to work with. We could try to force a flip with a tie or use an idol. But before I start planning any crazy ideas I gotta talk to everybody and see how we’re feeling.....but of course it’s almost noon and no one else has spoken.... :)

Michele

Yikes on bikes!!!! There goes my plan to get Dusty out this round. Sorry Rain or Frank, process of elimination points to y’all.

lennyt

his is either going to be a really easy vote or complete chaos. Probably chaos. Yeah. 99% going to be chaos.

Michele

As long as I make it to the jury vote thats a win in my book! Looking around me I honestly don’t see myself winning the vote, but as long as I make it to the top thats enough for me!

Frank

It’s so quiet and that scares me. It is Easter so people could be quiet due to that but there is also quarantine so I don’t think people are spending too much time with family. 6th place is my brand but I don’t want to it be Frank’s brand. I think I have people I trust but I haven’t heard a name yet. Rain and I have actually spoken this round and I think we’re good but we’re not working together so they can go. Either rain or worm ideally but michele can also go and I won’t be too upset.

Dusty

Feeling like a frog on a log cuz I’ve got a immunity tonight. Which means I’ve got my idol to play around with. Of course I can save it for next week to ensure a spot in the final 4, but tonight if frank is in danger of going home I might have to pull it out. My fear right now is the alliance between Lenny, Michele, and Worm. Now I know last round Worm was ready to flip on michele, but wince he voted for Franco it’s very possible Worm still wants to work with Michele. My target this round is Worm because if he’s here then I’m not sure where I stand with Lenny and Michele. I think what I’m gonna have to do here is get Rain on our side of the vote, and just hope that Rain isn’t in tight with that 3 or that Lenny and Michele don��t retaliate next round.

lenny

we're in a stick sitch rn. I am hoping that the og nera crew can vote off frank tonight but if we do, that leaves dusty and I don't know if they'll trust me if I vote off their ally. That being said, idk who else to vote. I also don't know who to trust rn. I just want to make it to f3 so I can see what this thing Franco gave me is. Also, dusty may have an idol........ again? seriously?!

michele

i dont like dusty. hes trying to stir the pot and its coming off as villain trope.

michele

dusty youre trying way too hard!!!!!!!!! you me lenny frank f4 isnt happening!!!!!! hes lucky he has an idol and is basically guaranteed final 4. I hope its me him lenny and worm!

michele

do you ever just tell someone youve been moving apartments for 3 days straight and youre exhausted and then they keep bombarding you with game questions and exaggerated info to stir the pot....thats dusty.

Worm

So I feel like I'm in a weird purgatory kind of place. I feel like I kind of got put into a goat position. I have both Michele and Rain coming to me and telling me that they want me in the final 3 with them. Now I'm honestly flattered but I feel like they want me there because they think they can beat me. I'm hoping though that because Eliza and Franco are both on the jury I have a good chance of them supporting me and maybe rallying for vote for me.I still think I have a chance of winning but I wont deny that other people still playing have much more obvious game that are easier to see from a jurors point of view. I'm kinda happy though that I was able to get into an alliance again of Michele, Lenny, and Rain especially after all the hecticness of last round. It seems as though that Michele and I have also been able to patch up everything even though I told her I was voting her out lol. But right now I do feel like she is my closest ally but I also think that I'm not the only one saying that. I honestly don't know who to trust in this game but hopefully if I survive this vote I can get some clarity of who is on my side. Michele did tell me that Dusty was stirring that pot with her and trying to get her to mistrust me but all of our dirty laundry is aired out so I'm hoping that it just fell on deaf ears. I do think that for the first time in this game (other than fucking rocks) that I might actually be eliminated.

Lenny

Time to play clean up with dusty. ALSO!!! Final five! I AM SHOOK. I would’ve never thought that I could make it this far or be in this position.

Michele

FINAL FIVE BITCHESSSSSS!!!!!

Michele

Someone from OG Nera is about to get the boot and I’m going to try my hardest to guarantee it’s not me

Michele

My main right now is Lenny but I know she also talks to Dusty. She proved loyalty last tribal council by voting for Frank with og nera. I just am not sure if moving forward with her is the end all be all best for my game. If I move ahead with rain and worm I can hopefully stop dusty from gaining any new allies and it will remain everyone against him. I know I say this every round sksksk but this tribal will be the hardest personally to date. Winning immunity is really the only way to keep me safe!

FINAL FOURRRRRR

Rain

It’s final 5. I am unhappy. I didn’t want to bring Michele to final 4. Suddenly, I’m hoping for a final 2, even if I know it’s not going to happen. I didn’t want to go to the final 4 with both dusty and Michele. They are winners. Especially compared to me. At this point, I know I’m going to lose the game. I’d rather see both Michele and Dusty in the final 3 and watch them duke it out than watch me and worm get smoked by either of them. Fuck Michele. I love you but I never ASKED to be in your final 3. I’m here because you think you can beat me. I will prove you wrong.

Worm

I’m extremely worried tonight. The vote is basically between Lenny and I. Everyone is being kinda quiet and I’m trying to read into that literally every way I can. Are they just not talking to me cause I’m being targeted and they don’t want me to be bitter toward them. We’ve all discussed what made the most sense and I think Michele, Rain, and I all agree that keeping Lenny in the game cause everyone want to take them to the end. That makes the rest of us 4 fight for the other 2 spots. I’m hoping if I do survive tonight that my spot in the final 4 is basically guaranteed. The only thing that could foil that would be dusty cause he is such a wild card. I do think this being an alias game has given me a slight advantage in that with no one knowing who I am that they aren’t able to really see my track record. I have been to a lot of finals, and I have lost a lot of finals. But I am a big believer in that you learn from your losses and every time I have been close to winning there is always one thing that I have to adjust to get me there in a position to win. I also am hyper aware that you need to be aware of how you are maneuvering in the game and that you need to be able to talk logically why you did things that may seem questionable. I’m hoping that the other people here don’t have the same experience as I have and have difficulty portraying themselves in the final. If I do get voted out this round I may be team rain. I think they played a great under the radar game yet was also intricately involved In many of the big moves of the season. I still don’t really trust anyone in this game but I just have to hope that I was able to get them to see value in me like I’ve been trying to all season

Dusty

So here we are at the final 5. Michele is sitting pretty with immunity, and thankfully I’ve got my idol. Honestly I don’t feel safe going into next round. I think that just the super idol alone makes me a threat in the end. On top of that I have people in jury that were my allies in the game and have much more reason to be pissed at the other remaining players. I don’t know how much I can trust Lenny and Michele to take me the end. If I want to win I need to assure I can win the final challenge.

Michele

Voting Lenny out was heartbreaking. I’m glad she left me the legacy advantage because it shows that she didn’t take it personally. Us girls gotta stick together right? As long as Dusty doesn’t win this final immunity challenge I am super confident in making final three. If Dusty loses, I may have an actual shot at winning the whole game.

Michele

About to enter the jury chat with my legacy advantage and I'm really nervous. I think it's mostly because I've never seen the show and won't really know what to talk about. I want the most bang for my buck here. I know I'm going to see some not so happy faces but I'm hoping my friendly personality shines through. I genuinely don't dislike anybody, it's all just a game.

Michele

My conversation with the jury went pretty well once I figured out what I was doing. I think I have cranjes vote to win for sure. Franco and Eliza don't seem to want dusty in final 3, but that makes me think maybe I should bring him????? but i'm worried that he will have enough votes to beat me. keeping it OG Nera might help from him automatically getting plati votes. sksksksk this is going to come down to the wire for my decision. I really should stop worrying until the challenge results are posted thought.

Dusty

SHOOT i really needed that challenge win!!! I am so not confident in my standings with Michele, Worm, and Rain. I was so worried about this challenge because i basically know nothing real about these people!!! So even seeing that i could have been tied for the win was shocking, and the emotional trauma to come with not winning will be coming in shortly. Anyway at this point I feel like if i do have a shot at making it to the final 3 it is with Rain. At this point Michele has really given me no reason to be able to trust her when it comes to a vote and i cannot make that same mistake. Everyone loves Michele and shes a strong competitor in challenges, so if she makes it to the end shes winning for sure. Hopefully Rain and Worm will realize this and get rid of her now!!!

Worm

Going into the immunity challenge i had a good feeling that I wasn't going to win it. Especially since the 2 heavy point questions were based around were people are from which is a topic I strayed away from while talking to a lot of the jurors. I did impress myself a lot though by getting a lot of the individual fact questions right. Sadly though I didn't win but on the bright side neither did Dusty. So it basically confirmed that the final 3 alliance of Michele Rain and myself will succeed in making it to the final 3. I was worried cause Rain did come to me earlier in the round and tell me that they may want to be voted out based on the fear of how the jury would react to us being in the final 3. Selfishly I would be okay with it just cause I would have someone on the jury that i feel like would 100% be on my side. But I'm still human and I didn't want them to do something they would regret and I'm very happy that they decided to stay. Dusty is trying very hard now to stay which I do admire his tenacity of wanting to stay but he honestly got outplayed. One ting that confuses me that he keeps saying that Michele is a huge threat in front of the jury. That confuses me because he has targeted me the last couple rounds. Like literally every tribal I have received votes, one of them was from Dusty. He knew I wanted to target Michele during the round that Franco left so I don't see why he didn't take that chance to target her then. He also told me he voted me cause he saw me as a threat but I guess that perception has disappeared. I understand that he is grasping at straws so I don't knock him fro trying everything he can but even if I do flip and give a fire making challenge, that is just gonna boost someone's resume that isn't my own. Either Dusty is gonna win and get credit for flipping me to his side and betting Michele, or Michele stays and gets another challenge win. Either way it's a lose-lose so my best option is just to stay on track and get the original Nera to the final 3.

Michele

And here we are folks. Rain, Worm, and I successfully lasted 2 full rounds as a 3 person alliance. Excited to talk to the jury again and really explain my game. I debated telling the other two about my advantage but I think I’ll keep it to myself for now. No matter what happens I’m very proud of myself for reaching the final vote.....but I really want the win!

Dusty

All last night and today I was talking to Worm, Michele, and Rain to try and campaign to them to try and keep me for the final tribal council. Although all three of them straight up said they were voting for me. Which is really no surprise. Trying to make em go a lil crazy but there’s not a whole lot of point in trying.

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