#changes that would improve pets; while also being unlikely to upset anyone who's attached to the current look

[synthaphone]

I've decided to make a little project of going through all of the current Neopet customization art assets and documenting any errors I notice, with the hope of eventually making a petpage featuring all of them, with proposed fixes.

I was doing pretty good about just going through in alphabetical order and not making any edits yet, but I couldn't resist stopping to tweak the Disco Blumaroo- its one of those pets where the ways in which its conversion was rushed aren't super noticeable at first glance, but a few simple changes improve it significantly. even if only to me

[lucci0la]

what do your kinshifts feel like?

LONG ASS POST WARNING‼️

Personally I tend to notice kinshifts when my behavior and interactions with people change- I feel a very particular way about certain things, or my daydreams more often than not end up having to do with those from my canons. I miss certain people more, or my feelings suddenly change about specific people from my canon. I also tend to feel a lot less strongly about my other kins, sometimes removing them from my list just to add them back later when I feel a shift. And this may sound rancid, but when I’m in a kinshift, I tend to feel very agitated or annoyed seeing others with the same kin or feeling a strong sense of (unrightful) possessiveness seeing someone from my source being close with them. Not to say that anyone sharing a kin with me is invalid (they absolutely aren’t invalid in any way and my personal beliefs enforce that), but it’s an involuntary feeling that arises in my kinshifts. Behavior wise, there’s usually a very noticeable shift in what I do or want or my emotions.

If you’re asking about specifics of my kinshifts, I’ll just tell you what I’ve noticed!

Kakyoin :

~ My dysphoria gets stronger- not in the way of wanting to be more masculine as I’m fairly feminine, but feeling upset by any hyper feminization by those in my life (and occasionally within the fandom). There’s just a strong disconnect between myself and others emotion wise.

~ I tend to feel more passive and wear my more flowy clothing or button ups and spend more time on my hygiene, actually bothering to do things like put my damn earrings in or do my hair. I also seem to be more careful with what I eat and take care to finish any tasks and chores.

~ While my motivation for things increases, so does my will to talk to people. I speak noticeably more friendly to people (read: I’ll be really friendly casually until a full on encounter occurs, in which case, I’m shaking in my boots with uncertainty) and my tone changes drastically, so that’s always a hint. With that being said though, my words come out much more naturally and I don’t sound as much like a broken record.

~ This is literally the main thing that I noticed between kinshifts in the beginning, but in my Rohan shifts I felt a strong interest in body modifications or body art- like piercings and tattoos. In my Rohan shifts I’d have a clear feeling that I’d want some sort of tattoo or get random piercings, specifically nipple piercings, and then when I would be in my Kakyoin shift, I couldn’t not notice that I just had no will or want to alter or mark my body. This was during the time where I kept shifting back and forth between my Kakyoin and Rohan shift, which would change every (this is really a guess) 3-21 days and my feelings and sense of improvement, progression, and change were super clear to me, so it couldn’t go unnoticed. What made it even clearer to me was that the back and forth interest in body modification didn’t feel like indecisiveness, it just felt more like a flipped switch that always went back and forth to the same thoughts and feelings. I remember the thought of dying my hair being a similar feeling to body modification even though my hair color is different from canon- attempting to remedy it outside of video games with customizable characters just makes me feel like I shouldn’t.

~ SUUUPER fucking lonely. I may have more motivation to talk to people, but oh my god, I’m still painfully reluctant and shy in genuine interactions.

Rohan :

~ Usually I feel a lot more upfront with everything, and unlike in my Kakyoin shifts, I’m a bit more distant from people and tend to repeat myself if I’m not in the mood to let my words come out naturally. In other words, I’m considerably more self-focused and care more to finish my school work, usually only reading on the side instead of my Kakyoin shifts where I’m actually taking the time to do anything and everything I can to take care of myself.

~ I don’t experience much dysphoria in these shifts, if any, and lean towards form-fitting or revealing clothing. Though by revealing, I mean more that if I’m alone and at home (which I usually am) I usually just end up strolling around in an unbuttoned cardigan and my underwear so it’s not like I do it in public.

~ Even though I present myself differently with people and don’t actively pursue them much in this state, I feel a notable fondness for them. It’s not like I ever stop loving my pets or family when I’m in any of my shifts, but I’ve noticed that I think about them in a kinder light when I’m in my Rohan shifts. To put it very lightly, the family I was born into that I remember from my canon though wasn’t one that I was as close as I would’ve hoped.

~ It’s a subtle change from the Kakyoin shifts, but I tend to be happier and a bit more hopeful rather that feeling like something is missing. My memories are all and all very much happier and it makes me feel a lot more at ease in many things that I do even if I’m not actively remembering them at times.

~ I’ve admittedly been very distracted from my own kins as of late and unfortunately even let myself forget my own memories- though once I read them again (as I wrote them down) I was reminded. Aside from the attachment and interest to body modification like nipple piercings or getting tattoos, I can’t remember many more differences.

Doppio :

~ These shifts are always way shorter than the others, but I notice them very easily. They stick out like a sore thumb in my eyes. My emotions aren’t passive (in the background) in the slightest during these shifts and mostly consist of like,,, pure fucking peace. Like it’s just a strong feeling you can’t ignore.

~ I procrastinate much more and act with self-indulgence, food becomes the biggest comfort, and I lose my absolute MIND over the outdoors. Scenery of any kind (even if it’s really not that good) catches my eye in an instant and I fuckin’ lose it just trying to take pictures.

~ I’ll interact and talk with those close to me, but I don’t care to do so that much with others.

~ While I like being babied (caressed, treated with endearment, etc.) I literally cannot stand not being treated like another person. Consuming kin content for this shift in particular can make me very angry very quickly unless I get it custom made- like holy shit, call me sweet all you want to, but if I see another damn aesthetic regarding frogs or phones, I will lose my shit. It feels like saying one thing at a family meeting when you���re five and then everyone holds it over your damned head into your adulthood. It’s just a bad joke.

~ I’m pretty sure this is the one kin that I had whose canon was more fem-leaning in terms of attraction because every time I’m in the doppio shift, I just— women 💞💞💞

Johnny :

~ Honestly I don’t know how I know I’m in this shift when I am, I just am. I may have not had this shift enough to know for sure, but I just do.

Aside from all that, easier hints would be

Kakyoin: Attached to Jotaro (and Dio at times) and reacts to doubles in a very jealous way- I don’t interact, obviously, but regardless.

Rohan: Attached to Josuke for the most part, but enjoys most from part 4 and reacts to doubles with a strong feeling of disgust or annoyance, obviously still not interacting.

Doppio: Attached to no one in particular despite kin memories (regardless of my care for Donatella or Trish), but reacts to doubles more out of anger. Just as I said, I just get really angry to the point of shaking and simply try to remove myself from the situation.

Johnny: Who knows tbh lmao. I haven’t done any meditations on this one.

Like I said before, these are just involuntary feelings I get from doubles, I don’t, like, bark at or harass them or anything, they’re all just as valid as I am, but these are just differences I’ve noticed between shifts.

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 18: Whitby and the Mouse

I’ve been thinking about this and

[Spoilers for the Southern Reach trilogy below] [by which I mean, don’t read this post, read the books]

*

I don’t think Whitby is a clone. And I don’t think OG Whitby is the mouse.

I have to say I dislike the idea that just because clones exist, all characters who are a little bit weird, and/or all characters who have returned from Area X are clones. (Someone literally said on r/SouthernReach “everyone who leaves Area X is a clone, thus Whitby and the director must be clones” like ??? That statement is tautological. I feel like a lot people wouldn’t say it so starkly but nevertheless believe the same thing, though.) Like, I get it, the clones are cool. But isn’t it cool/er/ to think that Area X can do something other than return clones to the world? That the number of outcomes for people who enter Area X is bigger than two? What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really want Whitby to be a clone. I think it’s more interesting to say he’s not. And I also think that if you assume he is, and especially if you think other people are too, you’re going to run into nonsense later on, drawing these theories to their conclusions.

But I also don’t think Clone!Whitby is the best, most textually supported interpretation either.

Here are the known, definite, canon clones: Ghost Bird; the blanks from the last eleventh and the twelfth expeditions; the director who expanded the border at the end of Authority. We don’t know anything about this last clone, if she has memories or personality or anything. I mostly assumed she was a blank, too. The one bit of evidence in favor of this: Grace is positive enough that she is not really the director that she feels comfortable shooting her and killing her. If the director had been more Ghost Bird than Mr. Biologist, I don’t think this would have been as easy of a call.

So among the canonical clones we have Ghost Bird, and the blanks.

And we have some potential clones (aka characters who I’ve seen presumed or supposed to be clones while reading theories on the internet): the director at some earlier point; Lowry; Whitby.

Ghost Bird is a clear anomaly among the canonical clones, but not so much if you include the potential clones. If you include the potential clones, then Area X has the ability to create a variety of lifelike human duplicates, including, from the time of the very first expedition, one that can function for decades on the outside without anyone thinking he’s inhuman. 

And if Area X has, and has always had, that ability, why is Ghost Bird’s creation consistently held up as such an odd and special thing? Why is Ghost Bird herself presented as unique? And why are so many factors, specific to her and the biologist, delineated to explain her creation?

Unlike any other character, the biologist:

Was known to Area X through a prior expedition member (we know that her husband was thinking about her a lot, since he addressed his journal to her, so Area X could have ‘read’ her in him before she even arrived);

Has a personality that seems like it would be easier for AX to read: more of a loner, someone who finds it easier to, in her own words, fit into any environment in which she finds herself;

Was conditioned before arriving in AX to be even more isolated and paranoid than usual;

Had an intimate relationship with a clone (I don’t actually think this is important but I’m adding it anyway since I’ve seen it mentioned in some theories);

Is so unusual even before any conditioning or any time spent in AX that the director feels in her presence like she is in the presence of AX itself;

And, most importantly, was exposed to the spores several days before Ghost Bird’s creation, allowing her to be ‘someone AX knows’ before meeting the Crawler and being fully scanned--this factor is mentioned specifically in Acceptance as the main reason why Ghost Bird is able to exist as such a perfect, nearly-human clone.

Why go through all the trouble of creating such a unique Original for cloning purposes, if Area X can make clones like Whitby, post-first-AX-trip director, and Lowry?

This is largely definitive for me, but my full reasoning actually goes farther, and is harder to describe. Especially not without sounding like I’m actually arguing against myself. It has to do with the ways that Whitby changes after being in Area X. His reaction is unique among everyone who’s been in and come back out. He also comes in under fairly unique circumstances.

Unlike the expedition members, Whitby doesn’t have any sort of conditioning or training before he crosses the border. There are other characters who fall into that category, too: the director before her first trip, Control, Grace, and potentially Lowry, who had some training probably, but not like the later expeditions, whose training was based on his experience. I guess this could be evidence as to why his clone is a little different, but to me, it’s a good explanation as to why he, the original, returns so changed, so broken. A particularly good comparison, I think, is Control, who I could easily see returning to the outside world and going down a Whitby-esque spiral, in slightly different circumstances. He’s sort of, I say tentatively, an ‘improvement’ on Whitby, an experiment repeated with only slightly different variables, which leads to a different outcome.

So what I think happened to Whitby is, roughly, this: he went into AX with arguably the least preparation of anyone; he was scanned by something while the director was in the tower, allowing a clone to be made; he encountered his clone, who was carrying a backpack with a plant--for expansion purposes--and a phone--for communicating with Lowry purposes--and was so upset that he fought the double; he killed the double, just as he said he had (what happened to the body is a bit of a mystery--I guess the clone could have been a hallucination the entire time, and he just found the backpack among the journals--but this comes out to mostly the same imo since his experience was still that of having ‘killed himself’); and he took the materials out of AX. He’s still “himself,” in the sense that he can follow a train of existence back to his pre-trip self, but is nevertheless altered by his time across the border.

I think this alteration is, at the very least, akin to that of a person in real life who’s gone through some sort of trauma. Just like we might say someone who’s survived a warzone or a horrific accident is ‘a different person’ so Whitby is ‘a different person.’ The experience of fighting and killing his own double is unique and weird and terrifying and uncanny and of course he’d react to that.

It’s also possible he was ‘altered’ in some more traditional sci-fi-y way, because he and the director were in Area X for quite some time, and we really don’t see that much of the journey, compared to its total length. (I think...the time dilation makes this a hard thing to pinpoint... But I think they were there for a couple weeks in Earth time? And if so, possibly even longer in AX time. But I could also be getting this wrong, too lazy to look.) This is, of course, vague, but other characters have started to feel ‘the brightness’ fairly early, so perhaps he was ‘infected’ in this way, too.

He may also have been pricked by the flower, but this happens late in the timeline, and while I think this might explain how the SR became another tower, and perhaps even the expansion of the border, it doesn’t explain the changes to his personality.

So what’s the mouse? I get the neatness of saying ‘well it’s Whitby!’ and I have to say I don’t have any other real explanation for it. Honestly, it really could be just a mouse. Just an ordinary, unchanged, Earth mouse, that for whatever reason Whitby has chosen for a pet. A comfort object. I mean, Control--who, again I think is most akin to Whitby in terms of experience and interaction with AX--has a comfort animal too, Chorry, who he carries with him in the form of a carving even after he enters AX, and which is dearly important to him. Chorry isn’t magical or alien and neither is the carving; Control’s attachment to the carving is part of his attempt to hold on to his humanity. I think the mouse could be similar.

I guess it’s also possible that, since Whitby found the mouse “in the attic,” by which he clearly means the SR attic, and the SR has already been compromised by this point (probably very compromised; probably compromised by Lowry), that the mouse is another sort of ‘plant’ (pun unintended) by AX, another little feeler sent out into the world, like the clones, like the (literal) plant. But I don’t know what thinking of the mouse in this way does for the narrative. I don’t know what it tells you that is new or necessary or interesting.

Yeah, the more I write, the more I think Whitby and Control are thematically linked in some way [like, re: my comparison above to repeating an experiment with different variables, they also have that conversation about many different universes existing, all slightly different from each other] and that the mouse is his Chorry, and that Whitby is definitely a human who, shocked and confused by his encounter with the alien force, is just trying his best, even as his mind is semi-broken and unable to think clearly anymore. I think that’s the story here, different than the clone stories, different than Ghost Bird’s story, more unique than viewing him as a clone.