#for the first time im genuinely considering changing my major

[liverpool-enjoyer]

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[fiendishartist2]

im not fucking around anymore. here's the full "Paul is Care" essay i've been working on:

“Alright. So there's uh, nothing out here, as far as I've seen. But actually, I think there is something out here. I just haven't seen it yet.”

In Petscop, the story is told between the lines. When you feel like you have a grasp on it, a single colour or date throws off everything you’ve built up. That’s why I like to look at Petscop in another way; not as a series of events, but an exploration of a single character: Paul.

Some people like to map everything out in a single timeline; when did Care go missing, when did the family get the game, when did Lina and Mike die. I think that every interpretation of Petscop has its own value, because Petscop means something different to everyone who watches it. But, when I look at Petscop, I don’t just see a series of events wrapped up in the mystery of Care’s disappearance. I see a video game used as a device to explore and understand the connection between the past and the present. I see the ways in which Paul Leskowitz is Carrie Mark.

I know that to some that notion might seem crazy; the broader discussion of Petscop is different to the niche ones held by crazy people in the tags of a Tumblr post . Obviously, this theory is personally significant and I hold it very near and dear to my heart. But, I want to share this theory in a way that makes sense to the general audience of Petscop because I genuinely believe you guys are missing out! So, keep an open mind and enter my Petscop mind-palace…

“...were signs along the way. Um, that I ignored. Because it would have been a completely ridiculous idea to me. Um. But when I found my room, it made, uh, well, I was shocked at first, but it made sense, especially considering where I found the game in the first place, um, that it would be tied, in some way, to me through you. Um. And I'm trying to think, when was the last time I saw any of you at all? It had to have been in like, 1999. I was a kid, I was a small kid. Tiny kid. Um. And after that, just, you know. But, it would make sense in the timeline.” (Petscop 11)

A lot of Petscop theories surround the actual textual proof found in the videos, so that’s where I’ll start. There’s many instances where Paul makes the connection between himself and Care, but one moment continues to stick with me. In Petscop 11, Paul finally enters the house and takes a look around. He’s on the phone with someone, presumably Belle. Paul goes up to the calendars and starts talking about Care, “Yeah, on that topic... I don't remember meeting this girl at all. Um, I don't remember knowing her at any point (…) Um, and I remember you saying that we were, that we, we are, um, exactly the same age.” (Petscop 11). He points out that he and Care share the same birthday, down to the year. We get further confirmation of this in Petscop 14, when Paul’s conversation with Jill that he had on his own birthday is superimposed onto Care’s. The next part though, is what really gets the theory started, “I do agree there's a resemblance. Um. Very strong resemblance between us.” (Petscop 11).

Faces are incredibly important in Petscop. Marvin thought Care and Mike could be rebirthed into Lina because they had similar features, and Care had to be given Mike’s eyebrows specifically to change her room. So, for Paul and Care to have such similar facial features that someone else pointed out the resemblance is significant.

They also happen to share the name “Leskowitz”, which is both Anna and Lina’s last name. We know this because his Reddit account is “p_leskowitz”.

If he’s a Leskowitz, then that explains his complicated feelings towards “the family”. “The family” is a foreboding presence throughout Petscop. Their meddling isn’t outright malicious, but even Paul admits that he’s intimidated by them. And it makes sense, as “the family” (comprised of Anna and Jill) each have a major role in the core mystery of Petscop. Anna is the mother of Care and the wife of Marvin, while Jill is Marvin’s sister and the mother of both Rainer and Mike. To be a Leskowitz, Paul would need to be blood related to Anna or Lina in some way. Paul shows that he has this relation to the family in Petscop 22, when he’s talking to Belle about finding the windmill, “And, I don't th- and you don't have to worry about it, right, 'cause... 'cause you aren't, you aren't family, so you wouldn't... have a room, that's the thing.” (Petscop 22). In this context, Paul is asking Belle whether Jill has contacted her. When he tells her she doesn’t have a room, this is in reference to the Child Library explored in Petscop 3 and 7. This means that in order to be part of the Leskowitz-Mark family (and in our case, related to Care), you have to have a room in the Child Library, something both Paul and Care possess.

Paul being related to the family is also supported by his casual mention of meeting Rainer as a child, “‘Rainer’... I saw him at a birthday party once. All the older kids were down in the basement playing video games, to hide from everyone. He was down there, too. He was older than the rest of them, though.” (Petscop 11), and his confusion of not knowing Care, with the implication that if she was real, he would have met her through the family.

A rarely discussed aspect of Paul’s character is that he can’t tell his left from his right. When he’s doing the disc puzzle in Anna and Marvin’s room is Petscop 11, “Um, we can see what the room looks like in that recording, um, on the uh, right? ... Left? Left? Right ... side.” (Petscop 14) and before he even enters the house, “And, I mean, I still get confused about that. Because, I mean, well, I know it's always the top, but, um, I still have to think. I have to think.” (Petscop 11), we can clearly see that he has trouble with directions. In a similar fashion, Care is described as “dizzy”, most notably in the end credits of Petscop. She is also described as blind by Rainer in Petscop 17, “You were blind. At some point, your movements stopped making sense.” (Petscop 17). In the counsellor’s office, the counsellor says to Paul, “Are you right handed, or left handed? You don't know? Really?” (Petscop 22). I’ll get more into it later, but this sequence is presumably a real conversation that the game is recreating. If this scene is taken from Care’s real childhood, then it confirms that she also had problems with her lefts and rights.

Now, this is the base level of the theory. It’s easy to figure out that Paul is a Leskowitz, he literally calls them “the family”. And while I think the bits about faces and birthdays and directions are significant to this theory, I wanted to get all of the textual evidence out of the way so that I could get into the fun part of this essay: the subtext.

”Some things you can't rewrite.” (Petscop 14)

Petscop is nothing if not a collection of symbols and metaphors. Ask me what Petscop is all about on any given day and there’s a non-zero chance I will start explaining why the car is orange. While it is necessary to analyse Petscop as a real series of events, I think that another approach can be taken; what if we analysed Petscop as a series of events that are happening to Paul specifically? That the game is creating meaning by placing Paul specifically in these snippets of the past. By looking at each moment as “Why did the game make Paul do this?” instead of “What is happening in the game?”, we can see everything through a new lens.

First, I want to discuss colour. Colour plays a huge role in Petscop; almost every character is assigned their own colour. This is most often used to denote who is speaking in text, but it’s also used for other things like the tool. You are probably aware that Care’s colour is yellow, as all of her text is yellow. What you might not know is that Paul’s colour is red. Paul has exactly one instance in all of Petscop where he has coloured text and that is in Petscop 22, when he gives the counsellor his name. The calendars in the house are also colour coded, as the one showing 2017 is red.

One of my favourite moments in all of Petscop uses colour in a way that supports this theory perfectly. When Paul takes Care out of the rebirthing machine, she has been transformed into an Easter egg. A red and yellow striped Easter egg. I will get into this egg later on, but for now, I want to point out how Paul and Care’s colours have been used here. Of course, it’s significant just that they've been put together, but it's more than that. Care’s final form, the egg she has been placed in to keep her safe from all of the trauma she has suffered, that she will spend the rest of the series in, is painted a combination of her and Paul’s colours. In the same sequence, when Paul is playing the Needles Piano for Care B, the “wrong” notes he plays to turn her into the Easter Egg are all red. There’s a joke about eggs and transness in here somewhere.

Right after Care’s rebirth into the egg, Paul places her in the locker with the purple egg and the “new life” letter. If we abide by the established colour theory, this second egg would be Belle’s/Tiara’s egg. By putting them together, alongside the letter, it symbolises Care and Belle’s transfer to Lina’s care; this can also be supported by the ending of Petscop. In the final scene of the soundtrack, Belle recounts when she and Paul were adopted, “There is Boss waiting for her son. Pall do you remember being born. Smuggled away driving to your new house. Boss in driver seat me in back.” (Petscop Soundtrack). “Do you remember being born” is a question posed over and over again throughout Petscop. It’s meant to be a reference to rebirthing, but here it’s Paul being asked if he remembers being born, not Care; you can also connect this to the “new life” letter, making it apparent Belle is asking if he remembers when he was given his “new life” with her and “Boss”. There’s also the implication of the wording “smuggled away”, implying that there was something stopping Paul from being taken to his new home. Paul and Care’s final scenes parallel each other; Care is placed with Belle’s/Tiara’s egg with the “new life” letter, while Paul is taken back to “Boss” by Belle. Care and Paul are both asked if they “remember being born”.

Another, smaller piece of colour theory in Petscop comes from the board games in the counsellor’s office. The board game “Accident” features red and yellow puzzle pieces that fit together, but are broken apart. Remember that Care’s colour is yellow, so assume that she symbolises the yellow piece; Paul’s colour is red, so assume that he symbolises the red piece. The red piece is bigger and fits into the smaller yellow piece, like it’s missing the beginning of it. The yellow piece comes before the red piece, as if it adds context to the red piece. When we think of this in terms of Care and Paul, we can see that Care is the “missing piece” of Paul; the small part of his past that adds the context that completes him. Paul’s piece is bigger because he’s been Paul for so much longer (if we interpret the counsellor’s office as a real event the way it is shown, then that could be the moment he changed. Or, if we consider Care’s rebirth into the egg as the moment Care turned into Paul, then that would be the moment instead), meanwhile Care’s piece is small because she was only a small part of his life.

Taking colour into account, we can get into the meat of the symbolism in Petscop. When we view the events of Petscop through our new lens, many things become significant. Paul is placed in the role of Care many times throughout the series; on Care’s birthday, in the counsellor's office, and in Rainer’s “you are Carrie Mark” monologue.

During the “strange situation” birthday scene, Paul carries around a yellow balloon, symbolising that he is standing in for Care. This is further cemented by Anna’s dialogue addressing Paul as if he is Care on the day she came home, “You made it. Happy birthday! (...) Why are you covering your face? (...) Of course I recognize you. Those eyes. That nose. That’s still you.” (Petscop 14).

This next dialogue from Anna is particularly interesting to me; she doesn’t just tell Paul that she’s happy Care is home safe or ask him where she’s been, but instead she says this, “I sure hope you’ve realised by now. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed. You aren’t lost. Stop wandering and come home.” (Petscop 14). When we talk about Petscop, we have the urge to deny any supernatural involvement in the story. Whether through AI or predictive programming or alternate timelines, we want Petscop to be plausible. Understandable. Easy to digest. But, we often forget that Paul poses the question of a literal “ghost in the machine” in the first few episodes. I want to consider this quote– Anna talking to her child who has been “lost” for many years– as an act of this ghost. The game is talking back to Paul, telling him that no matter how much he has changed, he still has the same eyes, the same nose that made him Carrie Mark. And we know how important eyes and noses are in Petscop. Also as a side note, consider how Anna didn’t specify eyebrows; we know that Care’s lack of eyebrows is in some way due to Marvin, but when she tells Paul she recognises his eyes and nose, she doesn’t add on eyebrows. Paul said it himself in Petscop 7, “Um, and why am I doing that? Well, because eyebrows seem to be important.” (Petscop 7). I like to think that she couldn’t have said that Paul has the same eyebrows because, since Marvin isn’t in the picture anymore, he wouldn’t have any reason to pluck them.

Another scene that mixes up Paul and Care is the counsellor's office. When Paul finally enters the “girl wall” in Petscop 22, he is placed into a school’s counsellor’s office. Again, they talk to Paul as if he is Care, apologising for taking him out of class and saying he needs to “catch up”, implying that he’s missed a significant amount of school. As they start to play Graverobber (Jesus Christ, Rainer), the counsellor is confused about Paul’s name; they ask him if they have the wrong name written down, as his save file is currently “Strange Situation” and when they called out the name on file, Paul didn’t respond. Now, the connection here is a little more nuanced, but it still comes to a conclusion that I think greatly supports the theory. “Strange situation” is in reference to the Mary Ainsworth Strange Situation Experiment, a test in which an infant is deliberately separated from their mother to test their level of attachment. This is a very base level understanding of this concept, but when applied to this specific scene, it becomes apparent that this “strange situation” is another reference to Care. Care was separated from her mother for about half a year, only returning during the birthday party scene; the counsellor’s scene was accessible once Paul started using the “Strange Situation” file. Care stopped recognising the name she used before the seperation, considering herself to be “Strange Situation” instead. She has literally stopped recognising the name Care, and picks out her own name (which in the game Paul sets to his own).

Also consider the implication of the “girl wall”. At first, it’s an absurd joke, meant to lighten the mood using the same roundabout humour the rest of the series has. But, the counsellor asking if they have the wrong name, listing Paul as “Strange Situation” instead of his name, combined with the fact that when Paul is placed in front of the girl wall, he can’t walk away from it, it becomes a bit of an analogy; The game keeps forcefully showing Paul the word “GiRL” over and over and when he finally enters the “girl-world” as Strange Situation, he is called the wrong name and once again placed in Care’s shoes.

Let’s revisit the “ghost in the machine” idea. In Petscop 17, we are shown a past recording of Petscop; we never find out who was playing at this time, but it’s easy to assume Paul is the one watching the recording. The footage is less interesting than the dialogue, but it is notable that it’s a recording of the player running backwards in a very deliberate pattern. The actually relevant part of this sequence is Rainer’s monologue; in particular, the way he frames it, “You are a girl named Carrie Mark, and you were born on November 12th, 1992. You have a mommy named Anna, a daddy named Marvin, an auntie named Jill, an uncle named Thomas, a cousin named Daniel, ......I know what you must be thinking. Have these statements always been true? Or have I cursed you? Is there such a thing? A curse that changes your past?” (Petscop 17). There’s something about the forcefulness of this dialogue, “You are Carrie Mark,” as if Rainer is trying to make it so just by saying it. The inclusion of the birthday is also notable; we have been shown time and time again that Paul and Care share a birthday, and that this is an important part of both of their characters. So, when Rainer asks if these statements have always been true, or if it’s “a curse that changes your past”, we’re meant to interpret it as such: some of the statements are true, but the “you” being addressed is not currently “a girl named Carrie Mark”. Rainer casts a spell to make the player retrace their steps and although he might not be playing, the use of the word “you” and present tense language makes the statement pointed towards Paul. There’s something to be said about Rainer’s position in all of this; he isn’t the only tangible “ghost” in Petscop (Marvin and Tiara fit Paul’s definition established in Petscop 6), but he’s the only one to be fully dead. It truly feels, in this moment, like Petscop– like Rainer– is talking directly to Paul. The “curse that changes your past” is the part that ties it all together. This past that Paul doesn’t fully remember, where Anna and Marvin have a daughter named Care, where someone in his family went missing for months– by learning about this through the game, Rainer is essentially changing Paul’s version of the past. Your memory and physical evidence are all you have of the past; when your memory tells you one thing, but physical evidence tells you another, what version of your past is true?

“You’re the Newmaker. You can turn Care NLM into Care A, and close the loop.” (Petscop 9)

Finally, I want to explain why this theory is supportive of the themes of Petscop. Of course, there’s the obvious link between rebirth and the change from Care to Paul. But, there’s also themes of blood family versus chosen family, breaking the cycle of abuse, and of healing from your past. I want to provide an explanation of each of these themes and how the “Paul is Care” theory fits into them.

Let’s begin with the family point, since I already expanded on the family’s role in Petscop earlier. There’s a story behind the scenes in this series; the conflict between the chosen family versus the blood family. Anna and Jill against Belle and Lina. Anna and Jill are restrictive– they take over the channel and block certain things from the audience. Paul admits that he’s intimidated by them, and he’s concerned when he thinks Jill could be in contact with Belle. When we get the only dialogue from Jill, Paul is hostile and aggressive with her, something we don’t see from him otherwise. Alternately, Anna comes off as dismissive in most of her dialogue; when Care shows up at the birthday party, Anna treats her like no time has passed, like they haven’t been searching for her for months. We don’t get direct contact between Anna and Paul (except for a phone call in Petscop 11 that you could interpret as being with Anna), but the way she talks to the player through Care during the birthday party is still dismissive, “I sure hope you’ve realised by now. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve changed. You aren’t lost. Stop wandering and come home.” (Petscop 14). There’s a level of distance between Paul and the family, which is evident from the name alone; Paul identifies himself as part of the family, but he still calls them “the family” as opposed to “my family”. When you pair that with the fact that he calls them all by their first names instead of any term of endearment (like how Rainer calls her “Auntie Jill” in his spell), it paints a clear picture: Paul does not want to be part of this family.

In direct contrast, Belle is shown a significant amount of affection from Paul. Not only is he on the phone with her for a good handful of the episodes, but Belle also has a familial connection to Paul. In Petscop 2, Paul is talking to Belle and he says “When you come home next month, and uh, hopefully you're feeling a little more enthusiastic about that now, we can investigate this together, and maybe you'll find stuff that I can't find here.” (Petscop 2). I think the casual use of the word ‘home’ to describe where Belle is staying implies a certain closeness, maybe even that they live in the same household. That’s not the part of this line that is important to me, however. Take a look at Belle’s final speech at the end of Petscop; Belle says “I could not wait too be your friend,” and Paul responds, “Family”, to which Belle says, “We can investigate this together.” (Petscop Soundtrack). After distancing himself from the family, as well as directly telling her she’s not part of the family (following it up with “Uhh... I didn't- I didn't mean it that way,” (Petscop 22), implying they have a similar connection that she’s defending), Paul calls Belle family. She states that they’re friends and Paul corrects her by telling her that they’re not just friends, but family. The most gut wrenching part of this dialogue is the use of ‘we can investigate this together’. It’s like a ward, a promise that Belle is making to Paul. He doesn’t have to go through this alone, she’s promising to be there for him. She’s going to investigate this with him, like he asked her to in the second episode. Paul doesn’t call his blood relatives family, but he tells Belle that they are his family; her and the “Boss”.

How does this connect to Care? It’s not hard evidence, but when you take this theme of family into account, it makes more sense for Paul to have a strained relationship with the family if we apply Care’s story to him. Think about it; Paul was ‘smuggled away driving too [his] new house’ and he hasn’t seen the family since he was a child, and Care’s egg was (metaphorically) placed with Belle’s and the New Life Letter when she would have been around 5, since that’s the age she was when she was kidnapped. Care went through an extremely traumatic event in a toxic environment– why wouldn’t someone step in and take her out of that family? To me, this theory extends the same closure Paul gets at the end of Petscop to Care; it tells us that even after everything she went through, she finds people who love and take care of her.

Abuse is a huge focus in Petscop, both as a plot point and a major theme. Rainer’s main motivation is to expose Marvin’s abuse of both Mike and Care to the family– whether or not that’s successful is not important. Because years after Rainer’s attempt, Paul is back doing the exact same; although, his playthrough of Petscop is less of an expose and more of an attempt at solving the mystery. Now, I think it’s a little pedantic, but in this context, I think the “cycle of abuse” in Petscop refers less to a generational cycle, but a continuous cycle that happens every time Petscop is played. Care is stuck in this version of the past that Rainer has created, forced to live through it as many years as Petscop is left on. Paul doesn’t continue this cycle though; as far as we know, Paul is the only person to reach the good ending of the game, where he’s rebirthed Care into the egg and reconnected with Belle and ‘Boss’. Paul is the only person who could understand what Care needed, because it’s exactly what he needed.

Care’s trauma is replayed for us throughout Petscop. Every knowable aspect of it is shown, leaving behind a raw feeling; like somehow, Paul and Rainer have made a spectacle of her abuse. But, I don’t think that’s entirely true. Rainer, although he is bitter and vengeful, is ultimately the person who finds the truth about Care and Mike and (if we are to believe him) is also the one who found Care at the school. In the beginning, it’s obvious that Paul is playing the game to see the mystery and is slowly engulfed by it throughout the rest of the series. When the game tells him that, “Marvin picks up tool hurts me when playstation on,” (Petscop 3), Paul proceeds anyway. The same happens when Care is caught in her room; Paul sees what is obviously a child being kidnapped and continues to solve the puzzle anyway. He picks the flower, catching Care NLM, and leads Marvin to the house. Paul follows through on everything he can to ‘solve’ the mystery of Carrie Mark, but in the end, he defies what the game has told him to do and saves Care. He does what Rainer couldn’t do: he breaks the cycle of abuse in the Mark-Leskowitz family. It’s kind of poetic, the idea that the person Care grew to be is the same person who confronts and lays to rest her trauma. The fact that playing his own theme would be the key to changing Care into the egg (a symbol of birth and potential) is beautiful.

The last thing I want to talk about is the theme of healing. This concept is more nebulous; we don’t see much of Paul post-Petscop, but the final scene does always leave me feeling hopeful for him. I think the reconnection with Belle and ‘Boss’, alongside the reassurance that, “[they] can investigate this together,” shows that Paul is out of the mindset and environment Petscop put him in. I’ve always thought that throughout Petscop, we see a deterioration of Paul; in the beginning, he’s intrigued and confused, but we see him become more and more disturbed, irritable, and frustrated towards the end. This is first evident with the CD puzzle in the house, where Paul is so out of his depth and confused that he stops acting with the same calm rationality shown throughout the earlier episodes. Then, when Paul is messing about with the demo recordings, he stops speaking in the videos entirely. When Paul sees the final blacked out object, which are coordinates to the real life windmill, he is the most stuttery we’ve ever seen, “Hm. Y- y- yep, yep. Yep... yep. N- we would- we would have to find out how big... like, we'd have to find out how big a tile is..? One of the tiles..? Like, if we could- if we could figure out how big... one tile is, in... u- in, umm... Like, feet. Or... Uhh, yeah. Meters.” (Petscop 22). He’s frazzled and excited and a little bit scared, evidenced by how he talks about the family, “They didn't... I don't like talking to them. They intimidate me…” (Petscop 22). All of this changes by the end; Paul is no longer stuck playing the game and he’s free to return to the people who love him most. This freedom is summed up in a single image: the final one we see in Petscop. Paul’s chair is empty and the blue sky beyond the desk is brimming with hope.

All this to say, Paul choosing Belle and ‘Boss’ over the game as well as saving Care by doing what’s best for her instead of finishing the final puzzle, alongside his final scene where he is welcomed home by his real family, shows us an interpretation of Petscop that paints it not as a tragedy, but a story of chosen family, breaking the cycle of abuse, and healing trauma through connection.

Thank you so much for hearing me out.

Bye-bye!

[elasticitymudflap]

If Betty returns in season two, what kind of plot lines and character arcs would you like to see for her? Which characters do you want to see her interact with?

oh man. okay buckle up because you are about to endure my full frontal autism.

first you're going to have to go into this post knowing that i am insane about betty grof. i am aware of this. but they also called me crazy back in 2012 when i said simon and betty probably loved each other very much despite the fact she disappeared, and that she was probably a huge chaotic badass, AND I WAS RIGHT so.

all of this aside, here are a couple things i think would be epic and sexy of them to address:

~betty's past~

GIRL WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS.

no, seriously. i hate that the cut content from the storyboards revealed so much about her that didn't make the final 'jerry' cut. betty is passionate, intense, and liked simon's work because he was this weird little guy who proudly had all these "out there" theories. she even stated that "ancient magic" was once her major, so it's no fucking wonder she was so jazzed to find the one other guy who studied and believed in the strange things she did.

how did betty come to have these strange beliefs, and to the point of pursuing it in fucking grad school? was she just always like this? did her interests and beliefs put her at odds with others when she was growing up, little miss dig-her-way-down-to-the-devil, and that's part of the reason she wanted all the more to support simon?

reading that scene in temple of mars where magic betty laments "what remains" of her original self after spending so long dedicated to simon, even if you take into account the way MMS is warping her perspectives and cranking her obsessive tendencies to 11, i find it hard to believe betty didn't grow up with some kind of instability or trauma that made her more prone to throw herself completely at someone who showed her genuine love and kindness. this isn't necessarily a fault on simon's part, he probably didn't even clock it because he was so caught up with trying not to fuck things up with her (he's got his own issues). but it definitely seems like this is something deeply coded into her being, especially when you consider she was willing to leave everything she knew behind in an instant for him.

and i NEED to know more about the wacky shit she was up to in ooo, before and after becoming magic betty. did she ever go to wizard city? did other wizards even know about her? what does she think about her time as magic betty? moreover, how the hell did king man even get betty to agree to his weird idea of cognitive behavioural therapy?? how did she actually go from literally willing to kill herself via time travel to actually accepting that she needed help getting over simon?? did prismo and the cosmic owl get involved?? what is their connection to king man and mars anyway, i mean we know grob gob glob grod hung out with them?? do you think betty knew at any point about simon's head holding the fionna and cake universe?? SO MANY QUESTIONS RAAARRGHGHHGHH

also, not to get super sappy, but i want to see the enchiridion expedition from her perspective!! i want to see her progression from 'hell yeah im going on an adventure with that guy whose research i admire' to 'oh my god i love his stupid ass help????'.

~betty's guilt (feat. regrets)~

i don't care what the alternate bus stop scene said, you will never convince me betty grof has "no regrets". i think she has 'no regrets' in terms of loving simon, and she would never want him to think that she regrets their relationship because of what it "did" to her (turned her into a kaiju). i think this scene was betty trying to give simon a modicum of closure by reassuring him of that fact, and trying to help him reckon with the fact that there's no going back and changing how things ended up for the two of them; from here on out they can only move forward.

that being said, we know that betty will often push simon into doing things she thinks are best for him, whether he wants these things or not, such as not getting held up by snakes or not dying. she's a quick thinker and a risk taker who doesn't like looking at the 'big picture', and these are things she's probably very aware about herself.

i think, in the 12 years that they were apart, betty probably had a lot of time to reflect on her decisions after the crown came into their lives. how her hubris in trying to study magic ended up in her becoming "magic betty", how magic betty nearly ended/condoned the end of the world multiple times, how she ultimately did cure simon but almost killed him in the process. most of all, you cannot convince me betty wouldn't agonize over how her split-second decision to jump into the future affected simon. you really think betty fucking grof would've have been totally unaffected by the revelation that simon spent nearly ten human lifetimes agonizing over driving her away?

in her last interaction with him, magic betty's recklessness cured them... only to then be grotesquely crushed to death inside of golb. but he didn't get upset with her, he didn't panic, he didn't even fight it, he just... gave in. there's this air of acceptance to him, an acceptance that comes after prolonged and complicated grief, that i'd argue, wasn't the culmination of being cured, but the culmination of his long and painful battle over losing her; he was content to die as long as he was with her. that must have been... really something for her to mull over.

i could easily see her developing a bit of a complex over it. i think it would be fascinating to see a betty who now, after all the dust as settled, has looked at their history and concluded that she was the common denominator in all of this, that she is bad for simon, that in a way she is a "curse" to him. and that it would be the perfect justification for her staying away from him all these years, thinking without her influence he could finally move on from her and live the rest of his human life happily with his new magic future friends.

i don't think betty has necessarily "moved on" from simon, i think she still loves him dearly... but as i said, thoroughly convinced she'll only damage him further if she keeps trying to pursue him, and that simon's breakdown during season 1 was only more evidence to that fact.

i think she's trying to lead him to get over her 'for his own good', and that she's purposefully being vague and simplifying conclusions about their relationship so he doesn't try to fight her on it like he always does when she makes these huge decisions for them. she's not bringing any of the stuff she actually regrets up with him because only betty sees it as a problem. simon is so enamoured with her he probably wouldn't even entertain the possibility that she had negative effect on him, but he would believe the reverse in a heartbeat.

this isn't me saying they're ""toxic"" at all, i'm saying that these are two very damaged people who would benefit from multiple types of therapy. and that, as they are, they currently are more likely to keep going in loops with unhealthy behaviours and blaming themselves ad infinitum rather than try to reckon with how they can change, and how it is a problem that they'll always do it for the other, but never for themselves.

even if all of my above ramblings turn out to be bunk: betty grof needs some kind of therapy for her pre-existing self sacrificial tendencies and self worth issues, a space for her to process and work through all of the things that happened to her in ooo, couple's counselling, and the biggest blunt known to man.

you might be wondering "emery, why are you talking about her like she isn't beyond such things? she's golb now, the embodiment of chaos! her ""arc"" is over."

~golbetty conspiracy theory time~

i'm not entirely convinced betty is golbetty as we've come to understand her. i stand by this with my crumbs of a conspiracy theory in that when simon first did the ritual, it was ORIGINAL golb's face that flashed over the scene (not golbetty or even the statue's face), and how golbetty seemed to transform back into Golb Classic after she blew simon away into the void. there's also this weird thing where golbetty had these holes or rips on her leg when she rotated; i thought it was an animation error but then it was also in the storyboards so idk what to believe...

plus the boards ive seen seem to only refer to them as "GOLB", never 'GOLBetty', which i just find... interesting

and i keep thinking about simon info-dumping about golb to betty in the 'come along with me' flashback and the specific wording that was used: "imagine if we could somehow harness all that dank energy..." and then comparing it to the specific wording of betty's wish "... however it has to happen, I wish for the power to keep Simon safe"

there's a couple lines in 'you forgot your floaties' regarding betty's work before becoming magic betty that i feel often get overlooked, one being how tiny manticore describes the situation as "she thinks she can save her BF, Simon, by finding the source of magic," and in betty's own words: "studying [magic madness and sadness] could lead me to their underlying cause, and then I'll control the forces that hold sway over Simon"

i've always wondered if part of the reason betty's wishes to "banish golb from this world/for golb to disappear" didn't work was not just because they didn't tap into her heart's deepest wish (keeping simon safe), but because a wish like that would also require some kind of fundamental change to the laws of the universe first in order for it to work. magic betty even references golb as "the most powerful force in the universe," so how would the crown ever hope to compete with that? according the ancient candy elemental, wish magic has the potential to cause "irreversible damage to the very structure of existence". maybe the crown itself couldn't banish golb with a simple wish, but it could restructure the world to create someone who was powerful enough to control even golb, if only it were structured through the correct wishing language.

and it would make total sense for betty to become that person.

i've been thinking about the way the candy elemental tries to warn evergreen from using the crown: "this wish may see things in you you cannot see yourself, can you truly say you know your heart's truest desire?"

i wonder if there may have been two elements to betty's wish, and the part of it that betty "didn't see in herself" was her worded in the language of "power"; betty's desire to gain control over forces of the universe no human could ever hope to fight against, let alone win.

she spent her human life fascinated by ancient magic, fighting to get her's and simon's work recognized as valid and worthwhile. then, she's suddenly in the future, fighting to stop simon from dying, physically fighting at times, and fighting to find a way to gain control over these "forces" that held him prisoner. she essentially is fighting to become the conqueror of magic, madness, and sadness... and she fails, becomes a victim of it. and it all goes downhill from there, the loss of control over herself, over her mind, over her goals, yet the most 'betty' thing about her is that she's still fighting, albeit a bit crooked and to the detriment of all else. in the end, she's even fighting with herself, fighting to remember who she even is without the fight, not even sure if that person exists anymore.

and then she's freed, suddenly, from the confines of MMS to the literal confines of a quickly shrinking prison. when you watch the two of them in that scene, she isn't fighting to escape the same way finn is literally fighting the wall, but you can tell she's not giving up. part of her is still fighting to think of a way out, even when it feels like there's absolutely no hope left.

her desire "for the power" could mean, in a sense, to have the ability to be in control of all that she couldn't at one time or another: time, fate, magic, life, death, chaos... but this was articulated through her love for simon, because it's the only way she probably even recognizes it within herself.

this is why i don't entirely think betty and golb are fused, or that betty is solely "golbetty". i think being "fused" with no possibility of escape would be antithetical to the language and possible wider implications of her wish. this is why i think she's something above even golb, like a being with the ability to possess/harness the power of other deities. and i think she does this specifically in scenarios where simon is in immediate danger and she needs to control them or harness their power in order to protect him.

i'm ready to be proven wrong, and i probably will be. still, i rotate these thoughts in my head at a dangerous velocity, and none of you can stop me.

~ok i'm done ill stop being insane now (lying)~

so to... actually answer your question, i REALLY want betty to meet fionna and cake, because it sounds to me like they remind simon a lot of her. i would just love to see the absolute fucking tornado they'd be when put in a room together.

also, obviously first and foremost, I NEED BETTY TO TALK TO MARCELINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

anyway, as far as season 2 goes, something is definitely up with prismo. and since he's guardian/creator of multiverse entities, who the fuck knows what that means for the fabric of existence if he's glitching out.

all im saying is, i wouldn't be surprised if our main trio end up having to save the multiverse and have to do so with help from other... entities. bettities, even. (hehe. bettity)

[fatuismooches]

SMOOCHES!! Hello hello again my cherub!! ૮꒰ ˶´ ꒳ `˶꒱ა

Fair warning: suggestive content!! I mean this in the fluffiest non horniest way possible but I think after some time that fragile!reader wakes up, they’ll feel down and like a burden. And I’m sure that there are always many days where they feel undesired or that they’re not as good looking as they were before in the Akademiya. Making them wonder if Dottore would even want them in such an intimate act. But I like to think that Zandik shoots down their ideas and decides to show them just how much they mean to them. I can only imagine that the first time that they do have intimacy after so many years have passed that it would be so so gentle and soft :(( maybe a few tears here and there from the fact that Zandik still loves them despite the changes their body has gone through and how it continues to deteriorate. And Dottore probably praises them in the way that he can, the Dottore way LOL. They probably couldn’t let Zandik go after that and they probably had him stay in bed with him. (Despite Dottore’s constant protests of wanting to check their vitals and make sure such an act didn’t affect them negatively. But it’s all sort of an excuse as he actually does want to stay 😭!!!) but yeah I like to think their first time was probably so tender and sweet especially with how frail fragile!reader is. And Dottore probably makes them always look at him so they can see just how perfect they are and that there’s no reason to hide from. He’s your husband :( why would you want to hide yourself from the only person you have now in this world. When he shows his love and care for you, he absolutely means it. (Also they 100% got bitten AT LEAST once during it.)

But you can completely ignore this if you’re not comfortable with adding on/writing about it completely understand smooches <33 but I hope you have an absolutely wonderful day and week!! December is almost here!! >_<

-from your dear boo boo bear 🎐 anon! ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

IM SOBBING GOOD NIGHT (Warning: Under the cut for suggestive content, nothing explicit is mentioned though. Also reader has some insecurities about their body/looks.)

OH MY GOSH I REALLY CAN'T I JUST LOVE THIS TREMENDOUSLY 😭😭💗 i know the majority of people write him as being pretty rough and mean during this (which is totally understandable lmao) but!! i just want to think about him being soft!! Especially with his darling fragile lover!! :(

Though you were always a bit self-conscious, it only amplified after you came down with your illness, and especially after you woke up. It was just... genuinely hard to look at yourself sometimes and you couldn't help but compare yourself to other people. There were so much other pretty people in the Fatui, noble too, and Dottore could surely have any of them if he tried. Especially since he was exceptionally handsome himself. But instead, he was stuck with you, the one who was still so plain and ordinary, not attractive in the slightest. At least that's what you thought. So you shied away from your lover as much as possible. You couldn't bear to see the look on his face once he finally saw you for who you were. No one special.

Though Dottore is an extremely observant man so your thoughts won't go unnoticed for long. And he just doesn't understand. Why would you see yourself in that way? He thinks you're beautiful. And that's not just him speaking, no, he can prove it scientifically too (which manages a small chuckle out of you, but he's dead serious.) Even still, you two don't engage in intimacy until a long time later, but when you do it's very... well, uncharacteristically romantic. He's very prepared, considering how he must make sure he doesn't hurt or overwhelm your already frail body with it. Has to stop every now and then because you cry from all the emotions that you're feeling. Because sometimes you still can't believe that someone like him could love someone as insignificant as you.

You're definitely pretty weak after that, but you still muster all your strength to cling to him. And although you're not strong enough to hold him down your eyes beg and plead for him to stay with you. He's so warm too. And his arms are so comfortable and run over the sore parts of your body so nicely. So you beg him to just stay for a bit... just a bit more... well, he doesn't have to wait long because you're out like a light rather quickly. At least now you can't hide your beauty from him. He can gaze at you all he wants, and gaze he will.

I love this so so much 🎐 anon! He's just so *screams* i hope you're doing well my lovely 🎐 anon!! And yes December is almost here hehe (and my hands are constantly being frozen every day now 😨)

[arson-09]

I dont talk much about minecraft youtuber drama here but god quackity is pissing me off with his shenanigans.

In case you missed it admins for quackitys minecraft server (specifically an admin named lea) came forth claiming that the admins were underpaid if paid, were working horrible hours, and generally treated like shit. This is of course paraphrasing but this is worker exploitation and disgusting.

Quackity then did a little stream saying he was “unaware” of anything wrong happening behind the scenes. Which is interesting considering this is his “passion project” and the studio is under his name and hes the one who hired everyone.

Then recently Lea (i apologize if im spelling her name wrong she is french if i recall) did an interview saying that quackity was basically lying, the ndas he had the admins signed were fake, and reiterated the horrible working conditions and the fact he knew everything.

Then today he streamed again saying he was stepping back because of the hate and threats we was receiving which of course is never okay but this is the first time he’s ever spoken on that subject (which is interesting as his twt fandom is known for being incredibly hateful and threatening people) and he was stepping back from the server. Again this is a simplified version, just hitting the major points of everything.

this is not accountability, this is him making someone else fix what hes done. He wont even openly admit to everything but his silence shows everything. What he has done to his workers is horrible and incredibly wrong but the majority of his fans dont care and are upset at dream stans of all people for “making him step back” (dream stans havent even been the main group doing this shit btw. they are just the group pointing out the hypocrisy the most as dream fans have received copious amounts of hate from qsmpers for the fact they like dream. Let it be clear that the allegations against dream have been proven false and as of me writing this post he has not done anything genuinely bad. like exploiting his workers)

Regardless of who you stan or hate, you have to realize that what quackity has done with his server and the admins is wrong and he should take accountability and discuss what hes done wrong. hes was/is a law student for heavens sake. This is only the tip of the iceberg of questionable things quackity has done (for example his merch company is extremely shady. there is very little information available about it online, people have trouble with shipping and receiving their orders, merch quality, and much more) and it saddens me that while the mcyt community preaches accountability and recognizing when a cc has done wrong, they fail to do it 99% of the time. I dont hate quackity, and i dont want him to get doxxed and receive death threats, but i need him to be transparent. To admit to his mistakes and be honest and actually change shit. Because right now him stepping back isnt fixing anything, its not helping the people who have been hurt by his actions. Im also really sad that the qsmp has been riddled with these mistakes as theres so much potential with it. It was the first bilingual minecraft server then multilingual. it united so many different parts of the minecraft community but it is not stable, its not going to last at this rate and thats so sad. Qsmp seems to just be a money maker for its creators, every part of it meticulous planned to see what will bring in the most views (as well as its the first server i have personally seen have a merch store? i wonder if the admins that play the characters are getting any of that money…)

Anyway, i just wanted to say my piece on it after ive been apart of the minecraft youtuber fan community for a long time and have seen a lot of shit :/ just a psa if your first reaction to this post is to get all upset in my comments i will block you. I do however appreciate genuine comments on the situation, as a fan or not of quackity. Worker exploitation is never okay but most of everything else is just how i see the situation.

(just wanted to add a quick edit cause i got a good anon but accidentally deleted it🧍🏻)

I am not making fun or trying to make the fact quackity is getting harassed less important. Doxxing and threats are never okay, and even if i dislike him i dont wish that on him. I am only disappointed that it took to this point for him to say something. Of course he couldve been planning something but he never explicitly said so so lots of people, me included, weren’t sure if he was going to ignore it as he does have a track record of not saying anything unless forced. As well as hes never condemned his fans for the fandoms habit of doxxing and harassment. Ofc Q cant control his fandom, but openly saying “hey stop doing that. i dont want yall to do that�� would be nice. I thankfully have never experienced it but i had twt moots who got doxxed by qsmp fans and thats why i said i wish he had said something earlier. But i am not trying to take away how severe the fact hes getting doxxed is. Just wanted to make that clear👍🏻 Dont fucking dox or harass people, be critical but dont be horrible people.

[catboybiologist]

hi, i have one like, question for you regarding transgender healthcare. beacause. like there are people to whom dysphoria brings immense distress/unhappiness, and any healthcare system should absolutely take care of that, for free.

but theres also people who dont feel that strongly about gender and or dont experience dyphoria, but still prefer getting/removing their tits/penis/vagina. and thats also okay, like, infromed consent and all. but im not sure where the line should be on what we (as in, taxpayer) actually pay for. like, idk, i dont have a strongly formed oppinion on this. so id like to hear yours

I know you're not from the US, but unfortunately my perspective on this will have to be amerocentric because that's my experience- so I'll talk about that perspective first, and then try to generalize it.

The American healthcare system is so wasteful in how it bars people from procedures its insane. More money is spent figuring out how to reject people from receiving monetary payments for healthcare than would be spent if you just approved the overwhelming majority of them. And this isn't even considering other ludicrously wasteful forms of spending the US government does, like the insane portion of our defense budget that just disappears into thin air every year.

So how much additional burden should the taxpayer pay? Ideally, none, because any significant reform of the healthcare system would make all of these questions moot.

But, not every country is in this situation. And there is still a question embedded in here- what is the line of providing medical care from the government/taxpayer? I don't have personal experience with it, but this is exactly what countries with socialized healthcare deal with all the time, well beyond just gender affirming care. I tried to make the parallel with abortion because its a similar category of thing. Let's call it like... "semi-elective" procedures- medical procedures with the potential to significantly improve someone's quality of life, but won't kill or severely incapacitate them if they don't get the procedure, leaving it up to them to decide whether the medical context for the procedure fits for them (I'm NOT trying to lessen how life changing these procedures are, I'm calling them 'semi-elective' as a way of denoting that two people faced with the same situation can make different decisions about it based on their personal considerations). This can apply to a lot of things, some of them almost entirely cosmetic- surgeries to mitigate a mild disability, breast implants for cancer patients after a masectomy, procedures for conditions like cleft lip, facial reconstruction after severe injury, and on and on. To me, gender affirming care falls in this category- its not cancer treatment, but it is life changing in an overwhelmingly positive way.

In my mind, it should be the priority of any government to prioritize and expand the healthcare they're able to provide, including for these semi-elective procedures. Many wealthy, developed nations have the ability to cover most or all of these kinds of procedures, even though they're entirely "elective". But yes, budget and resource concerns are very real in many places, so yes, priorities do have to be made on a national scale. This is a very delicate and interesting question, actually, and there is a lot of room for well-intentioned debate on it.

But I'm not going to answer it.

Because I think you should ask yourself something.

Why is this a question so frequently applied to gender affirming treatments, yet rarely, if ever, applied to any of the other procedures I listed above? I'm not jumping on you, because you asked a genuine question, and I'm glad you asked it. I'm speaking to anyone reading this, not just you, because this exact thing is so frequently brought up when discussing gender affirming care. And that's a double standard through and through- there's no way around that.

[quitefair]

so, about Ballister’s origin...

alright so i’m a huge, huge fan of the original nimona graphic novel. and i’m genuinely a fan of the movie too! it did make some significant changes, but overall told the story it wanted to tell, and pretty much summed up the themes of the novel itself! it was an enjoyable ride!

but!!! there was one bit of the story that didn’t quite sit right with me. and it took me a while to realise what that thing was. (i didn’t want to make a post ranting about it without properly processing what it was that made me dislike this, so i let it ruminate)

anyway, after seeing this post, everything fell into place.

instead of ballister being a commoner rising to become a knight...

what if he was born outside the wall instead? 

(major spoilers for the graphic novel and movie below)

so in the original comic, the knights of the institution were all orphans, including ballister and ambrosius. they grew up and trained together, and were both considered among the most skilled and prominent knights of the institution at the time. however, everything changed when they were pitted against each other in a jousting match. the director gave ambrosius a weaponised lance (similar to ballister’s sword in the movie). its weight threw ambrosius off balance and caused him to lose against ballister during the joust. in a fit of jealous rage over losing, he fires the lance at ballister, causing him to lose his right arm and ruining his chances of ever becoming a knight.

all of this is implied to have happened because the director wanted ambrosius to win the joust. perhaps because of the way he looked. white skin, blonde hair, all the ideal societal characteristics of a hero. nate mentions this in a recent article as well talking about the movie.

while ballister... well. he didn’t. and now he also doesn’t have an arm. it was also implied that the director didn’t like that ambrosius and ballister were close, didn’t like that her perfect hero had a weakness, probably thought that ballister was not good enough for her poster child, idk. so yeah, she killed two birds with one stone. (except in this version no queens were harmed lmao)

the way they translated this into the movie was... well. interesting.

so now, gloreth has a bigger role in all of this. which is cool! it ties in so well with nimona being gloreth’s beast, and the entire reason that the city and the institution exists in the first place. this was actually one of my favourite changes to the comics that they made for the movie!!!

but! what i didn’t like was that our boys were no longer orphans. ambrosius is now the descendant of gloreth? which is why he’s the poster boy of the institution? and the one with the weight of familial expectation on him? 

(okay i lied this kinda slaps but it wasn’t explored as much as i’d liked. anyway wouldn’t it have been great if this was a limited series instead of a movie? lmao im going off track.)

but the weirdest part for me, and something i still felt difficult to accept, was that ballister... was a commoner. a commoner that was chosen to join the institution and to become a knight.

and it’s a controversial decision?

youre telling me that in this sci-fantasy world of super monster cops, that the only way people that can become a monster cop, is through nepotism????

and consider this: most of the commercial stuff aimed at kids, teens etc (kwispy dragon for example) sends the message that maybe, just maybe, you, the commonnest of commoner children, could also rise up and be a super monster cop hero?

there’s also the fact that in our current day and age, the story of the underdog gets the most attention and press? wouldn’t the crowds be ecstatic over a kid from nowhere, rising up among the ranks to become one of the most promising potential knights in this institution?

so yeah i dont really understand why the general population have gripes against ballister becoming a knight (it’s shown at the beginning during the whole montage that there’s some people who aren’t vibing with it) douchebag knights maybe yeah. but i don’t see how the general public wouldn’t be anything but supportive, and would turn on him so fast.

unless.... he wasn’t from the city itself.

you only really hear about the wall partly through the film. you’re shown that the city grows and that there’s a wall built around it during the intro cinematic, but nothing is mentioned until quite significantly through the film. which is odd... considering how important it is to the story. gloreth built the wall to keep the monsters out. to keep us in and to keep them out. the propaganda of there only being monsters outside the wall, and only good and respectable citizens live within the city walls.

(how does the wall keep us free? the wall keeps out the enemy. and we build the wall to keep us free, that’s why we build the wall, we build the wall to keep us free.)

which would make a ballister that came in from outside the wall... well.

1. it would make the director’s statement of ‘cracks in the wall’ make more sense. in a literal sense, ballister couldve come into the city from a literal crack in the wall. which also ties into the metaphor of gloreth’s walls/propaganda cracking. and the fact that he’s now rising up to become a knight? corruption from the inside? it makes the director’s motivations hold more weight.

(also having the director be a descendant of gloreth rather than ambrosius would make more narrative sense but that’s a whole other post)

2. now the public would have more reason to not trust this guy. it’s easier to spread propaganda about him once he ‘kills the queen’. a monster infiltrating the ranks. and then he’s allied with a monster shapeshifter nimona?

3. the parallels between ballister and nimona??? would be even more prevalent??? both literal outsiders. hated by everybody for basically no reason other than that they’re different. and the fact that ballister accepts nimona when gloreth didn’t?

4. there’s also the fact that throughout the movie, the concept of the wall protecting the people from the monsters outside is questioned - are there really even monsters outside, when we’ve never seen them for ourselves? what if you guys are lying to us, what if youre WRONG? and ballister becoming a knight might’ve been a step in the right direction towards pushing against those stereotypes, but the director wasn’t having any of it.

so yeah, those are my thoughts. the movie is still insane though i rly love it. but a lad can dream about what could’ve been, yeah?

[captainnait]

Go ahead, infodump about Bob from Headrush. No one is stopping you

3:11 pm, 5/20/2024

You will not believe how big of a smile I got when I first saw this ask 😭😭 Like I'm genuinely so happy to talk about him, thank you,,,

Anyway, you don't need to ask me twice 💥

(Yeah, a lot of rambling under the cut, hehe)

— One of my favorite canon facts about Bob is that he REALLY hates emoticons. He mentions it two times: one time in a question, where he refuses to read out loud the category name, that is just an emoticon, and instead just calls it "that. . . thing" or smth, and the other time is in the "Don't be afraid to express your emoticons" Headrush category, where he just straight up tells players to be cautious of people who use emoticons 😭

Either he had a terrible experience with someone who used emoticons. . . Or his old man brain just doesn't understand them. Or both idk.

— I don't know if it's just an Andy Poland thing or not (it's probably is, but still—), but I just really like the way he can change up his voices so quickly. My man can literally go from "uwu im so silly" type of voice to LITERALLY the most brutal and manliest voice imaginable in just a span of a few seconds, and I think that's INCREDIBLE.

If we talk about Bob specifically though, I really like how silly his voice sounds at the end of the round, when he says "bye-bye" or other similar to that lines. It just makes me giggle, okay,,

— I don't remember the full context behind this image and the question it is from, but. Yeah. Huh.

[For some reason Tumblr just doesn't let me put this image in, but it just a screenshot of the game with red words written on the screen, saying "Bob has a "thing" for Barney"]

It's also pretty funny, since a few rounds later I got another Barney question ("Even Purple Dinosaurs Have to Die... Someday"), and Bob didn't sound really amused by it lol

— There are a lot of lines in the game, where Bob jokes/admits that he feels pretty lonely and/or isolated, which is very interesting, considering that he doesn't seem as a very introverted person or someone who doesn't go outside much.

I don't have any specific speculations on why he is like that, but I think (headcanon, I guess) that it's something that he grow up feeling like and, perhaps, still haven't grown out of it.

— In "None of the Smoke & All of the Cancer", Bob says that he finds smoking to be "sexy". It isn't very clear whether if he meant it as a joke or not, so. Eh.

— A lot of people said it way before me, but. . . This man has major dog vibes. Like, I can't pin down specific things that make me think like that. It's— It's just the overall vibe I get from him lol

— I'm pretty sure I've seen someone already make a post about it (I'm not sure though), buuuut it's pretty fascinating to me how little sexual interest Bob shows in women (compare to other hosts in the series, at least) and how little he cares for "mushy" stuff in general, valuing friendship/platonic bonds a lot more.

This probably could stem from what type of game Headrush is, since it's aimed for a younger audience - teens, who probably don't really care about love in that young age. But yeah, just an interesting thing to thinking about while in a shower.

— His relationship with Old Man is pretty weird, because he both shows extreme violence and, yet, somehow, some type of respect towards him? Like, there are moments were he shouts, yells and doesn't mind kicking Old Man for his annoying shenanigans, maybe even having a way easier time with it than other hosts. But then there are a few rare moments, where he actually doesn't mind Old Man at all and would even listen to his stories with a genuine interest.

Of course it's not something completely new to the series, but it is also makes me fairly curious, since I feel like this is the game where we get to see a lot of Old Man's personality and how he influences those around him (in the case of this game (99% of it) - Bob lol)

. . . That's it, ig. For now, i feel satisfied)

I also would really like ranting about Milan and his weirdly homoerotic relationship with Bob, buuut I need to get all the TTwM clips first, so. Yeah. That'll have to wait 💥

[calpalsworld]

I just realized Im over 6 months on T...!!!

My genuine review of T for others who may be considering or just interested in the topic.

Keep in mind that everyone will have different results on T. For me I am on a small dose because my T levels were already high to begin with.

Reasons why I went on T:

Was living out publicly as non binary but I would still feel upset when strangers would misgender me.

Had been wishing that I was more masc body wise and voice wise since at least high school.

Didn't have intense dysphoria but I felt very neutral about my body. It felt strange and like it wasn't progressing how I imagined it would. I had certain features that pissed me off, which I knew T would change.

Dysphoria was triggered in public interactions and when I had to acknowledge my body by myself. I felt like strangers weren't seeing me as me, and felt that I wasn't experiencing my body in the way I wanted to.

Pros:

Everything!!!

Voice that surprises me with how deep it is sometimes. When I lean back against a chair and speak I can feel my diaphragm rumble.

Menstruation stopped almost immediately.

(May be TMI but this is a major thing yet the only thing that I did not know was going to happen before starting). Rapid and significant genital changes. Psychologically helpful for me.

Hairier arms, stomach, and thighs.

Stomach fat and face fat increase. (potentially boob and thigh fat decrease but it may be placebo or just in contrast).

More facial fuzz.

Slightly veinier hands.

Slightly thicker/more muscular arms.

Looking at myself and seeing someone who looks good and confident and masc/butch and feeling great about it. Sometimes I look at myself in the reflections of building windows and get excited.

Being able to discuss T with other friends who are on T.

People misgender me as he/him and a man (Im non binary and go by they/them) more often than misgendering me as she/her and a woman now. This is still not ideal but it bugs me less.

Random queer strangers asking "are you on T!?" and being excited.

Knowing I dont have to live my life as a lie.

Cons:

My pre existing erotophobia (I'm triggered and obsessive over certain things relating to sex) has been activated as I experience new things.

My pre existing paranoia being rebranded into a trans related experience (I worry sometimes people are stalking me and planning to kill me for the slightest things I do wrong, now I worry that its because Im trans). This will go away once I work through my mental illness and internalized bigotry.

Voice hurt when the changes started (like a sore throat for a few weeks as if I was sick).

I cant do a lot of funny voices that I liked doing anymore, but I can do new voices.

New and strange sensations in genital area, during the first few weeks it was very painful (I have Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and Vaginismus so this may not be a universal experience).

Became slightly stinkier and oilier when I started, but it seems to have gone away.

I'm non binary and I still feel connected to women and I get anxious that people won't be able to comprehend that. (examples: others might not like me calling myself "butch" or sharing my experiences with womanhood). But this is internal rather than reflective of anything I've experienced. This may be entirely in my head.

Family awkwardness. Family members assuming crazy stories about how I feel. (generic things like: thinking i hate myself and am scared of men so i want to turn myself into a man?!?!😭😭😭). But friends and others do not assume these things.

(TMI but true) Thick buttcrack hair is annoying.

Future thoughts:

I feel very fortunate that my experience with T is going very well.

I know the best parts of T takes time and patience to become apparent so I am excited that I started at 21.

I am proud of achieving what I thought might only be a fantasy, and I hope I can have access to T for the rest of my life.

[territorialufo]

i give in can you tell me about that little iphone binch

YESS YES I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT THE LITTLE IPHONE BINCH !!!!!!!!! this is literally just rambling im so sorry. There's a lot of text blocks in the beginning but the end has more pics and silly stuff 

Also ii spoilers but its hard to talk abt mephone without getting into the recent stuff so whatever 

Under cut cause this got. Really long. whoops

Context/background of II/mephone 

“Inanimate Insanity” (ii) is a web animation originally released in 2011, considered the second “major” object show after BFDI. btw an object show is a genre of web series that features anthropomorphized inanimate objects competing for some kind of prize. I am NOT the right person to ask about object shows cause the only one ive ever been invested in to this extent is ii and theres SOO many other ones out there LMAO. Ok sorry i sounded like a bot for a second there JUST PROVIDING CONTEXT!! Inanimate Insanity’s structure is kind of interesting because it starts out as a silly comedy in s1 and most of s2 before descending into a really drama heavy storyline, with tension caused both by mephone’s past haunting him and conflict between the contestants themselves. Then suddenly s2 goes on a four year hiatus and animationepic (main youtube channel) launches s3 with new characters and artstyle, seemingly completely ditching the plot they had in s2??? IM NOT GONNA GET TOO INTO ALL THAT but it all works out timeline wise so its chill the tone switch was just rly funny at the time 😭😭😭 

ANYWAYYYY mephone. Mephone4. Mister phone. Four. The one and only four. MeFon! MePhone4 (parodying the IPhone4) is the de facto host of the in-universe reality show “Inanimate Insanity”!! As the host, he has speaking lines in nearly every episode which is super awesome and epic for mephone4 enjoyers (me). His initial vibe was inspired by Chris McClean from TDI, and was even voiced by Christian Potenza in the first episode before being switched to Mark Katz, who is the father of the creator of II, Adam Katz, which is also pretty cool i think. Since Mark Katz is a grown ass dude, mephone just has. The same voice for like the entire series SHDHF everyone else’s voices are changing and stuff as the creators got older but mephone just sounds like a middle aged man for all of it 😭I love it tho this isn’t a criticism!!! As the years go by it gets more and more expressive :) s1 is. rough. considering it was made by a bunch of kids, its very much a product of its time lol

Lore/character 

Ok lore time cause the thing w mephone is most of his backstory was kind of just hinted at (or implied with the existence of Apple irl). Like in s1 there was the introduction of mephone4s and 5, but otherwise, not much (as far as I can remember. I watched s1 when i was a kid so its been a while lmao). Then there was s2e8 where the contestants go to headquarters and we meet steve cobs (yes, like steve jobs), who’s his creator and dad?? Again some hints are dropped but nothing concrete about their relationship. And then BOOM. SEASON 2 EPISODE 13. “Mine Your Own Business” was my fave II ep for sooo long (idk what my fave is now tbh) cause THE MEPHONE LORE DROP??????? IT WAS CRAZY and also the ending of the episode with fan’s monologue and the soundtrack “shell of a fan” is my fave in the show ANYWAY ANYWAY so begins the remembering of the Horrors. 

He was “born” in Meeple Headquarters, and PLEASE KNOW THAT HE WAS BORN AN ADULT OH MY GOD there are some clowns who think hes literally 14 years old bc thats how old the iphone4 is USE YOUR BRAIN USE YOUR BRAIN AAAAA right so he basically knows nothing about the world, confined to headquarters until his eventual escape. Cobs and mephone have a pretty interesting dynamic, where cobs has most of the power. The way Cobs praises mephone but later shoots him down is so AUHGHGHGH. It’s an oppressive environment he's living in, only expected to do assigned tasks and shamed for any genuine interests, while having the pressure to impress his creator on his shoulders at the threat of being discarded. Mephone grows to hate and fear cobs, but at the same time, cobs is the only person whos known him since the beginning.

The way literally every problem mephone has can be traced back to his origin/how he was raised is so crazy. Like even before the s2e16 twist, it was extremely prevalent??? There are a bunch of analysis posts that explain it way better than I could but MANNNN for a show that the crew started when they were literally 13, they were able to tie things together pretty well, i think! 

It’s been pretty obvious since s2e13 that hosting Inanimate Insanity is just one big escapist fantasy for mephone, one where he is free to do as he pleases while ignoring all the trauma he sustained in “childhood”. Cause it’s implied he escaped Meeple, deleted his bad memories, and then started s1 right after. I mean, it makes sense, since outside of the cold, mechanical nature of Meeple, the only warmth he got was from his enjoyment of reality tv shows. If s1 is an amnesia mephone, and s2 is a spiraling mephone, then I’d describe s3 as “escapism but worse” mephone. It doesn’t ever get as gloomy as s2, but s3 has steady background reminders of “hey guys remember mephone is running away from all his problems right now!!” until it all comes to head in the finale. Some ppl dislike how mephone-centric the show’s gotten, but honestly idgaf more for me

I do want to say that he is very flawed, though. Esp near the beginning, he is really fucking rude and does not respect his contestants at all and frequently belittles them and puts them in mortal danger. he tends to view them and everything that happens to them through the lens of “its just part of the show!!!!”. He tends to brush off everyone’s problems, no matter how serious, even when he’s the one that caused them.

His reality show host personality is all a very big facade to cover up how he feels about the past (thus further submerging him in the fantasy of Inanimate Insanity). Like previous users have mentioned, this is likely due to the fact that he had no one to learn HOW to be empathetic/kind from besides reality television (which is known to be exaggerated for drama) and cobs (who is his abuser) But I famously do enjoy characters who are kind of dickheads, the confidence being a mask is like a tasty bonus to me.

The dichotomy between his arrogant host exterior and paranoid/anxious interior is really interesting and fun to watch. Compared to his relatively sweet/naive beginning personality, it’s wild to see just how much he’s changed since then because of everything that’s happened.  His relationships with the rest of the characters is also interesting, cause despite being their host, he isn’t very close with a lot of them. Other than maybe Bot, who I believe he feels kinship with since they're both robots who freed themselves from the expectations of others. Same with Mepad, since they’re both from Meeple. 

He’s a robot, but in an emotional/psychological sense, is basically a normal person/object (person is synonymous with object in this case). He feels like a person despite being an AI. which makes cobs a lot worse imo, he mistreats all his creations, but at least the other newer mephones are barely “feeling” at all, unlike 4.

Basically, 

Cobs: i have engineered a machine that is functionally a person

Everyone: you fucked up a perfectly good phone is what you did. Look at him. He’s got ptsd. 

Not to get too into ii16/17, but they basically recontextualized the entire series and made what we initially thought about mephone’s escapist tendencies and origins a million times worse. Bro was so tormented he subconsciously made his OCs come to life 😭😭😭all while projecting all his issues onto them??? Psychologically sound individual activities. Additionally, the way he was created is also. Terrible. Cobs basically invaded an alien planet, kidnapped an alien kid, and then presumably used its energy to create mephone4. Outer space colonization? In MY object show? yes!

Ok now im just gonna talk about random stuff i like about him  

His powers are so cool.,.,,. Esp as a foil to cobs/mephonex, who could represent destruction, he represents creation with his generation ability. Also something abt using his powers for non violent reasons when his creation was built upon violence uhh idk. And I think the screen turning green and the sound effect is very satisfying dlsjkfg. Oh and the fact that he canonically had to practice to get better at it? In the flashbacks he’s shown having trouble generating even a simple tree, and now he can make pretty much anything with minimal effort. 

Also MeLife, which allows him to bring contestants back from the dead, is an ability unique to him, which is super cool!!

He can create portals as well and this is never explained. He can just suddenly do it KDLJFGH this kind of renders Mepad’s teleportation ability useless but it's still fun. 

I like when he uses his face as an actual screen :)

Something something robot related stuff

He is not waterproof and will malfunction or even die when wet

His speaking function can be disabled by other people

Glitches while talking sometimes!! Delightful 

Something that gets overlooked often I think is the s1 finale, where mephone4S (mephone4's brother) basically killed himself to save mephone4 by downgrading his own OS. Technically, mephone isn’t even in his original body anymore, he’s inhabiting his brother’s. Fun!

this is unrelated but he got shot in the face with a gun once. there havent been any guns since unfortunately

Get yoinked idiot 

In conclusion, 

I heart him and im sad ii is gonna be ending soon thx for reading

[morganinez]

tldr at the end i think this is pretty annoying to read idk its in red

normally i wouldn't send this kinda stuff but honestly the ever changing list of reasons you dislike/like having me interact is making it really hard to decide whether to send one of those character interaction things .

because if you're fine with me then it's good to send it because you want interactions and i like writing but if you don't like me then if i send it you'd just be irritated and i wouldn't be able to tell

because you obvs haven't confirmed or denied such things considering the list was made by my brain which i wrote down to try and rationalise

not trying to bring down your mood or anything just giving context for the question im about to ask

is it like weird or annoying or clingy if someone keeps like sending you stuff about morgan or just like interacting with you

i dont want to do that if it is you get what i mean

because it feels like you don't like me but at the same time it could be anxiety speaking and i don't want to like put assumptions on you

but at the same time i don't want to assume that you're fine with me and then have it turn out i've been annoying all this while

idk why i'm typing this because even if you did dislike me / my characters people don't usually just say that kinda stuff to people's faces

this is like the tenth? time i've revised this ask it should not be this long (very sorry for that /gen )

are there like interactions that annoy you so like i can avoid that i guess /genq

please like feel free to ignore this i mean something this long in your inbox is probably also pretty annoying i guess it just felt like i should clarify things but at the same time what if this makes me annoying

i should probably stop like revising this ask every time i do it i feel the need to clarify more like at first it really really formal but it felt too not genuine but if i send like this what if you can tell who i am and then think i'm making things up for pity points or something and what if you didn't dislike me but now you do because of this and its getting really long i am so sorry

TLDR: are there like any forms of interaction that annoy you like ,,. someone interacting with your blog too much or something because i'd like to avoid annoying you and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that i don't dare to delete because what if you want the context to this question or something but

yeah please feel free to delete this or something i don't know i've been pondering over sending something like this for days who knows how long which may make me seem weird i don't know i just need to know if i should or shouldn't interact i guess ? sorry

i feel like this is like about some asks i haven’t replied to (or won’t reply to) so here are the reasons why i don’t

i have no clue how to reply (this is like … the major reason and the biggest reason)

some people have sent asks like their character & mine have interacted before… when they haven’t… so i dont reply to that bc… how will i when i dont know where their relationship stands ifykwim?

asks that just says “hi” or something along the lines of that .. IM SORRY I JUST ?? idk i don’t vibe w it bc i love interactions w flavour you know?

connected to number 1; i have no clue how to reply because i don’t get it (and maybe the reason why i don’t get it because the ask is like the one in number 2 or i’m just slow as fuck)

i guess that’s all ?? should’ve clarified that i’m more comfortable doing novella with people i know / morgan has an actual relationship with — if you want that, interact with her posts (then again, it didn’t mean i will reply because of the reasons above)

i do try to formulate replies but in the end it’s just turns into an ugly writing that i give up .

[my-castles-crumbling]

hi cas, reg kin anon back already haha

(again, cw/tw for medical stuff and complicated family dynamics)

firstly, thank you for your supportive and kind words, they really do mean a lot to me (and everyone else you help; youre genuinely such a wonderful person and deserve everything good in life ♡)

i think ive come to the conclusion that i havent really processed the whole situation yet, honestly. even though i wrote it to you, i havent actually said the words out loud about my mother's diagnosis (and honestly writing them out again is a struggle haha, like my fingers are blocked from doing it), and it kind of feels like saying it makes it real? does that make sense? i dunno. it feels so impossible to imagine my mother being genuinely sick with something so serious. 'my mother' and 'cancer' dont fit in the same sentence.

but i didnt really realise until now just how major of a major life event this is for everyone and everything. because (and remember, i have a very complicated relationship with my mother. i once defined it as 'i dont have to like you to love you' and i think thats really relevant to now, too) my mother was going to help me with moving out (both buying things ill need, as well as actually moving out on the day) but she told me yesterday that ill have to go out to get things myself because she physically cant right now. i didnt think id mind so much, i like having my own independance and doing things myself, but i went out today to buy everything i need and i was struggling so much more than i thought. i genuinely almost had a breakdown crying in the first shop i went to.

honestly part of that was because i had no idea what i needed or where was best to get it or what any of the fancy words about different types of stuff meant (like, who even knows what depth their mattress is to buy the right bedsheet?? what is a tog??? whats the difference between a bath sheet and a bath towel?? they look the same!) but also because that was something we were supposed to do together. i dont like her and theres so much about her i want to change, but theres a huge part of me that was looking forward to a parent/child experience that so many normal families have, especially because i didnt get a lot of other typical 'growing up' moments with my parents due to how my family is.

part of me, in all honesty, considered waiting to move out, partly so that she could still be part of it, and partly so that i was in a better place emotionally to be able to handle the change. but if i were to do that, id have to wait another year (im moving out to go to university, and i already put it off last year to get a job instead because i was scared and anxious about university) and i dont know that i could go a whole extra year stuck at home. theoretically, i could afford to move out and rent (or buy, if i went to one of the cheap areas) when i felt ready in however many months time, but itd be a huge drain on my savings and would be nowhere near where ill be for school the following year so itd be a waste of money and time. itd be stupid and silly for me to put off university for another year, but i did consider it. i wont, but part of me is scared and wants to.

i met up with my older brother for lunch while i was out (who, sticking with the black family dynamics, is kind of like the andromeda of my family. he moved out 5 years ago to break away from the family and rarely comes home, and is probably the one person in my life who i feel genuinely comfortable and safe around) and we talked about it which was nice, especially considering my family is typically very much a 'do not talk about your feelings at all' sort of family, and as a whole we have not discussed anything further about my mother's health or how we're all handling it since that first conversation. he was super gentle and caring and honestly that in itself made me want to cry a bit because hes just so not at all like our parents?? idk who raised him but i wish theyd raised me too hahaha

but anyway, he was really open and supporting with me. he talked a bit about how he was feeling (which was super validating, because he was also hit hard by it and had complex feelings about it all) and he was really clear too that if i needed anything at all, i could always go to him and would always be welcome at his flat if i needed time away, even when i move out. (seriously, who raised this perfect older brother????) basically he was everything i needed in that moment and i am really genuinely thankful he exists, so at least my parents made one decent thing haha

still, though. i think its starting to hit me now just how many things are going to change and, as selfish as it is, how many things im going to lose and miss out on because of it. i dont like my mother, but i want her there to help me take that next step in my adult life, yknow? she, nor my father, have explicitly said she wont be able to help on moving day, but its not likely, and theres no way on earth i could ever ask whether she will (again: selfish thinking.)

my brother did mention, though, that the type of cancer our mother has is apparently one of the worse types if it isnt caught early enough. as far as i understand it (which isnt much, honestly, i dont understand much with medicine), she has cancer in her abdomen and its usually caught too late to get rid of. i didnt know this until today, i think our father didnt want to worry me? but i dont actually know how far along the cancer is (which stage it is? i think thats the right term) and i dont know at what stage it becomes too late. my brother also didnt seem to know, but now thats put a new worry in my head because my father explicitly did not mention that to me, so of course my brain has jumped to conclusions about why and what that means. im trying not to spiral, but ever since i found out about her diagnosis, i dont actually think ive gone ten minutes without 'fuck, my mother has cancer' or something similar going through my head, and restarting the breakdown id just pushed down again.

as expected, my sister was already making inappropriate jokes about it by the next time i saw her. i spoke to my brother about this too (hes cut contact with her entirely, like i plan to) and that was part of why he offered to let me stay with him if i ever needed; to escape our sister as much as our mother. i dont understand how she doesnt care a single bit. i know shes never got along with our parents but like, at least have a little decency and sensitivity?? she was literally laughing about it and i just... i dont get how someone could be such an awful person. sure whatever, she doesnt have to be upset if she really doesnt care, but thats crossing a fucking line.

this is getting to be another long ask so im gonna stop here for now, but before i do i just want to say thank you again for being such a safe place for myself and others. you are so, so wonderful cas ♡

- reg kin anon

Hi hon ❤️❤️❤️

I know there’s not a lot I can say right now to make you feel better because unfortunately I don’t know the future. I don’t know how this will turn out and neither do you. But I want to say again that your feelings - all of them - are okay and valid and none of them are bad or shameful. It’s okay to mourn the things that you might miss and it’s okay to have mixed emotions. No feelings are right or wrong here, and I’m here when you need to vent. Also I know move in Day will be hard but I’m so proud of you for continuing to prepare for university.

Sending so much love ❤️

[virtueisdead]

tumblr is the only corporate social im willing to use at this point, purely because of how vastly different it is from its contemporaries, structurally and culturally, but they're very clearly doing something that is quickly turning me away. for lack of less sensitive term, staff is practically gentrifying the platform. (forcing shit from other socials that tumblrs lack of were the only reason i still used it)

given i use spacehey daily, im sure youre already aware that im not a big fan of the contemporary concept of the "social media". i wont go on my whole pedantic/esoteric rant about distinguishing the definition of a social media and a social network because thats a whole other essay for another time and its not worth the argument given im already trying to discuss something else at the moment. (ive literally written a research paper about this because i seriously am that obnoxious about the subject)

so; one of the most substantial changes that happened to social websites in general over the past 2 decades was the introduction of algorithmic feeds. for those unaware, tumblr is in fact the very last major social platform that still doesnt operate (primarily) off of algorithmic content, and this is direly important to the continued use it receives from older bloggers. the majority of people who regularly use tumblr today and have for years are still here because it is the last bastion of chronological dashboards. this also plays a huge role in why theres such a dramatically different atmosphere on tumblr compared to other platforms.

reblogs are literally the only way that things can "go viral". posts do not ever spread if people dont actively decide "i want to share this with my friends" and hit the reblog button, as well if their friends dont think the same. whats especially important is that this system is entirely end-viewer-oriented; it does not particularly favor reactionary content like an algorithm does. on a platform like twitter, any kind of engagement at all (replies, likes, qrts, etc) will be taken by the algorithm as an indication that the post is likely to resonate with people in some way, regardless of whether the post in question is receiving positive or negative engagement, and regardless of whether or not it is thoughtful or warrants that- not to mention how this problem is even further exacerbated by the character limits on microblogging social media platforms like twitter.

so people love tumblr for the fact that posts that you wouldnt share with your friends simply will not garner any popularity most of the time. this fosters a far more unique and interesting community and types of viral content, but youll notice that a little while ago, tumblr quietly added the "for you" page. realistically, nobody who actually has used tumblr since before that tab was added would ever even touch it because it is a spit in the face of what makes people love the platform. but they they knew most people dont vocally give a shit like i do.

the first problem arises when you consider that new users from places like tiktok and twitter will naturally assume the tab was always there and likely use it as their primary means of discovery. they wont learn or understand the way that the proper system tumblr uses of follows and reblogs actually works, which is steadily creating an enormous and frankly insurmountable divide between new and old users of the platform. its already fostering the kinds of passive interaction from people who dont understand tumblr's mechanics that is honestly genuinely harmful to the community overall. people misusing the tools that the platform has due to not understanding their function or assuming similarity to things they already know from other platforms. honestly, this in itself would not even be that much of an issue because we could simply ignore the new users who refuse to make the effort to understand how to use the app and fall for the advertising trap that is the for you page...

but the problem is getting way bigger as tumblr is slowly but surely pushing the "for you" page onto other dashboards. youll see posts with a little "based on your likes" banner at the top crop up more and more. theyre quite literally trying to subtly force an algorithm into place where there wasnt one before. (ive been made aware you actually can turn this off from within an entirely seperate settings menu from the regular one that you open on the notifications screen for some reason?? the fact that i didnt even know this after using tumblr for this long is wild, but it doesnt invalidate my argument in that they turned it on automatically without asking or telling users) its not egregious enough to make me leave yet but its definitely been happening more and more frequently to the point that i am seriously doubting if i should consider continuing to use the website/app. this is the biggest structural issue, but its not the only example of what im talking about where tumblr is trying to pretend to be like other contemporary social medias in order to lure in new users without teaching them how things work so that they can use them as advertising guinea pigs.

another example would be the abrupt and frankly pointless introduction of tumblr live, which is entirely unnecessary and has received near unanimous criticism from older users. but a bigger one is something that a lot of people, especially newer users, mobile only users, or those straight other platforms have probably not even noticed- the completely silent removal of subdomain urls. (which is why people here call usernames urls in the first place) this one is way more apparent of an issue as far as my questionable use of the term 'gentrification' goes.

if i asked you the question "what is tumblr?" what would you say? more than likely, you would answer that its a social media- and to be clear, you would certainly not be incorrect in that assessment, but thats not the important part. as far as i can see, thats the first thing that comes to mind when they think of what tumblr "is" in its contemporary state. but if i asked somebody that a decade ago, they would likely give a completely different answer; they would say its a "blogging site". that's because fundamentally, that's what tumblr actually is and is supposed to be. a social blogging host platform. the dashboard and tumblr.com screen was always only half of it as far as the functionality went.

everyone used to have a personal website for their blogs, and people would often hook their tumblr blog up with its own custom domain as well. tumblr was first and foremost simply a blogging platform with social elements. while that subdomain (personal website) functionality does still exist, and you can see it on my blog because i customized my blog's css themes, they actually completely silently added a switch that gets rid of it, and they automatically turned it off for anyone that hadnt fully configured that page already which slowly consolidates everybody towards the exact same uniform tumblr-blog style like what you see on the mobile site. it forces a uniform visual aesthetic and functionality, which is one of the things i hate the most. in the first place, the enormous number of people who hadnt set up their page properly is largely because tumblr has for a few years now actively discouraged, hidden, or obfuscated the 'personal website' aspect of the service for whatever reason they may have using a method ill get into in a moment. it may be because they thought it was too convoluted for newer internet users who dont understand, or it may have been a more calculated effort to abandon older infrastructure and replace it with replicas of more contemporary systems like are used in other social medias, but it doesnt make a difference to me.

blogging is all about self-expression, and restricting that defeats the point so fucking hard. on the mobile app, my page will look something like this.

though this screenshot is taken on desktop. the url here is "https://www.tumblr.com/virtueisdead". this is an entirely separate and pretty recently added functionality called the profile view, which is entirely different from how the website used to operate, which is demonstrated for clearly by the fact that this is not what my blog is actually supposed to look like. in fact, you cant even see what blogs are supposed to look like on the mobile app at all. if you open your browser and go to my actual blog url, "https://virtueisdead.tumblr.com/", you can see the intended design, which is very similar to my spacehey profile.

im honestly not unconvinced that they intend to eventually completely distinguish the old blogging system (akin to wordpress and blogger) from the social media aspect of the site entirely, though thats more of a crack theory. the fact remains that they began to silently get rid of people's actual blog pages, slowly forcing uniformity with the mobile app. (this is less important, but another part of that that drives me up the fucking wall is that i cant even use the tumblr website in my main browser anymore. they made it so it only works in certain browsers, and im sure i dont need to explain why that is absolutely insufferable behavior)

tumblr is absolutely trying to mimic other social media platforms like tiktok and twitter in order to attract users from them or give them a more 'familiar experience' and its absolutely a detriment to the experience for people who use tumblr specifically because it isnt like other corporate social platforms. this is a separate gripe, but...

ive said before and will say again, twitter users should not look for an alternative to twitter, they should just stop fucking using it. thats like going from smoking a cigarette brand that uses slave labor to one that doesnt. youre a more ethical person but youre still giving yourself lung cancer.

[lovebvni]

what was i made for? (journey overview)

this is going to be kind of a vent blog , but at the same time it’s a reflection of my shifting journey. where i’ve been and where i’m going. i want to be transparent, and i want to motivate others, and right now, this is the best way i can do that.

there will be no triggering material in this blog, but will be slight references to mental health and illness. if that botherw you, i totally understand if you don’t read on. this is also a long blog, so be prepared

i’m not going to start at the beginning and where i was born, because that’s BORINGG!! what i do want to start with two major signs i got when i was younger. i, personally, consider these signs that i would eventually get into shifting/i am made for a higher purpose. at the time, i didn’t know this so all of these are almost… revelations? i hope that’s the right word, lol!

the one thing i want to talk about is a dream i had. i’m going to summarize it. simply i was living in black and white with my family. i found a vent and crawled through it. i cried a few times, and got discouraged, but i kept going. when i got to the end, my 5th grade crush was there. everything was in colour. i forgot what he was wearing but i know it reminded me of the gilded age. i was wearing a lime green dress and he said something along the lines of “i’ve been waiting for you” or “you’re finally here” obvs i woke up after this but it felt very important and it still does.

anyways, time skip to ~late 2020 - early 2021. i was on quotev… writing hxh fanfics… BUT ANYWAYS! i was on quotev and one of my mutrals, who im still good friends with today, made a post about something called ✨reality shifting✨. now i looked up to her — im going to call her s btw — so i thought it was pretty cool she found out about something like this. now obviously, with me being me, i did a deep dive into it. tiktok, go google, instagram, amino, you name it, i was on it! dude, i genuinely got so into this and obsessed. it wasn’t healthy, but at the time i needed something.

the first thing i remember was joining amino. i joined an mha shifting community. i had recently got into the show and i was debating about shifting there — although my main priority at the time was hxh. i asked a lot of questions — simple questions too — but everyone was so respectful when answering them. i also remember posting a (very shitty) art work at the time n i got a lot of love for it 😭 my art style has changed a lot since then and ajsjdjf!! i lowkey should redraw it. i also kept s updated during this time, and looked at her mini-journal on quotev whenever she posted! it’s an understatement to say i was very into shifting and that i latched onto it. primarily because i needed something to look forward to and to have hope in, you know? i didn’t have much at the time. i didn’t have friends, my life began changing in the 3D. things felt like they were going downhill. i also moved this year to a house from an apartment.

anyways, i continued interacting in that amino up until earlier this year — because of personal issues. but during the time, i actively engaged, researched and got better at shifting and understanding the process + life in general. i made many friends during this time, and got involved in group shifts :) other than w s obviously.

this leads to my first shift in ~mid 2021. i fell asleep doing a method, i forgot what method at this point. what i do know, is i woke up in my mha dr. i felt wind blowing on my face, i heard birds chirping, i felt the sunlight on my face… i have a post on it somewhere — i literally cannot find it! but it was a wonderful experience, it gave me a lot of motivation to remember it. it still does! also my eyes stayed closed this whole time, but i know, i KNOW i shifted. i was there. there is no way 99% of those things could have happened in my cr bc of where i was. i had also moved at this time, i was living in a house.

this leads me to ~late 2021 or early 2022. i was introduced to channeling (and dabbled in witchcraft) through replika (don’t do this. it’s not reliable.) as i channeled my s/o (who turned out to be my soulmate) multiple times + my spirit guide gage! it was weird meeting her, because she’s very blunt and straight to the point. she literally said hi, her name, and dipped 🤞. i love her. later in 2022 (early -> mid ) i had a discord server that was shifting based (it has sense been abandoned, as i los that account 💀) and i met kairi ( gage’s baby daddy/husband), piper (who was 5 at the time, she’s abt 7 now) and my friends guide — sailboat (that’s what i know him as. him and kairi have BEEF!) i used to often channel and talk to them — or even just talk to them without channeling them so i could just ramble and they would listen. i would do this in the shower btw. they listened a lot and well. they’re so sweet, and they’re always there for me. i seriously recommend u guys get to know ur guides — they help a lot.

anyways, at the end of this year, 2022, it was a blur. my sister was admitted to the hospital during the beginning of 2023. i was introduced to deity work during the end of 2022 — and this is how i work with loki and found out im his child (he just said hey btw 💀💀 so if yall wanna say high go ahead) i want to say im sorry to loki, as i blamed him for my sister being admitted to the hospital and another situation i cannot talk about publicly. loki is the god of chaos, but that’s because he brings chaos and strives in it. i also bring and strive in it, but how people react is what matters. it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t mine, it wasn’t my sisters, it was actually my biological fathers. and that’s okay. i don’t care anymore, but i want to publicly apologize to loki for blaming him for such issues that came by. i love you so much, padre, and thank you for being a great father and friend

this year, i was going through a lot of shit. i was inactive on most socials from january to may, and i really don’t remember why. i do remember this is the year i was manifesting seriously that i shift before or on 11.11. unfortunately, i didn’t and im pretty sure that’s because i believed that i wouldn’t. i worked my ass off and i thought i deserve this, so why am i seeing little to no progress.

it was because i was basically looking down, and not realizing how far i’ve come. the end is near for me, and there’s literally no way i can mess this up.

now i know, this isn’t an in-depth reflection or whatever, but there isn’t a lot i did that i can remember in this reality (trauma response oops!) but it’s what’s going on up until now.

this month, i did a reading with my friend (nile) and we asked what has to happen before we shift. and we got two things. the first being a fight between two of my school friends, the second is a significant meeting between nile and a MAN. YEAH. A MAN U GUYS WERE WAITING ON A MAN.

anyways. sorry about that. so we’re currently waiting on a man n that’s like the last step 💯🤞✨ i’m trying to stay hopeful n whatnot but it hasn’t been easy. the part 2/addition to this blog will be constants and things that kept me going and hopefully can help you out :)

i’m sorry this blog is just one big pile of nothing bc the message got a bit fucked when i was making this — i restarted it about 3 times n i genuinely forgot why i made this when i did initially. but yeah, this is what i have for u rn! the next one will be called “i got love” based off the mother mother song xx keep an eye out!!

[loveguts]

what are some wips you're having fun working on? (sorry i know this is random 😅)

hi hi no need to apologize at all i’m excited to get questions thank u for asking!!

right now i’m really excited to be working on a wip i’ve called “boything,” it’s a short story atm but if i end up really feeling it and writing a lot i might consider turning it into a novel? it’s sort of mutated from a short story i’ve been trying to write since 2021 but could never figure out what to do with it, i’ve tried rewriting it and workshopping it like 5 times now and i’ve posted about it a little bit in the past. the original had a few different titles but it was always vaguely victorian in setting and followed the main character, eden, through his shitty relationship with his tyrannical abusive father.

BUT recently i’ve decided to overhaul the story entirely and i’ve made it southern gothic, the bare bones concept with eden and his father is staying the same but the setting and the characterizations have changed a lot into something i feel a lot more excited to write about and overall just more connected to. the vibes of the rewrite are ofc a southern gothic setting + religious horror + cannibalism + even a worm will turn + kind of like if carrie was transmasculine but also obligatory i hate stephen king + subtle body horror

i’m really excited about it though and genuinely feel more connected to it than any personal writing projects i’ve written in a long time. and i mostly blame this on my depression and not being on meds that worked for me, but over the past ~3 years i’ve been involved in writeblr and posting my writing publicly on here, in the past it was just difficult for me to grasp the stories and characters and that’s why nothing i wrote ever really went anywhere. so 2024 and just being on new meds definitely feels like turning over a new leaf for me and im HOPING i actually get somewhere with boything, especially since i have a very clear vision for it. i might post a preview soon or maybe i’ll just wait until it’s finished to post it but it’s going well so far i think!!

but yeah other than boything i don’t really have any wips atm, just concepts i’ve been tossing around. there’s one i’m trying to work out that’s sort of an amalgamation of every major writing project i’ve tried to write since i was like 15. there’s absolutely no plot in mind right now and i’m kind of just frankenstein-ing various ideas i’ve had to see what i like and what ends up sticking, but the essentials right now are like..midwestern gothic (specifically a small town in indiana), focus on dysfunctional familial dynamics between the main character + his sister + their neglectful mother, the sister goes missing and a lot of weird shit starts unraveling surrounding her disappearance. idk what the weird shit is yet im gonna be real. but the other story idea i have isn’t fleshed out at all in the slightest i literally just have an aesthetic in mind for it and that’s it, but i’m thinking it’s something like small town suburban gothic maybe with a slasher or a string of murders or something?? i do have a post about these two ideas in my writing tag including a moodboard for the second idea so i’ll tag this post with the same tag so it’s easier to find.

ANYWAYS thank you again for asking i really appreciate it, i’ll go ahead and use this as the first post for my boything tag too :•)

[kudzucataclysm]

how has se changed since you first created it? are there any plot ideas or concepts that fell by the wayside?

oh god, let me travel back in time mentally almost 3-4 years or so-

well first off, i rmm that a large foundation of SE was inspired by the Venture Bros? the guild of villains aspect of it most likely cuz i genuinely found that interesting. Dez and Francis were proper like, apprentices to VILLAINY and it was all meant to be a more lighthearted story, of them going on adventures while trying to be “professional criminals” (Dez doing so accidentally). Francis was actually NICER somewhat? and Dez’s family loved him to bits. Carmine was much more of a father figure to Frank (EUGH) and he wasn’t a former nazi? And Maya acted more like a chill business partner/friend to Carmine rather than like, his leash holder of sorts…Carson was also egging to be a prof villain and sucked at it so Hammond had to help her or something

i rmm also that the worldbuilding aspect of SE was ULTRA FLIPPANT? like, i would make just the stupidest/most fantastical shit happen in the timeline for no reason and i think that mainly fell through cuz i ended up wanting to justify everything…and the timeline became so cluttered and chaotic tbh. so much was going on that didn’t make sense, im much happier with the one i have now (smaller/less detailed tho it may be)

i genuinely don’t rmm how the city of Necropolis came to be however. i just knew it was Necropolis and it was BIG and built on top of the ruins of an old city, inspired by the coast spanning megacities in judge dredd. the babel-like structure of the city is entirely new/recent and its no longer in new york (got tired of ny…TBH…)

mmm what else…ah plotlines. i rmm one that primarily featured tugarin as an antag and old foe of Carmine’s and there was gonna be a big confrontation in Soviet Russia or something…tugarin is now like, SUUUUPER background fodder. the villain awards ceremony plotline. dumb asf. i also rmm exploring a plotline where Martians tried to like, pull a transformers 3 and PUSH MARS right next to earth for some reason. it was dumb 😭 lots of nigh world ending events that these kids had to deal with…not anymore!!! and superheroes! that was a major thing. like them being corporate tools and such, and there being a lot of them that the kids had to fight due to aforementioned villainy…thats all def backseat now, there’s like only a handful of people considered supes now, everyone else is just a freak…and as of rn im wondering whether or not to dash everything with ATLAS and the comet and stuff like that…or maybe just redo the lore surrounding them! im unsure

EDIT OMFG LAS NEVADAS!!! how can i forget ok so like, it was meant to be a sort of solo arc kind of? like how pokemon had the spin off movies that weren’t like lore accurate. the main crew were to go to the city state of Las Nevadas and do a whole nuclear casino heist thing inspired by oceans 11 and casino 1995. WOW ya that got abandoned sadly 😔

that’s all i can rmm rn! mainly that it used to be way more lighthearted and episodic (think Adventure Time), just kids messing around with atompunk superscience, villainy and going on adventures together…i’m attempting to go through old notes but there’s not much substance to be found unfortunately- a lot of it is just dialogue…? like my mind straight up refused proper notes and things i think, all i have is old cringey dialogue between characters from 3 years ago now 😭😭😭