#how do i write him to be silly but not one-dimensional

[crabsnpersimmons]

Last Line Challenge

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or however many as you like).

Tagged by @thatmooncake ! Thank you!

Here's my last line:

No sooner had you plugged in the USB did Clip start rotating his faceplate like a loading wheel.

And here's my last little doodle, since it's also Clip:

Been exploring Clip a lot recently! He's just a silly little guy.

18 words so 18 friends! No pressure of course, this is just for fun:

@starriegalaxy @vacantfields @lunarmoves @spadillelicious @restinsodaroni @mulatto-macchiato @cacaocheri @ren-054 @craykaycee @betweenblackberrybranches @thecourtjester12 @crystalmagpie447 @paggylyn @sinnabee @wenchfry @haruka-636 @ramblingsofacotlfangirl @ohno-the-sun

+ and anyone else who wants to share!

[torchstelechos]

I love that Isabeau is the one to bring up the "what do we do if you die" conversation cause its a very good insight to his character at the very start of the game. Isabeau is practical, smart, and loves everyone dearly and wants to know how to help them when shit goes sideways. He's the one to ask about Bonnie too, which is a delightful read on how he thinks because everyone else shuts that down instantly as a "That wont happen and cant happen" but we see later in the game it can happen which is such a startling thing for a game to do but justifies the foreshadowing of Bonnie can die what do we do if that happens? Isabeau, despite everything, is also the one who gets to the heart of the matter even if its not something must people are willing to talk about. All without it being part of his friendquest, thats just him naturally. Which! Says so much about him and how he is! His character when its not about his relationship with Siffrin is a very intriguing thing because it feels like a very classic hard intellectual stance that's been softened after many years of learning to better communicate healthily with others. A reflection, if you will, of Odile but in a very drastic direction. I find him fascinating and I also want to scoop his brains out and study them under a microscope to see all his little brain thoughts.

[acquired-elfroot]

The annoying thing is that reducing Solas to a dislikable two dimensional caricature in Veilguard didn't even come close to fixing the problem they set out to fix in doing so, and it was never going to.

I can’t pull up the exact quote, but I believe one of the writing team said something along the lines that they needed to make Solas less sympathetic because at the end of Trespasser too many people agreed with him and wanted to end the world. Which is why they chose to have him kill Varric, among other things. 

While I will say that I agree with the choice to have him kill Varric(I like the idea of him making Rook hallucinate him too, that could have been sweet if it had been well executed rather than a bland set up for a M. Night Shyamalan level twist) to raise the stakes and set Solas up as a serious antagonist for a new audience, or an audience that hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to him - but there is no way it could have ever suddenly made his goal to tear down the veil unsympathetic for those who found it to be so.

The writers seem to have been under the impression that members of the audience sympathised with Solas’ plan to tear down the veil not on its own merits, but for the draw of his sparkling personality alone. Not for well established lore related reasons, or for extra-narrative reasons rooted in a desire for emotional catharsis and narrative satisfaction (which a fictional body count has even less bearing on besides) but because he’s a sad pretty elf boi and we want to kiss it all better.

I’m going to be real with you, if they had surgically transplanted Ogrehn’s personality onto Solas and had him stone cold murder every other beloved character in the series, I would still want the  Veil to come down, or at the very least a better solution than leaving it just as it is. How likeable he is or isn’t has fuck all to do with it? 

Making Solas more dislikable does nothing to change the effect the Veil has on spirits and mages, it does nothing to address the question of the value of mortal lives weighted against immortal ones. It does not change the narrative role of a trickster in bringing enlivening chaos and upheaval to a stagnating world, in this case one that’s been forced to stagnate in service of the illusion of player choice; nor does it quiet our desire to see the rotten roots of Thedas’ corrupt institutions torn up and put to the torch ect. ect.

Most annoyingly, attempting to use Varric's death to accomplish this betrays the writer's assumption that players that did sympathise with Solas’ goals did so out of a naive misapprehension that he’s some sweet uwu softboy that could never do anything truly ruthless or cruel in order to accomplish his goals, and that once we had been disabused of that belief we would clutch our pearls in horror(you mean he’s willing to kill people? In a video game series with protagonists that each have kill counts numbering in the thousands? Quick, summon my fainting couch!) and tidily dismiss the notion that he might have ever had any worthwhile motivations at all. 

Look all you silly little girlies that want to kiss the fictional man, I feel like you don’t understand that he’s the *bad guy* here, glad we’ve cleared that up for you sweetheart. And isn’t he just sooo condescending?

It does not seem to have occurred to the writers that, to his fans, his stone cold ruthlessness is both one of the most well understood and deeply compelling features of the character.

I would happily give that writer a pass on a wicked case of foot in mouth, but the way Anaris & Cyran are written seems to very much enforce their the stance that an overabundance of sympathy for Solas as a person, as well as a desire to see him vindicated are the primary reasons any of the audience would ever agree with his goals. 

So to fix this issue, it stands to reason that the writers needed to de-emphasise everything that humanised(for lack of a better term) Solas and made him sympathetic as a person. Because apparently the problem is that their attempts to do so in the previous game worked a little too well on some people, right? 

As @mythalism pointed out, we cannot see him comfort his friends through their panic or grief or their crisis of faith, or have hushed philosophical conversations with them. We cannot see him flirt awkwardly, or try to pretend he didn’t just set his own coattails on fire.

We never see the god of liberation free so much as a wisp bound to a teaspoon.

And all of those compelling character motivations you thought he had about free will and self determination? Don’t worry kitten, we’ve sanitised all of the conflicts those might be applicable to right out of the setting anyway. Yay <3

At the same time, it feels like they’re too scared to upset the very same audience that they imagine has this woobified rose tinted view of the character, lest they scare them away. They’re too afraid of the audience to let him be truly unwaveringly ruthless, prejudiced, bitchy, vindictive, and even genuinely sadistic towards his enemies, because that might upset our fragile sensibilities too much! 

He can’t ever say anything mean to Rook - that might hurt our feelings!

He doesn’t really do anything bad, and if he does he doesn’t really mean it. He committed war crimes, but only because Mythal asked him nicely. He killed Varric, but it was an accident. He makes Rook hallucinate Varric, but he doesn’t use that to manipulate them; Varric just hangs out and vibes. He uses blood magic on you, but he doesn’t do any of the truly fucked up violating things that we know full well blood magic is capable of. He misleads you when he says “the Veil will not fall by my hand”, but it’s so transparent that it’s laughable. He’s never allowed the conviction to really follow through on any of his misdeeds, while still he’s bizarrely framed as outright villainous for them. 

So what we’re left with is a character divested of most of his admirable qualities, but with most of the rough edges filed off as well. Toothless. Boring.

It feels so much like they’re talking down to their audience? Like they don’t trust us to see a character with BOTH vices and virtues in spades come to our own conclusions about them? 

So we get this bland mealy-mouthed version of the character that we apparently need watered down further with ‘our team’s’ insipid commentary, much of which is blatantly based on bad takes people were spewing online almost a decade ago, and many of which have no bearing whatsoever on the actual story we’re being told because ohh my godd apparently we need to have our hands held while we’re walked though every opinion the audience might theoretically  have about the character and gently reassured by proxy that it’s a hashtag #valid opinion and why does this game insist on speaking to us like we’re morons??

For all that they incessantly bring up how condescending Solas is, I’m not sure if I've ever felt more spoken down to by a story I had been so invested in.

So Solas is boring now and I still l wanna tear down the veil lol

[gnabbang]

Sparks

word count: 1k

warnings: none that I can think of- a bit of language maybe!

authors note: love baby lino man- bias wrecker for a reason. I hear this song and immediately it made me think of him- the quiet love I think he'd give- hope you enjoy!

.・゜゜・　. ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄　・゜゜・．

Minho isn’t a loud lover. He isn’t one to shout on top of the roof, our from out of his balcony that he is in love with her. He thinks things like that, and the people who do them aren’t really in love with their partner, because if they were, why did they have to tell the whole world? Why isn’t their partner knowing how much they’re loved enough? It was something he could talk forever about.

Despite the fact that he wasn’t a loud lover, he was a deeply compassionate one. When he loves, he loves with his whole body, mind, and soul. Whether that be platonic, or in her case, romantic.

He loved simply but deeply, and at first a bit hesitantly. He doesn’t say the words “I love you”, but he will make for damn sure that she knows he does. He loves by remembering her favorite drink (matcha with cinnamon and honey), her favorite song (No Complaints by Noah Kahan), her favorite artist (Lizzy McAlpine and Noah Kahan she always said she couldn’t pick between the two), her favorite color (pink most of the time but it depends on how she’s feeling), which one of his hoodies is her favorite (anything he’s been wearing for an extended period of time, which made no sense to him until she explained it “They smell the most like you, especially the ones you wear to work”), her favorite scent (sandalwood).

He could tell someone everything about her, paint them a very vivid picture of the person she is, not with just looks, but with her personality, her kindness, her compassion, her tenderness, he could write a book about her, about everything he makes her feel. The love that threatens to bring him to his knees when he sees her after a long day at work (or any day at any time- but the feeling hits especially hard after work), the shock that he still feels even after two years of being together that she chose him, that she keeps choosing him, even after she has seen all the ugliest parts of him. “We don’t abandon the people we love just because they can be a bit horrendous sometimes, if everyone did that, no one would ever stay together. That’s why love is such a strong thing Min, we see that ugliness and chose to stay despite it, because that is not who the person is at a whole. No one is perfect, therefor everyone has a little bit of ugliness in them.” Though if asked out right she would never say there was anything wrong about him.

“If there was a part of you that I truly thought was ugly, Min hon, I wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You have to think about that when you get into a relationship of any kind- is this part of the person something you can live with? Is it something that will affect your relationship with this person on a deeper level than just annoyance. If the answer is yes, then you fight for them, and love them. Love isn’t one dimensional, it’s multifaceted. There’s a little bit of annoyance that goes with it, a little bit of sadness, of anger, but love trumps all of those. That’s why its called love.”

It shocks him at times, his girl that primarily reads about dragons and romance and things he sees as silly is very emotionally intelligent. That’s apart of why he thinks they’re so good together, he sometimes struggles with emotions, not just his own but others as well, but she gives him guidance, helps him see things he cannot at times, either because he is blinded by his own emotions, or because he thinks the other person is being ridiculous, but she gives him a fresh pair of eyes, helps him see things not form a logical stand point, but an emotional one.

It has saved him from turning a small argument with one of the boys into something much bigger. At times he stops himself an thinks what would she do right now? If she were in this situation how would she move forward? and he thinks. He doesn’t rush into a decision, and instead sits with his thoughts, sorting them and curating a response to the situation that is both him and her, and goes on accordingly. Sometimes if that doesn’t work and he is really stuck he’ll call her or wait till he can see her in person, and they’d just talk. For hours about it.

That was one thing he loved about her, and about the two of them. They talked, about anything and everything. Ninety-nine percent of the time he was so focused on controlling what he was saying, with cameras and the peoples eyes always on him, he’s found himself filtering out his words a lot but he never has to with her. He can tell her every thought he’s ever had, every dream, every nightmare, and she will listen, and respond back. No finger pointing, no gasps of outrage, just quiet understanding.

He loved the quiet moments more than anything. When the silence wasn’t awkward, or uncomfortable, it was filled with love.

So when it was late at night, the window slightly cracked open, a gentle breeze making the blinds sway and occasionally hit the window sill, and he was still awake, staring down at her, that feeling of overwhelming love hitting him straight in the chest. She was asleep, he could see her eyes going back and forth and up and down behind her eye lids. Her lips were slightly parted, her chest rising and falling as she breathed. She was curled into his side, her hands put together as if in a prayer and tucked under her cheek, childlike almost. He lifted his hand, pushing back her hair from her shoulder softly so he wouldn’t risk waking her. “I’ll always look after you,” He whispered softly, leaning forward, placing his lips against her forehead. Her body curled into his, her lips closing and pulling into a small smile.

He felt himself smile in response, and shifted closer to her, letting his eyes shut. He let sleep over take him, his dreams full of nothing but her.

He loved quiet.

He loved their quiet.

But most of all he loved her.

.・゜゜・　. ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄　・゜゜・．

this was very self indulgent and i need it thanks

[sophieinwonderland]

The Plurality of... Bill Cipher (The Book of Bill)

Spoiler Warning for Gravity Falls, The Book of Bill, and the nature of reality as you know it

Hello dear reader.

I recently found in my possession a strange book with no explanation as to how it got there. A bizarre tome known only as The Book of Bill.

I recognized the name and imagery from someone else's memories. Bill Cipher, a character from Alex Hirsch's hit series Gravity Falls.

It honestly seemed too perfect. I've been doing this "Plurality of..." series where I look at plurality in media. And an important part of Bill's shtick was possession.

It seemed simple enough. I can read the book, learn a bit about Bill and his possession, and then write an article about his plurality. But the reality was anything by simple, with far more than I bargained for.

And by the end of this post, this book will have driven me to break a fundamental rule I've held sacred through my "Plurality Of..." series.

What is Plurality?

Before we begin, I should explain what plurality is for anyone new here. Plurality is a term for being multiple in one body in some way.

We call the body's occupants "headmates". These can be anything from alters in dissociative disorders to spirit guides bound to a mortal, to... yes... even literal demonic possession.

Yeah, even being possessed by a demonic triangle from a 2-dimensional universe is a type of plurality. If there are multiple self-conscious agents of some kind there, it's plural!

Time To Get Weird!

(Art by magentasnail)

Let's catch you up on the basics real quick. Again, there will be huge Gravity Falls spoilers.

In Gravity Falls, Bill Cipher is a yellow a 2-dimensional triangle demon bent on causing chaos.

Through the series, Bill makes deals with multiple characters to possess their bodies. This includes both gaining full control over the body of protagonist Dipper Pines for an episode, and more interestingly, sharing control over the body of Stanford Pines for an extended period of time.

Bill's possession of Dipper left Dipper outside his body like a ghost. But his deal with Stanford is much more plural in nature, where they shared control, with Bill only controlling the body in his sleep.

Obviously real plural systems don't have headmates controlling their body while they sleep like this, but the experience can be seen as analogous to dissociative identity disorder, where it's common to experience blackouts and "wake up" in situations unsure how you got there.

That's all you really need to know about Bill for the time being.

With that out of the way, it's time get weird and dive straight into the Book of Bill!

The Book of Bills

As I begin reading the Book of Bill, I'm given a warning from Stanford Pines that the book will rewrite itself based on the mind of the reader. This seems silly, and I of course dismiss the idea out of hand. Surely there's no way a book could change itself based on who's reading it.

As I venture further into this tome, I find the occasional point of interest. References to Bill living in people's brain, him being an idea, etc.

I stop briefly to ponder that. Why does Bill refer to himself as an idea? Isn't he canonically a being from a physical 2-dimensional world? Him being described as an idea is peculiar, but something I tuck away for the future.

The first thing I find that really piques my interest in regards to plurality is the multiple times that it's just referenced that there are multiple Bills in Bill's head. Such as when Bill refers to "the voices in his head" teaming up.

In the plural community, there's a concept known as median system.

A median system is typically a system which has separate parts that are less distinct from each other. There's a pretty solid case that Bill, having a bunch of Bills in his head, could be considered a median system on his own.

In fact, the book itself actually depicts communication between multiple Bills, in the form of an interview.

And throughout the interview, there are times where the Prime Bill seemingly gets annoyed at the interviewer's questions. As if they are actually different people. While this could be Bill simply duplicating himself and pretending for comedic effect, it could just as easily be that both Bills are headmates in Bill's system.

Bill being a median system is a pretty interesting direction.

As I read on though, the book dragged me down yet another rabbit hole, and raised an important question.

Does Bill Have A Dissociative Disorder???

Let's talk about dissociative identity disorder. There are two main criteria for DID. Criterion A is the presence of two or more distinct personality states. You know, like those Bills in Bill's head.

The second is memory loss.

Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events.

This is what was on my mind when Bill was describing how he was uniquely gifted with the ability to see into the third dimension, and wanted to teach others this same skill.

But when he tries to recount it... this happened...

To me, this sounds exactly what was described in criterion B. This is also called dissociative amnesia.

And it's not just this one-off example. Bill actually references later that he dissociates (his words) and "wakes up" later after a conquest.

With everything we know, it seems incredibly likely that Bill has DID, or at least a related disorder.

Bill is what he eats

Okay... wait...

So Bill can ALSO imprison the souls of those he eats inside himself, and they can apparently take over Bill's body too???

What actually is going on here? Is this one of Bill's powers? He can just eat entire universes and then whatever he consumes becomes a part of him? Or maybe it's something else...

Maybe if we looked at this less literally and consider the previous hints of Bill having a dissociative disorder then perhaps what is going on is that Bill is introjecting these people.

Maybe whenever he enters somebody's mind, some piece of them remains...

I would love to speculate more on this... But this is the only mention of it in the entire book!

At this point, I begin to reflect on the words at the beginning. Maybe it was true that the book was changing itself to give me what I wanted. Little hints of plurality to keep me reading, to ensnare me in its vicious trap and ultimately drive me to madness.

And the worst part was, I was falling into it anyway. Because I had to know, even if this was a trap, I was in it to the very end. My thirst for knowledge and understanding unquenchable.

Even if I knew I should stop here, there was no going back.

Stanford Pines, Bill's Perfect Host

At last, beyond all of the misdirects that were put in my way, I arrived at the reason that I started on this journey.

Stanford Pines.

I need to say that when I started this journey, planning to delve into what the plurality of Bill and Ford might be like, I never imagined that it would be handled so... Beautifully.

I mean that genuinely!

I love the relationship of these two characters in the book!

They are both very out of place in their own ways. Both are aware of things in their world that are denied by others, leaving them ridiculed and ostracized for it. They manage to form a genuine friendship. Even if Bill was using Stanford the whole time to achieve his Weirdmageddon.

The two compliment each other surprisingly well. Bill provides Stanford with a friend who can get him out of his comfort zone, which is something that I think Stanford really needed.

There's a really fun part of the book where Bill just gets Stanford mind-drunk, which is apparently something he can do.

Bill fills a role in Stanford's life that nobody had since he lost contact with his brother. While Stanford had friend in with Fiddleford, his lab partner, and we do get to see parts of that friendship in the book, they are more like work acquaintances.

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Because in the end, Bill is still an evil demon who was bent on bringing about the Weirdmageddon and was manipulating Ford the whole time.

And when Stanford found out, he tried to shut Bill out. This led to Bill trying to communicate through sticky notes to get Ford to stop ignoring him. He would front in the body at night while Ford slept, and they carried on a conversation through these sticky notes.

Wait... Sticky notes?

This is such an interesting choice for the character! Especially after so many hints of Bill Cipher having some sort of dissociative disorder.

Why?

Because sticky notes are an actual method that real DID systems use to communicate with their alters, as seen in this post from the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) website.

It's fascinating how, if you were to try to depict how headmates with strong dissociative barriers might communicate, this is one of the ways you would want to do that!

Is this coincidental? Maybe. But the talk of dissociation earlier suggests the author also has at least some basic knowledge of dissociation and how it works. And, perhaps, plurality as well?

Overall, this whole section with Bill and Ford was fantastic, and it was well-worth the read for that on its own.

The End?

I suppose this is the end. I found what I wanted. I got the content I was after. A cool plural story of a guy and his headmate from another dimension who wants to take over the world.

Through all the strange distractions and hints of Bill himself having headmates that seemingly went nowhere, I got more plurality in the book than I expected.

And yet, as I turn the final page of the book, I feel unsatisfied. Unsettled.

"Is that it?" I think to myself.

This is Gravity Falls, a show built on mysteries, and looking deeper than the surface. Surely there has to be more. Right?

What if... all the plurality in this book, is obscuring something deeper? Or maybe hinting at something deeper...

And then... I see it!

After the final page, I come to the About the Author section.

Which means it's time to talk about...

The Plurality of... Bill Cipher Alex Hirsch

Yes, I am going there!

In the beginning, I promised that this post will require me to break a rule I've held sacred through these posts.

That rule... is to never speculate on the plurality of the author.

But, Alex Hirsch, at least in a fictional sense, hasn't exactly shied away from the idea of being "possessed" by Bill. This dates back at least a decade, with him making Tweets like this one.

"Bill Cipher" even did an AMA on Reddit through Alex, playing it off as Bill possessing Hirsch while he slept.

It's a pretty open secret in the Gravity Falls community that Alex Hirsch is "possessed" by Bill. At least in some meta-fiction way that may not be canon to Gravity Falls but isn't quite real either.

And were my analysis to stop here, I wouldn't really be saying anything new or valuable. A lot of this was covered by MatPat on Film Theory.

But there's something I want to go back to that confuses me in this book.

That Bill Cipher... is an idea?

Let's bring this full circle, back to the beginning of the book where Bill mentions that he's imaginary and describes himself as an idea.

These are such weird lines because Bill didn't seem to have originated from people's minds within the narrative of Gravity Falls.

His story is of being a being from a literal flat world. So why then, does he describe himself as an idea? Why does he describe himself as imaginary???

Bill Cipher as Alex Hirsch's Tulpa

While Bill being an idea doesn't make sense if he's speaking as a being from a 2-dimensional world that's real to him, it does make sense if we consider that the Bill talking to us, who wrote the Book of Bill, is a tulpa sharing the body of its creator.

Before going on though, we need to answer an important question. What is a tulpa? The r/tulpas subreddit gives its own answer to this in its FAQ.

The simplest way to describe a tulpa is simply another person who was created intentionally/unintentionally through repeated interaction and shares a body and mind with their creator. A more complicated definition can go as follows: A tulpa is believed to be an autonomous consciousness coinhabiting a brain with their creator, often with a form of their creator's initial choice and design. A tulpa is entirely sentient and in control of their opinions, feelings, form and movement. They are willingly created via a number of techniques to act as companions, muses, and advisers. Tulpa forms can either be visualized in the mind's eye, or, with practice, seen as a hallucinatory figure using a technique called imposition.

And let's stop there on the line about being created as muses, because this is something that's found repeated throughout both The Book of Bill and Journal 3, with Stanford referring to Bill as his "muse."

It's a curious term that doesn't appear in the show, but was added to the lore in these two supplemental books.

The FAQ goes on to explain that while tulpas are often considered to be intentionally created, there are also accidental tulpas that can arise through imaginary friends or from writing characters.

Is it possible to accidentally make a tulpa? Yes - many people join the community after realizing they have had tulpas all their lives, but without knowing what they were called. These "accidental" tulpas often arise from imaginary friends and writing/roleplay characters.

On the point of roleplay characters, something I also haven't mentioned yet is that Alex Hirsch didn't just write the character of Bill Cipher. He WAS Bill Cipher. In the show, Bill is one of the characters Hirsch voices along with Grunkle Stan and Soos.

Writing tulpas and how they come about are discussed a bit more below:

Is this a new phenomena? No, it's a practice that goes back in recorded history at least as far as the Greek philosophers. The present name of the phenomenon is derived from the word used by Tibetan monks in the early 20th century. There's also evidence to suggest dedicated prayer can lead to the development of 'religious tulpas' in the minds of the particularly devout, and on the secular end, writing techniques similar to tulpa development techniques can and have resulted in writers creating accidental tulpas from their characters. Having a tulpa is nothing new, although it's gone by many names throughout the course of history and does so even today. However, we believe we are one of the first groups to address this practice as a psychological phenomena rather than a magical, occult or divine experience.

Tulpamancy and Attention

There was another passage from the book that I found noteworthy.

At the end, Stanford describes what truly sustains Bill isn't power, but attention, which Stanford describes as Bill's "lifeblood."

It's even underlined for emphasis.

Why is this important? Well first, this line goes back to the weird lines earlier suggesting Bill is an idea.

But more importantly, feeding on attention is something which is actually a pretty popular philosophy in tulpamancy. That tulpas feed on and are sustained by the attention of their hosts.

How do I give my tulpa energy? Tulpas are sustained by attention, and energy is a convenient metaphor for this. So, you can give your tulpa energy by interacting with them. It is also possible, through no shortage of work and time on the part of host and tulpa alike, for a tulpa to grow beyond this need and to learn how to sustain themselves.

How much attention/energy/interaction does my tulpa need? During the creation process you should aim to interact with your tulpa daily, anywhere from a few minutes up to a few hours, and narrating to them as and when you can. After they're fully vocal and active, the bare minimum is just acknowledging their existence, but spending time talking to them and interacting with them is very much the point of bringing them into existence. Just don't ignore them, and you'll both be fine.

On Parallels in Writing

Adding another layer, it's likely that Stanford Pines is at least partially based on Alex Hirsch himself.

One point of trivia is that Alex Hirsch has a twin sister, and Gravity Falls was inspired by vacations they would take as children. Dipper and Mabel being based on Alex and his sister is pretty well-known. But towards the end of season 2, it's revealed that their Grunkle Stan is a twin himself, with his brother being Stanford Pines, the author of the journals.

During this part of the story, it starts creating a parallel between the relationships of the younger and older twins, with Dipper (who is based on Alex) bonding with Stanford over how much they have in common. Both are nerds who are into writing and science and uncovering the mysteries of the world. Both are a bit socially awkward as well.

And while not much attention is drawn to this particular connection, both had experiences of making deals with Bill that let Bill takeover their bodies at different points.

Based on the parallels between Dipper and Stanford, one might speculate that Alex based Dipper on his younger self, while Stanford was loosely based on himself as an adult.

The personalities of these two characters are also the most likely to create a tulpa based on the psychological profiles of most tulpamancers.

In 2016, Dr. Samuel Veissiere, a psychiatry professor at McGill University, found the following in his study of tulpamancers:

From coding of qualitative interviews collected in large surveys, the most common tulpamancer profile to emerge is one of a highly cerebral, imaginative, highly articulate, upper-middle class, formally educated person with many consistently pursued interests, talents, and hobbies, but limited channels of physical social interaction. Typical tulpamancers are confident about their talents, but are quite modest and socially shy. They possess – or have cultivated – a high propensity for concentration, absorption, hypnotisability, and non-psychotic sensory hallucinations.

The psychological profile of tulpamancers fits both Dipper and Stanford to a t. And many of these same traits could just as easily be true for Alex Hirsch if these characters were meant to be stand-ins for himself.

Is Alex Hirsch trying to tell us that he's plural?

In the end, this is just a theory. And it's one that I feel nervous making because plurality is so deep and personal. That's why I've avoided speculating on the plurality authors in the past. Even when the writing feels so true to the plural experience that it's hard to imagine that someone who isn't plural wrote it.

So why am I making an exception with this one?

Well, in this particular case, I think that the breadcrumbs are being left intentionally, and if he is plural, then he expects somebody to follow them. I'm not worried that I would be outing somebody who didn't want others to find out.

With Alex Hirsch's love of codes and clues and mysteries, if he were plural, I have to imagine that the hints weren't accidental and he would be wondering if anybody would follow them.

And if I am completely off base and he's not plural, I think that he would still appreciate the theorizing anyway. 🤷‍♀️

But if these are intentional clues that were left behind to hint at a real life plurality, one might ask why.

Why would he want people to know about it, and hint at it in this way?

Well, I think the Book of Bill might have an answer to that too.

Shame is a powerful emotion. But it grows in the dark. The more I've tried to hide my past with Bill, the more hold it's had over me.

Perhaps this line is meant to reflect Alex Hirsch's own feelings. Because many plural systems have felt this same way about their plurality, having hide their relationships to their headmates.

The actual end now

Finally, we come to the real ending of this.

This is, again, just a theory. I don't want anyone taking it as fact. I admit that I could be completely wrong about everything that I've said here.

But if nothing else, it's at least fun to imagine that Alex Hirsch does have a Bill Cipher tulpa in his head that has been acting as his muse this whole time. And it would give a new meaning to the gag of the Weirdmageddon intro saying Gravity Falls was "created by Bill Cipher" all those years ago.

Thanks for reading, and if you have your own muse that you think might be more than a simple muse, be sure to read my guide on how to know if your imaginary friend is sentient.

And if you like this post and want to see more like it, you may want to check out The Plurality of… Avatar: The Last Airbender or The Plurality of… IF

[maxdibert]

Oh that's interesting. I'll read your posts. How much do you think it has to do with the books being written from Harry's pov? That's the excuse many JKR apologists use but I feel like if JKR wanted to develop female characters through Harry's perspective she could just have given him more perspective lol. Especially when one of those female characters is his best friend and the other ends up being his wife.

That’s a terrible excuse. Your protagonist can be a boy, and that doesn’t mean you have to write terrible female characters. There are plenty of books written not just in a single POV but in first-person narration, and the author is perfectly capable of giving depth to the characters, even with the handicap of only showing the protagonist’s perspective.

Similarly, in Harry Potter, we have multifaceted male characters: there’s Snape, who is a fully rounded character with his own storyline, concerns, arc, and objectives. There’s Dumbledore, who, despite being a sort of deistic, almost manichean figure throughout the story, is ultimately revealed as a much more complex man with many more flaws than he initially seemed to have. There’s Sirius and Lupin, who aren’t as central but still have their own arcs, discrepancies, and contradictions. There’s Voldemort, who, as the villain, still has a fascinating backstory.

This isn’t about Harry and his POV; this is about Rowling and the fact that she gives her male characters, both main and secondary, a multidimensionality that their female counterparts lack. There is no female counterpart to Sirius and Remus, for instance. There’s no female counterpart to Snape or Dumbledore. The women in their circles are flat characters reduced to being wives and mothers. The female villains lack the depth Voldemort has, they’re just “crazy women” or “ugly women” to be mocked and are entirely one-dimensional.

Look at side characters like Lucius or Arthur, what do they have in common? They’re not crucial to the plot, but we know they have jobs, what they do, and that they have an identity beyond being fathers. What about Narcissa and Molly? Nothing. They’re just mothers and wives, and that’s it. Molly is praised for being a completely selfless mother, and Narcissa is forgiven because she’s a mother who loves her son. But they’re only mothers, whereas their husbands are both fathers and political agents.

Tonks is an Auror and seems to have her own life until she falls in love with Lupin, and then her entire arc revolves around her obsession with a man who treats her terribly, yet she forgives him repeatedly and has his child. Fleur is a character who is only “forgiven” by the main group of pick-me girls when she proves to be a devoted wife willing to support her husband in everything.

This isn’t Harry’s POV; it’s the narrative about women’s roles in the society Rowling builds through her novels, where women are relegated to being wives and mothers as adults, villains if they haven’t had children or don’t have a maternal instinct, or, in the case of adolescent characters, pick-me girls that Rowling narratively elevates for “not being like other girls.” Meanwhile, female characters who are dismissed as silly, overly emotional, or “annoying” are so because they express their emotions or have traditionally feminine interests (like Cho, Lavender, or the Patil twins, for example).

The problem isn’t Harry’s POV, the problem is that Rowling has an issue with women that she really needs to address.

[studio-petrichor]

Writing Short II: Talk and Play

I wanted to practice writing more since it's been a while,,, so behold the second part to my first writing bit. It's full of platonic affection and cuddles and I just thought Billie could benefit from having as much parental care as possible since she's got it rough throughout the game,,, my writing is VERY rusty so please bear with me! Without further ado, a lil follow up :))

Side note: Barnaby maaay be treating her younger than she is, since his kid didn't reach her age and he doesn't quite have experience with older kids pft

The feathers were warm, at least.

No big deal, if she was surrounded by them. They were warm, and they didn't irritate the evidence of her fights like she thought they would.

Itchy? Yeah. That checked out. Feathers were light, and so was Barnaby; he was made up of some kind of plasma. Though she recognized him as soft, and warm - and by the gods, she didn't think she'd ever think this, but safe... he was also wet. But... not like one would expect "wet" to be.

It was difficult for her to put her finger on it. It wasn't like water. It didn't leave a residue of wetness on your skin. It wasn't loose, or thin, no. He was.... like a slime, in a way. Not one that would fall into gross pieces on her, or one that would leave a strange film. He rather reminded her of... putty.

Solid enough to hold shape. Would still feel rather damp, but there wasn't any real impact on the things it touched. Yeah. That was the word.

She rose and fell on his belly, arms crossed underneath her. True to his nature, after he made sure she was alright, he'd fallen asleep. "Silly bird," she whispered quietly, cuddling closer to the wings draped over her like a blanket.

"Mmr?" He murmured, ears perking up a bit. "Billie?"

She smiled meekly, rubbing her reddened, puffy eyes. "Yeah?"

"My dear, are you okay?"

"Mhm. I was just thinking that you feel weird."

He chuffed, disgruntled. Slowly he sat up from the sofa, his spiraled eyes unimpressed. "How rude," he whispered, but it held no weight - other than guised affection. "I even made non lethal tea for you."

"That's the bare minimum," she countered, her voice a bit abrupt in the quiet, before instinctively matching his volume with how much he'd winced. Her tail wagged a little bit from the banter. "You outta do that with mortal guests to start."

"Silly me," Barnaby purred softly, noting her little tail, the soft expression on his face betraying his endearment. "I'll make sure to do that quite a bit more often, my dear. Fret not."

Holding her steady, he sat up a bit more, an exhale leaving him. "Hoo. This old sofa is not good for the back! Hoohoo." He stretched, twisting his torso comedically. "I'm quite out of sorts, but that was a great nap! I'd forgotten how nice sleeping in company was."

She expected that sentence to carry more... weight, but... it didn't. There was a gentle relief, like the reprieve after a long, windy rainstorm finally passed. She didn't miss the soft undertone of sadness, but... there was acceptance. Sheepishly, she looked down, inspecting herself instead. Trying not to focus on what he'd lost.

Her much cleaner fur stood out to her. "... thanks for cleaning the blood and dirt out, Barnaby," she murmured quietly, her eyes taking in the cuts and blemishes over her arms.

His owlish (pft) eyes followed her gaze, drawing closer. "Hmm... I am sorry I wasn't able to heal those... I'm a researcher of magic, certainly, but healing magic was not my specialty."

"What was your specialty?"

He chortled. "Ahohohoo, wouldn't you like to know. I'd rather not share. It... it's best to avoid a repeat outcome." He gestured loosely to himself and his 2 dimensional body, and it dawned on her.

She blinked a few times, processing the information. "Oh, I... yeah, okay. I can respect that," she conceded, crossing her arms. Slowly she slid onto the couch, still propped against him.

It was odd to her, his preening habits. Or rather that he was perfectly alright with cleaning the blood out, knowing most of it would just be swallowed. "... you know," Billie started, amusement creeping into her voice. "When we first met, I really thought you'd, er... eat me."

Silence. Then,

"HoohohohohohohohoppfftWHAT?" he guffawed, flapping his wings enthusiastically, tears of laughter stinging his eyes. She leaned back, mildly surprised at the outburst. "Why- hmmmhmhmhmhm," he giggled uncontrollably, and despite the embarrassment creeping into her face, the giggles were rather contagious.

"Look-" she defended, pouting a little.

"No, no, no!" Barnaby leaned over to pinch her cheeks with the most maniacal cackle she'd ever heard. "That's hilarious, little pretty! But why did you ever get that impression?? Goodness, how silly! And I thought I was the crazy one!"

"Hey!" She barked, but his feathers were too soft to be disgruntled by. She giggled a little, pushing him back. "It's not my fault! You literally sang about cooking me into various food items! You remember 'goat meat stew'? I'm not crazy!"

He crooned, an odd mixture of a giggle and a trill of affection. "Ohohoho, I forgot about that," he pulled at his bowtie thoughtfully. "... truth be told, my dear, I might have actually thought about it!"

"What!!"

"Well," it was his turn to be defensive, "I was half asleep because someone was trying to steal my stuff! I hadn't had any tea or breakfast! You'd have done nicely, I'm sure." He smiled innocently, growing a bit toothy when she looked at him in exasperation and bewilderment. "In fact, I'm sure it's not too late to prep dinner..."

She squeaked, scrambling. "No fair!! I thought you'd changed!!" She exclaimed, ears dragging behind her as she made to run- he snagged her by the scruff with his beak, gently dropping her back in his wings.

"I have," he crowed, "but I'm still a prankster." He nibbled her ears just a little, a habitual response. She squirmed in protest at first, exclaiming something about fairness, but she gradually gave in out of annoyance.

Slowly it devolved into timid preening once more, thoroughly checking for knots and mud. If she was being honest, his bird brain was probably looking for bugs, too. Begrudgingly, she leaned into it, thoughts of her mother running a brush over her fur when she was much smaller. Billie closed her eyes at the gesture, a quiet calm washing over her, coming through a sigh.

"You know, I'm sorry." Barnaby broke the tender silence softly, a trill leaving his chest, "For all of that. I'd... realized, when you said that, I hadn't apologized."

She opened one eye, glancing at him with half a turn of her head, mildly perturbed he'd stopped. "You didn't need to apologize," Billie sighed. "I... understand it. I mean - not entirely. Mom says losing a kid is... much more intense... it's a grief that sort of eats you up inside. And I'm still a kid, so all I know is that it's just been me and mom." She gave pause, considering her next words, neverminding the teary expression that rode his features. "... if my mom lost me... I think... I think she'd find herself in a spiral too. The only difference is that she doesn't have a gem to feed that spiral."

Barnaby wiped his face quickly, before he melted on her. "You're not unlikable," he muttered.

He watched her face go through a flurry of emotions, bouncing from exasperation to a slight side eye. "... thanks, arseho- OH YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE COURTROOM THING." Immediately she slapped a hoof over her mouth. "I... sheesh. I know that! You weren't exactly the picture of likeable yourself. I figured, after I left, that you were projecting." Disgruntled, she wound her arms against her chest, a slight grumble to her breath.

Still... watching her, he chuckled a little, winding his neck around her loosely. "If there's ever something I can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask. I... I'd like to return the favor one day," his voice, still soft spoken, spoke from on top of her head.

Sheepishly, she gave his long tube of a neck an affectionate squeeze, holding it close. "I'm... just happy, if I can come visit. Are you okay with that?" The trepidation in her question gave away how nervous she'd been to even broach the topic, but he caught the anxious shimmer in her eyes, the way her posture sloped in uncertainty.

He couldn't sit on that question too long, otherwise he feared she'd backtrack and he'd never have company again. "I'd like that a lot," he smiled. "Bring your mother too. I'd like to meet her."

Billie's eyes lit up and she immediately bolted upright to squish his head. "I'm okay with that!!" She exclaimed, beaming as she began to rattle on about her mother, filling in gaps of knowledge and what to expect, personality and such.

Personally, he just needed to meet Belle to work out a shared custody agreement.

[beartitled]

I just clicked further on a post i saw earlier where you cleared up you didn't condone the actions of smitten in the hea epilouge, and now i feel stupid

Aw it’s chill, you were respectful and it’s always fun to read someone’s opinions :D

(I will answer for the previous ask here)

You actually brought my attention towards the fact that I should do a lil context warning in my old comics 🤔

I assume by ship art you were referring to this post (which gathered so much attention holy damn 💥 still in lil shock of how much ppl saw it /pos)

A little bit of context: those comics were drawn before Pristine Cut came out, so back in the day many considered Smitten as this silly comic relief guy

(not generalising, some ppl were expressing how “blindly devoured” Smitten was)

And after HeA route, that changed completely

Absolutely not blamin ya for jumping to conclusions, bc yea, HeA route recontextualizes Smitten and you start viewing him differently pretty much for the whole game

U probably saw that post, but here I go into my thoughts after experiencing HeA route, I can write a whole thesis on Smitten tbh 😭/silly

Also just a small PSA: my comics are mostly just silly stuff for comedy’s sake, 90% of the time they are not intended to be taken seriously

Especially in princesses x voices post, where I essentially flanderize the complicated character dynamics for memes and giggles

oh and I am not fully sure if I actually ship them or not

I feel like if we take voices separately, pretty much all relationships with princesses would be toxic 😭 bc they represent one “two dimensional” part of a person instead of a whole being

Like I legit struggle to name one single pairing that would be fully healthy if we take one single voice💥

Stubborn x Adversary? They kill each other multiple times 😭 tho admit very passionately

Opportunist x Witch? Both will backstab each other in sync

Contrarian x Stranger? That maybe could work, 2 sillies denying rules of reality

I think they could be shipped, but we just need to be aware and honest that they are “problematic faves” not an actual stable relationship

HeA Smitten x HeA Princess is toxic and I would say may be harmful to ship (borderline glorifying abuse), again Smitten has to atone for his actions first

Smitten x Damsel is interesting to me, bc they are two ppl who are very blindly and ignorantly in love with each other, which not saying would be healthy, but might be an interestingly messy dynamic to see in action 💥

Anyway I’m getting sidetracked

Really glad you enjoyed my STP art ❤️

Welcome to the fandom, it’s never late to experience cool games 👸

I’m honestly glad that people are still discovering this game even though it’s not in peak popularity

Have a nice day/night as well 👋

[sandcobangevent]

This Story Oozes Love

By @frenchfriedgiraffe and @iwantthatbelstaffanditsoccupant

J: Today, listeners, the podcast guy and the detective are shopping. And you will never guess what we are shopping for. Not that you could guess in a way that we could let you know if you actually got it right. I mean, yeah, you could, like, write in or something, and I could tell you if anyone got it right on the podcast, but you’d know by the end of this mailbag anyway, so that wouldn’t work. Plus, that means me sorting through a tonne of emails, and I just don’t think I have the time for that, with the editing and all. But, if I did, and it could somehow work, you’d still be wrong.

S: This one!

J: Sherls, don’t you think that’s a bit…much?

S: Despite your attempt to turn me against it through the use of a question you clearly never intended for me to answer— no.

J: “A bit much” as in ornate, not “a bit much” as in pricey. But, if you like it… Well, how much does that thing cost ‘cause oh my god it’s 55 quid. Taking the piss.

S: You do not need to look at the chop to see that this pot is imported from Tokoname, Japan. Here are the distinctive markings of Youzan Namako’s glaze, a tradition carried on by his son, Eimei. There are proper drainage holes of course, and wiring holes so that the tree can be fixed to the pot. The stoneware burned ceramic ensures there are no metals which may release toxins and it holds no water in the material—important for the health of the tree. And I enjoy the motif.

J: Well, it certainly… It oozes love.

S: Yes. It rather does, doesn’t it?

J: The bright red and the—the heart shape. And you think this plant—

S: Buckaroo. You chose the name, so why not use it? Or did one of your listeners—

J: Our listeners.

S: Did one of our listeners come up with it?

J: Yeah one did, actually. And now might be a good time to tell anyone who offered a suggestion that the bonsai we purchased in Mailbag 23 has been christened ‘Buckaroo’. Which happens to be a reference to a film my favourite babysitter—who eight-year-old me just might have had a tiny bit of a crush on— and I enjoyed watching together back in the day.

S: After your father died?

J: Yeah. A few weeks after. Carol had to work and she, her name was Cheryl Gansecki, offered to help us out. Funny how when you remember names from your childhood you always remember the last name along with the first name. Dirt pay, a teenager babysitting in the 90s. Labour Board should look into it. Anyway, we would get a tremendous bowl of popcorn, put in half a brick of butter and god knows how much salt, and watch old films on VHS on the cheap. I think “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” originally came out the same year as “Ghostbusters” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. But it was our favourite. And we’d quote it to each other all the time.

[Audio of typing something into a phone.]

S: “The… Adventures… of Buckaroo Banzai… Across the 8th Dimension.” So, Buckaroo, he’s the one in the cowboy outfit, then?

J: No. No, that’s a guy called New Jersey. Buckaroo fought inter-dimensional aliens. Silly sci-fi stuff, but fun. And very distracting. Both were things I definitely needed. If you want a more serious name for your plant, then by all means go right ahead and change it.

S: It doesn’t matter to me what name it has, just so long as it has a name. It has been proven that giving something a name creates a stronger bond and therefore ensures a higher level of care. One would be far less inclined to regularly water or to fertilise a plant that had no name.

J: And you think the plant will appreciate a ridiculous heart-shaped decorative pot, do you?

S: Not really. Dogs have dichromatic vision, meaning they can see blue and yellow well, but red and green appear as shades of gray or brown—similar to a human with red-green colour blindness. Therefore, when you buy Archie a bright red ball, it is not designed for him. It is designed for you. For you to want to interact with it and to play fetch with him. I am applying the same technique to the plant.

J: To remind you…that you love the plant?

S: Exactly, Watson! It reminds me that I love the plant, and therefore reminds the plant that it is loved. To the degree to which a plant is capable of sensing emotional changes in its environment, at any rate. They don’t have feelings in the way we have feelings, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel. We cannot extrapolate our neurological system into the form of a plant. But we need occasional reminding that not everyone expresses feelings, or love, in the same way, or in the way we most frequently come to expect or easily comprehend. So, the pot serves as a reminder that even the plant might feel its own version of love. And, as I have said before, we owe it the best life we are capable of providing.

J: Yeah. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And are we, uh… talking about something besides the plant, here. Like, symbolically…Sherlock?

S: Oh. I suppose we are. I share traits with the plant in the same way you share traits with that movie character. It says here he is Doctor Buckaroo Banzai: scientist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock star, who fights to save the world. I think it overambitious for eight-year-old you to have wished to accomplish all of those things upon reaching adulthood, but, to your credit, you did manage more than your fair share.

J: Oh. [Pause]

Thank you.

S: You’re welcome.

J: I don’t think we can take the analogy too far though, because all the bad guys in the film are named John. There are, like, 50 of them, if I remember right.

S: Really?

J: Yes. Really. They have different last names though.

S: Do you remember their full names as well as you remember your babysitter’s?

J: I remember one was named John uh…Bigbooté. Oh and there was a John Take Cover. That’s somewhat appropriate. And the Big Bad was John Whorfin, which sounded enough like John Watson to be my nickname for a few months.

S: Mmmhmm. It also says on Wikipedia it had Jeff Goldblum in it. He was in “Jurassic Park”, yes?

J: Yeah! Did you see “Jurassic Park”? I thought you had the train autism, not the dinosaur autism.

S: I have the train autism and the dinosaur autism. They are not mutually exclusive. I tend not to like fictionalised dinosaurs, but I saw the film anyway, because My—

[Announcement: Attention all shoppers, the store will be closing in fifteen minutes. I repeat, the store will be closing in fifteen minutes.]

J: Better get a move on, then! And, the point of this is that I, and whoever made the suggestion, thought naming a bonsai “Buckaroo” was funny. Ummm…sorry listener, I don't remember who you are. I’ll find out later and edit it in. OK, let’s go get the love pot.

S: Yes. Let’s.

J: Signing off… And remember, everyone…. No matter where you go… There you are…

S: I take it that’s a quote from the movie.

J: It certainly is.

[mossy-chaos]

These are all of the codes I could find in the Book of Bill!

The order is decoded message-page-type of cipher

Spoilers under the cut (for those of you who decode yourselves):

Black and white-back of the cover jacket-authors cipher

Even his lies are lies-inside the front cover-theraprism cipher

Praise the fallen angle-first actual page-Cipheric (this is the only time Cipheric is used for some reason)

Olaf was here-same-rune (not sure what this is a reference to)

Remember us-same-Bill's cipher

Let him in and break the seal between what's fiction and what's real-books new master-Bill's cipher

The Axolotl thinks he's won but Ciphers games have just begun-handprint page-color cipher

Irregular-fake covers(very top)-color cipher

The one who writes the codes-about me-Caeser cipher

Glotto/slotheny-Magazine cover(7 new sins)-Bill's cipher (I love the new sins lol)

Not a phase-Stanford pines here(on the goth moth)-Authors cipher-love the jack skellington reference (if thats what that is lol)

Warning/Folding this card may/result in crossovers-the universe is a hollogram-rune (Maybe that's how we finally get an owl house/gravity falls crossover)

My optometrist never saw it coming-What is a human-Theraprism

Paper is book skin/Shave your grandma-Skin-Bill's cipher

Love pain-Bill's tattoo knuckles-Same

Lies-How to trick everyone into loving you-same

Regrowing limbs is Axy's art/but can he regrow a ripped out heart-How to cheat death-Bill's cipher (he must really be mad at the Axolotl)

Eye doctor of a different kind/who wants to make his patient blind-silly straws-caesar

The doctor says/three sips a day/will make the visions/go away-Same

Fussy eater/baby Billy/wouldn't drink/unless it's silly-same (love how this implies that he only drank out of silly straws)

Mason-Embarrassing memories-Bill's cipher (love seeing Dipper's real name again)

Booberry-the meaning of life(popsicle stick)-Bill's cipher

One eyed king-the early years-theraprism

Suck it-The good times(liscense plate)-Caesar

Can warp narrativity/protect fourth walls-Alert from time baby-A1Z26

Lone survivor of the Euclidean massacre-Rune (I wonder what happened during that event and what that event actually is)

Tantrum-Bill's Cipher

Which henchmaniac ratted me out-The shaman-Theraprism (I find this one funny)

Titans blood-the dark ages(Wizards hat)-Rune (Love the owl house reference here)

Suck it Merlin-Never trust a wizard-Rune

Daryll-Cipherstitions(lobster lord of the deep)-Theraprism (love how that's his name)

Curse Wittebane-Witchcraft-Rune

It's all made up-America(the dollar)-Caesar

Countries aren't-Bill's cipher

Rubberhose-Animation-A1Z26

Bill cipher-top secret file-Same

Six fingered freak-Lost in the woods-authors cipher

Stanley would have made her laugh-same (he just rolled better charisma dude)

If lost return to Bill-my muse and me-Theraprism (love how he said this means wise one and also more billford hehe)

Forget the past-A voice from the past page 2-Bill's cipher (this implies that Bill wants Ford to forget Stanley so he won't get in the way)

Hopefully F's gloves will hide what Cipher has done to my hands-I was wrong about everything page 2-Author's Cipher (I love this one <3)

Ouroboros-Wakey wakey here's a snakey (on the snake)-Bill's Cipher (I guess this is the snakes name?)

Miss you-try to forget (on window)-bro's secret code

Have I been too harsh all along?-Should I contact S-Bro's secret code

Hotxolotl-Dimensional authority call transcript (on the sauce packet)-Bill's cipher

I can write codes too it's not that hard!-Dipper's page-Bill's cipher (he do be flexing his intelligence there)

(What a buncha) Love ya bro-Stanley's letter-Bro's secret code (love how this shows that they both still remember the code they made up as kids)

Just fit in (repeated)-SSSSTANNNNLEEEYY-Rune

Holy mackerel-color cipher

AXOLOTLLOTAXOLOTLLOTLAXLOTLAXLOTLAXOLOTLLOTLAXLOTLAXLOTLAXOLOTLLOTLAXLOTLAXLO-Theraprism

Wellwellwellbeing-message from the theraprism-A1Z26

Spheremonger, Eternalor, Bill cipher, The Logicube, Paingorious, Jessica, Shadorg, Mr Silly, The beast-recent inpatient names-Theraprism (the hallucination dog is still creepy lol)

Justice for Scrimbles/Remember Grembley-inside Back cover-Theraprism/Rune (JUSTICE FOR SCRIMBLES!!!!)

Those are all of the codes that are in this book! (Or at least that I could find lol)

[brickmvster]

a brief ramble post about owen

I don’t know how many people are going to agree with this, but here goes.

Sometimes, I feel like one of the few people that like Owen. The way the TLOU fandom usually demonizes him really irks me because people tend to have really one-dimensional views of his character, which is sad considering the fact that all of the characters in TLOU are complex and written in such a nuanced way. I honestly think it’s a little ignorant to demonize Owen just because he cheated. And before anyone yells at me–no, I don’t stand for cheating, nor do I think cheating is a good thing to do. What I am saying, though, is that only looking at the fact that Owen cheated and not paying attention to other aspects of his character is kinda silly.

Owen, alongside a few other characters, is one of the most morally sound, level-headed, and grounded characters in the game. In the midst of all the violence, he really stands out as a character that truly just wants to do good and is sick and tired of all the blood on his hands, metaphorically and literally. Yes, he cheated, and that’s totally not cool – but this is the man that spared Ellie, deeming it unnecessary violence. This is the man that wanted to go to Santa Barbara for a better life for him and his companions, even if the chance was slim. This is the man that told Abby he spared an old Seraphite that was on the ground, defenseless, and shot one of his own to protect who was supposed to be a sworn enemy. I find the conversation that Owen has in the boat with Abby to be so insightful on the kind of guy Owen is deep down. Owen cheating on his pregnant girlfriend was a completely irrational decision – but all of the TLOU characters have made completely irrational and even immoral decisions.

These characters exist in a world where they are often pushed to make these kinds of decisions. I think the writing team did an excellent job of depicting them as complex individuals full of contradictions and impulsions just like humans in real life. Absolutely none of these characters are perfect and that’s the point. To only define Owen as a cheater and to completely disregard the good parts of him is just doing a disservice to the wonderful writing in this game.

Nobody in this fandom completely demonizes Ellie for all the acts of violence she committed, and that’s because people are able to recognize that deep down, Ellie is a compassionate individual. She went on that revenge journey not because she’s just a naturally violent, bloodthirsty person but because she was driven to commit those acts and she felt like she had to in the name of justice; she simply failed to realize (until it was too late) that the violence she was committing would not help her achieve her goal of vengeance and that it was only harming the people she loved as well as herself. Most people are able to understand this and yet when it comes to characters like Owen, that kind of nuanced thinking flies out the window. It really doesn’t make sense to me. Mel also gets weird treatment but that’s another post for another time.

At the end of the day, I am definitely not forcing anybody to like Owen. But I’ve always felt that these characters are multi-faceted and deserve to be viewed as such. Also… if the worst thing a character in this game has done is cheat on their partner, that’s pretty tame compared to, oh I don’t know, murder and stuff. Obviously in the real world cheating is one of the lowest things you can do but in the TLOU universe? In the apocalypse where people turn into monsters in the name of whatever they’re fighting for? Where some people take the lives of others just because? That’s the last thing I would care about. Genuinely. Especially when there’s cannibals and transphobic cults running amok.

[jellybeanium124]

Don’t hate yourself for liking someone’s works. Something to remember is that Neil Gaiman wrote his stories to target young, vulnerable people. He was writing his stories to attract fans, and interacted with the fans to entice and groom them. Some of his victims met at book signings. All were fans of his books.

The stories were written with your admiration in mind. It’s not your fault he wants to hold the admiration of people of your demographic.

First, I don't.

Second, I think you are making up a story here bro. I think once upon a time there was a teenager in england who worked in journalism but wanted to write books, and then he was the one-in-a-million lucky soul who wrote his books and they became wildly famous and successful. and then after he accrued power and fame he started exploiting it. I'm not saying people who abuse power don't tend to try and get themselves into positions of power, but "famous author" is a pretty difficult career path and one likely to fail.

with this narrative you've concocted, you've removed his humanity from him, as well as any sort of genuine love of storytelling or creation he definitely has. like he's just as human as the rest of us, and I simply do not believe that he is a monster who only cares about attracting 20-something women and does this by crafting beautiful stories for the page and screen.

there's a concept I've talked about before, the Fetishist. as someone with a widely hated fetish, I've thought a lot about how people think people with my fetish are not humans but Fetishists, monsters who look human but only care about fulfilling their fetish, and see all other people as Objects They Can Use or Nothing. you've turned gaiman into the Predator, which is the same thing just a bit broader. the Predator is a monster shaped like a human, but unlike a human who cares about a myriad of things and has a three-dimensional personality, the Predator only cares about Preying On [usually young women or children], and every human being is, to them, either a Target To Prey On or Nothing. neil gaiman is not the Predator because the Predator doesn't exist. I don't think he had a long term plan. I don't think 19yo neil gaiman was going "hehehehe I can't wait until I become world famous so I can use that to coerce women into sleeping with me!"

turning ng into something evil is easy. because then you don't have to think about the good he's done. then you don't have to think about how he's been a supporter of queer people since the 90s. then you don't have to think about how he's supported refugees or ukraine. you don't have to think about his works of tzedakah or tikkun olam, and you don't have to think about the beautiful art he's made (and while we're here, let's think before dehumanizing a jewish man, hm?). it also handily makes it so you never have to worry about your own behaviors. because you're a three-dimensional person! so of course you could never be the Predator. or the Abuser. or the Fetishist. or the Narcissist.

until I see proof debunking this, I am going to continue believing he made the art he wanted to see in the world out of a genuine wish to be an author, and not primarily to put himself in a position of power to abuse women. maybe he always had tendencies towards manipulation. maybe part of him always knew that if he became famous then there would undoubtedly be women falling over themselves for him. because we all know that. we all know that if we became famous there would be people who we could exploit for sex. that's not a secret. part of me would like to be famous. I wanna work in the film industry. I have silly dreams, of course. but I'm not pursuing this difficult line of work in order to someday abuse people, I'm pursuing it because of a genuine love of making movies. neil gaiman was a guy who wanted to become a writer, and then he did, and then he abused that position, repeatedly. we have three examples now. I wouldn't be surprised if more women started coming out about their experience, because three is absolutely a pattern, and because claire did the brave thing of being the second one to speak out (since scarlett and the other one whose pseudonym I can't remember atm came out at the same time). and now that there's been two exposés, two podcasts, three stories total, more are going to come. I'd be more surprised if they didn't. but that doesn't make neil gaiman the Predator. it makes him a man who did shitty things repeatedly.

[mysterycitrus]

i know you've been talking about jason lately so i'll ask about smth different... robin jason (sorry)

idk idk lately i've been wanting to take a peek at his robin comics for the sake of writing fic (ofc...) but i'd like to hear what u think before that, a summary of sorts if u may (i also wanna contrast what u say with what i get out of it so yeah)

i feel like his robin days are so muddled by his identity as red hood later on, and even before that it was his death. u had people constantly blaming jason for dying in text (or else they'd have to admit bruce can make mistakes and everyone in dc is allergic to doing that) and painting him like someone reckless and violent (classist editorial u need to DIE), and then people in fanon painting him like a sweet fella who would do nothing wrong and as well as being bruce's Only Actual Son etc etc for the sake of making the situation around him all the more sadder (yeah yeah pathetic meow meow we've all seen it)

and i'm just curious bc i rlly wonder what the actual comics say about him, most likely something in the middle of this? exams are killing me but my god i'll come back to life after im done just to read jason robin's days... have a good day !!!

the difficulty with reading about jason as robin is that there are three primary periods that all differ fairly dramatically from each other — pre-crisis jason todd is a strawberry blond acrobat who’s almost adopted by dick grayson before becoming robin; post-crisis jason todd is a kid from crime alley who steals the wheels off the batmobile before becoming robin; and post-crisis, post-utrh jason todd is a very angry, very violent kid who becomes a cautionary tale after he gets himself killed (something he is often blamed for).

we can walk the line here. pre-crisis jason isn’t particularly relevant because so much of robin!jason’s stories depend on his reinvention after the reboot. all the crucial factors leading up to death in the family — growing up in the alley, both his mothers, his relationship with the robin mantle, his developing relationship with dick grayson, his slow schism from bruce, his relative isolation from other superheroes — are all crucial to who he is, especially after his death.

fanon about jason is annoying because there are valid criticisms that can be made about how he’s written with regressive, classist stereotypes, but as always it pivots way too far in one direction. jason wasn’t the “happy” or “angry” robin in the same way that dick wasn’t the happy or angry robin — they’re both characters that possess more than a single emotion. it’s true that jason was later written to be more explicitly violent (to contrast him with dick) but also like… they’re both pretty similar characters that differ in interesting ways. dick created robin to be a symbol of hope and joy. jason carried that on when he took up the mantle. they can both be angry at stuff without the world falling apart. it’s not that serious.

the dialogue about dick being a child soldier but jason being the true son makes me want to tear my hair out. jason became robin because bruce missed dick and was afraid of being alone. they’re both his gd kids. acting as though bruce wayne doesn’t love dick grayson so much that extra-dimensional beings can clock it is so fucking stupid. it once again ties into fanon’s obsession with each character only getting to be “one” thing. tim is smart, which means he’s the smartest. jason said robin made him magic, which means he’s happy all the time. dick chased after zucco in a grief spiral, which means he’s the violently angry one, with no other character traits. dick can’t have been nice to jason because he’s nice to tim, etc. seems a little silly, no?

i think i’ve only read jason’s brief run as robin once, though ive gone through a death in the family + a lonely place of dying a bunch of times, so ig my advice for reading him is to keep in mind the context in which he was created. dc comics was reeling from losing dick grayson as robin, and were really throwing anything at the wall to get something to stick. many, many negative tropes are baked into his introduction, and thanks to writers like jeph loeb and scott lobdell they have compounded over time. jason’s updated backstory is, with actual critical intent by the writer, a really good examination of how poverty and class will affect how someone views the world. his death was not his fault — and removing sheila haywood from that warehouse purposely makes his story less tragic. he was a good kid! and he was angry for a good reason. if jason had lived, i believe he would’ve carried on the robin tradition and left bruce behind once their differences became insurmountable.

[gowerhardcastle]

Spinning off from Wodehouse's characters

When I started writing Tally Ho, the first characters I designed (and, in fact, the first characters you meet) are very clearly versions of Wodehouse's characters, instantly recognizable. Rory is my version Bertie Wooster; the main character servant is our Jeeves, Aunt Primrose is mostly Aunt Dahlia, and Figs is a Gussie-type. Frankincense is some sort of Madeline Basset stand-in.

But to me, the fun part of writing these games, and where it got even more fun in Jolly Good is spinning off from Wodehouse's world and seeing how far I could bend his world--sometimes to the point of breaking--and still have it be recognizable. Clearly the moment I introduce Haze, that's happening.

The female version of Haze is introduced like this:

...an extraordinary-looking woman in her twenties with long black hair, dyed purple at the ends. You halt in the middle of taking your seat as you notice this strangely coiffed woman, who, you now see upon closer inspection, has several ear piercings. As she looks around the carriage to see who is entering, her hair moves, revealing a small tattoo of an autumn leaf behind her ear.

That was my announcement that this was not just going to be a pastiche, or, as my favorite Steam review says, "tryhard Wodehouse fanfiction." I mean, it's that too! But also something else, I hoped. And as I added in characters who were at first recognizable Wodehouse tropes, like Parsnip (the awful hellion child) and Pilcrow (the model servant) and Mopsie (the fiesty ingenue) but then did...or could...transform into something deeper, that was even more interesting to me.

Because this being interactive fiction, I was able to have the Wodehouse cake and also eat it by giving the player the opportunity to poke at the two dimensional comedy and see what they look like if you deepen them.

I mean, on the face of it, Vyv mean seem like a silly punch line of a character--a law student who actually wants to be an artist. I can imagine that character in a Wodehouse story. But interactive fiction gives me the chance to take that comic idea and see if it can look like something a little tragic, or romantic, or meaningful because I can show the player the character from so many different angles and so many different situations.

So Wodehouse is a great starting place, obviously, and I owe him so much. I love him. I've read almost everything he wrote. But at the same time, I think and hope what I'm doing is seeing what his pastoral comic world looks like if you nudge it into other genres, if it becomes something you can interact with and live in, and if you put a character in it (you) with lots and lots of autonomy.

I've written a little thing about something I call ambiguous stats in interactive fiction. It's here. It is free--one must simply become a free member!

I've also written up a long thing about Starling, the fifth and final romantic character in my game, and how I was persuaded to make this character into a love interest. It's here. (This one is not free, but part of my robust series of game design essays here.)

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Guys. Scrooge McDuck already traveled the multiverse in 1995

Hey look, it’s the doors from doctor strange

-my dad

This year will mark a historical moment in Disney comics history. The first Marvel-made Scrooge McDuck comic. Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime coming up in June will have Scrooge travel through the multiverse to defeat an evil AU version of himself.

To some unfamiliar with Disney comics, this might sound like a lame idea in the trend of many multiverse stories that we are seeing in the cinemas today.

To some familiar with Disney comics, this sounded exactly like the plot of Zio Paperone e il predone dimensionale.

Truth is, the multiverse has always been a part of… just comic books. It’s now starting to slip into other mediums because of the many, many comic book adaptations just getting to that point of the lore, but the comic books themselves have had it for a long time now. Including Disney comics.

Though for Disney it’s less a case of: we wanted to explain continuity errors and then went a bit too far, and more a case of: if you have comics coming out literally every single day of the week then at some point you just get to the multiverse.

There are many of these to be found in Disney comics, which we might talk about later if someone is interested or I feel like it, but today we are going to go over the one most similar in premise to the upcoming Marvel release.

Because I just think it’s really funny how similar they are. Like at this point I would call it a reboot.

Oh oh, Scrooge and multiverse, look at this. I’m pretty sure the Loki tv series just copied their time doors from this comic.

Federico Povoleri wrote a pretty simple story. Someone is stealing from Scrooge again, and this time, the culprit turns out to be… himself!

‘Our’ Scrooge is signified by the red coat (and later the multiverse hopping suit). All the alternates will be clad in blue. DT87 Scrooge is just another AU that no one cares about confirmed

This stealing Scrooge is our ‘Scrooge above all’. He wants to be richer than all his other variants and steals from them for that or something. I don’t remember very well but why he does it doesn’t matter. It’s evil Scrooge and he steals that’s all we need to know.

As we have seen already, he escapes with an universe hopping door. As he always does within these kinds of situations, Scrooge calls Gyro who finds some kind of dimensional energy lingering around where the door used to be. He does the usual explain the multiverse bit.

Then Gyro does in a few hours/days/wedontactuallyknow what Red Raider has been trying for years. There’s a reason they kicked him out of PKNA he would be too overpowered.

Yeah altronave my nose.

Scrooge arrives in the bin of another him, and explains as well as he can. This repeats a few times and I would love to show it but there is a 10 image limit on tumblr mobile for some reason.

Finally he arrives at the bin of the Scrooge who steals and they have a little typical multiverse discussion (I am the real one. No bitch I am. But which one are you. A real me would never do this. That kind of stuff)

But he gets defeated by bad Scrooge. Oh no the only one who could defeat Scrooge has defeated him. What will happen now?

Exactly what you think happens. prime!Scrooge never closed the AU doors and so everyone he visited could just hop through and arrive at Scrooge above all’s office. Yay.

It is not a bad comic. It has the single idea, it sticks to it, it executes it well. The interactions with AU Scrooge’s are just plain fun. At the time of writing the story has place 6020 on inducks which is pretty dang high for such a silly comic.

It’s very much a multiverse story in a classic Disney comics way. It’s not used to bring multiple continuities together. No storia e gloria Scrooge VS life and times Scrooge. Nothing dramatic happening or high stakes. Just Scrooge going on another adventure, and for being one of the first multiverse comics involving Scrooge that didn’t pull random bullshit, it’s considered good by most of the fandom it seems. That the Comicup artists was pretty decent helped as well.

But now, what can we expect from what is totally gonna be a remake of this?

Infinity Dime is Marvel. It’s gonna take a Marvel approach. Assuming it’s not gonna be parody (which i kind of really hope it isn’t), then what will it be? Are we gonna see something similar to this, where Scrooge will just meet different versions of himself or will we see established AU’s? Both Ducktales and all his other animated counterparts (i heard the americans like christmas carol scrooge) seem like easy picks. Will they fight? Will it be Secret Wars? Or will they work together like in this comic?

Marvel has still given out zero information about the story (hell, they haven’t even made clear which artists aside from a few are drawing. “celebrated Scrooge artists” does NOT narrow it down) except for that super vague premise. So the best we can do is imagine this story but with the Marvel flavor. Not that I have read enough Marvel comics to properly understand what that means but ive seen some movies okay.

We can probably imagine there will be more ‘evil’ Scrooges. Some Scroogehenchmen. And they will fight. We gotta have action scenes. Which I trust will look good because Mangiatordi I believe his connection to the project alone will secure that the art department will be amazing. His existence is enough.

I’m also expecting DT17 Scrooge to at least cameo. He’s the perfect character for this type of story, fits way better than any other non comic variant. DT87 Scrooge could work as maybe a younger version? Who is not sure what he got caught up in. But then we would need emotional scenes between Scrooge and Scrooge and that’s probably asking too much from Jason Aaron.

Oh hmm actually. I can see when good Scrooge fights bad Scrooge in the climax he will do a big speech that will last a good 4 pages and will teach bad Scrooge what it takes to be a real Scrooge. That sounds stupid enough to be a Marvel thing but not so stupid as to become completely ridiculous.

I’m not expecting actual references to other established comic Scrooge AU’s. We will probably have Barks and Rosa references and that’s it. I’m not even expecting a Van Horn reference tbh. It’s all Barks and Rosa we gotta keep it beginner friendly. It might even just be Rosa. Which indirectly will result in a Barks reference because every Rosa reference is just a Barks reference but with extra steps.

I’m trying to make predictions okay? So I can go I SAID SO when it comes out. It’ll be really funny for me and annoying for you guys. You don’t even have to read this (yet). This is just for in the future so I can look like a wizard.

The scene where Gyro explains the multiverse might just get copied one on one. Maybe Gyro will be replaced by Ludwig? At least I don’t think they will have Scrooge just go: oh yeah ive seen this before. Maybe another Scrooge will explain it to him/secretly the reader. It WILL involve a big cosmic looking image that will represent the multiverse. It just has to. Even if just to show the Marvel audience how good these Italian Scrooge artists are.

I don’t think Donald or the nephews are gonna play a big role. Maybe at the beginning and end, maybe they will somehow stay in contact with Scrooge or he thinks about them a few times to remind us of hey this is Donald Duck. But I think most is gonna be a solo Scrooge adventure just like we have already seen.

Idk. I really want to talk more about Infinity Dime because it’s the most exciting US made Disney comic in ages. Idk why no one else seems to be hyped. Where is all the rambling and speculation guys?? Not about the covers, but about the actual story!

Anyways now we get to the most important question: do i think it will feature Magica?

Maybe. (Definitely not gonna play a big role if she even appears. Maybe a cameo when at some point there will be a dramatic flashback… Or she could show up in one of the AU’s. Maybe just a short scene in the beginning showing his usual life but that sounds lame. Probably not gonna have a role in the story at least, and I kinda hope it won’t have any Magica at all because I’m scared that they will go of off Rosa’s characterization lol.)

Ok Remember to infinity your dimes and uncle your scrooges gby

[ledreca]

obligatory tommy taffy hc post

once again if ur one of my disc friends for the love of god do not press read more. thanks

sort of half headcanons half character analysis idk i was just writing whatever i thought of since everyone else is

warnings: written under the assumption youve read the book, includes heavy spoilers for both the reddit story and published third parent book by elias witherow, mentions/jokes of some of the more violent acts comitted by taffy but nothing explicit or sexual. you read the book you know what youre in for. also long ass post sorry i wrote all this on my phone last night

go ahead and preface everything here with "i think" cus as these are headcanons they are just my personal thoughts and ideas of stuff making up his character. that i made up

he has "real" hair, or at the very least it's made up of individual strands and not just a chunk of blond plastic. brushable and styleable!

his soft plastic doll-like skin is actually a fairly recent development. previous iterations through time had him being made of stuff like stained wood, stuffed cloth, porcelain, whatever rez saw humans using for idols and toys and such at the time. the plastic variant is comparatively modern, obviously inspired by barbie toy lines

the skin is surprisingly malleable, functioning similarly to both the human epidermis and the plastic of a modern toy. its able to bend smoothly and fold in areas, but also any imprints of say, fingernail scratches or bite marks, will remain there until he does something about it. it irritates him to no end how impressionable it is but he tolerates it for the benefits appearance-wise

he doesn't have eyeballs per say, but he does have the sockets and general shape of them. they aren't flat. the whites of his eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows all appear painted on tho he is still able to emote with his eyebrows. the iris is also painted on but he can move them just like a regular human can

the blue glow of his eyes is controllable by will and strengthened by heightened emotions, tho he prefers to keep a low ambient level in low light

his mouth area lacks any shape or definition, and instead also appears painted on like his other features. his teeth also lack real detail and look uncannily simple on his 3 dimensional living body (I like to think rez wanted to give him a more silly cartoonish glee vibe and instead got uncanny and sinister ones). it can still open and emote differently than his default wide toothy grin.

lets get to the guts . . . (haha) his interior is full of flesh. just flesh. like what someone who didn't know what humans or mammals or organs are would imagine is inside something only known as soft and made of meat. just full of dark and meat and goo and warp all coated in a thin layer of syrupy yellow. (I can't actually come up with a reasoning for rezs choice in making his blood yellow. maybe he thought it to be associated with happier things than humanity's red blood and that it would never really matter anyway since he'd totally never get sliced open? lol!). rez got a little lazy when it came to designing something as complicated (and objectively subparly structured) as the human organ system so he just said screw it

looking at his exterior skin tho you would never be able to tell nothing really makes sense underneath, cus his body concaves and bends and is detailed in every way that would suggest a fully developed skeletal structure and organs. he can bend any way he'd like, but he does still prefer to try and follow anatomical standards. he also appears to have a circulatory and cardiovascular system, seeing as his blood can rush to his face and other areas to "blush" yellow (yeah hc he can blush). you might even be able to hear a facsimile of a heartbeat if you had your ear pressed up against his chest :)

the only "interior" rez cared to put any effort in designing is taffys mouth and jaw structure, since it'd be visible whenever taffy would open his mouth for emoting. it looks like a generically simple mouth with no detail past the color red and 2 curved blocks on the top and bottom to represent his molars connected to his "main" teeth. it also doesn't go anywhere and is just a small pocket, so he can't actually eat anything as itd have nowhere to go

since someone else brought it up first NOT ME I'll relay my own thoughts of the subject of taffys Lower body parts. Tommy Taffy was designed by something who wanted him to successfully blend in with humanity while also being remarkable enough in a fun friendly way (whether he succeeded is another story lol) and thus designed him with everything important he believed made up a human being. rez also admits to originally believing sex and violence were the predominate human traits due to his first experiences with humanity being very early stages of life and civilization. so yeah, he probably wouldve designed him with all the knowledge and exterior parts of a normal male human being, why would he suddenly decide to cut corners on his dream's own physical lower body? (now whether or not EVERY subsequent layer had all the bits and bobs is debatable and subjective but this is purely a personal and subjective post anyway lol!) also he gave him a goddamn tongue, guys. come on

taffy could very well be a reality bending divine being IF he thought he was able to. taffy operates under strict mental parameters carried from rezs influence to not be able to pass certain self-imposed limits on his own power. its mentioned in the book he could go up to like 66 thousand copies of himself like his real name meaning (66358 deadnaming lol) but I think at his current level he could build even more layers or just copies of himself or even create something else entirely new if he just knew he was capable of it. like father like son

some words about how his layers work: in the book rez describes it as each layer being a different tweak or change to the original base layer, so this can sort of be equated as like a code base on github or something idk im not a coder. except since he never actually overwrote anything, every "bug" and "deprecated feature" never actually got fixed or removed with each update, just pushed to a metaphorical backburner. so the modern taffy would basically be running a constant rng game to decide how he would react to stimuli from his environment, which can hopefully better explain his emotions switching at the drop of a hat and his bipolarity. sorry this was like confusing af lol

^ also all his layers probably think just a liiittle differently from eachother, each one isnt just a perfect carbon copy. seeing how in the book he could theoretically go up to sixty thousand present copies, it can be assumed each summoned layer is either a compound of every layer minus the latest layer additions or, what i believe, a "division" of several layers. like, say he had three manifestations active, each one with a divided ratio of the total sixy thousand, so theyd only have around twenty thousand changes picked at random. theoretically, one of his manifestations could have a very low amount of "early" builds and lack most of the violent/sexual tendencies and instead be a relatively decent guy. what are the chances of something like that happening though haha

he has a perfect hivemind relationship with his other current manifested layers, and he's able to perfectly tune in to every manifestation with precise focus. he doesn't really think about this tho as it's another one of those self-imposed limits to not acknowledge just how powerful his mind really is. this could also be why he's so irritated when someone points out or acknowledges another one of his layers

I don't actually think he works like this but itd be funny to imagine his thoughts are just all his 60000 layers yelling at each other like in slay the princess. mental fortitude of a god to be able to function with that shit

he's capable of instantly remanifesfing himself. he sometimes doesn't for reasons I'll talk about later (threat) but he IS able to "shed" and dismiss his current form for a new one if his gets, say, dirty bitten scratched stabbed lost russian roulette and/or set on fire. he just appears back either in front of a house if he plans on making an entrance or back inside if he knows no one will see him, depending on the severity and reason for why he had to remanifest. just like imagine if some kid accidentally got apple juice all over his stupid khakis and he was like "🤗 no biggie!" while internally fuming and he just disappears into some shadowy corner and comes back in the middle of the night sitting on the couch all clean and ominous

he can be a master at virtually any skill or talent if he knows enough about it. like what's that? youre interested in woodworking? wow, taffys actually a master woodworker and a whiz with a whittler! you've been getting into opera singing lately? lucky, taffy has an incredible range and can be your theater partner! he'll help you :) (whether you want him to or not)

he does actually have a really nice voice and is naturally good at singing tho. someone else mentioned this but he rlly would be putting a kid to bed and have to come up with some shit on the spot to sing them to sleep. he probably would have an insane range too cus lack of real vocal cords and all his sounds coming from an unknown eldritch source of power in the sky

he can purr. that is all

i KNOW his chest be rumbling from his goofy laughing and it's so nice to lay on. mask off

he used to really look up to rez and admire him as a creator, at least until he began to actually "exist" as more and more layers were added and he could feel the dissatisfaction and maybe even hatred from rez for things that were actually rezs fault but taffy would later assume were his own shortcomings. this got even worse once rez discovered he was out and about on earth and tried stopping him, driving a wedge between them that would eventually escalate into full on hate and spite fueled rivalry (mostly on taffys part). he does still have some deepseated respect and reliance on rez tho

highkey fantasizes about someone breaking into one of the houses in his care. it would likely rarely if ever happen cus of the effects he has on a neighborhoods aura and it probably really drives outsiders away but maybe during an early taffy "infestation" someone could attempt to rob his current family. he has a power fantasy where he'd violently protect his home by making an example out of whatever misfortunate schmuck decided to break into the wrong house and rip into him, proving he's strong and capable of protecting his territory. no lasting physical trauma on his own beneficiaries needed! (no but like imagine you just broke the lock on some upper middle class house. you walk in past the foyer and into the living room and sitting on the couch in the dark room is some tall lanky figure staring at you with piercing blue lights and a wide white grin. he lets out a quiet chuckle. ur not dying quickly nor painlessly)

he is unfathomably dramatic. I'm talking insane drama queen levels and passion for theatrics. will always be dedicated to the bit. his body just got thrown off a cliff by his current family and they think he's gone for good? give them a couple weeks. let them think they won. all for the spectacular and horrific entrance busting down the door he'll make on his return. need to make an example out of some poor parent who's just disrespected him for the last time? he won't just punch them, no, hes about to splay their corpse on the shingles and make the kids help. he does NOT have to do allat but he does. for the bit

he's actually incredibly intolerant towards child abuse from parents and will very quickly nip it in the bud at the source i.e separate heads from necks if what he's seen is bad enough. he only ever really snaps on a family himself if they go against him, and punishment without reason would be enough for him to fully takeover for the abusive parents in question

I like to imagine there has to have been a least one set of kids who deemed him more tolerable than their real parents because they were just that bad (I plan on working on a little something with this premise in the future, highkey suck at writing tho so don't expect much)

he'd be surprisingly good at comforting someone if you just let him. he knows all the methods to handle panic attacks and best ways to hold someone to calm you down from night terrors and such

he thoroughly appreciates the senses and thinks humans take them for granted. he believes all senses are wondrous (the quiet sneeze of a baby, the warmth of a family pet choosing his lap to lay on in the middle of the night cus he hasn't moved and won't move for hours, the indulgent aroma of a tired husband's baking brownies wafting through the house, and ofc the sight of a child's small smile at some funny thought or another when they thought he wasn't looking. he'd enjoy tasting things too if he didn't think he was wasting it since he'd have to throw it away later) he's a sucker for it all

this dumbass probably really only does have one item in his wardrobe. poor sod and his stupid Hi! shirt hes emotionally dependant on. still dont have to draw him in tho. if he does branch out he would make sure to keep the Hi! in there somewhere, be it one of those name stickers or a on button pinned to his lapel

anyway not a hc but a potential fixit fic idea for the book ending if anyone wants it: "killing" rez didnt actually work. something went wrong, maybe a subconscious reeling that forced him to collapse and go dark, but he never actually died. (you cant kill a god that easy.) thus, taffy remains, albeit incredibly beaten and roughed up. something changed him that night, though. whether it was witnessing what he thought was the death of his precious creator, the showdown with one of his favorite wards, his own horrific "death", or something else entirely removed, he woke up in that housefire different. more appreciative of life and with a new understanding of his own morality (or lack thereof). he would leave and go to rez's own already-mending mass and theyd abscond.. somewhere. anywhere other than here with the memories literally burning behind them and dripping blue fluid. then theyd experience found family and love for the first time and finally bond as father and son and live happily ever after the end WIN

sorry and thanks for reading this if you got this far. stay winning taffy fans and led fans