#i kid i kid. i mean it was incomprehensible

[wyrmswears]

wyrm thinking about jordana do you want to talk about your thoughts 👂

ok it was 2am so i saw this ask, thought to myself damn id be incomprehensible, and went to sleep to get up in time for my 9am lecture. BUT!!! yes i would like to share my thoughts.

first of all, ive been rotating lightning master au in my head a Lot. like tumblr doesnt even know a fifth of what ive got going on there. so ill share a little bit keep the general public updated nod nod (though im always happy to elaborate). jordana is so ignorant to non-imperium cultures and thats really fun to explore because it means that she knows little about elemental powers and even less about the significance of lightning in particular. at first jordana assumes that it was one of the new elements created by the merged (because, well, lightning sounds like a bit of a niche) and has no clue about the 'finding a new host' thing.

He was likely the holder of a new element created by the Merge, as so many now were. And just as quickly as the Merge had created it, Ras had destroyed it.

not to mention, almost every realm outside of imperium learnt the significance of the ninja in the aftermath of the merge, with them being such an important part of ninjago's culture. even as the rest of imperium became more open and started interacting with other cultures, jordana went with ras, continuing her isolation and only ever learning of the wyldness.

all this is to say that she is woefully unprepared for the reaction people would have towards her element.

“The most shocking competitor of the tournament!” A burst of amusement at the pun, courtesy of Jay. “Jordana - master of Lightning!”

For a brief second Jordana enjoyed the shocked look that washed over the ninja, but as the expressions of shock turned to dread, her smug smile twisted into an uneasy frown.

The arena and stands had fallen into eerie silence. Jordana felt like she was missing out on the punchline of a joke, a common feeling having grown up isolated in Imperium’s culture and more recently finding herself surrounded by citizens of the Merged Realms, all of which had learnt from and shared with and found understanding in one another.

There was common knowledge underlying the dread, she knew. She just didn’t know what it was until one of the ninja - the master of Earth - stepped forwards.

“Your element is… lightning?”

Her hand found its way to her chest, rubbing above where her heart would be. “What does that matter?” She said, not dismissively but with fear creeping into her voice.

the tournament is an awful place to realise the significance of your situation. surrounded by friends of the ninja and a city of people who know far more about elemental powers than jordana, who has held the element of lightning for maybe a month at this point. all of whom know what it means for jordana to be the master of lightning, far more than she herself does. to jordana, every ounce that someone cares about jay is an ounce less that they care about her. the silence as an entire city of people understands and processes and starts to mourn the death of jay is the backing track to when peoples perception of jordana changes from a kid participating in a competition to an enemy. effectively through her introduction she has made a far greater enemy of herself than she has ever been considered before

so silly that jays attempt to give jordana protection (by passing on his element to her, hoping that it would defend her against ras) instead leads to her persecution at the hands of the ninja and allies

anyway. breaking out of lightning master au, lets trans jordanas gender. i think this would save her. i really do.

oh fuck i have another lecture uh. more thoughts later

[knockknockitsnickels]

For Equality (#Women), here's a Princess tierlist (already did a voices one). I was hesitant to make one bc all of the princesses are different facets of my beautiful wife whom I adore, but I also love to yap so let's do it. Full disclosure I like all of them a lot for different reasons so these rankings are based almost entirely on vibes. For the sake of brevity I'm gonna be counting unique chapter 3s alongside their respective chapter 2s and counting the shared chapter 3s separately. I know that makes no sense but c'mon there's like 22 of these ladies

EDIT: I completely missed Razor!!! 😭 I'm sorry babygirl. Updated to add her.

Spectre/Princess and the Dragon: Spectre my beloved. My most anticipated route after playing the demo, and she met all of my expectations. The themes of forgiveness in her route are wonderful, I love how reluctant she is to hurt you, even when you deliberately antagonize her. Princess and the Dragon was also great - getting to see from her perspective feels so fitting I'm surprised it wasn't in the original game, and the moment of quiet you get just chatting with her was a delight.

Nightmare/Moment of Clarity: One of the most tragic characters in the game. I adore the way Shifty's description of her completely recontextualizes the route, taking Nightmare from a quirked up lil villain to just a sad person trying to find a connection after being rejected. Another wrinkle is that no matter what route you take - whether you get Wraith, M.O.C, or set Nightmare free - there's not really a way to give her the connection she wants. I got M.O.C for the first time via choosing to stay with Nightmare, not wanting to release her after she admitted to wanting to destroy the world, but recognizing she just wanted a friend. After the vision she shows us, I felt bad for what I chose - I wanted to apologize to her, but there were no options left.

Prisoner/Cage: First princess I ever got, hence subject to first-princess bias. I've already talked a lot about how much I love her in another post so I won't repeat myself, but she truly is the 3rd best Princess in the game.

Fury: My babygirl It's really hard to write about why I love this girl so much. I've talked about it a bit before, but there's a special kind of horror in how you destroy Fury's original sense of identity (whether you got there via Adversary or Tower), and how upset she is by what she becomes. I think she also ties in really well with the overarching themes of the game. Her insistence that you are not your body and her desperation for you to understand her (in one route destroying herself in the process) remind me a lot of what Shifty has to say in the final fight.

Adversary/Eye of the Needle: My lovely wife whom I adore, my bestest friend. Adversary is such a fun and underrated character, her respect and genuine care for the player is so good AND she's hot. Eye of the Needle is also extremely underrated, her dialogue during the Shifting Mound fight - especially the variation when you free her - honestly gets me a lil emotional.

Wraith: A star, she's done nothing wrong, she is a girlboss and she is slaying. I've already written a bit about how tragic her route is & how I think she's one of the best shared chapter 3s in how she changes depending on the context, so instead i will say: banger design.

Witch/Thorn: Yeah im basic. Thorn was something I was hoping for basically as soon as I realized I couldn't get through the game without hurting the Princess, and it really met my expectations. Witch is a fascinating character - she's so desperate for revenge she'll end up destroying herself in the process, yet despite reveling in how awful she believes the two of you are, her chapter 3s show there's a part of her which wants to reconcile with you.

Damsel/Happily Ever After: Damsel on her own I found to be a pretty funny route - Smitten's dialogue, her happily agreeing to end the world, & Narrator suffering throughout the whole route makes it a lot of fun. Honestly even the more unsettling moments like the deconstructed Damsel are kind of funny - like OK I think it's fascinating thematically (we're trying to help her by asking what she wants but in questioning the only desire she knows we strip her personhood away), but also her turning into an anime doodle is hilarious I'm sorry. Despite that, there is this underlying, deeply uncomfortable horror to the whole route which comes to the surface in HEA and Burned Grey (we'll get to her). HEA is genuinely the most tense I've ever felt playing this game lmao. I think she adds a lot to Damsel - she gives her another dimension of personhood, and whether you choose to pursue it or not, I think the route feels incomplete without it.

Razor: Hilarious, showstopping, spectacular. Her route is a lot more lighthearted than the others, which helps her stand out and can be a nice break on some of the rougher playthroughs. It's hilarious that she was originally going to be a bit more sinister - I'm glad BTG made the best decision anyone has ever made and changed her to her current version. There's also some interesting stuff going on with her thematically, esp in how she parallels Stranger she stole Stranger's ch 3 that's why she's the only route with 4 chapters and how she kind of flips the script on the player and so the slain becomes the slayer. Also, I just love the concept behind her design - her exploding into the perfect woman a knife monster is something I will never forget. She probably has some of the same problems with linearity as some of the routes I talk about later (you're always going to see almost the exact same 4 chapters, after all) but there's enough variation in dialogue and outcome to make me always happy visiting my dear friend Razor.

Stranger: I love her but she's probably one of the routes I replay the least, just because it always plays out the same. Either way, I love the lil peak behind the curtain her chapter gives us, and I love getting to reunite with her & having a real conversation for the first time if you get her as the heart princess.

Tower/Apotheosis: God forbid women do anything. Pristine cut really did wonders for her - honestly in hindsight I think part of the response to her might have had to do with how brief both of her Ch 3s could be. Getting a chance to see (both via Apotheosis & Fury) how much she clings to to her divinity adds a lot to her character.

Wild: Wild really hits different after all of the tension in Beast & Witch. I'm not sure how intentional this was, but I like how both of the no-knife princesses (Beast & Witch) have ch 3s where there's an option to reconcile. I'm guessing the devs knew players would probably eventually be forced to backstab the princess & wanted to give them a chance to make things right? Either way, I love she. The dissonance between the peaceful atmosphere of this route & her desperation to stay together makes this one of the most anxiety-inducing routes in the game.

Drowned Grey: Extremely cool design, extremely cool environment, I love the whole "widow/bride" thing the two greys have going on, unfortunately her route is extremely short & linear. I think part of my trouble with the greys is I don't entirely understand how anyone would get them naturally lol. You stabbed the prisoner? Jail for you. Jail for 100 years.

Burned Grey: My thoughts on her are basically identical to my thoughts on the Drowned Grey but she's lower because I think Drowned Grey looks cooler. Sorry bestie.

Beast/Den: She's one of the most horrifying princesses to me, which is probably part of why I try to avoid getting her route, lol. The themes of dehumanization & the way she's reduced to a base instinct of wanting to consume you just so she can be "whole" again freaks me out. Also the part where she rips you in half & is like "lol oops" is so funny. Legend.

[majimaisms]

also thinking about how when kiryu went to talk to majima on that rooftop and was like the tojo clan is in your hands now. (youre the tojos collective dad now.) after majima was already like it sucks giving up my freedom to keep my family afloat. and theyre pretending this is gonna be good for majima even though him leaving the clan was in both his and his familys best interests and nothing about that has changed and he's just giving in because kiryu beat him. when That happened. it was literally kiryu putting majima in the exact position he's running from (being the tojos collective dad) in order to be an actual dad and have a family. but. majima had already been living his little "civilian" life with his own family and being a dad (patriarch) as a substitute for having a traditional family (wife/kids) which he desperately wants but which is not an available option for him. and he'd jumped ship in the first place to be able to do that. and now hes going back because kiryu at least has a real chance at living out his dream of being an actual dad. which isnt possible for him anyway. so kiryus dream is more important. yeah. thinking about that

[imminent-danger-came]

Between

2x08 S: "As long as I'm doing something to help out a friend, I don't mind what it is! I just want to be there for 'em when they need me. Because at the end of the day, helping my friends is more important than anything in the world!"

3x03 Mei: "So wait, how did you get your gold vision back again?" MK: "I don't know! The same way I got them in the first place I guess. Every time I learned a new ability, it was because there was something I NEEDED to do, when there was no other way. Against the gold fish guy I NEEDED to do something to save my friends!" P: "Yeah, friends that YOU put in danger on purpose!"

3x10 MK: "NO! Mei is my best friend, I’d never abandon her when she needs me. We’re heroes! It’s what we do!",

3x14 MK: "A perfect world is what you make it. So as long as I have my friends by my side...this world! Is! Perfect!”

4x01 MK: "Honestly? I’m kinda liking the world as it is, right now. So...if it could just stay like this, forever? That would be awesome." SWK: "Yeah well...forever’s a long time bud...trust me."

4x02 AL: "It’s too late to save them! We can’t risk unleashing the curse into the world." MK: “You don’t know! We’d risk it for sure! I won’t abandon them when they need us."

4x07 IMK: "You can see it, can't you? This is your fate. Your friends will turn on you, seeing you for the monster you will become. They will destroy you, harbinger of chaos."

4x11 MK: "We have to try, he'd do the same—for any of us." and

4x14 YT: "I know full well what would happen should Azure fail. But- but he is my brother. I owe him my life." S: "We get it! I'd do anything to help my friends. But at the cost of the world?" P: "I'm sorry pal, but NOTHING worth that price!"

I'm like, really worried scoob.

[wabblebees]

just finished the new fantasy high episode and havent seen anyone talk abt this so i wanted to say i am 100. one HUNDRED PERCENT sure. that fuckin fourdogs was at that party invisibly (the One And Only buttfucker to NOT make an obvious appearance?? rules-follower or no, i dont believe that for a SECOND) and that she stole the piece of the cloud runner that went missing, and that the moment of her swipe was the "something" riz missed on his check -- i also really *hope* it wasn't oisin that made those damn ice mephits (or "muffets" as my beloved drunk adaine christened them lmao) act up like that, but immmmm pretty sure thats exactly what was goin on since it wouldve given his party member advantage/an easier access point :/

[pileofpawns]

yeah

[nonuggetshere]

GOD I HAD AN IDEA AS I WAS FALLING ASLEEP TODAY

About FaaF naturally

A sad one, TW fir near child death and harm

Involves Xero's attempt at an assassination, or it could be literally just any guard controlled by the Radiance

PK and WL need to talk about something private, and WL looks at the tiny vessel tagging along by her wyrm's side

"Should it be here?"

"It wouldn't understand anything anyway."

"Still, it's...a little..."

He sighs lightly, "Yeah, I get where you're coming from... Vessel, come here."

He kneels down and orders them to sit by the door and wait for them while they talk, says he'll come pick them up once they're done and not to move, then the two go to talk on the balcony and close the door behind them

At some point, Xero/the guard bursts in and attacks PK in the middle of the conversation, managing to take them by surprise and so gets one good swing in before PK darts away and retaliates, pinning them down with soul blades, though he has to keep his wife from killing them on the spot - he doesn't want to be so hasty, knowing they're infected and not themself. He pulls out the sword from his chest and that's when they realise, it's covered in void...

Child harm/near death TW beyond this point

After a moment of shock White Lady, who's closest to the doors, runs out and all her husband can hear is a horrified, heartbroken scream. He feels nauseous, his stomach twisting into knots and feeling like his heart is in his throat as he runs out after her. He sees her in tears, cradling a tiny bundle soaked in void. There's- there's so much void. It covers the floor where he left their child vessel and soaks through his lady's shawl and clothes as she cradles them in her arms.

For a moment he's paralysed, before he just snaps. He flies back onto the balcony, screaming at the possessed guard that he'll kill her, he'll make her pay for this, and he slays them in his rage (something he'll regret and feel ashamed of later), still hitting and screaming at Her well after the possessed person is dead and she can't hear him anymore.

He collapses, panting, near tears, and just gets himself up and stumbles out the door and towards the two, he wants to see how bad it is for himself.

Flower survives, but just barely. They had multiple stab wounds and lost their left arm, if not for their parents immediately healing them they'd be dead. They're barely older than 5, still so very little and defenceless, PK is horrified at how could anyone hurt a baby this young and helpless (hypocrite), even if they're not alive.

They're still on bed rest because that was so much damage and their mother doesn't leave their side and their father only leaves when necessary. They still don't realise Flower's alive and they know they shouldn't be so attached but it still feels like their baby and they can't just leave them. WL spends the entire day by their side, gently stroking their hair and horns with her now permanently void stained hands and softly coos and sings to them

Of course, they quickly realise they ARE alive because no way in hell a toddler is getting this hurt and NOT crying and screaming the second they wake up <3

Which just makes this situation so much worse

[caeca-iustitia]

@phantasiiae from here

-

“Aye,” came an affirmative, a wry smile twisting pale lips, “Pleased to meet you again, Miss Gainsborough…”

Morticia- Vincent- would shake her head now and sigh before looking away. The questions felt uncomfortable and it puzzled her as to why. Maybe it was pity for this poor girl who had not asked to be thrown into these endless cycles and chewed like the toy of an overly excited dog.

As the poor girl trembled and shook, she shifted close enough to gently lay a small yet surprisingly warm hand on the other's knee. Something akin to the affection one's older sibling may provide when life is going poorly. 

Present but not overwhelming.

A reminder that she is no longer alone.

“The me of this iteration does not yet know of the cycles and will not for some time,” Morticia reveals softly, “They will be… aggressive and hostile at first in a way that may cause you all harm. If what I have seen is true then you may need to beat some sense into me… literally.”

A small hint that there lay a battle ahead that could hurt someone quite seriously.

While Morticia may be unable to prevent it from happening entirely, since the Planet was who dictated where she appeared and did not, she could at least forewarn someone who could see her. That battle would not be an easy one and she would rather be punished later for revealing something she should not than leave them to wander merrily to their possible deaths at the claws of Galian and Chaos.

“I am simply a fraction of one that came before,” she says with a shake of her head now, retracting her hand slowly, “One that failed to repair what you now seek to. I cannot recall how many cycles it has been since my own… innumerable I would wager.”

She sighs and shakes her head again as if dislodging cobwebs from the recesses of her mind.

“You are a strong young lady, Aerith,” she says quietly, sending the other a soft smile, “Stronger than I for certain. You have endured much and will have to endure more still. This cycle of seemingly unending torment will reach its finale one day but that day is not yet upon us.”

She hums and tilts her head back, staring at the white ceiling of the cell with contempt.

“My presence here is no mistake,” came her quiet voice, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, “I demanded to be sent here in place of another version of you. I thought the memories of that past life may be too much after being brought back to this place. Besides, that version of you is busy right now. Busy trying to appeal to what shards remain of Sephiroth within that body that is not his own. It is not a fight, not yet, but a negotiation or plea. She is unaware that nothing remains of that child in there… his true self lies far beyond where she can reach… he is safe there, at least.”

Morticia chuckles humourlessly.

“So you must bear with my presence a while longer. I am unsure how long, exactly, but it may be a bit longer than you or I wish,” she says, looking back at Aerith, “How are you holding up? I know that these seemingly unending cycles can be incredibly mentally taxing…”

[erisolkat]

did the alpha strilondes have access to alternian tv do you think. like i know dave and rose wouldnt have set them up with that shit, brainwashes your thinkpan, but theyre smart they woulda figured it out. basically do we think they would have learned some alternian

[armulyn]

excuse me but the mental scars images created by 'cave paintings' WILL NOT leave me alone. [Spoilers through WatWK]

Artham and Esben, on opposite sides of the sea, both settled in facades of a home while pining for their family?? Artham high in the trees to escape the ground like a hawk and Esben deep in a forested cave like a hibernating bear entrenched in the fruits of Gnag's cruelty?? Both processing trauma and struggling to recall their past through the arts they were taught as Annierans?? Artham with his stacks and stacks of journals and Esben with wall upon wall of paintings??

[1010ninetynine]

honestly i don't agree with terf ideology but to call it colonialist is interesting imo.

it’s always so fucking funny to me when terfs are like “how can you say trans women and women are the same thing! being born as a man makes you different!” because like. yes. trans women and cis women are different. so are black women and white women. and straight women and queer woman. and women from different countries and different socioeconomic statuses. there’s diversity in the experience of womanhood? what a wild concept

[excalisi]

it's a fun hc of mine that during dick's robin days, he went through the "omg i wish i had a cool secret language so i can have secret conversations with my friends" phase all kids go through. but one of his closest friends at the time also happened to be the batman, a guy with possibly the most bizarrely diverse arsenal of skills in the world. bruce sees the merit in the entire idea of a coded language to communicate rudimentary information when they can hear but not see each other. so why not make a code built on bird vocalizations? it's pretty much incomprehensible to anyone without a trained ear or comprehensive knowledge of birding and impossible to even passably mimic without proper training, so while the chances of interception are high, the chances of someone understanding it enough to interrupt during the middle of a bird-convo and feed false information are not.

it also, batman and robin come to realize, feeds into the "holy fuck our vigilantes are cryptids" idea. bird sounds that come from seemingly no determinable location (ventriloquism) come to mean batman and robin are nearby. to the goons of gotham, bird song becomes inextricably connected to getting your ass kicked by the dynamic duo. the real reason why criminals don't operate during the day is because they get skittish and jumpy about if the sounds of birds chirping are real birds or some masked vigilantes lying in wait to rock your shit, and it's just easier to commit crimes during the night when all the birds are asleep so you know for sure.

ornithologists have boards on their bedrooms dedicated to the bird-bats of gotham. they've written dissertations.

the bird language becomes a bit of a batfamily bonding connection. teaching each other how to do different clicks and whistles, making up slang so bruce and barbara can't complain of clogging up comms with non-mission relevant talk, searching up birds to associate them with different people, psychologically terrorizing the criminal populace of gotham by chirping at them...

how the bird code works is that there's a bird assigned to each one of gotham's major heavy hitter criminals and vigilantes, and a few assigned to heroes out of the city (by which i mean the ones the bats associate with often enough to have a sign to address by). the only birds i've got so far are the robin (for robin. self-explanatory) and the glistening-green tanager (for the joker). i only have one for the joker bc i wanted to reference this hc in one of my fics and so searched up green birds to find the most eye-searingly annoying-to-look-at green bird i could find, and the glistening-green tanager was the closest one to fit the bill.

[m-jay-gee]

recently came to the realisation that i have low empathy and have convinced myself to think it's high empathy.

i think i was able to convince myself it was high empathy because i can see logical reasons why people care about others but then i thought about it and i have no urge to act upon anything i disagree with unless under social pressure.

i don't particularly want to put myself in other people's shoes but i also dont need to do that to comprehend caring. if that makes sense?

low empathy =/= bad person. just means i have to go through hoops to get why people react a certain way when someone does something.

[hello-delicious-tea]

This but also: what’s more relatable than “fuck fuck fuck what am I doing with my life, everything I’ve ever cared about seems lost to me or meaningless, and what I’ve chosen to base my life around (God, for Dante) seems lost to me?” combined with “I’m gonna (literally) roast all my enemies, anyone who’s ever wronged me, and that one dude I just don’t like, in writing, for everyone to see”?

The second part is basically Reddit’s AITA where Dante is clearly just making a post to show that someone else (many, many people honestly) is an asshole.

And then he gets to journey back to himself and his convictions and the person he wants to be, and that’s…pretty fucking relatable and aspirational.

And also he’s super gay for Virgil and it’s very funny.

just seen someone criticize the divine comedy by saying that it's not relatable which is of course incommensurably stupid because relatability should never be the only criterion through which one can judge the validity and quality of a piece of work &c but also. just because you tedious unimaginative losers have never been on a journey to hell and purgatory with your long dead favorite writer doesn't mean others haven't. happened to me

[itsbenedict]

so in an effort to be slightly less out-of-touch, i went and watched all of Skibidi Toilet the other day. (at present, the whole series is about the length of a feature film, so this wasn't too big a lift.)

what surprised me is just... how totally normal it was. like, it's not at all difficult to describe. people big it up as this incomprehensible thing that's emblematic of a generation gap, but it's. not.

the plot is: there's toilets with human heads in them that go "skibidi dom dom dom yes yes, skibidi dabbadul neef neef". they can move despite a lack of ambulatory appendages. this is wacky and unsettling, but the chief question is: Do They Win In A Fight Against Some Robots With Cameras For Heads?

it's an action movie about a war against an alien invasion. that's it. less than the first thirty seconds of it are anarchic GMod YTP insanity- it develops a plot almost immediately. the plot is paper-thin and conveyed almost entirely without dialogue, existing to set up giant robot fights and zombie apocalypse jumpscares.

who are these factions? why are they fighting? you aren't failing to get it because the kids these days are on some totally different psychic wavelength. the show simply does not give a shit about this question. here are some bad guys! here are some good guys! they're going to do explosions and punches at each other for roughly two minutes until the perspective camera is abruptly destroyed in the crossfire somehow.

it is a remarkably competently-shot action movie. the fight scenes are weighty and satisfying and have lots of exciting little twists and turns as the two sides pull increasingly bigger weapons and gadgets out of their asses. the production gets more elaborate over time, and it's a pretty stellar example of what machinima is capable of. genuinely good at the things it's trying to do.

it does kinda fall down a little later, as it attempts to develop Characters and Deepest Lore after kind of not caring about that for most of its runtime. the decision to have "dialogue" almost exclusively in the form of incomprehensible heavily-filtered backwards speech with no subtitles is probably rewarding for die-hard Skibidi-heads who have the time on their hands to mess with the audio and uncover all the hidden messages, but it means you are not going to understand anything anyone is saying on a normal watch.

the action suffers from this decision a little bit towards the end, as for reasons that completely fail to come across, the toilets appear to have broken into their own factions and start fighting each other and forming various alliances, which disrupts the simplicity of the setup and makes it hard to determine who's winning a fight at any given time. a giant scary toilet man just exploded! was that bad, or good? listen, don't worry about it. all you need to know is that these things are going to keep happening until DaFuqBoom gets bored.

it's like a... 7/10, shallow but enjoyable. easy to see why kids like it. not going to give you any deeper insights into the Kids These Days, but there's worse ways to spend a couple hours.

(the most confusing thing to me is how something this straightforward got a reputation for crossing some sort of rubicon of cultural alienation. did everyone born in the 20th century who talks about this show just watch eighteen seconds of it and give up???)

[ckret2]

Do you think Bill Cipher is his real name? The book suggests it is since he used to be called Billy but he also tells Gideon that his true name would drive mortals insane. But maybe he was lying! About which we’ll never know.

I personally think it would be really dumb for

an alien

with bizarre alien biology that involves speaking through some organ that clearly isn't a mouth

because his mouth is also his EYE SOCKET and occupied by an EYEBALL

who's not only from a different planet but from a different UNIVERSE

which is so different from ours that the LAWS OF PHYSICS aren't even compatible

because they don't have a THIRD DIMENSION

and who was named ONE TRILLION YEARS before any humans existed

never mind human languages

never mind "common" human names like Bill

to have a normal human name made with normal human sounds.

So I buy the "my name is unintelligible to your species; Bill Cipher is just a dimensional pen name I use because you can pronounce it" explanation, due to the alternative offending my sci-fi worldbuilder sensibilities. The "if you heard my name you'd explode with an expression of ecstasy and agony on your face" part in the Bill Cipher AMA might be a boast to sound cool, but nevertheless I buy that his name can't be spelled, pronounced, or possibly even heard correctly by humans.

The most common explanation I've heard for why he would claim his REAL name is incomprehensible if his name is actually just "Bill" is that he thinks "Bill" is lame and wants people to think he has a cooler name. But, if that were the case... why wouldn't he just... y'know. Give himself a cooler name? Like, who's gonna call him out on it? Birth certificate's incinerated. Parents aren't gonna call him his deadname in front of his friends. The only reason he'd tell people his name is Bill Cipher would be if he wants to go by "Bill Cipher."

When he goes by "Bill" and refers to himself as a child as "Billy" I'm assuming that that's, like... the dub version of his name. Like how the main character of Pokémon is named サトシ but in the dub it's changed to "Ash" because surely American children can't pronounce that bizarre foreign name!! Bill's real name is [EERIE INCOMPREHENSIBLE SOUND] and as a kid sometimes his mom called him [A SIMILAR BUT SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT EERIE INCOMPREHENSIBLE SOUND THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO US BUT TO BILL'S SPECIES SOUNDS LIKE A CUTESY VERSION OF THE FIRST SOUND] and when talking to humans he translates those as "Bill" and "Billy."