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caligvlasaqvarivm · 7 months ago

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Love is Stored in the Cat: A Nepeta Leijon Character Study

I guess these are a series now! I also have a request for Feferi in my inbox that I'll get around to eventually.

SO! Dear, sweet Nepeta.

Nepeta is the troll that is most against the existence of the hemocaste.

I believe the Ultimate Self speech was originally going to be from her, not Davepetasprite^2.

She's bad at shipping.

These all make her extremely impurrtant!!!

So furst of all, I'm going to start with the same disclaimer as my Eridan essay (go read that first!!! It sets up a lot of ideas that I'm expanding on here), which is that the things Hussie says are going to be lowered in value, because he likes to play coy about plot stuff. I'm also not counting anything but the actual text as canon, and even with in that text, I'm counting everything after GAME OVER as soft canon - a suggestion of what would have been, often truncated for time, often a deliberate middle finger to the shitty fandom.

Okay, so with that squared away!

Nepeta Says Fuck The Hemocaste

I'm not going to bother doing a deep dive on Nepeta's characterization, because fur the most part, I think the fandom more or less gets her right - she wears her heart (h33h33) on her sl33ve, after all! She's a very sweet little catgirl who loves roleplay and shipping, who is also a vicious hunter of wild beasts and lives in a cave. She's very nice and friendly, but has a tough streak and a spine.

She also says fuck the hemocaste, why does that even exist:

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

This is a radical stance not outright shared by any of the other trolls. Aradia calls highbloods "hateful sn0bs" that she and Tavros shouldn't have "ever had anything t0 d0 with", the highbloods are, of course, all casteist to varying degrees, and even Karkat seems fairly accepting of the class divide, at one point taunting Vriska that her rejection from the blue team is "ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY". Not to mention his long-held dream of becoming a threshecutioner.

Even Feferi, despite saying to Eridan that "W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!", is actually perfectly comfortable with the caste system's existence, comparing having to stop using her royal typing quirk to "peasant-IFICATING" herself - and let's not forget that a Beforus under her rule had its caste system 100% intact.

This means that Nepeta is the ONLY troll who has said, in no uncertain terms, that the caste system should not exist. It's stupid, it's bad, and it doesn't meowtter!

AND SHE'S RIGHT.

But she's never able to fully express this opinion, which brings us to:

A COMPLICKATED RELATIONSHIP WITH EQUIUS

Now, before I say anything, I must insist that I do believe these two work as good moirails. That does not, however, stop them from being 13, and therefore, being poor to each other the way 13-year-olds sometimes are. I don't think they should break up; I think they should re-examine certain dynamics, and I think they need some space to breathe apart from each other.

Equius has a lot of problems, which I won't get into overmuch here, because... that's a whole essay on its own (are you people seeing a trend yet). But with regards to Nepeta specifically, he's extremely controlling and protective, to the point where she's a little scared of him before the game begins:

AC: :33 < well it does sound like it will be a lot of fun but i think i should get purrmission first GC: BL4R!!!!! GC: TH4TS SO STUP1D GC: H3S NOT TH3 BOSS OF YOU AC: :33 < i know! AC: :33 < but still im kind of scared of him and i think purrhaps its best to just run it by him first so there isnt a kerfuffle about it or anything

She's also afraid to tell him about her crush on Karkat, since she knows he doesn't like Karkat:

AC: :33 < well AC: :33 < i have never told anybody this not even my moirail AC: :33 < heh, actually hes the LAST guy i might tell, he so wouldnt appurrve X33 AC: :33 < but yes i have liked somebody for quite some time, but alas he doesnt know it

By the time they end their game, she's gotten over this fear, seeing as she spends many hours curled up with Equius in a pile of robotics parts, but it still must be noted that they have some issues in their relationship that were never resolved, primarily on Equius's end. What this means for Nepeta, however, is that in addition to setting her up as the most outright anti-classism troll, the comic sets her up to be socially isolated due to her moirail's paranoia about letting her associate with both lowbloods (seeing them as bad influences) OR other highbloods, seeing them as dangerous.

He's not entirely wrong - his refusal to allow her to participate in FLARP kept her from winding up entangled in the horrible chain of revenge, as Tavros alludes:

AT: iT'S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST, AT: tHAT YOU LISTEN TO HIM, AC: :33 < i dont know AC: :33 < you think so? AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU, AC: :33 < hmm purrhaps

But he's still wrong. And it's probably an uncontrolled manifestation of his Heir of Void abilities - he's both consciously and unconsciously hiding her from other people.

This isn't to say she doesn't stand up for herself! Many of her discussions with Equius are pseudo-arguments, and she does get her way often enough, managing to get him to roleplay with her, and managing to get him back in the roboti% pile to talk about his feelings about Aradia. She also talks to the humans explicitly against Equius's orders, although she's keeping it a sneakret from him:

NEPETA: :33 < but equius already furbid me from doing that :(( NEPETA: :33 < not that i am listening to him, but shhhhh! :33 KARKAT: WAIT, HE DID? KARKAT: OK, THEN AS YOUR LEADER I ORDER YOU TO RP WITH THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. BE AS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT AS YOU CAN. NEPETA: :33 < yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

But the fact that she has to tiptoe around him like this speaks to them having issues in their relationship that go unexamined and unresolved, especially since it's clear that Nepeta really would like to be friends with more people, were Equius not getting in her way. So, even though I do think they are good moirails for each other - they clearly genuinely, deeply care about one another. But they could use some relationship counselling.

In fact, Jasprosesprite^2 outright calls her lonely:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Or the girl who likes ships! Cause they made her less lonely. ;3

So, she's anti-hemocaste and lonely, two character traits that were set up and never resolved. And beclaws this is Nepeta, in her honor, I'm going to talk about a third:

Her Unrequited Crush On Karcat

She has the BIGGEST flushed crush on Karkat. It's seen on her shipping wall twice, once with the word OTP on it.

And, despite never discussing it with her moirail, Nepeta mentions it once to Jaspersprite, and once to Jasprosesprite^2.

Now, I'm not really here to debate on the validity of KatNep - I think it's fine, even if I don't personally ship it, and don't personally think it would work out (there are lots of indications that they wouldn't work out, including Jasprosesprite^2 outright saying so). However, her crush on Karkat is both complicated and creates some interesting setups for her character. I am going to discuss it fairly critically either way, so KatNep shippers have been warned.

A lot of her feelings about Karkat - and about shipping in general - wind up being heavily interlinked with her status as a Hero of Heart, so I'm going to expand on it more there. But what I will note in this section is the fact that, despite Nepeta insisting twice that she doesn't think Karkat knows about her crush on her:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < it was karkat NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but i never told him and im pretty sure he never found out how i felt!

He tooootally did:

KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK?

Interpret that how you will for shipping purposes, but I want to propose that this is a reflection of their statuses as Heart and Blood players. Heart, despite its players' obsessions with romance, is not the romance aspect, Blood is. Karkat displays this very same romantic acumen when he tells Dave that he's known Terezi and Gamzee were a thing for a long time, despite everyone else on the meteor trying to keep it a secret from him. Heart is, instead, about identity, feelings, motivations, souls, and self. In other words:

Nepeta Is Kind Of Bad At Shipping

Let's take a look at those shipping walls.

Let's break this down a little. Nepeta's ships are not entirely wrong, but even the successful ones are kind of wrong. Here's what I mean. We've already discussed how Equius and Nepeta's moirallegiance has some... issues in it. If we go down her list of ships that actually do happen, most of them have some issues in them!

Aradia expresses her regret for getting together with Equius in the Ministrife. Kanaya and Rose suffer some major relationship problems when Rose starts drinking, to the point Karkat feels a need to step in as an auspice. Karkat and Gamzee fail, as Karkat is not calmed by Gamzee, and Gamzee stops listening to Karkat. And while Sollux and Feferi seem to be fairly healthy, after they both wind up in the Furthest Ring, he's pretty much always next to Aradia - he and Feferi don't even get to exchange words with each other once they're in the Furthest Ring. Purrsonally, I think he and Feferi are meant to end up as moirails, but shhhh.

So what's happening here? Well, this goes back to her identity as a Heart player. Heart is concerned with feelings and motivations.

They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are.

Nepeta's shipping has also been associated with her isolation and loneliness. When you put this together, it implies that Nepeta's shipping is about her desire to understand others, and much of her ships are based on one of the parties having feelings, regardless of compatibility, feasibility, or broader implications. After all, despite the fact that she has pretty terrible romantic acumen, she IS able to instinctively identify that Eridan's advances toward her were insincere:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well ok i guess eridan hit on me a few times NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but his advances always struck me as cr33py and insincere

And that Karkat secretly LOVES and RESPECTS his friends:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: On the contrary Nepeta. You deserve someone who will RESPECT and ADORE you. NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well... yes NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i always hoped to find someone like that some day NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i dunno maybe youre right but in spite of whatever problems he might have i always felt like i saw something in him that made me think he could be that purrson!

Or knowing that Equius loves to play games, and still feels sad about Aradia exploding:

AC: :33 < i s33 right through your stupid act, who are you trying to kid! AC: :33 < look how you go out of your way to use words that have x's in them so that you can use your silly purrcent signs AC: :33 < or use these absurd words that you can shoehorn a '100' into, even if its not strictly replacing 'loo'!!! AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games! AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33

NEPETA: :33 < she was so happy, just like she used to be, and she said she would s33 you soon! EQUIUS: D --> That's a nice thought, and thank you for sharing it EQUIUS: D --> But it was only a dream, and will surely have no consequence in reality NEPETA: :33 < equius? NEPETA: :33 < are those f33lings i an detecting with my wiggly whiskery nose? EQUIUS: D --> Maybe

Because feelings, and not relationships, are her actual domain.

And speaking of Heart powers...

Nepeta and the Ultimate Self

So from this point forward, I'm going to assume you're more or less agreeing with my take that at some point after Game Over, Hussie - for whatever reason - gave up on his original ending, and wound up truncating his ideas so he could finish the comic faster. I go more into detail about that here.

So, in this hypothetical original ending, I firmly believe that the speech about the Ultimate Self would have come from Nepeta. First, let's take a look at what the "Ultimate Self" entails, as it appears within the comic:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming ... DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the time aspect is all about running into different versions of yourself so you kinda get confronted with it in a really literal way that can be disturbing DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < obviously davesprite stuggled with that too, but now its fine DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < hes fr33 from worrying about it all and what it means for his place in reality DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < because he can s33 now all his selves have relevance in painting the full picture of who he truly is DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self

Now, I believe - and I hope you'll agree - that it's kind of lame, narratively, for Davesprite to have been set up with so much angst about not being the "real Dave," and for Nepeta to have all her issues with loneliness and shyness, and for these two specific iterations of each other to have never interacted, but suddenly getting double-prototyped fixes all of their problems, and they achieve Ultimate Selfhood despite being two total strangers to each other. So let's instead break down the more salient points about what Ultimate Selfhood entails, divorced from the fact that it's Davepetasprite^2 doing the narrating:

Every player in the game possesses an "Ultimate Self," an ultimate culmination of all their experiences and memories, specifically referred to as a "persona"

Normally, people are not aware of this, because it would be too overwhelming to deal with so many memories and iterations of each other.

Everyone will achieve Ultimate Selfhood eventually as the final culmination of their understanding of their aspect.

Heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self.

Let's talk about that last one some more, and by that I mean, let's see what Calliope has to say about it:

TT: I don't know why it had to be this way for me. Juggling these two waking selves at once. TT: I guess I'm used to it, but it still makes for a pretty intense existence. TT: Do you even know what the deal with that is? Like is there any precedent in your readings? UU: i don't know aboUt precedent, bUt it makes plenty of sense to me as the type of path one might expect for a hero of heart. UU: a path rUled by the heart aspect can be a joUrney of splintered self. UU: that is, the player's being may exhibit the same kind of fragmentation which certain classes coUld caUse in others. UU: i think this is what has triggered yoUr dUal-awareness between waking and dream selves, thoUgh it woUld not sUrprise me if the symptoms manifested in even more ways than this.

Now, Dirk has a clawmplicated relationship with his alternate selves, given that he's a Prince, but Nepeta wouldn't have the same struggles, or at least, not to the same degree. The problem is, hampered by Equius and her own shyness about discussing her thoughts and feelings with others:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something

She never actually gets to explore this part of herself.

But What If... She Did?

The way I imagine the original ending going is that each troll that gets saved by John's interference in the timeline then asks John to help them fix their own mistakes, thereby saving somebody else. Each successive trip through the meteor brings new character development, and also riddles the comic with progressively more password pages, which I think would be really funny. And throughout all this the Game Over team is searching for Vriska, Meenah, and the treasure, and resolving their arcs that way, so it's not like they would be replaced - they're the ones who get to kill LE. The process, in my mind, goes like this:

Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent her from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.

Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.

Tavros staying alive means that he and Gamzee wind up hashing out some stuff - Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. This is interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. So having Tavros back, alive, means that he and Gamzee would likely end up in some sort of relationship, probably pale despite flushed leanings, and would bring Gamzee back into the fold.

Gamzee would then be like, yeah, wow, that time I killed Nepeta and Equius was pretty bad, huh? Especially since his decision to hang onto his friends' bodies and prototype them is often interpreted as him genuinely feeling bad about his dead friends (he tells Kurloz to shut up when Kurloz mentions all the dead friends, and his religion seems to be about a paradise he wants to share with his friends anyway). So he'd ask John to prevent him from killing them, resulting in the two of them getting to live.

Things get much more hypothetical from here, since so much of the character dynamics would have changed, but I think by this point, Equius might command ask John to let him say goodbye to Aradiabot before she explodes, which he expresses feeling very sad about. However, in doing so, John and Aradiabot end up in the same room, and when she realizes that he has the ability to change the timeline without repercussions, she'd seize him by the arm and demand that he take her back in time, to before she died. After all, she expresses regrets about her reckless actions, and how she always felt like it was all one big setup.

She would take Aradia's place in the Vriska revenge chain, being once more freed of her robot chassis, and from there, would trick Doc Scratch and the Handmaiden into thinking everything was still going according to their designs. Meanwhile, Alive!Aradia would be hanging out at Equius's place, borrowing his void powers to avoid notice, coordinating a new timeline that keeps the beats of the original (too much deviation causes unpredictability, and an paradox'd timeline offshoot without John's direct interference would still become doomed), but allows them greater freedom and the ability to overcome the machinations of Doc Scratch and associates.

This would also prevent Sollux from becoming so self-loathing, since it's no longer "his fault" that Aradia dies, although he winds up in that hole again after Feferi gets killed. Now that his Aradia is alive, he wouldn't feel like he might as well stay in the bubbles because his closest companions are there, so he'd make it to the end, and would ask John to prevent Feferi's death.

Eridan still dies; he's so disconnected and isolated from all his friends that his course of actions is largely unaffected even by everybody else's timeline tweaks. But before Feferi can suggest bringing him back, Karkat would butt in.

The Friendship Troll should be the one to demand that ALL of their friends be revived, especially if they had everyone except only one guy, and Karkat and Eridan are heavily implied to be moirails anyway. The course of Karkat's fixes are so comprehensive, and primarily romance-based, that the end result of this final loop is everybody not only being alive, but god-tiered, with appropriate character development.

Now, where Nepeta's Heart powers would play into all of this is that she would start to notice something going on. After all, Heart players are sensitive to their splintered selves, and (Nepeta) is probably much closer to Nepeta than regular doomed timeline offshoots. As the loops continue, and Nepeta has more and more time to talk to people, and meets her dead alternate selves, and even meets (Nepeta), she starts to awaken to her Ultimate Self - to come into possession of alternate memories.

And if the Ultimate Self is a very soul-y kind of concept, such that Heart players have a natural advantage in coming to understand it, then isn't it a natural fit that a Rogue of Heart - one who steals from Heart or steals Heart for others - would be naturally inclined to share the wisdom of her alternate selves, and even the very concept of the Ultimate Self, with her friends?

Because the Ultimate Self is actually, in my opinion, a pretty good narrative device. It turns the sadness of the dead and doomed timelines into something littersweet instead, and makes it so any weirdness regarding time travel and not really knowing your friends anymore will eventually be resolved, even if off-screen.

It's not really narratively satisfying when Davepetasprite^2 suddenly comes into being and reaches enlightenment, but imagine if instead it's a post-character development Nepeta comforting Davesprite on his relevance, or Jade on her loneliness, or John on not really knowing these new post-retcon versions of his friends? It would feel a lot better, since in this hypothetical, she would have reached that point after on-screen character development. Being able to share her true self with her friends on the meteor - by necessity, since what else are they going to be doing for three years - leads to her finally being able to fulfill her role as a Rogue of Heart.

Also, at some point during these repeated meteor trips, she dates Karkat (whether that's successful or not, I'll leave to reader interpretation - you already know where I stand), fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date Karkat after she dies.

So that's two out of thr33 of her outstanding plot hooks resolved... okay. So, I try not to make these essays into ship propaganda, but hear me out:

Hate Is Stored In The FefNep

Okay, so, remember that thing about how Feferi is actually a huge casteist hypocrite? Well, let's also note that the comic, post-Murderstuck, seems to put Nepeta and Feferi together a lot - they're a Commodore and Rear Admiral in the ghost pirate army, respectively, and they also wind up as Fefetasprite. So I think it's not entirely out of left field to say that these two were implied to have SOMETHING going on.

And that something... is a difference in political views.

I mean, let's be real, there's a reason Fefetasprite is the most explode-prone after Tavrisprite. Miss "The Hemocaste is Stupid and Shouldn't Matter" vs. Miss "I Love Being A Princess And Call Jade Hornless and Finless (Derogatory)"? Come on, tell me you don't see it.

Without getting too much into Feferi, this hypocrisy, and unwillingness to check her privilege (so glad I found an excuse to use that term unironically), are probably her greatest character flaws - ie, the things you would expect the story to address about her. Meanwhile, one of Nepeta's flaws, which she laments to Jasproseprite^2, is that she feels too shy to talk about her feelings to other people, leading to her having never expressed her views on the hemocaste to anyone but Equius.

I think that they initially think they'd be friends. Each one of them would go "oh man, this other girl is soooo cute, I wish I could talk to her more often!"

And then, once they do, they realize they fucking hate each other. Nepeta would go "X00 < you are such a hypocrite who f33ls like youre better than all of us!!!" and Feferi would go "You're suc)( an uneducated glubbing P-EASANT! 3X0" and then they'd claw each others' eyes out. It would be so funny, and if a homestuck ship isn't extremely fucking funny, then why are we even here.

But more importantly, this would further them along into resolving each others' arcs - Feferi would be forced to grapple with the greater implications of classism, and Nepeta - who is shown having a spine the most in defiance of somebody else - would grow more aggressive about being open about her feelings in defiance of Feferi. Even Equius would get roped into it in a positive way - you can just imagine him going "D --> Can I really believe my auricular sponge clots D --> Nepeta, you are finally taking interest in politi%" and be 100% on board with teaching her so Feferi won't be able to call her uneducated.

And then for flushed, I dunno! Karkat's an option, and Jade and Jake also both love the fuck out of furries, and Tavros seems nice. But yeah I'll die on the fefnep hate ship. Guys it would be so funny.

Thank you as always for reading! Let me know if there's a troll you want to hear me ramble about next.

#homestuck #nepeta leijon #feferi peixes #equius zahhak

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sofiaruelle · 1 year ago

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Oh wow, I was not expecting a whole drawing of them trying the dance and falling around. It's very beautifully done, I rmmbr just staring in awe for a while at first 🩵

I have another odd question about the she trio/ass gang, which u don't have to draw

Cause I saw a little video of Harvey going hard; dancing to MiseryxCPR(xReese's Puffs) and it had me laughing for a long while, and I wondered who would be the ones singing the song if say the stardrop saloon had some kind of karaoke night

My head tells me both Sam and Abagail would end up doing Reeses's puffs, but that would leave one of the other songs without a host :/

Harvey would probably end up saying stuff about how cpr doesn't require mouth-to-mouth anymore or smthn, and Shane probably worried Marnie would walk in-or just, too drunk off his ass having fun to care 🤔

nah man i just have to draw them. and oh look I even have another essay under readmore! 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂

✨Also my commissions are open! ✨ if anyone is interested! :D< please reblog/share the og comm sheet ,if you can! it would help me a lot thank you!!!

Honestly i can imagine them all just being pissed drunk before attempting to sing the song😂. i know fersure the SHE trio would require more liquid courage for it (heck even to join/start a kareoke sesh!)

Shane gives of major Kareoke Tito (uncle) vibes~. Yknow that one tito who specifically sings “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and has a bunch of classic rock songs under his belt. He’s not good at singing perse but he can at least carry a tune. He and Sebastian would totally connect with singing Misery. but like Shane vaguely knows the song (he’s heard it on radio a bajillion times but he doesnt know the name of the song so its not quite on his playlists) so he when he’s super sloshed and can barely read the screen, he tries to sing it from memory and misses a couple of the words. but hey! at least he knows the chorus and is in tune.

Meanwhile Sebastian has Misery “secretly” on his go to playlist. He doesnt admit it (the songs is too main stream and overplayed but he stumbled upon a vocaloid cover and rest is history.) He definitely always chooses the song every kareoke sesh (although not his first choice) and he’s passionate about it even has a little performance too(lots of head bangs, fist pumps and that classic 2000s disney knees bent together, feet wide apart moment)! For his duet with shane he’s the first to shed a lil tear and that gets shane going and they cry through most of the song in their own lil misery world ignoring the chaos around them.

Sam is a fucking menace for singing CPR and I do agree He and Abigail would go off on Reese’s Puff BUT i can definitely imagine being commited to singing CPR (we all know he’d awkwardly twerk). Especially if it was to troll on Harvey who probably thought it was a wholesome song about doing CPR at a specific BPM. 😂

Harvey good lird poor harvey! He’s probably the most sober out of everyone. It doesnt help that he’s no light weight + lowkey becomes designated baby sitter everytime (he’s soooooooo going charge them extra in the morning if they come stumbling into his clinic asking for some hangover cure). He was so excited about adding a new song to CPR tempo list he was gonna teach at the nex first aid classes!! Who would have thought that a singer with a cute wholesome name like Cupcakke was just so… sooooo SCANDALOUS!!! He should have known Sam was up to something the moment he grabbed him by the shoulder!!! “This is medical malpractice, Samson!!!” He spends the whole trying to sush Sam who’s having so much fun laughing at Harvey’s reaction 😂

Abigal. F e r a l.

Help! Elliot has fallen over! He honestly just has a mild peanut allergy but he has been drinking and hooo boi. thats not good. thank goodness Harvey is sobered up (with the help of Sam ofc) and has an epipen on hand! Catch Leah cackling from her seat by the bar before assisting Harvey.

#doodle #stardew valley #stardew valley sebastian #stardew valley sam #stardew valley abigail #stardew valley shane #stardew valley elliot #stardew valley harvey #ass gang #she trio #sdv sebastian #sdv sam #sdv abigail #sdv harvey #sdv shane #sdv elliot #TW: drinking #TW: allergy #good lird this was such chaotic night to remember

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crushedsweets · 1 year ago

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Can you draw or talk more about Toby and Eyeless Jack or even the X-Virus?

YESSSS i can. heres a lil doodle to get me started.

OKKKK the little concept in my head has slender's MAIN GOAL being to prevent any paranormal/supernatural stuff coming out to the general public. hence his proxies being made to get rid of tapes, evidence, and kill if Necessary. sometimes slender makes paranormal/supernatural ppl help out his human proxies "as payment for refuge" in his forest. SO that sorta explains how toby and jack know each other and why jack helps at all. he can't rlly go out to the public so he's stuck with these assholes. it's not really supposed to be a 'mansion' trope, moreso random cabins and shelters littered about the forest, but it could work in the mansion au too

Imma ramble abt toby n jacks friendship (in my head) under the cut + a random x virus doodle

as for toby and jack specifically. toby is impulsive, aggressive, can't feel pain, and doesn't know what's good for him, so he's forced to get help from jack a good bit. for a long while there was hella tension between them since, again, jack isn't helping these guys out of the goodness of his heart. he's helping them bc the forest their boss resides in is the only place he's relatively safe. jack has a weird mix of a inferiority and superiority complex, since he envies toby's humanity but also feels like he's 'better' due to toby's own . . violent habits. toby thinks jack is pretty cool from the get-go ('wooow ur grey..') but he gets pissed off with jack's questions and demands of 'DONT RIP UR FUCKING STITCHES' and 'u have a concussion don't fucking scroll on your phone for 5 hours a day'.

toby has no idea if these demands come from actual concern or annoyance, and frankly, neither does jack. regardless, toby's with jack a decent bit. partially since jack makes a lot of people really uncomfortable so it's easy to go hang out with jack when he doesnt wanna deal with anyone else but still wants company. eventually theyre capable of some decent banter and conversations. theyre both mamas boys so thats a very weird touchy topic that they kinda dance around but both feel very deeply and know the other relates. THEY MISS THEIR MOMS SO BADLY.. :( mayhaps one year toby helps drop off flowers to jack's moms house for mothers day. jacks way too ashamed to even get within a 10 mile radius of his mom. that's kinda the moment things really shift between them and they actually become friends.

toby also asks abt university. lyra was at community college until she passed, and toby never considered college as an option, so he gets curious on what he missed out on. he also likes to share stuff abt lyra and their old shenanigans. tim and brian have used his childhood against him multiple times before, and it's not like he's gonna trust ben or jeff with that information. jacks sort of like a void he could talk into. jack feels uneasy talking about his life before the sacrifice, since he misses it so unbelievably bad, but toby accidentally got him to talk about it while treating a burn before.

ok and to top this fucking essay off heres xvirus. i had no idea he existed until this year and someone sent me an ask about his updated design, so he's some scribbles for him :9 his concepts super cool tho so maybe ill get more into him later on

#THEYRE BEST FRIENDS UR HONOR...#but seriously thank u for the ask #i love getting to ramble. im still working on the confidence to just post headcanons unprompted LOL #ok i gotta go to class now byyeeeeeeee #eyeless jack #ticci toby #ticcijack #eyeless jack headcanon #ticci toby headcanon #creepypasta #creepypasta art #creepypasta headcanon #xvirus #toby rogers #jack nyras #sweetart #chatterbox #creeped

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victimsofyaoipoll · 1 year ago

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Round 3

Propaganda Under Cut

Kairi

kairi is the third protagonist of the kingdom hearts series and the third member of the destiny trio, alongside fan favorites sora and riku. sora/riku shippers HATE kairi, and will go out of their way to discount her at every turn. the hate for her ranges from typical "she's a boring bitch" to fans of soriku making five-hour long video essays reassuring their fellow shippers that the big bad kairi won't show up in the next installment – to quote one video, "she's in a box. she's on the shelf. four walls, no door." kairi is the greatest bogeyman the soriku fandom has ever known, to the point where most of said video essays and fanon meta posts focus not on why sora and riku should get together, but rather on why they don't like kairi.

Literally has a 100+ page Google doc fan theory writing her out of the narrative and putting all of her (few) canonical accomplishments onto half of the popular m/m ship (soriku). Don't even get me started on how her memory was completely written out of the canon plot of re:coded. KH is a nightmare to explain so dude trust me she is THE victim of yaoi

She is so fundamental to the plot and themes and narratives of game and yet it is near impossible to find anything about her thats not ship bashing pre-mlm with the other two characters. I dont even care if she ends up with one of the main characters i just want fans to see her as a cool character to love or like, anything other than “annoying comphet girl.” You can write your mlm but pleaae stop inventing comphet where it doesnt exist. She does not even get to spend time with sora ever?? Why does everyone see her as a threat and a thing to destroy?? Let her have friends so help me

Misa Amane

she gets treated in-canon the way fandoms treat female characters that Threaten an m/m ship. it's like, "oh why don't you go sit in the corner and be pretty, misa, while the Men have intelligent conversation and pretend they aren't ten seconds from fucking each other, doesn't that sound nice?" it's infuriating. and MAYBE it's better now but i remember her getting treated the same way in fanfiction too, like we all need to do just as badly by our female secondary characters as fucking tsugumi ohba, but with the added insult of making her be alternately oblivious of the relationship between light and L or actively trying to sabotage it—incompetently, of course, because god forbid misa be allowed dignity or moments of cleverness.

she's one of the first characters I think of when I consider old school fandom misogyny. The annoying bitch and clingy crazy gf allegations were AFTER HER ASS. She's also a lot more intelligent than people gave her credit for, but most seem inclined to take the Very Biased word of our unreliable, narcissistic narrator and his homoerotic arch nemesis and claim that just because she's bubbly and into romance that she's also a complete moron. Which is blatantly untrue. Everyone was afraid of Misa girlbossing too hard. Killing people and devoting yourself to the deranged twink of your dreams even though you know he'll never love you back??? Having a hardcore goth aesthetic and being so Hot even literal Death Gods are into you?? God forbid women do ANYTHING!

Not only is she the victim of yaoi culture, she is the victim of early 2000s misogyny by an author that wanted to introduce a girl character because he knew his male rivals were getting too homoerotic. She is a goth bimbo icon who portrays what I think is one of the few callouts for stan culture and what parasocial relationships can do to both the stan and the idol. The fact that she is a toxic fan of Kira and also hot, funny, sociable is tragic in its own way, which I think the author did try to touch on but was too misogynistic too really get through. Of course, she was reduced to villain status by the fandom and anime alike because she got in the way of the supposed romance in their psychological horror anime.

#round 3 #poll #kairi kingdom hearts #kh kairi #kairi #kingdom hearts #misa amane #misa misa #death note

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moonshynecybin · 5 months ago

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what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)

#i also. found stuff bc i did a lot of digging around in blogs archives from 2013-2015. but this was because i was unemployed #and my migraines made reading books (my FAVORITE THINGGG) kinda hard for like 6 months #so i was acting like a border collie that hadnt been walked in two weeks but like. mentally. and we got here.#tumblr didnt hurt my head so much NOOOO idea why #motogp #callie speaks #asks #rosquez

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kosmicdream · 5 months ago

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oh now i want to know why you hate one piece (just so you know where im coming from, i used to hate the series and thought was the stupidest thing ever and there was no way it was good, and then i read it and it was amazing and i loved it and it moved me in profound ways, and yet i did not forget why i thought it was stupid and indeed i can still fully see why someone would think it is stupid because, lets be honest, it is kind of really stupid so) yeah, im curious

i once loved it as a late teen, i even had one piece ocs LOL. One Piece is not bad because its stupid, or has toony art style or w/e .. but it is bad because its betrayed all the characters and core principles of the story that it pretended to be so invested in. in so many ways its honestly impressive. While i don't agree w/ everything said - youtuber Drizzt has made a very long mutli-series video essays about the various issues and i have enjoyed watching them as it covers arcs that i could not force myself to read. I personally kept reading to the mermaid island arc, but emotionally i dont think it was good when they reached the grand line. (laboon stuff was cute, but after that.. trouble) i dont really like alabasta arc and i feel like every arc after that, is just trying to do that arc again but worse every time. (all complete w/ a new princess character to be tossed aside for the next round..) i hated robins backstory and her part in water 7 (she was my fav female character in the series & i loved her powers.) i wanted usopp to leave the crew or have some real consequences w/ him and the ship. i hate luffy being like such a chosen one in so many ways he has 0 agency in the story, there's some to be expected but now its like at the point where i dont even know what else you could add. he really is the nepo baby of the one piece world. no one dies EVER and i dont even count ace dying bc who gives a fuck abt ace, luffy sure doesnt cuz he got over it in like 1 chapter after he died w and now he has a new retcon brother (who also was dead at least once i think and had amnesia) to fill in the void. franky is ugly as shit now. i could go ON.

#i want all those little pirates to drown #just a taste of my salt #i forget when choppy got bad but i used to like him a lot and that was one of the things that kept me going for a while

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grif-hawaiian-rolls · 2 months ago

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Anyways the “essay” about the energy sword to character development pipeline below the cut

Ok so like yea tucker-crunchbite-junior is, obviously, the first instance of the sword-quest-companion theme/trio that im like, rattling in my head rn

Tucker finds the sword, crunchbite shows up and theres the “quest” that challenges tucker both in the false intent (you need to be the hero) and the true intent (SA leading to Junior which is not handled well but it IS important) which is a push against tucker’s character thus far in that he’s the comic relief, make everything a sex joke archetype— he doesnt take it seriously, he doesnt see himself as important beyond getting just enough recognition to be “hot” and now he’s made to be the so called “hero” and the true plot puts him in the one position that he probably never thought could be him. Bc he wants to get laid so… yeah. Pushes his character if you give it like three seconds of critical thinking and not just the standard “haha alien baby bullshit” (that said, i do enjoy fics that explore crunchbite more and play with the potential of the “joke” shitty character into someone less sinister, but im doin my best to stick to canon rn)

And JUNIOR, oh man, because theres the thing that really solidifies this for me like

The dude who doesnt care doesnt bother is all jokes and ‘man whatever’ energy is a dad, and it starts with him trying to avoid it but he really fucking quickly steps the FUCK up for Junior and its the start of his development that people are like “oh he learns to be a leader on chorus” which i mean kinda yeah but he never struck me as a Leader even on Chorus even tho he does decidedly lead, its not the same as when kimball leads or when wash leads or carolina

He’s leads as a dad bc he is a dad

Not always a good one, but he’s trying and yea sometimes that means being the asshole, sometimes that means screwing up but it also means you fucking care and you take responsibility and you put yourself in danger first (the rescue mission, leaving the lieutenants behind)

And that doesnt start on chorus! Its the most evident there sure but

it starts with junior

It starts with him going after tex to protect his son, it starts with him trying to be a diplomat so they stay together, in sending junior away so he is safe while tucker buys time protecting the temple, it STARTS with him looking at church and going “leave my kid out of this” and yeah the way rvb was written and approached does Not take that seriously bc it wouldnt and if it did it would be a very different show but the implications are there and its acknowledged with tucker’s photograph of junior with his 5th grade basketball team (“i know right? Who carries actual pictures anymore” -tucker) which i could go on about THAT too but suffice to say its very clear that tucker cares so gd much about his kid and yeah his character development isnt super linear but you can basically pinpoint when it starts with the sword and junior

The second run of this trio of things is actually grif which is admittedly, a stretch, a big ol reaching for straws (okay, TECHNICALLY grif is the third run, but i’ll address that in a minute) largely a stretch bc grif�� does the pattern backwards

This IS S16 stuff so if ur a shisno paradox hater i respect that, i however am gnawing on it with everything i have and will be going feral so this is your warning thank u for reading the tucker side of it mwah appreciate ya

Anyways

Grif does his plot backwards during timetravel shenanigans

He gets the alien companion/friend who contrasts his character first in Huggins

Grif is a loyal friend, but he is lazy, even after s15’s breakdown and apparent change of tune, he’s still looking to take the path of least resistance, avoiding the call, trying to keep things from moving

Enter Huggins: zippy, full of energy, excitable and just so different in that she is not only so proactive she puts herself in danger (which helps everyone in the long run/plot but its the principle) but shes so fucking lonely

As far as she knows, her family is dead, except for muggins who is so dettached from her, he might as well be a coworker and not her brother

Compared to grif, who has a family even when he tries to push them away (the reds, the blues, KAIKAINA) but hates taking action

Huggins is the start for grif’s arc of “it sucks but someones gotta do it” which in their case is best shown as the trudge across the bottom of the english channel which is so fucking funny to me but it really pushes both of them and puts them firmly in the friends category

Huggins cant zip ahead without grif, grif cant stop moving because huggins wont let him, so they find their little balance of gas vs brakes and together they cruise along p well

The actual push of the “quest” is grif having to be the one who steps up (kinda like tucker but its to the left) he’s the one who starts getting everyone together again across the timeline, even if he is very,,,

Well he’s very Grif about it, but it is still fundamentally, the change in character

Tucker isn’t a always good dad, Grif isn’t always a good instigator of action

But theyre trying and theyre working on it and grif’s arc suffers a Little from being so late in the show and thus not having much of a parallel to pull on but you could argue he gets the parallel from s15 anyways with the refusal of the call (from fake church/loco) and rescue mission but i hesitate to call that a parallel bc its literally back to back but an argument could be made for it which i love

Enter part two: the alien quest giver

“Wait wasnt that huggins”

NOPE huggins was alien companion! The Bestie in grif’s case,

The alien fetch quest comes from atlas, in that stupid wishing sequence but cmon it wouldnt be rvb if the character development wasnt sandwiched inbetween obnoxious gags and stupidity

The quest is less important here admittedly bc again, with grif doing this in reverse its not the challenge to his principle character that it was for tucker, his connection to huggins was the challenge, and this becomes the final push into the development, the “you have a role, now play it” that gives grif the final shove into Doing Things literal!! And his prize? For this character development arc? An alien sword

And thus the inverse version reaches an end, sort of (im pissed that technically he loses his sword, im also ignoring that he loses it in canon bc he fucking earned it okay this is a bit of canon i will ignore and loophole my way around it)

And now we track back to Chorus and to the second iteration of the sword-quest-companion plot

Locus

Now okay i will admit this is conjecture and pepe-silvia-on-corkboard-with-red-string fuckery at this point but hear me out okay!

He gets the sword with Felix’s death. We know this. What we dont know is how the fucking hell he gets off Chorus! We just see him show up later with A’rynasea. The vaguely alien (maybe sentient?? AI? Its implied with the way he addresses her but we literally have her for like two episodes) ship that seems to be the driving force (literal) (bc shes his ship) behind his chosen redemption arc where he pushes himself to help others at no apparent benefit to himself, but because it is, and i quote “the right thing to do”

Arguably, Santa could be Locus’ quest giver, seeing as how he is the one who triggers the whole shift in view for Locus in the first place and that is, technically, what crunchbite does and what atlas finalizes for grif! But the problem is we simply dont have enough of A’rynasea to draw the parallel between her and Locus as personalities, as companions for it to work for me??? But that might just be me overthinking? But it does make Locus’ version is a bit messier depending on who you consider his quest-giver but as far as I’m concerned, he’s still on his quest snd its just up to interpretation if A’rynasea is his companion?? or if theres a secret third alien for Locus that we never wouldve seen even if they planned for that bc its red vs blue and im just delusional about locus and his role in plot and this is just me firing concepts blindly into the sky at this point like - yeah i could still theorize what kind of companion characterization i think locus would work well with bc its more about the wielder than the companion in this sense (sorry junior and huggins i love yall i promise) but thats a completely separate rant at this point and not nearly coherent enough at this exact moment to add it PLUS its ridiculously self indulgent and only marginally canon compliant/adjacent but i will never not be amused by this very specific plot beat happening enough to draw these parallels, as tenuous and vague as the parallels are

#rvb #red vs blue #rvb locus #lavernius tucker #rvb grif #rvb tucker #dexter grif #samuel ‘locus’ ortez #im a red im built to talk endlessly about shit no one cares about but meeee

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jams-sims · 1 year ago

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I wrote a whole ass essay for Philza now Im gonna do it for Jaiden. In defense of the lack of content with Jaiden in it (real quick). Being an old goat of fandoms I can explain it (don't worry this won't take long and also it plays into her character's overarching narrative of a grieving mother.) Plain in simple women in Minecraft are notorious for getting shit on by the collective fandom. (Everyone has to take part in making sure that it stops happening.) She is mainly a YouTuber which makes a dissonance between mainly youtube viewers and Twitch watchers. So it's harder to catch her just because you have to go to another site. Also, she doesn't stream as often as everyone else. This makes for a lack of content, just because Jaiden is just a low-key person. This is the recipes for a lack of content BUT that does not excuse people who are being weird to her or think she's in the way of any ships etc etc.

BUT

Narratively speaking all of those things above make for perfect storytelling. (below the cut I go deep into Jaiden character I mean I go DEEP)

Even though Jaiden has the support of the whole island. At the end of the day- she goes back to that same house. Climbs to the very top and she fall asleep on the chair facing the sunset. This means that everyone else has moved on, especially Roier. She is forever stuck in that same place.

I can't be the only one who noticed every single stream, she logs out at the house. BY HERSELF (I think Roier built? Someone corrects me if I'm wrong.) It's so subtle that you wouldn't even notice it at first.

When asked where she was living by Etolies. She doesnt say her and roier house, she doesn't even say where bobby use to live. She specifically says " I am squating in Roier old house". She puts herself on the outskirts of what is further from the truth. Shes not squating in roier house im 100% sure Roier shares everything with her. It is her home too!

Next when it came to the marriage between cellbit and Roier. She was surprised that she was even invite. Its as if as soon as Bobby died all her friendships and relationships died with him. No matter how many people are around her she has this ice wall of isolation and deep lonely-ness.

Her grieiving is less theratical than Charlies its so sudtle that you can miss it. While Roier throw himself into drink and into a relationship. (Which has admitedly worked out in his favor. He gets a husband a new son, a world of love. Something that can lessen the sting of Bobbys death.)

Jaiden on the other hand threw herself into a a impossible task, "protect the eggs." She doesn't know anything about any group or fractions. That is her only wish and the federation saw that and picked her to use. She has nothing everyone else has seemingly moved on of course. They haven't stopped investigating but they death of Bobby mostly everyone has moved on. Besides Jaiden this is her driving force so no one will suffer like she did. (on a side note her and Charlie should team up for lore and to both work for the federations.)

ITS PREFECT! Oh are you greiving has everyone else seemingly moved on? Your friendly neighborhood bear has a book full of instructions. Don't think, I'll guide you.

Before it fell apart the federation was going to secretly use Jaiden and she was going to do everything alone. But because Jaiden can't keep a secret to save her life. This leads to everyone realizing how at risk Jaiden is at being used. They are all with her in an instant. But part of her character is now that she sides with the Fedration and no one sees it yet. While everyone else think they are the bad guy. Her story is shifting because cucurucho is there, because cucurucho is nice to her, because Jaiden is cucurucho favorite.

She is being drawn in whether she knows it or not to be om their side. Think of it this way-

Fit is team: Spy thats off the island

Cellbit and Crew are team: AntiFederation

Jaiden the one that is left alone is the perfect choice to slowly pull her onto the federation side. It's perfect! The self isolation, the want to connect but feeling like she can't. It would be so easy for someone to take advantage of that.

#qsmp jaiden #qsmp #jaiden animations #qsmp cucurucho

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shubluvr · 3 days ago

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i’ll just write out everything i know/remember about tina and foolish. get ready this is an essay. some of it you may know already. im very serious about them

there’s been small things for years but the consensus was generally that they were just friends up until earlier this year. when tina did a wine stream with ellum, foolish was in and out of the viewer list and chat until like 4:00 am, as if he was restless. he had a sponsor the next day. it was super unusual behavior for him

like a week later he shows up in LA for literally no reason. there’s a beef wellington cooking stream where they dance and are cute but its not super relevant. he and tina do their own wine stream, and they have insane tension for most of the latter half of the stream. foolish’s blanket/bed is visible behind him at his LA setup, and it remained unchanged between his stream the day of the wine stream and the day after. he didn’t sleep in his bed

he leaves eventually but comes back for tinas birthday. he then goes with tina to new york for a beats sponsor, she doesnt take anyone else and he has no reason to go there other than to support her.

the next time he’s in LA, all of the other roomies have moved out. its just him and tina in their house. he’s essentially there just to keep her company, he comes like 2 weeks before she moves. one stream, tina comes back from emma langevin’s birthday party. foolish rushes to end stream as soon as he finishes a valo game. the next day when he goes live his bed is again exactly the same. when tina goes live, she noticed her pants are on the ground behind her, briefly looks panicked, and says she took them off as soon as she got home to get comfortable. this is the most damning evidence we have imo

he then helps her move, and his LA setup goes into a room in tina’s new apartment. all of his clothes and shit are at her place. currently he’s back in LA and is staying with her. hes buying a bunch of stuff for his setup and essentially moving in. she makes coffee for him and they watch tv every night. its very surreal to watch

in all this time of people speculating and them acting like a couple, they have never said theyre just friends or not dating. they ignore anyone who asks. theyve even both disagreed with people calling them siblings.

im sorry this took me so long to answer anon but this is amazing i hope u have a wonderful life thank u

#ask

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skythealmighty · 9 months ago

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Maximo "Lucky" Jonronero is extremely ADHD coded. in this essay i will

edit: someone asked for the essay, and since im not just about to sleep now, I can be coherent. lets start with the most damning evidence:

1. What he says to Miner during 5-X

Lucky: "I know...it's just... I was never much of anyone as a kid. Bad grades, couldn't ever focus, mom and dad yellin' at me... But on the field, everything was different. Without baseball...I feel like I'll just be that useless kid again."

this is, easily, already a common story among athletes with ADHD! not only that, but if he had no access to the right medication- and since i don't think he knows, he doesn't- it would be extremely hard to do schoolwork, much less homework, paired with all that pressure.

this also means, of course, his mom and dad likely also have undiagnosed ADHD, and possibly are projecting onto him! so yeah parent issues

2. His mannerisms at the start

at first this doesnt seem like that damning of evidence, but as a person with ADHD, his remarks resemble me. a lot.

one effect of having ADHD is this little bitch called emotional dysregulation, in which you can't- not "it's hard to", you can't- control your emotions to a degree, and they tend to get out of hand. from personal experience, it sucks ass, and especially if you dont know what it is, you get mad at your emotions for making you look like a child.

Lucky is mad. a lot. he also seems to bottle up as much as he can, a common pattern with myself. he also seems to understand that his overreactions are stupid, but he really just can't stop himself- if this is a pattern, it partially explains why he had a quicker turnaround than most would think to apologize to Paige. he KNOWS his constant anger is fucking dumb, but he can't stop it. he literally, biologically, has no power to stop it, as a person with adhd off meds.

3. The way he acts, in general

he gets distracted halfway through conversations. this also parallels with just how fast he was able to zone out in 5-3. this isn't very hard evidence, but it further perpetuates the "lack of focus" bit, which is also something he hates about himself! without knowing he has ADHD, that's not an uncommon jump of emotions

he doesn't seem to have any other interest than playing baseball at the moment (though it doesnt seem like that was always the case), but even then it seems to be dwindling out despite his best attempts (a common pattern with hyperfixations). he also seems to immediately latch onto coaching!

he moves around, a lot. we don't see him happy stim, but that jumping animation is likely an angry stim, which yes, also happens. he seems to hate staying still, which is emphasized by the fact that he needs to. for long periods of time. hence him sneaking out to the gym as much as he can. AND A GOOD ADD-ON BY @kittyfirest0rm - THE GUM. THE FUCKING GUM. HE CHEWS GUM WHILE PLAYING BASEBALL!!

he's quick to emphasize, when he's not angry. he's not very keen on some social cues, but he definitely seems to get emotions. in 5-3 he's probably surprised at Miner's easy admitting that he was injured and would stay willingly, but he also seems to get it when Miner talks about overworking himself and his emotions. (he zones out though during the explanations. classic.)

there's more i could add, but the post is getting long, so here come get your juice lol

#rocket talk #lucky jonronero #rhythm doctor #rhythm doctor lucky #adhd

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remusawoooo · 4 months ago

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anon here, excited to read the essay! i asked you because i really like your takes and i see people in the more canon-adjacent parts of the marauders fanbase to complain about the extremes of the fanon one, though personally ive never really seen anything Too extreme, tho thats probably just tantamount to how well i curate my spaces i suppose (ive seen people say that fanon makes remus really “alpha” or makes sirius “bimbofied” and while ive seen hints of those extremes here and there, mostly it looks like it varies from person to person. ive just seen remus be more assertive than he probably is in canon, or sirius being more dramatic and “fem” than he probably is in canon). from what i know people like exaggerating events (the prank, etc.) or shifting some personality traits, but i dont really think thats a bad thing - i personally enjoy it. as long as they dont completely turn characters into stereotypes (though its a pitfall of every fandom, i fear), then whatever its just camp.

people are allowed to criticize stuff like that though, not taking that away from anyone, i personally just dont really care enough to be totally accurate esp since this hyperfix is kind of the bottom of the barrel for me LMAO. but i ask mostly bc im just curious to see what other peoples opinions are, and bc i think - especially in a fanbase like this - that its incredibly important to be at least a little critical with your media experience and reflect on it. saying “oh fuck canon we’re just having fun” is fine and all, i dont think anyone is stopping you, i think the personalities people have made up for characters that have zero screen time are super fun and the little ships are not everyones tea but like its fine. but even still, people should be way more aware of what characters theyre dealing with and from what franchise, and like reflect on any biases you may have. if youre making shit up for a random DE character, or retconning some sutff, okay, whatever, but be sure to not defend or like suddenly turn to really weird rhetoric. idk i think its the bare minimum in a fanbase like this

i definitely rambled way too much here, super sorry op! i hope this doesnt bother you, feel free to reply or feel free to not. i just really like hearing peoples thoughts on things, and i like your takes and your blog so i hope i didnt catch you by surprise. i really am just an outsider trying to look in LOL

hello anon, I'm sorry I lost your ask. I was writing on my laptop and saved the draft (but apparently had to press on alt, and didn't do it) so I basically lost your question and half of my initial response. Ty for sending in another ask!! Not a bother at all, i find this very lovely :D

I was mortified to find that someone who isn't really a part of the fandom was perceiving me while I was complaining about fictional characters ahahaha. still, thank you for validating me and asking my thoughts on the mischaracterization of marauders!! I do talk about it daily, unfortunately, and without any prompt too. I'll try to gather all my thoughts here. I don't necessarily come across fanon as much as I did when I reentered the fandom and honestly, I can not be more with you about curating your space !! at the end of the day, I am just here to have fun, and really, pointing out these issues is not a good time at all! But I do post a lot about these, I can't be bothered to bottle up any thoughts lol.

I think the major issue I have with current interpretations is the underlying bigotry that comes along with it. There is a lot of unchecked problematic content that doesn't sit right with me.

Flanderizing characters in fandom interpretations is not limited to marauders fandom obviously. any popular media will face this because so many of us want to interact with one character so their traits are simplified for easier consumption and to find a common ground. this is also not limited to new marauders fandom. even in the older era, leather jacket-wearing, motorbike-driving quintessential bad boy siruis was a thing. so I won't nitpick on silly simplifications.

I just want to say that this isn't about me wanting everyone to have the same interpretations as I do about the canon. I follow so many lovely people and I don't agree with all of their posts. But, we all just simply share the love for these characters in the text and form an imaginary community. So, if we were to remove all the issues I will mention, it is still very well possible to have different personal takes.

Here are some of my issues:

Queerness, Gender roles, and misogyny:

My biggest problem is the representations of queer relationships. the fandom packages these couples in a strange and obvious heteronormative mold where the individuals fit into male and female gender roles. mlm and wlw are now an “f/m”* stereotype and characterization gets affected by the ships. Heterosexual relationships shouldn't have these limitations either, anyway. There is no one way to be a woman or a man. With queer relationships in particular, we have reclaimed the word queer now but it was used to describe the unconventional weirdness in the relationship. We didn't fit into the normal portrayal of a loving relationship. So, it really bothers me, even in fiction, that queer ships are popularly consumed in a way that represents a traditional template. (*this is not about gender itself but the gender roles! f/m can very well be queer!).

Let's take the biggest victim in this fandom: sirius.

Sirius’ portrayal concerning his gender and sexuality has heavily changed his characterization in the fanon. We have a character who is popularly headcanonned as trans and is it a coincidence that all their traits have changed from the og material? Sirius is suddenly vain, whiny, and dumb. Canon doesn't suggest this interpretation, it has to have stemmed from somewhere. It's the implicit bias. Sirius becomes a caricature of what a woman “should be”. When we focus on sexuality, there is the suddenly short twink sirius who has the same new traits- proving the point of fulfilling gender roles. These characteristics are a stand-in for the “female” role of the traditional relationship and it becomes more clear in the example of new age wolfstar. Remus is now the big alpha stoic manly man- the obvious stand-in for the “male” role. I could go on, it is apparent in the way you can see remus becomes a caretaker and sirius is taken care of.

The point I am trying to make is not to discourage gender/sexuality hc. I love them, keep them coming. But, why is female sirius not tall suddenly? It is not inherently bad at all to have a feminine and masculine pairing! But why do we need to change the constitutions of these characters to consume their relationship?

I'll keep dropping disclaimers because I hate being misinterpreted: I don't obviously mean every single person is doing this or that doing one of the things means doing the other too.

Race:

It is related to the point above. I was personally so excited to see the popular desi james hc. Even in fanon, I have never seen such a prevalent and encouraged brown rep, it was quite sweet to come back to that. But the problem is the change of characteristics that comes with race hc. Desi james is also a manly dude who is big and buff as opposed to the white petite and delicate regulus within jegulus ship. The melanin is directly proportional to the manliness here.

This is a propagation of race stereotypes. Maybe jegulus was a bad example because usually there are seen as blank templates. I will raise the argument that this can't be all we can come up with for blank canvases then. Either way, my point about race still stands when you repeatedly design interracial queer relationships so they fall into heteronormative roles. Anyway, same issue with wolfstar when there is a brown remus.

Canon, JKR, and hypocrisy:

Refusing to engage with source material is funny when we are picking characters out of it. the interpretations of the characters will be from their book. otherwise, they are just original characters with the same name. you can add onto the traits and a lot of the time fandom comes to a consensus regarding a few things! This is common in every fandom but I don't think I have seen such reluctance to not only critically engage with media but also shame others who do. We are surely in special circumstances with this fandom but I really do think jkr and how we navigate the fanon should be two different things.

Most of us don't condone jkr or even remotely agree with any nonsense she spews on the daily. Most of us can see the problematic nature of even consuming this media and staying in this fandom. It is one of the reasons I even left the fandom. Most of us are simply doing our best to engage carefully while distancing ourselves from her. So, it is quite laughable when some love to take the moral high ground for rejecting canon while still engaging with the same characters. (the rejection of canon in question being sirius’ height, lol)

(Sirius' height is quite a polarising fact apparently. Unfortunately, the point about height is also discussed so disingenuously. When I talk about sirius’ height, it is not really about him being 6 or 7 feet. It will not really impact my life. It is about what it represents. He is bimbofied as he becomes short. It's an issue of "WHY" again.)

Of course, this isn't an accusation of intentional bigotry from everyone here. The problem with this fandom is that the people in it tell themselves that it is progressive and to run away from the problematic creator as much as possible. We are not progressive if all we do is co-opt queer and racially diverse identities on such a superficial level. The bias manifests in subtle forms. I just wish we check ourselves from time to time, that's all.

There is a lot of hostility when we try to discuss issues in the fanon. Things are interpreted in the most misguided way to just win the argument. Like I said in the beginning, we all just want to have a good time. That also means creating a welcoming space for vulnerable groups (especially when the same identities are used to pat yourselves on the backs for inclusivity points). I didn't even cover everything btw, I just wrote about the issues that concern me. queer and poc also partake in biased representations, I also probably have some biases that I didn't identify yet. I just think it would be super neat if everyone tried to make an effort to unlearn and engage with media without hurting anyone.

I have other issues but they are all just super subjective opinions and smth I can ignore when others do. ex: I really don't like giving tragic backstories to bigots in the story. Not every supremacist loser has a trauma that forced them into oppressing people! There is also "tropeyfication" of all major ships. Just an overall issue in the reading world I think, though.

Anon, I didn't mean to make it preachy in any way btw. You probably asked for a silly little rant and I went full lecture mode, so I apologize for the tone shift!! I mentioned these because every other issue can be brought down to these imo. Like you said, I also don't have any fixation on everything being canon-compliant. I only complain by asking about the thought process behind certain kinds of changes, if that makes sense! I hope this wasn't a drag really and you can see where I am coming from. If I misspoke anywhere, pls lmk. Thanks for sharing your opinions too!!

This is a long long rant, anyone who read everything, you are wonderful and patient. Thank you for taking the time. This huge post and the content can make you think, “who cares this much?” or “it's not that serious” and yaa it really isn't that serious. The characters aren't real but we all are. the identities projected are real. so, it does matter to talk about this.

Everything said this is a fun place to be once you find your own corner in the playground.

#anti jkr #anti jegulus #anti marauders fandom #anti fanon #marauders fandom #gender and sexuality in fandom #race in fandom #canon wolfstar #fanon wolfstar #hp canon #canon vs fanon

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eazy-peazy54 · 5 months ago

Text

My problem with the Will Wood fandom, (a.k.a touch grass, a.k.a stan culture can suck it) (an essay.)

This one is LONG and a DOOZY, so buckle up if you like to read.

just want to clarify, i do NOT hate the will wood fandom in itself. AT ALL. I love you guys (/p)

i just dislike the people who say weird and creepy shit. if that doesnt apply to you, cool! but tell the people who do that shit to knock it off.

NO DISCOURSE IN THE REBLOGS I WILL ATTACK YOU

One HUGE gripe I have with the Will Wood fandom is how some of you guys treat Will Wood like (and this is literally the only way I can put this that isn't too serious) some all-powerful deity of knowledge that you would kill AND die for. In this essay, I will explain why [some of] you are fucking creeps.

Will Wood. Where do I begin. For the very few who are unaware, Will Wood is a singer-songwriter who makes very strange avant garde whatchamacallit evil jazz/swing music. He has been known as Will Wood since 2015, where he released his first album, Everything Is A Lot, under the name Will Wood and the Tapeworms.

Me personally, I first heard of him from the song Dr. Sunshine Is Dead, from the good old days of 2018 animation meme Youtube.

Ever since the inevitable Tiktokification of the song I / Me / Myself, from The Normal Album, the Will Wood fandom has become... well.. full of children. I have no place to speak, of course, because I myself, am a teenager, but I'm talking like. 11-14 year olds.

11-14 year olds who are all fucking INSANE.

Will Wood has been put in what I like to call;

The Holy Trinity.

This being the big three artists who the mentally ill queers (like me) listen to.

Lemon Demon, Tally Hall, and of course, Will Wood.

Being in this holy trinity has both done him good, and bad. On the positive side, yay!! More streams, more plays, more people to appreciate the craft, and more people who like the music! On the negative side, now you have an army of children listening to adult music, interacting with adult music and music videos, who are willing to do ANYTHING to get your attention, because they are young and don't know much better.

And here, stuck in the middle of it all, is poor William.

Stuck as a straight "gay icon," in a sea of twelve year olds.

Well shit.

---

Leading to the second part of my half-essay.

2020. The year shit changed for Will Wood. The Normal Album was released, and people found themselves relating to I / Me / Myself, as stated before. Then this "new," unheard of fandom was kind of birthed upon Tiktok. They were treating him like fucking jesus.

Which is weird.

They were sad, gay, looking for answers, and found them in Will's music. Which is like. Cool!

But when people were saying that he was trans, and then switched up and said he was making fun of trans people?

Yeah. Not that cool actually.

Coming back to the present now, Will has stated how weird these kids are.

In a response from a AMA for In Case I Make It on the official Will Wood subreddit, (I know. Ew, gross, Reddit, but this post was what inspired me to make this in the first place, so,) Will says this:

---

"When I was living in the sticks along the Delaware during the pandemic, I had this weird sort of mystical thing going on inside my head that was trying connect dots in my life and turn meaningless nothing things into signs that I would die.

This was happening around the same time I was dealing with getting actual public attention for the first time, and was living in an area where nobody wore masks, and was living with people who were at risk of serious covid complications if they caught it. Also for most of it I was the dreaded 27, and having been a bit of a junkie in my younger years and an idiot with a barely-treated psychiatric wreck in my brain for most of the ones following it, it was not unlike me to assume I'd die young.

It just seemed too perfect.

As I was dealing with the reception of the normal album (my first truly scathing reviews, I/Me/Myself "discourse," being the subject of conversation on a larger scale) which was beyond what I was prepared for psychologically in terms of its scope and type, my anxious rumination started to veer toward genuine paranoia.

I started thinking that I would die by my own hand or be murdered by one of these crazed Will Wood fans in the dead of night. So I didn't sleep like ever, I lost a bunch of weight and couldn't gain it back for a while, I freaked out a whole bunch and I'm surprised looking back I never lost my sobriety or whatever.

Since it started to look more and more like cosmic fact that I was doomed, I started to feel greater and greater desperation to get out these songs that I had been quietly writing over the previous year or two. Songs I'd written while going through a big breakup and wrestling with rotten parts of me that were finally accessible due to my finally being properly medicated and dealing with the real shit in therapy. And then songs I'd written as I went through these changes."

---

Obviously that is a lot to unpack for a Tumblr essay, but since you’re this far, you probably read it all already.

“Stans,” as most would call them, and “Stan Culture” as a whole, is just a huge wreck. Everyone is always fighting someone. We know this. We all do. Stans scare artists.

I want you to think. Think of the artists who are inspired by Will Wood. The ones who want to cater out their music to the Will Wood fans. Imagine if you will, those artists seeing that AMA post, seeing the crazed fans, seeing the relentless sexualization, the jokes about serious issues, like Will’s past drug use, seeing all of this and thinking:

“Is it really worth it?

Is it really worth all of this to make music and put myself out there?”

Now, that may make you uncomfortable, but it's the honest truth. And it's happened to so many people, and so many artists.

---

And now a message to the disgraced kids who managed to latch on to Will Wood’s music.

Treating a musical artist like a god is not gonna help anyone. I’d know. I’ve seen it happen multiple times, to multiple artists.

I guess what I’m trying to say is think before posting on the internet. Think to yourself; would I say this to the artist's face? Could someone see this and think differently of me? Is this just weird to say in general?

Remember that these people are real people. Will Wood is a real person. With real thoughts. real feelings. a life to live. He's not just some music making machine. He’s not just some silly character. He’s not just some whimsical guy who we can all project onto.

Will Wood is a real person, and everyone should treat him that way.

Thank you for reading.

(I will edit this essay if I think of anything else to add. That or I'll just reblog it.)

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juni-ravenhall · 5 months ago

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If you take over SSE, what would be your first changes that you make? Like immediate things you want to do?

And what’d be your long term goal, how would you achieve it?

- ro-sso

this is the best ask ever thank u but u might not be prepared for this essay........ sorry :3

first off id need to find out exactly who are the current ppl for game director, art director, etc direction positions, and who of them are making the crazy decisions. is it directors and managers, is it the CEO, etc. ofc there might be many parts in this chain from an uncaring CEO down to a confused director down to a struggling game designer down to a coder/writer/artist that doesnt get enough time and resources, like, i understand its a complex chain but that doesnt change the fact that someone (or several) have been fucking shit up for all of sse's history. so i would do a lot of talking to staff respectfully and finding out whats really been going on in the chain, and who is not working in the best interest of the game's quality and the company's stability. map out where in the company theres the most and least problems.

(this to me is easy, im analytical and resistant to lies and manipulation as a person. i see through shit very easily and i have a long history of self-studying and analysing stuff related to running companies and making games, since thats my life goal... so to some ppl it might sound like "thats harder than you think" bc theyre just not me. some ppl arent passionate about running good healthy ethical game companies - i am!)

sse clearly has basically never had good directors with good direction, or if they did, those werent given enough power and resources. they shouldnt have been changing artstyle several times, they shouldnt have been abandoning storylines and areas, they shouldnt have been ignoring bugs in general, they shouldnt have been ignoring bugs and cheats in racing and champs, etc. so, its very important to get a good game director, art director, and so on, in place, whether its an existing staff member who just needs more power and resources, or its someone new who is a good fit.

then ofc take a look at all staff hired and see what everyone is there for. after the layoffs im not sure if they have many passive workers left but id get an overview and do some interviews w staff to find out how the efficiency situation is and if more/less ppl are needed in diff areas to actually pay ppl to work on the game itself. (as an example mb u need one less social media person and one more programmer, one less team manager consultant or other middleclass word salad jobs... etc.)

then overview of salary differences. this is a huge point to me. was the CEO that im assumably taking the job from, earning a lot more than everyone else a month? then thats not happening anymore. all salaries within the company would become more balanced, setting in place a system where the minimum salary and max salary at the company are tied together in a ratio so that to raise the top u must also raise the bottom. this will instantly lower much of the top and assumably raise some at the bottom (how much, i dont know from the outside). this ratio system would be clearly outlined and from now on a pillar of the company's structure. also, check that skilled senior staff has appropriate pay for their experience, etc, make sure salaries seem fair.

along with this ofc a good overview of costs, loans, earnings, the current office and all of this to know the situation. i think thats obvious but ill say it anyway to be clear. have a complete grasp of the economic situation, talk to the economics staff.

with staff interviews and salary checkups it would also be relevant to see if theres any gold star workers who should shift up in positions, for example a very good animator could become lead animator, stuff like this. sse has already done things like this fairly often (sometimes maybe not with the right people) so im not too worried about it but i would do another check. also just general talk w staff to find out who has hidden potential that might not be getting used. (i want to know my workers and be able to help them shine, this is good both for the workers, the work environment, and the company results.)

at this point, we should have balanced out some of the leaking money at the top (and hopefully made a few leeches jump ship while at it), boosted the happiness within the company (balanced salaries etc), and have a great overview of whats going on from the more economic and hierarchy standpoint. we should have gotten rid of some potential leeching staff that didnt actually help create a good product and run a healthy, ethical company, and we might have gotten new people in positions where we needed more skills (direction, programming, whatnot). compared to sse's 10+ years of being a chaotic mess, the company structure should look pretty good now, even if not perfect.

i would have a lot of talk with the directors and team leaders and senior staff to make sure everyone is on the same page from now on: we are making a good quality game, we are being consistent, we are not adding new random shit just bc ooh shiny or cashgrabs, we are going to impress the players and make them feel "oh god, finally sso is consistent and living up to its potential". everyone at the company needs to understand this goal and why the loyal players are disappointed with the game. there will still be new horses and item recolors etc ofc, we do need a certain degree of "ooh shiny" from the player side of things (hopefully good gameplay and good stories would also be ooh shiny though), but there needs to be a new focus on the Actual core and Actual pillars of the game, which sse failed to do bc they have bad direction.

most likely, we would change the weekly update into bi-weekly or monthly, maybe starting with bi-weekly to test the waters. in order to deliver a good quality main storyline and also good quality stories and updates to tie up loose ends, there needs to be enough time to do that. there would be very solid goals on the cadence at which major updates are released and no long stretches of time without main story, and no long stretches without other significant updates.

an important part of that is also the seasonal events - i think the 4 seasons of events is a good thing, but they need to be properly bug fixed and have some design and writing improvements, one new fun (more challenging) race for each of them, etc. so hopefully we can afford enough staff that we have a few ppl working on updating and finalising the 4 seasonal events to their more or less final form.

each seasonal event needs to have a cool and challenging race (similar to cloud kingdom rainbow race or some other recent races) that HAS A HIGHSCORE BOARD. this is a key thing to me. all event races should have highscore boards (and some crappy event races may be removed, or combined into a better version of all of them together). *everyone* playing would be able to just better their own score for a generic gold/silver/bronze score, which gives specific rewards for reaching the medal score on the event race(s), and those who are at the top of the leaderboard among everyone, would get a non-exclusive prize, like 1000js. its not a huge win - not to encourage cheating to get to the top - and mostly based in the existing "daily best" system. it would still encourage players to actually try their best at the event races and feel like there's some stakes in it. (active human moderation of suspicious race results is also necessary - we should be able to afford that now.) i also think, if someone has won the daily best, they should then not be able to get the daily best for at least another week, leaving place for other people... but this becomes a problem with alt accounts, so it needs more consideration, i dont have the full answer to that yet.

also, all the tack and clothes need a stats overhaul. the random top stats we currently have are stupid and they seem like they just didnt think about this at all. this is partially a dress up game, so you need to be able to dress up cute and still have top stats and be able to win champs. if possible, i would set staff to work on letting you upgrade any piece of equipment to max stats (which would be something like 5-10 in each stat i guess). this system might require starcoins to upgrade - a way for the company to earn money from cosmetic changes, that seems fair enough to me. (maybe there would be a way to pay with shillings and collectables, but just an easier way to pay with sc, it would be considered.)

we'd also need to sit down and take a good look at what all horses stats are, which horses seem to be boosted or nerfed in races for no reason, and make sure all horses at least function fairly and as intended. after that, to consider whether you should be able to train all horses to have the same max stats, or if we want to keep breeds unique and different, then those differences should also be well thought out and actually matter. right now, and for a long time, some horses are just better at races than others (pintabian, etc), and some (ardennes) seem to be shit for no real reason (other draft horses dont necessarily have the same problem). so it needs to be properly looked at and fixed so all horses at least have good reasons to be different, if they are different at all, and no bugs or unintended boosts and nerfs. horse stats should make sense for gameplay.

all the champs need to get their updated forms, so i also hope we could afford enough staff to have a few ppl working on updating the champs consistently until thats done. i do think a lot of sso's races also should be overhauled, because racing is the main gameplay we actually have (collecting light in hollow woods is not challenging and not really gameplay) and it should be satisfying, fun, and challenging, like playing a mariokart race (that doesnt mean it should play *like* a mariokart race, just that it needs to be fun). the highscore boards and the gold/silver/bronze medal systems are really, really neglected assets of sso's player motivation. if getting a gold medal score on a race was consistently actually difficult and required practice, and getting that gold medal also gave you a good reward (shillings, items) that motivated you to aim for it, then players might actually have fun challenging themselves for higher scores! the same goes for daily best / etc scores that should be looked into, what rewards they give, etc.

also, there should be a ban on adding any new npcs to the game if theyre not extremely necessary. sse has been adding new npcs left and right all the time, and it just clogs the game with random irrelevant characters that dont add anything to the game, it takes time and resources to make their model, give them a name, write their dialogue, and so on. instead, focus all that energy on actual relevant npcs and ones that players want to talk to and find out more about, hear their storylines, etc, and let races be handled with either existing npcs or with new and improved highscore board objects (make it obvious you click them to start the race).

of course, the art style of sso should never again change. art direction from now on is consistent and solid with an art director who understands their job, lead artists and lead animators who 100% understand what the goals are. directors who make sure that the quality of art, design, animation are up to the standards of the style we are using, that things fit together in the game. new models should not actually be "better" than the old ones - you end up in a destructive cycle where the art keeps changing. the style should be consistent with only relatively minor refinements over time. so, the art directors and leads need to make sure the style continues to be consistent, and update things that need to be. (im not sure how many areas of sso should really get the complete overhauls like silverglade village anymore - at some point you're also wasting resources on something less important than the gameplay and story, but some areas also look really outdated, so careful consideration needs to go into which areas to update and *how* to update them. maybe jarlaheim doesnt need a complete overhaul but a partial one. etc.)

the gen 4 horse needs to have very solid planning before release, which seems to have been the case so far from the little ive heard about it. if players can finally get a more custom horse with custom markings, mane and tail styles (preferrably available across breeds), and ability to pick coat, mane and tail colours separately, i think this would be great. it also relates to the whole thing with horse stats and just making sure that horses function properly and have reasons to actually have different stats and such, if theyre going to have that.

there also needs to be a decision made about sso's future - specifically, should we keep developing this game on this crappy messy engine for another decade, or should we eventually say, "this is sso 1, and we're finished with it (the story is finished, game isnt buggy, etc)" - and then go on to create a new game (while still keeping sso 1 running!) on a new, modern engine, where there is good direction and good planning from the very beginning? i dont know how far they got with project curie before cancelling it, whether theres much work to salvage, but i think that creating a new horse mmo set in jorvik (curie was supposedly not a horse game) as a more or less "sso 2" is a fair idea. the potential of customisable gen 4 horses might not really be that relevant for sso 1, or customisable player character faces and bodies like the sims. maybe this is stuff that should be in sso 2 from the very beginning, rather than patches trying to fix the mess that is the current sso? i think a lot of players wouldve been happier to see the old avatars and stuff remain in sso 1 and see the new, current artstyle we have be a separate game as sso 2 instead. (runescape classic etc.)

so, i would want to very carefully consider what really should be in sso 1 versus if we should be making sso 2. its possible to decide, actually we do want to just keep updating sso 1 and make it the best it can be, to basically keep adding expansions to it. but even if we decide that, the thing is, its hard to save the original story at this point due to the careless updates that have already been made for years. my question is, is it possible to give the loyal, old players a satisfying ending to this story and these characters' stories and this world's lore, within the current state of sso? or is it just too far gone off the track? so this needs to be carefully considered. maybe sso 2 could be a sort of remake of the story, starting with elements based on SSL, rather than the haphazard "uh these girls saved the world a while ago and now youre here i guess" that sso did start with. maybe its not too late to give the loyal long term players a satisfying end to the story. but its a complex issue that needs a lot of thought. (which should never have happened! the story shouldnt have changed the way it did, things shouldnt have been abandoned randomly, added randomly, changed randomly, all of this is just bad shitty direction and management without respect to the players, which is especially frustrating bc it goes right into "girl gamers dont matter, girl games dont matter,".)

there are more things, like a weather system, that i would have loved to see in sso but ultimately might be better to save for sso 2. or maybe sso keeps going with major updates and major expansions and then it would be relevant to consider for sso. the same thing for customising our home stable, getting a player home to customise, there are lots of fun ideas like this that i could talk about but that ultimately im not sure how much time and resources should be sunk into when sse have chosen to fuck themselves over for this long and caused this many problems with the game that need immediate attention to make it playable and enjoyable. so in this... essay... i focused mostly on solving problems and making the game a solid and fun experience, and what to prioritise to keep it that way, while these bonus new content like weather or customisable horses or customisable player faces/bodies and all that, would be great updates (or sso 2) but have to come as a bonus when everything else is under control.

so yeah thats covering both a lot of immediate stuff and long term considerations. this is like, a fraction of the stuff i've thought about. i have a lot more to say about a lot of things to fix in sso and other things that have to do with running companies too. and ofc theres a lot of things i just cant know from the outside, and so on, im not a perfect person who knows everything and never pretend to be (i have to say this bc ppl like projecting things on me just for being confident in my skills). getting to take over sse would still be a learning curve with finding out exactly where the problems are and how to solve them. i view this realistically. there are always unknown variables and things i'll have to figure out when i get to it, but you can do that if you have a strong core and strong direction that wont be swayed by capitalism or ooh shiny. i just know a lot about prioritising and directing and about ways to run healthier, better companies, and ways to be ethical and create good products instead of cash grabs - and i also value the skills and knowledge of others, which matters in finding the right people to work in the right positions. these are specific interests i have and spend a lot of time thinking about, analysing, studying, practising, etc.

if you or anyone else actually read all of this (im shocked) and want to discuss more about it or have questions about it, im all ears :D

#LONG POST. VERY LONG #thank u ro-sso and sorry :)

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