#i made this blog at some point in april 2019

[survivingpierce]

i can't believe i have this blog since 4 years (and have returned four years ago). it's unbelievable how fast time flies.

[ot3]

Hey! The link to your FAQ wasn't working for me so I don't know if this question has been asked before. I really appreciate your perspectives on AI art. Do you happen to have any resources that you read/listened to on intellectual property rights and the issues with it? I just don't really know where to start with it.

[heres where i cut out a big paragraph of me, once again, bitching about how blog pages don't work on the tumblr app and i think that's fucking stupid]

anyway i dont have any generalized sources on the subject but the tl;dr of it is: intellectual property rights exclusively benefit people who have the resources to pursue sustained litigation. 99% of the time, what IP law is being used for is to reinforce corporate ownership of work that was done by their employees.

the whole disco elysium debacle is a great case study.

The shareholders of ZA/UM accused the trio of, among other things, intending to steal intellectual property (IP) from the company — a curious accusation, considering that the world of the game is based off of a novel written by Kurvitz himself. The case of Disco Elysium illustrates the shortcomings of IP rights as protection for artists. Consequently, it contains a lot of lessons for the labor movement when it comes to the arts, and serves as a reminder that creative workers are, at the end of the day, workers. But this is not just an academic exercise. It’s a human story about the intimate consequences of capitalist exploitation. “I got my soul ripped out of me,” Kurvitz told me over Zoom in April of 2023. “I got my skull cracked open and my brain lifted out of it by a fifty-five-year-old financial criminal.”

another example: alex norris of webcomic name, which you will probably recognize when you see it, has been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past several years to try and keep up with the protracted legal battle over maintaining ownership of his own work.

I have been fighting this case since 2019. It arose out of an agreement to make a boardgame based on my webcomic in 2017 but the publishing company has used this as an opportunity to take all of my intellectual property, and has even claimed ownership of Webcomic Name as a whole. I can't go into more detail here, but the details of the case are publicly available to read online.

Then, in a 2024 update:

I have essentially won the main case based on the decisions made last summer. The Judge has clearly stated that I own my comics, and that the other party has infringed on my copyright. It is not over yet, as there are still a few things that need to happen. Hopefully things will all be wrapped up this year. After 6 years of legal battling, I can’t wait to be free of all of this. Hopefully, this second case will backfire, and they will be sanctioned for filing it. But to get to that point requires a frustratingly large amount of work, time and money.

An interesting thing about both of these two specific instances is that they involve creators who had entire bodies of work produced around the specific IPs that were stolen from them before they even began partnering with corporate entities to produce works. which is insane! you can spend years writing novels, drawing comics, and if a company comes in with enough lawyers they can own those ideas.

this is pretty distinctly different to me than instances of work you do while being employed by a corporate entity being owned by that corporate entity, because at least you know what you're getting into there to some degree, but i still think that's bad too. consider stuff like the owl house and gravity falls, two disney shows made by people who very very clearly did not like working for disney. disney owns their ideas, their characters, their worlds, because that's the price you pay for having an animated show produced.

essentially it's very very clear upon even the slightest examination that intellectual property in no way exists to codify who the creator responsible for specific creative concepts or works is. it exists to turn nebulous things like 'ideas' into market commodities, and to funnel the profits made by the labor of individual artists and writers into corporate bank accounts.

the only person who has ever really benefited from IP law as an individual trying to lay claim to their own work is ken penders, who notoriously won his suit to have ownership of characters and storylines he created. heartbreaking: Worst Person You Know Gets An Unequivocally Deserved Legal W.

The comics continued under Flynn’s direction as if nothing happened, but things started looking grim in late 2012, when Archie suddenly fired its entire legal team. The company had been unable to produce Penders’ work-for-hire contract, which would have given control of his creations to Sega. Penders claimed the contract had never existed. A heavily circulated Tumblr post outlining the case (which has been corroborated as a reliable source by Penders) explains that while Archie did provide a photocopy of a contract allegedly signed by Penders in 1996, Penders claimed that the document was a forgery. That it was neither an original copy nor a contract from the beginning of the writer’s tenure at Archie meant that its validity was questionable. Making things worse, Archie couldn’t produce an original copy of any previous contributor’s contract, meaning that any writer or artist who had worked on the Archie Sonic line could potentially follow in Penders’s footsteps and reclaim their work. “So are you saying prior counsel blew it?” the presiding judge asked Archie counsel Joshua Paul in a May 2013 court session. His reply was unequivocal: “Absolutely, your Honor.”

So yeah. Owning the work you do as an artist is only something that happens when the people trying to profit off of it show unprecedented and staggering level of incompetence in their legal teams.

Then, alongside not owning the concepts and ideas you produce while working with corporate entities, there's the issue of NDA regarding specific pieces you've produced. This causes a LOT of trouble for freelance illustrators/character designers/concept artists, etc. Looking for work is very hard when the past three years of pieces you've drawn can't be added to your portfolio. Some people have password protected pages on their portfolios that they use for NDA work, but I believe the right to do this varies depending on your contract. I'm not 100% sure. In cases where the project you worked on eventually comes out, that's one thing, but there will be instances where the entire project gets canned after all the work is done, but is still under NDA so essentially all of your work has been taken from you, crumpled up into a ball by a studio executive, thrown in the trash can, and legally you are not allowed to go pick it out of the bin and try and flatten it out again.

This has all been pretty art-focused because that's the kind of circles I run in and where a lot of my interests lie but the truth is none of this is even remotely close to as evil IP law gets. I've saved the most egregious for last: The Lakota Language Consortium

The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks.  But when Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition. The traditional knowledge gathered from the tribe was now being sold back to it in the form of textbooks.

When you're in defense of IP law, this is what you're siding with. This is the rational endpoint of IP and it is neither a fluke nor an example of the concept being twisted against its original design. Art, culture, language, it belongs to whoever is most capable of turning it into a product. The economic incentives of producing and distributing arts and culture demand this is how things be.

Meya says his work is a vital tool in preserving the Lakota language, which did not previously have a standardized written form. He estimated that there are fewer than 1,500 fluent Lakota speakers left and that over the last decade and a half, the organization has helped add 50 to 100 more. “Just because money is involved in it does not inherently make it an evil thing,” Meya said in a recent interview with NBC News. Most of the products his organizations make are free, he said, but the cost of printing textbooks has to come from somewhere. “That tends to be sometimes part of the rhetoric, ‘Oh, there’s money involved. It must be, you know, part of the overall colonization effort.’ Well, you know, that’s just not realistic.”

Artists looking to force their way into the class of people who gets protected by these laws are not looking out for their community. They are not protecting anything but their own perceived financial interests. Intellectual property will never, ever benefit the most marginalized members of creative communities and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is huffing some serious copium.

Frankly, I don't believe anyone can or should 'own' things like Ideas or Specific Aesthetic Flairs. But even if you do believe in that, IP law isn't the framework for handling it.

[poisonedspider]

poisonedspider: INDIE roleplay blog for ANGEL DUST (ANTHONY) from HAZBIN HOTEL. Incredibly NSFW muse. DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. Spoilers present. Canon divergent. Semi-selective. Medium activity. Multipara/Novella literate writer for 20+ years. Multiverse and multi-ship. Mostly head canon based representation of (one) famous porn star. Mature and triggering content present, must be 21+ to interact. Blog will explore extreme trauma, abandonment, s*xual assault, physical violence, death, etc. Mutuals only, please! Authored by Strode, he/him, 30+. Re-established April 2024 (originally wrote in July 2019). Please read rules under the cut on this post.

Stand-alone blog, not strictly affiliated with the Hazbin/Helluvaverse and community (and certainly not in support of Vivzie). Open to any and all characters and interactions. Let it be known I am NOT AN ASK BLOG. Personals are allowed to follow, but will not be followed back and will be BLOCKED if they keep interacting with my stuff. Do not reblog this post.

Angie's main bitches: @featheredbarkeep, @sirserpentine, @veelentino, @hazbinned, @mothvalentino, @widdlestwucifer, @doublejango, @grimowled, @voxxisms and @hzbinsouled.

Don’t be an asshole. Literally my number one rule, and basically my only rule. This is a hobby. We are nerds writing as fictional characters. I’m too old to feel in high school again. If you don’t like what I write, the block button is a function. Block me, and move along. Forget I exist. I do not participate in call out culture, and will not be forced to choose sides.

Memes are definitely the best way to interact with me. I personally will turn all memes into threads, as I feel that’s the point of them. You don’t have to necessarily continue them, but I’d appreciate if you did because I put a lot of thought and energy into my replies.

Never feel the need to match my length (I write a lot), but also know that I reserve the right to delete a thread if I don’t feel like what you wrote gives me enough information to write a well thought out reply. Also always feel free to delete threads I send to you that you no longer have muse for. This is for fun, it isn’t a homework assignment. You don’t need to explain yourself on your own blog!

I don’t work full-time, but that doesn’t mean I’m not constantly busy. I’m traveling almost every other weekend, and I’m trying to put my energy into being off Tumblr if I can help it. I may not always have the spoons to talk or do replies, even if you see me online. Just please be patient with me!

There will be a LOT of R-rated material on this blog. Almost everything will be NSFW - look at the show content, and especially this character. I do my best to tag all triggers, but please let me know if something specifically triggers you and I’ll edit it to be tagged right away so you can blacklist it. I’m still going to keep writing it, though. This is my blog. It is not my duty to make sure that you have a safe space, and if you don’t feel safe, I will not be remotely offended if you unfollow to keep your dash what you want it to be. It’s kind of impossible to write Angel and Angel’s story without some triggers coming up (Episode 4? Yeaaaah.)

Personals, do NOT reblog things. It already happened from the hour I made this blog, and it will become an automatic block. This is a roleplay blog. Period. I am also not an Ask Roleplay Blog, so while I may respond to some of those things in jest, it isn’t the purpose of this blog. Hazbin fan blogs and whatnot, leave my stuff out of it. If you continue to do this, I will report your blog. 

Angel Dust is gay. He will not be having romantic relationships with any females in the show. The only way he would ever be with a female, is if for whatever reason Valentino decided that he needed to sleep with a woman for his porn. Which I can’t see happening but….yeah. 

Speaking of Valentino, the way I play Angel is him still definitely within the confines of the contract. He might do things he is ashamed/embarassed of and doesn’t want to actually do because of the contract. Dubcon will probably be explored on here to some degree because he struggles saying no to Val. That doesn’t stop him from fighting back, but he’s going to do some gross things because his soul is owned. Also, my Angel does have love for Val. That doesn't mean I ship them AT ALL. It means that I have no shame as a therapist in exploring the cycle of abuse and toxic relationships, and that this is incredibly important to my Angel's story.

This being said, dubcon would be the only thing I'd put under a Read More because I know other people hate it. I don't really intend to write it out, but people could argue that Valentino using his 'poison' is considered dubious consent, and yeah, I'm going to write that and flesh it out a bit. As for other read mores, I'm lazy and it ain't gonna happen. You followed a character who is a sex worker. There's going to be smut. Murder. Cussing. That's the content of the show. I have no shame putting it out in the open. As mentioned, you can check the trigger warnings on my posts before reading something.

I’m a multipara/novella roleplayer. I’ll do some one liners and crack stuff, but it won’t be as common. I want to have elaborate threads. I want to flesh out this character. I’m going to come up with things about him that Vivzie doesn’t and make him a little bit my own. And that comes from writing, writing, writing. If I don't reply to you, it's probably because I can't work with one liners and I am stumped.

All the graphics and whatnot on this blog were either created or commissioned specifically by/for me. (I know I’m not a fabulous photoshop graphic maker but hey I tried). Do not steal from me. If I find out that you have, I will report your blog for theft. Majority of the graphic work on here is done by both @cerberuscommissions and @17webs.

DO NOT GODMODE. I will literally scream, cry, and throw up (okay, not literally). This is my blog, and I want to control Angel in my way. Please and thank.

I don't necessarily need people to reblog from the source, but if my activity is blowing up with the same person reblogging and reblogging, I'll kindly ask you to stop. If you continue, that will lead to a block because I already have hundreds of drafts and don't have time to swim through activity.

Sorry fam, I don't do Discord. I've had a few people ask, and while yes I do have it, I have it with a burning fiery passion. All roleplaying will be done here and here alone, because I like to have a Tumblr blog as a sort of 'archive.'

As for the mains (listed above), to not be discouraged just because I have mains. I was avoiding choosing them for a bit because I hate how it can feel like favoritism, but the fact of the matter is that there are unfortunately people on here that Angel has much more muse for, and that I talk to ooc almost every day. Those people get first priority. Let it be known that does NOT mean they are exclusives. As mentioned, I will be writing with every single character, no limitations. Nor are there any rules specifically associated with my mains. Mostly just means they get priority on things.

I don't have any triggers. Period. I appreciate people asking me if such and such is okay in a thread before we do it, but really, just do whatever your character feels they would do. I'm a therapist. And sure, therapists have their triggers too. But I've been exposed to so much shit that nothing really phases me anymore.

I do not own the character Angel Dust or any content from Hazbin Hotel. I am not associated with Vivziepop and am in fact an Anti-Viv blog (please don't associate me with her). Shocker, I know. But gotta put that on here. 

Tldr; Be chill, have fun, don’t follow if don’t like hypersexuality, severe trauma, or sassy gay men.  

[zukazukazuka]

Serika Toa to Retire on April 27, 2025

Long reflective navel-gazing and emotional processing under the cut.

tl;dr: If I had a nickel for every time I inadvertently planned a trip during a Soragumi taidan, I'd have two nickels.

Second nickel hurts way worse.

Inevitably, living on the opposite side of the world means I usually wake up to messages about these things before I actually see them for myself. I remember waking up on July 7, 2017 to things like "wow...hope you like Soragumi!" when her transfer was announced. It feels oddly prophetic that that year we inadvertently planned our trip to catch Asaka Manato's taidan show as well as Kiki's last Grand Theater show with Hanagumi. I cried a lot on that trip, honestly.

Once you start to immerse yourself, it's easy to get attached to your first round of top stars. We'd gotten to see Maasama and Soragumi in Elisabeth the year before, and I was sad she was leaving. Hanagumi was our home troupe, and my favorite actress was transferring. Both shows were incredible, and to this day SANTE!! remains my favorite revue of all time. I think we saw it some ridiculous amount of eight times, back when it was possible to have the privilege of satisfying your brainrot by waiting outside the Tokyo Theater at 5 AM in hopes of getting same-day tickets. I remember the utter devastation of seeing that show from the 4th row, of getting arrowed with a Kukochihiko stare from the silver bridge during her duet with Mirio that made me squirm in my seat. I remember how loud the audience was on senshuuraku in Tokyo, it felt like we were at a rock concert rather than a Takarazuka show, and how satisfying that was, despite the tears.

It's hard to believe that was seven years ago, which feels both so close (literally to a degree, as you don't have to scroll very far down this blog to get my live reaction posts lol) and somehow yet so far away (thanks COVID).

Two months ago, we bought tickets to go back to Japan in January, our first trip since 2019.

This morning I woke up to messages again.

And now apparently I've stumbled yet again into a Soragumi taidan, "my" taidan, which of course I knew ultimately was on the nearer horizon since June 2023, but could never have guessed how fraught everything in between would become.

I can't help but feel exceptionally, heartbreakingly sad.

I fell in love with Kiki from the very first time I set foot in Quatre Reves and saw her photo as Rudolf in 2014. She has always been my favorite since that day, and by the time she goes it will have been effectively 10 and a half years. 10 years, nibante under two long-running top stars, through pandemic closures and changes, and effectively 1.5 GT shows as top. In truth, I'd always prepared myself for a short run. 3 shows would've been just enough to give her 'decent' time without really feeling like they were just shoveling her off after so long as #2, although I would've been cranky about it. 4 or 5 would have been an ideal sweet spot. At this point, I'm sure 3 was always the initial plan, and I hope that had been satisfying for her going into things.

It just extra fucking sucks now.

Today I can't help but feel regret for falling off as much as I did after her transfer. I was able to see her in both of those 2019 trips, thankfully at least once on stage, but the double whammy of Mirio leaving and COVID closures made it feel a lot hard to stay connected to Takarazuka in general - which is ironic, given that I will never, ever not find it surreal to watch a raku livestream on my fucking couch at 12 AM. But I didn't watch as many as I could have. One of my favorite things had always been seeing iride photos on twitter, and it made me feel like even if I couldn't be there, I could still "keep up" with what was happening day to day. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately, given this last year) I am famously too lazy to make a lot of effort to read things in Japanese, even if Takarazuka helped improve it for a time. I have limited space and desire to buy dozens of GRAPHs or other magazines for interviews. I moved on to other interests, but always kept one finger on the pulse of things. At one point, as things went on longer and longer, I thought so many times "hey girl, if you wanna pull a MiyaRuri and bounce without making top, I fully respect and support that, even if I won't get to see you one last time."

Well.

I don't have much I want to say here about what happened last year, except that I hope such a horrendous tragedy does ultimately lead to a lot of reform at the revue. Unlike apparently most everyone, I didn't go digging around the internet for names and 'what really' happened (see: lazy, also not my fucking business). I don't know, I don't want to know, and at this point frankly I don't really care about anyone's particular opinion about the people involved, or whatever outcome they think should have happened.

But we are where we are, now.

Last week, in my naive hope that after we got through Escalier's break with no taidan announcement, I was guessing that she might yet go later next year. I'd been reading the schedule wrong and complaining about the possibility of a late summer taidan, because Japan is fucking horrendous in summer, only to realize that it would've really been October, which would be ideal, although truthfully I'm not sure I could have swung a second trip in one year. I'd been sad about not getting to see her possible ohirome during my favorite time of year, since I couldn't swing a trip last year. In hindsight, I'm glad it turned out as "lucking" into actually seeing taidan rather than potentially have booking a trip last fall and "wasting" it, and that I no longer have to worry about whether or not I get to see it. But it still really fucking sucks.

Part of what helps offset the hurt of an actress retiring, especially your actress, especially a top star, is the celebration of all that's come before. Coming in as a fan in 2014, I saw all of the photos and videos of the last day festivities of Teru and Chie, which continued through all of the others that left in subsequent years. I felt devastated for the top stars who left during the height of pandemic closures, who couldn't have that, and for fans who couldn't get to see it. I'm not even sure what taidans look like these days, as I'm sorry to say a consequence of only trailing vaguely along on the hype train for the past several years is that I haven't seen any taidan shows or bothered with social media to know if they do even a semblance of those last day activities, even for the troupe. It makes me sad to think that maybe those sorts of things are perhaps long gone, just generally. Even if they aren't, though, I doubt we'd get any of that, anyway.

So in absence of that element or really any other joy, all I can really feel is bitterly sad.

In truth, I have a lot of complex feelings about her whole run, and have for many years, but those aren't things I care to lay out here. Suffice it to say, this whole situation feels like icing on that whole cake, I guess.

As I was writing all of this, I realized that just because of timing and that we usually prioritized seeing grand theater shows over small ones, the only time I will have seen Kiki live in a lead show will be her last one. I realize that compared to many people I'm privileged to go at all, let alone the number of times I've already done so in the past, but I'm still utterly heartbroken.

At the end of Escalier last weekend, I'd been so happy to see a semblance of her old self again. Her jokes, her smile, which has always felt like sunshine to me. I can't ever know her real feelings, but I hope that maybe there is some relief for her, knowing there's an end in sight. I hope that despite everything, she can find a satisfying life after the fact, that she'll still be able to perform, if she wishes. At the end of it all, I do feel thankful for the things we do have, the experiences I've had up to this point. My one tiny silver lining is that Sakura is (supposedly, maybe, fingers crossed) hanging around, hopefully for a while, because she's an incredible powerhouse and deserves the world. I'm grateful to her for being Kiki's partner and radiating love at her on stage, and terribly looking forward to seeing that in person.

Anyway, time to go cry some more, and eventually write a letter.

[kenthenugget]

Dear Watcher....

This is going to be about the youtube channel Watcher and a recent video that they released earlier today, so if you dont watch the channel, or older content produced by Ryan, Shane and Steven at Buzzfeed, this is not going to make sense to you. This only going to be for those who are a fan of Watcher, or are fans of Buzzfeed Unsolved so if you are, that's great!

Earlier today, I got a video notifcation from the channel titled, "goodbye youtube", and it was definitely not something I wanted to see. There is a recent trend this year of youtubers retiring or taking a break this year and I was scared this was that scenario. And it kind of was but way worse. Basically, the guys over at Watcher are going to be posting on their new streaming service called....Watcher. And, no, it is not a late April Fools joke, that's actually what their doing. Initially, I was in a state of shock after I watched through the entire video. I, no joke, went through the 5 stages of grief upon viewing this announcement and was thrown through a loop to where I struggled to focus on sketching one of my comic pages. So much so that I actually made a deviant blog post about it the moment I finished watching the video (most of the content from this post will be copied and pasted from that blog so declaimer I guess). After having some time to absorb this information, I have to say that Im really disappointed with the guys over at Watcher. Like Im not mad to where Im completely done with their content but.......WHY!?

I think at this point in time that a lot of people, myself included, are burnout with the whole streaming boom we've had for the past 5 years in no part thanks to those greedy bastards at Disney....but thats another story. I miss the days when there were only 2 to 3 main streaming services and not 5 billion other services that you need to buy in order to watch a show you like that was on Netflix but it now locked behind a pay wall. Streaming services used by a novelty concept but are now not looked upon in the best light. So for the them to announce a streaming service now is definitely a bad look, especially because the content before was free to access. I feel like creators will always have an uphill battle when it comes to content that was initially free being locked behind a paywall, because you're potentially isolating your audience and bringing up the question of weather your audience if loyal enough to give you money to enjoy your content. Now, like I said, I love and respect the people at Watcher, but I dont know if I'm willing to take money out of my wallet to watch the next season of Ghost Files. Especially in this economy, where in some parts of the country a big mac now costs 20 fucking dollars, and with inflation going out of control.

Now its not like I don't understand why they're doing this. Ever since its founding in 2019, Watcher has always had troubles with money, with most of their shows not being profitable enough to make ends meet (I know that sounds bs because most of their vidoes get millions of views but this is coming from one of the founders Steven, in an update video from a while ago so idk, views probably mean jack shit in the grand scheme of things). And the fact that they started around the pandemic didn't help things either. Unlike Buzzfeed, Watcher is a much smaller company so any loss that happens is felt much more than if it was a larger one. In the video itself, they mentioned that most of their money came through youtube ads and sponsorships, which, while alright if you're an independent creator, may not be enough for a company. And then there's the fact that YouTube can remove or demonetize videos out of nowhere and for the dumbest reasons so its not a very stable sight to base your income off of. So I can understand why they felt moving on from YouTube was a good idea. But..........I think there were better ways of going about it than creating their own fucking streaming service. Like, in one of their update vidoes, they said most of their shows werent making ends meet so maybe cutting back on the production of said shows to make them not as expensive to produce would be a good solution. In their announcement vid, they talked about wanting to maintain their high production value for their shows without going under but (and I dont mean this to slight them) I dont think they understand why they popped off in the first place. For me, Im not watching Ghost Files or Mystery Files for high production value and fancy graphics, Im there for Ryan and Shane. Same reason I loved Buzzfeed Unsolved, which compared to those shows is much more bare bones. I get wanting to step up your production value from what you had at Buzzfeed but if you have budget out in certain places which would entail having a season that doesnt look as good as the previous season, that's completely fine. Im sure me and the rest of fans wouldn't have minded a downgrade because at the end of the day, the fancy sets and graphics are window dressing to why we're truly watching.

I also thinking letting us know ahead of time would've possibly softened the blow. Watcher is in a very interesting situation because there's a much closer relationship between them and their customer base as opposed to traditional companies. So they really could've been like "hey! We're thinking about having future content be on our own streaming service because doing business through YouTube is fucking us over. What do you guys think?". One explanation as to why they waited until now instead of a few months ago when this idea was sparked could've been because they knew they would get backlash and they were going ahead with the streaming service idea regardless of fan input, which might be the reason. But if that's the case, they probably would've had the comments and likes disabled from the start. Right before I started typing this, I checked the video to see if the comments were disabled and they are thankfully still there. Im someone who always wants to see the good in people (which is definitely a character flaw of mine and while defiently lead to me being at the end of an abusive relationship........another abusive relationship but lets not go there), so I think this might be the case of Ryan, Shane and Steven, thinking the streaming service was a good idea and not reading the room properly.

At this point, Im hoping that they dont do things that could make this situation 10 times worse: a) removing the existing content (Mystery Files, Puppet History, etc) off the youtube channel and having it on their streaming service. If you are going to have new seasons of those shows behind a paywall, at least have that content still up for those who want to support but cant purchase the service......b) respond to the critism in a negative way. I think things would be made worse if they lumped genuine fans who are concerned with the new direction with the trolls and haters, and double down on this new direction. Im hoping this situation ends up being a slip up that they can learn from and not being the beginning of the downfall of the Watcher gang. No joke, I think Ryan and Shane are the only youtubers who have avoided any sort of drama up to now. Youtubers I once respected over the years from Tobuscus to Leafyishere to H3H3 to Idubbz to even fucking Dream have all fell from grace in one way or another, and Im hoping the ghoul boys dont join that list....

[vesperione]

As of today, the 15th of February 2024, I have been running Vesperione for five years, and it is finally time for me to reintroduce myself to the fandom because I get told time and time again in a “big name” here still??! Anyway I am aware I'm perceived at face value so here we go:

VOTED BIGGEST WIGGLY FAN, BIGGEST HEY MELISSA! FAN, BIGGEST PAUL CATMEWS ADVOCATE AND MOST ACTIVE FAN IN THE 2024 STARCANWRECKEDPULP AWARDS: WELCOME TO TEAM VESPERIONE

Hi, hey, hello, and welcome to my resume. I'm Jay, I'm 18 and I have been in charge of Team Vesperione for half a decade. despite my blunt sometimes borderline bitchy attitude, I am GENUINELY very grateful for the people I’ve met within this fandom and the welcoming community. Like. I love most of you 🫶. I started this account when I was in Year Nine and I am now a university drop out (don't ask me on that). what the actual freak. I also started this account with the username of robertstanion which, luckily, I changed to vesperione (vuh-spare-ee-own) April 2021 before he outed himself as a sexual harasser which was a lucky escape on my behalf, and now I'm a multifandom menace!

Other fandoms I tend to post about most often are Cooking Companions/Dread Weight, Criminal Case (the 2012 facebook game actually), Miraculous Ladybug (it's 2024, cringe does not exist) and Julie And The Phantoms. Following me for Hatchetfield content also means following me for those fandom posts reblogged as well.

I am your worst nightmare when it comes to Hatchetfield Trivia. My (personal) Hatchetfield Timeline goes as such:

Jan 7th 2019: I watched TGWDLM for the first time , April 1st 2019: I watched the Starkid10 announcement, and watched as Black Friday got announced before my very eyes. October 11th 2019: I watched Nick Lang announce NPMD on the IT'S ALIVEstream, November 6th 2019: I watched the Black Friday digiticket (which really changed the perspective of my life, if I'm being honest) and from that point forward, I watched every Hatchetfield project debut in real time.

Because of the above timeline, I am a walking, talking Hatchetfield dictionary and there are some specific tags I use to navigate my way around starkid tumblr being:

consjderthecoconut:;- generic Hatchetfield posts

whatsshakjnbanana:- my Black Friday posts

aljteralmonster:- my NPMD posts

MEOW:- hey melissa tag. look at my pfp and guess my fave nmt story (it's abstinence camp actually)

kickstarter perks:- my workin boys tag

lcverlosses:- my lautski tag

track 14 on fift:- this was originally named the "angel emoji" tag but I changed it. This tag I use when I am Bluntly Correct People On Lore when it comes down to stupid takes for those who can't be bothered to do a Google. (for those curious, Track 14 on Faith In The Future (which is Louis Tomlinson’s second album) is Angels Fly)

Team Vesperione as a collective regards my entire social media presence including my instagram, tumblr, ao3 and tiktok. All socmeds are under the same name as this blog, aside from my cosplay tiktok, which is still a part of Team Vesperione, despite not having the same name. All of my vesperione accounts have (officially) been running for five years now, including my ao3 profile, which is exactly one day older than my insta and tumblr.

For whatever reason, if you want some fun little trivia facts about me, here you go:

As an ex digital media production student, for my final project, I made a Beginners Guide To Hatchetfield Podcast called Hatchetfield Action News so if anyone is Dan Reynolds, it's me. You can find that link here: https://linktr.ee/dothncx.

I’m the person who willed the “Paul is Richie’s uncle” headcanon into existence. The origin was This Aint For The Best chapter,, nine. So youre welcome!

The name Vesperione came from Vesperia + Viperion from Miraculous Ladybug. I chose this name when I became a multifandom blog

My favourite Hatchetfield musical is NPMD but my fave starkid musical overall is VHSCCS

My fave Hatchetfield character of all time is Wiggly. He makes me genuinely feral.

My overall ranking of the HF series goes NPMD, Workin Boys! (proud backer 2019 baby!), Abstinence Camp, TGWDLM, Hey Melissa!, Honey Queen, Yellow Jacket, Killer Track, Watcher World, Time Bastard, Forever And Always, Hatchetfield Ape Man, Black Friday, Jane's A Car, Witch In The Web, Daddy, Perky's Buds.

I have absolutely no intentions of leaving this blog any time soon you'd better prepare to be Sick of me and my angel emoji tag because i am going nowhere.

And if you need more info abt me, check my pinned xoxo

[theanomily]

Regarding the H.I.V.E. birthday bundle, specifically my less-than-satisfactory contribution to it:

(Under a cut because I estimate this to be about 1000 words).

The shortest way I can say this is "sorry."

In a longer form, I acquknowledge that Wing is a beloved, respected character of the H.I.V.E. series, becoming a favourite of many, and ranking highly in the minds of everyone else. If anyone deserved better treatment in this event, it was undoubtedly him, not to mention the real-life disappointed H.I.V.E. fandom.

I also acquknowledge that this was probably the largest communal event since the release of Bloodline three years ago and that the date on which it was announced was long enough ago to counter any explanation I could possibly give, especially since I, as a minor, have more time to commit to any one project than an adult burdened with full-time employment and more significant responsibilities than I. Yet I shall offer one regardless and leave the perception of my character at the mercy of your own individual judgements. It is as follows:

Some of you might remember me directing a post to an "anon" threatening me in January, which I have since deleted. This is actually not a recent or isolated issue- not even for my blog, although I doubt that anybody remembers her posting so-called "edgy" stuff on it back in like 2019. But if you do, fun fact: it was the same person. This person used to be my friend, then a "girlfriend" and is now something of an enemy. As well as threats, there has been blackmail and cases of physical violence committed against both me and my other friends. The reason I bring this up is because she followed me to the store I worked at sometime mid Feburary and provoked me there too. I was stupid, I shouted at her, and I was rightfully fired as a result. And the reason I mention this at all is because it has been hell finding a new job, eating up the time I had specifically set aside for this project.

Then, the entirety of March I more or less dedicated to finally reading bloodline (I read it twice more after my initial "live react" posts so I could actually get the juice out of it).

On the 23rd of March, my cat died, and to be brutally honest, I spent the entirety of April not doing anything that wasn't complete brainrot (hence the surge in my blog activity 💀).

May brought with it UCAS exams (UCAS points being what you need in the UK to get into university).

June brought the results, one of which was a C in physics, a grade that my school, family, and peers viewed as an unforgivable failure. As such, I had devices as well as other "distractions," including my books, taken away until the end of July so I could focus on resitting everything. Additionally, I was forced to go to school two hours early for extra lessons, given hour long detentions until the end of the academic year and had to have random meetings during my breaks to really rub in how stupid I am (no exaggerations are being made here; my head of year managed to drag calling me the r slur into a forty minute rant on one occassion).

Then, in August, my uncle got into a car accident and requested that myself and my parents fly over into Zimbabwe to help him. Fair enough, but in the time it had taken us to get over there, the man had gone off-grid (as he has a habit of doing) and we still have no clue of his whereabouts.

I promise I will make amends, and the only path I can see heading towards this objective is completing and redoing what you have seen for this project alongside a few other elements I had planned to incorporate into it. To be more specific, I will:

- Finish the birthday bundle.

I'm sure you've noticed that the "playlist" and "prompts for you" categories are missing from my offering. This will be rectified, and I will add these to the original birthday bundle post so it can be completed. I had elected to avoid those categories as I figured that having a few tasks done to a "rushed and painfully mediocre" standard would be better than having a small amount of awful content for each element of the bundle. The reasons why those two categories were chosen to be neglected were that a) no music I know at all aligns with Wing and b) I had not noted that the "prompts for you" was an existing section and only remembered when reading through the example Otto post, meaning I had not left myself enough time to sit with and revisit ideas to see if they really were any good. Additionally, that fanfic is nowhere near finished. I do plan to edit the published chapter and then continue it, and I shall try my best to stick to frequent, regular updates of a higher quality and quantity than I have presented you with thus far.

- Improve what I have given you

I plan to drastically improve my digital art for each "mini" picture that's in my work- you can see that there's a very, very good reason why I kept them all mini. When I'm done, they will be transformed into something that can at least be posted at their full size without risking the health of your eyes.

- Add to what I've given you

I know I've done very few headcanons, so I'll be sure to focus on Wing for future ones that I'll publish on my blog. In all likelihood, the next post of mine will be a much longer list of Wing headcanons. And even if it is not next, it will still hopefully be in the near future.

My initial plan for the "Wing art" was to make a rudimentary physical model of him. I can't promise it'll be of high quality since the last time I did this, I was four years younger, working with better materials, working without keeping it a secret, and crafting the fox emoji rather than an entire person. I also can't see how the colour green, which is what I was assigned, will fit in. But I'll do it anyway.

Something that I played with a bit while waiting for the prompts to be given out was character art. Currently, I have WIPs for Shelby and Laura and have posted a Ms Leon. I want to do something for every character, and Wing will most certainly be included in that, so I promise I'll take extra care to do him justice when I get around to him. Consider it to be like a non-picrew alternative to the cover image.

I also have a physical drawing in the works, though I confess this too shall probably take a while in the interest of refining skills before applying them so I don't waste the one piece of sketch paper I bought.

Once more, I am so extremely sorry for what I have done, and I will ensure that never again shall this height of inadequacy be reached and inflicted onto people who deserve so much better.

Thank you for reading

[breadboylovin]

28 :3

28: A description of the person I dislike the most

omg this question is JUICY. strap in yall im telling you guys the tale of the insane girl i liked in freshman year of high school whose antics landed me in therapy for like the past 4 years

under the cut cus idk how long this will get. also this is from this ask meme

okay so we met online thru the bts fandom. she lived 2 hours away from me and we had a 2 year age difference (i was 15 she was 17)

the first ?!!?!? thing about her was that she was writing like INSANE bts porn fanfic (and i mean insane like. everything she published had at least one ao3 content warning on it) despite being underage. i learned about this in like april 2018 but i was too head over heels for her to care. in june 2018 we finally met irl and went to a science museum and she told me about some of the insane shit she was writing IN THE FOOD COURT while i was trying to eat a shitty subway sandwich. like wow

anyway summer passes and we have a bunch of relationship drama. im not getting into it too much (ive talked enough about it in therapy LOL) but we didnt date, it was an unrequited love thing where she kinda just exploited me for validation cus she was super depressed. anyway at some point we start talking less but she sends me her tumblr discourse blog. and then in september 2018 i found out she blocked me from it so i checked why and SHE HAD TURNED INTO A FULL-ON TERF while pretending she was still cool with our basically all-trans friend group. so naturally i show everyone else and we kick her out of all our gcs. at some point after that she also detransitions (she was a trans guy before which was why i liked her. cus im gay)

so i dont talk to her at all after that because why would i. technically i sent her an apology for something that id fucked up on but that wasnt like... a normal friend conversation yknow. and i assumed that she had figured out that she fucked my whole shit up and i wanted nothing to do with her. but APPARENTLY NOT because in august 2019 i woke up one day with several messages from her on twitter where she was like "omg this new hurricane made me think of you (we both live in florida and this was when hurricane dorian hit us) ^___^ how have you been?? im doing so good im in [MY SISTER'S COLLEGE] for biology and having a great time"

needless to say i was flabbergasted. im pretty sure i had literally woken up from a nightmare ABOUT HER that day and now i had to deal with shaking with anxiety so bad that i could barely talk to my mom over breakfast. i initially tried to be nice and be like "haha wow i havent heard from you in a long time... ummmm if you see me on your campus while im visiting my sister please dont talk to me". but then i went to therapy that night and left mad as hell so the next day i told her off and was basically like "i want nothing to do with you and if you talk to me again ill throw rocks at you". and that was the last time i talked to her

last i heard about her online she had been run off of insane bts porn twitter for being a terf. then she started writing insane porn about figure skaters and got run off of THAT twitter circle too. i hope she never knows peace again god bless

[xielexalt]

Xiel's Atelier Log #1 (April 2024)

I decided to start this blog detailing my creative endeavors and progress every so often, discussing the process and thoughts regarding recent releases and current WIPs!

1: "Buffer" ft. ZETHIEL ZERO (DiffSinger)

I commissioned Annoying Hyena to create this DiffSinger voicebank of ZETHIEL ZERO, based on 20 minutes of his Japanese singing data! He's obviously not the best quality DS, but I really like his vocal quality and how it differs from his RVC. I have some ideas for the future of creating an update of his DS that includes his English data, even more singing data created with RVC, and parallel training to help his vocal range, but that'd be for 2025 at the absolute earliest.

Regarding "Buffer," it's the first song Empty old City created as part of Kamitsubaki, and I fell in love with it instantly. I think I'm the first cover of it, and I really enjoyed tuning him as well to reflect some of the stylistic choices of Kahoca's singing. It's such an excellent song and I'm just. OBSESSED.

2: "Tera Tera" - Alcheglow SIDE B

I worked with Kezo, Pigeon, and Kori to make this chorus of Tera Tera for A Sekai Tour! I actually had two groups under "Alcheglow" entered in this event, but SIDE A had to be delayed a bit due to some circumstances. It's a super fun song that the rest of the team really liked, so I'm glad we made a fun final result.

In any case, I'm really proud of this mix and how it all came together. I did all the art and as well, and the simple video. I tuned Rikka and Pigeon tuned Chis-A, and one thing that's really fun about 2 tuners for a cover like this is that the vocalsynths blend into each other more "authentically" like they're actually two people singing, instead of their voices overlapping into one new resonance. Rikka is my darling favorite so I'm glad to use her. I also discovered ZETHIEL, arcdia, and Rikka's blend is pretty insane. I do have a ZETHIEL x Rikka duet planned at some point...

3: "Karen's Cleanup" - arcdia

arcdia's first solo cover coming back as a "revived" vocalist. The process to create her voice is to first sing normally as myself, then convert my voice with RVC into her voice. Although she and ZETHIEL ZERO share a voice essentially, it boils down to the song choice and expression that strongly differentiates them. arcdia leans into the sweeter charm and covers beautiful or sinister songs, while ZETHIEL ZERO leans into a "cooler" charm and covers melancholic and electronic songs? Additionally, ZETHIEL ZERO is strictly a vocalsynth, while arcdia is more of a "real" singer, especially because more "real" singing goes into her presentation than synthesized singing.

I really really love this song, and the comments I got on it during February Youtaite Rewind said her voice suits the song so well and could be the original. I'm glad arcdia's voice has a similar distinctive charm to SEKAI/Isekaijoucho in that case. It's a bit strange that I love listening to arcdia meanwhile ZETHIEL ZERO is a bit of a mixed bag due to dysphoria feelings.

4: "Ga1ahad and Scientific Witchery" - ZETHIEL x arcdia

For this cover, arcdia isn't revived through RVC, these are genuinely just vocals I recorded way back in early 2019 in the real. And then I rerecorded for the other part in late 2023 (4 years on T) to create this duet. This song has such a chokehold on my psyche and I'm obsessed with this song so much... I feel like it defines a part of my inner soul or essence so to speak, so I feel like by making an arcdia x ZETHIEL cover of this song, it's like I've created the perfect Ga1ahad and the perfect Witch.

It's because of this song, I decided to take arcdia's persona in the direction of a "witch" style. Incidentally, ZETHIEL with his emphasis on alchemy and technology suits the "scientific" side of this song. ZETHIEL and arcdia are my perfect duo.

5: "Kannagi" - ZETHIEL

I will not stop covering Hiiragi Magnetite songs. I have more in store.

I'm obsessed with this song in particular, and wanted to create an utaite/VSinger version I could listen to a lot, so I made this shortly after my trip overseas to attend an honor choir. I felt like that trip really awakened a new side of my voice and I think I showcased it here well. I think I listened to myself in this cover so much that it showed up in my YT Recap stats as a top song.

Although I can't belt super high like a lot of other tenor vocalists, I feel like my falsetto has its own appeal. When this was played at a Youtaite Showcase end-of-year stream, a lot of people commented on how insane my vibrato and falsetto is, which I was really happy about, as well as the unique youthful quality of my voice combined with the beauty and technique of the cover. I'm really, really glad people love ZETHIEL like this.

Kannagi is a super captivating song that I'm just really really obsessed with. I feel like it encompasses such a beautiful side of Hiiragi Magnetite. Yes, it's an electronic song, but it really just feels so similar to the beauty evoked by classical or orchestral songs -- which I love a lot too.

Speaking of which, Kannagi, Ga1ahad, and Buffer are all part of a new playlist I created called "Essence of ZETHIEL" -- which I think are the "key songs" for ZETHIEL's overall image and vibe. I think I worked really hard planning on ZETHIEL's image as a character, and I'm satisfied with where we're going with this now.

6: "Pale & Deep" - ZETHIEL (WIP)

This is the next "big" cover for ZETHIEL to define his character image, incidentally it's the same composer as his debut song Hana to Nare.

I carefully considered a lot of artists and decided to go with this artist for the music video. They captured ZETHIEL's vibe so exceptionally well, and it'll be the first music video featuring ZETHIEL's new design. I wanted him to have more of an "alchemist" vibe!

Regarding the song choice of "Pale & Deep," I was really excited Awairo became a proper musical duo (Yunosuke + WaMi) and under Sinsekai at that! Their visuals are so pretty and their music as well, I listened to Pale & Deep on loop for so long!!! The music video evoking "blue" and the lyrics too, makes it even more suitable for ZETHIEL.

I arranged the harmonies here myself, I kind of want to adjust things to make it more "proper" Yunosuke style. But it might be OK by itself, we'll see.

Trying to make an MV myself is difficult, but that's what I'm gonna try to test myself on this for this cover. I hope to release this by June or July. I downloaded a lot of assets for this cover in particular, inspired by my video editing class and the original MV of "Pale & Deep."

7: Various original song/arrangement works

Been unable to publish a lot of them just yet, but there's a lot of original song works I've been doing in the past half year or so. Keep in mind some of these are still WIPs and unmixed.

#1 is client work. #2 I hope to release as a single this year. #3 and #4 will be part of a collaboration album. #5 is also client work!

Also, I published "Aurora" onto Soundcloud, it's just been sitting around finished for at least a year so I decided to post it. It's a fansong for Tobias from Dragalia Lost.

I think I'll be able to release it onto streaming as a B-Side to another collaboration track.

Anyways, that's the atelier log for today!! See you in a bit more!

[lutethebodies]

LTB Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Intro/How I Got Here

When I spun up this blog my goal was simple: a place to dump screenshots of my Tavs and other BG3-related brainrot. My personal site's blog wasn't a good place for it, since I'm a freelancer and it's gotta have at least some concessions to "professionalism," so here we are. But it feels a bit too aloof to do these "Tav Tuesdays" posts chock-full with names and places unfamiliar to 99.9999% of readers here, so "LTB Worldbuilding Wednesdays" have arrived.

They won't be convoluted or super lore-dumpy, but they will provide context for my characters, who've been my 5e mainstays for years—with lives and stories and whatnot—before I imported them into BG3 and forced tadpoles in their heads. For every subsequent post in this series, I'll try to distill the TL;DR of a place or faction or whatever—but only enough for it to be relevant to a given Tav's story, because (again) I don't want to drown a reader in lore (unless that's your thing, which is totally fine and I'm down for asks about that).

I'm also in the middle of churning out a second homebrew fantasy atlas (more on the first one below the fold), so ideally these posts will keep me in the mindset of getting that work done instead of running yet another BG3 playthrough. Wednesdays are the weekly game night for my tabletop 5e group, so it's already a good day to be in worldbuilding-brain.

While it's been extremely fun and fulfilling to do over the past five years, I won't claim that it's the right way or only way to worldbuild, because that's silly given the wealth of other resources out there and the galaxy of creativity we're all capable of. It's worked for me, though, so it's not nothing. Here's a quick rundown of how I got here, with "here" being "a sufficiently fleshed out campaign setting with plenty of room to grow":

Creating a Unique Map Style

I'm a huge map nerd, and have reached a point in my life/career where I get to do freelance map design as a part-time job. I'm shaking off the aesthetic snobberies I learned as a graphic designer, because snobbery is too close to gatekeeping, but I'm still enough of a snob about map style to want my own stuff to be unique. In a sea of samey-looking hand-drawn-hobbit-maps, I wanted my homebrew world to stand out, so here's how I did that:

Creating "Homeworlds" - a brief process piece about my April 2019 digital map illustration project.

Creating "The Game Board" - process and background for my 2019 found-texture fictional map project.

Creating "Found Islands" - a smaller 2021 side-project that sorta refined that found-texture style.

Creating Compelling Names

Once I had a unique visual style, I had to populate the world (or at least start to, one region or place at a time), which required some decisions about toponymy for names of places, people, and in-world history/lore, because pretty world maps can still feel boring without stories of who lives there:

What’s in a Name? Fictional Toponymy for Fantasy Maps - process piece for how I developed naming conventions.

Custom Fantasy Map Illustration - portfolio page for my found-texture digital map work.

The Game Board, 2022 Version - One result of all this was a big fat map poster I'm still proud of.

Creating a Homebrew Fantasy Atlas

A map can only show the names, though—it can't tell the stories to a compelling level of detail—so here's where I got to combine lots of my different personal and professional interests and experience: my own fantasy gazetteer. I made all the maps (aforementioned map nerd), I did all the design work (two decades of experience in publication layout), I created/edited all the iconography/imagery (two decades in design plus two more before that as a generally creative person), and I composed/compiled all the lore (I have an English BA and I dabbled in journalism for a few years). Et voila: "The Nua Gazetteer, Vol. 1" was born.

The Nua Gazetteer, Volume 1: Lands and Lore of Aviridia - portfolio page for the main gazetteer project.

The Nua Gazetteer: Announcement - kickoff/kick in the pants for me to get going on this beast.

The Nua Gazetteer: Production Notes - process and influences on the project as a whole.

The Nua Gazetteer: Release Notes - posts for the digital (2022) and print (2023) gazetteer release.

And that's not even getting into the recording project I did for seven of my bard's songs. Maybe I'll do, like, a brief "Music Monday" series. None of this will ever have the juice of my one runaway Minthara post, but whatever. If it's compelling for me (a brain-rotted lore-bard), it won't be bullshit for you. Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

[kimmiessimmies]

Hello?? Anyone still out there?

While I seriously doubt anyone is still following KimmiesSimmies, I wanted to post anyway, just in case someone is. I have some plans, and would like to share.

First let me tell you where I’ve been and why it’s taken so long for me to post here again.

My last post was in 2018. Right before I got involved in renovating my new house. In september 2018, my son and I moved to our new place. There was still lots to do and on top of that, in April 2019 I fell pregnant with my second child. Very much planned, but still lifechanging. On Christmas Eve 2019 my daughter was born. Life with two kids is wonderful, but also very busy. Considering it takes my game at least half an hour to start up and then it’s always bound to crash again sooner rather than later, finding the time to play, and then edit the pictures and writing the stories for KimmiesSimmies is nearly impossible. However, my love for my Simmies is everlasting. I missed them dearly, they’re like family to me. Even though I couldn’t play, I was often thinking up stories and making future plans for them. Will Henry succeed in greenifying Honeycomb Valley? Where is Martha? Does Daniel and Sadie’s relationship survive the distance? How does Morgan handle her co-parenting situation? What does Susie and Luke’s wedding look like? I have the answers, and many more, but they’re all in my head.

However, I’m dying to share. These stories, that have been building up in my head for five years, need to get out. So I started writing. And even though I don’t think KimmiesSimmies still has much of an audience left, I still decided I want to share these stories. Now the only question left was, how? My site has always been heavily picturebased, as is to be expected of a Simblog. This has always been my style as well, at one point I even said it: I don’t play to write, I write about what I’ve played. This was already shifting slightly within the last few stories I’ve written. Because even then, with one kid, the time I had to play was far less than the time I had to make up stories, I started to use my play time to play out the stories I had set up in my mind. While playing I took pictures and when I wrote the blog post I made up the text but the main story line had been clear even before I started up the game.

To tell the stories I need to tell now, I will take it one step further: the stories are already written, in detail, and when I get the chance, I will start up the game to take the pictures I need to emphasise the words. I won’t play out these stories in their entirety, but I will set up the scenes I need so the stories get that little bit extra. I couldn’t even play the stories out fully even if I wanted to, because the way I’ve written them now, my characters sometimes perform actions impossible in a Simuniverse. My “no poses” policy however, will, mostly, be maintained.

The stories in itself are also slightly different. While I was writing, I realised I often focused more on the emotions involved in the moment, sometimes making the stories more serious. At the same time, writing this way, gave my characters more personality. So, more text, less pictures, but also a lot more depth. Another consequence of writing first is that the subjects of my stories have changed a bit compared to before. When playing, it’s easy to show an event, or a casual Summerday where not a whole lot really happens, but it’s still fun to witness and be a part of. When writing without playing first such situations make for a less interesting storyline, so those will occur less.

Long story short: if you are still following KimmiesSimmies and stuck around for 5 years to see how their lives continue, you will get your answers. In a different way than you’re used to and I can’t make any promises about frequency. But yes, things will happen. I for one am very excited about this. 🙂

My first story, evolving around James, is already up on the site, but more on that later.

[norfkid]

was tagged by @patronsaintofdesire to answer these questions and tag nine people you want to get to know better! thank you, malina :]

last song: as of writing this, marie doucer, marie colère by manon hollander from the john wick 4 soundtrack. it's essentially a french version of paint it black by the rolling stones & it's a banger

favourite colour: i always say yellow (like a gold yellow, #ffc000), but by that i usually mean the combination of black & yellow. i'm also pretty fond of the greyish-blue i use on my blog (#7b9e9a)

last film/tv show: the last thing i watched in full was point break (ty andrew @busaikuknee for initially convincing me to watch it, "keanu reeves has to learn how to surf to solve robberies" is a truly baffling concept & no one will ever do it again). i say "in full" bc also been revisiting a lot of clips from ip man 1-4 so in my head it feels like i've rewatched those too

sweet/spicy/savoury: savoury. i don't have sweet things very often, and while i can tolerate fairly spicy food i just don't enjoy it that much (i'm a massive disappointment to my family)

relationship status: philosophically speaking, aren’t we all single?

last thing i googled: cozmo and vector robots! i saw a video somewhere of these guys and got so excited. they're these rly cute little WALL-E -esque robot friends made by an american robotics/ai startup called Anki, who specialised in robotics technology for children. i looked online to see if they were still around, but they've been discontinued since the company went bankrupt in April 2019 <\3

also related, there's this article from 2019 i read called Discovery of the Uncanny Valley that briefly mentions the Vector robots, but also discusses other examples of technology made in the past that have these human-like attributes given to them. it's a light read & there are some links to other similar articles at the end if you're into that stuff :]

current obsession: well, wrestling is always a given. i've fallen out with njpw for months now, but i've been watching more pro wrestling noah instead & i'm loving it tbh

apart from that, i've been watching a lot of Donnie Yen films bc i'm a little bit a lot in love with the old man (60 y/o btw & looks like that, fucking wild man). and by proxy i've been learning a bit about chinese martial arts (wing chun, in particular (a southern chinese style that influenced guys like ip man, bruce lee, jackie chan, sammo hung, donnie yen, etc etc)) through his interviews and stuff.

it's funny that i'm always so interested in "sports" i can't ever physically do & they always have some element of storytelling/performance and coordination... the martial arts to stunt performance to choreography to dance pipeline is all just so fucking fascinating.

i think chinese martials arts has gripped me bc all these 70s/80s/90s films made in china rely so much on pulling off wild stunts and fights without the budget for cgi and equipment. not to discredit the guys that do their own stunts in hollywood, but it's rare and always cause for celebration... in chinese filmmaking it's so normal. and as a result their performances are just so real and visceral. like, i watch wrestling ffs, ofc i'm drawn to films where storytelling and physicality intertwine. you construct intricate rituals etc etc

on that note, i'm really excited by the new wave of stunt performers turned film directors we've been getting. guys like Yuen Woo-Ping (Matrix Reloaded, Drunken Master) are already established in coordinating incredible scenes and stunts, but more recently: Chad Stalenski (the John Wick films), David Leitch (Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde), Sam Hargrave (Extraction), etc. there's a sort of magic lost in all these mainstream big budget marvel superhero and hollywood action films where fight scenes are so easily ruined by a thousand jumpcuts and wiring and fantasy, but these guys are bringing back that special smth, that authenticity and grittiness (not only in their choreography, but in the filmmaking and cinematography of those fight scenes too). it's so refreshing & i’m fucking nerd sorry

not so much an obsession, but i've also developed a new, old appreciation for woodwork (carving, whittling, joinery, etc) & in another life i think i would have loved to be a carpenter...

last book: admittedly, i don't read. tho i got a joblot of old hellblazer comics from ebay recently and have been meaning to revisit them

looking forward to: not much really... i find it hard to think about the distant future & i don't get that sense of anticipation and motivation from long-term plans. maybe getting this third and last year of uni over and bloody done with? which is incidentally something i'm absolutely dreading (“you need to get a job, you need to get a job, you need to get—”)

[orangepunkwitch-blog]

Where have I been?

I will try not to get into too much detail (considering this is a witchy blog; I originally wanted to get into the super-detailed stuff in my main blog) but a LOT has happened since 2018!

If you’re a new follower: hello there! You likely haven’t seen much from me in recent years because I migrated from tumblr in 2018, only to make a friggin’ back-up account because I needed to vent about stuff, lol. But I’ll be posting more frequently now! Especially since I saw this post the other day, which made me come back here. 

But first, to the old followers: we got catching up to do.

I should note that any followers who followed me to my Mastodon account saw me sort of drop off from there but I’ve been more active on there the last few months.

CONTENT WARNING: I will be talking about some health-related trauma and there will also be mentioning of ED for the next few paragraphs. I’ll signal the end of that with all caps bold-italics.

2019 was the year my body decided to... ramp up the pain. From the tail-end of summer onward, I had developed health issues that affecting my colorectal areas, complete with rectal cramps, but all on one side. Eating was becoming difficult for me, as I had to do everything I can to avoid constipation as my chronic anal fissures worried me. It was to a point that I actually got a cane, and I ended up skipping eating at all except for dinner on my first two days of my period. This continued into 2020 as my high metabolism made me slowly drop in weight over time to a point where I was really underweight. But that pain on my period that caused me to use a cane because I thought I had some sort of.. growth or something pressing on my sciatic nerve... That’s what kept making me constantly adjusting my diet. But it’s hard to eat when the pain eliminates your appetite or makes everything come back up and you nearly collapse from exhaustion.

April 2021, I had an anal fissure that, while not very painful, had a considerable amount of blood that warranted my very first ambulance right to the ER. I’m fine, but I had blood tests done just in case it was Crohn’s. It’s not. I was recommended a gastroenterologist, who at first recommended a colonoscopy, but I begged for something less invasive (my first CT scan!). And he was glad I did, because I had a golfball-sized cyst on my ovary that was pinching and pressuring my large intestine, as well as creating pressures everywhere else.

He referred me to the best gyno I’ve ever met. Upon meeting him, he immediately told me, “I want to perform surgery on you as soon as possible.” He also went, “While I’m in there, did you want your tubes removed?” Like.. no questions. This guy was fucking awesome. I felt like a person to him (the gastro-doc was cool, too!)

September 2021, I got surgery. This gyno specializes in ovarian cancer, and that’s what he was afraid of. But lo and behold, it was not cancer! The cyst was chocolate in color!

It was endometriosis, confirming my decade-long suspicion.

He told me that the cyst was sticking to my bowel, and he gently pulled it loose, but saw no other signs of it anywhere else in me. He wasn’t a specialist, but he knew what to watch out for.

I ended up losing the ovary. But post-op recovery was a breeze. I didn’t need painkillers, and that still freaks my husband out, lmao.

2022 saw me going to seek a counselor for a few things (abandonment issues, trauma related to health issues, as well as being assessed for Autism, which I’ll get to that last one after the content warning bumper at the end here), and the counselor I ended up seeing was some... I guess religious lady who specializes in eating disorders. By this point, I knew I was underweight and was trying to get a hold of the right doctor to get that taken care of, but despite telling hr of my health issues, she kept insisting I was anorexic.

Meeting after meeting, she refused to listen. She did everything but tell me directly that she didn’t believe me. She invited my husband to come in on the last meeting, to which I agreed, and when he took my side, she immediately ignored he existed. And I’m still messed up from her.

I saw a nutritionist who recommended a nutritional shake intended for gaining weight and such, but she also acted like I had an eating disorder, begging me to “just eat more” and eventually told me, “I don’t know how endometriosis affects how you eat.” The only silver lining is these shakes do the trick.

I am gaining weight, just not at the rate people would like me to, but I’m DEFINITELY making progress. It’s just a high metabolism has ALWAYS made weight-gain so difficult to me.

OKAY, THIS IS THE END OF THE TRIGGERING STUFF. I APOLOGIZE. THE REST SHOULD BE FINE. IF NOT, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

I’ll keep this bit brief, but I’ve discovered that I’m Autistic! I’ll keep it to only self-diagnosis, as if I had an official one, that could rip all sorts of rights away from me here in the US. I’ve got a mouth on me, so someone (anyone, really) could use such a diagnosis against me if they wanted (such as having me involuntarily committed, abuse as a patient at any medical facility, etc.) Figuring out how my own mind works has helped me a lot to a point where my husband says my mood has significantly improved.

And now, the important part relating to this blog: my practice.

This is... a lot. So I’m going to sort of keep it short because I definitely want to make more detailed posts on some of this.

I’m of Serbian descent; I’ve had the most cultural exposure in my family to Serbian Orthodox practices (it wasn’t a whole lot, because I guess my dad (who is where I get my Serbian heritage from) wanted me to be “normal” or something... the guy wants to be plane white-bread ‘Murican and tried to make me like that, too, basically), and after realizing how much of stuff in general is appropriated, I decided to back off from a lot of things outside of the safe stuff (like Tarot, color/candle magick, runes, etc.)

I also realized that on my mom’s side (she’s Irish, and the only Irish-American culture she has is getting to say that she’s Irish), I have actual colonizer’s blood in me, and that did not sit well with me at all. (Mom loves to brag about how we’re related to Andrew Jackson.... yeah...) I didn’t want to have any association with that at all, not even by accident. So I decided to educate myself a little regarding colonizers and the Americas.

And after I did lots of reading, I’ve come to the conclusion that, in my eyes, much of Christianity is basically a colonizing tool. And if anyone knows anything about Serbian history, it took 2 tries for that to take hold, which is precisely why much of the Pagan practices still remain within Serbian Orthodoxy.

So what’s my practice now? Welp, I’m still Pagan, I’m still a Lokean, but I’m gonna reclaim my roots and reform it. And by “reform,” I mean not only shedding the Christian aspect of it, but also adjusting the folk magick practices (so, for example, no sacrificing of animals). I’m going to do a separate post soon after this one about that, too. But I do want everyone to keep in mind that this is what I’m doing for me. I’m not trying to convince anyone to do anything regarding reclaiming their roots. If you wanna do it and have your reasons how and why you wanna do it, go for it! But I’ll be sharing what I’m doing (and plan to do, I’m still kinda in the beginning stages of it) so that others have an example in case that’s the route they wanna go.

I’m gonna end the post here, because I’m gonna start going all over the place. So once I fold laundry, I’ll make the next post all about my practice and what I am doing and planning to do in better detail (including what gods have left my life and who are sticking around!)

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Lol, let’s note a few things for posterity, shall we? (Repost)

Sigh. Can’t even leave here for a few days lmaooo. It really is comeback season. It’s the eve of Kendrick Lamar’s new album but I’ll just mention a few things since some of you have questions.

I’ve already written about how Kim Youngdae and others have described how Korean journalists have treated BTS and ARMYs for years. I’ve mentioned the JTBC break-in to the HYBE building, I’ve mentioned the media coverage for BTS around the time of the Burning Sun scandal, and by now it’s old news that there’s been repeated, deliberate negative coverage of BTS, especially Jimin, by Korean ‘journalists’ for the last 2 months which has intensified since BTS came back to Korea from their successful Vegas concerts. I’ve also noted how the timing is coincidentally also around the time the CEO of YG Entertainment is on trial for threatening to kill a former trainee. Link to my old post here. Lol.

Before we get to the titillating events of the last 72 hours, let’s walk a bit down memory lane. The text isn’t long but I will be posting some screenshots to help you piece things together.

*

First quick interesting tidbit. It’s interesting that the one journalist I’ll highlight today is Juwon Park, the journalist who started the latest uproar on Twitter by tagging BTS’s personal Twitter account two days ago after the Proof tracklist was revealed, demanding to know why Jimin selected Filter (a song written by Danke, a group of 3 women), one of about 8 songs in BTS’s discography made before 2020 that a man on trial for sex offences contributed to by playing guitar. The allegations against him were made almost a year after BTS worked with him and BTS have not worked with him since. Juwon Park bears no relation to another Juwon Park, a guitarist who has ALSO worked with BTS and specifically Jimin before. Same name, different people, but coincidentally tied by guitarists who have worked with BTS.

*

Juwon Park ('journalist’) started her career as a dancer for YG Entertainment (from 2011 - 2013), then got into blogging, then 'proper journalism’ in 2013 - 2014. Her coverage of BTS has always, without exception, had one thing in common. By the end of this post I’m curious to know if you’ll be able to figure out what that thing is.

When interviewing Psy for his latest comeback in April this year, she confirmed career connection to YG Entertainment:

(Psy used to work under YG Entertainment and she was a backup dancer with the same agency.)

*

A few screenshots spanning the last 4 years to show how Juwon Park describes interview events related to BTS:

(Just by the way, corporations are mandated by law to include *all* press to invited events. If HYBE wants any Korean journalists to cover an event abroad, by law they cannot pick and choose which news stations attend, they must invite all and its customary to cover the expenses as its an invited event).

*

Here’s how Juwon Park has tried to engage and solicit comments from ARMY and BTS typically over inflammatory subjects:

Note the person she sent this to is not Korean nor is she even in Korea. She’s an ARMY (one of hundreds that I can’t post since there’s an image limit on Tumblr) who Juwon has solicited comments from on every subject from enlistment to the inauguration scandal around the new president (that was shown to be false and HYBE had to release a statement to deny), to basically any controversial topic that involved BTS over the last 5 years especially. She’s been into my DMs before in early 2019 around the time of the Burning Sun scandal. I left her on read and ignored, and most ARMYs did the same. We know who this person is.

Now some will say, "why does any of this matter? She clearly has a point about BTS being associated with a sex offender and she of course does not support sex offenders." A few screenshots to show how Juwon feels about known sex offenders and/or music credited to known sex offenders who are *not connected to BTS (but almost all of whom are connected to YG Entertainment, coincidentally).

For people who might not know who Owen Ovadoz is, I’m quickly running out of space for screenshots so I’ll just link to a summary of who he is here.

*

This particular tidbit is unconnected to anything above but I think it's important you know that Juwon thinks it appropriate to ask female idols why they choose to go bra-less under their clothes when walking through an airport. She’s confirmed she’s said this to Hwasa...

Anyway, back to Juwon.

*

Even earlier this year during an especially sensitive time in Korea due to pandemic fatigue, when talking about high omicron rates in Seoul during the time a 60,000-person football event with FULL in person attendance and cheering allowed was happening (the same week), she instead highlighted BTS’s concerts which had strict restrictions, no cheering was allowed, the seats were socially distanced and only 12k people were allowed per day in a full sized stadium. But this is how she framed it lol:

···

Anyway, so almost 3 days ago now, Juwon said this:

*

Never mind that:

BTS is of course not actually working with a sex criminal. The work relationship BTS/BigHit had with Jung Bobby ended in 2019, at least a year before any allegations were first made. Jung Bobby’s connection to BTS is through about eight songs which he contributed to as a guitarist and occasionally as a lyricist. These songs include Filter, Love Maze, I’m Fine, Dream Glow, Answer: Love Myself, 134340, and a few others. Juwon Park later on asserted that Filter is written and produced entirely by Jung Bobby and that Jimin insisting on adding the song to the anthology album is an action consistent with his recent history (Jimin was in the news at the time for the missed insurance payments - in news articles written by Juwon's colleagues). Btw, Filter’s primary lyricist is Danke, a group of three women, and the song's producer is Tom Wiklund.

The Proof album is an anthology, and based on the credits for other songs so far, no previously released song has been re-written, re-credited, or even re-mastered. It’s literally a compilation of already released songs, with about 5 new songs (far as we know).

Filter is a song already in circulation without incident. So long as the song is out there, HYBE is mandated by law (KOMCA mandates and federal law) to credit any contributors.

*

Juwon Park almost immediately after posting that last SS above, received well articulated lengthy responses from ARMYs explaining all 3 points above and then some. She blocked those responses so they wouldn’t show in her threads, closed replies, then highlighted DMs from trolls - several accounts being racist to her (no that does not include saying “pussay” lol) in her screenshots had less than 5 followers and are all deactivated.

When writing a thread in English did not garner any significant response, she waited about 12 hours till around noon in Korean time, then re-published the thread in Korean, and within 10 minutes of her doing that, several Korean news outlets she frequently interacts with had retweeted it as well, by 15 mins in it had gotten over 600 retweets, nearly all from Korean k-pop stans and more Korean journalists including the same people writing the articles on Jimin for the last month. Retweets now are close to 4,000 I think, almost all in Korean and many from duplicate or dummy Korean Twitter accounts to drive up engagement. You can stroll over to her Twitter account to verify all this or just to amuse yourself.

*

A group of Korean journalists have been increasingly inciting controversy related to BTS for about 4 months now. This happens usually around comeback season but the enlistment situation has been somewhat radioactive in the last few weeks, and any criticism related to BTS and Jimin in particular, seems to catch like wildfire and is continuously stoked by K-antis and some journalists so BTS's and Jimin's reputation is tarnished. What this particular journalist wants, after seeing her try for years to find something to ding BTS on and see her act frustrated by having even no access to BTS, seems to now be trying to hurt the group by using the fandom, regardless of how stupid that idea actually is (written about this before here).

A lot of ARMYs have no illusions as to what all this is. Regardless of the outcome of this latest dumpster fire, I think BTS will be alright. And that’s all that matters here I’d say.

But anyway, Kendrick Lamar’s new album drops tomorrow! Back to being off here till then. 💜

Originally posted: May 12th, 2022 12:01pm

[greensparty]

Album Review and Movie Review: Jimi Hendrix "Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision"

Guess what? There's a new Jimi Hendrix release! Since beginning this blog, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing loads of Hendrix albums including the posthumous album Both Sides of the Sky, the 50th anniversary Deluxe Edition of Electric Ladyland, the 50th anniversary re-release of his live album Band of Gypsys, his live box set Songs for Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts, the live album and movie Live in Maui, 2021’s Record Store Day release Paris ‘67, 2022’s Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969 and last year's Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967. There's a Mad Magazine joke that Hendrix released only 3 studio albums in his lifetime and there's been over 360 since he died. That's highly exaggerated, but the joke is that there's been a ton of releases since he died in 1970. This week sees the deluxe box set release Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision from Legacy Recordings. Included in it is the documentary film of the same name.

Deluxe Box Set review

box set

Hendrix's big legacy beyond his music and his influence could be Electric Lady Studios in NYC. He commissioned the recording studio which opened in August 1970. This box set is made up of 39 tracks recorded between June and August 1970 by the new Jimi Hendrix Experience of Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. Sadly Hendrix died on September 18, 1970 and never got to see the legendary studio it went on to become. So these recordings represent him performing in his dream studio. Much of the recordings are alt versions, early takes and different mixes. But there are some previously unreleased gems in here like "Further Up the Road" (to clarify a previously unreleased version).

Bottom line: the music here is fantastic and this album is probably better than the vast majority of albums released this decade. But I think it's to the point now where I just want a little more. Instead of different mixes, unearthed live, and newly released demos, I am now hoping we'll someday get an unearthed recording that is music never released before and it wow's us all because it's new and it's amazing. That is my desire with new Hendrix releases, but the reality is we're getting what little was left and in many of those cases it's songs we have heard before. The music itself is great and it's made all the more special by the fact that it was recorded just before he died. But I hope for not just previously unreleased but previously unheard.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Blu-ray documentary review

movie poster

Last month there were a number of screenings at indie cinemas across the country of the documentary Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision directed by John McDermott, who directed the Grammy-nominated Live In Maui. The focus in this doc is the trajectory of the recording studio itself, going from an abandoned nightclub into a state of the art recording studio. It shows Hendrix's vision and desire for his own recording studio and they talk to many of the key players involved with the studio. Interviewees include recording engineer Eddie Kramer, Billy Cox, and Steve Winwood. There's a ton of archival footage interspersed as well.

me in front of Electric Lady Studios in 2019

Bottom line: I went into this doc with a real enthusiasm because I as I was getting into music as a teen visiting NYC with my Dad, I used to love going to the West Village and shop at stores like It's Only Rock And Roll, Revolver Records or The Postermat. Right there on West 8th Street is the studio. One time I went to the studio in the hopes I might be able to get a tour, but on the speaker at the front door someone said they don't do tours, it was by appointment only. I think this doc was interesting, but it focused primarily on Hendrix's vision for it. I think there could've been a more comprehensive doc if they had shown how the studio has lasted and is still there today. So many classic albums from Stevie Wonder, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, David Bowie, AC/DC, The Clash, Weezer, U2, Lana Del Rey, Beyonce and even last year's Rolling Stones' album Hackney Diamonds (my #1 Album of 2023) have been recorded there. At 90 min. I felt like it could've been a little longer and gotten further musician insight. It was good, but only scratched the surface!

3 out of 5 stars

For info on Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision

[bread-gobgob]

Hi.

Mod Kanik here. I'd prefer to be called K. I do not go by this in real life, but if this post is ever found by its other owner, I do not want them to know my name.

WARNING. THIS POST DISCUSSES A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A MINOR AND AN ADULT.

This blog was never all that active. The story Eni and I were writing was a wonderful escape from our horrid realities and was made better our writing together. I do not consider this blog a big part of my life, obviously. We never had any followers, we never put that much effort into it, but I do consider it a big deal. This blog is all I have left of Enigma. That is not a good thing. I think if I post this it'll give me the closure I need.

When bread-gobgob was created, I was - based on the dates of the posts - fifteen years old. For nearly three years, I had been chronically online and had developed a terrible bout of agoraphobia. This was the result of many things that I won't list, but most of all it was the result of a very long co-dependent relationship.

Usually, I really wouldn't find this relationship to be that big of a deal. Recently, I have been diagnosed with traits of BPD, I tend to be dependent on people. I tend to have unhealthy traits. I'm trying to get better at not doing that. However, the relationship I had with Enigma was an incredibly big deal. In fact, it was a huge deal. I was fifteen. Enigma was twenty.

I cannot keep my composure while talking about this, I apologise for that, but I'm not aiming to keep my composure here and act mature. I'm aiming to tell my story, because Enigma was an inherently fucked up person and I need to vent. I need to talk to someone about this. I need them to come back and see this at some point and understand what they did to me.

To tell the truth, their age never stood out to me.

I lost contact with Enigma right before my sixteenth birthday. I believe it was the eleventh, maybe twelfth of July? We had stopped talking long before that. I will give credit where credit is due, it is Enigma's sysmates that initiated the loss of contact. Engima was removed from their position as host and the system, from what I know, decided it would be best to ghost as they did not know any other way to tell me they didn't want me in their life anymore.

I thank them for that.

Since losing contact with them, I've made friends. I moved schools (I went to college) and made friends who weren't held hostage by their phone their whole teenhood, and I have spoken to these people about Enigma. I have spoken with my therapist about Enigma. I had long, long talks with my ex-girlfriend about Enigma.

All three parties had only one thing to say about it all. That being, that I was groomed.

My relationship with Engima was a struggle, but I want to be clear: our dynamic was only romantic for around nine months out of the three and a bit years we knew each other. I want to be even clearer: it was NEVER sexual. Not once. But it was unhealthy. PAINFULLY unhealthy.

I'm shaking as I write this so I apologise if this doesn't make sense. When I knew Enigma, they also had an extreme case of agoraphobia. I do not think they ever did what they did out of genuine ill-intent, I think this was just their very fucked up way of showing they cared. But that doesn't matter, because it was still manipulation.

I missed out on a lot of my teenage years - when I first got into a relationship with Engima (April 2019), I was twelve, turning thirteen and they were seventeen, turning eighteen. When I told them my age - a few days after my thirteenth birthday - we stayed together for another five months. They broke up with me on Jan 1st, 2020 because they were uncomfortable with my age. This was over Skype. They said that, in future, they'd be happy to get back together if the opportunity came about. They said that they would prefer to wait for us to both be adults before meeting. I agreed to this and we went on as best friends. But in spite of this breakup, we only grew closer.

When I say I missed out on a lot of my teenhood, I mean I never got to experience the big things. I never went to parties, I never smoked weed, I never got drunk, I never kissed anyone, I never went out with my school friends, I never went outside.

I'm sure a lot of people go without these oppurtunities. Most of my friends didn't smoke weed or drink simply because they never got the chance. I'm not salty that I never got to try substances or mess around with a stranger at a party. That's not what I'm saying. I did get the chance to try those things. I got invited to parties and I got asked to come sesh with people and I got asked to go to town and window-shop with my buddies. I declined everything I got asked to. I declined because when I told Enigma about my weekend plans, they would freak out.

Freak out at me and at themself. The idea of me going outside, to this person, was like a threat. I would say "[name] and I are going skating tomorrow!" and Engima would have the panic attack of their LIFE. That, or they would ignore me for multiple hours. Enigma didn't like the idea of me going outside. It got to the point that I cancelled plans out of fear that they would off themself if I stepped outside. The fear came from the idea that if I was busy, I wouldn't answer. If I didn't answer, they would panic. If they panicked, they would hurt themself.

And it was like this until my last year of high school. I live in Australia, we don't have middle school. We got straight from primary school to high school, and then we head to college when we hit seventeen. There were five months of my four years of high school where I didn't have this person on my back, telling me I couldn't do this or that because they NEEDED me.

Enigma and I's last messages to each other were late last year after my leaver's dinner. I sent them photos of my dress and new hair and all that, and said I was living my life now. They sent me a message back and we exchanged words about how these days, it was so much easier to go outside and do things because we weren't nervous that we were gonna miss a message about something bad.

I know that throughout my relationship with Enigma, I was very panicky and very dependent. In their last message, they made it sound like I had done the exact same thing to them? I argue that they were eighteen-twenty-one and I was thirteen-sixteen. Fuck that. You were an adult and I was a child. You claimed to be so much more mature than me and claimed to know what was best for us, so I raise you the fact that you were an adult. A UNIVERSITY STUDENT. And though you broke up with me, you stayed in contact, even though I was FIVE YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU AND TO THIS DAY STILL AM A MINOR and made me think that if I left you, an adult, alone for more than an hour, YOU WERE GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOURSELF.

FUCK YOU HORRIFIC SENSE OF MORALS AND YOUR FUCKING "oh but we were so close and I was so attached and-" FUCK THAT. You were an ADULT. You should have blocked me BACK IN 2019. I DIDN'T NEED CLOSURE. I NEEDED TO BE TALKING TO ANYONE, ANYONE MY AGE. You shouldn't have needed me. I was not capable of fixing you.

You don't realise it, but the effects you had on me were insane. I take melatonin now because YOU used to get mad at me for falling asleep. I hallucinate your voice when I have panic attacks, I dream of you and I sitting alone in a void when it's been a long day. I panic when I don't have my phone on me. Recently I lost it, left it with a friend who then got on a bus with it, and the panic attack I had was HORRENDOUS. I thought I was going to get a message from you, August this year, and miss it and completely fuck everything up.

I have cried over you tirelessly, I have written stories upon notes upon letters to and about you. You have thoroughly ingrained yourself into my head and you just. won't. get. out.

I am working towards getting over it. Leaving my phone at home while going on walks, not bringing chargers to school, putting my phone on do not disturb, completely deleting discord and skype from my computer AND phone. But I don't think I'll ever really escape it. Not before I get out of school anyway.

I will not speak on my relationships with the others, as I respect them far too much for taking action when realizing that what was happening was unhealthy. There is one other alter, however, that I am willing to talk about. Not because of anything bad. Simply because I need to come clean.

K. You know who you are. I don't care if you read this or not, it feels wrong to say it all, but I can't keep myself from saying it. You'll probably never see this, but I think telling you will help in some way toward my healing. Here goes.

So far as I know, I'm aromantic. Romance repulsed. But occasionally, you cross my mind, and I remember how desperately in love with you I was when we knew one another. Enigma always said, "you fixed him!" I think that was very poor wording. I didn't fix you, K. You fixed yourself. All it took was some form of kindness, and you learned to open up. Slowly. I'm so proud of you for that. I don't think I'll ever love anyone as much as I love(d?) you, K.

I sound ridiculous at this point, but you'll never read this, so fuck it. Talking with a very nerdy friend of mine recently, I realised why you got so odd when I promised to braid your hair one day. I don't take it back. If it weren't for how things went, if it were a different time, different circumstance, I would marry you. In a heartbeat, I would let you braid my hair and I would braid yours. I hate to admit it, because I hold so so much resentment in my hands and jaw, but I absolutely would. You were so so special to me and I don't think I could ever be mad at you for what happened. You are the brightest bit of the spots of light in the darkness of my teen years.

I send my respect to JF, who always made me laugh. To PB who always held wonderful conversation. To B, TMM, and THM who made me feel powerful and respected.

Thank you to those in the system who provided me comfort during a very scary time. We should not have known each other in the first place and, to be honest, I don't remember most of you. But you were there and you were not my abuser and I recall snippets of joy from some of you. Thank you. I'm sorry it turned out like this.

K.