#i think i was going to make a really creative header (with like. tarot cards maybe ??) but i gave up lmaooooo

[laylakeating]

just realised i never changed my mobile theme rip

[calamariimpossible]

Magicians on the internet, crypto, and the email that broke me.

This is a continuation of a twitter thread that Muz (@mzkrx) started to write out in his car but then when he plotted out his thoughts, it made more sense to him to put it down in a blog format rather than a thread. You'll find out why as you read through.

Stuck in the car for half an hour so I'm gonna do a thread (Editor's note: Now a whole-ass blog post) about a strange email I got recently.

So I was casually watching magic tricks on YouTube. the funnest part of which to me is reading the comments. YouTube commenters love explaining how they think the trick is done and it's fun to read through their theories and connect dots between similar tricks, etc.

And then one time as I was scrolling I noticed a comment that didn't make sense. It was a string of an almost sentence. Intelligible enough to not be random words but odd enough to read like a trigger phrase for something.

The closest I can describe it as is like the string Zemo used to wake up the Winter Soldier, but with some syntax to it. Like "many thermos wiggle throughout exotic harbinger of circle ascending fuchsia entrapment".

Initially I thought nothing of it, but then I kept seeing them in these magic trick video comment sections. They're never the same string, and it's always under magic trick videos. from different channels even.

Hmmm.

The profiles that posted these comments are also always blank accounts with zero videos and no profile pic. Just their name. I felt like it was too much of a coincidence for these comments to only be under magic trick videos.

I also knew that the world of performance magic is thick with secrets. That is to say, there is deliberate obfuscation of information whenever you try to go online to find out how a trick works.

Magicians get together online and share information with each other just like performers of every other sort as well but the amount of code and doublespeak they use is an order of magnitude more annoying to decipher compared to say, an engineering message board or a gamedev forum.

Knowing that, I thought maybe this almost parsable gibberish I keep seeing everywhere was also some kind of code these people were using to talk to each other.

So I started investigating.

First things first, let's just Google one of the phrases. Maybe that's enough?

And it sorta was.

Pasting them onto the search bar lent me to only 1 result (wild!) and it was a website that looked really dank. Like geocities dank. Annoying neon colours and badly margined jpegs of tarot card images everywhere and a big bold header text that said something to the effect of:

"Congratulations, you've found our hidden message. This portal is only for those seeking knowledge beyond what is on the surface. Continue below."

* * *

I haven't been doing well. I feel like I say that too much. I say it on Patreon, on my personal podcast, whenever any of my friends ask me how I'm doing, pretty much everywhere. I feel very heavy. I understand I'm not the only one feeling like this during a pandemic.

Duh.

But I have this other version of worry that I can't quite articulate until right now: I'm scared I won't be funny anymore. Anwar and Farid can attest that even during our recordings I don't feel up to being funny. I question my jokes a lot. I barely enjoy telling them. I'm worried I'm letting everyone down.

To me, silliness and absurdism as virtues only make sense when the world has trace amounts of injustice and wrongness that training ourselves to see it in our everyday helps us remind ourselves of what is just and fair. The more we consume silliness, the more we are able to recognize silly and point it out. So we don't ignore it when things go wrong, so we talk about it, manage it. So we can take care of each other.

Maybe I can't be sure if we're all up for taking care of each other right now.

* * *

"Continue below" seems instructive, but it wasn't. Like I mentioned, the margins were haphazard and the CSS was all over the place. Some jpegs were straight up cropped off.

Meaning I can't be sure what "below" meant. But there were clickable images and text so I was readily intrigued.

It was tantalizing. Did I stumble into some secret order of Extremely Online Magicians? Maybe I'll finally find out why there aren't many female magicians out there. Maybe it's some sort of secret initiation to a secret message board full of secrety secrets. Secretly.

Y'all.

I didn't click on any of the linked images or anything. I closed the tab. That was the end of that.

An earlier version of myself would gladly run headlong into this rabbit hole to find out more and sink hours into some goddessforsaken labyrinth of links. But the current version of me recognizes this for what it almost certainly is: an abandoned roleplaying game.

Back in the early 00s when the internet was the realm of nerds and nerds only, it was full of people who loved sharing things for sharing's sake. It used to be punk rock to maintain a blog that only talked about snails or have a lo-fi YouTube channel that uploads biweekly 3-minute news about your house, or manage a little message board where people roleplay as wizards who rummage around the net looking for clues.

That last part was a thing I remember being actively involved in. In '03, a group of online friends and I wrote up a scavenger hunt of sorts where we sent people through various blog pages that we have where the goal is to just dick around and have fun. We wasted each other's time for sure. Hundreds of hours of it for literally no gain at all but for some laughs and fun memories.

The internet isn't like that anymore. People don't share something online for sharing anymore. Not really. There's this idea that if you put stuff out there, you want people's attention because numbers are good. You get a lotta reblogs and RTs and Likes which means people Like you.

If you don't have a lotta numbers, you don't matter. If you do, everyone has to talk about what you said or did because it's 'News' now.

Isn't that kinda gross, you think? That we need people to interact through an app to be sure that we're Liked? I say "we" but I mean me. I've successfully poisoned my brain to believe this to a certain extent too and it's not good.

I felt myself physically react when I closed that geocities magician website tab. I shuddered because my brain went from "this is cool" to "I gotta let people know I found this" to "this'll get me hella RTs" to "ew Muz why did you think that" within 3 seconds and I was disgusted with myself.

As a dude who started my online presence on YouTube and parlayed it into my real life comedy/writing career, I've believed for a long time that doing good work and putting it out there is what it takes for a working creative to make it because that's what I did. So there's this idea that making stuff and having it be seen is some kind of virtuous.

But it's not anymore. People pick fights with children for clout. Newspapers post about people's tweets as if its important. People are investing in crypto, a thing that literally only exists as electrical waste on a grand scale. We're boiling the oceans to yell at each other over nothing and exchange bits of code everyone agrees has ever-rising value but doesn't. Everyone is making and eating junk, it feels like.

So am I making junk? Have I just been making useless junk for literally over a decade now? Is that what I've been good for this entire time?

* * *

So the email.

It was a response from a company I applied to for a job. I applied as a creative writer and they're an advertising agency.

Receiving emails from a prospective employer when you're in need of a job is exciting! So soon after I applied, too. Wonderful. Here's what it said:

We just received your application today but would love to extend the opportunity for you to participate in the Case Competition as a prerequisite of your job application for Creative Writer position with [REDACTED] and stand a chance to be a winner for cash awards up to a total worth of RM1,800.

Yea.

They want me to enter a competition where I compete with other candidates to get a chance of being hired.

This company saw how many people applied for a job with them, and decided to dangle some cash and throw it over the fence to see which candidate will fight for it the most.

I didn't expect to feel vomitous after reading an email but that did it. I almost dry heaved. That's where we are now.

Recruiters see a glut of applicants and decided to play Fall Guys. These people watch Istana Takeshi and think Takeshi is the good guy. It hurts. It hurt me. That email caused me pain.

I can't at all empathise with recruiters who think this was okay to do. They really believed that creative writers will do a little dance for them just for money.

Look, I know we all need to eat. But I can also hate that people undervalue the work of creatives to this painful extent.

I don't give a shit about earning a lot of dough. I just wanna make things that tickle people. I want you to smile more.

That's the whole point of that weird little YouTube comment that led to the quirky website. That's the whole idea of making silly videos and dumb tweets and memes. We just want you to laugh.

But it seems people think so little of joy that they'll do whatever they can to avoid legitimately supporting and paying for stuff that gets them through the day. So much so that they want free work from us for the potential of maybe being able to get paid for more work. It breaks me, man.

I hate that I cannot make a living just trying my best to make people happy.

That's the best way I know to take care of you.

I know I don't just 'make junk' for a living. People have messaged me personally that my work has helped them get through tough times in school, in their relationships, at the office and I am eternally grateful that they took the time to tell me that.

I just also wish my feelings about my work aren't easily brought down by the majority of people who insist its worthless. Even if sometimes those people is me.

So forgive me if I won't be funny for a while. I'm gonna need some time to process this. Thank you for reading. I love you.

[pumpkin-toast]

Some OC Questions

This is gonna be long so I finally figured out how to properly use tumblr formatting to add a read more section

1. Your first OC ever?

My best guess is a little fellow called Scribbles

2. Do you have a personal favorite among your OCs?

Three actually - Gretchen, Flooken, and Quasar. All small and precious, all very overpowered.

3. Have you ever adopted a character?

Yes actually, several times. A Cuphead OC named Jess and a few fantrolls.

4. A character you rarely talk about?

I rarely talk about half of my characters because I have so many but I feel like talking about Blinkey. He’s an aquaphobic Enderman who wears a little grassblock themed raincoat in case it rains

5. If you could only make one of your OCs popular, who would it be?

I think it would have to be Pindle. I feel like she could make it big.

6. Two of your OCs that look alike despite not being related?

Icicle and Noelle, although I heavily based Noelle’s appearance off Icicle. And then there’s Spindler, Spindle, and Pindle, who all have basically the exact same name.

7. Are your OCs part of any story of stories?

I have a looot of stories. Too many, actually, which is why most of them are on the backburner and I’m trying to focus on just one of them for now. Here, take some concept art for it:

8. Do you RP as any of your OCs?

Yes, I have RP blogs which interact with a small circle of other RP blogs. Specifically I RP as Flooken, Kamyx, and Remund.

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?

Only if I didn’t have a personal connection to them, which I do for a crap ton of my characters. I’ve only given away one character and that was because I didn’t have that connection. Somebody like, say, Flooken? I would never consider giving him up.

10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design?

I don’t really have any tbh. The whole point of my style is to be simplistic.

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”?

Yes, Purity! She’s innocent, a bit naive, and a total extrovert.

12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot

A female serial killer character made by my friend.

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs?

The Suits. All five of them. Oh, and also Note, and Hanret.

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory

There’s too many to choose from

15. Do you like to talking about your OCs with other people?

Yes

16. Which one of your OCs would be best at biology?

Sophie, because she kind of is a biologist.

17. Any OC OTPs?

Graalu x Qiospe, Hana x Seven, Ragdoll x Dollface, Drobyme x Remund, Kayla x Camilla

18. Any OC crackships?

Spindler x Duplin, Entity x Spindle

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you

So hey, this is Gretchen. I really like her.

20. Do any of your OCs sing?

Lots of them sing. The first one that comes to mind is Kamyx, she usually only sings when she’s alone and my voice of choice for her would be Bryana Salaz.

21. Your most artistic OC

The only one that I can think of right now is Drobyme.

22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize?

I can’t really think of any, so I guess no

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would look like?

Almost all of my fantrolls. Because I recently redesigned them into humans for a non-homestuck related story

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?

Flooken, so I could hug him and tell him everything’s going to be alright and buy him 2001 chicken nuggets

25. The OC that resembles you the most

Coffee or Cupcake, because Coffee was based off all the craps I don’t give and Cupcake is my optimism.

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will?

Yes, this is a funny story actually. So I had been adopting several fantrolls off a person on Amino because I needed fantrolls for a fansession and I was going creatively bankrupt at the time. But it turns out there had been a mixup and one of the trolls I adopted was actually adopted by someone else first, so I had to give her up. And then I just adopted another troll and gave her the same name.

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?

I’ve had backstories that I’ve fleshed out a bit more using songs, but I don’t think I have any characters that were inspired by a specific song.

28. Your most dangerous OC?

It’s a tie between Kamyx and Reaper

29. Which one of your OCs would investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?

There’s no doubt in my mind it would 100% be Gabby.

30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection?

Quinn, Pindle, Ivisd, or Cressida.

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain their Tumblr blog layout.

Okay, let’s go with Baxter.

He’s got the default blog layout, burgundy background with black text. His icon is a purple eye and his header image is just a black fill. He posts about the weird crap he and his friends get up to, reblogs a lot of witchcraft, lots of divination and tarot cards. And also demons, he’s into demons. And then he has a more innocent side blog where he posts about baking.

32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why?

Seven, because he’s a big scaredy cat but would probably be able to go through a horror game scenario if he had the proper motivation.

33. Your shyest OC.

Ivisd

34. Do you have any twin characters?

Totally. Kefi and Lypi, Noiche and Blanr, Blue and Pink, Quinn and Harriet. I even have a set of quintuplets.

35. Any sibling characters?

Yes, but if I listed them all we’d be here all week and this post is already too long.

36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else?

Yes

37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human

Most of my OCs aren’t human actually but uh I’ll go with Seven

He’s the one on the left. No one really knows what he is but he looks human, although his eyes are a bit weird (he’s also blind). He’s pathokinetic, always wears a yellow raincoat, and his LI is a tsundere. He’s not exactly shy but he’s a scaredy cat and always very very fretful

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

I’ve thought long and hard about this. And it has to be Lyric.

39. Introduce any character you want.

*ahem* I’m gonna do two

Aight so this is Entity (left) and Censor (right) and they’re my protagonist duo in my story. Censor is overly pessimistic and Entity is overly optimistic and they’re pretty much stuck with each other. They’re also both fugitives.

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters?

I remember playing Splatoon as some of my OCs and having lots of fun being terrible with their weapons.

41. Has anyone ever drawn fanart of yours OCs?

Yes

Qerri, Murck, Flooken, Flooken again, and Lyric

42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods?

Lorelei, because she’s a god herself.

43. Do you have any certain types when you create OCs?

I tend to lean more towards making badass girls and fretful boys. I don’t know why it just happens more often than not. But I’ve been trying to push past it as of late.

44. Something you like about your OCs in general.

I just love them all. I view them all as my children and I love them.

45. A character you no longer use?

There are a few from stories I’ve scrapped and abandoned, but I still keep them around in case I need another cast member for another story. They’re just like understudies!

46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?

Yes and I do. I may love them but it’s tough love.

47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child?

Yes

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure

My baby boy Flooken, the best boy of them all

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes?

Entity, that little shit

50. Freebie!

Oh a freebie?

So I’ve got this google doc. I talk about it sometimes but I’ve never actually showed it to anyone outside of a very small group of individuals, but it does exist. I call it Ramager’s OC-Palooza of Epic Proportions and Broken Dreams. It lists every single one of my countless characters, all organized into sections based on what story or universe each character belongs to. In fact it was lagging so much that I had to make a second doc (Titled ‘(P2) Ramager’s OC-Palooza of Epic Proportion and Broken Dreams’). Collectively the two docs have a total of 207 pages. These docs are where I store every bit of information about my characters, including pictures, themes, voice claims, and more. I have been working on it since October of 2019. I’m still adding to it everyday. It terrifies me greatly.