#i was fine until i wasnt

[blueberryrock]

Nothing like nearly throwing up in the middle of your workout in the middle of a packed gym with your family

[lotus-pear]

bsd fic authors i understand yalls pain SO well right now why is it so fucking HARD to write dazai. like i have a whole fucking spreadsheet dedicated to tireless analysis i have done on my part so i can accurately characterize him but he is such an unpredictable and morally gray character that it's hard knowing his limits and boundaries and where he draws the line for himself.

[bonefall]

BB!TPB Titles

Having some fun just absentmindedly thinking of titles for the BB overhauls of main arc books. I think I'm gonna do it for all of them, because I actually really like renaming these and explaining my thought process

But here's TPB for now, because it's on my mind after that little scene bundle I wrote

Below the cut;

Arc Rename: The Prophecies Begin -> The Forest Four

Into the Wild -> Into the Clans

Fire and Ice -> Thermal and Undertow

Forest of Secrets -> Forest of Flowers

Rising Storm -> Rejected Rites

A Dangerous Path -> The Hunting Trail

The Darkest Hour -> Before the Dawn

The Forest Four

It's the intro to the original four, y'know? Plus, I use this term all the time in Clan Culture entries to specify when something is different about SkyClan from the "Forest Four." Makes sense it's the arc title.

Plus, there's a bit of a thing going on, especially in the later books, where the number of the Clans comes up a lot. Three Great Clans, but only four modern ones, River and Shadow combine to make TigerClan leaving three, BloodClan would make four, LionClan's alliance leaving two...

In BB, they know about SkyClan in history lessons, but Firestar doesn't think about it much until after this arc is done. More importantly, his choice to spare Scourge at the end of the arc suddenly means there's a Forest Four, and a Town One. I just think that's interesting.

(for some reason I also just love Scourge's insult where he calls Firestar a "forest fool" lmao. four forest fools.)

Into the Clans

The book with the expanded intro to the culture of the Clans. I feel like it's more fitting for BB to not call it "into the WILD" because... well, Clan cats DON'T see themselves as ""wild"" like animals. They're in Clans, with culture. They have ranks, politics, family, and even cooking and little kitty tools. It doesn't really make sense to me that they define themselves as "wild" just because their home has nature.

To them, loners are who's "wild," y'know? Rusty isn't totally coming to the Clans because it's wild, he's coming because of the community. Friendships and bonds with cats like Ravenpaw, Graystripe, Frostfur, Spottedleaf, Bluestar, and the sense that he could belong here. That he matters to these people.

This title's the one I'm actually waffling the most on, though. I don't like it very much yet. I don't feel like it captures the feeling I'm going for. It's also really close to a field guide title.

Thermal and Undertow

I've always interpreted "Fire and Ice" to be about how differently Graystripe and Fireheart are as people, and how that starts pulling them apart. The thing that people focus on is their "reconciliation" at the end of the book, but what stands out about it to me is that this is the book where Fireheart's TRULY integrated into the Clan.

His friendship with Graystripe is strained because of the HalfClan relationship Gray gets in, and he starts looking back to his roots for comfort because he doesn't feel like he's completely part of ThunderClan. I love this irony; they're BOTH struggling with loyalty in this broken system, experiencing types of xenophobia that prevent them from having happiness, but not yet wise enough to recognize they have a similar problem.

They're both breaking the law to talk to outsiders. Their forbidden love, both familial and romantic, makes Clan life harder. They're BOTH not doing anything wrong, but the STRUCTURE of their society is setting them against each other.

Graystripe responds, eventually, by leaving. Fireheart thinks he can make a home where he is. They're both wrong. The STRUCTURE needs to be challenged.

And meanwhile, they must go to fetch WindClan after it was driven out. They have to face RiverClan AND ShadowClan when Crookedstar and Nightstar show that power acts through them, as leaders. All the while, they experience the simple truth that love for cats in other Clans makes cruel, bloodthirsty battles like these too difficult to be sustainable.

And that's just canon!! I fucking love this book!!!

So in the rename, I'm putting emphasis on the natural flow, above and below. A wind is controlled by the temperature, rising up into a warm thermal. An undertow is a ferocious current that will pull you into the cold depths. They're not so different, in the end.

Forest of Flowers

And that leads right into canon's Forest of Secrets, where we learn that the older warriors also struggled with those pressures. Fireheart and Graystripe were never alone, cats have been suffering under this cruel system for GENERATIONS.

In BB, this is where I'm dropping the flower symbolism for the three major branches of politics in Forest Four society, which persist and are expanded on for the rest of BB;

Traditionalism, represented by the Honeysuckle, is used to justify the current system. "The Clans are branches of a honeysuckle bush. We fight and strangle each other for the light, and this prunes the weakest sprigs and rewards the fittest. When the winter comes, the strongest branches ensure the survival of the bush."

He also learns, much earlier, of Tigerstar's mentor. He hears the Parable of the Thistle, a story about how a young apprentice was forced to attempt to uproot a bull thistle, only managing to spread its seeds across a clearing, and won a trip to the Cleric's den for the trouble. How Tigerstar, and others, believe the honeysuckle must be challenged.

And meanwhile, he uncovers the story of the Forget-me-nots. A friend group even stronger than his collection of allies, with cats of every Clan, and how ambition drove it apart. How Bluestar looks back at it with both silly shame and deep appreciation.

The kindling ember in Fireheart's chest as he realizes he is the heir of a Forget-me-not, and that surrounding the obvious slash across Tigerclaw's nose, are the subtle pockmarks of thistle thorns.

Rejected Rites

I feel like Rising Storm is the "weakest" book of TPB, because it's where canon's cracks begin to show.

There's still a lot I love about this book. I love the way that Bluestar's cruelty arc begins with her grace and altruism towards other Clans not being returned without a catch. I adore the rescue of Bramblekit and Yellowfang’s guilty, harrowing death insisting she deserves judgement as Fireheart insists she is a good person. Its harsh ending revealing Tigerstar as leader of ShadowClan is a gut punch in an already brutal book, making an excellent mid-arc climax

But I feel its sudden turn towards suggesting the status quo was actually good drags it down.

For example, Cloudpaw is constantly arguing with Fireheart, in ridiculous fights Fire started. He's abducted by humans and returns in the same book, suggesting his uncle was totally right all along and he Totally Promises he won't mess with humans any more. The fact Fire was projecting on his young nephew and denying him answers when he questions their way of life, in a way very similar to the shame Firepaw himself went through, is not addressed.

A lot more of this book than you remember is also dedicated to Fireheart and Sandstorm arguing because the writers think a good romance is when you hate each other but stay together anyway.

So instead, this book in BB focuses more on what I DO like; Fireheart learning to be a LEADER. He's young, inexperienced, and has acted mostly alone up to this point. The Clan is in a moment of SERIOUS tumult as it reckons with how no one saw ANY signs about Tigerclaw.

As he loses his mentor Bluestar to paranoia, he has to learn which warriors are truly trustworthy, and try to win back those whose loyalties might stray.

In this way, Rejected Rites is about the WHOLE Clan. It's Whitestorm throwing his reputation and experience behind Fireheart. It's Goldenflower and how her disgust with her ex-mate blows her mind open and she shifts into Fire's most ferocious champion. It's Mousefur deciding that Tigerclaw was a uniquely bad person and refusing to admit fault with a Clan that supported him.

And of course it's about Cloudpaw, grappling with how Fireheart insists he's his mentor, not his father, not his friend, going back to how he botches the Queen’s Rights on bringing him to the Clan. Fireheart, too, is a flawed person capable of being complicit in damaging systems.

The Hunting Trail

The dog plot barely needs a recap, it's this fandom's bread and butter. But there's a small, VERY popular misconception about; in canon, Tigerstar only uses the dogs at the END of this book with a rabbit trick. Before that, the dogs are practically a natural disaster he has nothing to do with.

There's a reason why it's misremembered. It works better if he's more involved with them the whole time, showing how DANGEROUS he is, how Bluestar's fixation on her war with StarClan is blinding her to reality, and adding to the tragedy and madness by having Swiftpaw getting wrapped up in his father's/stepfather's quest for revenge.

So in BB, Tigerstar's involved MUCH sooner. He freed the dogs.

The title change reflects that. There's a hunting trail and the cats of ThunderClan are its prey, but it doesn't specify who the predator is. In the end, it was Tigerstar's scheme all along and Bluestar sacrifices herself to save her apprentice.

(I also want to take the moment to highlight how short-sighted and impulsive Tigerstar's plans actually are, something I find fascinating about him as a character. He's malicious and intelligent enough to make some incredible schemes, taking advantage of every opportunity. But he never accounts for details like... "what if my dogs don't go right to where I want them to go?" or "what if I'm not picked as deputy after I kill Redtail?" or even "what will i do after my demons kill all the living cats?")

TigerClan is also forming earlier. It begins in THIS book. Stonefur and Mistyfoot are "detained" after leaping into the ravine to rescue Fireheart and Bluestar, it's all the "evidence" Tigerstar needed to accuse them of divided loyalty. To finally start his persecution of HalfClan cats.

Before the Dawn

...In spite of its iconic moments, I'll be honest; Darkest Hour is actually the book that makes me the angriest about the original series.

All arc long, we are shown that the Clans are flawed. They have been, long before Rusty set foot in the woods that day. It NEEDS bigotry to exist the way it does, fostering xenophobia between Clan cats so that love and friendship won't get in the way of violence, encouraging and even rewarding extreme Jingoism, and even setting clanmates against each other for these senseless problems instead of the STRUCTURE of Clan society.

Darkest Hour SLAMS the breaks on that theme, and brings the message to a screeching halt.

FIRST of all, this is the book where it's explicitly stated that StarClan "doesn't interfere," even giving them a moment where they yell at protagonist about free will or whatever while simultaneously barking a vague, ultimately useless prophecy at him. The first of many scenes like it in later arcs. It feels completely and utterly out of left field, instantly turning StarClan from a mysterious, possibly not even fully benevolent force, into THE most annoying plot device ever.

Secondly... BloodClan.

BloodClan is introduced as a TRULY EVIL group of horrible atheists who hate love and friendship, to the point of banning families, and are now here to destroy our glorious society and steal our home. They're depicted as being ruled by fear and brutality, unbound by concepts like "honor" or "loyalty." You cannot reason with them or spare their lives, the barbarians must be killed and kept out, lest they replace us.

(there is even a moment where it's implied that if the soldiers lose the war, BloodClan will come and murder the elders and children too.)

It is SO bad and SO egregious, and it's played completely unironically. It bothers me so badly I've talked about it before. Multiple times, actually

After Tigerstar gets his well-deserved grallocking like a 10-point buck, the endgame villain of TPB is a foreigner and his army. Scourge is a foil of Firestar himself, but THIS one hates the clans and doesn't worship the right god, which makes him dangerous. Firestar is textually stronger than him because of his faith in StarClan.

At the end of the day, TPB, and the rest of the series that follows, doesn't refute Tigerstar's ideology. It even agrees. Weakness IS abhorrent. Outsiders ARE to be distrusted. Split loyalties ARE detestable. It just didn't like that he challenged the status quo.

Foreigners and their leaders ARE less trustworthy and more villainous than Clan cats. Wariness and even violence towards them is necessary, "justifying" the isolationist structure of the Clans. Scourge is only the first in a very long chain; then comes Sol, One Eye, Slash, and Darktail. Even Hawkfrost and Willow Tail can fit into this pattern.

With the death of these evil, troublemaking cats, the Clans return to the status quo. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Darkest Hour frames this like a wonderful, triumphant thing, with Firestar noting how the now-leaderless BloodClan fighters look so inferior to Clan warriors, Scourge's evil will never haunt them again (Tigerstar gets to be grieved though), and that with LionClan disbanding, they will all return to their petty bullshit squabbles.

So, BB's renaming.

I had a lot of ideas. I really liked the name "Moment of Truth" because it's the book that really brings together the theme of the arc, ending with Firestar realizing Scourge is right to distrust the Clans and that change is DESPERATELY needed, but the more I thought about it... the more I liked Before the Dawn

Reference to the phrase "The darkest hour comes before the dawn" BB is a much more optimistic story than canon, by tweaking the themes and details while following the major beats. Something is just... idk poetic? About picking the more uplifting part of the idiom. It feels right, like it's almost too perfect to go with any other title

It's a new era for the culture going foward It IS right before a "new dawn." It's the start of major changes to Clan culture, setting the events of the rest of BB into motion. The years and generations that follow are going to see major changes to the code, territory, culture, and philosophy in the universe. The choice that Firestar makes here is going to bring the Clans into a new epoch. Plus the cats are crepuscular now so I can literally have the final battle take place just before dawn because subtext is for CHUMPS

I like the idea of opening up the next arc with Dawn Just because that's really funny to me lmaoo. Something is cute about titles that reference each other. Maybe the first book of TNP could be "Dawn of the End" since the destruction of the forest starts early. Maybe add in some apocalyptic prophecies and such...

[dykedvonte]

See like the only reason I think the others seriously believed Curly may have crashed the ship is cause he basically had a 30 Rock "I lie to myself" momentary breakdown in front of them after one too many mocktails and like completely forgot about it.

[writer-room]

You ever just see people talk about the Percy Jackson books and know somewhere, deep in your heart, that none of these people have understood that this is a series made for middle schoolers. And that fandom will very frequently lie to them like, all the time. No, that character probably isn’t ooc, you’re just thinking of what the fandom turned them into. No, this book isn’t a horrible stain next to the others before it, literally all of them were like this. It’s Percy Jackson. It’s cheesy and occasionally makes a very questionable writing decision.

You gotta be in this for the long haul or jump ship my guys. Be cringe and free or be gone

[obsob]

do you make enough money from selling prints in etsy to sustain your life? how are you able to afford this beautiful house and time to crochet and go on walks and all of that? i’m not asking for nosiness but because i’m trying to figure out what i would need to do in order to make my life financially sustainable… is art an option… etc

short answer i mooch off my bf <333333333333333

[boygirlctommy]

it felt like it had its hands wrapped around me...

[thedrotter]

Re:Kinder Fun Facts of the day☺️!!! Have you ever wondered who talks the most from the main cast in Re:Kinder?? Well, I did😊. Today I'll be answering this question with some graphs and as a bonus telling you what words each character uses the most! I will warn you, this will be a bit long and I don't know how to be less verbose so, yeah!!!

First, I've made some basic rules as to what I counted regarding how much the characters speak. Not all lines really count as speaking, after all.

Any of the incoherent screaming lines don't count. There's a lot of screaming since the characters die a lot (as expected for a horror RPG game), but I don't really count that as speaking unless they're saying proper words. In that same vein, I didn't really count any of the panting or sniffing and such that are conveyed through words. Again, I don't really see that as a character actively speaking their thoughts!

If I cannot tell who a line belongs to, I will not give it to anyone. This happens for certain lines, so I felt this rule was important.

I won't be counting repetitions of the same line if it's on a variation of the same scene. This may sound a bit strange, but when a character dies, the game goes on to the same next scene it would regardless (unless the scene that follows it is an ending), with variations and new lines here and there to account for the dead character, but a lot will be reused and placed in the exact same beats it normally would have been in originally. So, this rule is here for that. Oh, and also the scenes with bits of Yuuichi's backstory that appear in Shunsuke's head won't be counted twice, because some appear twice line by line.

Of course, the "..." lines won't count. I am so sorry Aya!!!!😞

Now that the ground rules have been set, there's just one thing I want to mention. Though I will count all the total lines for Takumi and Yuuichi like any other character, I just want to mention that first I will have two separate counts for them! Takumi | Takumiel and Yuuichi | Yuuichi's Heart respectively.

Takumiel is separate because I was curious about how much Takumi spoke as an archangel compared to when he was alive. Yuuichi's Heart is because he speaks so much he feels notable enough to be given his own division, even if he and Yuuichi at the end of the day are one person

(I count the silly mind telepathy where Shunsuke is being directly spoken to [and being told things normal Yuu would avoid saying at that point] and the comical theater as Yuuichi's Heart. I clarify in case one assumes he only starts being counted the moment he's directly labelled as Yuuichi's Heart. Any line that can't be distinguished between Yuuichi's Heart and Yuuichi will be given to Yuuichi by default.)

With nothing else to be clarified let's get to the numbers!!!😊😊

First, the line counts with Takumiel and Yuuichi's Heart counted individually!! Here are the rankings:

Shunsuke (With a lead of 535 lines over second place!!)

Yuuichi

Rei

Yuuichi's Heart

Hiroto

Ryou

Sayaka

Aya

Takumi

Takumiel

You may be thinking— woah, does Shunsuke really speak that much?! You could say that, for a good chunk of those lines are from how he describes interactable points around the map and his inner thoughts, so they aren't all exactly said out loud. The benefit of being the protagonist, I suppose ww

Funny enough, Yuuichi's Heart has almost as many lines as Yuuichi does for not having that much time in the game, being on the higher end between the characters that don't get the benefit of being a protagonist (lol)!

Admittedly I had expected for Rei and Hiroto to have a more similar amount of lines given their nearly equal amount of presence, but for what it is Rei surpassed Hiroto by 51 lines! I also had expected for Takumiel to speak a little bit more than Takumi but turns out the opposite is true.

While the lack of lines of Takumi and Takumiel are to be expected due to their short time on the game, what stands out is Aya not even reaching triple digits between her other peers who are in there for most of the game. This is because a good chunk of Aya's lines in game are silence!^^" And thus weren't counted. If ellipses were a word, she surely would have reached triple digits, but unfortunately they're not.

Now the line count with combined sums of Takumi | Takumiel and Yuuichi | Yuuichi's Heart!!!

In here, the ranking isn't affected, with Yuuichi remaining second place and Takumi being last place. But the disparity of everyone's numbers compared to Takumi's feels a bit more clear to see when Takumiel isn't individually counted.

With Yuuichi's line counts combined, Shunsuke remains 318 lines ahead of him, but it also means Yuuichi has a 59% the amount of Shunsuke's lines; and impressive feat for someone who doesn't get the benefit of being the point of view for everything you press... Although he does also have an upper hand over everyone by essentially being the plot of this game ww

But maybe line counts do not suffice to tell how much a character speaks. Yes, Shunsuke has a bunch of lines from everything he interacts with, but is it really reliable to say he speaks all that much in all those lines? A good chunk of those could easily have 3 words each! So with this in mind, let's do a word count.

Even in a word count, Shunsuke has the lead, having a lead of 2,247 words over second place. But we'll see about that when we combine Yuuichi's numbers. Anyway, here's the ranking!

Shunsuke

Yuuichi's Heart

Yuuichi

Rei

Hiroto

Ryou

Sayaka

Aya

Takumi

Takumiel

This time, Yuuichi's Heart is the one at second place!!! It's pretty funny that he speaks more than his physical counterpart ww. I genuinely didnt think he'd out yap himself that way when I chose to count for him individually 😭!!! He has a lead of 63 words over himself, but a lead nonetheless.

In here, Rei and Hiroto are more even than in the line counts, with the difference seeming more minimal when put into words. But it also showcases that despite Rei having more lines than Yuuichi's Heart in the line count, those only get to have a bit over half of the amount of words he talks (To be fair he does get to infodump a lot in his section of the game).

And here's the combined word count!!! Suddenly Shunsuke's lead is only by a mere 55 words! So Yuuichi speaks about as much as he does with 318 less lines.

I must admit that I genuinely did not expect it to be that close. When I chose to count the lines for when you interact with things for Shunsuke, I thought he was granted to speak an absurd amount more than anyone else. But turns out that Yuuichi speaks about the same amount out loud when most of Shunsuke's are his own thoughts ww. But it does make sense! He is still the plot of this game.

So, after all those charts, here's the average/middle point of lines and words for characters to have, because why not, it's fun.

Average Line Count (YH and Takumiel counted individually): 197 lines

Average Line Count (When combined): 247 lines

Average Word Count (YH and Takumiel counted individually): 1,333 words

Average Word Count (When combined): 1,666 words

So there it is. That's how much the characters in Re:Kinder speak!

But wait!!! I am not done. I will share with you an additional fun fact... Did you ever want to know what word each of these characters said the most?! This one will be quicker, I do promise.

When it came to counting these words I did not count stop words, that being common words that are used all the time by everyone in English. "I, you, me, the, to, a, my, your, yes, no"... Words like that! Otherwise everyone would have one of those as their most said word and it'd be rather boring to look at. With that said, here are the words these characters say the most!

Shunsuke: Yuuichi - said 40 times! (this genuinely confused me so much im sorry he uses interjections so much I had expected it to be something like "huh" or "um" but no i dont know how this passed by me as i was rounding up all the lines he says or proofreading or writing all of those lines WHAT?!?! its been two days and it still takes me out)

Ryou: Shunsuke - Said 14 times

Sayaka: Murderer - Said 7 times (All in one sentence!)

Takumi | Takumiel (counted in one for how little he speaks.): Takumiel - Said 3 times (That name is so important, he said it thrice.)

Aya: Sorry - Said 5 times

Rei: Hell, gonna, look, Yuuchi - said 8 times (Most of the repeated words she says are stop words for she doesn't tend to speak about the same things repeatedly.)

Hiroto: Shunsuke - Said 17 times

Yuuichi (separate from YH): Problem - Said 17 times

Yuuichi's Heart: Mama - Said 24 times

Yuuichi (Overall): Mama - Said 31 times

So that is finally it. That is the fun fact of today.😊😊 Use this to woe your friends at parties!!!

I am aware Mami speaks about enough to be counted in, but this is pretty time consuming to do and I'm not sure anyone is invested on her enough to count her in. But if there's enough curiosity regarding that, I'll try counting her in. But for now this suffices.☺️ Thanks for reading!

[moeblob]

Surgery is at 9:45 (finally, thank the heavens cause I'm going insane here at how bad hospital communication is) so! Pen doodles before I'm drugged up on anesthesia.

OCs of mine as a comfort in my suffering (and it's easier in pen bc they're boring designs unlike fanart I'd want to draw).

[infiniteseriesofhalfways]

sitting in the parking lot thinking i might vom

[spadefish]

Oh so it turns out that some of my Bad Experience with gabapentin so far is because "two vitamin gummies and a coffee" don't count as food to gabapentin. I had no problems with my TVGaaC breakfast when I was only on celecoxib but now that I'm on gabapentin that apparently isn't going to cut it. I've discovered that if I eat an actual solid food before taking my morning gabapentin that I experience very little side effects, but if I DON'T do that then it feels like my eyes and brain are being scooped out with spoons and spun around. Very cringe

[thetimelordbatgirl]

New school attendance rules (that are stupid as fuck) being published has me learning people didn't even know that the UK fines people for their kids not being in school unauthorized???

[moonpaw]

dogs caught what i believed was some kind of black bird up until i whisked it away and realized it was a hawk or falcon chick? i had to relocate it 3 times because they kept finding it again before i finally plopped it down into our open shed which conveniently gives a little birdie plenty of hiding spots

but i was still worried about it possibly starving and it was unclear if the parents were near or not so i put down some water and leftover bird feed (even though i doubted it would probably eat it) and left it alone

checked up on it today and not only does it sound healthy, it looks like one of its parents is keeping an eye on the little guy 🙏

[scalpelsister]

what if i lost the will to live like. as a joke. what then.

[fruitybashir]

6k per week ain't even that much..? there's writers here who do much more, why are you complaining

hi <3

i am not other writers! hope this helps ✌🏼✨️

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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