#i've been on a plateau for a month

[vitamingummybear]

my body out on nowhere:

[phoenixcatch7]

Man I am just SO CONFUSED. About the time line of this game.

No one is telling me how long links been gone! Or how long the botw-totk timeskip was! They all just started selling my stuff again lol. I'm going to have to get everything redyed!

Me: hey random stranger! Lore dump? You look like a lore dumper.

Kindly npc: why hullo there, link ^^! My, I haven't seen you in a while since the calamity ended! I was so worried when they said you and the princess had gone missing! But it's good to see you're well.

Me: aw, thanks. How long has it actually been tho.

Kindly npc: ^u^

[mysticfemme]

lil heartbroken ramble in tags oop-

[naomiknight-17]

I was upset because I've been working super hard at cardiac rehab and stuff but when I weighed in last week I was up 4 lbs

But then I weighed in this morning and I'm back to where I was a month ago so?????

Yay??????

[rubberbandballqueen]

About your tags: is there more that you can share about the OW fandom and fics? This was a phenomenon I wonder about too. It was one of the most popular fandoms around 2017-2018, but the way the fandom stopped on its tracks around 2019 was hard not to notice. Especially from people who didn't play the game but were aware of it's fandom.

oh! overwatch is one of about 50-ish fandoms i track for this one spreadsheet project i do as a hobby (which i Technically blog about @fandom-data-scientist, but i've been too lazy to do a proper writeup to explain what the hell it is i do), wherein i try to answer the age-old question: when did the weebs move to ao3?

(the answer is late 2015/early 2016. most likely this was in large part a result of undertale and sports anime, but that's currently just my own conjecture)

According To My Research(tm), the overwatch fandom peaked in late 2016/early 2017 when it comes to the number of new fics posted per month. after this, it declined quite rapidly, as it didn't even get to enjoy a plateau period.

(there's a reason why the plots are really wonky towards the end of this graph-- it's bc i found the past dates for number of fics archived to a particular site via the wayback machine. since those snapshots are typically bot crawls, the number of fics shown on the fandoms listings will not include fics that have been archive-locked. although i technically started this project in august 2022, i did not add overwatch to my tracking list until this june/july or so. my current guess for the small uptick in the rate of ow fics published to ao3 in october 2022 is that the sequel came out? and then the rate plunged for january 2023 bc of the ai scraping scare that happened at around that time-- nearly every single fandom i track had a significant drop right then bc everyone was archive-locking their fics. the rate shooting up in like july 2023 on this chart is bc like i said, that's when i added ow to my list of tracked fandoms; because i'm logged into my own ao3 acct when checking these numbers live, i get access to the archive-locked fics and so the display number goes up.)

in my experience, fandoms will generally kind of plateau in their fic production after their peak, which will ofc normally gradually taper off. games that receive regular lore or story updates probably have fairly long or stable plateaus, although i haven't made scatterplots or made any comparing analyses to prove this rigorously. this plateau period generally represents a time of fandom stability as the fair-weather, casual, or migratory slash fans run off to the next big thing.

if we ignore the fact the plague and quarantine happened, we can see a nice, steady, and very consistent plateau period for the danganronpa fandom from about 2018-2020!

let's look at an older fandom, like my archnemesis final fantasy:

granted, the ao3 numbers are kind of all over the place these days, but you kind of get my point by now, right? that healthy fandoms tend to plateau as the wind carries away the faintly-interested and leaves the long-haulers behind to form their communities.

overwatch struck me as unusual when i was on one of my long wayback machine trips because of the way there was a net increase of only two fics published from 1 july 2021 to 1 october 2021, when before then it had usually been in the hundreds or so. i then went on a work tangent n googled around n more or less concluded it had Something to do with some kind of scandal with the development company, but otherwise i don't really have any more comments on it hahaha.

[anonprotagging]

I want to play SV so badly :(

I don’t even like....... actually care about the story or whatever at this point since I’ve seen so many spoilers (maybe 1/3 of the game’s “plot twists” if you can even call them that 🙄🙄🙄), and I don’t really like, like the pokemon designs this generation either, but I’m tired of my brain hyping it up constantly kjsdhfjksd

[identitty-dickruption]

alcoholism recovery timeline (as of 69 days of sobriety)

things are different for everyone, but I thought it could be useful for people if I sketch out a rough timeline of withdrawal symptoms/things that are still problems etc now that I'm over two months into recovery. caveat that my body may be different from yours

first few days

your big problem on day number one is getting through whatever hangover you might be experiencing from your most recent bout of drinking

HELL !

headaches. nausea. shaking. flu-like symptoms

the headaches took several days to die down, the nausea was mostly gone after 48 hours

cannot emphasise enough that the biggest problem of the first week is physical recovery. if things start to get scary, go to emergency. some people can experience seizures in withdrawal, and that can get dangerous

first few weeks

mood-swings. goddd the mood-swings. terrible

some of the longer-term withdrawal symptoms are going to start to be more obvious around this point

examples: clumsiness, nerve problems (e.g. the shakes won't go away), changes in appetite

it is at this stage that you want to establish some kind of routine around the times that you usually would be drinking. e.g. if you used to have your first drink at 7:30am, that is now Going For a Walk Time

you will learn just how strong your mental associations are between booze and various activities. the hard bit is breaking those associations. which is easier if you have replacements

around about one month

this is. a commonly reported danger-time

for me, and for others I've talked to, one month is around the time you start to think "hmm it can't have been that bad. surely I can just have a couple of drinks?" <- it was that bad. trust

this is the time when it can be good to start to take stock of what you've gained from sobriety. remember why you're doing it. have some positive reasons as well as the negative ones (e.g. sobriety makes me feel more comfortable in my body, more secure in my relationships, etc)

the other thing that can happen at this point is. the reasons you drank in the first place coming back in full force. this is the point where I went from "quitting alcohol" to "recovery from alcoholism"

around about two months

from here, I've mostly found it's about maintenance of the good habits I established early in recovery. this means reminding myself of why it's important to be keeping those habits going

the thing is. the tangible benefits might now be plateauing, so you need to make sure you're able to find ways to motivate yourself to keep going

if you're feeling comfortable to do so, it might be a good idea to test yourself a little bit. where it was a good idea to avoid bars in the first month, you might be okay to go back to those environments with your new coping strategies (just remember to give yourself an out)

you will keep learning about yourself and you will gain awareness of all sorts of triggers that weren't immediately obvious at first. as long as you stay vigilant and you know who to turn to in a crisis you will be okay. trust me <3

okay that's kind of where I'm at now. hope it helps. luck and love to all recovering alcoholics out there

[uhitsum]

youve probably answered this question before, but just how did you do it? im at about 120 now (but very short), i can only dream of reaching 200. Whats the secret (is there one?)

I don't think there is much of a secret, I can't tell you any new hack for gaining that you've never heard before. But I'll gladly share how I did it :)

I started at 120lbs too, which was a bit underweight on my 5'8" frame 😅 I didnt only gain for the kink, but because I felt genuinely unhappy in my body and I wanted to change it. Here's a rough outline of the pace of my gains:

Sept 2022: 120lbs

Jan 2023: 155lbs

June 2023: 180lbs (plateau until October)

Jan 2024: 200lbs (starting this blog shortly after turning 18)

September 2024: 220lbs (I havent stepped on a scale this month, but I know I hit 220 lol. also yay, 2 years of gaining 🥳)

From Sept 2022 to Jan 2023 was probably the most work I've put into gaining, since i had to rewire the metabolism that had kept me skinny all my life. I don't believe in tricks and hacks in fattening up (not that I could get much for myself, I was 16 and couldn't drive) so I did it the old fashioned way. I altered my meal schedule in this sort of way:

7am Breakfast

NEW 10am Brunch snacks (often a Peanut Butter Smoothie)

12pm Lunch snacks

NEW 3pm actual Lunch (usually followed by a food coma)

6pm Dinner

NEW 9pm 2nd Dinner

I probably wasn't hitting all of these meal times every day, but adding more opportunities for me to get my hands on food throughout the day meant i was almost always thinking of my next meal 😅

Besides just eating more often, another area I worked on was eating more at each meal. I would push myself to go back for seconds, or to pair more with whatever I ate at each meal. I adopted a "what could I add" mentality, where I would never eat one thing alone. My favorite example was for breakfast: before, I'd eat a breakfast sandwich, which is a respectable small meal at ~400 calories. When I was in my "gaining prime," I would add a second sandwich, and put tater tots in the air fryer, adding up to 1000+ calories for just a little more work.

While I know this won't be the glamorous answer many people hope for, it's good honest work with results hard to ignore. After you force yourself to overeat for long enough, it becomes impossible to go back to the small and infrequent meals of before — your own appetite is enough to keep up your gaining momentum 🤭

From Sept 2022 to Jan 2023 was when I was working my gut hard to adhere to the schedules, but I loosened up once I upsized my wardrobe a second time and could feel the softness creeping in. My gainer's appetite kept me cruizing until June, gaining an average of 6lbs a month (🥵) when I started work (at a Frozen Custard shop, no less) which kept me on my feet late at night and made me plateau.

It wasn't until October that I would start pushing myself again, on one Very Horny week where I had the house to myself. I binged every single day, including my first experience drinking melted ice cream (cut with Heavy Cream) 😵‍💫 which led into a plateau break as I gained 20lbs in 3 months once again.

2024, despite me making this blog, has been predominantly a cruising year. I started at 200lbs, bigger than I had ever expected to get when I first started, so I mainly just eat a lot when I want to, and don't when I don't. Now that I'm in college, both stress eating and a very loving boyfriend join the mix, so we'll wait and see what these next few years have in store for my waistline 😉

So, that's the long and short of it! If you're looking to gain, I think you have to push yourself, but make sure you're only doing so in ways you can enjoy. Routine is EVERYTHING, with the end goal that you shouldn't have to make conscious decisions to overeat; it should just be a fact of life 😌 I wouldn't personally recommend relying on drinks to fatten up from the very beginning, since those can be easy to get sick of, but they can be valuable tools for plateau breaking in combination with an otherwise gourmand mindset.

Thanks for the ask! And to anyone brave enough to make it through to the end, thank you for reading! I love telling my gainer story, because I like to put it into a more realistic framework than many of the hot and horny stories out there are able to do. As thanks, here's a belly pic just for you! Dont mind the bruises, we just had a little fun yesterday :3

[leafofkudzu]

Happy soon-to-be Spring, everyone! I hope this short month has treated you well, because the first Saturday of March is approaching fast, meaning it's time for another art party hosted by my guild, Verdant Shield [VS]! I ran some numbers and realized we've only had one party in charr lands, so it's time to rectify that imbalance over at the coziest little guild trek target, Anya's Strawberry Patch in Diessa Plateau!

For those who aren’t familiar with art parties, they’re a concept carried over from Final Fantasy XIV - in-game get-togethers for artists/writers/creatives of all types to hang out, chat, and create together! Get your favorite character/look together, head to the location, find someone that catches your eye, and create! Afterwards, everyone posts their creations in a shared tag (ours is #VSArtParty) so others can see, interact, and share! Tl;dr: the ‘goal’ of an art party isn’t to be drawn, but to draw others, and share with the community!

Time and /squadjoin information is under the cut, but will also be posted again via reblogs as the squads go up on the day of the party!

Location Information:

Anya's Strawberry Patch isn't a PoI on a map, but it is a guild trek target, which means the wiki has a reference on how to get over there. To save you a click, it's a little jumping puzzle to get into a pipe behind the Town of Nolan in Diessa Plateau (take Nolan Waypoint), but if you have a mount you can just go directly to the pipe without having to do any fancy footwork. Pass through that and it'll spit you out basically right on top of the party location! I'll be marking the pipe entrance via squad markers like in the below image, so if you can't find it just hop into squad and it should light right up!

Time & Squad Details:

As we always do, we’ll be having two parties - one on EU servers and one on NA ones - with an hour break in between. People tend to arrive early and/or jump between accounts as soon as the break comes up, so don’t be surprised to see tags and announcements going up ahead of schedule!

The first party will be on EU servers and begin at 9pm Central European Time (aka 3pm Eastern Standard Time or 4 hours before in-game reset). I’ll be hosting on my EU alt account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Stormcaller Nell for an invite.

The second party will be on NA servers and begin at 7pm Eastern Standard Time (aka 1am Central European Time or at in-game reset). I’ll be hosting this one on my main account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Lorn Dustpaw for an invite.

Closing Words:

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out, I've been away on a trip and just got back! I also may have spent more time than I should have trying to decide which character(s) I wanted to host with - I'm jealous of you guys who do character polls leading up to things. :P

Anyway, I say this every time but really truly thank you everyone who comes out to these, you guys are what makes these things fun! I look forward to seeing you all on Saturday, take care and see you soon! ♥

[prettyinpwn]

How Gravity Falls Could Have Been Better + Poor Ford and Wendy (GF Writing Analysis Pt. 2)

GF Writing Analysis Series: Pt. 1 - Ford Pines: A Masterclass in Writing a Good Flawed Character Praise the Axolotl, I feel horrible just writing that title. But let me preface this post with three statements:

I've been in this fandom since the first episode aired. I participated in this fandom while it was airing, and I will always cherish this fandom, those memories, and Gravity Falls itself even when I'm a crusty old lady in a rocking chair someday.

Gravity Falls is still my favorite show of all time, even as someone now nearing thirty years old. Nothing's ever topped it since in my mind, and I don't think anything ever will for me.

Writing and making a show is hard. It's easy for me to sit here and smash my little lady hands on a keyboard and criticize the Gravity Falls writing team's decisions. I'm sure if I'd been on that team, I'd have done a lot worse under that burnout and pressure, and I doubt I'll ever write anything anywhere near that critically acclaimed or beloved.

But... every time I've watched Gravity Falls from beginning to end, I've always felt that there was something off. And in recent rewatches, after I'd studied creative writing in college as a part of my minor, plus just having studied and done a lot of writing in my free time for years... I found out finally what it was:

The flaw, in my opinion, is the pacing. Gravity Falls is - and I mean this in the most respectful way to the writers, and I'm saying this as someone who will praise this show to my grave - poorly paced overall.

So what do I mean by that? Each contained episode is tightly written and nearly flawless in the pacing, but the overarching plot? I'll describe it like this: Picture a rollercoaster starting on a very, very slow incline. The scenery on the way up is gorgeous and entertaining to look at, but damn, you want to get to that peak that was teased in the advertisement of the ride. That first tease is what keeps you going on the slow incline. You know you're going to get there, but...

Okay, we're focused on getting accustomed to the seat, the people around us, how this rollercoaster feels, but... you check your watch. Are we there yet? What about that peak that was advertised? No, it's still a glacial incline. You inch upwards. It's godawful slow. You wait - and for those of us who watched when it aired during the hiatuses (which were more Disney's fault than the core team's, to my understanding) - it takes months to years.

Jesus Christ, you think. What about that tease? I want to know what's at that peak! Yes, I get tension and slow buildup, but this is taking FOREVER, and there have been no glimpses of the peak for eons. And then... suddenly, it gets more intriguing. There's a little bump. And another. And finally... there's another hint of the peak that you saw teased all the way back in the Stone Age.

Now, the ride consistently offers you little fun hills after that long, slow first incline. But seconds later BOOM! You skyrocket to that peak so fast your facial skin is flapping behind you. WOO! This is a blast! But holy hell, this is going a little fast compared to what it was like before. The last third of this ride must be MINDBLOWING, with lots of loops and spins and turns and even greater thrills, right?

And then the ride just drops almost face first to a plateau again. There are no more bumps, really. No loops. No twists. Just an almost straight, logical line back to Earth. Half the ride was pretty and made you laugh a lot despite how long it took, but the other half of the ride went so fast in comparison that it was just a blur. You're at the finish line now. Yes, it concluded like it was supposed to, but... is that it?

Rollercoaster metaphor over with, that's the pacing of Gravity Falls. For a more detailed visual example:

(Note - each episode is listed by their overall number. For example, 1 is Tourist Trapped, the peak at 31 is Not What He Seems, and the finale Weirdmageddon episodes are 38-40. Also, this is a rough, subjective view of the pacing tension, but generally... episodes that hinted or contributed to the overarching plot and tension earned higher points, and ones that added almost nothing besides comedy and character development that didn't necessarily add to the overarching plot were lower. The Weirdmageddon episodes are at a plateau since they - as finale episodes - serve to create as much tension as they do resolving it.)

Now, there are no hard and fast rules in writing, and every writer plots differently, but generally, this is the kind of pacing tension that's considered "good" (and that most common outlining techniques follow, just in different forms):

(Credit - please check out this page for a full explanation of each act.)

Generally, the trend is slow buildup. There's no plateau for eons, BOOM, then faceplant, like Gravity Falls. So that gets us to my main thesis of this post, building on what I bolded before:

Gravity Falls was too short because it's a three act story squished into a two act structure; the first season is paced like they were expecting three seasons - a season for each story act - and the second season is paced like they had to quickly fit the last two acts into one.

Why do I say this? Because there's a common writing plot point called the Midpoint / Plot Twist. So for those unfamiliar with writing techniques, let's explore what a Midpoint is:

"The Midpoint occurs at the 50% mark, halfway through the Second Act and (obviously) halfway through the book itself. Although many writers neglect the Midpoint in comparison to more noted moments such as the First Plot Point or Climax, the Midpoint is arguably the most significant beat within the story. It is what director Sam Peckinpah called the “centerpiece” of the entire story. Everything hangs upon it. In many ways, it is the moment that decides the ultimate fate of the story." "The Midpoint will feature at least one, possibly more, momentous revelations. Within the primary character arc and thematic exploration, the protagonist will encounter a Moment of Truth that forever changes his or her view of the story’s central philosophy. This revelation, perhaps in partnership with a further external revelation about the nature of the conflict itself, will forever evolve how the protagonist approaches the conflict—on both a personal and practical level. It signals a thematic shift from Lie to Truth (or vice versa) and an external shift from ineffective “reaction” to increasingly effective “action.” (Credit).

"But PrettyinPwn!", I hear you protest. "Gideon Rises is the episode smack dab halfway through the story and seasons! And that has a big reveal. And we learn a truth about Stan."

Yes, my sweet friends. Gideon Rises - and the reveal of what Stan's hiding in the basement - is a revelation, but the way the first season is paced, in my opinion it's what writers refer to as the First Act climax or Break Into Two. The Break Into Two is:

"Main character makes a choice and to go on the journey, and our adventure begins. We leave the “Thesis” world and enter the upside-down “Anti-thesis” world of Act Two."

(Credit).

Traditionally, this Break Into Two is literally stepping into a new world. Harry Potter getting to Hogwarts. Katniss Everdeen getting to the Capitol. Yadda yadda. But in Gravity Falls, it's more subtle:

We go from the "ordinary" world of Gravity Falls in Season 1 / Act 1 (which is anything but ordinary, but you get the point) where things are bizarre but lighthearted, to the "new" world of Gravity Falls in Season 2A / Act 2 where things are bizarre and definitely not lighthearted anymore. We've started to see the dark underbelly of this strange place and family, the seriousness ramps up, and... lo and behold... a B STORY pops up right at this point in full force, just like B Stories typically do right during or after the Break Into Two point. And that B Story? Is Stan's work on the portal and his search to find Ford, which was teased in the hook, all the way back at Tourist Trapped.

So no, Gideon Rises is not the real story Midpoint. The real story Midpoint is this nerd:

Let's look at those two plotline graphs again; Gravity Falls' and the typical one you see with three act structures:

Yes. Ford's reveal / Not What He Seems should have been smack dab near halfway through the series. But it's not. It marks the 75% point instead. Technically, if we follow the idea that the Midpoint should be roughly around 50% through the story, Not What He Seems should have taken place near where Gideon Rises is in the episode roster, and Gideon Rises should have been halfway through Season 1 (roughly near Fight Fighters).

So what caused this? Oh boy, I'm getting into speculation territory, and I know Hirsch has said it was meant to be this way, but based on the pacing flaws, here's my theory:

Hirsch and team wrote Gravity Falls Season 1 assuming there'd be three seasons; a season for each act of the story. They burned out, so compacted it down to two seasons, and fit all of Act 2 and 3 of the story into Season 2. That's why, at the time the episodes aired, Season 2 was referred to in two halves: Season 2A and Season 2B. Translation? Season 2A is Act 2 and what was supposed to be Season 2 but condensed, Season 2B is Act 3 of the story and what was supposed to be Season 3 but condensed.

TL;DR: In Gravity Falls, Act 1 = 50% of the story, Act 2 = 25% of the story, Act 3 = 25% of the story. AKA poor pacing. The equivalent in, say, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, would be if Harry spent 50% of the story at the Dursley's before getting to Hogwarts.

If Gravity Falls had had three seasons total, the slow buildup in Season 1 would be totally justified, as the first act of most stories takes its time to establish the characters and world. But we instead go from slow plateau to BOOM to faceplant, instead of a slow ride up to the top that consistently raises tension with a few peaks here and there, then a fun, bumpy ride of resolving the tension on the way down.

That's why Season 1 has a little hint of the overarching plot in Tourist Trapped with the Stan vending machine tease at the end of the episode - that's known in writer's circles as the "hook" or promise of the premise - and then literally almost nothing until the end.

I will reiterate: Season 1 is written like the writers thought they had enough time to pace Act 2 and 3 out over the same amount of episodes for each Act.

All this, combined with the fact that Season 2 has some very out of place episodes concerning the tension (*cough* Roadside Attraction *cough*, and no, I don't care that it was retconned later to have made sense), well... yeah.

But this didn't just affect the pacing. It also affected the characters' writing. Wendy barely got developed, Stan and Ford's backstory AKA the B plot got squished into two episodes, the government agents as an antagonist were "defeated" too soon to try to quick switch over to Bill Cipher for Season 2B / Act 3, and the most oof-worthy part? Ford got the short end of the writing stick.

I mentioned in another post that I think Ford is a fantastically written character as a concept, but unlike Stan, Dipper, and Mabel, his good writing relies more on subtext, rushed plotlines, and external materials (Journal 3, mainly). Thematically, as the show focuses on twins, parallelisms, juxtapositions, Ford should have had just as much "let's get to know this character!" focus and time to develop to the viewer as Stan did. But no, he got... what, roughly 4-5 episodes, some of them where his story was only the B plot? Literally, let's count:

Episodes with Stan plotlines: Tourist Trapped, Legend of the Gobblewonker, Headhunters, The Hand That Rocks the Mabel, The Inconveniencing, Dipper vs. Manliness, Irrational Treasure, Boss Mabel, Bottomless Pit, Land Before Swine, Dreamscaperers, Gideon Rises, Scaryoke, Soos and the Real Girl, Little Gift Shop of Horrors, The Love God, Not What He Seems, A Tale of Two Stans, DD&MD, The Stanchurian Candidate, Roadside Attraction, Weirdmageddon 1+3.

Episodes with Ford plotlines: A Tale of Two Stans, DD&MD, The Last Mabelcorn, Dipper and Mabel vs The Future, Weirdmageddon 1+3.

Ford feels like an afterthought. Dipper, Mabel, and Stan get 100% of the story to develop, and Ford gets less than 25%. Also factor in how Ford is the peak the viewer is waiting for, the whole mystery that keeps viewers on their toes for most of the story... and he gets ~5 episodes, and none of those are 100% focused on him.

It's like hosting a multiple course meal promising the main course - the steak - is gonna blow your mind. And then you get it 75% of the way through the meal and it's like... dime sized. It's a damn good little nerd steak, but it's so small, and we ate like three hundred Dipper and Wendy crush and Mabel crush and really well written and funny but effectively filler episode salads on the way here, including ones that weren't even canon (Bottomless Pit and Little Gift Shop of Horrors), interspersed with the occasional hint of steak with episodes like Dreamscaperers. Which would have been fine had there been an equal and increasing amount of steak, but no. To ask an age old question... WHERE'S THE BEEF?

A summary of Ford:

Worse yet, let's compare his introduction to Stan's introduction.

Stan (in Tourist Trapped): "Heya, I'm a grumpy old conman runnin' a tourist trap, and all I care about is money, but... hey, you kids want something from the Gift Shop?"

Ford (in A Tale of Two Stans): "Greetings, I just returned from sci-fi sideburn land, I'm just going to punch a character - my brother - beloved by the audience in the face after he did something very nice for me, tell my long backstory that kind of makes me look like a douche in multiple ways, plot convenience the antagonist away, then tell said beloved by the audience character / brother to get off my lawn."

No wonder why - after ATOTS aired - lots of people thought Ford was a Class A, prime US Grade, grass fed dick. And to this day, more people seem to love Stan over Ford in the fandom. We get context for his decisions later in... drumroll please... Journal 3. And subtext. Not even an episode.

We THEN understand that Ford punched Stan because of the thirty years of hell he went through, that he was just about to defeat Bill Cipher when Stan activated the portal therefore interrupting him, and Ford was upset that the Shack had made a mockery of his paranormal studies plus Stan had literally stolen his identity, completely turned his house around, and made him look like a conman... so we then have an 'OH!' moment and realize, "Hey, wait a minute, this guy has reasons for what he did. Maybe he was more justified than we thought, or at least as justified as Stan was.".

But not in the show. In a book released after. He is actually equally as well-written as Stan is, in concept. He's a great protagonist with realistic flaws and reasons. But he got a sad little salad in the writing department compared to Stan, Mabel, and Dipper's whole ten course caloric explosion buffet.

So what would have fixed this? Just like the overarching plot's pacing... another season. Season 1 + the first half of Season 2 could have been solving the mystery of Stan, and the second half of Season 2 and Season 3 could have been solving the mystery of Ford.

And that, my friends, is why Gravity Falls is too short.

~

Where does this leave us? Well, er... my next thought is... how would I have written Gravity Falls using the typical pacing progress?

Well, for starters, let's decide this: how many seasons do we want overall? The two options are...

A. Two seasons like it is now, but shorten each story Act.

B. Three seasons, each season is one Act of the story.

If Gravity Falls were just two seasons long in this hypothetical outline, this is what I'd do:

Take out the Dipper/Wendy love subplot. I'm sorry, we all knew while we were watching it that it would go nowhere. I remember watching it as a teen girl as the show aired and being so damn bored with it as a subplot. Especially because... as it stands, most of Wendy's purpose is as Dipper's crush. She never got her own episode.

Put Gideon Rises as Episode 10 instead of Fight Fighters. Make Not What He Seems as the Season 1 finale.

Take out a lot of the "filler" episodes in Season 1. I hate to say this, because I love a lot of the Season 1 episodes. But to pace it better, I'd say order the episodes in Season 1 like this: Tourist Trapped The Legend of the Gobblewonker The Hand That Rocks the Mabel The Time Traveler's Pig Little Dipper Boss Mabel Carpet Diem Land Before Swine Dreamscaperers Gideon Rises Scary-oke Into the Bunker The Golf War Soos and the Real Girl Sock Opera (Any of the "filler" episodes from Season 1 or 2 here) Blendin's Game Society of the Blind Eye Northwest Mansion Mystery Not What He Seems

And as for season 2:

A Tale of Two Stans Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons Then... Here we have a big gap, because we put many Season 2 episodes in Season 1. We squished all that plot into Season 1, so what do we fill episodes 3-17 of Season 2 with? I'll tell you what: More Wendy and more Ford. In this version of the outline, Dipper and Mabel are present characters in every episode, with a special focus on Stan and Soos to a smaller extent in Season 1. So to make it even, I'd make this version of Season 2 have a big focus on Ford and then Wendy to a smaller extent, mirroring how Stan and Soos are focused on in Season 1. And just like the antagonist of Season 1 - Gideon - with a little bit of the government agents, have this season have a few more episodes with the government agents and then Bill as the big final bad.

This gap here gives us ~14 episodes to develop these characters. I also think The Last Mabelcorn should be in here somewhere, so make that 13. If we parallel Season 1, then roughly... Bill should get two episodes as a main antagonist like Gideon did before his finale in Gideon Rises. Wendy should get two episodes as a deuteragonist like Soos did in Season 1.

The Bill episodes could hint more at his backstory like Journal 3 did, have him mess with Ford more and tease at Ford's "sing to me O Muse" backstory with him (because more Ford parallels with Odysseus are always welcome).

The Wendy episodes could delve into the same issues Soos' episodes did: Wendy Episode #1: Her dating issues, but instead of finding someone like Soos did, she's happily single at the end. I vote a plot where Wendy is ready to date again after the Robbie fiasco, Mabel tries to set her up with someone new, tied to a B plot with Ford where Mabel digs into his dating life, finds little to none, and then both Ford and Wendy realize at the end that it's okay to be single and not ashamed of it in a romance obsessed society (also Ford on the ace spectrum ftw, personal headcanon though). Better yet, have it have a kid friendly explanation that some people love differently; actually show that Wendy is Bisexual and Ford is - I'd argue - Ace (or straight or gay but just super bad at relationships because of pouring himself into his work and his other flaws, fear of sharing his baggage with others, etc). Not that Disney would have allowed LGBT+ at that time, because, well... Disney.

This would simultaneously make Wendy A. NOT just a crush figure tied to romance, as female characters often get relegated to, and B. help Ford parallel some insecurities about how he compares himself to Stan, just like Stan compares himself to Ford in the episodes that actually aired, especially if we keep The Stanchurian Candidate as one of the episodes but involve Ford more in it. Have Mabel pull a Jane Austen's Emma and learn to stop being a busybody matchmaker. This idea - in my opinion - is way cooler and less ethically ambiguous than The Love God.

Wendy Episode #2: Her family issues, AKA her dead mother. Make it real tearjerky with a B plot tie to how Stan or Ford never got to see their parents again after the portal accident and before their parents died, and parallel it with Wendy regretting something regarding her mother before she died. This would give us a chance to explore more about Wendy as a character, and both Filbrick / Caryn (AKA Stan and Ford's parents) as characters, as well. I would also lean more towards having her bond with Ford over Stan in this episode. Or, alternatively, you could tie this to Dipper and Mabel and their parents. Because you can't tell me that their parents did NOT have questions about what was going on after Mabel sent that letter home about her "two grunkles".

But why so many Ford with Wendy plots? Because Soos is already the Shack employee tied a lot to Stan, so to parallel, you could have Wendy bond more with Ford. At first glance, this seems like it'd be an odd duo, but Wendy probably could relate to Ford's experiences of feeling like the responsible one in the family, hiding how much they care about things under a more calm facade, the fact that Wendy's dad built the Shack for Ford, maybe add Wendy having an underlying interest in science or the paranormal that she deadens down to fit in that Ford finds out about and tries to encourage her to not hide anymore to tie in with his theme of "it's okay to be weird". You could do a million things with Ford and Wendy subplots.

So that leaves us with a total of nine other episodes to devote to Ford here in this season space. I mean, picture it... in my original counts of how many episodes Stan vs. Ford got in the real version of the show that aired, Stan had around 23 episodes that featured him.

In this version of the outline, Stan would get 14-15 episodes featuring him. Ford would get 14 episodes featuring him. CHEF'S KISS; EQUAL TREATMENT BY THE WRITING. But what would these episodes be about?

A. More bonding and arc between Dipper and Ford. Dipper would go from "notice me Ford senpai / hyperventilating" to "holy crap the Author is as awesome as I thought he'd be!" to "wait a minute, this guy's got some flaws" to "maybe this isn't who I want to become?" to make Dipper's rejection of the apprenticeship feel more natural and take the blame heat off of Mabel (as the fandom's been eager to place).

If Dipper's reasoning for rejecting the apprenticeship was not just "Mabel needs me" but a combination of "Mabel needs me, Stan needs Ford more than I do, Mabel was right and I don't need the Journals / the Author / Ford to be a hero, and I don't want to become Ford", it'd make a lot more sense. Because thematically, the plot of Gravity Falls resolves BECAUSE Dipper and Mabel don't become Ford and Stan; they avoid the mistakes they made, and in doing so, heal the literal and metaphorical rift. And it also makes more sense for Dipper's character arc, which was always about self-confidence.

That, and I think it'd have been great for Dipper to have had a trust - distrust - trust again arc with Ford like he did with Stan. "Oh, Ford's so cool" to "Ford lied to me about Bill!" to "Ford is flawed, but he's still the great uncle I love now". Put a Dark Night of the Soul in there, where Dipper literally 'Trusts No One!'. Not even Ford. Have him teeter on the precipice of going down Ford's dark path, but Mabel saves him from fully falling into it. And have Ford have a Dark Night of the Soul, where now even Dipper doesn't trust or like him, and so Ford feels totally outcasted by his family like Stan felt years ago.

B. Slower plot twist revelations about Ford's past with Bill Cipher. Start him out reluctant to talk about it, especially in front of Dipper, who views him as a hero that Ford so desperately wants to be. Explore some of his trauma, what his choices have cost him, etc. Hell, I'm pretty sure Ford's got some form of PTSD, so throw a plotline in there about Ford isolating a lot because of it. Of course, since kids are a primary audience of the show, you can't get too dark, but you can't tell me Ford didn't experience some messed up stuff on the other side of the portal.

C. Goddamn, take some of Ford's multiverse explorations from Journal 3 and make them actual episodes. What a wasted opportunity in the show. And it better have Jheselbraum in it, or I riot.

D. More Ford bonding with Mabel. Please, for the love of God, I know Dipper and Ford are nerdtopia buddies, but Ford and Mabel would get along so well. They're both weirdos at heart, sweater twins, the older twins, and love the odd and the artistic. Make a B plot with Stan and Dipper bonding, maybe even after Dipper's loss of respect for Ford, and have Dipper "side" with Stan while Mabel starts to "side" with Ford more, almost getting lost in Stan and Ford's rift themselves. Because goddammit, we're riding this juxtaposition and parallelism and thematic train into the Sun!

E. GIVE FORD MORE MOMENTS TO LOOK LIKE A CARING, SWEET GRUNKLE. Stan got a truckload of chances to shine and for the twins to bond with him. Can... can Ford have the same thing? Please? Here, elevator pitch: Ford being forced to put science away to watch the twins for a day because Stan's busy, he reluctantly agrees, and by the end he's just as much of a softie for them as Stan is. Or have Dipper and Mabel get in trouble, Stan and Ford have to work together to save them; have them sabotage each other, trying to look like the better Grunkle, but then pulling their heads out of their asses and working together reluctantly and realizing they actually have fun on adventures like they used to (which would foreshadow their choice to go on Stan-O-War II adventures later).

F. By God, I don't care if Gideon's already in jail by this point, plot-wise. This boy spent episodes chasing the Author's journals. I need to see the look on his face when he realizes the Author is his arch-nemeses' twin brother / great uncle. Please. Have him start a rivalry with Ford that goes as horribly as you'd expect because Ford would use 30 years of multiverse experience to punt this kid into the next dimension for multiple reasons, one of them being having summoned Bill Cipher, another being having used his journal for nefarious purposes.

G. Don't make the government agents go away so easily. Foreshadow Stan's return of memory in Weirdmageddon 3 with the agents remembering what happened before the memory gun wipe in Not What He Seems, not only to utilize them better as antagonists, but to increase the stakes, and also to make Stan's memories returning later seem more plausible. Have Ford play a part in getting rid of them as a threat.

Or have them switch from antagonists to allies once they realize Bill Cipher is the real threat, but have them fail to neutralize Bill to make him seem that much more insurmountable and the Pines' defeat of him that much more of a feat. To wrap up them as an obstacle, just have them thank the Pines at the end and then have them put forth the whole "Never Mind All That" act and keep the stories of the weirdness contained to Gravity Falls. Have them try to lock Stan and Ford up still, though, but realize that they're gone on the Stan-O-War II trip (which, if that story's ever made into a show, they could serve as continued antagonists chasing after the Stans).

H. More Pacifica. Make her redemption more believable. Give her another subplot in Season 2, maybe following the plotline she had in the Lost Legends comic side story with Dipper. In fact, give her a B plot episode storyline with Ford; have them bond over having had to be perfect golden children with a parent(s) that care way too much about money, and it gives Dipper and Mabel more context and understanding about Ford's struggles. There. It writes itself.

I. More McGucket. I want to see Ford angst more about what happened between them. Then, finally, after all these episodes with The Last Mabelcorn somewhere amongst them... Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future Weirdmageddon 1 Weirdmageddon 2 Weirdmageddon 3

And ta-da! You'd have a version of Gravity Falls with two seasons with more fair attention to Wendy and Ford, more evenly paced tension and plot twists, and an antagonist cycle that goes from town enemy to world enemy to multidimensional enemy. ~

As for a three season version of this outline, keep Season 1 completely as is, make Not What He Seems episode 10 of Season 2, and... this is a bold suggestion, but turn the Season 2 finale into Dipper and Mabel vs The Future and make the Weirdmageddon episodes into a whole season. Make the failure to stop the rift really hurt, and use the whole of Season 3 to have the Pines figure out how to stop the end of the world. Use some of it to rebuild the portal, explore some of the Multiverse to find a solution, have them try to find Jheselbraum to help discover more about Bill and his weaknesses and his previous attempts on Earth to break reality (like Modoc's story in Journal 3, in fact, have an episode where they time travel back to Modoc which would give him inspiration to have drawn the prophecy wheel on the cave wall that Ford found hundreds of years later), gather the whole gang and build the Shacktron, have it fail and have to use the prophecy wheel... But wait, it fails, too, and Bill scatters everyone involved across the Multiverse instead of making them into banners - while also destroying the portal - to buy himself some time to get Ford to give up the solution to breaking free from Gravity Falls. Explore the Multiverse more to gather everyone again, use each episode to devote yet more time to developing each character, parallel Ford's journey in the Multiverse for 30 years. Maybe even have a bit of a subplot where Ford breaks from Bill and tries to rebuild the portal to get everyone back, paralleling Stan's struggle to get him back for 30 years.

Learn more about who Ford was those thirty years he was gone. Use the Multiverse episodes to make Stan sympathize more with what Ford went through for thirty years. Have Jheselbraum reference the whole "you have the face of the one who will destroy Bill" to Stan instead of Ford like she did in the past, and have Stan be confused at first, thinking Ford will be the hero again. Dark Night of the Soul up in this season, man, and make the prophecy wheel fail again, and Stan realize yep, time to brain zap, Jheselbraum was right, but HE'S the one that has to stop Bill, not Ford. And THEN try Stan's conman trick to trap Bill in his mind.

And that's how I'd rewrite Gravity Falls as three seasons.

~

I'll say this: after all that criticism I just laid out, you might think I hate Gravity Falls as it is now. No. I love this show. It won't leave my brainspace and lives there rent-free, like Bill does in Stan's mind. And I will say, I understand 100% why it was written the way it was. They seemed to have had a plan in Season 1, switched gears between seasons, and tried to wrap up two seasons of plot in one season for Season 2.

And they did it with little to no flaws in terms of the overarching plot. They told the story they wanted to. They pulled a Stan and took some shortcuts, but had good intentions and got the job done. And the show is still like... an A- to solid A grade show even with these flaws.

But it could have been nearly flawless and A++ had they either planned for two seasons from the start, or powered through the burnout to make three whole seasons (which is easy for me to say, as someone that didn't have to live through what must have been hair graying levels of stress).

All in all, I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on my critique, or if anyone would like to add more about what they'd put in this hypothetical Season 2 or 3. Or if you'd prefer the two seasons still as they are, or as I hypothetically rewrote them, or as the three seasons idea I explained above. Or if you think I'm just crazy, and that Gravity Falls is perfect as is.

[paperclipninja]

Seeing everyone's reactions to the Good Omens news, I think I'm feeling some version of them all concurrently. And I know throwing my 2c into the basket is neither here nor there, but I've popped some rambling thoughts under the cut.

First off I want to be really clear: obviously the people truly impacted are the victims of NG's behaviour and that is first and foremost. This is not intended to erase or diminish that, I am distinguishing broader impact from impact on the show here intentionally, even though they are inherently entwined, but want to acknowledge that right off the bat.

This whirlwind of finding out about the allegations, to hearing that the show was paused, to assuming it was cancelled, to wanting it not to be cancelled but not wanting NG to be a part of it, to not being sure how that would happen, to being hopeful, to hearing it is back on sans creep but a movie, to hearing it's a series, to getting confirmation it's a 90 minute movie, to finding out that not even a month ago we were, in fact, getting nothing. It's been a lot.

And I managed to convince myself that if it's cancelled, well then the fandom will live on forever - creating, imagining and determined to continue this story and give these characters the varied and many endings and stories they deserve. Believe me, nothing binds a fandom like an unfinished story.

And then I heard that a movie, then a third series, was going ahead and took that to mean NG was no longer involved and thought ok, it's going to look a bit different probably but that's ok. We will still get a 6 episode resolution on screen, an ending that is canon and ties up all the things and we can enjoy that and all it brings and then, probably have lots of mixed feelings about how it's all tied up, then eventually, probably, start to move on.

And now we have actual confirmation that it's a 90 minute movie, NG properly removed other than some script contribution and it's somehow more than I expected and not enough, and a relief and heart-breaking all at once.

And I have been reflecting and thinking about it all morning and realised that for me, this is a funny, bittersweet kind of middle ground that sort of allows two things to happen: we get a resolution on screen, we get to see these characters we love so dearly together once more and for their story to play out to some kind of conclusion. But we will also have to create and imagine and determine what happens with all that we won't get to see now.

Am I sad that there will be many aspects of the story we will probably never get (thinking of more flashbacks in particular)? Absolutely. But the other thing that often happens when a show ends is that after a while, without the need to speculate or theorise or imagine what could have been, fandoms plateau (that's not to say people don't continue to create and love the characters and show, especially something like Good Omens, but generally, in my experience, the level of engagement will peter off over time without new content, especially if everything is wrapped up nicely with a bow). The compulsion to create endings and resolutions is often diminished once an ending and resolution has been established.

So I realised that we find ourselves in a rather unique position. We will get a resolution of sorts, but all those bits we will never get to see will become the source of speculation and stories and art and theories and what could have been, and it will become ours to imagine and create time and time again. I think that the collective experience of all of this, along with the need to fill in the gaps, might actually keep the many talented creators in this fandom inspired and the rest of us engaged and bound together in a way we may not have been otherwise.

This is obviously just my take and where I currently sit on all this - there is no right or wrong way to feel, engage or move forward from here. The beauty of fandom, especially one as big as ours, is that everyone can find their pocket, connect with those who bring comfort and validation, and proceed in a way that works for you.

I adore this fandom, the people I have met and the unbelievable content and fandom works that come out of it. It is truly unlike anything I've ever been a part of online and if nothing else, I am grateful for that. This was an indulgent little ramble, perhaps it might bring some solace or make you want to throw things at me, and that's ok. We're in it together.

[exhausted-archivist]

The Deep Roads are Complicated, and I am in too Deep...

I've been working on and off at mapping the Deep Roads for a while now and after writing 4 pages explaining my methodology of why I think it is mapped the way I put it and then moving on to orienting the ttrpg thaig map, I realized something while taking notes on the directions mentioned and cross-referencing it to the description of Horrors of Hormak thaig description.

You can't map the Deep Roads from a top-down perspective because sometimes the roads change directions and aren't actually going in a straight line.

They need an orthographic map. Or a map that essentially bisects the mountain. The literal map in the corner of both the Origins and ttrpg maps. The maps... that have increments of depth.

Now, I knew that the deep roads had to change elevation, especially considering how they're described and the way they're supposedly below sea level for most thaigs.

But somehow, despite knowing that, I never considered that thaigs and the roads themselves would essentially be stacked on top of each other. Don't know why that never crossed my mind up until I was checking my notes and the passages of the ttrpg and Horrors of Hormak to confirm directions. To which it finally clicked as they both explain how there are galleries/antechambers and staircases/pathways that change directions.

How do we get to the thaig? This tunnel leads to a series of galleries. Think of them as interconnecting wide flights of stairs linked together and occasionally switching direction. We head down these for a few hours and we’ll be on the outskirts of the thaig.

-- Dragon Age Tabletop RPG, Buried Pasts p. 18

Beside him, Lesha muttered a word and her staff began to glow. She pushed it inside the entrance to the hole, giving light to the darkness within. The edges of the circle cast by Lesha’s spell revealed a small staircase that descended into an antechamber slightly larger than the clearing above, carved with a skill and delicacy that rivaled the works of Orzammar, or even Kal-Sharok. At the other end of the chamber, a doorway and a second staircase beyond that which spiraled into the darkness, the entire space lit by the glow of lyrium. And above the entrance, written in dwarven runes, a single word—Hormok.

-- Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights, Horrors of Hormak (p. 86)

Which then gave me pause and had me rereading and looking back at the map. Because the maps looked like they were straight and didn't initially give the impression of any verticality to them. Until you look in the corner. That's when it clicked for me and the mountains suddenly made more sense.

And now I'm screaming about it here. Because both maps are depicting a small chunk of mountain(s) in the Frostbacks. Which, for reference, my wip of the Deep Roads looked like this.

If you follow BioWare's scale of 1 square = 15 miles / 24 km - if the Deep Roads were in working order the journey to the anvil would only be roughly around 2.5-3 days journey. However, we know to get to the anvil and back to Orzammar is a month-long trip. So, with the darkspawn and collapsed tunnels it becomes a 2-week journey there and 2 weeks back. Which is quite a large jump in travel times.

I have a personal scale based on population size, megafauna, and the fact that it is supposed to take over a week to get to the Circle from Orzammar on the surface, among other travel time increments. Which makes each square 38 mi / 61 km. A 4-5 day journey from the anvil to the void when functioning.

Now, I think this map still holds up in terms of placement considering that mountains can have a wide footprint and the map on the Origins Deep Roads has at least two major peaks and a plateau, whereas the ttrpg just has one major peak and a couple of smaller ones. The ttrpg map also speaks of ravines and such so it fits the geography.

But yeah, long story short I need to revise some of my methodology; and maybe rescale the map, so things aren't super tiny.

[azurehaiku]

throughout the past 3 days i've been playing a demo for

THE BIG CATCH!

an extremely stylised gamecube-dreamcast era platformer inspired by the likes of psychonauts, super mario sunshine, FEZ and wind waker, where you catch fish, collect scales and do cool ass tricks with your fishing rod.

you play as Caster, a young, recently come of age bunny-bird [known as a Fysker] who passed all his trials to become a Fyskari and start doing fishing work in the wastelands for hire. this work is a big part of their culture, it being tradition for Fyskers to undergo acrobatic training to hunt and catch fish.

he works for a resturant, The Big Catch, under his boss Chef Leurre. we don't know much yet but the game seems to be set a few months after he starts working there, with some great disaster approaching that's going to doom the resturant unless he goes to save it. if you wanna read more, the website [https://thebigcatchgame.com] has a little info on the characters we know of and the general story.

his smug, cocky rival and coworker, Tackle, is a little older than him, and just as skilled! but his attitude and lax nature hold him back. speaking of him, he's actually the character you play as in the demo!

the demo in question serves as a prologue taking place a year or so before, featuring content that won't appear in the full game. as said, you play as Tackle during his last days of training to become a Fyskari, riding around the desert plateau through 12 different areas for a total of 26 fish and 688 scales. it's labelled as a demo but it is REALLY dense, a good 10-15 hours of content if you're goin for 100%.

the music, too, is really good! using MIDI sequencing to simulate the music from the era it takes inspiration from, it hits a spot in my brain that reminds me a lot of super mario galaxy.

one word of note is that the difficulty curve in this demo is STEEP. once you get out of the tutorial pit almost every area asks a LOT of you, and it can be frustrating to start. if you manage to get past that, however, the platforming puzzles in this game are really satisfying to figure out. not to mention there's TECH

overall, while this demo does have its flaws, with falling being a bit punishing when there isn't enough checkpoints and shortcuts available to get back quickly, pushing past them and improving leads to a LOT of really tight platforming and satisfying realizations when you figure out what to do.

HOWEVER!! if you plan on playing READ THIS NEXT PART CAREFULLY

[THIS IS OUTDATED!! SEE BELOW] the game has a Final Area locked behind 100%, and, another flaw, this game has no method of tracking where you've missed scales.i heavily recommend getting a notebook or opening notepad and keeping track of how many scales you've gotten in each area. people have already counted up how much each area has, so if you check and the numbers don't match, you know where to look! otherwise you're stuck aimlessly backtracking.

EDIT: the compass was added in a later patch, and it lets you know which area you're missing scales in once you reach the final hundred or so! it pulsates red when you're in the same area as them [minus the garden and mortar bird island, they're the biggest so you might need to go further into those to get it to trigger] and pulses stronger as you get closer. it can still take a bit to find the scales you're missing but it means you're no longer completely helpless if you missed some!

if you're willing to stick to it and aim for 100%, the reward is absolutely worth it! the atmosphere in the final area is incredible, with the music building as you progress through it, and even beyond the item that lies at the top, you can go even further up and experience the view of a lifetime. i'll leave that for you to see for yourself though! hope you have fun! see you on the dunes. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2985610/The_Big_Catch_Tacklebox/

[annalise-my-life]

I genuinely only 34t when I'm bored. Legit the only reason I've been plateauing for like three months. I need to get a damn hobby😭

[pishifuzul]

What would you recommend for someone (me) that had hit a wall in their bodybuilding ? It’s been around 7 months that I’ve not been able to lift heavier weights , I’ve tried changing what exercises I do to target the same muscle groups so that my body doesn’t get used to the same exercises and stops growing but unfortunately I go to a small gym and it gets packed no matter the hour

disclaimer that i'm not an expert, so i'm really just repeating advice that i've seen other ppl give. my understanding of strength plateaus is that they have to be addressed by checklist:

make sure you are performing your sets to failure. failure not as in "another rep would be really hard", but failure as in "you literally cannot force your muscles through another rep"

ensure you're eating enough—both raw calories and protein

double-check your form on everything to maximize consistency between workouts

make sure you're resting enough! especially sleep

try increasing exercise volume if this won't interfere with #4—more sets per week per muscle group

i'm not sure how you structure your workouts in terms of reps and sets, but if you're currently doing something like 8-12 to failure and you're stuck shy of maxing out, try a higher weight even if it means fewer reps (or even a lower one despite more reps, as long as you go to failure)

this is all i have right now but hopefully something there helps!

[7grandmel]

Rip of the week: 04/11/2024

You Are Sus

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume D

Ripped by Retro Gaming

Requested by Corb! (Request Form)

I've written a fair amount already on here about my somewhat...muted feelings, regarding Season 5 of the SiIvaGunner channel. It was, retrospectively, a sort of transitional year for the team, as they had to officially move past the King for Another Day Tournament after over two years of fixating on it, not to mention how large parts of the team had left during those years due to creative and personal differences. It's a net good in the end that the channel team wound up finally being free of the edgy assholes that had festered since the dark days of 2016, yet this transition left 2021 in particular feeling a bit...lost, in terms of long-term goals for the channel. We were, of course, still getting stellar rips as always; be it the remaining old guard showing tremendous growth with rips like Hopes and Divinity+, or fresh faces like R.L.99 from Through the F-F-Fire and the F-F-Flame and Memmy from Welcome to 2021! They finally invented summers that hurt motherfuckers😂 only at sonicforces​.​com making immediately memorable first impressions to help pave the way for the future of the channel...yet taken on the whole, it can be hard for me to remember just what Season 5 of SiIvaGunner in particular was aiming to prove.

As fate would have it, however, a set of huge events in the online world wound up happening in the lead-up to 2021, the very year of this initial uncertainty for the channel. The channel was no stranger to responding to ongoing online trends – Plains of Des-passing-to was far from the only upload of its ilk – yet the events in question had such a magnitude to them, to where it was as if SiIvaGunner's responses to them wound up inadvertedly defining the entire year's Season, in part defining the channel's whole legacy. The most obvious example is in the year's April Fools event; The Disappearance of Super Mario, rather than playing with the expectation and goals of the SiIvaGunner channel itself the way that ...of 2023 did with Season 7, was instead entirely built on an existing online joke that had been bubbling in the gaming community for the course of multiple months, one I covered pretty succinctly back on Your Best Nightmario and Mario Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Princess.

The second of these events would be the initial release of Friday Night Funkin' and the immediate surge of popularity it came with; doubtlessly, the SiIvaGunner team's choice to provide matching visuals for every rip of the game as shown on Satinpanties Symphony and Euler's Panties wound up giving the channel tons of attention from new fans, and over three years later it feels as if the culture of SiIvaGunner is inextricably linked with the youthful punk spirit still keeping FNF alive. Yet most momentous of all, above the aforementioned two events, there was a third that would end up festering into 2021 of SiIvaGunner, not through thematic coherence or through the die-hard passion of any one ripper in particular, but through sheer force of overexposure and comedic value; 2021 was, indeed, the rise and inescapable plateau of all forms of imposters, crewmates, tasks and sussy bakas; At last, it is time to talk about AMONG US, and time to talk about You Are Sus.

I've had the request for this rip in particular stuck in my head for months on end, awaiting a proper time to cover it; I've scraped the very surface of Among Us' presence on SiIvaGunner on here beforehand through Among Drip Drop Galaxy, and it's been looming over this blog since near its very beginning all the way back on Big Sus Chocobo. Yet to try and comprehend all that Among Us is feels nigh impossible: more than a video game, more than a phenomena, Among Us took the entire shitposting world by inexplicable storm and mutated like a virus into what feels like several hundred different memes over the course of mere months. It was rapidly growing in absurdity and layers of irony, much the same as SiIvaGunner memes like Grand Dad did like I wrote about on Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), yet now done on a wholly mainstream level; no matter who you were, if you were frequent on the internet you were only a few posts away from seeing the Among Us Drip memes, from knowing someone who had permanently added "sussy" to their lexicon, from seeing the vague silhouette of a crewmate wherever your eye would wander. Among Us shitposting was omnipresent, and the worst part was; It was, through some bizarre construction of the collective human consciousness, pretty much ALWAYS funny. The SiIvaGunner team witnessed this meteoric rise in an entire new genre of shitposting, and it was as if it gave the channel a newfound passion; as if to say, "no matter where our vessel heading, we're gonna make the best damned Among Us shitposts possible for as long as its afloat.".

And so, the rips came in; Expensive Dispenser's Among Fresh Drip, a mixture of these latter two phenomena released near the very start of Season 5, may perhaps be worthy of coverage on here in its own right for just how foundational it is to the Season 5 SiIvaGunner experience as a whole. But the rips riffing on the game only continued to grow in number, and as the meme itself grew it had yet more sources to pull from; like Bottom G of Lagplane fame, Among Us' greatest strength as a meme was just how damn versatile it was, as there were a seemingly neverending amount of audiovisual cues that would immediately let the viewer make the connection to Among Us and the growing insanity of its derivative content. Now, imagine taking a distillation of that insanity, and mixing it with what may be one of the SiIvaGunner team's most insane rippers; Retro Gaming. Featured on here previously through Logan Paul's Shop, the guy is a ripper whose output I have been SORELY underestimating, someone who – as made evident in the aforementioned rip – has a sort of unhinged knack for adding onto his rips through additional sources and jokes that only barely feel cohesive with what the original concept for the rip was, like teetering on the brink of madness. With these two combined, you end up with a whole bunch of Among Us rips; and, indeed, with You Are Sus in particular.

It's remarkable to me that You Are Smart now has two clear all-time amazing rips under its belt for me with both You Are Sus and Season 7's You Are Book Smart, but it goes to show just how much inherent comedic value the song has. The off-kilter feel of Katamari Damacy as a whole, distilled into a weird beat, melody and voice samples, make it the perfect canvas for true lunacy to breed; and with You Are Sus, practically every part of the Among Us shitposting homunculus is leveraged to make something truly unbelievable. It's far from the only Among Us YTPMV on SiIvaGunner – I mentioned Big Sus Chocobo before – and yet it feels perhaps like the most cohesive rip of the game you could possibly make. All the hits are here; Arcade Craniacs-posting, Stop Posting About Among Us, Among Us In Real Life, A M O G U S, all woven together in such a chaotic, unpredictable way, like a barrage of Among Us noise more than aiming to be organic parts of the original You Are Smart. Yet they're paired with additions that ARE almost seamlessly integrated with You Are Smart, changing the titular chant into "You Are Sus", Among Us sound effects being added to the original song's beat to give it just that slight sussy texturing, even giving it a sort of "beat drop" around 0:40.

Retro Gaming doesn't get sidetracked off the original joke here the way you could argue (despite being to its benefit) Logan Paul's Shop did; EVERY joke present here, every layer of madness added is all to further You Are Sus's agenda. The usage of Arcade Craniacs clips in particular is immensely inspired; the channel was one of many content farms on YouTube that found increasingly absurd ways to play off of the Among Us branding to boost their own popularity, and through voice clips relating to said efforts are intersperced throughout You Are Sus, it all comes full circle at the two minute mark. "It literally says 'You Are Sus'", a clip rings out, thereby connecting the echoing edit of the You Are Smart voice heard throughout the rip to the title and concept of the rip as a whole, a madhouse of every possible angle of the word "sus" played all at once.

I can express as many gripes with the overall direction of SiIvaGunner's 5th Season as I wish, but none of that will take away from the sheer talent and quality found within its rips; and a rip like You Are Sus excels in ways only a Season 5 SiIvaGunner rip could. Channelling the peak of Among Us shitposting insanity through the veins of one of the SiIvaGunner team's most cracked-out rippers, executed with the detail and finesse on a level to where the Stop Posting About Among Us-guy's ramble is synced to the beat of the song used... it was bound to become an all-time fantastic rip, is what I'm saying. It was as if the loose direction the channel took during 2021 in particular gave the team free reign, a freedom to adapt all that the internet was yelling over throughout the year with a degree of effort it would otherwise direct to the channel's own internal ecosystem. If that effort was what gave us rips like You Are Sus, then I'm perfectly content in calling Season 5 of SiIvaGunner a truly successful experiment.