#its weird finding this stuff on my own too

[lacesoflove]

guess who’s back on tumblr after trying to unalive themselves 😍 i don’t really wanna talk about my absence and go into the depths of the reasoning why, so i’ll just talk about why this account was made - which was for hamzah and slushy noobz. i want to have my own little thinkpiece on the match as well as my place in the slushy community moving forward

i want to say the match and the production is the reason why i love them soo much. they have such an ability of creating cinema with their videos, hence why one of my favourite video from them is the camping video (i tend to watch this video more for comfort rather than for humour though) – and there’s an immense amount of payoff as a viewer watching their content, you can see all the layered inside iokes (i.e having aldo, and nettspend’s producers) and internet jokes culminate in something so carefully crafted (like the way chase’s commentary was genuinely good??). and then the obvious reasons as to why i liked it, hamzah looked so damn good, and he knows it too (i also find martin attractive too, i’d just prefer not to talk about it too much in respect to his relationship). there’s something so beautifully boyish about their content that i can’t find something else (as much as i love them and before anyone says it, no - the dancing gamers cannot replace hamzah and martin and that’s okay!)

however this video kind of cemented why i don’t think i’ll continue regularly engaging with their content. this video kind of felt like a bittersweet ending to one of my favourite eras in my life (watching them). and before i proceed, ik the reddit fans are gonna be annoying - on a side note of the reddit fans i feel like the reddit community is so pedantic over small stuff and because of the few, genuine bad eggs in the community, they over correct and just get so bitter and mad about everything (i.e them being so cruel to fanfic writers) and call everyone chronically online whilst they use the same old “*insert trending braintrot joke* 💜”. i feel so aged out in a fandom even though i’m 18 - i can’t imagine how the slushies who are actually around hamzah and martin’s age feel when their fandom is so reminiscent and full of the same 14 year olds that i’m convinced are the reincarnations of the 2021 14 year old dsmp fans. definitely more sane, i’ll give them that. but community aside, at least reddit community, i want to talk about something another one of my mutuals mentioned recently in their own post and it’s how money hungry they seem. two things can exist at once, let’s get that straight - hamzah and martin don’t get a lot of sponsorships but also being upset that so much of this well awaited come back was heavy promotion for the patreon which, mind you, had a decent amount of members subscribed (i do commend hamzah for encouraging people to unsubscribe over the break!) and also they get money off of ad revenue. i just personally find it egregious that their hoodies, the out of character ones, which are at least unique designs unlike them literally reselling temu shirts like the “find x” shirts, are the same price, in my currency, to the essentials fear of god hoodies.

for any south africans here, it was around like R900 for a hoodie! which is gross im sorry :)

there are also other reasons im distanced from them, and its their associations with chase and claire - i made a, now deleted, post about this before but chase has this annoying tendency i notice in white ‘queer’ (i think he’s queer lmao) men where they speak in blaccents, which was heavily highlighted to me when he was a commentator and he was able to speak in a ‘normal’ white accent, and claire made weird ass comments about black women. as well as having fucking idubzz (who im not sure why was even invited when like sm people are like “who even is he??”) who literally had to make an apology about the fact he created a racist culture with his platform, years after the damage was done. i also have other smaller issues with them that would definitely actually get me cancelled (not even over on the reddit but here). but idfk, what are yalls thoughts?

[starvingnarcissistmusic]

I've had this drafted forever and I'm not entirely sure why I didn't post it. Oh well, better late than never!

MAL DU PAYS (the song) fun facts:

(Like the original post, spoilers for Act 5 ((and also 2hats)))

- Originally, after finishing the game, I wanted to write a song about Loop. They're one of my favorite parts of the game and I really loved their character, but I ended up scrapping that idea very early on, as I couldn’t really find a personal tie to anchor the song to me. While I did want to write a song about the game, I didn’t want to write something that didn’t resonate with me and my musical “mythos” in some way. It's a fan song, but it's also a Starving Narcissist song, and I felt it was important to strike that balance. MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) only got released because I felt that it was something that fit into the larger body of my works even without the context of the game. So in the end, I chose to write about Siffrin, as I found them a lot more personally relatable. The final version, lyrically, is almost like I’m using Siffrin as a vehicle to write about my own feelings. Some lyrics are his, some are mine, a few are both of us, it’s a weird sort of style I’ve never really written in before.

I do have some leftover lyrics from the scrapped Loop version, though!

“There’s a you you’ll never be, across the cosmic sea / Who has everything you wanted, now it’s everything you need; is it over yet?”

- I think originally the song had a lot more of an exhausted vibe, but with most of the stuff I write, the tempo usually gets faster the more I play it. At some point in the writing process the song channeled more of a manic energy than I had originally intended it to. Loud and shouty is kinda just my default lol.

(The first ever demo for the song, recorded September 15, 2024. Features some slightly altered lyrics!)

- The title was also subject to change! I think for a while I was going back and forth on just calling it Homesickness, mostly because I was a little nervous that my song’s name was technically a late game spoiler. Half the reason I wanted to even write the song was because I thought MAL DU PAYS would make a great song title though, so in the end I just sucked it up and went with my gut. The alternate title was also not set in stone, I think originally I was considering just calling it Mania or Paranoia, but I thought those would be a bit generic. Eventually, I settled on Monophobia, because I felt it was apt in describing the song as a whole. I write a lot about loneliness, and Siffrin is afraid of being alone, so it felt fitting to name the song after the fear of it. (And also, a bit more superficially, I thought Monophobia made a better song title.)

- The song is the only Starving Narcissist song on a nylon string guitar, and it's also the second song in a completely non-standard tuning (third if you count ITWYW?, but that's just a half step down from standard). MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) in DADF#BD, with a capo on 1.

- THIS SONG HAD SO MANY REVISIONS. I don't think I've ever had this many versions to a song ever. It got so bad that I made a specific folder just to hold all the different variations I had for the song. They're not all too different from each other, and they're all built on the same take of the song, but I was playing around with mixing and structuring and vocal layering and its a whole mess. Honestly, the fact that it's a song about a timeloop makes it probably the funniest song this could have happened to.

- And that's about it! To end off this little fun fact post, here's a little something I wrote for Genius (where lyrics for this song and all my others are posted! plus annotations I write! <3) about the song. The response to MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) has been pretty wild, and I'm glad it managed to resonate with people, even some who don't even know the game it's about.

That's all. While I guarantee this year will probably be slower for Starving Narcissist, rest assured that I am working on stuff, just very slowly. There's a very low chance I'll ever do something as flagrantly self indulgent as this song, but whatever I do end up doing, I hope you're around to see it.

In the meantime, stream the song on spotify! or buy it on bandcamp! or even just go watch the lyric video i made for it (please i spent like a week on this)!

Thanks for everything, see you later <333

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars And Time! tldr; i wrote a song about it. if you wanna skip all the gushing and just listen to it, click here. (spoilers for act 5) If not, behold this big rambly mess of a thing i wrote:

So funny story, I kind of wasn’t planning on releasing anything for the rest of the year. The album wore me out, and the only other idea I had sort of fell through, so I was content on just letting the album be the only thing of note I would make in 2024.

… and then, in September, I played a little RPG called In Stars And Time. beat the whole thing over the course of three days, then spent the next couple weeks ravenously consuming all the fan content I could get my hands on. my friends have been forced to stare at my siffrin pfp every day for two months straight at this point and frankly i think they are tired of me talking about it.

i love the art, i love the story, i love the music, i love the characters, i love the world. siffrin sort of immediately became one of my favorite protagonists like,, ever. and it definitely did not help that i am also a scrawny forgetful person who has to regularly fight off the part of my brain that convinces myself that All My Friends Secretly Hate Me.

I’ve never really been so called out by a character before. The spiraling, the deflection, and the agony of being a stranger to yourself. the yearning for something you cant even name, because how could you? you cant even find the words on your tongue. not being able to tell anyone how you feel because its just easier to live with it, easier to let it eat you from the inside out then to bother anybody else. its easier to keep the mask on, stick to your lines, let the show go on.

all that hit just a bit too close to home. so i did what I usually do When Things Hit and wrote about it.

(like i said, spoilers for Act 5; It’s pretty devoid of context but they’re spoilers nonetheless)

MAL DU PAYS (Monophobia) is a song about cyclical burnout, self-estrangement, and homesickness. It’s half about Siffrin, half about me, but mostly it’s a rumination on loneliness and the hell that is the self.

Out now wherever you listen to music.

“How can you be homesick if nowhere is home?"

[ganondoodle]

(oh hey, we didnt have a long rant in a while, this wasnt supposed to be so long, as per usual with me ... i looked up some refs of the botw sonau ruins since i wanted to see how to combine its design to my sonau design in my totk rewrite- and this happened ... in case this sounds too angry or aggressive, its not meant like that, im not imploding about it, its just frustrating and annoying to me)

i have a problem with pretty much every inch of totk, and theres lots of big problems, and lots of things i find absolutely bafflingly stupid decisions-

one bafflingly weird and stupid decision to me, though there are way more important ones, is the nigh complete seperation from botw sonau (zonai) design aesthetic and totk sonau design aesthetic- its so .. weird and utterly unecessary it will never stop bothering me, its one that has relatively little impact in development but huge impact on the believability of the world

you have these ancient ruins of long gone people (that imo should have stayed a mystery, since that sense of lost history you cannot grasp makes both the world more believable and real feeling and will never let you stop thinking about, if you care about that kind of stuff at least- but i talked about that in length before im sure), but whats left leaves you still with a pretty clear design aesthetic, at least in the buildings that remain (the armor less so bc it really doesnt look like anythign ancient and just doesnt really fit together)

and then you make a game around them- but ... completely redesign their aesthetic .... in a rather big contrast too, for literally NO reason, there is not a single reason to do that, not even the excuse of trying to seperate the two games in their core aesthetic (like in the case of the shiekah- though that too is stupid bc ITS A DIRECT SEQUEL- IF YOU DONT WANT TO MAKE MORE OF THAT DESIGN THEME or leave it in for that matter THATS CORE TO THE PREVIOUS GAME DONT MAKE IT A DIRECT SEQUEL YOU DUM-) can do any work here, the botw sonau ruins werent many, it was background stuff, it wasnt a main theme and it didnt carry any importance in the game itself

like, botw sonau architecture was dark stone with red highlights (a color that usually fades rather quickly, imagine how strong it had to be once, maybe it was even more colorful at some point), bird, boar and dragon carvings, torches in bird shape, alot of swirls and round patterns among the blockier rough shapes, its was pretty detailed with patterns and pictures all over it --

totk sonau? blendingly white stone, all blocky shapes like unfinished blender models, not a swirl to be found, green hologram lights (or cold white light, i dont think there are any totk sonau torches, just those weird candle things- most light sources are lamps in impeccable shape all giving off that cold white light) and gold blocky script, theres rarely alot of detail on them, the pattern most often present beign a scale pattern ... one which i dont remember appearing anywhere on the botw sonau ruins in that way/that often, the only animal motif is a dragon head every now and then and it honestly feels tacked on, like they scrambled to try and connect the two in any way shape or form, white gold and green, theres nothing red anywhere, they neither connect to the botw sonau architecture nor to the one armor set- or its description, totk sonau have nothing to do with the phirone (faron) region (aside from that one quest that could have been placed anywhere), they are weirdly modern and techy, theres nothing "barbaric", not even their clothes are in any way connected (im so sick of all that gold tbh) even their magic isnt really .. magical, it all feels like science fiction type tech stuff (even though they said they wanted it to feel magical, couldnt be further from that tbh) the design of their magic symbols dont line up with their own building aesthetic or anyone elses even, its so messy

if you do the quest to get the fith sage its even more apparent- its the direct contrast between botw and totk sonau, its like a cut into a mod, theres no overlap, you cant argue that its bc the botw ruins where exposed to the elements and thats why the color differs- the totk sonau ruins left to rot both in the underground and in the literal sky are all just as if not more exposed, yet they all remain in rather good shape, all keeping the white and often completely colorless look, most damage being just some clumps of mold (?) or something having fallen over, and if they were protected so their color didnt change? wheres the red? the colors all should be in pristine shape then but its not bc there is no color

their excuse of "uuuh the hylians build those things in honor of the sonau!!" they tried to give doesnt work, like all other excuses, if they did why the hell does it look so different? sonau stuff was all over the place, you have the blueprints right there, WHY even build it? in those regions nonetheless that were of pretty little importance as far as we know, if this were the case they should be on the forgotten plateau or around hyrule castle but they are not- ALSO if the hylians built them for them .. so after they died out .. why then is there some weird mechanism with their actual aesthetic there in the ones in phirone? if they built it while they were still there ... why make it look so different?? ADDITIONALLY hyrules style of architecture is closer to the totk sonau one than the botw sonau so you cant even say it was influenced by their own style bc botws sonau is more different than both of them

it also adds to the .. feeling of something being off about the entire game (like it felt to me even shortly after starting to play), while i dont want to touch on the stupidness of how they handled totk shrines since thats another long rant i already did before, the sudden appearance of totk sonau style stuff literally everywhere (and the disappearance of anything not plot relevant shiekah bc it just went poof according to interviews and neither that nonsensical excuse nor anything in the game making sense- bc in the end they just wanted it gone and didnt care) would seem LESS weird if it was in the style of botw sonau, you know that style, its been here the whole time and more of it appearing would seem much less jarring, even if it doing so in completely non sensical ways- it would at least lessen that weirdness

i do not get why you would do that, did your designers have nothing to do so you made them make an entirely new aesthetic? did you not want your holy perfectly goodest god king to be anything but the most clean and kingly looking so you didnt even go for the barbaric idea from botw?(which i am not a fan of either) bc of course someone supposed to fill the role of perfect example of how to be good king of holy hyrule to zelda couldnt look "primitive"? was that given to the ancient hylians instead? with their designs going, to me, rather close to a mix of native american and ancient greek aesthetic (uh oh)- to contrast them to your superior alien that brought the idiots on earth technology since we didnt have enough tired tropes in here already? thought that design theme was more sellable? simply didnt care? (tbh, most likely in my eyes given the carelesness of the game to connect in any way to botw, much less in a meaningful one)

(those where written like questions but i dont expect anyone to answers for, it just sounds better)

[emptymasks]

so this hasn't happened in like a year

[ID: a tweet from me saying that my art has been stolen with screenshots of the art they stole badly cropped out and put on a tshirt with text that says 'yes, darling? do you need something?' and another screenshot of the store page. next to it is a screenshot of my original Goostarion artwork I posted to Tumblr and Twitter 6 days ago.]

someone stole my art. again. please never buy from tshirt shops like this on etsy. they are 100% stolen fanart and stolen official art. my own goostarion artwork as a sticker is one of the first results on etsy when you search for baldur's gate (which, thank you guys so much for that) and so perhaps because i put him on etsy you might see the tshirt and also think it's mine without checking the shop name. but it's not. and multiple people have the shirt in their basket. if an artist is selling their own work as a shirt it will be in their own shop, or perhaps in a redbubble/teespring shop under the same name. and it won't be a badly cropped version of their art with their watermark painted over.

[ID: a screenshot of the shop selling stolen art, SweetieBestieStore on Etsy. They have had 85 sales, 12 reviews with an average of 5 stars, the listing for the shirt with the art they stole from me says '3 people have this in their basket'. There is also stolen art by artists I tracked down using Google's Reverse Image Seacher they are grimmsever on Twitter, BryeArt on RedBubble and twistedlonewolf on Twitter. please support the actual original artists. their art has all been cropped, backgrounds erased and/or text placed next to it.]

i've repoted the listing, we'll see if etsy does anything. no one else can report it for copyright other than the person who owns the copyright so. we'll see if anything comes of that. i've reported stuff on other websites before like wish and amazon and got them taken down, but never etsy before so i don't know how quickly they work on these things or what the response could be. i have no idea if this post will reach any of the people who have this shirt in their basket on etsy, anyone who's scrolled past items like these on etsy, but please don't support shops like these.

[ID: a screenshot of my own Etsy shop 'emptymasks' where I have search for 'baldurs gate' within my own shop to show only my baldur's gate items, you can see my original artwork for goostarion which i have been selling as a sticker this past week since i drew him.]

And if you want Goostarion, you can just buy him as a sticker off my own shop. Or you could reblog the original post I made of the artwork here.

Ugh this isn't what I wanted to wake up too. I really hope no one buys anything more from their page.

[ghostofsnails]

so did you guys know theres this character called tristan vik disventure camp and

[warmfuzzyanimal]

wish i had a consistent character to show for this, but since i don't i just used icons :0]

blank template for those that want it under the cut

[icewindandboringhorror]

I've referenced before how I have a big google document to keep track of every media I've ever seen in my entire life (just for reference because I like to track everything possible lol… I am the Data Collector), but recently as I was updating it, I thought of actually evaluating them to find out random percentages (like for example, out of Total Shows Watched, what percentage did I finish vs. stop watching, what percentage did I like or dislike, etc.)...

Evaluating these things is made easier by the fact that I already place everything on each subsection of the list into 6 broad ranking categories, so I don't have to go back and guess to figure out how I feel about them or anything. The categories are: Ranking 5 - overall best* (despite some criticisms of course because I'm too much of an Analyzer to ever find anything Perfect lol) Ranking 4 - more positive than neutral, but not good enough to be 5 Ranking 3 - either the good + bad negate each other, OR it's just not memorable/interesting in any way enough to be ranked higher or lower (this is the Default category ALL things are placed in if no other rank applies) Ranking 2 - maybe a few redeemable elements but largely more negatives than positives Ranking 1 - So bad that it circles around to being fascinating to observe in some way (not necessarily Funny, or Good, but just interesting somehow) Ranking 0 - Bad in a genuinely frustrating or obnoxious manner

*("best" primarily defined here as most interesting, rather than most good in a technical sense, or some other measure. I tend to value more highly whether there's something novel or thoughtful about the worldbuilding, tone, writing, base premise, etc - than about whether it's actually executed perfectly.)

And here's the amount of shows that have so far been placed into each category -

TV shows ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 20 shows ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 28 shows ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 114 shows ~ Rank 2 (mid low) -33 shows ~ Rank 1 (low low but intriguingly so) - 14 shows ~ Rank 0 (iredeemably low) - 2 shows

This would make for a total of 211 TV shows overall. However, there are 57 shows within these list marked as "didn't finish" (typically meaning I quit on the very first or second episode - but log them still to keep a record that I at least had a brief view of them).

So my total of genuinely fully watched shows would be more 154. 211 Total, but a More Accurate Total of 154.

Counting them all and using the Total Number Of The List (211) -- that means roughly 9.5% of all total shows I have ever watched (or at least attempted to watch) have been Mostly Good, 13% have been Moderately Okay, 54% have been either entirely Forgettable or some mix of good + bad that lands them right in the Neutral Middle, 15.6% have been Mostly Bad, 6.6% have been Bad (but in an interesting way), and 0.9% have been Terribly Bad.

Additionally, I didn't even get past the first two episodes of about 27% of the total.

Sooo, discounting ones I didn't finish, my total TV shows ever watched in my life would be about 154 (maybe give or take a few, assuming I might have forgotten some from very long ago).

But instead of entire life, let's just say this is the total for 'About 20 Years' (so, not counting very early childhood when I likely wouldn't remember things I saw/have no detailed recollection of them (like for example, I'm sure at some point when I was like 4yrs old I must have seen an episode of Spongebob or something, but I have zero distinct memories of it, can't quote anything of it, and barely recall the premise - so I don't count it on the list, etc.)).

In that case, 154 divided by 20 would be roughly 7.7 shows a year.

Which is actually surprisingly low considering that I often have stuff on in the background for hours whilst I make sculptures and do costumes and stuff (maybe I should have also marked some distinction between 'things I fully paid attention to' and 'things I kind of half listened to whilst sculpting', but that would further split the categories too much probably lol), but I guess a lot of that is youtube videos or random documentaries, so .. eh.. maybe I get it being lower.

Now, doing the same thing for movies-

Movies ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 4 movies (3.4% of total) ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 12 movies (10.3% of total) ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 91 movies (78.4% of total) ~ Rank 2 (mid low) - 8 movies (6.8% of total) ~ Rank 1 (low but interesting) - 1 movie (0.8% of total) ~ Rank 0 (irredeemably low) - none in this category (0%)

That makes 116 for a Total (Actually Remembered) Movies Watched In Lifetime (Or At Least In 20 Years).

116 divided by 20 is roughly 5 or 6 movies a year (I feel this has probably been skewed though by adding everything since like elementary school onwards, as I remember a lot more movies from child/teen years.. Whereas, the past 3 years I feel like I've barely seen maybe even 5 movies?? lol). I also have "Didn't Finish" marked on 18 of them. Which means I quit halfway through about 15% of the total movies.

So, a for broader summary stuff..

I seem to be less forgiving to movies than tv shows, by far. Which makes sense to me, I guess, because I love elaboration and details, so "short form" things that only last an hour or two are often lost on me a bit. My biggest complaint with movies is indeed usually walking away just wishing there had been more exposition, more scenes where characters are doing nothing, more "mindless bantering" conversations, more Quiet Downtime and Lore Elaboration and so on lol, so... of course most 1-2hr films end up feeling a bit Not Enough To Draw My Interest/Nothingy to me.

If you count 5 and 4 as "like" and rankings 2 to 0 as "dislike", then for TV shows I at least somewhat liked 48 of them, and at least somewhat disliked 47 of them.. So it's almost exactly the same lol. I'm just about equally as likely to find something bad as I am to find something redeeming about it. But overall, the largest chance is that I just won't really care much for it at all and it will be tossed into the 'neutral' pile, forgotten forever. Movies have a bit better of a balance, "liking" 16 of them, and "disliking" only 9 of them. So I'm slightly more likely to enjoy a movie than to find it annoying - though still VASTLY more likely to just not find it anything in particular, possibly not even finishing it.

ANYWAY.. this is vague and literally pointless, but like I said, I just really find information fun. Like my document where I've rated every apple flavor I've ever tried (like 40 of them now?), or reviewed every oreo flavor (32?), or ranking data from my entire 10 years of Trying To Make Friends process (out of 100 people, roughly 8% chance of a moderate compatibility, 3% chance of high), or etc. etc.. I love to have random pointless things to analyze I suppose lol.

I doubt anyone tracks things in their life in this same exact way, but I'd be interested in hearing any at least somewhat similar data !!! (like, how many TV shows you watch a year on average, and what percentage of those you like vs. dislike (if you keep track of that sort of thing), etc.)). I guess it might be easier with movies, since I think some people use those websites where you curate a list of movies you've seen and you can rate them or something, so maybe the numbers are already available on those places. :0

[soupmanspeaks]

you ever wonder if the Glamrocks's face tracking acts up when they look at Glamrock-Freddy, like they'll look at his face, and the recognition will register as Freddy, but their systems for whatever reason or another think that there is a face overlapped on Freddy's do you think they see two small squares next to him, at his side, roughly child sized, but no one is physically there.... right...?

[fate-defiant]

These four wormed their way into my head last night and would not leave me until I spat something out so here's some assorted headcanons, a comic that I'm not sure I understand the punchline of myself and the youngest inn-bling(ba dum tss) in ten to fifteen years.

[itsalwaysdark]

i think itis funny in the past when i would list my interests as if i post abt them i donot post abt the shit im into rly Mainly bc im not rly Into Into anything anymore i occasionally watch or read or play something but i dont do fandom stuff rly much.... just sometimes i get brainworms

[phagodyke]

yeah I'm not gonna talk abt it am I...

[silouvertongues]

gotta get up early for class tomorrow im so sleepy but i suddenly felt the urge to calculate how much money's been spent on my post secondary education till now and i literally feel nauseous

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Me: *talking about the older Disney Princess movies and how I'm re-watching them* Someone: Oh yeah, but man those older ones, the OG 3? They were horrible representation for wom- Me:

Me: Speak not another word, lest we get thrusted back into the good year of 2014. This is why Frozen gagged y'all, cause people had that antiquated and twisted mindset of something that doesn't exist.

[transbee]

having did and being online in any capacity is so fucking exhausting because you literally can't go anywhere without seeing the most heinous takes about your existence or validity it's like. can we be normal. can we please be normal and Chill for like two seconds.

[sludgeguzzler]

ever since the pandemic ended and i started going out and talking to people with the goal of "making friends being happy loving life" ive started o realize that i in fact do not enjoy the stay at home doing nothing not talking to anyone lifestyle and that i love calling ppl and that nature is actually the bomb, all the times id rather stay in bc "im just not an outings guy" is actually bc im like. traumatized or something

[gurorori]

um