Lately I’ve been obsessed with how feral and animalistic Scratch (and by extension the Dark Presence) is portrayed in Alan Wake 2. In the past Alan has said that it’s hard to personify the Dark Presence because its behaviors and motivations go beyond what human psychology and emotions can express, but it’s interesting to me that some behaviors and emotions usually associated with feral animals like wolves seem to fit this version of the Dark Presence/Scratch better. In the same way Alan is the owl and Saga is the deer, Scratch is the wolf. I mean, he constantly bares his teeth and growls. In the Dark Place the Dark Presence hunts Alan, while in the real world Scratch hunts Saga, both stalking their prey. Saga also gets repeatedly attacked by shadow wolves, who at one point kill a deer when she solves a nursery rhyme. And I absolutely love how the old saying about how animals are most dangerous when they’re cornered and/or wounded can be applied to Scratch in multiple situations, but especially when the Cult of the Tree attacks the lodge. At that point the Dark Presence was still weak from joining with Alan, but now they’re under attack, Casey is gone, and cultists are coming to kill them. Even though we don't actually see it and Alan doesn’t remember, it’s obvious Scratch managed to come out. And Scratch doesn’t just kill the cultists, but fucking rips them apart, judging by the piles of bodies and gore and hanging entrails. Don’t even get me started on The Bad Boy in Number One Fan, where they practically take the wolf motif and beat us over the head with it all under the guise of funny jokes and fanfiction tropes.
As much as I love the old portrayal of Scratch in AWAN, this much darker and feral version of Scratch is just so fascinating to me. Anyway, TLDR:
116 notes
·
View notes
THINKING ABOUT YANDERE NEO…
ִ ˙ ✩°˖💿 ⋆。˚ A shameless ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ ripoff from your resident Harry Styles fan :)
After forcibly removing you from The Matrix, Neo’s hope that you would eventually learn to accept your new life in the real world never comes to fruition. So he has to try alternative measures.
His idea comes from the training programs but he tries something a bit more ambitious, he’s The One so he can practically do whatever he wants. He creates a whole simulated suburban town, designed like the 1950s and he keeps you plugged into it. Your mind is wiped of everything that came before and all you know is this simulation, you believe it to be the real world, you believe Neo is your husband and you’re happily married but you keep having such vivid dreams, where you live a completely different life (the life you had in the matrix) in a completely different world that is far more advanced and you have a successful career, you tell Neo about these dreams every morning before he “leaves for work” (unplugs from the simulation) and he acts amused telling you how absurd they sound.
One day you’re running errands when you see Neo’s car parked outside a motel. You watch him enter one of the rooms and your mind thinks the worst, that he is having an affair. Determined to confront him you storm over to the motel and barge into the room you saw him disappear into, prepared to find him with another woman only to be greeted by an empty room. Your feet quickly rush to the bathroom but that’s empty too. Feeling confused you come back to the room and notice the phone hanging off the hook and carefully put it back while your mind races wondering if you were imagining things. You startle when the shrill sound of the phone ringing echos through the room, making your heart leap out your chest. You quickly answer it and everything goes dark.
When you wake up, you’re in an unfamiliar dark room, you can feel the cold air against your skin as your blurry eyes try to look at your surroundings. It’s hard, your eyes hurt, you’re unaware of how long it’s been since you last used them. You look down, realising you’re strapped down to what looks like a dentist chair, you panic and start crying out for help. You notice all these strange ports on your skin with wires attached, you feel like you’re in a nightmare. Then Neo comes running into the room, realising you managed to escape the simulation. He soothes you, telling you this is just a dream as he plugs you back in.
Once you’re back inside the simulation, you wake up confused, the ‘nightmare’ still fresh in your mind and Neo is there ready to feed you some lie. You fainted in front of a motel he tells you but your memory tells you otherwise, you feel confused, wondering where the nightmare started and reality ended.
The next day while Neo is “at work” you revisit the motel room, it looks just like it did in your “dream” and the phone is sat on the beside table. You sit on the bed and hesitantly lift the phone off the hook and put it to your ear after taking a deep breath. Nothing happens. All you hear is the dial tone. With a sigh you put the phone back down and shake your head, convinced it was all just a dream you return home and your life with Neo continues as normal for a while again…
97 notes
·
View notes
Small tip that has been helping me SO much with this cleanup: get a decent sized box and designate it for “stuff that is going to eventually go somewhere else”
I frequently get overwhelmed looking at the pile of stuff in front of me. Breaking it down into gradually smaller and smaller piles is the only way I stop myself from just shuffling the same clutter around in circles trying to decide where to put it.
So when im focused on just one area, i get a box that is literally just for “other stuff”. Add that in with a basket for dirty clothes and some trash bags, and now the process is much more straightforward:
Pick up an item. Is it trash, dirty clothes, or something else? Now I only have 3 choices. Put it in one of those. Move on to the next item. Repeat.
Then once the laundry is in the washer and the trash is all bagged, now I can look at the box of stuff and break it down even more. Okay, this is a charger. Let’s put all wires and chargers over here. This goes in the bathroom. Here’s my bathroom pile. Etc.
And if im tired for the day, i can put my box of “other stuff” to the side and start again tomorrow. But all of the stuff is now out of my way and i can see my floor again.
55 notes
·
View notes
ADHD mood (again)
I swear sometimes having ADHD is like living in a world where inanimate objects just teleport sometimes. Every day at random objects just teleport around your space.
The teleport happens completely at random. Usually paying really close attention to an object can delay it teleporting, watched pot never boils and all, but not always. Sometimes you're trying sooo hard to look at this thing so it doesn't teleport away, but then you blink or sneeze or look over at a noise you heard and oops it's gone.
It doesn't matter if you put an object in That Place You Will Remember It, because it will probably teleport somewhere else before you need it.
It doesn't matter if you have a special place for the thing, it's not going to stay there. No matter how many times you put it back, it's going to keep teleporting around.
It doesn't matter if you try reaaaally hard to remember where you put a thing. It's not there anymore, it teleported.
And after a while you stop bothering to try and remember where you put things, because it's faster to just look around at places things are likely to teleport to.
13 notes
·
View notes
Something has been bugging me lately; why is it that so much of the ASOIAF fandom hates romance? Like, this is a problem I've noticed and it's honestly kind of weird. To be sure, George's view on what is romantic is, uh, dubious at best, but to outright be so against it the way I've seen some people be against it is quite bizarre, to say the least.
Rhaegar and Lyanna? Of course there's no romance there! Rhaegar clearly was just using Lyanna as a baby factory to produce a super prophecy child because that's all there is to his character!
Jon and Daenerys? They won't be getting together like that dumb show! And if they are, it will be purely a political marriage! No lovey dovey stuff there!. After all Dany likes "bad boys" (which somehow translates to "evil men") so why would she like a strong, assertive man like Jon? And why would Jon like her? Not like he likes strong fiery tempered women!
Those are the two biggest examples but there is more. Daemon Blackfyre and Daenerys Targaryen are more ambiguous since they are historical characters, but a lot of people are convinced it was 100% unrequited love.
I've even seen fans complain about the line from Barristan where he thinks about how Bittersteel and Bloodraven's rivalry over the affections of Shiera Seastar caused the Blackfyre Rebellions. Like sure it wasn't the only reason, but to think that jealousy and romance didn't have an effect on those rebellions is a bit weird.
Yes, I am aware these are some problematic pairings, not least of which because most of these are pretty incestuous. However, the complaints about these romances do not stem from a moral quandary. In the case of R+L, you see people calling Rhaegar a groomer and pedophile (see my post on him on my full thoughts there), but the majority of it is simply "well it's stupid because they told no one and caused a whole war, the selfish brats" (bonus points if someone specifically targets Lyanna).
Okay, setting aside the fact that, like with the Blackfyre Rebellions, Robert's Rebellion was caused by far more factors than their elopement, why does making it an abduction Rhaegar did simply for a magic messiah baby make it a better story than the fact these two were in love and desperate to escape situations they felt trapped in, leading to shortsighted decisions that had an unexpected affect on many people?
With Jon and Dany, the backlash is "but that's so cliche! George wouldn't do something as cliche as two of the biggest protagonists falling in love." As if George doesn't constantly engage with cliche storybeats as often or even more than he subverts them. Even when the evidence for the two getting together is literally so overwhelming that you'd need to be willfully ignorant to ignore the foreshadowing (plus the fact George literally said that their union is "the point of the series").
And again, I must ask; why is Jon and Dany marrying to secure a political alliance without any real love between them a better story than an epic, doomed romance between two people who have gone through such similar struggles and have such similar personalities? What does R+L=J even exist for if they are just a couple of convenience using each other?
I'm not saying you have to love and ship all these people together. Because we sometimes forget our little fandom bubble, most people are not okay with even fictional incest ships. That's okay. Sometimes it's not even incest ships, but again, that's okay! We are all different and have our preferences! Some might not even care much for romance.
But the way a lot of this is criticized doesn't read like that. It's always focusing on the negative aspects. Especially with Dany's love interests. I'm not a fan of Daario and Dany, personally, but it is a bit uncomfortable how she is targeted so heavily for thinking and getting horny about him. Like... let a girl be horny and infatuated? Lol, I don't know!
With Rhaegar and Lyanna, Prince Duncan the Small and Jenny of Oldstones, the "problem" is that their disregard for political betrothals and following their hearts makes them stupid monsters who are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands. That is absolutely not the way we should take these romances.
These doomed, tragic affairs aren't about how people are selfish. It's about the power of love. The way love makes people act rashly. The way love consumes someones thoughts and feelings. Love is powerful, it is transformative, transcending. That is the point. Even in spite of the death and chaos occurring around it, the love these people have for each other is something that cannot be broken.
I feel like the fandom has taken the wrong approach to this series tone and themes. I'm not George's biggest personal fan, to be quite honest, but he is a self described romantic. Turning Rhaegar from a lovestruck prince to a selfish crazed maniac is not romantic. Turning romance or potential romance into cold political maneuvers is not romantic.
The point of all this is that, yes, the world is dark. It's scary, it's cruel, unforgiving, and cold. But in that darkness, there are pockets of light that shine and make you feel safe, and warm, and happy. It makes you forget all the troubles around you. That light, that warmth, that love, is worth fighting for, even if it's all that is left, even if it doesn't last.
I am of course, slightly biased in my assessment, lmao. You could say that me, being a bisexual polyamorous transfemme, is maybe a bit of a big fan of romance and love! Yet, it still saddens me that people try to keep romances from just being romances, and try to make the story and world more bleak as a result. We already have Ramsay, Joffrey, Gregor, Euron, Randyll Tarly. We have people who use love against others for their own gain or outright reject it violently. We don't need more of that.
83 notes
·
View notes
Is it just me or does The Pink Opaque version that Owen and Maddy watched as teens feel very- creepypastay.
Like obvious the fact that it later doesn't match was Owen originally saw adds to this, and this is not meant to take away from the very obvious queer narrative that this movie has, but it's just something I think is really neat about it.
I mean the director also made We're All Going to the World's Fair which is often compared to creepypastas, so I bet it's not too far off from the vibes that were intended. Beyond the obvious metaphors going on and stuff.
7 notes
·
View notes
so tiktok has been showing me so much yaelokre stuff and i am borderline freaking out because its triggering a level of anxiety I havent felt since averno was a thing
like the fandom jokingly calling themselves a cult and getting so involved in the story that sometimes its hard to tell whats real is so reminiscent of what averno was like (on top of actually literally being a cult) that its making me like “oh shit here we go again”
even though yes, I know the creator has condemned the people calling yaelokre a cult and stuff but still it feels so damn similar its scary
6 notes
·
View notes